Perspectives Of Helen In Edgar Allen Poe's To Helen

Both Edgar Allen Poe and HD use diction to further imply their individual perspectives of Helen. In the second stanza of Poe’s “To Helen”, the words “glory” and “grandeur” are used to describe Helen’s beautiful qualities and image, referring to the glory and grandeur of Ancient Greece and Rome. The classic period, while horribly violent, found this referred glory and grandeur in their victories and honors that came from brutal wars. Poe sees Helen not only as the most gorgeous woman in the world but also as a figure of motivation, believing she is a person worth fighting for (as many did in the Trojan War) and reminiscing the praise and reward one might’ve felt in doing her favor. In the third stanza, Poe observes to her “brilliant window-niche”
The powerful words “hates” and “reviles” create a dramatic exaggeration of the speaker’s feelings toward Helen. The speaker finds no adoration in her artful depiction, but finds it repulsive for the “past ills” that Helen had committed. These past ills relates to the Trojan War, and how Helen’s abduction caused a large battle that would destroy a symbolic city into ashes. The speaker uses the term as if to say Helen had wronged them in causing such a conflict for reasons the speaker does not understand or care for, and wishes for revenge in the destructive fires that burned Troy to ground on her account. In the third stanza of “Helen”, she uses the word “funereal” to emphasize her hate for Helen, going so far as to call for death to descend upon her. Funereal referring to funerals, in which someone who has died is buried. While Helen escaped from all the death caused by the Trojan Horse, the speaker suggests that she deserved to die with all those who fell to Hades’ realm in protection of her, believing her beauty as unworthy of all the trouble she caused. Poe and H.D.’s depictions, while varied also use imagery in their expression of their individual opinions of