Text: Various, “Chapter 05,” The Book of the Poe Centenary (1909), pp. 34-99

V

IN MADISON HALL

We have assembled this morning for the purpose of doing further honor to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe. On Saturday evening the Jefferson Literary Society of which he was a member recalled his close connection with the student life of the University of Virginia by reviving the story of Poe's University residence and his connection with our literary activities; on Sunday evening some of us had the privilege of hearing from the distinguished clergyman who occupied our Chapel pulpit his [page 35:] gracious and grateful tribute to Edgar Allan Poe and his plea for a right judgment of his failures and foibles.

In no country has Poe been so appreciated and so distinctly flattered by sincere imitation as in France. The development of the short story, which has reached such a marked degree of excellence both in France and America, has its common starting point in Edgar Allan Poe. This influence was transmitted to France through the translations of Baudelaire, and from this day to ours the influence of Poe, both in poetry and prose, has been consciously felt by the artists of our sister republic. Un able because of distance to summon to our aid a speaker from fair France, we have been singularly fortunate in procuring as her representative on this occasion Dr. Alcee Fortier of Tulane University, designated by one of his colleagues as our “Prince of Creoles.” I have the honor to introduce Dr. Fortier who will speak to you in the language counted by him and his compatriots as la plus belle langue du monde.

Je suis heureux de me trouver parmi vous aujourd’hui pour prendre part a la celebration [page 42:] du centenaire de la naissance d’Edgar Allan Poe. C’est ici meme que Ton doit celebrer cet evenement avec le plus d’eclat, a cette grande Universite de la Virginie, ou le celebre ecrivain commenga sa carriere litteraire. Ici vecut Poe, ici il fut etudiant, ici il fut inspire par l’atmosphere vivifiante de la magnifique institution fondee par Jefferson, Le nom de I’auteur du “Corbeau,” de “la Chute de la Maison d’Usher” et autres histoires admirables, est indissolublement lie a celui de I’Universite de la Virginie, et le nom de I’Universite a celui de Poe.

L’etudiant doit une grande reconnaissance au college qui lui a donne la vie intellectuelle, mais le college, a son tour, ne doit pas oublier I’ancien eleve qui, par son genie, a contribue a illustrer son alma mater. Je sais bien que cette Universite serait arrivee a la celebrite sans I’aide d’Edgar Poe, mais celuici a grande ment ajoute a la gloire de I’institution, et il est eminemment juste qu’elle se souvienne du poete et qu’elle I’honore. En agissant ainsi I’Uni versite represente aussi le grand etat de la Virginie qu’ aimait tant Poe, et dont I’ad mirable civilisation exerga sur lui une si grande influence que, malgre ses egarements, il lui [page 43:] resta toujours dans I’ame I’amour du beau et du vrai.

Nous ne pouvons admettre qu’un homme soit jamais vraiment grand, s’il lui manque la grandeur morale, et une institution d’enseignement superieur ne donnera pas cet homme en exemple, quelque vaste que soit son genie. Edgar Poe fut plus malheureux que coupable, et nous qui admirons ses belles qualites mentales, lui pardonnons ses fautes, parce qu’il aima I’art, parce qu’il ne ternit jamais un nom de femme dans ses vers ni dans sa prose, et parce qu’il etudia I’ame humaine et tacha d’en comprendre les mysteres. Telle est l’opin ion qu’ont de lui les professeurs de l’Universite de la Virginie, qui ont fait une etude ap profondie de ses oeuvres litteraires et de sa vie malheureuse. Telle est L’opinion de M. le Docteur James A. Harrison, qui a ecrit la biographie la plus complete et la plus sym pathique du poete; telle est L’opinion de M. le Docteur Charles W. Kent, qui a si bien com pris le genie de Poe; telle est L’opinion enfin de L’eminent President de cette Universite, dont le gout litteraire est si fin et si parfait. C’est parce que ces messieurs savent qu’Edgar Poe [page 44:] ne fut pas le miserable, que nous presente une deplorable legende, qu’ils honorent au jourd’hui sa memoire et nous ont invites a L’honorer avec eux.

L’Universite de la Virginie est fiere du plus illustre homme de lettres parmi ses anciens eleves, elle lui sait gre de la gloire qu’il a don nee a elle, a L’etat de la Virginie, et aux Etats Unis. Pendant de longues annees, apres que notre pays eut acquis son independance, il n’etait connu en Europe que par ses institutions politiques, et par son merveilleux developpement industriel et commercial. A peine quelques noms d’ecrivains avaient traverse rOcean et etaient mentionnes de temps en temps, mais lorsque le Corbeau de Poe eut croasse son immortelle complainte, que le Scarabee d’Or eut scintille dans la nuit, et qu’ eurent paru les formes etherees de Morella et de Ligeia, on sut dans la vieille Europe que la jeune republique occidentale avait donne naissance a un vrai poete, a un prosateur exquis. De tons les ecrivains americains Edgar Poe est le plus connu en Europe. II est le seul qui fasse, pour ainsi dire, partie de la litterature frangaise, qui soit reellement francise, [page 45:] comme L’a si bien dit Emile Hennequin. Voyons done quelle est la genese de cette extraordinaire popularite.

Des 1841, peu apres la publication du “Double Assassinat dans la Rue Morgue,” M. le Docteur James A. Harrison nous dit que trois journaux de Paris s’approprierent et se disputerent ce conte etrange de ratiocination. Ce qui commenga, cependant, la reputation de Poe en France fut un article de E. D. Forgues, publie dans “la Revue des Deux Mondes” du 15 octobre, 1846, “les Contes d’Edgar A. Poe.” M. Forgues commence son article par une comparaison entre “L’Essai Philosophique sur les Probabilites” de Laplace et le systeme de Poe. II dit que les contes de L’auteur amer icain ont une parente evidente avec la philoso phic de Laplace, quoiqu’ ils ne conduisent pas a un aussi noble but et n’emanent pas d’une pensee aussi vigoureuse. La faculte inspira trice de Poe, c’est le raisonnement; sa muse, c’est la logique, son moyen d agir sur les lect eurs, c’est le doute. “L’auteur met aux prises Oedipe et le sphinx, le heros et un logogriphe.” Le mystere parait impenetrable, L’intelligence s’irrite contre le voile etendu devant elle, mais [page 46:] sort victorieuse de la lutte apres des travaux extraordinaires.

“Monos et Una,” d’apres M. Forgues, est une monographie patiente, methodique, scientifique, sur la fraternite du sommeil et de la mort. La logique de Poe ne devie que rare ment les principes une fois poses; elle est claire et intelligible, et s’empare du lecteur malgre lui. C’est sans nul doute, a mon avis, cette logique impeccable, cette clarte, malgre L’obscurite apparente, que Ton trouve dans les contes de Poe, qui le rendirent si populaire en France, car ce sont les traits caracteristiques de L’esprit frangais. Les grands ecrivains de la France reconnurent en Poe une affinite lit teraire et lui donnerent droit de cite parmi eux.

