"Quaff this kind Nepenthe"

I pulled out the dying pansies from my window boxes today replacing them with deep burgundy mums. I love the colors of fall, the slight chill in the air, the anticipation of Halloween festivities. Autumn is my favorite season and although it isn’t officially Fall until next week, I have already started bringing the telltale signs that it is quickly approaching into my home. A collection of gourds rest between two black taper candles on my dinning room table eagerly awaiting the Mabon party we are throwing on the 24th celebrating Falls official arrival. I light a pumpkin spice scented candle, grab my copy of The Norton Anthology of American Literature and curl up on the couch excited to be reading Edgar Allan Poe, one of my favorite authors. I hurry to read “The philosophy of Composition” so that I can hurry up and get to the good stuff, okay, so yes I could probably quote “The Raven” in its entirety to you but what an appropriate read for what I am trying to convince myself is a perfect “autumn” afternoon.
As I read I stumbled across this quote, “The death…of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world,” (1601-1602) Even though I have heard this quote innumerable times I hadn’t read it in its context in quite some time. Poe declares this after stating that beauty should be the province of all poems. Understandably my first response to this is what a misogynistic ass! Edgar Allan Poe has essentially stated that there is nothing more beautiful than the death of attractive women. But wait Poe simply cannot be a misogynistic asshole, I admire him and furthermore, I am getting married at the Poe museum next year. I had to find some other way to interpret this. I began to think about some of Poe’s work that I was most familiar with and I realized that Poe actually portrayed many of his female characters in a much more positive light than that of his male characters, I thought of The Tell-Tale Heart, The Black Cat and Goldbug immediately in which the male characters are hysterical, something that was usually equated with feminine behavior especially in the Victorian era. I found comfort that Poe was obviously not a misogynist.
So I thought more about what was meant my his statement, as I glanced out the window and watch the tree branches swaying in the wind, I remembered that Hurricane Ophelia was supposed to hit today, Ophelia, a beautiful woman drowned in her youth, Juliet, the suicidal bride, and yet the epitome of romance. Why is it that our culture idealizes that which is lost, another example would be Camelot. Why don’t we think the most beautiful thing is an elderly couple still madly in love with one another after many happy years? Perhaps the answer lies in the popularity of Poe’s tales; we are attracted to morbidity. Poe also states in this work that humans have a thirst for self-torture (1846). Perhaps depression is our muse without sadness we could not be motivated? If we truly reached a state of perfect happiness would there be anything left to drive us? If we did not desire anything would life be worth continuing? Do humans need to have a lack of something in order to exist? Could sadness possible be the elixir of life?