POE AS A LATENT HOMOSEXUAL, AS SUGGESTED BY MARIE BONAPARTE

11/5/2022

One of the first things that my eye falls on during a visit to the Sigmund Freud Museum in London, apart from the legendary couch, is his bookcase, where I see some thick volumes with the works of Edgar Allan Poe displayed on the top shelf. The entire study is cordoned off, however, and a subsequent query sent to the director of the museum as to in what language Freud read Poe, elicited no reply. Up to now I can only guess which editions of Poe's work he owned, along with the country, year, language and possible translator.

In addition to his knowledge of Greek, Latin and, naturally, Hebrew, Freud spoke German as his mother tongue, and by the time he was an adolescent in the 1870s, the major part of Poe's work was available in German-speaking countries, through translations on the European continent, and often through Baudelaire's French translations (1) . Freud was very much at ease in English, which would probably have him turn to the original versions. He spoke fluent French, but had less of an affinity with that language, as well as Spanish and Italian. (2)

All this highlights two things: as an American writer, Poe became world famous through translations in Europe, and with his extraordinary stories and a biography which reads like that of an accursed poet, he probably also earned the title of an author whose work was subjected to the most psychological and psychoanalytical research, including that of Marie Bonaparte.

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” is one of Freud's more well known sayings, with which he somewhat mocks his mania to seek a deeper meaning behind everything, particularly, as in the case of the cigar, in the sexual field. For this reason, Freud tends to be rather out in certain circles for the time being:

his work is considered as a valuable echo of the mentality of his time in hypocritical imperial Vienna, but people tend to dismiss his theories asunscientific fantasies, the practice of psychoanalysis as outmoded and sometimes outright dangerous, and the man himself as a megalomaniac. I will limit myself to a recent example from the land of Baudelaire entitled: “Le livre noir de la psych-analyse: vivre, penser et aller mieux sans Freud” [The black book of psychoanalysis: or living, thinking and feeling better without Freud] published in 2010. (3)

Marie Bonaparte has already been mentioned. Given the time constraints of this lecture, I shall confine myself to her biographical data relating to Freud, who was 26 years her senior. She is a well-to-do lady with, like Poe, an unhappy childhood, and as her name suggests a distant family member of Napoleon, who moved in the nobility and academic circles of Europe, was interested in and studied psychology and the upcoming practice of psychoanalysis. In 1925 Marie went into therapy under Freud because she allegedly suffered from frigidity, in spite of a number of lovers, including Rudolph Löwenstein, a disciple of Freud, with whom she went on to found the first Freudian association for psychoanalysis in Paris in 1926. (4)

The subject of Edgar Allan Poe often came up between Maria and Freud, as the latter would go on to write the foreword to her analytical study on the American writer which, according to my sources, was published in 1933. Poe has actually emerged as a fixed value in Europe since Baudelaire. The Symbolists round the year 1900 glorified the alleged decadence and “madness” of Poe, and monographs that stressed this aspect of his work were not late in coming. I will just cite briefly Lauvrière, with his studies entitled “Le génie morbide de Edgar Poe” [The Morbid Genius of Edgar Allan Poe] and “Etude de psychologie pathologique” [Study of Pathological Psychology]. The subject was in the air, in other words. (5)

The two-part “étude analytique” [analytical study] is a voluminous publication, biography, and analysis of the stories and poems. Poe's sexuality still holds riddles for us, his alleged impotence, necrophilia, sadism, the deathof his child bride. Without probably being fully aware of it, by being the first to connect the name of Poe with the term homosexuality, which dates from 1890, Marie Bonaparte provides an important “clue”. I will cite the passage:

“When we say that Poe sought refuge among men against his terrible sexuality, we do not mean to suggest that he was overtly homosexual. (...) The homosexuality he satisfied with his drinking companions remained latent. But it was no less profound and real for that.” (6)

This citation contains a series of strong words, which call for further explanation. First of all, there is “his terrible sexuality,” which can best be illustrated with a statement by Poe himself, namely that the most poetic subject is the death of a beautiful, young woman. Poe knew what he was talking about: as a two-year old, he saw his mother pine away from tuberculosis, as a teenager he lost the first woman for whom he wrote love poems and for whom he cherished a Platonic love, Jane Stanard, he had to give up his loving foster mother when he was twenty, and finally became a widower of his niece and probably virgin bride when she died at the tender age of twenty from the same disease that had claimed his mother. We can also add that when it came to his family, Poe never knew his father, saw his brother die from alcoholism, while his sister Rosalie was described by those around her as bordering on retardation.(7)

All this is indeed “terrible” and more than a man can bear, and fully in line with her mentor, Freud, for whom the first years of someone's life are extremely important in later life, Marie Bonaparte was aware of Poe's incapacity as an adult to experience his sexuality in a normal manner -- whatever that word may mean - given his status as an orphan and the absence of parents. Yet, all right, normal. Normal for a man in Poe's time was probably to fall in love with a woman from his social milieu, and enter loving matrimony, go to church and produce an offspring. The fact that Poe was “only” the orphaned child of poor travelling actors threw a heavy spanner in the works for him; it suffices to bring to mind his youthful adventures withSarah Elmira Royster.