M. Forgues ne se contente pas, cependant, de presenter le logicien a ses compatriotes; il veut aussi leur faire voir le poete, L’inventeur de fantaisies sans but, et il fait L’analyse du “Chat Noir” et de “rHomme des Foules.” Il prefere les quelques pages de certains contes de Poe a de longs volumes, et comprend le merite du conte, ce genre ou Ton “condense,” ditil, “en peu de mots sous forme de recit, toute une theorie abstraite, tous les elements [page 47:] d’une composition originale.” M. Forgues ne veut pas etablir un parallele en regie entre L’auteur americain et les feuilletonistes mod ernes, mais, ditil, “il sera opportun et utile de les comparer quand le temps aura conso lide la reputation naissante du conteur etranger, et — qui sait? — ebranle quelque peu celle de nos romanciers feconds.” Le critique fran gais de 1846 etait prophete: les nombreux volumes d’Alexandre Dumas, quoiqu’ils in teressent encore les jeunes gens de vingt ans, ne font presque plus partie de la litterature, tandis que les contes de Poe sont des joyaux litteraires, dont L’eclat augmente; a mesure que s’ecoulent les annees.

L’article de M. Forgues attira L’attention de Mme. Gabrielle Meunier, qui traduisit quel quesuns des contes de Poe. Ce grand ecrivain, neanmoins, serait reste presque in connu en France, s’il n’avait trouve en Charles Baudelaire une affinite litteraire extraordinaire et un traducteur merveilleux. On n’avait rien vu de pareil en France aux contes de Poe, malgre la concision et la clarte caracteris tiques du style frangais, si ce n’etait “la Venus d’lUe” de Merimee, publiee en 1837. Aussi la [page 48:] traduction de Baudelaire en 1848, et ensuite en 1856, des “Histoires Extraordinaires” eutelle un immense succes. Le traducteur consacra a L’auteur americain une notice sympathique et eclairee, et quoiqu’il n’eut pas les documents qui exonerent le poete des calomnies de Griswold il le defend contre son biographe malveillant. II dit qu’Edgar Poe et sa patrie n’etaient pas de niveau, et il ajoute que Poe avait “une delicatesse exquise de sens qu’une note fausse torturait, une finesse de goiit que tout excepte L’exacte proportion, revoltait, un amour insatiable du Beau, qui avait pris la puissance d’une passion morbide.” II etait certainement impossible que Poe piit etre bien compris par ses compatriotes de la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle.

Baudelaire raconte la vie de Poe, nous presente son portrait physique et moral et fait de lui un magnifique eloge que nous citons tout (Cntier. “Ce n’est pas par ses miracles materiels, qui pourtant ont fait sa renommee qu’il lui sera donne de conquerir L’admiration des gens qui pensent, c’est par son amour du Beau, par sa connaissance des conditions harmoniques de la beaute, par sa poesie profonde [page 49:] t plaintive, ouvragee neanmoins, transparente et correcte comme im bijou de cristal — par son admirable style, pur et bizarre, — serre comme les mailles d’une Armure, — complaisant et minutieux, — et dont la plus legere intention sert pousser doucement a le lecteur vers un but voulu, — et enfin surtout par ce genie tout special, par ce temperament unique qui lui a permis de peindre et d’expliquer, d’une maniere impeccable, saisissante, L’exception dans L’ordre moral. — Diderot, pour prendre un exemple entre cent, est un auteur sanguin; Poe est L’ecrivain des nerfs, et meme de quelque chose de plus, — et le meilleur que je connaisse.” “Quelquefois, des echappees magnifiques, gorgees de lumieres et de couleur, s’ouvrent soudainement dans ses paysages, et Ton voit apparaitre au fond de leurs horizons des villes orientales et des architectures, vaporisees par la distance, ou le soleil jette des pluies d’or.”

Dans cette appreciation de son auteur favori Baudelaire s’eleve a la hauteur de son modele comme prosateur, et nous verrons bientot qu’il L’egale presque comme poete. Je ne sais reellement si L’Edgar Poe frangais n’est pas [page 50:] superieur au Poe de langne anglaise. Ecoutez L’admirable traduction de Baudelaire:

“Les annees, les annees peuvent passer mais le souvenir de cet instant jamais Ah les fleurs et la vigne n’etaient pas choses incon nues pour moi — mais L’aconit et le cypres m’ombragerent nuit et jour. Et je perdis tout sentiment du temps et des lieux, et les etoiles de ma destinee disparurent du ciel, et des lors la terre devint tenebreuse, et toutes les figures terrestres passerent pres de moi comme des ombres voltigeantes, et parmi elles je n’en voyais qu’une — Morella! Les vents du firma ments ne soupiraient qu’un son a mes oreilles, et le clapotement de la mer murmurait incessamment; ‘Morella Mais elle mourut, et de mes propres mains je la portai a sa tombe, et je ris d’un amer et long rire, quand, dans le caveau ou je deposai la seconde, je ne decouvris aucune trace de la premiere Morella.”

En 1857 Baudelaire publia “les Nouvelles Histoires Extraordinaires;” en 1858, “les Aventures d’ Arthur Gordon Pym;” en 1864, “Eureka,” et en 1865, “les Histoires Grotesques et Serieuses.” Ces traductions [page 51:] sont dignes des premieres et naturaliserent en France les contes et les nouvelles de Poe. “Les Petits Poemes en Prose” de Baudelaire furent, sans nul doute, comme beaucoup de ses vers, inspires par Poe. On y voit des etudes etranges et L’amour de L’art, mais on voit souvent aussi dans la prose et dans les vers de Baudelaire, des grossieretes de langage et des impuretes de pensee qu’on ne trouve jamais dans Poe. On ne pent, cependant, qu’ admirer “L’Etranger,” a la premiere page des “Petits Poemes en Prose.” On y trouve le sentiment poetique de Poe:

“Qui aimestu le mieux, homme enigmatique, dis? ton pere, ta mere, ta soeur ou ton frere?”

“Je n’ai ni pere, ni mere, ni soeur, ni frere.”

“Les amis?”

“Vous vous servez la d’une parole dont le sens m’est reste jusqu’a ce jour inconnu.”

“Ta patrie?”

“J ‘ignore sous quelle latitude elle est situee.”

“La beaute?”

“Je L’aimerais volontiers, deesse et im mortelle.” [page 52:]

“Vor?”

“Je le hais comme vous haissez Dieu.”

