Why did Edgar Allen Poe continually write about Angels? ? Please don't give me any information about his life as an answer. Thank You, Kyle Savant

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2002

Answers

Quite naturally the angels stand in as mediators of the eternal, of the ideal and as buffers with the quarrel with God. Unlike the remote and impersonal Deist God, the angels do art, affect life and death, represent the system of creation and existence. Easier to argue with them or use them as Muses, examples(Israfel)because like the poet they sing, are betweeen God and man, creatures of pure art.

Compare to the ghouls and demons who are no more bad than the angels are good. In fact these beings are rather neutral symbols of spiritual mediation and presence and can each inspire strange moods of awe or fear. The poet is moving in higher realms here and is removed form his world and fellow man just as some of these spirits are alone and cut off, inhabiting lonely places where their music strives against the silence. Few are given names, the early poem "Israfel" making the magnificent parallel between the angel and the poet in their respective spheres.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2002