Monday 9 November 2020

ultima thule

Via Strange Company, we learn that on this in 1848, Edgar Allen Poe sat for a daguerreotype portrait with the vernacular caption above in a studio in Providence in the state of Rhode Island. From the Latin designation for the extreme limits of exploration and travel, the term comes from Poe’s poem Dream-Land: 

I have reached these lands but newly 

From an ultimate dim Thule— 

From a wild, weird clime that lieth, sublime 

Out of Space—out of Time 

This title was coined by spiritualist and romantic interest of Poe, Sarah Helen Whitman, whom had met three years prior through shared interests.