“Eh! qu’aimestu done, extraordinaire etranger?”

“J’aime les nuages — les nuages qui passent . . . .la bas. . . .les merveilleux nuages!”

“Le Vieux Saltimbanque” est un portrait tel qu’aurait pu le dessiner Poe, un portrait implacable de verite, ou cependant la sympathie pour les vaincus de la vie se mele au sentiment d’horreur que fait eprouver la vue d’un vieil homme voute, caduc, decrepit. Nous reviendrons a L’influence de Poe sur Baudelaire poete. Poe le prosateur attira L’attention de Barbey d’Aurevilly, et cet etrange ecrivain consacra a L’auteur americain plusieurs articles, entre 1853 et 1883. II ne lui est pas aussi sympathique que Baudelaire, mais il reconnait sa volonte extraordinaire, et L’appelle “le plus energique des artistes volontaires.” II dit que Poe “se sert d’une analyse inouie et qu’il pousse a la fatigue supreme, a L’aide d’on ne sait quel prodigieux miscroscope sur la pulpe meme du cerveau.”

. . . . “Positivement le lecteur assiste a L’operation du chirurgien; positivement, il [page 53:] entend crier L’acier de rinstrument et sent les douleurs.”

Barbey d’Aurevilly lie connut d’abord Poe que par sa biographie par Baudelaire. II le jugea moins severement, lorsqu’il eut lu la vie que joignit Emile Hennequin a sa traduction des “Contes Grotesques.” II lui donna alors “la Royaute des hommes de genie malheureux.”

Revenons maintenant a Baudelaire et a Poe, et voyons ce que Theophile Gautier a dit d’eux. Nous ne doutons aucunement que Poe n’ait eu une certaine influence sur Gautier, le poete de “L’art pour L’art,” et sur son ecole. II est probable que les contes de Poe ont inspire “la Morte Amoureuse,” “le Roman de la Momie,” et “Spirite.” Baudelaire avait dedie ses extraordinaires “Fleurs du Mai” a Gautier, et celuici ecrivit une notice sur L’auteur du livre dans laquelle il fit une fine analyse du genie de Baudelaire et de celui de Poe. II dit qu’audessus de rimmonde fourmillement de misere, delai deur et de perversite que presentent souvent “les Fleurs du Mai,” “loin, bien loin dans L’in alterable azur, flotte Tadmirable fantome de [page 54:] la Beatrix, L’ideal toujours desire, jamais atteint, la beaute superieure et divine incarnee sous line forme de femme etheree, spiritualisee, faite de lumiere, de flamme et de parfum, une vapeur, un reve, un reflet du monde aromal et seraphique comme les Ligeia, les Morella, les Una, les Eleonore d’Edgar Poe et la Sera phitaSeraphitus de Balzac, cette etonnante creation.”

Gautier appelle Poe “un singulier genie d’une individualite si rare, si tranchee, si ex ceptionnelle.” II dit qu’en France le nom de Baudelaire est inseparable de celui de Poe, et que le souvenir de L’un eveille immediatement la pensee de L’autre. “II semble meme par fois,” ajoutetil, “que les idees de L’Ameri cain appartiennent en propre au Frangais.” Une des histoires les plus fortes de Poe est “le Chat Noir,” qui nous terrific, lorsqu’il ap parait “avec sa gueule rouge et son oeil unique flamboyant.” Baudelaire ecrivit trois poemes sur les chats et dit d’eux:

On voit Edgar Poe dans les plus beaux poemes de Baudelaire, dans “Don Juan aux Enfers,” dans “les Petites Vieilles,” dans “le Soleil,” et surtout dans, “le Mort Joyeux,” qui n’est qu’une autre forme du “Ver Con querant,” de Poe, et que nous citerons en entier, malgre L’horreur du sujet, pour faire voir L’affinite litteraire et mentale vraiment extraordinaire des deux poetes.

“William Wilson,” ou Edgar Poe se de double d’une maniere si etonnante, a dii plaire infiniment a Baudelaire, ainsi que L’admirable “Chute de la Maison d’Usher,” oil le senti ment de la terreur est si intense. Baudelaire a du rever bien souvent a Eleonora, qu’il eut voulu suivre dans la vallee du Gazon Diapre, ou “les fleurs etoilees s’etaient abimees dans le tronc des arbres; ou avaient deperi les asphodeles d’un rouge de rubis,” qu’avaient remplacees “les sombres violettes, semblables a des yeux qui se convulsaient peniblement et regorgeaient toujours de larmes de rosee;” d’ou “le volumineux nuage retombe dans les regions d’ Hesperus avait emporte le spectacle infini de sa pourpre et de sa magnificence.” Ces [page 57:] admirables phrases de Poe sont rendues en franqais par son traducteur avec une exacti tude saisissante, un sens poetique extraordi naire.

L’influence de Poe le conteur se fait voir dans Villiers de L’lsle Adam, Paul Hervieu, Henri de Regnier; dans Guy de Maupassant, qui L’egale dans “le Horla” et autres oeuvres d’un realisme intense; dans Jules Verne, qui imite ses romans scientifiques, comme “Hans Pfaal,” ou ses aventures de voyage, comme “Gordon Pym,” dans Gaboriau, dont le M. Lecoq est frere de Legrand et de Dupin; dans Jean Richepin, dont “les Morts Bizarres,” sont imitees directement des contes de Poe, ou celuici fait une etude si extraordinaire et si poignante de la mort. “Le Disseque” de Richepin nous rapelle “le Cas de M. Wald emar,” et Feru, L’etudiant en medecine, nous interesse presque autant que les personnages les plus sombres de Poe. II veut prendre la matiere en flagrant debt de pensee. “II suffi rait d’arriver a ceci,” dit Feru, “analyser, dis sequer, tenir sous ses doigts un cerveau pen sant. Evidemment on saisirait la pensee, on la sentirait, on la toucherait, comme on [page 58:] saisit, comme on sent, comme on touche un phenomene electrique, par exemple.” Pour esperer une telle possibilite, Feru veut dissequer des hommes vivants. II tuerait des hommes pour le bien des hommes. A la fin de la Commune, dans la cuisine de la cremerie borgne, “le Rendezvous des Affames,” un corps tombe a travers une marquise en verre. C’est Feru, L’etudiant en medecine. On se baisse pour le relever, mais on est saisi par une epouvantable horreur, “le malheureux avait la poitrine depouillee, les chairs a vif, et cela non pas par L’effet du verre, mais par suite d’une operation. II etait disseque.” II s’etait disseque, veut dire L’auteur.

