"And
when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From
what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is
obvious- "When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then
of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in
the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited
for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."
I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased
mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word "Nevermore." I
had to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every
turn the application of the word repeated, but the only intelligible
mode of such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing
the word in answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I
saw at once the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had
been depending, that is to say, the effect of the variation of
application. I saw that I could make the first query propounded by the
lover- the first query to which the Raven should reply "Nevermore"-
that I could make this first query a commonplace one, the second
less so, the third still less, and so on, until at length the lover,
startled from his original nonchalance by the melancholy character
of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a consideration
of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length
excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far
different character- queries whose solution he has passionately at
heart- propounds them half in superstition and half in that species of
despair which delights in self-torture- propounds them not
altogether because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac
character of the bird (which reason assures him is merely repeating
a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a frenzied
pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the expected
"Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable of
sorrows.
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