EDGAR ALLAN POE
AND SPORT
By F. K. Mathys
Born of Anglo-Irish parentage, Edgar Allan Poe is indisputably the
greatest American literary figure of the 19th century. His
characteristic tales and short stories brought world renown to
American literature for the first time. Poe was treading similar paths
to his older contemporary E.T.A. Hoffmann, but the New World to
which he devoted his talents had - as Goethe said - no ruined
castles, no basalt, no rocky vestiges of the beginning of man.
P
oe’s penchant for the abnormal and peculiar led him to romanticize the
demonic. Profoundly inspired with a sense
of the heterogeneity and mysteriousness of
life, he showed in his marvellously colourful,
symbol-filled narrative work how a thousand
twilight forms lurk in the recesses of the
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mind. Using art, he tried to do what at the
end of his century the Viennese doctor Sigmund Freud sought to explain through psychoanalysis: to analyse the world of dreams
and the life of the mind; to reveal primal
impressions as the motivating force behind
different kinds of behaviour.
ART AND SPORT
There is no doubt that the philosophers of the Romantic period, like Fichte
and Schelling, had some influence on Poe’s
work in the same way as this highly-educated and well-read writer may also have
been inspired by Novalis. The themes of
life after death, reincarnation and metempsychosis feature in many of his works, so
much so that this often grotesque-seeming
poet can justifiably be described as the
classic author of the bizarre.
It was another poet of the abnormal,
the hashish smoking Charles Baudelaire,
who discovered Poe for the old world by
translating his ‘Tales of the Peculiar’ into
French, and immediately ensured the writer
with whom he had a spiritual affinity a
wide European readership. It was also
through Baudelaire that the world learned
that this hyper-sensitive and highly intellectual American author had practised sport in
his youth. In his foreword to ‘Tales of the
Peculiar’, Baudelaire wrote: “As a young
man, Edgar Allan Poe was capable of
amazing feats of strength. In his youth, he
won a swimming bet that went beyond the
normal limits of the possible”. His various
American biographers subsequently confirmed what Baudelaire had maintained. As
a young man, Poe was an excellent runner,
jumper, boxer and swimmer. Griswold, one
of his biographers, tells us that, during the
short time he spent studying at the University of Virginia, Poe distinguished himself
through his extraordinary audacity, strength
and physical agility, and that he achieved
renown as an athlete. On one hot June
day, he swam six miles from Ludlams
Wharf to Warwick against the current.
When doubt was cast on this feat, it was
confirmed by Poe’s fellow students. And
Poe was far from exhausted after this tour
de force, returning to Richmond on foot.
He is also alleged to have expressed
on several occasions his desire to swim the
English Channel from Dover to Calais. But
when he was staying in England, he already
had other plans which did not include
making a name for himself in this way.
Through his friends John Clarke and Ebeneezer Burling, he had found an interest in
rowing, and in this sport, too, he is said to
have been a powerful athlete. From the
letters the young Poe sent to his adoptive
father, we learn that he also tried and
greatly enjoyed boxing. When he returned
to the United States in 1829 after his adventurous travels, he decided, not least on
account of his excellent physical condition,
to take up a military career, and entered
the West Point Academy. But he could
stand the strong discipline for only one
year; enduring the sympathetic teasing
from the other cadets, he began to write
poems and have them published.
Poe’s love for sport is reflected in many
places in his work. In the “Adventures of
Hans Pfall” there is a picaresque strato-
Edgar Allen Poe, the great literary
figure in the USA, was an eclectic
sportsman.
sphere flight in a balloon. In the novella
‘Gordon Pym’, he sings the praises of
swimming, riding, horse racing and rowing,
and in the famous ‘Metzengerstein’ the
love of equestrian sports and a magic horse
finds almost hymnic expression. Alas, the
forces of darkness increasingly took Edgar
Allan Poe away from sport, and ultimately
led him to a tragic death.
F.K.M.
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