Le ler mai 1886 “la Revue des Deux Mon des” publia un article tres interessant sur “les Poetes Americains,” par Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc), qui visita les EtatsUnis il y a quel ques annees, et fit un sympathique portrait de la femme americaine. Mme. Blanc dit que Poe “restera inimitable, quelque effort que fassent pour approcher de lui les exploiteurs du macabre grotesque ou larmoyant,” Elle dit que le poete americain adorait le beau comme Heine et “qu’il voyait sa supreme expression [page 59:] dans la tristesse que nous cause le mal de la vie et notre incapacite a saisir L’inconnu.”

Mentionnons encore d’autres articles pub lies dans “la Revue des Deux Mondes:” Un par T. de Wyzewa, le 15 octobre 1894, et deux en 1897 par Arvede Barine (Mme. Georges Vincens). M. de Wyzewa dit des vers de Poe: “lis sont les plus magnifiques, a mon gre, de tous ceux qui existent dans la langue anglaise. Ce sont des chefsd’oeuvre d’emotion et de musique a eux seuls, ils suffiraient pour la gloire d’un ecrivain.” M. de Wyzewa ajoute qu’il “a inaugure en outre une dizaine au moins de genres litteraires tout autres, dont chacun a ete ensuite largement exploite.”

Les articles d’ Arvede Barine ont pour titre, “Essais de Litterature Pathologique.” Ils ne nous plaisent pas autant que le livre de M. Emile Lauvriere, public en 1904, “Edgar Poe, sa vie et son Oeuvre, Etude de Psychologic Pathologique.” Voila L’ouvrage le plus com plet sur Poe qui ait paru en France. L’auteur consacre 730 pages a son sujet et le traite a fond. II donne la vie du grand poete americain, reconnait ses fautes, les excuse, jusqu’a un certain point, et le plaint. II [page 60:] etudie de la maniere la plus detaillee les oeuvres du poete et du prosateur, et nous pouvons dire que son analyse du “Corbeau” est la plus penetrante que nous ayons lue: le Corbeau, c’est Poe luimeme; Lenore, c’est encore lui. “II y a done,” dit le critique frangais, “dans le puissant symbolisme de ce petit drame pathetique, toute L’ame du poete: c’est son etre conscient aux prises avec son ideal ex tatique et avec sa melancolie desesperee. Le volume de 1845, adjoute M. Lauvriere, con tient assez de chefsd’oeuvre pour immotaliser un nom. “II n’a pas seulement ‘le Corbeau’ qui, malgre des raffinements d’art qui touchent a L’artifice, restera par la solidite de son fond comme pour la vigueur de ses effets, par la prestigieuse magie de sa musique comme par le poignant pathetique de son desespoir, la plus puissante et, partant, la plus populaire des oeuvres de Poe, un vrai chefd’oeuvre de poesie fantastique, sans egal en beaucoup de langues et avec lequel ne pent rivaliser dans la poesi anglaise c|ue le charme moins con querant, mais plus insinuant du “Vieux Marin” de Coleridge.

M. Lauvriere etudie en Poe conteur, le fantastique, [page 61:] la peur, L’impulsion, la curiosite r imagination, la logique et le style, et fait un travail vraiment magistral. Poe critique, Poe cosmogoniste, nous interessent moins que Poe poete et Poe conteur, mais je le repete, le livre de M. Lauvriere est remarquable. II est ecrit avec une clarte bien frangaise, avec une exac titude toute scientifique, et d’un style, parfois simple, parfois fort, et parfois poetique comme les vers memes de L’auteur du “Corbeau.”

De nombreux volumes ont ete publics en France sur Edgar Poe, et ses oeuvres ont ete traduites maintes fois en frangais. Parmi ces traductions, outre celles de Baudelaire, nous pouvons mentionner les poemes traduits par Stephane Mallarme, et “le Scarabee d’Or,” par J. H. Rosny. C’est, neanmoins, Baudelaire, comme nous L’avons dit, qui naturalisa Poe en France. Son admiration fut telle qu’il fut possede de son auteur favori, et Asselineau, cite par M. Lauvriere, nous dit “qu’ a tout venant, ou qu’il se trouvat, dans la rue, au cafe, dans une imprimerie, le matin, le soir, il allait demandant: ‘Connaissezvous Edgar Poe,’ et selon la reponse, il epanchait son enthousiasme ou pressait de questions son [page 62:] auditeur. Jules Lemaitre, luimeme, le celebre ecrivain, dans un “Dialogue des Morts,” a place Poe en compagnie de Shake speare et de Platon, quoiqu’il disc qu’ils pre sentent trois exemplaires de L’espece humaine aussi dissemblables que possible.

Nous avons donne L’opinion des critiques frangais sur Edgar Poe; nous allons main tenant etudier brievement quelle fut son in fluence sur la poesie frangaise. Nous nous servirons pour ce petit travail de L’excellente “Anthologie des Poetes Frangais Contempo rains,” de M. G. Walch, publiee en 1906. Nous avons deja compare Poe poete a Baude laire poete, et nous avons vu V influence de L’Americain sur le Frangais. Quant aux autres poetes inspires par Poe, ils le furent, en gen eral, indirectement et principalement par L’en tremise de Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, peutetre, le seul excepte. Baudelaire repeta le precepte de Poe que la poesie n’a d’autre objet qu’ellememe. C’est la doctrine de “L’art pour L’art” de Theophile Gautier, et nous la voyons portee a un haut point de perfection par Theodore de Banville, qui avait, disaiton, “pour ame la poesie meme.” [page 63:]

Barbey d’Aurevilly est de L’ecole de Poe, ainsi que Villiers de L’lsle Adam et Verlaine, cet etonnant boheme, que M. Anatole France compare a Villon, le grand poete du XVe siecle. Verlaine a meme un poeme intitule “Nevermore” que nous citons ici comme un souvenir interessant du “Corbeau:”

NEVERMORE!

