Poe Post 1
Poe is one of the only poets I like and The Raven is one of my favorites! It's quote time.
"Quoth the Raven "Eat my shorts!" You really think I was going to miss the chance to use this? I actually have a bookmark that says this and it glows in the dark. OOOH SPOOKY. Now on to the actual quote...
"Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door--Perched, and sat, and nothing more" (lines 41-42).
As it said in the foot note, Pallas aka Athena, is the Greek goddess of wisdom. All the times I've read this, I've always wondered why Poe had the Raven land on the goddess of wisdom. It's kind of ironic, since the narrator is being illogical because of his grieving for Lenore.
I'm not so sure he is being illogical in grieving for Lenore, but I do agree that it is odd for the Raven to sit upon the goddess of wisdom...
Maybe he is trying to tell the narrator that he is being foolish in his actions?
I checked a bit, and according to a seemingly well cited wikipedia article, (and a couple mythology web sites I just checked) Pallas is the name a of a couple titans, as well as Triton's daughter, all of whom Athena kills. However, Athena also is sometimes given the first name Pallas, and in later works is called Pallas alone.
However, I think that it may refer to Simon Pallas, or Peter Simon Pallas (his son). The former was a major figure in medicine, who wrote many texts, while the latter was an important botanist and zoologist. Either way, the bust could be somehow symbolic of science.
I actually checked a few sites too, but there was so much different info. Thanks for the info and I never thought that the bust could be linked to science. That's a very interesting theory.