:The Suicide's Soliloquy

The poem was published in the Sangamo Journal,{{Cite journal | date=1838 | title=The Suicide's Soliloquy | url=https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=SJO18380825.2.180&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN--------- | journal=Sangamo Journal | pages=2 | via=Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections}} a newspaper in which Lincoln had previously published other works. The poem uses a similar meter, sync, dictation and tone with many other poems published by Lincoln and according to Richard Miller, the man who discovered the poem, the theme of the interplay between rationality and madness is "especially Lincolnian in spirit".{{Cite web | title="The Suicide's Soliloquy" by Abraham Lincoln – Shenandoah | url=https://shenandoahliterary.org/blog/2014/11/the-suicides-soliloquy-by-abraham-lincoln/ | access-date=2020-10-27 | language=en}} In addition to this, many of the symptoms of depression that Lincoln expressed in letters and other writings are discussed in this poem. For example, one of Lincoln's symptoms was described as a "storm in his brain, punctuated by thunderclaps of thought--self-critical, fearful, despairing". He also wrote of an "intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea thread-bare and turn it to the bitterness of death". In the poem, the narrator exclaims, "To ease me of this power to think,/ That through my bosom raves,/ I'll headlong leap from hell's high brink,/ And wallow in its waves."{{Cite news | url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/10/lincolns-great-depression/304247/ | title=Lincoln's Great Depression | last=Shenk | first=Joshua Wolf | work=The Atlantic | date=October 2005 | access-date=2017-05-30 | language=en-US}} Although some doubt remains around the authorship of the poem, one Lincoln scholar said, "It looks like Lincoln. It sounds like Lincoln. It probably is Lincoln."

There is a general lack of agreement on the year the poem was published. In William Herndon's interview with Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln's closest friends, Speed initially said that the lost poem was published in 1840 or 1841 before settling on 1838. However an early authoritative biography by Jesse W. Weik, assembled largely from Herndon's writings, stated that the lost Lincoln poem was published in 1841. Thus Lincoln biographers assumed it had followed Lincoln’s suicidal breakdown in 1841, known to historians as the “fatal first of January.” However there was a period during 1835 when Lincoln's friends became concerned for his safety due to his talk of suicide following the death of a friend, Ann Rutledge, from typhoid fever. "The Suicide's Soliloquy" was published on the third anniversary of Rutledge's funeral, the point at which acquaintances first noticed that Lincoln was suffering from a depressive episode.{{Cite news | last=Siegel | first=Robert | date=October 26, 2005 | url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4976127 | title=Exploring Abraham Lincoln's 'Melancholy'}}

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1951239 Newly Discovered Poem Likely Lincoln's], Neal Conan, Talk of the Nation, NPR, June 9, 2004
• [https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna5167666 Was Suicide Poem Written by Lincoln?] from US news on NBC News.com
• [https://abrahamlincolnassociation.org/Newsletters/6-1.pdf Lincoln's "Suicide" Poem: Has It Been Found?], Richard Lawrence Miller, For the People, Spring 2004

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Category:American poems

Category:Poetry by Abraham Lincoln

Category:Works about suicide

Category:Works originally published in American newspapers

Category:1838 poems