Chez plusieurs des Parnassiens de la pre miere heure, tels que Xavier de Ricard, Leon Dierx, Catulle Mendes, ainsi que chez plusieurs ecrivains des deux autres Parnasses, on voit L’influence de Poe. Le Parnasse fut une reaction contre le romantisme, et fut suivi par le symbolisme, qu’on a parfois appele “le decadent.” Arthur Rimbaud, L’auteur du curieux “Sonnet des Voyelles,” fut un des precurseurs du symbolisme. Henri de Regnier en fut le chef inconteste, et subit, sans aucun doute, 1’ influence de notre poete americain. Lisons surtout L’admirable sonnet, “la Terre Doul oureuse a bu le Sang des Reves:”

Stephane Mallarme, acclame le Maitre par beaucoup de jeunes poetes, fut selon L’expres sion d’un critique, “impregne” d’Edgar Poe. Jean Richepin poete nous rappelle L’auteur du “Corbeau,” ainsi que Rene Ghil, Edmond Har aucourt, Gustave Kahn, Jules Laforgue, Gregoire Le Roy, Adolphe Rette, Maurice Rollinat, L’auteur des “Nevroses,” parmi beau coup d’autres poetes contemporains. Men tionnons, cependant, d’une maniere toute spe ciale, deux grands ecrivains beiges, Maurice [page 66:] Maeterlinck, dont on a dit: ‘Toe, le Poe de la ‘Maison Usher,’ est a coup sur, son maitre familier;” et Emile Verhaeren. Appelons encore L’attention sur deux celebres poetes frangais, nes aux EtatsUnis: Stuart Merrill, a Long Island, et Francis VieleGriffin, ne a Norfolk, en Virginie. Le petit poeme de celuici, “Fleurs du Chemin,” est charmant et est un exemple de la “volonte” de Poe:

Quant a Stuart Merrill ses “Poings a la Porte” nous interessent presque autant que “le Corbeau.” Le refrain: “Entendstu tous ces poings qui frappent a la porte?” nous im pressionne tout autant que le “nevermore” de Poe: Ce sont peutetre des amis qui frappent, mais le poete n’ouvre pas a la joie futile, lui qui veille seul parmi les esclaves du sommeil; ce sont peutetre des vagabonds, rodant de male sorte, pieds nus dans leurs sabots, cou teau clair au poing.

C’est peutetre Celui qui vient vetu de blanc, et quit fait dans la nuit le geste immense du pardon. Le poete alors prendra le baton de voyage et suivra le Redempteur vers des [page 68:] destinees meilleures. “Entendstu tous ces poings qui frappent a la porte?”

Je ne sais si Ton ne pourrait dire qu’Edmond Rostand luimeme n’a pas pense parfois a Poe, lorsqu’il ecrivait son fier “Cyrano,” ou Ton voit un tel culte pour L’ideal, pour la beaute

artistique, malgre le physique grotesque du heros. Xavier Privas, Albert Samain, Carnille Mauclair, Charles Morice, Leo Larquier, doivent beaucoup a Baudelaire et a Mallarme et, par consequent, a Poe. Paul Fort a cer tainement imite notre poete dans sa ballade, “Cette Fille, elle est morte,” ou nous voyons le repetend si cher a Poe, la repetition et le parallelisme si bien decrits par M. le Dr. C. Alphonso Smith:

Georges Marlow, Beige comme Maeterlinck et Verhaeren, a donne de la poesie une defini tion que n’eiit pas desavouee Poe: “La poesie? Un peu de fumee c[ui s’eleve de L’ame embrasee et qui parfois, entremelee de rayons d’etoile, se concrete en aureole autour de L’ame qui s’eteint.”

Terminons nos citations des poetes frangais par le sonnet de Mallarme:

LE TOMBEAU D'EDGAR POE

Les vers frangais, inspires par notre grand poete, sont generalement fort beaux, mais je doute qu’ils egalent le merveilleux “Corbeau,” meme traduit en prose, tel que nous le lisons dans le livre de M. Lauvriere. ‘ Quelle fin ad mirable du poeme, que les lignes suivantes;

Je remercie les membres du Comite du Cen tenaire qui m’ont fait L’honneur de m’inviter a parler ici en frangais. Je vous remercie, mesdames et messieurs, de votre bienveillante attention. Cela me fait le plus grand plaisir de me retrouver ici, a cette Universite, ou, comme Poe, j’ai ete moimeme etudiant. Mon sejour ici a ete bien court, mais il a laisse sur mon esprit et sur mon ame des traces ineffagables. Je puis dire de mes annees de jeunesse: “Jamais plus,” mais le souvenir c|ue j’ai con serve de rUniversite de la Virginie est aussi immuable que le “Corbeau qui, sans broncher, siege encore, siege toujours sur le pale buste de Pallas. [page 73:]

Within recent years much attention has been given to the influence of Hoffman on Edgar Allan Poe, and the reciprocal influence of Poe on the German writers of imaginative prose and more especially upon the modern school of German poets. We were very fortunate in finding in our own country a talented young German fresh from the companionship ot these modern poets and thoroughly in touch with the present literary movement of the Fatherland. It will be his province to tell you how far this influence of Poe has extended and to bring to you the greetings of the German nation on this the centennial anniversary of the birth of our great alumnus. I have the privilege, ladies and gentlemen, of presenting Dr. Georg Edward, recently of Germany, at present a member of the faculty of Northwest ern University.

The purpose of my brief address is to re call to memory the tribute which German literature, and, accordingly, the German people [page 74:] as a whole, has rendered and is still rendering to the genius whose hundredth birthday we are celebrating at this time. It will be necessary, in the very first place, to glance back at the way in which Poe gradually became well known in Germany, then to attempt to answer the question why at the present time, sixty years after the poet's death, the temperament of precisely this American author is felt to be specifically modern by a European nation; why it is that we behold in him a man of letters who was far in advance of his own times, and who, accordingly, must be said to belong to no earlier age than our own.

Poe's relations to German literature, and the relations of German literature to Poe, are both varied and manifold. The influence of Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann upon the author of the “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” has been but recently investigated in detail by Professors Gruener and Cobb. It is my purpose merely to show how highly prized Poe is in Germany, and why he is regarded there as the typical and characteristic American author. That the Germans have occupied themselves with him continuously [page 75:] and minutely is, perhaps, not an occasion for especial comment. Germany is the very home of what Goethe called “Cosmopolitan literature” (Weltliteratur). There exists in Germany an almost marvelous familiarity with the literature of other nationalities, and it is not at all an exaggeration to maintain that there is scarcely any important poet or writer in the whole world, who has not been treated “historisch-kritisch” by some German scholar. Furthermore, there has been an endless number of translations of foreign works, and even poets and authors of very moderate ability have often enjoyed renascence in the German a tongue. This broadly-flowing stream of translations, which the peculiar elasticity and adaptability of the German language have made so possible, has brought it to pass that the German nation, not merely in professional literary circles, but in the general group of cultured people, is so largely acquainted with the literature of other lands. It is on account of this fact that the Germans have also acquired the ability to recognize what is specific ally and characteristically national in the literature of other peoples; in other words, the [page 76:] Germans have developed a very discriminating sense of what is specifically English in an English writer, Russian in a Russian, French in a Frenchman, or American in an American. That which Goethe once affirmed concerning French poetry and French literature, namely, that it could not possibly be detached for one moment from the life and the emotion of the whole nation, is none the less true of every nation's poetry and literature. And so it comes to pass that the intimate acquaintance with various foreign literatures which the German people possesses, leads to a feeling for the national individuality of an author, and the more highly this quality is exhibited by a writer, the more is he valued in Germany, if only, at the same time, his art gives evidence of a certain international spirit. In the light of these assertions, the fact that the Germans regard Poe as a most prominent American writer, nay, in general, as the great est of American authors, assumes an unusual significance.

