"Al Aaraaf" is an early poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1829. It tells of the afterlife in a place called Al Aaraaf, inspired by A'raf as described in the Quran. At 422 lines, it is Poe's longest poem.
"Al Aaraaf", which Poe said he wrote before he was 15, was first published as the major poem in Poe's 1829 collection Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. The book and "Al Aaraaf" in particular received mostly negative reviews for its complexity, obscure references, and odd structure. Some, however, noted the potential in the young poet, including author and critic John Neal, to whom Poe had shown "Al Aaraaf" prior to publication. Poe later referred to Neal's response as the first words of encouragement he had received. Nevertheless, the negative response to "Al Aaraaf" may have inspired Poe's later poetic theory that poems should be kept short.
Years later, in 1845, Poe used "Al Aaraaf" to hoax members of the Boston literary circle during a reading. Poe said the poem was a new one and his audience was perplexed by it. He later said a Boston crowd did not deserve a new poem. He held a strong dislike for New England poets and the New England–based Transcendental movement and hoped by presenting a poem he had written in his youth would prove Bostonians did not know good literature.
Overview "Al Aaraaf" is the longest poem Poe wroteSova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York City: Checkmark Books, 2001: 5. and was inspired by Tycho Brahe's identification of a supernova in 1572 which was visible for about seventeen months. Poe identified the supernova with Al Aaraaf, a star that was the place between paradise and hell. Al Aaraaf (Arabic , alternatively transliterated ) was a place where people who have been neither markedly good nor markedly bad had to stay until forgiven by God and let into Paradise,Poe, Harry Lee. Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories. New York: Metro Books, 2008: 39. as discussed in Sura 7 of the Qur'an.Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 158. As Poe explained to a potential publisher:
In the opening section of the poem, God commands Nesace, a name for Beauty's spirit, to convey a message to "other worlds". Nesace rouses the angel Ligeia and tells her to awaken the other thousand seraphs to perform God's work. Two souls, however, fail to respond: the "maiden-angel" Ianthe and her "seraph-lover" Angelo (Michelangelo), who describes his death on earth and the flight of his spirit to Al Aaraaf. Ianthe and Angelo are lovers, and their failure to do as Nesace commanded results in God not allowing them into heaven.
Analysis "Al Aaraaf" is thick with allusions and, because of this, is often avoided by scholars because, as writer Arthur Hobson Quinn notes, it can be "unintelligible". Nevertheless, Quinn says it possesses qualities which are important to understand the development of Poe's skills as a poet.Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 156. "Al Aaraaf" mixes historical facts, religious mythology and elements of Poe's imagination. The poem primarily focuses on the afterlife, ideal love, and ideal beauty in relation to passion.Campbell, Killis. "The Origins of Poe", The Mind of Poe and Other Studies. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc., 1962: 152. The majority of the poem focuses on this reaching for ideal beauty and aesthetics.Frank, Frederick S. and Anthony Magistrale. The Poe Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997: 12. Characters in the poem serve as representative symbols of personified emotions. The goddess Nesace is beauty, Ligeia represents the music in nature, Ianthe and Angelo are creatures of passion.Phillips, Elizabeth. "The Poems: 1824–1835", A Companion to Poe Studies, Eric W. Carlson (ed). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996: 76.
The poem draws from Sura 7 (Arabic الأعراف) in the Quran; Poe also drew upon the Quran in other works, including "The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade".Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998: 154. In "Al Aaraaf", Poe was probably less interested in the Quran itself and more interested in an atmosphere of the exotic or otherworldliness.Erkkila, Betsy. "The Poetics of Whiteness: Poe and the Racial Imaginary" in Romancing the Shadow: Poe and Race, J. Gerald Kennedy & Liliane Weissberg, eds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001: 48. ISBN The true setting of the poem is a sort of dreamscape or alternative world.Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998: 12. As critic Floyd Stovall wrote, the theme of the poem is "one of disillusionment with the world and escape into some more congenial realm of dream or of the imagination".Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 41.
The star which prompted Poe to write "Al Aaraaf" was believed to foretell disaster or that humanity would be punished for breaking God's laws. Poe may have gotten the idea to base a poem on Brahe's astronomical discovery from poet John Keats's use of the 1781 discovery of the planet Uranus in a poem called "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" (1816).Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 45–46. The name of the star has been changed from "Al Orf" to "Al Aaraaf" to become similar to the word arafa, which means distinguishing between things. Additionally, Poe was indebted to Irish poet Thomas Moore, whose poem Lalla-Rookh inspired, among other parts of "Al Aaraaf", the catalogue of flowers near the beginning. Another work by Moore, The Loves of the Angels, inspired Poe's idea of uniting mortal and immortal love.Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 160.
