The role of industrialization in the works of Poe, Benjamin and Rimbaud

Industrialized Poets

Edgar Allan Poe , Walter Benjamin , and Arthur Rimbaud all lived in the turbulent 19th Century where the idyllic countryside was giving way to the industrialized world . Their poetry reflects the profound impact industrialization 's onslaught had on the world . Starting from Edgar Allan Poe , to Arthur Rimbaud and finally to Walter Benjamin this will discuss the effect of industrialization on their respective worldview vis-a-vis the situation of the world during their life time

A City in the Sea

By Edgar Allan Poe

Lo ! Death has reared himself a

throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest

There shrines and palaces and towers (Time-eaten towers that tremble not

Resemble nothing that is ours

Around , by lifting winds forgot

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently -

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free -

Up domes - up spires - up kingly halls -

Up fanes - up Babylon-like walls -

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers -

Up many and many a marvelous shrine

Whose wreathyd friezes intertwine

The viol , the violet , and the vine

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in the air

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down

There open fanes and gaping graves

Yawn level with the luminous waves

But not the riches there that lie

In each idol 's diamond eye -

Not the gaily-jeweled dead

Tempt the waters from their bed

For no ripples curl , alas

Along that wilderness of glass -

No swellings tell that winds may be

Upon some far-off happier sea -

No heavings hint that winds have been

On seas less hideously serene

But lo , a stir is in the air

The wave - there is a movement there

As if the towers had thrust aside

In slightly sinking , the dull tide -

As if their tops had feebly given

A void within the filmy Heaven

The waves have now a redder glow -

The hours are breathing faint and low -

And when , amid no earthly moans

Down , down that town shall settle hence

Hell , rising from a thousand thrones

Shall do it reverence The setting is in a city in the west ruled by death who is worshiped by all . This set is often quoted or at least used for the crafting of gothic films or at work . Death looks down upon all from his high tower like Sauron atop Barad-Dur . The city has `domes , spires and kingly halls , and fanes and Babylon like walls . The poem makes a rather ironic point because the west has always been associated with good and life and the east with evil and death . For example , in Tolkien 's Lord of the Rings Trilogy Aragorn is the goodly Lord...