Poe's naturalization has taken place more slowly in Germany than in France. He has, to be sure, never enlisted the services of any [page 77:] German Baudelaire or Mallarme as interpreter, but, on the other hand, very important authors and historians of literature have been his advocates, and his “Raven,” at least, has found a number of first-rate translators. In the period from 1855 to the present day, there have appeared three English editions of his works in Leipsic, as well as a large number of editions of various “Tales” for the use of schools. The first translation of his short stories appeared in two volumes in Leipsic from 1855 to 1858, and to these have been added thirteen further translations by most varied authors, under the imprint of all sorts of publishers. A selected translation of his “Poetical Works” has appeared but once, namely, that of Hedwig Lachmann, published in 1891, but we encounter separate translations of separate poems scattered through the pages of many journals, and “The Raven” has been adapted to the mother-tongue of the Germans — with greater or less felicity — some dozen times. It is worthy of especial remark that the best translation, that by Eduard Mauthner, appeared (along with Coppee's “The Smiths’ Strike”) in the so-called “New Theatrical Library of Vienna,” and has gone [page 78:] through three editions, the last in 1894; in this transmigration “The Raven” has for a long time belonged to the repertoire of the “show pieces” of elocutionists, and of those actors who occasionally make a public appearance as reciters. Naturally enough, the “Tales” have appeared in many editions, and I think it is not without significance that they have been taken up by all the “Popular Libraries,” such as those of Reclam, Hendel, Cotta, Spemann, and Meyer. It is only within the last seven years that a complete German edition of Poe's Tales and Poems has appeared, with an excellent introduction by the editor the ten volumes constituting “Poe's Werke,” by Hedda and Arthur Moeller-Bruck, which, taken as a unit, must be counted as the most important contribution which has been made to Poe's memory in Germany up to the present time. The only features of this edition which we should characterize as in adequate (and in fact far inferior to other similar attempts) are the selected poems in the translation by Hedwig Lachmann, already mentioned, and the now-superseded, though meritorious, “Memoir” of Ingram, which precedes the first volume. [page 79:]

The translations and discussions of Poe, which have appeared in Germany, cannot compare, either in their extent or in their influence, with similar contributions which have been made in France. For thirteen German translations of Poe's Tales in Ger many, we have no less than nineteen in France; for one collection of selected poems in Germany, four complete translations in France; for one complete edition of the works in Germany, two such in France. But in spite of the fact that French literature occupied itself with Poe at an earlier date than did the Germans, it need not be assumed that Poe found an entrance into Germany by way of France. It is only in the most recent years that German interest in Baudelaire has breathed new life into the interest for Poe; only at the present day has Poe come to be recognized as a thoroughly modern author. Germany made the acquaintance of Poe quite as early as did France, but there has never been found any person among us who made the American poet such an object of religious adoration as did Baudelaire (the German character is [page 80:] very chary about going to quite such lengths as this!) or who, like Théophile Gautier, discovered in him something the like of which the world had never before beheld, an intellectual beverage which reminds him of “those strange American drinks, compounded of fizzing, prickling soda-water, and ice, and every conceivable sort of exotic alcoholic ingredient.”

The estimation of Poe in Germany came to pass unostentatiously, but has held its own consistently. The first thorough discussion of the poet I find in Herrig's “Hand-Book of North American National Literature for the year 1854,” a work of very little authority on its own account, which nevertheless, in spite of mistaken opinions and defective information (it speaks of “Ulalume” and “Annabel Lee,” for instance, as “writings”), speaks out clearly and concisely the certain conviction:

“Poe left behind him a name which is bound to live in the annals of American literature.” Poe's actual introduction to Germany was due to that eminent novelist and author, who has in other respects largely contributed to our [page 81:] knowledge of America by the democratic spirit of his writings — I mean Friedrich Spielhagen. It was in 1860 that Spielhagen published in the journal “Europa” a thoroughgoing study of our poet, whom he calls the greatest lyric singer that America has produced; furthermore, he occupied himself in 1883 with an essay of considerable length treating somewhat exhaustively the contest between Poe and Longfellow on the matter of plagiarism, and, in addition, he had already published a translation of a number of Poe's poems in the year 1858. Two years before that time Adolf Strodtmann had published similar translations in his “Song and Ballad-Book of American and English Poets,” to which he added in 1870 his widely-circulated “American Anthology,” a work which besides “The Masque of the Red Death” contained “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and “The Bells” in very good translations, and in this manner made these poems at once famous throughout all Germany. Of no less importance is the attitude assumed toward Poe by the historians of literature: Adolf Stern in his [page 82:] “History of Recent Literature,” Eduard Engel in his “History of North American Literature,” and Carl Bleibtreu in his “History of English Literature” have been especially influential in preparing the way for an appreciation of Poe in Germany. The most important undertaking, one more over that is fully modern in all its tendency, is the already-mentioned translation of Poe's works in ten volumes edited by Arthur Moeller-Bruck, and which has been completed within the past year. With the exception of two tales, which could not be translated, it contains all the stories of this class, and, in addition (for the first time in Germany), “Eureka.” Moeller-Bruck has contributed on his own account a valuable essay on “Poe's Creative Activities,” which, in general, does full justice to Poe's temperament; in a few places only (he appears to be entirely unacquainted with the latest literature of the subject, and more particularly with Professor Harrison's edition) are his results unsatisfactory. The basis of his work still continues to be the “Memoir” of Ingram, the Edinburg edition of which is the foundation of the German work. [page 83:]