Sigmund Freud, like Marie Bonaparte later, was always far more industrious in studying the so-called “psychopathologies” round sexuality, and as he condemned few deviations outright, he also gave no opinion as to how someone's sexual life should be. Perhaps, for a man, it is someone who as a child has gone nicely through the oral, anal and phallic phase, and whose libido for life remains projected onto a woman - the woman whom he marries.

I want to mention here in passing that Freud had concluded that practices such as oral and anal contact were “ordinary little perversities”8 , that he was not otherwise biased against paedophilia and zoophilia and that, for his time, he had a progressive view of homosexuality: since, in his view, everyone was born a bisexual, he tried only to investigate the mechanism which tipped someone to the “wrong side” and believed that it was possible to “heal” that person, through marriage or psychoanalysis. (9)

Aside from the mitigating circumstances, that the first half of the nineteenth century was certainly puritanical especially in the regions where Edgar Allan Poe roamed, there is scarcely any or no question of a so-called “terrible sexuality” in the sense of “scandalous.” His enemy Griswold portrayed Poe immediately after his death as someone 'terrible” whose passing would be mourned by few, but he had nothing to say about any carnal vices of the poet. As is well known, Griswold unwittingly initiated the myth of “accursed poet,” including drunkenness, use of opium, fits of rage and pecuniary poverty, which turned out decidedly to Poe's advantage among Baudelaire and the French readers. And yet, once again, there is the issue of sexuality! Contemporaries saw Poe as a caring and loving - albeit probably asexual - spouse of his niece Virginia; his likewise asexual search for a second wife, after Virginia's death was, just like Poe's alcohol problem, considered pathetic - I am thinking here only of the total absence of rivalry between Annie's spouse and Edgar, and the only time that he could perhaps be caught up in quarrels driven by jealousy and lust, was his debacle with Mary Devereaux. (10)

As a psychoanalyst, Marie Bonaparte delved deep in Poe's stories and poems, rather than in his chaotic life, to illustrate his “terrible sexuality,” which is a double-edged sword, in a way: for a low-key reader, many of the stories, the “gothic” zeitgeist notwithstanding, come across as the brainchildren of a disturbed mind; on the other hand, a writer can naturally never be fully identified with his work. “Shakespeare never killed anyone,” is an advice that is still given to young writers to throw their reserve for the white page overboard.

An English translation of Marie Bonaparte's work was published in London in 1949. A review ran as follows: “Marie Bonaparte psychoanalyses Poe, concluding that his fiction and poetry are driven by his desire to be reunited with his dead mother. This desire leaves him symbolically castrated, unable to have normal relationships with others (primarily women). Bonaparte analyses Poe's stories from this perspective, reading them as dreams reflecting Poe's repressed desires for his mother.” (11)

This is my copy of Marie Bonaparte's analytical study, the first part with a very brief foreword by Sigmund Freud, in which Poe is described as an extraordinary individual “with pathological tendencies,” attributable to his wretched early years which, though they do not elucidate, must have at least been the breeding ground of his exceptional creativity. This first part is a biography of Poe with attention for his poems.

In the second part, Poe's most important stories are subjected to an analysis on the couch based on Freud's theories, the concepts whereof have in the meantime entered the collective consciousness: the Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, the Id-Ego-Superego, the oral, anal and phallic phase. Since the discussions contain an enormous amount of spoilers, my advice is that no one should broach Marie Bonaparte's analysis before having studied Poe's work in an unbiased manner.

