The mysterious name that Edgar Allan Poe repeated before he died
2021-10-07 12:41:04
TiranaPost
On October 3, 1849, the city of Baltimore woke up surrounded by an annoying autumn rain. Like this one today. Joseph W. Walker, an employee of the Baltimore Sun newspaper, decided to leave the house and on the way he encountered a delirious and visibly ill man. It was Edgar Allan Poe. He did not know and only trembled by repeating the same name "Reynolds" obsessively. Walker asked if there was anyone who could help, and the writer mentioned a doctor he knew, Joseph E. Snodgrass. Edgar Allan Poe was hospitalized after this moment and died on October 7, 1849, never explaining why he was away from home and in clothes that did not belong to him.
How did you get there?
A week before he closed his eyes forever, Edgar Allan Poe had left Richmond, Virginia, by train for Philadelphia, where he was to edit and cure another author's collection of poems. In those days no one had seen or met him. He had never arrived at his destination, nor had he returned to New York, the city where he lived. While in Richmond he had even asked a woman to marry him, but that is another matter. But what was Reynolds, the name he called in the last hours of his life?
Although the name still remains shrouded in mystery to this day, some hypotheses have advanced over the years. Someone talked about illusions and hallucinations caused by alcohol or opium or a consequence of diseases, such as meningitis, syphilis or even rabies. Others speculated that he may have fallen victim to an illegal practice of the time during the election, where some people were kidnapped, drugged and forced to vote for a specific candidate. According to another hypothesis, studied by American biographer Matthew Pearl, the culprit was a brain tumor.
Searching for the news of Edgar Allan Poe in the archives of various newspapers, Pearl has discovered something important. The body of the American writer had been exhumed twenty-six years after his death, and, on the move, some witnesses had claimed to have noticed the brain still intact, calcified, as is the case with tumor cases.
Born January 19, 1908 in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe was the son of two actors. Orphaned at a young age, he was placed under the care of John Allan, his wealthy uncle who lived in Richmond. After a period of study in England, he returned to the United States but began to waste money on gambling. My uncle stopped the funds he was giving him and he was forced to join the army to gain something. He decided to abandon military life and create short stories in New York. Poe fought hard, as there was no copyright law at the time.
In 1835, while in Baltimore to visit an aunt, he fell in love with his cousin Virginia Clemm, who was only thirteen years old, exactly half his age. The two married in secret and went to live in Richmond. In those years Edgar Alla Poe wrote some of his best, short stories while struggling to survive due to poor gains. As his stories became darker and pessimistic, his life also sank. The death of his wife in 1847 caused him to fall into a vortex of no return. He lived his last two years in pain, abusing drugs and alcohol to extinguish suffering.
