Pruette, Lorine. “A Psycho-Analytical Study of Edgar Allan Poe”. Flashcards
“In his drinking he was noticed to drink a glass of punch at a gulp, apparently craving the stimulation rather than the flavor of the drink. One glass, too, was said to be all that he usually desired. This habit of drinking en barbare, as Baudelaire calls it, he kept up all through life”
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Poe’s partiality to alcohol may have contributed to his depression. On the other hand, his drinking may have been a reaction to the way in which he felt.
It is in such festive gatherings that he is said to have acquired, at an early age, the taste for alcohol which was later to play such a sinister part in his undoing.
poe liked alcohol from an early age
Poe himself, in speaking of his foster parents, says that he never received the parental affection or family sympathy for which he longed. But according to his biographer, John H. Ingram, “Throughout life a morbid sensitiveness to affection was one of Poe’s most distinguishing traits,” and it is highly probable that any normal affection would have seemed insufficient to the neurotic boy.
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