My first acquaintance with Poe’s works was at the Foreign Literature lectures. I read his poems The Bells and The Raven, and other works. It was a world of dreams and mystery that I found in Poe’s lyrics. Recall to memory The Raven, in which the poet longs to know the magical meaning of the bird’s word “Nevermore”. In Annabel Lee and Lenore we see dreams and griefs over his untimely deceased; in Eldorado there’s a reverie of a wonderful land. There’s also tension and fear in the writer’s compositions.

Poe’s works were interpreted by great men. Famous English sound producer Alan Parsons dedicated his debut album Tales of Mystery and Imagination (the title of one of Poe’s stories) to the writer. It’s a conceptual album with compositions bearing the names of Poe’s lyrics – The Raven, The Cask of Amontollado, etc., and featuring Parsons’s ideas of the author’s creations.

The idea of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher found its reflection in the plot of Ray Bradbury’s short story Usher II from the Martian Chronicles novel.

This year we mark the 190th anniversary of the birth and the 150th anniversary of the death of the famous American romanticist Edgar Allan Poe. On October 8th YES-Club arranged a meeting dedicated to him. Having listened to The Tell-Tale Heart’s tape version, the audience felt agitation and excitement from the atmosphere of the story. This emotion was gradually intensified by the author’s words.

Poe is alive in our hearts. Whatever we choose of his literary works – either detective stories or poems – we find a great deal of ambiguity and enigma. There’s always something unspoken in compositions of the writer. And it enables us to use our own imagination, to make our own conclusions. In my opinion, this is the most valuable thing in art.