What's new about the last days of the writer Edrag Poe, who mysteriously disappeared and died at the age of 40

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The great writer died at the age of 40 under very strange circumstances. Shortly before his death, Po disappeared, and was then found in a tavern, for some reason in someone else's clothes. He could not move independently and speak coherently. Many theories have arisen around the strange, sudden death. According to one of them, the writer tried to commit suicide by taking any drugs, this could explain his unusual state. However, recent scientific studies have denied this option.

On the evening of October 3, 1849, in Baltimore, Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, who was Poe's longtime friend, received a note: Baltimore was a stopover on the writer's journey. A week earlier he had left Richmond by steamer and for some reason did not go further. The writer, when friends found him, was in a grave condition - he almost fell into a coma, then raged. Four days later, he died in a local hospital and was buried in the cheapest coffin in the far corner of the cemetery. All medical records and documents, including the death certificate, were lost. It is possible that they did not exist at all. The medicine of that time could not (and did not try too hard) to answer the question of why the famous writer died, so various theories arose.

The main version of Poe's death, of course, was considered alcohol, with which the writer had long had problems. Various possible diseases were also considered: brain tumor, diabetes, syphilis, apoplexy, alcoholic delirium, epilepsy, meningitis and cholera. An interesting theory connects Poe's plight with the Maryland congressional and legislative elections, which were held at the time in Baltimore - allegedly, the writer could have become a participant in an old "election carousel." In the middle of the 19th century, electoral lists did not exist, so the “political strategists” of the past sometimes simply rounded up poor voters and, generously distributing cheap alcohol and beatings, forced them to vote several times. A writer prone to hard drinking could well become an accidental extra and a victim of such a "political struggle."

Another common theory was the possible suicide, or rather, his attempt. If we consider the history of life's troubles, Edgar Poe, in principle, could decide on this: despite his literary successes, he lived very poorly, as he drank a lot, wrote less and less in recent years and was forced to defend his reputation even in the courts. The only stable income was lecturing, but they were periodically disrupted due to binges. A year and a half before the events described, the writer lost his beloved wife and was very worried. However, on the other hand, not long before his death, everything seemed to be not so bad: Poe met his childhood love, proposed to her, and even for this he joined the ranks of the sobriety society "Sons of Moderation." The wedding was scheduled, and the writer would soon improve financial affairs - his chosen one was rich. These arguments were made by opponents of the suicide version.

To understand the situation, specialists from Lancaster University and the University of Texas conducted an unusual study. They analyzed 309 Poe letters, 49 poems and 63 short stories. A computer program, adapted to the vocabulary of the 19th century, searched in the works of Po for marker words by which psychologists determine a person's propensity to commit suicide.

It is known that in depressed persons the lexical composition of written and spoken speech changes dramatically: in addition to the obvious negative words "death", "deceased", etc., the use of the first person pronouns in the singular ("I", "mine") increases, but the number of pronouns in the plural ("we", "our") becomes less - a person seems to be isolated, removes himself from the human community. The number of positive concepts (“life”, “light”, “joy”) also decreases. Of course, such an analysis, and even spread out over the years of creativity, would not have been possible without the use of computers, since the amount of analyzed information is simply enormous.

Scientists obtained data that allowed them to draw very unambiguous conclusions. They really saw in the texts of Edgar Poe "persistent patterns of depression", but they did not refer to the last years of his work. The maximum number of marker words was found in the years of the greatest success of the writer, as well as after the death of his wife. As for 1849, Edgar Poe at this time was definitely not suffering from a depressive state and, accordingly, was not prone to suicide. The researchers in this case did not set themselves the goal of giving an answer to the question of why Edgar Poe died, but one of the possible versions was cut off. For fans of the great writer and simply for fans of historical riddles, the conclusions of American scientists are of great interest.

By the way, the version of electoral fraud, for all its originality, has a completely reliable basis - similar cases have been recorded with other people, and the history of crimes in the elections in the United States has been fairly well studied.