"A lot of the themes recurring in his stories were in many ways as real to him as the actual experiences of his life," says Jonathan Christenson, writer, director and composer of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, the widely acclaimed Catalyst Theatre fact-and-fiction musical that receives its Calgary debut tonight at Vertigo Playhouse.

"As a man, Poe was constantly re-creating his own life story," Christenson adds, pointing out that after his death, Poe biographers often did much the same, basing their histories of the infamously alcoholic visionary as much on rumour as fact - even going so far as to let their own negative feelings colour what they wrote.

And you could also argue that Poe, the 19th-century American author of such narrative classics as The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Tell-Tale Heart - not to mention poems that are almost incantatory in nature, such as The Raven or Annabel Lee - essentially wrote the book on the creeping psychological horror that comes from a mounting sense of vulnerability compounded by dwelling too long on things that aren't real.

According to Christenson, we continue to be drawn to the horror genre, whether represented by the work of Poe or a Stephen King, because of its therapeutic value - a horror-as-catharsis mechanism that operates, he says, "by bringing us face to face with our deepest fears and reminding us of how fragile our hold is on the lives we've constructed for ourselves, and how much of an illusion our sense of control over ourselves and the world around us really is.

"And in doing so, I think it just re-sensitizes us to appreciating the kinder, gentler, better things we enjoy in our lives - by showing us how easily lost they are."

For Christenson, Poe's work is a particularly potent expression of that aspect of horror because of misconceptions about the man himself that have fostered a stereotype.

"I think people tend to think of him as this sort of dark, macabre person - a gothic figure who actually enjoys or indulges this dark side of himself," the creator of Nevermore says.

"And, in fact, I feel him as someone who tried very hard not to live in that place."

Poe, says Christenson, was a man who, though teetering on the edge of a kind of existential abyss as so many of his Romantic contemporaries were doing (or made a show of doing), "was just trying to live as good a life as he could, and to enjoy the same things that so many of us want to enjoy - the company of good friends, family, and a sense of peace and tranquility."

That he was never able to attain such a sense of social well-being in any sustainable way, Christenson says, was due to "demons" that he wrestled with, but was never able to conquer.

"There's a beautiful kind of vulnerability that comes through in his work that reminds us there are many people in the world who are unable to wrestle those demons to the ground."

Christenson cites what he refers to as the "Oprah Winfrey view of the world" that suggests we can all be "masters of our own destiny."

"I think for people who struggle with powerful 'demons' in their lives, that can be a really demoralizing message," Christenson says. "So there's something about Poe that I think really brings you back to not just the kind of pornographic indulgence in darkness and horror, but to what I think of as the seeds of real horror - the fear within ourselves that, in fact, those darker forces will overpower us and control our lives."

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