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Musopen, building a free classical music library

If there's one intended victim of the decaying copyrighted music game it is classical music. A great amount of classic... more

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"They called me crazy ...
But it is unclear if madness is or isn’t the highest degree of intellect, if most of what is glorious, if all that is deep does not arise from a disease of the mind, from exaltating states of the mind to the expenditure of intellect in general "(from" Eleonora ", 1841)

"In my youth I was quick to notice that I inherited these characteristics from my family, I descended from a race which has always stood for easily exciting imagination and temperament..."

"My dear mother, I was so sick, I had cholera, or seizures; for certain, something equally ugly ... The joy to see you almost compensates our pain. We can at least die together... It is unnecessary for you to discuss with me now, I need to die now...”
He fixes you in an indefinable way, resembling a deeply childish stare, with his asymmetrical face, an eyebrow placed lower than the other and with his misaligned mustache. His expression is absorbed and depressed, as those who plan to ask for advice and comfort. The great melancholy, the alcoholic by necessity, that feverish genius is Edgar Allan Poe, the inventor of a new literary genre that turns, and introduces the macabre in the sphere of everyday life and then manages to make it highly likely. But is not his works in which we are interested in. It is the man whom we dedicate this article. The rumors, the mania, the perpetual need to request money, the emotions which brought him to his death, all this we are interested in.
On MYSTICREADER’s shelves we find the Correspondence published by Longanesi. All his letters were collected in 1955 by John Ward Ostrom, and were made denser by the preface written by Henry Furst, very interesting things now come to light. Starting from the first few lines of the foreword: ‘All in the life of this poet is difficult and obscure…’; Edgar Allan Poe lied like a Persian: not for a purpose, just because he felt like it, he lied for the sake of lying, or maybe even not even for that...
When he was still young he fell in love of Helen Stannard, the mother of his fellow-student. Inconsolable for the early death of Mrs Stannard, his letters show us that for several months he went alone, at night, even in the rain, desperately crying infront of her tomb. In a letter dated 11 September 1835 written by Kennedy, one of his few admirers, we read:
"I am in a spiritual state of depression never experienced before. I strive in vain in this melancholy and believe me if I say that despite the improvement in my condition I am always miserable. Console me, you who can, and have mercy on me because I suffer from depression. If this state of mine is prolonged it will ruin me ...

I have endangered my life and not by a desire for pleasure, only with the desire to flee from my tortuous memories.

The extreme poverty in which he lived, even forced him to use the accompanying sheets of marriage (brought in dowry from the bride) as a shroud for his wife.
He asked for money, friendship, favors, food and employment; Him, the genius of darkness. He refused invitations to dinner by asking to borrow $ 20 from his same host so as to be able to dress with decency in order to accept his invitation.

"I am left entirely to my resources, and without the profession with very few friends. Worst of all, without a penny ... "writes Poe to John P. Kennedy in November 1834.
From Richmond he writes to John P. Kennedy about a new home:
"I would be much obliged if you could lend me the sum of one hundred dollars for six months .... So I would be able to honor the draft that matures in three months.
And again I find myself in the toughest need; I haven’t touched food since yesterday morning. I do not have a place to sleep at night, and I wander the streets. '"They called me crazy ... But it is unclear if madness is or isn’t the highest degree of intellect, if most of what... more

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