Text: Anonymous, “The Character of Edgar A. Poe's Genius,” Cincinnati Daily Press (Cincinnati, OH), vol. IV, no. 149, January 10, 1861, p. 2, col. 5

[page 2, column 5:]

The Character of Edgar A. Pee's Genius.

His Extraordinary Gifts.

Edgar A. Poe is thus spoken of in an article in last week's New York Century:

Of the character of Poe's genius much has been written that does not deserve to be read. Dim ideas of his analytic power and splendor of imagination, ate suggested in vague criticism, but these are attributes of all great poets, and do not express his individuality. Men look upon him as on the midnight sky, where brilliant constellations are wrought upon unfathomable darkness. Astronomy is at fault, yet still in the shadow, the miracle worketh change; apparitions of glory are revealed and withdrawn, and the motions of the heavens silently unfolds their mystery. The laws of the soul are not less exact than the necessities of stellar movement, and the creations of the poet obey their tyranny. Atheistical and Godless they are not, but intimate the invisible divinity beyond. Yet the creations of the poet are held a phantom show, as in old days, men saw in sunset skies ærial pageants of knights careering on cloudy steeds, armies. prophetical of coming war, marching with “banners in the dazzling mist, and crumbling into ashen gloom. Or they are seen with the incredulous eye that in the tropical noon, and on a sunlit waste, beholds waving forests over glittering lakes, and the distant domes of Pagan cities, that are but mockeries of the sun and air, that vanish in the desert sand.

Yet it may be safely, affirmed that, no poetry is more profoundly suggestive its author than that of Edgar Poe. That the it exerts over the mind does not exist merely in the force of abstract ideality, but in the revelation of a superior personality, is of this assertion, a striking proof. The magician is greater than his magic. Deeper was the passion, wilder the climax of his life, and more difficult of solution its riddle, than story of the “Raven,” or that of the “House of Usher.”

Blindness to the force of this fact produces one of the greatest errors made in the judgment of the man: the assumption that his power was necessarily limited to the field of its exercise. The correctness of his criticism, though applied to minds radically different, proves his universal appreciation, and from this alone might be inferred the completeness of his genius. His written poetry is not a full expression, but merely an indication; for its limited range of feeling is not the result any poetical. or personal deficiency, but of the pressure of external circumstance. Writing rarely, and in difficulty, the most intense and habitual passions naturally found the most frequent expression.

Indeed, the originality of the style, is the result of poetical completeness. Possessing all the qualities essential to the great poet, the variety of sympathy enabled him to avoid special imitation. Transcending Tennyson in passion, he equals him in the analysis of emotion, and had he lived, would have equaled him in exactness of statement. With all of Byron's rhetorical splendor, he had a capacity to suffer, of which Byron never dreamed. Dante visited hell under divine protection; Poe lived there. Wordsworth. calmly contemplated calmness; but Poe looked steadfastly on dizziness. Admitting the personal evil ascribed to him, we do not weaken our argument, for the possession of evil does not exclude possession of good, and the poet may exercise in imagination, real qualities, that in his grosser life are neglected. All that Poe has written conscientiously, is strong; nowhere is positive poetical weakness betrayed. His personal deficiencies were not of that kind that interferes with intellectual exhibition of the beautiful, and we especially argue against the superstition, that his genius was limited to the production of effects of horror, and that his poems, like the ravings of ancient oracles, are most impressive when least understood.