Structurally, the 422-line "Al Aaraaf"Hoffman, Daniel. Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972: 39. has no discernible or consistent poetic rhythm, though the meter resembles a section of Lord Byron's Manfred. Instead of formal structure, the poem focuses on the flow of sound. Poet Daniel Hoffman analyzed the fluctuating meter and determined that Part I begins as octosyllabic couplets then shifts to pentameter couplets with occasional interludes of alternately rhymed trimeter-dimeters. Part II generally uses pentameter couplets with an interlude of anapestic dimeters.
Publication history
Poe claimed he wrote "Al Aaraaf" before he was 15 years old,Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York City: Harper Perennial, 1991: 55. though he would later adapt his claim. A few passages from the poem were first published in the May 19, 1829, issue of the Baltimore Gazette signed "Marlow".Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 152. Poe first offered the complete poem to publishers Carey, Lea & Carey in Philadelphia around May 1829. He wrote to them, "If the poem is published, succeed or not, I am 'irrecoverably a poet.' But to your opinion I leave it".Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 94. He met with Isaac Lea, who was willing to publish it so long as they were protected against any loss. Poe asked his foster-father John Allan to subsidize the printing but, not supportive of Poe's literary pursuits, he refused.Hayes, Kevin J. Poe and the Printed Word. New York: Cambridge University Press, 200: 26. By July 28, Poe wrote to the publishers asking for the return of his manuscript because, as he said, he had "made a better disposition of my poems than I had any right to expect".Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 97.
"Al Aaraaf" finally saw print for the first time in the collection Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems. 250 copies of the 71-page work was issued by Hatch and Dunning of Baltimore, Maryland in December 1829. Though Poe had already self-published Tamerlane and Other Poems, he considered Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems his first book. Though this was not entirely true, it was the first work published with his name, signed "Edgar A. Poe". Poe addressed the obscurity in "Al Aaraaf" by including multiple footnotes, many of which were left untranslated from French, Latin, and Spanish. "Al Aaraaf" was published in its entirety only once in Poe's lifetime, though some critics believe Poe never actually completed the poemQuinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998: 161. Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 100. because Poe implied it was originally intended to have four partsMeyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 42. or 400 lines.
Critical response Upon publication, "Al Aaraaf" and the other poems in Poe's collection drew harsh criticism because of how difficult it was to understand. Among the early reviewers was John Hill Hewitt, who wrote of Poe that "no man has been more shamefully overestimated". In trying to explain the title poem, he wrote, "all our brain-cudgeling could not compel us to understand it line by line or the sum total".Bloomfield, Shelly Costa. The Everything Guide to Edgar Allan Poe: The Life, Times, and Work of a Tormented Genius. New York: Adams Media, 2008: 192. A reviewer for the Baltimore Minerva and Emerald asked, "Has the poet been struck dumb with palsy?"Peeples, Scott. Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998: 17. Before publication, Poe had sought the advice of William Wirt, who had earned a reputation as a distinguished man of letters in Baltimore.Hayes, Kevin J. Poe and the Printed Word. New York: Cambridge University Press, 200: 24. On "Al Aaraaf", Wirt wrote that he was not the best judge of poetry but believed that it might be accepted by modern-thinking readers. As he wrote, "but to deal candidly... (as I am bound to do) I should doubt whether the poem will take with old-fashioned readers like myself".Thomas, Dwight & David K. Jackson. The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe, 1809–1849. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1987: 92. Sarah Josepha Hale of Godey's Lady's Book noted that "Al Aaraaf" must have been written by a young author because it was "boyish, feeble, and altogether deficient in the common characteristics of poetry". Nevertheless, she still called the author a genius.Poe, Harry Lee. Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories. New York: Metro Books, 2008: 41. A reviewer for the American Ladies' Magazine also commented on the poet's age: "[the] author who appears to be very young, is evidently a fine genius, but he wants judgment, experience, tact".
Poe boasted that these early poems were superior to most other examples in American poetry. Critic John Neal, who was a friend of Poe's cousin George Poe, responded to Poe's claim in his review of "Al Aaraaf" for The Yankee and Boston Literary Gazette. He said Poe's boast was "rather exquisite nonsense" but that the young author showed promise and predicted that some day Poe might "make a beautiful and perhaps a magnificent poem" to prove his claim.Sova, Dawn B. Edgar Allan Poe: A to Z. New York City: Checkmark Books, 2001: 169. He believed that if future poems by Poe were as good as some of his best lines in "Al Aaraaf":