It would carry us too far if I were to discuss the numberless essays on Poe which have appeared in the leading German periodicals. At best I could only give a barren resume of their contents, and there with I should surely overstep the bounds of time which have been set for my address. From the tenor of these articles, however, it is easy to discover how we have gradually come to the conclusion in Germany that Poe is to be regarded as a thoroughly modern author, and as the most characteristic American poet. In order to understand this one must call to mind the evolution which German literature has gone through in the last twenty years. Apart from those circles which are required ex-officio to concern themselves with German literature, we find among English-speaking people a very incomplete, not to say a comical conception of what the Germans have accomplished in this field. German character is assuredly not over-easy to understand, while its literature, which is the expression of this character, is still more complicated in its nature. Here in America, where people [page 84:] are decidely [[decidedly]] prone to generalizations, German literature is described either as heavy, brooding, and tasteless, or it is given (by a very short process) the general label of “decadent,” One of these estimates is precisely as fatuous as the other. At present we have to concern ourselves only with the second, however: the expression “decadent” belongs to the repertory of those who have to characterize the “modern.” German literature has undergone great transformations in the last thirty years, just as German philosophy, German music, and German art have done. After having disposed of “consistent naturalism,” or perhaps as a reaction against it, there has appeared an unmistakable new era of German psychological development: after sensitiveness, romance, the “second generation,” realism, and naturalism, comes a new species of impressionism, Nervosity. Almost simultaneously it has influenced the entire art, literature, and music of the western European continent. It cannot be denied that there is a certain element of morbidity in all this, but severe psychological struggles (and those struggles did precede [page 85:] the recent art-movement) never manifest themselves without some pathological symptoms. Underneath the hard pressure of the Art of the Actual there has been a quest for new methods of expression for the infinitely subtle variations of feeling which come surging in upon the modern individual, and there has been a discovery of new sensations, which are rooted in the nervous system. I need only to call to mind the music of Liszt and Wagner, who have attempted to give expression to everything inexpressible that lies concealed in the innermost depths of our souls, or the painting of Bocklin and Klinger, who have conducted us into a new world of tones and color-impressions — who have rendered the finest shadings of emotion in a way which could not have been expressed at an earlier time. And it is toward this goal that the modern literature of western Europe is also striving: the new times have brought new shades of emotion, and the new shades of emotion have demanded new methods of expression, and new sensations. It is altogether indifferent whether we call modern literature symbolistic, impressionistic, [page 86:] mystical, or flatly “decadent” the one thing which underlies all these tendencies is the striving after something new, something remote and strange. But in all this “decadent” literature we have not to deal with nervous prostration, or nervous irritation, or even with the moral corruption of modern city-life, but a revolt of the individual against the mediocrity, the dead-level of Philistinism, — a battle with materialism, with the age of machinery, the prosy morality of mere utilitarianism and the struggle for existence.

And how is it in regard to the “Pilgrim of Sorrow,” as Professor Harrison has named him, him whose memory we recall today with veneration and love, with a feeling of tender regret? Perhaps in his case there was not so clear a feeling as with the poets of today that he was groping after new sensations, in order to give expression to the emotions which dominated his psychical existence. But, consciously or unconsciously, certain it is that he stands at the gateway of the New Art, the art of modern humanity, as it comes to meet us at the close of the [page 87:] last century. Poe was seeking for the new world of actualities, — the very fact that in a portion of his works he recoils so sensitively from the surrounding unsympathetic world of actuality is proof enough of this. He made a quest for a means of expression for that which moved his inner soul, and the forms of expression which sufficed for his contemporaries were no longer adequate for him. In his significant introduction to Poe's poems. Professor Kent has indicated how rarely the poet was able to fully express what hovered before the eyes of his imagination, how “his conceptions were at times far beyond his own powers of expression,” as “much that was written is not understood, since with ears we do not hear, and with eyes we do not see, for both music and vision are for those of poetic temperament and artistic gift.” How far was Poe, in this respect, in advance of his age! Since the time when he wrote his melodious lines, our feeling for the musical values of language has become more and more developed and refined, more and more has lyric poetry come nearer to the domain of music. The [page 88:] very thing which our American poet, so sensitive for the tonal effects of his verses, strove for, many years ago (as is proven by the frequent variants in the different texts of his poems), the modern verse-technic is striving today to attain, more earnestly than ever before. As early as 1900 the Austrian writer Rudolf Kassner pointed out, in his book “Mysticism, Artists, and Life,” Poe's high endowment for music. He calls him a psychologist of the most painful nicety of apprehension, a mystagogue full of intoxicating rhythm, self-indulgent and yielding, a reveler and an adorer of angels, sarcastic and moody, a comedian and a fatalist. Dante and Poe — one is startled at seeing these two names side by side — had one thing in common (according to our writer): the necessity of having faith, — Dante because of the wealth, and Poe because of the poverty of his endowment of conscience. Dante believed in Heaven and Hell, Poe in the continuation of life in the grave, and his theology was mesmerism compounded with cryptography. He, too, had his Beatrice, whom he celebrated in song quite as subtly as [page 89:] did the immortal Florentine. But one thing he possessed, of which Dante had no suspicion: — music. It was his divinity, even when he was least conscious of it. “And what did Virginia Clemm mean for the art of Poe? Perhaps at the very moment in his life when he was most faithful to her, he was rapt away by his divinity. Music.” That is the music which every modern poet and artist carries about in his soul, those are the “words ineffable” which in vain strive to make their way out into the light of day, and which in the end cause the heart to consume away upon itself. “Who are these Helens, Lenores, Ulalumes,” asks Kassner once again, “these ghostly beings with violet eyes and tremulous lids? His art is not able to tell us that. These maidens appear at the beginning and end of his dreams, — so much art is able to tell. They conduct him into enchanted gardens, where enamored roses languish in the moonlight; they row him in swart craft to the enchanted islands, and the waves die away upon the shore like yearning after enjoyment; they lead him to the castles of death, which, wind-forsaken [page 90:] and immersed in eternal night, loom from the livid waters of a languid sea; they speak out of graves and point up to the stars. Though they appear at the beginning and at the end, as the first and last star of the night of dreams, nevertheless the dream has whelmed them up. This is the art of Edgar Allan Poe!”

That which gives so strong a sense of modernity in Poe is not the fact that he led the life of a dreamer, that he himself had the consciousness of being “no book whose meaning has been completely fathomed,” to speak with Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, but “a man with his own contradiction.” He himself gives expression to this conviction when he defends himself (in the preface to his “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque”) against the charge of “Germanism,” and cries out: “Let us admit, for the moment, that the ‘phantasy-pieces’ now given are Germanic, or what not. Then Germanism is ‘the vein’ for the time being. Tomorrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else.” And that he was, most assuredly: subjected to the never-ending [page 91:] changes of the moods of his spirit. And in the tales and writings which he has left behind him this multifariousness of his artistic and literary temperament comes to clearest expression. He who wrote most melodious stanzas, and who had the utmost horror of crass actuality, he it was who possessed the knowledge or the presentiment of our modern actuality: one has merely to recall his criminal stories, or his modern types which remind us of similar creations in the writings of Dostojewski, or the delineation of milieus, as in “The Man of the Crowd” which recall impressions in the novels of Zola. And alongside of these stand those tales, the fancies of his dreams, with which he transfigured and beautified life, those creations which sprang from his vague visions, in which he seems to us a visionary or an idealist, — as in his Eureka — song. Ethical principles, which he should be bound to champion, concerned him not he has no questions to put about the goals of humanity, nothing about its future — but he possesses that idealism which has fullest faith in the greatness, the purity, and the [page 92:] depth of human feelings, and which has called into being creations which alone represent these feelings: — William Wilson and Roderick Usher and Eleanora, Ligeia, Berenice and Morella. And then his fond ness for the horrible, the malicious. One has instinctively the feeling that Poe's soul life must have been that of the criminal, as though it gave him unspeakable pleasure to penetrate into the very depths of criminality, to experience its very sensations and to follow out the whole course of its origin.

