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The fiction poem of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven (1845) describes the grief of a poor man who has lost his beloved Lenore. The protagonist is sitting in the dark December night all alone, when suddenly he is struck by some strange knocking. He reasons who it can be, afraid to see dead Lenore, but when he opens the door there is nothing but darkness. And through the window an old raven enters his rooms to inform the man he will never forget his beloved and to stay with him forever (Poe 22-27). This entire plot unfolds step by step, with tension growing in each stanza, and striking the reader deeper and deeper. It is impossible not to mention its poetic virtues: sound effects created by alliteration, internal rhyme and complicated rhythm. The poem is melodic and easy to read, in spite of stylized old language, the images create supernatural atmosphere – either being entered by the hero in his sorrow, or being born by his own inflamed mind. Actually its origin doesn’t matter here; the Raven anyway becomes an eloquent symbol of evil forces and prophetic wisdom at the same time, and “Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance” (Silvermann 171).
Here it also symbolizes a strong conflict between the wish to forget (in order not to suffer) and to remember forever (to stay faithful to his love and not to betray it). The character shows a kind of masochistic pleasure, asking questions and knowing the answers. In this way, the feelings of a narrator infect the reader, they are not analyzed, but understood and clear.
The short story The Broken Heart by Washington Irving has much in common with the Poe’s work. It is easy to get the theme from the very title and to find another worthy expression in the text: “a bankruptcy of the heart”. The story is very like an argument essay, filled with reasoning and baring a clear logical structure: introduction, where the author states the thesis on romantic passion and its unhappy ending. It sounds like a sincere confession of a wise man who has experienced much and who has gathered enough material to support the expressed idea. It turns to be a kind of investigation of a female soul, but not scientific one. It is actually a literary work of high artistic merit. There are a lot of similes, metaphors and other tools of imagery: “there are dormant fires lurking in the depths of the coldest bosom”, he says; he gibes a woman’s heart a scale of the world where “her ambition strives for empire – it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures”; “her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate”

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(Irving 69-73) and so on. He uses exclamation and rhetoric questions, he explodes with epithets, and finally comes to the tragical story – the main argument in his reasoning. The story is about woman whose “anguish it would be impossible to describe” for she fell in love with one famous Irish patriot and loved him even more when he suffered. And so, like Poe’s character, she lost her beloved. But here her pains and anguish are described from the third party and stated as they are: “no want of consolation”, “there was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of separation”, “as much alone there as in the depths of solitude; walking about in a sad revery, apparently unconscious of the world around her.” Meanwhile we remember that in Poe’s poem the feelings are only touched, but not depicted directly; the situation becomes clear mostly from the scenes set and entire spirit of the work. Irving also uses the motive of contrast, but explains it himself: the girl was at the masquerade “lonely and joyless, where all around is gay.” (Irving 74).
So, in this way we have traced how one theme can be exposed in two different literary forms within one literary era. We have seen that fiction and poetry use different tools to set the scene, to state the problem and to reach the artistic height while they have different pragmatic guideline and naturally help the author to emphasize this or that side of the problem. In prose the author gives more generalization and deduction, giving a full picture whereas poetry is intended for impression, and knowing not the full context, we get only some details which in case of talented work are usually enough to develop empathy and go through catharsis. And all in all you can never say what form is better for this or that theme, as it all depends on two participants of creative communication, the author (extent of his talent and intuition) and the reader (what for he is reading and what effect he is expecting for). Therefore we can compare methods and tools, schemes and structures, but we can’t compare artistic value of different forms of art. Each of them has its own pros and cons, own virtues and dignities so exciting to explore and so complex to evaluate.

References
Abrams, Meyer Howard. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.
Berlin, Isaiah (1999). The Roots of Romanticism. London: Chatto & Windus.
Irving, Washington. “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent”. The Complete Works of Washington Irving. Vol. 8. Ed. Haskell Springer. Boston: Twayne, 1978.
Krutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926.
Poe, Edgar. Tales and The Raven and Other Poems. Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill, 1969.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991.