Dante Remy
I corresponded with several creators recently who had heard my reading of this poem and asked some good questions. Was this poem autobiographical? Is Annabelle Lee really Poe’s deceased wife? What are some of the circumstances around her death and his death depicted in this poem? I always encourage you to write and reflect, responding to this article in the reply option below. Let’s read Poe’s words, Annabel Lee, and then discuss it.
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea, But we loved with a love that was more than love— I and my Annabel Lee— With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven, Went envying her and me— Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we— Of many far wiser than we— And neither the angels in Heaven above Nor the demons down under the sea Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride, In her sepulchre there by the sea— In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Annabelle Lee, one of Poe’s most popular poems, which follows so many of the common themes of his poetry and his writing, often the death of a beautiful woman. But, is it about the actual death of a woman, or is it about the death of love? Is it about him and his life? Perhaps his young wife we lost in her youth?
We really don’t know the answers. What we do know about Poe and about his writing is that he was fantastical and that we cannot always assign a true meaning to anything that is written. Yes, we can surmise, we can think, we can reflect, and I will do some of that here. But in the end it is up to interpretation, and so, of course, I always wonder what do you think? What are your answers to some of the questions I will pose about this lovely poem? About Poe’s life, perhaps, and about yours? Where you see this poem, this ode, Annabel Lee, reflecting your life? Does it reflect, perhaps, events of your life, or formative death, or love or other life events? Think about these questions as we explore Annabel Lee from several angles.
Let us consider Poe and his life as it relates to this poem. The poem was actually written in 1849. It was published after his death, and he went to great lengths to ensure that it would be published after his death, speaking with his publisher, leaving a copy with a friend. He made sure it would appear in print and in many ways is one of his final acts as a writer.
Now, where does life and love come into this? Well, we know that he married his wife, Virginia, when she was age 13, and he was 27. She died about 11 years later, in her early 20s, and so I think it’s fair to say he was engaged and loved her in her youth, and that she actually died in her youth, as well. Poe himself met her and married her at age 27, and he died at age 40. So he’s somewhat of the outsider, the observer, perhaps as the writer of this poem, but also perhaps as the lover, as the husband, as the observer or outsider speaking about someone else writing about someone else as well.
It’s also fair to say that Poe, who was prolifically writing up until this time, was quite distraught at his wife’s death, and its been suggested it was his demise. He began drinking even more heavily. It’s widely recognized that he was a heavy drinker, if not an alcoholic. He was found incoherent in someone else’s clothing on the streets and brought to a hospital. They suspected of alcohol poisoning. There is evidence that he may have been used in a voting scheme that took people off the streets or who were inebriated and cast them aside once they had cast many votes. There was a phenomenon happening at the time.
What we do know is that he had been increasingly distraught and he had actually developed a relationship with a former love and had promised to marry this widow. You don’t know how all that played out in conflict, but what we do know is that love is a phenomenon of conflict. It’s a phenomenon of discovery, it’s deeply intimate, it’s something that’s shared with someone that perhaps those on the outside don’t always understand. It’s a story that we tell, and sometimes we have to untell that story.
Here we see a poem written that is fantastical and in a far-off land, so to speak, that draws parallels to Poe’s life, but also draws parallels to love in general. This poem asks many questions. How do we fall in and out of love, navigating the conflicts within? How do we navigate those around us who may perceive it in a different way? How do we survive the loss of love?
Now, it is interesting to note that this poem was published just two days after his death. Poe ensured that the poem would be published upon his death. However, there is some speculation that the timing of its publication was simply coincidental and, thus, perceived as an ode to his wife.
Finally, I’ll add, as a literary side note, that Annabel Lee was the inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita with the theme of forbidden love about age difference. As we know in the novel Lolita, there is a young love Annabelle Lee spelled differently who is terminally ill and is considered living by the sea. In fact Lolita’s original title was the Kingdom by the Sea. So you can see some great parallels and what an amazing influence Poe was on literary life, certainly literary life in the United States at the time (although Nabokov was Russian a more contemporary writer). Poe is considered one of the birthers, so to speak, of the United States’ literary tradition, raising the standard both as an editor and also as an author.
Have you ever wondered what the words of others would look like in writing, being able to touch and hold those words of a famous work? You can venture to Columbia University’s book collection, where an original written manuscript of Annabel Lee is kept, handwritten by Poe, as a final draft. Perhaps, if you’re lucky enough, you might even be able to read it to yourself and enjoy it just for a moment. One thing that I noticed right away when I looked at the written script was how he underlined she and I. He wanted extra emphasis on those words. She was a child and I was a child. And you have to wonder again was he justifying something there? Was he justifying the love? Was it the case they were both children? Is it a child’s reaction to lay at the grave of someone that you miss? Is the love about a platonic love? Is this about the love of children, or is it something that’s more deeply? Is it about loss of childhood first love or a childhood friend, given they were both children? Or is it more an explanation of a love that’s forbidden, that is taken away, that is criticized?
One cannot evade Poe's personal history when interpreting this poem. We see a kind of defense of this love. We see the potential for the love to be taken away certainly by illness, but also by society, by another family, by those who are looking down into the love and perhaps not approving of it from the heavens or from this majestic family as portrayed in the poem.