Such a state of mind is one which is only too frequently encountered in daily life, but the exceptional thing about Poe is precisely this, that he, as poet, is obsessed by this mania, and holds fast to it in his writings. Poe is the first of that long list of modern authors Krafft-Ebing, Lombroso, Dostojewski, Nietzsche and Bourget — who trace back the evil element in man, and consequently his criminality and wickedness, to an abnormal mental condition.

And so Poe appears in the category of those poets and authors to whom German literary research has given the attribute “modern.” [page 93:]

One further reason why Germany gives him so high a place is, perhaps, that we stand there in a neutral attitude toward the uninviting side of his character, his unsparing sarcasm, the provocative element in his nature which made enemies out of his friends. In the older world, where we can look back upon generations of artists, authors, and musicians, one is only too well aware of the fact that those persons who have been humanity's richest spiritual benefactors were often, in actual life, anything but model citizens and blameless toilers. One recognizes, for more reasons than need to be specified, that people cannot be estimated by set rules, and that literature, as well, must reflect both the good and the bad, for life is made up of both, and both keep the world moving. We are only too well aware in Germany how prone Americans are to lay down inflexible rules to which even the poet must bend himself. As early as in Eduard Engel's “History of North American Literature,” in which Poe is called “an exceptional phenomenon for both British and American authorship,” we encounter the undisguised satire: “The life of all the other [page 94:] important American authors passes by smoothly; they grow old in honor and abundance, they play the part of literary patriarchs with dignity, and show that authorship in America is as brilliant and lucrative a career as boring for petroleum or building railroads.” Is it hard to understand why Poe, finely organized and aristocratic, who did not possess the force of character to protect his sensibilities against the commonalties of daily life, became ever more and more embittered? Why he paid back the humiliations which he had to endure anew every day of his life, with that sarcasm, that unsparing onslaught on the mediocrity which shut him in from every side? Was he not, in fact, a dreamer out of ancient, half-romantic Europe, who was altogether out of place in the brutally realistic milieu of the new world? Call to mind his sensitive temperament, his refined conception of poetic art and literature, and realize that he was fated to do his singing to an age in which the first railroads cut their way across the country, in which the telegraph made the conquest of the world, and steamships and factories darkened the sunlight! Poe's fierce irritability towards: [page 95:] the life which surrounded him, and to which he felt himself superior, gave itself breathing space in those criticisms which made the whole world his enemy, and plunged him into that deep, incurable melancholy which makes the theme of his “Raven” and of all his poems the plaint of a heart which is dragged down from the highest heights of enthusiasm for the true and the beautiful into the mire of sordid vulgarity.

And if the Germans, who cultivate cosmopolitan literature, are prone to seek for the national trait in every author, they have also found this in Poe. The very earliest critics called him “the most original spirit in American literature;” a nature “in which the leaning toward the freakish, melancholy, mysterious and awesome coincides with the sense of verity, the realistic acumen of the Yankee.”

But it is only the most recent criticism which finds in Poe the characteristic American poet, the greatest American poet; one of the arguments in favor of this view is not precisely flattering, but the proof is mathematical in its logicalness: every poet, who truly bore the arms of his calling, has come into conflict [page 96:] with actuality, but few have been victorious in this struggle, and none has ever emerged from it without sore wounds. Is it not therefore logically inevitable that any true poet who should come into contact with the American life which encounters him in the larger northern cities with a materialism bordering upon brutality, must go to destruction under these influences? An American poet was in the nature of things an impossibility: he could never survive. But there have been attempts to treat the matter less superficially. In the contemporaries of Poe — such as Longfellow, Lowell, Emerson and Whittier — one has recognized, not American poets, but merely those who have continued English literature upon American soil.

In Poe, on the other hand, one recognizes an artist who understood American life as none other had done, who recognized its criminal tendencies long before they had reached their climax, and who comprehended, decades in advance, what an evolution the American spirit was destined to undergo in the field of inventions and discoveries. To be sure, Poe was interested merely in the physiological, or rather the pathological side of the American [page 97:] temperament, but the one-sidedness of his en tire being is itself a part of the American nature. He is thoroughly American, even when, compelled to write tales merely in order to secure the barest necessities of life, he is bound to continually invent what is new, and in being able to show interest and curiosity where his heart was not directly engaged. Curiosity is certainly a most prominent trait in American life, or interest, if the other term seem offensive. Poe's interest was directed toward the most strange and odd mysteries, and yet he refused to concern himself with things which were ready and finished. All that was incomplete, unsolved, unexplained, challenged him to pursuit; he was bound to complete it with his imagination; and so he has told of mysterious secret documents, of inexplicable crimes and discoveries, so he has tracked out the possibilities of mesmerism, the prospects of aerial navigation — such themes as these appealed to his interest. But when such things became realized, they became totally indifferent to him: he had to discover new possibilities which should excite his curiosity.

And yet, even to the last, he never parted company with his own self — he remained the [page 98:] artist that he was in the beginning, the pilgrim, who with bleeding heart is still searching for the land of undiscovered beauty. So Spielhagen greets him and pays him homage: “Unfortunate, fortunate man! for, confess it, thou hast beheld her, the fairest, the loftiest, in those rare, unspeakable moments: and she has kissed thee, but in passing, as she kisses mortals; but thy soul was filled with the echo of those kisses; and this rapture thou, starving one, wouldst not have bartered for all the gold of Ormuzd; thou, the greedy for fame, wouldst not have sold it for all the glory and renown and honor of those who, in thine eyes, were no priests at all, who counted themselves as priests only because the world counted them such!”

And in this hour, in which we pay our homage to the poet, the artist, the author, I, too, would bring to him at least one tribute from across the sea — a tribute which sprang from genuine enthusiasm, and which, however insignificant it may appear, gives its testimony as to how widespread is the knowledge of Poe in Germany, how deep the respect. I myself belonged, at a very youthful age, to a literary group which included Poe among [page 99:] its objects of study, out of pure love for the theme: we were then scarcely fifteen-year-old schoolboys, but we had the genuine reverence for the great and the beautiful which had not yet been weakened or overcast by any of the bitter experiences of life. We also tried our hand at translating Poe's poems into our mother-tongue, and out of these efforts one translation emerged which for its simple, melodious beauty surpasses anything which I have encountered in these last days while busied in preparation for this Commemoration. It is the touching poem “To My Mother,” and the translator, of whom I have lost all traces for many years, was called Friedrich Kraft: —