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Édouard Manet's 1875 illustration for "The Raven"

"The Raven" is a narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. Noted for its musicality, stylized language and supernatural atmosphere, it tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing his slow descent into madness. The lover is lamenting the loss of his love, Lenore. The raven, sitting on a bust of Pallas, seems to further instigate his distress with its repeated word "Nevermore". Throughout, Poe alludes to folklore and classical works. Poe explained in a follow-up essay, "The Philosophy of Composition", that his intention was to create a poem that would appeal to both critical and popular tastes. The poem was inspired in part by a talking raven in Charles Dickens's 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge. The publication of "The Raven" made Poe widely popular in his day. The poem was soon heavily reprinted, parodied, and illustrated. Though some critics disagree about the value of the poem, it remains well known and popular. (Full article...)

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Issue 3 of The True Record

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... that Tenzin Doendrup, the 68th Je Khenpo and chief abbot of Bhutan, issued a decree to stop the practice of animal sacrifices?
... that Josh Hawley's book Manhood was his second published by Regnery, after being dropped by Simon & Schuster for his support of the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election?
... that Vivian Stranders, a British-born Jew, served as an officer in the Nazi SS?

In the news

Daniel Chapo

Flooding in Spain kills more than 95 people.
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On this day

October 31: Halloween

USS Reuben James in 1939

1917 – World War I: Allied forces defeated Turkish troops in Beersheba in Southern Palestine at the Battle of Beersheba, with the battle involving one of the last successful cavalry charges.
1941 – 100 crew members of the USS Reuben James (pictured) perished when their vessel became the first U.S. Navy ship sunk by hostile action during World War II after it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-552.
1963 – A gas explosion at the Indiana State Fairgrounds Coliseum in Indianapolis killed 81 people and injured about 400 others.
1973 – Three Provisional Irish Republican Army members escaped from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin aboard a hijacked helicopter that landed in the prison's exercise yard.
2003 – After 22 years in power, Tun Mahathir Mohamad retired as Prime Minister of Malaysia.

Cosimo III de' Medici (d. 1723)
Muriel Duckworth (b. 1908)
William Evans-Gordon (d. 1913)
Gordon Steege (b. 1917)

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The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a German silent horror film, first released in 1920. Directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, it is considered to be the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, and tells the story of an insane hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style. The sets have sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, and structures that lean and twist in unusual angles. The film's design team, Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, recommended a fantastic, graphic style over a naturalistic one. With a violent and insane authority figure as its antagonist, the film expresses the theme of brutal and irrational authority. Considered a classic, it helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema and had a major influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror and film noir.

Film credit: Robert Wiene

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