“Come drink! The wine will brighten your wits” invites the label on my new Edgar Allan Poe themed wine glass charms. I received six different ornaments including a raven, a cat, a haunted house, the Eiffel Tower, a mask, and a coffin. My Poe paraphernalia originated from an independent seller named Denise from the UK. Denise’s shop called LiteraryAllusions creates “Charm gifts for people who love books”[1] according to her website on Etsy. As a piece of pop culture, my glass charms suggest just how influential Poe’s legacy in literature and culture still lingers around the world. Usually, Poe is of interest because of his allegedly scandalous lifestyle and subsequent dismissive portrayal by biographers. Aside from Poe’s bad boy reputation, Poe’s art was extraordinarily well received in Europe, specifically in France, where his works were translated by literary giants like Baudelaire and Mallarmé. Drawing on Dominique Jullien’s article about nineteenth-century French translation, I chart how Poe has been appropriated and reimagined in pop culture since his death in 1850 transforming him into the large lingering presence in mass media that he holds to this day. Specifically, my close reading of the Poe-themed wine glass charms especially address Poe’s interpretation and translation in the visual arts.
Denise, the artist who created the charms, situates Poe in a canon based on popular reading practices and experiences. Other authors featured in her series include: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Lewis Carroll, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Shakespeare, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Oscar Wilde. The artist clarifies the purpose of her site: “I have run a shop on Etsy (Fan Fayre Jewellery) since November 2013, selling fandom charm jewelry and accessories. I have decided to extend my range to include more items based on classic literature and packaged ready for giving as gifts to other book lovers.[2]” This useful clarification explains why the artist created Poe inspired items. Her canon suggests that she considers Poe as part of classic literature like popular British authors. Yet among these “classic” writers, Poe is the only American which suggests his importance in the UK. In her biography, Denise explains: “I use charms to allude to my favourite characters/scenes from various books/plays.[3]” Being included in her best-of assemblage, Poe is clearly an author she likes. Denise’s love of literature intersects with her love of jewelry making, which explains why she chose this particular medium to depict Poe.
Though she is not the first to reinterpret Poe through a visual medium, it is helpful to examine the impact of Poe in the UK and why Denise may have reason to include Poe in her series. In "Poe’s Reputation in England and America, 1850-1909" Dudley R. Hutcherson traces Poe’s reception in England and America from his death, to 1909. While the article introduces the American critic Rufus W. Griswold at the beginning, English critics appear also: The name of the Englishman John H. Ingram, who devoted himself with unflagging zeal to Edgar Allan Poe, is as important in the second phase of Poe's reputation as is Griswold's in the first. If to any single man belongs the credit for the rescue of Poe from the baneful influence of Griswold, that honor is Ingram's. It should be remembered also that the French admiration for Poe directed the attention of English and American critics and readers to the writer.[1] Hutcherson stresses that Poe underwent a renaissance in England influenced by the broad French reception of Poe. The French Poe-obsession also legitimizes Poe’s place among English romantic writers.
Poe’s influence abroad, specifically in France, reveals a precedent in translation and interpretation that informs the analysis of my wine glass charms. Dominique Jullien, in fact argues that Stéphane Mallarmé’s French translation of Poe’s “The Raven” reinterprets the original poem in ways modern translation would avoid because it does not preserve the original. Rich illustrations by Edouard Manet accompanied Mallarmé’s translation. Jullien emphasizes the reciprocal inspiration of the sister-arts illustration and translation during this period: “In addition, translation theory and practice in nineteenth-century France would encounter a culturally specific conjunction: the emphasis on the visual, picturesque qualities of translations coincided with an exceptional intensity of interarts relations.[2]” This cultural environment in France encouraged the overlap between disciplines and art forms, which in turn allowed the collaboration between Mallarmé and Manet to flourish. Jullien studies “Le Courbeau”, Mallarmé’s translation of “The Raven” more closely: “Mallarmé’s translation offered visual substitutes of Poe’s music: not only internal to the poem but also, perhaps especially, in the poem’s paratext.[3]” Given that Poe’s poems are so singular in musicality and rhythm, Jullien explains that visual elements can account for that missing element in the French translation. Illustrations increase also the visual nature of the language: “Manet’s illustrations themselves can be viewed — and indeed were viewed,” Jullien states, “as translations on multiple levels. The fact that he chose ink drawings obviously underlined the close affinity between the arts of writing and drawing”[4]. The link between translation as interpretation through visual art is helpful in understanding how Poe has been visually adopted into French culture and around the world.
While the history of Poe’s translation by French poets is fascinating, the argument that illustration plays a role in international literature exchanges and adaptations is most interesting if we think about one wine charm pop culture items. Looking to the French history I argue that the charms likewise translate and interpret Poe in ways Manet’s ink drawings did. The raven in the wine charm set directly invokes Poe’s poem, “The Raven.” Small and silver, the charm is attached to a hoop with colorful beads that are meant to differentiate wine glasses so no one accidentally uses the wrong glass at gatherings. While the practicality of the wine charm is different from Manet’s drawing, it also hints at a different focus and reading of the Poe’s poem. Denise from LiteraryAllusions in her wine glass creation underscores the themes of alcohol abuse and obsessive cleanliness in Poe’s “The Raven”. Poe’s poem, for example, leaves it open if the narrator is unreliable due to drug consumption, which is one potential close-reading of the poem. The focus on cleanliness emerges early in Poe’s lyric as well, in his delineation between the black color of the raven set off by the white color of a bust. Perhaps the narrator sees the raven as an unclean wild creature encroaching upon his “clean domestic space.” As a result, unclean and wild thoughts encroach on his sane mind. The visual representation of Poe’s raven in the wine glass charm, however, sets the tone for a different reading of “The Raven” from the French translation. A cute gift for the literary minded, the charms also perform a larger conversation about visual representation as reinterpretation. Drawing from the literary canon LiteraryAllusions, the influence of Poe in England, and the translation precedents set by the French. The wine charms function as a visual rereading of Poe’s work. The idea that Poe is appropriated and re-appropriated applies more broadly to Poe’s celebration in pop culture. Most pop culture representations of Poe seek to make a profit, which informs the way his work is depicted. Despite the goal of financial gain, the Poe charms represent Edgar Allan as a classic author of enthralling stories and translate him to new audiences through the lens of jewelry art.