Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, editor, and literary critic. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism in the United States and of American literature as a whole, and he was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story. Poe never really knew his parents, Elizabeth Arnold Poe, a British actress, and David Poe, Jr., an actor who was born in Baltimore. His father left the family early in Poe's life, and his mother passed away from tuberculosis when he was only three. The poem Sonnet: Silence addresses the duality of humans: the physical and the spiritual aspects of a person. These are encompassed in the metaphors of matter and light, solid and shade, sea and shore. Poe's constant mentions of the mirror image of a two-fold being allude to the general theme, life and death, throughout Silence by using many references to a separate yet the same state between the two entities as the layout of life and death. His extensive symbolism of death refers to Poe's history, and how Poe's life is merely but a succession of deaths of those who he loved. The overpowering emotions filled with this Italian sonnet directly refer to Poe's struggle with his reality of death, personifying it as a shadow that lurks him, so as to give a form to that which has taken his family, friends, and wives away from him, and that which offers the ultimate relief. Listen online to free English audiobook "Sonnet: Silence” on our website to experience Edgar Allan Poe's poem.
