Text: Arthur Machen, “Poe the Enchanter,” T. P.'s Weekly (London, UK), vol. 16, no. 416, October 28, 1910, p. 553

[page 553:]

 

The name of Edgar Allan Poe was once mentioned in Emerson's presence. The sage of Concord lifted his eyebrows, and said, “Oh, the jingle-man!” and changed the subject. One understands the point of view; Emerson had read “The Bells” and perhaps “The Raven.” Then there are many readers to whom Poe appeals as a capital concocter of “shockers”; others who rather like his detective stories; others who pronounce his work morbid and unnatural; and some who think he was a bad man given to excess in drink. I believe, indeed, that Poe's intemperate habits have excluded him from an edifice in America called the Temple of ‘Fame — a circumstance which must move the Shades to inextinguishable mirth. And it may be as well to say at once that all these criticisms are mentioned that they may be dismissed as impertinences and irrelevancies. Poe is one of the most important figures in the whole history of the fine art of letters, and those who have not been initiated into this mystery must be requested to regard themselves as profane, unfit to approach the shrine and oracle of the great American.

Mr. Ransome's theory of Poe.

I am glad to find that Mr. Arthur Ransome, author of “Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Study” (Seeker. 7s. 6d. net), is fully possessed of the true faith as to Poe. He analyses the collected works of his author with that subtlety and sense of aesthetic beauty which they demand; he is absolutely convinced of the supreme dignity of the masterpieces on which he comments. ‘And his study is “critical”; it is not a mass of undiscriminating laudation, of that “praise, praise, praise” which is the negation of the critical spirit. And I cannot help announcing my gratification in the discovery that Mr. Ransome feels about Poe as I have always felt. I have always been convinced of the fact that Poe's work is supremely great, that the charm of it is unique in letters; but I should have been perplexed if I had been asked to justify this belief “in black and white,” to give plain reasons for the faith that is in me. So Mr. Ransome:

Well, as Mr. Ransome says, very truly, “an admiration or contempt that we do not try to understand is more humiliating to the mind than none at all,” and so he has written this study to justify to himself his sense of Poe's very high value. What is the secret? According to the author, Poe's supreme merit is not to be sought in the excellencies of his poems, or tales, or critical writings, but in the fact that he “tried to teach, even in broken speech, the secret of beautiful things, and the way not to their making only, but to [column 2:] their understanding.” Poe's palmary greatness then, according to Mr. Ransome, is as a discoverer of æsthetic principles in literature, and I am not quite sure that I agree. Let it be understood that I quite admit the excellence of Poe's aesthetic work; considering the circumstances of the man's life and his surroundings, considering the nature of the barbarians amongst whose tents he dwelt, to whose deaf, and stubborn, and evil ears he preached his sublime doctrine, considering his reward — poisoned arrows of calumny, and the sharp stones of starvation — considering all this, his achievement in proclaiming the first principles of art was little short of miraculous. He told that stiff-necked generation that the object of poetry is to create beauty, and, consequently, to excite joy in that beauty. To us this is a commonplace; but to Poe's audience it was nonsense, and blasphemous, immoral nonsense, and just the sort of delirious wickedness that you might expect from a man who occasionally took more drink than was good for him. We can laugh at these people whose descendants are apparently in charge of the American Temple of Fame; but I agree with Mr. Ransome in thinking that the prophet who prophesied such things to such an audience is, indeed, an amazing figure.

“Round the corner.”

Still, we must not forget Carlyle's very valuable caution — forgotten by Carlyle himself now and then — that the difficulty or ease with which a thing is accomplished has nothing really to do with the worth or worthlessness of that thing. A bad poem may have been written with great difficulty, and an immortal lyric may have flowed from the pen in an hour or two. Besides, I do not believe that Poe's vision of essential principles in art is the supreme reason for our admiration of his work. I am inclined to think that Mr. Ransome is nearest to the mark in that sentence, “ My admiration was always for something round the corner or over the hill.” “Over the hill”; exactly. Other writers show us the hill of our mortality — the side visible to us all: they picture to us the long-white road thronged with the pilgrims of this earthly life; but in Poe there is the ever-recurring hint, expressed by mystic symbols unintelligible to the profane, that over the hill there are forms and figures of which we have never dreamed; that round the corner of that road there is an unimaginable country. Take for example the famous “Fall of the House of Usher.” Considered from the point of view of the logical understanding, I could not justify my conviction that this is one of the finest stories that have ever been written. Logically, you have here a tale of an old house, of a melancholy brother, of a sister who is apparently dead, who rises from the death-chamber to affright the living, of the brother's madness, and of the house itself falling asunder and crashing down to destruction. Honestly, I cannot say that this plot, [column 3:] quâ plot, strikes me a a work of supreme genius. Indeed, I think I could name many better inventions by writers of quite inferior excellence. But read the story and meditate on it; contemplate the extraordinary atmosphere with which Poe has invested the tale; oonsider the mysterious thrill with which you are affected. You will find, I think, that you experience sensations and emotions similar to those produced by listening to wonderful music; you have been charmed by a certain combination of sense and sound and suggestion, into another world; you have ascended the hill, and looked on a wizard land; you have seen the dread vision that lies beyond the corner of the road. Then there is another tale, called, I think, “A Story [[Tale]] of the Ragged Mountains.” It is, on the face of it, a tale of reincarnation; and, again, though the thing is deftly done, I cannot find the highest merit in the logical invention of it. But there are a few words descriptive of those forlorn and outland hills, of the mists and heats that brood over them, that sound on the ear like a spell, that echo within the spirit an unknown, unearthly message, from a world that is beyond the veil.

The music of literature.

I have spoken of music and of charms and spells; and here, I believe, we must seek for the palmary excellence of Edgar Allan Poe. Allowing him, with Mr. Ransome, all his merits as a discoverer in Aesthetics, giving him due praise for invention that is sometimes supremely good, for craftsmanship that is often superb in its accomplishment, I hold that his great secret lies in the fact that he was an enchanter, that he approximated to the primitive incantation, which is the essence and fount and origin of all true literature; that his work was of the family of “Kubla Khan.” Pater, whom Mr. Ransome calls an unconscious follower of Poe, laid down the far-reaching law that music represents the point to which literature should aspire; it is another way of saying that literature should be an incantation. It should rise, that is, into a world which is above all logical definition, which cannot be explained in terms of the understanding or in terms of common sense, for the good reason that it transcends all these things; it speaks a language that is not of earth; in the last resort it is the communication to mortals of immortal and ineffable beauty. And all through the work of Poe, with varying degrees of intensity and clearness, we can hear the solemn and awful cadences of this inexpressive song. As men in the marketplace, buying and selling, cheating or being cheated, speaking of common things in common tones, hear now and again the far-off triumph of the organ, and clear voices chanting the eternal mysteries, Bo in the tales and poems of Edgar Allan Poe there is a secret sense beneath the open sense, the sound of a voice that is not of man.

ARTHUR MACHEN.