Hannah Bridgeman
American Lit: 10:30
Bleck
Of Poe(Very Rough Draft)

Intro: In his article “The Influence of Eichendorff’s ‘Ahnung Und Gegenwart’ [Premonition and Present Time, 1815] on Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’” Franz Karl Mohr, seeks to show the relationship between Poe’s writings and the older macabre writings of the time. Mohr draws connections relevant to Poe from such literary pieces as “Ahnung Und Gegenwart”, “I Promessi Sposi”, “Decameron” and “Vivian Grey”, showing how their influence shaped Poe’s own work.

Summary: Mohr begins his article in stating that all great writers, be they poets or no, are influenced by some outside agent. Writings are always inspired by something, and it is not a sign of weakness to use those influences to make a great story. Poetry is less direct about this, if only for the reason that it would be too evident to use another writer’s influence directly. Mohr goes on to state that Poe is no exception to this rule, he was inspired by may other authors, and those inspirations he used to come up with his wonderfully macabre stories and ideas.

The main focus of Mohr’s article is how these influences shaped Poe’s piece “The Masque of the Red Death”. He mentions how Poe’s reading of Manzoni’s novel I Promessi Sposi, a novel about a deadly plague in Milan, was probably a big influence on his subject matter for The Masque of the Red Death. However, Mohr stresses in his article that while he believes that Poe’s inspiration for the Plague did come from Manzoni’s work, the sheer grotesque portrail of the plague was Poe’s own doing, as Manzoni’s account of it “Reads only like the chronicler’s report.”(Mohr).

Another author it is believed Poe got inspiration from for the Masque of the Red Death was Boccaccio and his story Decameron. A story in which some young nobles seek refuge from a terrible plague in a castle high on a hill, and amuse themselves by telling stories. However, unlike either of these works Poe did not give his reader a time or a location in which the events took place. Instead he used these inspirations to help set a terrifying scene with out a place or time to contain it, leaving the reader with only the imagery to contend with.

Mohr then raises the question of whether or not Poe came up with the idea of “Death” attending the masque as a masked guest on his own or if he had other outside inspiration for that as well. He goes on to state that there have been several attempts to trace the origins of the “Masked Death”. One of which seeks to claim that Poe got his inspiration from Disraeli’s Vivian Grey, in which the guests of the Queen are all gathered together for a party when suddenly a masked and unknown man appears in their midst. Mohr, however, disagrees completely with this notion. Mohr states, “That Poe should have been influenced by this ‘fancy-dress ball,’ not a masked ball at that,[…] is not plausible.” Mohr continues on to claim that if anything Disraeli was in fact inspired to write Vivian Grey by the Eichendorff’s novel Ahnung und Gegenwart. And shows many similarities between the two works, of which Eichendorff’s was the older of the two.

Response: I have found this article, so far, completely fascinating. The Masque of the Red Death has always been my favorite work by Poe. To see where he drew his inspiration is interesting for me. And as a writer I feel much less afraid to take my inspiration from other sources than I did before I read this. If someone like Edgar Allan Poe did it and wrote such wonderful things, than I can as well.
Conclusion: Mohr’s article shed new light on the process behind E.A.Poe’s work, and gives insight on how writers use the influences of the world around them to compile inspiration for their own works.

Works Cited.

Mohr, Franz Karl. "THE INFLUENCE OF EICHENDORFF'S "AHNUNG UND
GEGENWART" ON POE'S "MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.." Modern
Language Quarterly 10.1 (1949): 3. Academic Search
Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 June 2010.