“The Raven” from Edgar Allan Poe – a knife tribute

Bayreuth | June 2014  &  New York | January 1845.

Today I’ll show you a “slightly different” knife. The idea for this project had been haunting my knife (nightmare) dreams for a long time – a knife homage to Poe’s “The Raven”.

The poem “The Raven” was first published in New York’s Evening Mirror on January 29, 1845 and describes the mysterious midnight visit of a raven to a desperate lover. It later became one of the best-known American poems of all time.

If you want to get an impression (and don’t want to read all 108 verses right away), here you go, here is the first verse:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door –

Only this, and nothing more.”

And why such a project now?

For one thing, the raven impresses me – its cleverness, playfulness and cunning are fantastic.
On the other hand, this poem by E.A. Poe somehow followed me and still does.

So I faced my nightmare and sat on my own psychiatrist couch. After countless therapy sessions, the trauma was then processed in steel, bronze and ebony:

A few more insights into the making process:

And because it’s so beautiful, one more stanza!

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

PS, if you want to read the whole poem, you can find the original here.

Many thanks for the chic Poe’s Raven theme image to TwistedSynapses on deviantART!