Helen as the poet’s personal symbol

Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe's " To Helen" has been generally based on three
assumptions: that Poe's Helen is to be identified with Helen of Troy; that " the
weary, way-worn wanderer " is a not-too- veiled reference to Ulysses; and that
Poe ineptly allows Helen to direct Ulysses " To his own native shore." A recent
commentator on the poem, making all of these assumptions, concludes that " the
classical symbols used to express the experience do not bear a corresponding
relationship to each other." On the surface, this seems to be a logical conclusion,
for certainly Ulysses' return to Ithaca cannot be traced to the beauty or good
offices of Helen.

Helen, of course, is the unifying symbol of the poem. Since she represents
"ideal " love, however, is it not arbitrary to assume that she must be
incongruously associated with the archetypal representative of sexual love ? I
should like to suggest that, when Poe conceived of Helen as spiritual love, the
traditional Helen suffered a " sea change." A new Helen emerged, the very
antithesis of the destructive beauty whose face " launched a thousand ships and
burnt the topless towers of Ilium." In the poem, Helen does not launch the poet
onto the seas toward a protracted war; instead, through her spiritual influence,
she resolves his conflict with the " desperate seas " by gently guiding him home.
What has happened is simply explained: Poe assumed the poet's prerogative to
reinterpret or recreate the Helen myth in terms of his own artistic disposition
and needs. In other words, Poe's Helen is defined by Poe's poem and not by the
role played by Helen in Classical or Renaissance literature. Such lines as Ah,
Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy-Land! make it impossible to import
into the poem the concept of Helen as sensuous beauty. Moreover, Poe's well-
known critical statement about the kind of beauty that should be the special
concern of poets betrays a deep-seated predilection for spiritual as opposed to
physical beauty: For, in regard to Passion, alas! its tendency is to degrade, rather
than to elevate the Soul. Love, on the contrary-Love-the true, the divine Eros-
the Uranian as distinguished from the Dionaean Venus-is unquestionably the
purest and truest of all poetical themes. Once Poe has refined an ethereal Psyche
from the earthy Helen, she becomes a savior and an inspiration. It is Helen's role
as savior, however, that has led to critical diffi- culties. Yet, the widespread
assumption that Poe makes her the agent of Ulysses' or the way-worn
wanderer's return to his "own native shore " cannot be supported by the poem.
Careful reading demon- strates that Helen's beauty is like the barks which
carried the wanderer home. That is, she and the barks are symbols of salvation,
but her beauty is compared to and not equated with the barks. Clearly, Helen
performs for the poet the same beneficent function which the barks (and not
Helen) performed for Ulysses. The distinction between the poet and Ulysses,
when understood, further helps to absolve Poe of the charge of negligence in the
use of his classical imagery. Admittedly, the poet is a Ulyssean wanderer on "
desperate seas "; yet he is a modern Ulysses capable, as the Homeric Ulysses
was not, of reaching Rome as well as Greece. He is indeed Poe's correlative for
the artist seeking a spiritual home in the fragmented nineteenth century world
and finding it through the ideal woman (Helen) who puts him in touch with . .
.the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.

Allusions (classical/mythological)

Helen’s beauty, Poe tells us in the first stanza, reminds him of the boats
(‘barks’) of classical times, specifically those boats which set sail for victory
(‘Nicéan’ has been interpreted by critics as a nod to Nike, the Greek god of
victory; these boats, then, may be the very ships that were launched to fight the
Trojan war). The ‘weary, way-worn wanderer’, a delicious piece of alliteration,
may refer to Odysseus, who, after the Trojan war was over, made the long and
eventful journey home to his ‘native shore’. (This is, of course, where we get
the word ‘odyssey’ from.) Or it may refer to any such wanderer travelling across
the oceans in classical times.

In the second stanza, Poe likens himself to the wanderer returning home:
Helen’s ‘hyacinth hair’ (Hyacinth provides another classical reference: he was a
youth beloved by Apollo) has been interpreted as being black, based on Poe’s
reference, in his story ‘Ligeia’, to black hair as ‘hyacinthine’. Her ‘classic face’
reinforces the sense of her classical beauty. The ‘Naiad airs’ suggests that Helen
is nymph-like, ethereal: she has the ‘airs’ and mannerisms of a sea-dwelling
nymph. The fact that Helen’s beauty has ‘brought [Poe] home’ to Greece and
Rome suggests not only that he has been reminded of the magic and beauty of
classical civilization but that he recognises it as the cradle of all Western
civilization. We certainly analyse it in this way. After all, tragedy, comedy,
philosophy, and much else were either invented, or perfected and named, by the
ancient Greeks.

In the poem’s final stanza, Poe likens Helen to a statue – again, a symbol of
classical beauty – as he views her standing in the alcove of a window with an
‘agate lamp’ (agate is a crystalline rock). The word ‘brilliant’ (literally meaning
shining bright) and the ‘agate lamp’ in Helen’s hand both reinforce the literal
meaning of her name: ‘bright’. But the agate lamp is also another classical
allusion: it was Psyche, personification of the soul, who carried such a lamp.
She awakened the sleeping Cupid, god of love, when a drop of oil from her
lamp fell on him as he slept. It is as though Helen has awakened Poe’s
appreciation of beauty, but also – like the wakened Cupid – his capacity for
love. Poe’s final reference to Greece as the ‘Holy Land’ reclaims the title from
its Crusading connotations, where it referred to Jerusalem. The true ‘Holy Land’
for Poe is the original seat of Western art and poetry, and Helen reignites his
love of such things.

Indeed, Poe reminds us that Western poetry itself really begins not only in
ancient Greece, but with a story about the Trojan war – namely, Homer’s epic
poem the Iliad, which focuses on the last few days in the conflict, a conflict that
began when the Greek Helen was abducted by Paris, the Prince of Troy.

But as well as such universal resonances, ‘To Helen’ also has more personal
links to Edgar Allan Poe’s own life, and indeed the poem has been analyzed in
terms of its biographical associations. Jane Stanard, the mother of one of Poe’s
childhood friends, had been the first person to encourage Poe in his writing
ambitions, at a time when Poe’s foster-father thought he should be doing other
things. ‘To Helen’ was one of the first poems Poe wrote, and he wrote it for her.

Although Poe never explained why he changed Jane Stanard's name to Helen in
the poem, one possible interpretation is that he intended to connect her to the
famed Helen of Troy, who sparked the Trojan War of Homer's Iliad because of
her beauty. The remainder of the poem shows a definite classical influence, with
Poe's elevated diction and his direct references to "the glory that was Greece"
and "the grandeur that was Rome." He also praises Helen's beauty by describing
her "hyacinth hair" and "classic face," details that are associated with ancient
standards of the female ideal. If Poe indeed intended for the name "Helen" to
refer to Helen of Troy, then he has given his character high praise indeed.