So let’s dive more deeply into the poem and ask some questions and reflect on these questions. The poem starts as if it’s a fairy tale, many years ago, in a kingdom by the sea. In some languages, in Russian for example, you might start off Zhili Byili: There once lived in a time or land long, long ago. So we already have this sense of a fantastical and unearthly context for this poem, for this love. Can we agree that that sometimes this is the context for love? It can feel like it’s unworldly, that it’s new, that it’s different. How do you describe love? The experience of love, the experience of falling in love, the experience of knowing you’re in love? Is it of this earth? It’s beyond the everyday.
The first stanza ends with the line Then to love and be loved. In other words, she lived with no other thought than to love and be love. This strong reciprocity, the dual nature of love. It wasn’t just his love, it was her love. Again we establish the explanation, we establish a defense of this love. It’s not one loving the other, it’s both, both loving each other. So this is fantastical. This is at another level and it’s mutual. Who could criticize this, right?
But it’s much more. This love transcends age. It’s innocent. I was a child and she was a child. It’s an innocent, almost natural love that the angels of heaven, they coveted and envied us. They coveted what we had, this unearthly, this great force, this power, even from the highest angels from above. They saw it as love. This ode is even greater than love, maybe the greatest love, and it’s pure and it’s innocent and it’s real and it’s natural. It’s how things should be. I Was a child and she was a child. Can you be children in love? Can love make you feel Like your life is beginning? Can love be perennially youthful? Can you feel the renewing power of love even in old age? Can a touch, can a kiss, can the feelings of love be as new as when you first felt them?
Well, we find in the next stanza that this love is taken away twice, not just once, and physically taken away. Physically taken away. And again, you have to wonder about both this surreal and the real levels of this. A wind blew, chilled Annabel and she succumbed to death, taken away by death. The natural or unnatural nature of it, we don’t know. Was it natural or unnatural, what do you think?
And we know that a family, this Highborn Kingsman, then physically took her away and I would suggest even a third time. She was placed in the sepulcher and enshrined so that he could only lay next to it or or touch it, this tomb. So we have a kind of natural, unnatural taking away, we have a kind of societal or social taking away, and then we have a physical taking away. These are levels of grief, these are levels of loss that are profound. And, again, I would ask, where does this come from, this kind of writing, these multiple levels of loss? Is it simply fantastical for Poe to write this? Or is he portraying events in his life: the loss of his mother at age three to illness, tuberculosis, just like his wife died of tuberculosis and was taken away in youth. He lost his mother in childhood and he lost his very young bride and her youth. The parallels are really interesting here, and what we do know is there seems to be multiple levels of loss here. It’s very powerful.
It’s hard not to apply these events of his life. It’s also challenging to think of this as something that would just come out of his imagination. But what we do know is we all can experience loss of this depth, loss of love, whether it’s platonic, familial or romantic and loving. He talks more about her death, giving more details the chilling and the killing, the exposure to elements, the hardship perhaps. And he relates this to perhaps something coming down from heaven, almost as if it’s a judgment. He speaks of it as envy. Heaven envied what they had. Envied their love, and so took her from him to end that love, what it envied, through the elements, under the dark of night. He couldn’t defend her, he could only witness this. And again, this kind of vulnerability, out of control, whether it’s love or death or loss, is so painfully written in these stanzas.
Yet, in the second to last stanza, there remains a kind of morbid hope that this this love cannot end. It’s unending, a kind of metaphysical unending. It contrasts with the last stanza. That’s more physical, more real, more tangible. But in the unreal, in the supernatural, the love never ends. Angels and demons cannot take it away. Their souls are connected forever. You can physically kill someone, you can physically take them away, but the souls are intertwined. The souls never go away. The souls never part. And so in this second to last stanza we see how the love is unending and how love itself always leaves a part of someone with us. It doesn’t simply go away, It doesn’t simply disappear. Do we ever really fall out of love? Doesn’t a part of this love always stay with us? In the case of Annabel and this poem, the answer is absolutely it does. It can never be lost. This soul cannot be taken away. So love is sustained, the souls that are intertwined are sustained.
Imagine a world where we think of love as always eternal, the relationships we have as eternal. We approach and we cherish and we accept them as those that change us, that will always be with us, that love and relationships aren’t simply cast aside. They do remain with us. Yet, perhaps some are more special than others, and certainly this is the case of Annabel. That is what we’re reading here, what we’re knowing, what we’re feeling, what we feel in this.
But all things must come to an end and, as Poe so morbidly writes so often, the endings are often a process of eternal grief because in the physical, he is going to literally lie by her side. He can’t touch her. He can’t speak to her. He can’t feel her. He can only know their connection, their eternal connection. He lies at the sepulcher, this enshrined tomb, and thinks of her and stays with her as he hears the echoes of the sea. As he hears the echoes of their love. As he hears the echoes of the place where they were together.
So many questions. So many ways to experience love. So many ways to experience loss. It’s difficult, very challenging, to think that what Poe wrote in these lines is completely disconnected from his life, his experience, from his love and his loss. How would you express your love, your loss, and your connections? Are they intertwined in a permanent, lasting way?
Perhaps this poem will stay with you as you drift off in thought and reflection. Perhaps a day or a week or a month or a year from now, you’ll experience something and it will bring you back to this poem, Annabel Lee, by Edgar Allen Poe.
©️ 2023 Dante Remy
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