And then, there is the psychoanalytical index with all these terms. There are fourteen references to homosexuality, including the already cited ever so telling paragraph. The stories which come most to the fore are “The Cask of Amontillado,” owing to the brotherly bond that alcohol creates between men, 'The Pit and the Pendulum” with the obvious phallic symbol of the pendulum which Bonaparte interprets as an indication of Poe's passive attitude to other men and his father and foster father in particular - a bottom to put it fashionably - and William Wilson for his narcissistic character. And although Bonaparte thereby meant that Poe's homosexuality always remained latent, her ultimate verdict is crystal clear: everyone has bisexual tendencies, but Poe purportedly expressed them through a total incapacity to make love with a woman, while he sublimated his homosexual urges partly with his pen and partly by drowning them in alcohol, with impotence as a result. I have not yet had the opportunity to study the work thoroughly, but according to Bonaparte, all this would have led to “Eureka,” which she describes as a “homosexual fantasy.”

Poe has always fascinated me ever since I first discovered him when I was sixteen years old, but in the 1990s, I began to explore his life and work systematically. I can still remember when the idea that he may have been homosexual first occurred to me based on a series of marginal notes. Three brief examples:

- The black cat. A cat is generally considered (including by Marie Bonaparte), as a symbol of femininity, her fur perhaps the symbol for the long hair of a woman and her pubic hair. Although Pluto is a tomcat (unlike his real pet Catarina), it would seem to me that Poe finds the touches of this animal as disgusting as bodily contact with a woman - and when Pluto disappears from the scene, the main character sleeps soundly again in spite of having a murder on his conscience. He blames the murder of his wife to demon alcohol. Does Poe, more or less unconsciously, feel like bashing the head of his wife- niece Virginia because she stands in the way of his drinking bouts with his male companions? I will cite Marie Bonaparte yet again: “The homosexuality Poe satisfied with his drinking companions remained latent. But it was no less profound and real for that.” “Drinking companions” and “profound and real”, indeed, the murder of his wife is nothing compared to the reward of drink and male companionship to which it could lead.

- The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The protagonist has an inner, calm and intellectual relationship with Dupin, they live almost as a married couple, perhaps an unspoken wish of Poe, his image of an ideal existence. In reality he is living with his wife and her mother, something which stands in the way of his dream. Poe's hatred towards this female companionship is so outspoken, that he turns himself into an orang-utan and butchers the mother and daughter in the most beastly fashion.

- The Cask of Amontillado. One motif is fully absent from this story of revenge, even no absurd eye of a vulture as in “The Tell-tale Heart,” or alcohol abuse as in “The Black Cat,” or complete humiliation as in “Hop Frog.” There are only the “thousand injuries,” not a word about rivalry for a woman, or owing to social status or money, even though the Alan Parsons Project tries to motivate Montresor's behaviour with the words: “You who are rich and whose problems are few may come around to see my point of view”. My excuses for my disrespect, but all this reminds me of a gay poster from the 1980s, which ran somewhat as follows: “It is alarming how millions of people look on with indifference when men resort to physical violence against each other, but are deeply shocked when two men embrace tenderly.” Is Montresor secretly in love with Fortunato, and does he decide to cut this inappropriate feeling in the bud, by having the man die a slow, humiliating death? A spicy detail: in the gay collection of stories entitled “Unspeakable Horror” from 2008, which won a Bram Stoker Award, in his story “Cask,” Jude Wright describes how Montresor and Fortunato had been secret lovers in their wild years, and how Fortunato's corpse, half a century after he was walled up, comes to give one last kiss to Montresor on his deathbed, with the words “mio dolce” (my sweetheart). (12)

“Love never dies”... a mental disorder. The American Psychological Association Council of
Representatives followed in 1975. Thereafter other major mental health organisations followed and it was finally declassified by the World Health Organization in 1990. Consequently, while some still believe homosexuality is a mental disorder, the current research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviours are normal and positive variations of human sexuality. (13)

It can be disrespectfully stated that Marie Bonaparte's study can be dismissed as a piece of outdated history, as well theories of an Oedipus complex gone wrong, an abnormal maternal bond, an absent father, the separation of the sexes at school - all these theories, in short to explain that the phenomenon of homosexuality represents three to five percent of the population in every age and at every place.
And yet! For a homosexual in the year 2015 from a country with LGBT rights, it is difficult to imagine the precarious situation of a peer at the time and in the regions of Poe, or of Poe himself, should he, first, ever had homosexual feelings, and if so, secondly, be fully aware of the fact, and if so, thirdly, in order to hide this orientation, resort to the necessary diversionary manoeuvres. In very schematic terms, I would venture to contend that, based on Marie Bonaparte's monograph, nearly all Poe's writings are diversionary tactics so as not to be confronted with his own “terrible sexuality.”

Poe may not have belonged to this three to five percent of the population. He was not left-handed, as far as I know. But that he may be reckoned among the scarce percentage of the highly gifted, with extreme intelligence coupled with perseverance and exceptional creativity, is beyond doubt.

