Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm: a love story

Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm: a love story.

Edgar Allan Poe is often seen as a tortured man, and he was; But for a man to be one, he must first know happiness. And EA Poe was happy at one time, and that happiness had a name: Virginia Clemm.

Virginia Eliza Clemm was born in 1822. Her name came from a tragedy, as she was named after a sister who had died ten days before her birth. She was EA Poe’s great love, although she was certainly not the only one (see: The Secret Loves of EA Poe). She would eventually engage in some clandestine affairs with Sarah Helen Whitman and Sarah Royster, in fact, his first and last girlfriend.

Virginia Clemm’s mother shared the poet’s last name on her mother’s side, Maria Poe; That is to say, Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm were cousins, a somewhat thorny issue, although not entirely uncommon at the time. The relationship caused some scandal, but for different reasons.

EA Poe and Virginia Clemm met in 1829. He was twenty years old; she seven. Their families lived together for some time, during which time EA Poe had a platonic romance with a neighbor named Mary Devereaux. Little Virginia was in charge of transporting messages and love letters between them; It is even said that she, on one occasion, had the audacity to pull out a lock of Mary’s hair, with the intention of taking it as a trophy to her cousin.

Forced by financial pressures, EA Poe left his Baltimore home in 1835 and moved to Richmond, where he found employment as an editor at the Southern Literary Messenger. By then he already had the idea of ​​marrying Virginia Clemm one day, but one of his cousins, Neilson Poe, took the young orphan to her house, avoiding a premature marriage. The poet’s epistolary lucidity, added to the financial prosperity in the Southern, derailed Neilson’s plans. In May 1836 the couple legally married (a ceremony that required the falsification of the young woman’s birth certificate) although it is believed that in September 1835 they had already married secretly.

At that time Edgar Allan Poe was 27 years old, Virginia Clemm was 13.

Although marriage between cousins ​​was not unusual, the age difference was an element that scandalized some, in addition to other shocking details, for example, EA Poe’s habit of calling his wife Sissy, or Sis, diminutives of Sister. , “sister”.

Some biographers consider that the couple did not have any romantic nuances in their relationship, and that, in reality, their bond was like that of two brothers. Marie Bonaparte, one of the poet’s best-known scholars, and perhaps the first to study his works through psychology, produced a cryptic study of the work of EA Poe, and came to the conclusion that Virginia Clemm, in fact, died a virgin (see: Edgar Allan Poe for Marie Bonaparte).

On the other hand, the essayist Joseph Wood Krutch declared that EA Poe did not need women in the way that normal men need them, and added that the poet was never interested in sex, an exercise that produced the most intense repulsion in him.

To the rescue of these excessive opinions came several friends of the couple, who assured that Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm did not share a bed during the first years of marriage, but that after the young woman turned 16, the poet incorporated her into his bedroom with total naturalness.

Aside from these idle speculations, all sources agree that Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm were a happy couple. He loved Virginia’s tenderness, and she adored him like a god, she idolized him. She used to sit near the poet when he wrote, and kept his papers and supplies in perfect order. Only at the age of 23 did Virginia Clemm dare to write a short poem to her husband, dated Valentine’s Day 1846.

In May of that year the first symptoms of premature death began to appear. Virginia Clemm’s appetite became irregular, her cheeks became almost red, her pulse became unstable, she suffered from sudden fevers, night sweats, chest pains, and the worst: bloody sputum. As had happened with Edgar’s mother, Eliza Poe, Virginia Clemm manifested the symptoms of the last stages of tuberculosis.

EA Poe, mired in poverty, received help from some close friends. The newspapers covered the family drama. The Saturday Evening Post headlined: God help us! Is it possible that the literature fans of the Union let poor Poe die of starvation?

A few days later, the same newspaper published that: Edgar A. Poe is bedridden with brain fever. His wife is in the last stages of tuberculosis. They find themselves without money and without friends.

Even Hiram Fuller, an editor whom EA Poe had sued for libel, came forward to demonstrate his chivalry: We, with whom he fought, will take the lead in helping him.

The few comments from friends and family who had access to EA Poe’s home only increased the general commotion. It was said that Virginia Clemm’s eyes had turned violet, that her complexion had turned red like a demon. An anonymous pimp claimed that Mrs. Poe: she had a youthful appearance, with large violet eyes, and a pearly whiteness to her complexion. Her hair, black like a raven’s wings, gave her an otherworldly air. Seized by the same suggestion, others shouted that Virgina Clemm’s appearance was not entirely human.

Dying, Virginia Clemm made her mother promise that she would take care of Eddy in her absence, something the old woman strictly fulfilled. Virginia’s love was so intense, so pure and natural, that on her deathbed, covered by the poet’s old military overcoat, she linked Poe’s hand with that of Mary Starr, an old friend of hers, and ordered her to be a friend for Eddy, and never abandon him.

Virginia Eliza Clemm died on January 30, 1847. EA Poe refused to see his dead wife, and declared that he wanted to preserve in his memory the memory of her face full of life. Curiously, only one portrait of her remains, a hastily painted watercolor, and for which the artist must have used her corpse as her model. In this strange way, Edgar Allan Poe, who refused to see directly the face of his dead wife, observed a thousand times his stiff features on that cheap canvas.

The death of Virginia Clemm deeply impacted EA Poe, who sank into a depression from which he would never fully emerge. He used to be seen wandering around his wife’s grave, drunk, lunatic, almost catatonic. Two years later the poet died in unclear circumstances, abandoned, alone, and plunged into the most abject poverty (see: The mysterious death of EA Poe).

Both bodies were buried in different cemeteries.

In 1875, one of EA Poe’s early biographers, William Gill, rescued the bones of Virginia Clemm. He claimed in the Boston Herald that the priest at Fordham Cemetery was about to get rid of the bones, arguing that no one had claimed them. Readers of that article raised funds to buy a small silver and gold chest, where the remains of Virginia Clemm were located, which were later buried next to the poet’s grave.

Perhaps the best testimony of the love story between Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Clemm lies in the poet’s work. In Annabel Lee, for example, she mentions the tragic death of a maiden and the grief of her lover. Ulalume (Ulalume) is also a tribute to Virginia, like Lenore (Lenore) and, of course, The Raven (The Raven), where a demonic specter tortures a man with that implacable Nevermore, which in fact few interpret correctly (see: The hidden meaning of EA Poe’s “Raven”).

But the love between EA Poe and Virginia Clemm was not only reflected in poetry. The story Eleonora (Eleonora) tells the story of a man about to marry his cousin; The Oblong Box exposes a man’s lament after the death of his wife while he carries her body on a boat; Ligeia (Ligeia) details the ravages of a long-term illness on the body and face of a beautiful young woman. The presence of Virginia in Poe’s stories is constant.

That perseverance not only sublimates the love, the romance between them, but also the difficult moments. Many other stories by Edgar Allan Poe express the mental torture to which he was subjected during the most virulent period of Virginia’s illness. It is enough to read The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat or The Casque of Amontillado to perceive a slight distance between the poet and the reality in which he lived.

A few months before he died, gripped by alcoholism and a strong morphine addiction, Edgar Allan Poe took the manuscript of his first published short story, Metzengerstein, and corrected a line that had obsessed him after the death of his wife. Later editions, perhaps out of respect, retained this correction, since in the original a terrible prophecy could be read:

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