the archetype of mother: a never-ending story retold by poe

investigation the archetype of mother can help the reader to understand poes works, especially his fiction, better, if not fully. motivated by internal and external drives to get into the universe in its manifold form poe was impelled to art and, from various modes of art, to symbolism. how much was poe successful to produce works of art has been a matter of dispute among critics. however, there is at least one reason for his relative success and that is his influence. t. s. eliot asks, can we point to any poet whose style appears to have been formed by a study of poe? the only one whose name suggests itself is edward lear. and yet one cannot be sure that ones own writing has not been influenced by poe. eliot, continuing his remarks, confesses that he is not sure that he is uninfluenced by poe. poe is also charged with being excessively obsessed with necrophilia. this can be accounted not unreasonable craze for death and destruction but by the universal law that govens the unceasing cycle of life, death, and rebirth. this is the sphinxs riddle that he tried to universal. did he get throught it? did he get access to that never-to-be-imparted secret? the answer may lie in this passage from "eleonora" in which the narrator remarks, they who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. in their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in waking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. in snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. they penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable" and again, like the adventurers of the nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid into esset exploraturi".