Poe was inquisitive. During his school years, he studied the greatest Greek and Latin poets with great interest, so it can be assumed that he had come across passages that discussed “male love,” in any event, in Plato's symposium, a sentence from which he cites by way of introduction to “Morella.” He may well not have interpreted these texts in purely sexual terms; Poe's age was also a high point of what were known as “romantic friendships” between men, where speaking openly about feelings, personally or through correspondence, sentimentality and probably a bit more bodily contact than now, was considered the norm.

An effective surrender to the sexual deed, with the sexual and excretory organs may have been the ultimate taboo, something inconceivable, something non-existent, something abject, or to put it in the catch phrases at Oscar Wilde's trial half a century later, “the unspeakable sin”, or “the love that dare not speak its name”. (14)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the persecution, including executions, of same-sex lovers reached a climax in the regions where Poe lived, and even though such executions - to put it mildly -- were somewhat less refined, it suffices perhaps here simply to mention the title of one of Poe's most famous stories: “The Pit and the Pendulum”. Can we still speak of a persecution complex in the morbid climate of the Inquisition where the slightest transgression could lead to torture? Is this story far more real than one would dare imagine nowadays - a “Saw” from the Romantic Era? Contemporaries repeatedly accused Poe of being godless, in his stories, especially in his philosophical work, “Eureka,” something which he apparently sort of shrugged off. But perhaps - and this is a personal hypothesis - the need to have to suppress these “profound and real” homosexual tendencies constantly on his part, was one of the sources of unbelievable tension, and feelings of angst and guilt in many of his stories.

The percentage seems to remain constant in time and place. The climate in Poe's time and regions was however so repressive, that unlike in the Renaissance or the Enlightenment in France, for instance, we can rely on hints in order to get a concrete idea. I give in passing some which I have garnered chiefly from the biography entitled “Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance” by Kenneth Silverman from 1991. (15)

Poe was well aware of his rational superiority, which he confirmed with the following waspish statement: “I cannot conceive of any being superior to myself”. For this reason, we must not look for any feelings of love on his part for colleagues - who were all dumb rivals in his eyes - even though there are indications that some colleagues had turbid feelings about Poe. His relationship with Rufus Griswold was turbid, to say the least, and the remarks by two of Poe's colleagues suggest, at least from their side, more than a romantic friendship. Willis, with whom Poe cooperated for the periodical “Evening Mirror” in New York in 1844, is for instance portrayed by contemporaries as “an impersonal passive verb - a pronoun of the feminine gender” - something which apparently did not bother Poe. And contemporary and fellow-poet Chivers describes Poe's body as “a beautiful Myrrhine Fabric, clear as crystal, (...) full of Ambrosia”, and his voice "like the soft tones of an Aeolian Harp when the music that has been sleeping in the strings is awakened by the Breezes of Eden laden with sweet Spices from the mountains of the Lord”. Poe, the “tomahawk man”, is somewhat less laudatory about Chivers's poems.

Seas and oceans constitute a recurring theme in Poe's work, as do seamen and virile sailors, with whom Poe probably often had entertaining chats, over a bottle of rum in a tavern, and who are portrayed as comrades in a same-sex environment in, for instance, “Arthur Gordon Pym” and “The Premature Burial.” Call me an incurable romantic, but had Poe ever nourished carnal or amorous feelings about other men, shouldn't we look for them in these circles? And can't Poe be added to that long list of artists and intellectuals who in spite of their intellectual work had a weakness for “ordinary” men of the people, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Hans Christian Andersen, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Oscar Wilde, Joe Orton ... Tom of Finland with his erotic prints of sailors.

One word continues to intrigue me: “peccadilloes” (16) , “little sins”. When Poe went out on his own to dark taverns at night and his friends and colleagues later heard rumours about his strange behaviour there, he shrugged the matter off with the word “peccadilloes”. “Little sins” ... could this suggest a somewhat too intimate behaviour with another pub crawler?

I will conclude with the following verses from a poem that Poe wrote when he was twenty, later entitled “Alone,” which could be interpreted as the lament of someone who feels “different” and misunderstood: “From childhood's hour I have not been as others were - I have not seen as others saw - I could not bring my passions from a common spring”.

