The Raven Speaks: Poe's Bicentennial Begins

The actor then launched into “The Spectacles,” a comedy about an arrogant young man with bad eyesight. Refusing to wear glasses, he falls in love with an elderly woman whom he thinks is a young beauty. Once he marries her, he honors her request to put on a pair of spectacles and realizes that he has married his great-great grandmother.

The story took 25-minutes to deliver; it maintained the audience’s attention, but the delivery was rushed and dull—Mr. Keltz focused more on articulation than vocal inflections. Following “The Spectacles,” he recited “Hop-Frog,” the story of a court jester who gets so fed up with his king’s intolerance that he sets him and his court on fire. Once again, Mr. Keltz sped through the performance, and I noticed more than a few audience members looking around, as if wondering, like me, why we weren’t enjoying an artistic rendering of Poe’s more haunted works.

The literary critic Harold Bloom has said that reading Poe aloud is not “aesthetically very satisfying.” This comment could apply to many of the verbose authors of the 19th century, but still, I admire anybody who can memorize and recite Victorian prose for over an hour without consulting notes or sharing the stage. Yet on this day, the audience was expecting to celebrate an author who invented the detective story, furthered the science fiction genre and mastered the horror story. Instead of watching fifty minutes of rushed storytelling, why weren’t we observing an interpretation of a haunted man through the voices of his haunted narrators?

In his one-man shows of Mark Twain, Hal Holbrook embodies the author through his recitations from Twain’s essays and stories. He and Keltz perform on similar sets: sparse, with a couple of pieces of furniture from a study scattered onstage. Holbrook’s selections, though, allow him to present many facets of Twain’s character, and this is what I wanted from Keltz— more than a one-dimensional presentation.

With 20 minutes left, the brooding finally began. Sitting in a chair with his head down, Keltz raised his beady eyes to the audience and channeled our Poe. Slowly, hauntingly, he reminisced about his dying wife Virginia and almost whispered, “It was many and many a year ago in a kingdom by the sea.” The recitation of “Annabelle Lee” that followed was beautiful. The actor’s posturing and gaze revealed his thespian capabilities, and for a little while, even I forgot my frustration. Keltz finished with “The Raven,” a piece that he said he had come to perform. Unfortunately, he lost the trance he had affected with “Annabelle Lee,” flying through what many consider to be one of the world’s greatest poems. After Keltz’ performance, he joined the audience on the main floor, where Poe enthusiasts, bystanders and library regulars gathered for a toast and a piece of birthday cake.

What distinguishes Poe from other "masters of the macabre" is his ability to empathize with antagonists. Reading Poe is an exercise in self-awareness, because the reader can see her struggles within the characters’ deviant behaviors, her conflicts within the narrator’s divided loyalties, and her prayers for redemption within the confessions of Poe’s haunted narrators. The Rare Books Department is presenting “Quoth the Raven: A 200-Year Remembrance of the Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe” until February 13. This exhibition of Poe’s letters, manuscripts and personal history not only recognizes the influence of our city on a great American author, but it also offers visitors a study of Poe's psychology.

Image credit: Flickr user kevindooley.