Text: Anonymous, “The Potency of Poe,” Literature: An International Gazette of Criticism (New York, NY), ns. No. 13, April 7, 1899, pp. 301-302

[page 301, column 2:]

The Potency of Poe.

ABOUT every five years in the last half century — so that a fanciful mind might be tempted to think there was a law of periodicity governing the case — there has appeared either a peculiarly venomous attack on the famous author of “The Raven” or a somewhat exaggerative defence of his life and defiance of his detractors or neglecters.

The latest example of this has been given by Charles Leonard Moore, a Philadelphian poet of pleasing note, who, in the Chicago Dial of January 16, takes up the critical cudgels for Poe with unusual vigor of statement and brilliancy of expression. Mr. Moore asserts that to a great extent he (Poe) is ignored and repudiated.

Undoubtedly the general indignation Mr. Moore feels does as much honor to his heart as his keen appreciation of Poe's genius does to his head; but to be omitted from the wretched “volumes of specimen selections” with which various prolific publishers flood the country, and to be left out of “the foolish lists of American great men,” compiled by industrious idiots for the boredom of schoolboys, is a compliment, surely, whose value Poe would have been instant to recognise.

As for “cold hostility” in editing, the reference is probably to Professor Woodberry's extremely painstaking and valuable biography, and the phrase is hardly just. Temperamental inability to comprehend such a complex character as Poe's is the only defect that can be fairly charged against this erudite Columbian's work, and for the new light which his researches have shed on certain obscure points in Poe's career every lover of Poe has reason to feel grateful, since Mr. Woodberry's conscientious investigations will prove of inestimable value to the future editor, who shall possess all the qualities necessary to put an adequate presentation of Poe, his life, and his message before the American people. For such a noble office Mr. Moore's critical equipment is evidently sufficient, but he magnifies considerably the indifference in this country to the work of the man who is unquestionably our greatest imaginative artist in prose and in poetry.

Poe is a popular author. His works, even bad editions of them with absurd illustrations, sell steadily. There are two literary names, Poe and Shakespeare, which, mentioned anywhere, even in slums or among the outcasts of society, elicit some response of intelligent recognition. This has been tested again and again; and, pace Mr. Moore, Poe has plenty of highly intelligent and warmly enthusiastic admirers in America.

Should Mr. Moore start a Poe Society — Heaven forbid that he dream of it! — he would be surprised at the number of members he could get. Poe's fame is too secure, too [page 302:] deeply rooted in the divine average of the universal sense of beauty, to need any special “booming” or proselyting; and when one considers the long array of writers, American, French, and English, who owe intellectual debts to Poe for specific ideas in situation or plot and for style or styles, how can one escape the conviction that Poe has been — and is — one of the greatest, most vivifying, forces in nineteenth-century literature?

Some of the men who have treated his works as a mine have made handsome acknowledgment; but most have used him as the Latin poets did the Greek or as imperial Shakespeare did everything in sight. Sardou, Gautier, About, Verne, Gaboriau, Stevenson, Kipling, Doyle, Caine, and many of our own story-writers give large evidence of the extraordinary extent and permanent quality of Poe's impressiveness.

Sardou, for example, utilised two of Poe's tales, “The Gold Beetle” and “The Purloined Letter,” for a play, which was first produced in New York by Lester Wallack many years ago under the name “A Scrap of Paper.” Verne took the pivotal idea for his “Round the World in Eighty Days” from Poe's rather trivial bit of pleasantry, “Three Sundays in a Week”; and in a recent story Mr. Charles Frederic Stansbury played a graceful variation on the same theme. In his other works Verne adopted Poe's semi-scientific, ratiocinative style for the weaving of marvellous yarns of pure adventure.

Stevenson, one of the few men large enough to be always candid, took his Jekyll and Hyde idea from Poe's “William Wilson,” and several of his briefer pieces are redolent of the American master.

In like manner, some of Kipling's earlier and better stories, such as “Bimi,” yield notable chemical traces of Poe; though Kipling shows in these an easy gift of charcoaling character, whereas Poe mostly was quite content with faintly suggesting it; and Kipling also has a rich vein of racy and quaint humor — a quality of which Poe gave little sign.

Naturally enough, Mr. Moore's clarion challenge has evoked counterblasts from sundry silver or tin trumpets, and some of these emit distinctly amusing notes. The funniest, perhaps, is Miss Caroline Sheldon's verdict that the cause of Poe's immense “unpopularity” (which doesn’t exist) in this country is due to his “fatal lack of humor,” and in proof of her proposition she cites as a specimen of Poe's obtuseness in this respect the opening lines of his poem to Sarah Helen Whitman:

That Poe had the slightest intention of attempting a playful allusion to a lady's sensitiveness touching her age in the second line, as Miss Sheldon imagines and condemns, will be a novel notion for thousands of Poe's readers. One might just as easily postulate that in the apocryphal Book of Tobit the naive narrative mention of the dog of his son Tobias was introduced by the old Hebrew poet for a peculiarly waggish purpose. [column 2:]

Poe was not a humorist, but he showed in his critical writings that no one had a keener and juster sense of true humor than himself. The humor that lies in character, the kind that Shakespeare shows pre-eminently in “Falstaff” and that Dickens and Thackeray exhibit in many creations, Poe thoroughly appreciated and heartily enjoyed, although he never had or pretended to any special gift in that way himself. The kind of humor which has been called especially American, the Bill Nye brand and much of Mark Twain, one fancies, would have seemed to Poe as belonging to the Eocene era of literary development and mental enjoyment

There are in Poe's works, however, some subtly humorous turns and some conceptions of a humorous nature which negative the assumption that he was entirely without power of expression in this direction. Knowing his own mind so well, he doubtless decided that his vein of humor was far too thin to be worth much working. There were several popular humorists in Poe's day. They are now, for the most part, fortunately forgotten. Even at a literary gathering some of their very names would sound strange; and it would be stranger if any one could tell off-hand what they wrote. There have been several in our day, whom the bountiful billows of oblivion are already beginning to roll over. Poe stays. Poe grows. He grows as a poet; because, as Tennyson said, he is the most original imaginative artist and most absolute melodist that America has produced. Poe, the prose writer, grows; because, though the themes he preferentially handled are few, he surpassed all his contemporaries in the vigor, variety, and artistry of his style. In that mystic realm of spirit which by force of will he chose for his own domain or in which his peculiar nature made him easily regnant he has never been equalled; he has rarely been approached with appreciable closeness.

As a critic, he had a standard and a faith. He felt himself a High Priest of Literature. He was quick, often first, to hail true merit, and most of his verdicts have stood. As a man, he suffered horribly most of the time; but who shall measure the hidden height of his just intellectual elations? Compensations occasionally come to an artist from his art “till with vast of inward vision all the mortal waxeth dim.”

As to Poe's character, testimony conflicts. Whether his misfortunes were his own fault or not is a large question. Charity, as philosophised by modern science, now reduces personal responsibility to a minimum by assuming Heredity and Environment as the determining factors in human affairs. And the mystery in which Poe, the artistic dreamer, delighted to dwell, haunts his personality in the minds of men. There were many who always found him a quiet, unselfish, courteous, chivalrous gentleman. To some he seemed just the opposite — a drunkard, a brawler, a borrower, an ingrate, and a rogue. He may have been a bad man; but the bulk of unbiassed contemporary testimony certainly seems to be in his favor, and one convincing fact stands forth, to plead for him trumpet-tongued — more than one good woman admired him, believed in him, loved him.