References

1 M. LITTSCHWAGER, Poe in Germany, in Translated Poe, edited by E. ESPLIN and M. VALE DE GATO, Lehigh University Press (USA), 2014, p. 56

2 http://hubpages.com/hub/Five-Interesting-Facts-About-Sigmund-Freud-That-You- Probably-Didnt-Know, author: teutophile (Belgium, 13-1-2015)

3 Le livre noir de la psych-analyse. Vivre, penser et aller mieux sans Freud, edited by C. MEYER, revised edition, Paris, 2010

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Marie_Bonaparte (Belgium, 3-2-2015)

5 see E. LAUVRIÈRE, Edgar Poe. Etude de psychologie pathologique, Paris, 1904
and Le génie morbide d’Edgar Poe, Paris, 1935

6 M. BONAPARTE, Edgar Poe, sa vie-son oeuvre. Etude analytique, 2 volumes, preface by S. FREUD, Paris, 1933, volume 1, p. 128-29

7 for the general information on Poe see The Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (A Norton Critical Edition), edited by G. R. THOMPSON, New York-London, (2004)

8 S. FREUD, Petites perversions ordinaires, edited by R. ENRIQUEZ, in the series Librio Philosophie, Paris, 2015

9 C. PAGES, Freud pas à pas, Paris, 2014, p. 170-171

10 G.-M. TRACY, Les amours extraordinaires d’Edgar Poe, Paris-Genève, (1963), p. 39-40

11 http://2012books.lardbucket.org/books/creating-literary-analysis/s07-02- psychoanalytic-literary-critic.html (Belgium, 3-2-2015)

12 J. WRIGHT, Cask, in Unspeakable Horror, edited byV. LIAGUNO and C. HELDER, New York, 2008, p. 51-57

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology (Belgium, 4-2-2015)

14 C. SPENCER, Histoire de l’homosexualité, translated from the English by O. SULMON, (Paris), 1998

15 K. SILVERMAN, Edgar A. Poe. Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance, New York, 1991

JAN VANDER LAENEN

Jan Vander Laenen (° 1960) lives in Brussels, Belgium, where he works as an art historian and translator (Dutch, French, Italian, English). He is also the author of numerous collections of short stories, plays, and screenplays which have attracted keen interest abroad.

A romantic comedy, "Oscar Divo", and a thriller, “The Card Game”, have been optioned in Hollywood, while his short fiction collections, "The Butler" and "Poète maudit", and his horror play "A Mother's Revenge" are eliciting the requisite accolades in Italy.

His most recent publication are the tales “A Glass of Cognac” in “Bears: Gay Erotic Stories” (Cleis Press), “Epistle of the Sleeping Beauty” in the Bram Stoker Award winning “Unspeakable Horror” (Dark Scribe Press), “Fire at the Chelsea Hotel” in “Best Gay Love Stories 2009” (Alyson Press), “The Stuffed Turkey” in “Best Gay Erotica 2010 (Cleis Press),“The Corpse Washer” in Best S/M III (Logical Lust), “Lise” in “Strange Tales of Horror” (NorGus Press), the E-Books “Skilfully and Lovingly” (Sizzler Edition) and “The Centrefold and other Stories of working Men” (Silver Press), and the Dutch and French version of his novel “The housekeeper and other scabrous tales” (‘t Verschil, Antwerp (Belgium) - Textes gais, Paris (France)), the weird tale “The bat” in the anthology “A Darke Phantastique” (Cycatrix Press), “Petit papa Noël” in the anthology “Un cadeau de noël pour le refuge” (Textes gais, Paris), and the essay “The monstrous and the fantastic in the short stories of Poe and the paintings of Wiertz” (Weird Fiction Review).

Jan is a member of the Horror Writers Association and the Poe Studies Association. He presented his paper "Hypotheses on Poe's homosexuality" at the Bicentennial Congress in Philadelphia in October 2009 and “Poe as a latent homosexual, as suggested by Marie Bonaparte” at the New York Conference in February 2015. He has also given lectures on Baudelaire, Wiertz, Andersen, Guy de Maupassant, Grand Guignol and the guillotine at the universities of Porto (Portugal), Ghent (Belgium), Louisville (Kentucky), Madrid (Spain), and the Paris Sorbonne and Diderot universities.

Jan performed in the successful “Gala” by French choreographer Jérôme Bel in theatres in Brussels in May 2015 and December 2017, and he is taking acting classes to study as an author “the other side” of the written page.

Jan is currently working on a play/screenplay around the life of the Romantic Belgian "horror" painter Antoine Wiertz (1806-1865), a novel called "The Psychomanteum" around the practice of mirror gazing, and a screenplay around the life of Lucida Mansi. In July 2020 he finished his scandalous trilogy "Paulo or the obscene life of a gay escort" (240.000 words). He has also written recently three 30 minutes episodes for a series "Horror without frontiers", ten others are in the make.