The New York herald., 1921-06-19
Dams Own Book Review.

THE RAVEN. Edgar Allan Poe. Baltimore, Md
TT HIS is the story of melancholy young
man who was frightened by bird.
He was seated in his room one even
ing thinking about his girl, person named
Leonore when the bird pecked on the door
several times. Our hero was afraid to open
the door at first, because il was a lonely
neighborhood and it had been reported that
rough characters had been prowling around
with no good intent in mind but he finally
became annoyed by the insistence of the
Knocking and flung the door wide open.
determined to give battle to the intruders
One may imagine his astonishment when
bird flew in. and then when the darn thing
began to talk to him he thought he was
going nutty. This bird was raven. and
that is why the poem is so called The
raven could say only one word, and that was
nevermore," which he repeated over and
over again The thing grows monotonous
after little bit and one wonders why Mr.
Poe didn't let his raven say something else
IL Is nature taking of the rankest kind to
have raven talking. anyway Crows talk
and so do parrots, but not ravens Ravens
once fed one of the Biblical characters and
did good job of it, but the Bible does not
say anything about the ravens CARRYING
on conversation. We doubt very much the
accuracy of Mr.. Poe's account II NAV be
however, that he did not know much about
birds and that what he called a raven was
really a crow
Wen. anyway, the poem says il was a
raven that talked, so a raven we will let II
be. 1t is not our province TO rewrite the
poem-we merely criticise
Now, when this bird flew in the house
II didn't act at all like bird that had been
well trained Instead of looking around for
a bird cage or some decent place to light il
perched on top of "A statuette which the
young man had in a niche over his bedroom
door. This statuette was of n fellow named
Pallas, and the raven got right on top of
his head and sat there loudly crying Never
more" We have heard the same cry from
our friends who said Just one more" too
frequently i'm the evening and then woke up
the following morning shouting Never
more" every time the subject was men
toned. resolution which they usually kept
faithfully until noon, but we have never
heard such an expression from the lips of
a bird.
This melancholy young man had a lamp
burning on the table at his side and this
caused a curious thing to happen The
raven was on the bust of Paas over the
chamber door and the poet maintains that
the lamplight streaming over him cast a
shadow on the floor To be perfectly frank
we do not understand how this could hap
pen although we admit that our mental
processes are sometimes totally inadequate
to cope with some Of these modern problems
Possiblys Mr. Edison. who is said to be
rather proficient at answering questions
might tell what caused the shadow to
curve. or maybe DR.. Einstein can evolve
some new theory about how IL could happen
Our own solution is that while the young
man was absent from home during the
afternoon some one entered. removed the
floor and tackled it up on the wall back Of
the bust of Pallas. The motive for such a
crime? Oh you will have to see Commits
sioner Enright about that Motives come
under an entirely different department with
which we are not even associated ours is
the department OF literary research. IL now
occurs to us that IL the floor was on the
ceiling and the lamp was on the table what
the table resting on? The thing Is
getting deep. We will abandon the subject.
Read The Raven" by all means. but read
il in the daytime. II has q decidedly spooky
flavor. with tendency to make one nervous
after dark.
Authors note: Since rejecting upon this
matter we are convinced the above was
written with undue haste and should not he
printed. DETECTING the shadow from the
wall to the floor was merely poetic license.
Wall will not rhyme with nevermore. door.
make the poem rhyme properly Mr. Poe
had TO throw that shadow on the floor.