“The Raven” features a consistent strain of allusions to the world of classical—which is to say Greek and Roman—mythology. When the Raven flies into the narrator’s chamber, it perches upon the bust of “Pallas,” or Athena, the goddess of wisdom. While the presence of such a bust makes sense in the chamber of the narrator, who appears to be a scholar per his initial contemplation of the book of “forgotten lore,” the juxtaposition of the head of Pallas with the perched Raven also symbolizes a primary tension in the story as a whole: the ongoing battle between reason and reality (represented by Athena) and the supernatural stirring of the subconscious brought by the madness of grief (represented by the Raven).
Later in the poem, the narrator rambles to the Raven about his Lenore, and makes another allusion to the classical world:
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!
Nepenthe refers to a mythological substance mentioned in Ancient Greek literature—notably in Homer’s Odyssey—that, when consumed, leads to one forgetting their grief. Tortured by his grief for Lenore and his anguish at her passing, the narrator invokes the mythical substance as a possible source of “respite” from his pain.
Another classical allusion that appears throughout “The Raven” is the mention of “Night’s Plutonian shores.” This is a metaphorical comparison between the nighttime setting of the story and the underworld realm of Pluto, Roman god of death. By invoking such a comparison, the narrator portrays the night as a time of death, grief, and suffering—as is typical in Gothic literature—and conveys as much to the mysterious Raven over the course of the tale.
Strikingly, the narrator only uses classical allusion in reference to his own world: he phrases his predicament and his environment in terms of Greek and Roman myth, in sharp contrast to his characterization of Lenore in Judeo-Christian Biblical terms. Where Lenore is "named by" and lives "among" the angels, at least in the narrator's fervent ramblings, the narrator himself is confined to a chamber—and a world—marked by archaic classical characteristics. Through the juxtaposed use of classical and biblical allusion to refer to the narrator and Lenore, respectively, Poe is able to even further reinforce the separation between the two figures. Not only have they been forced apart by death, the narrator and Lenore exist in entirely distinct mythologies.
Throughout “The Raven,” the narrator uses biblical language and imagery, primarily to refer to Lenore. The first time the narrator’s lost love is introduced, he refers to her in terms of her relationship to angels:
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
From this point on, the narrator associates Lenore with a Christian afterlife, angels, and biblical allusion. He even claims to sense—or, perhaps, hallucinates—the presence of angels in his own chamber, taunting him with thoughts of Lenore:
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
Combining the olfactory imagery of some supernatural “perfume” with the auditory imagery of angelic footfalls—Seraphim are angels in the Judeo-Christian tradition—Poe thus amplifies the narrator’s grief-ridden obsession with Lenore by placing it right before his very nose and ears.
Shortly thereafter, the narrator demands to know more about Lenore’s fate in the afterlife:
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
"Aidenn" is another spelling of Eden, the biblical paradise that God creates in the opening chapters of Genesis. As Poe uses it here, "Aidenn" refers to a heavenly afterlife more generally. The narrator is therefore demanding to know if "this soul" (the narrator himself) will someday be reunited with Lenore in heaven, where that "sainted maiden" surely belongs. By surrounding the narrator’s thoughts and questions about Lenore with biblical allusion, Poe thus distinguishes the fate of the narrator’s lover from the narrator himself, who perceives his own world largely through terms of classical mythological allusion. By associating Lenore with the heavens, the narrator simultaneously exalts his lover and emphasizes his own bleak, foreboding surroundings, making the distance between them all the more stark.
“The Raven” contains many allusions, both to the landscape of classical mythology and to the Bible and its associated imagery, but only once does Poe allude directly to a biblical passage:
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!
The narrator’s question, about balm in Gilead, pulls from Jeremiah 8:22, in the Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament: “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?” The region of Gilead, in Ancient Palestine, was renowned for its medicinal balsam, a healing herb grown there in abundance. If there is no balm in Gilead, in other words, then there is no remedy for suffering: the phrase thus takes on proverbial significance. As invoked by the narrator of “The Raven,” this expression becomes yet another way for him to implore the Raven if there will be any relief for his grief. Further, by invoking the Old Testament in his grief for Lenore, the narrator's grief takes on literally biblical proportions.
