ABSTRACT
Edgar Allan Poe's successful poem met with response from English and American artists. Poe's poem, which probes the depths of human perception and identity, has made the raven a lasting part of the Gothic tradition. The "The Raven" is a metaphor of Spain ruled by the oppressive dictator. The darkness and the rest of the Gothic context only emphasize the horrors of political condition. Much of Poe's symbolism of the raven has been preserved and reinterpreted by Alfonso Salvador Sastre. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz's works – like Poe's and Sastre's – explore "the worlds of dream, madness, parody, and political satire". Lord Nevermore a modified version of Witkiewicz's nickname for Bronislaw Malinowski is given a partly invented sense in Agneta Pleijel's narrative. For Witkiewicz, the journey provided the experience of the exotic world of the Tropics ("A Journey to the Tropics") and the awareness of the richness of forms of life and experience that informs his future paintings, dramas, and novels.
