E. A. Poe: the music of the word as (un) translated into the music of the sound

Having briefly reviewed various criteria of the musicality of a literary text, identified by Polish scholars, such as Szulc, Zgorzelski, Błoński, or Makowiecki, the author proceeds to approach selected works by Edgar Allan Poe, such as „The Raven”, or „The Fall of the House of Usher”, whose musicality is based, to a considerable extent, upon the techniques of ostinato and crescendo as well as on the prosodic orchestration. Consequently, he tries to establish to what degree and for what reasons this quality has been preserved in selected musical adaptations of these works (Peter Hammill, The Alan Parsons Project, Lou Reed).