Text: Anonymous, “The Religion of Edgar Allan Poe,” Current Opinion (New York, NY), vol. 69, no. 3, September 1920, pp. 408-410

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THE RELIGION OF EDGAR ALLAN POE

IT will come as a surprize even to some who have given close attention to the writings of Edgar Allan Poe to learn that the poet of gloom and horror, who is more widely read in foreign lands than any other American writer, was an old-fashioned religious believer. Poe saw God in every beast, bird and flower. He regarded the Bible as God's revelation. He was deeply convinced of the immortality of the soul.

All this is vividly revealed in an article in The Biblical Review (New York), which its author, C. Alphonso Smith, Head of the Department of English, United States Naval Academy, says is the first treatment of Poe's religion ever published. The question of Poe's belief, Professor Smith points out, is important not only because of his universal fame but because his stories and poems so often either leave us in the dark or suggest an attitude of apathy or denial which was far from Poe's real mind. Even so well-informed a biographer of Poe as George Edward Woodberry makes the extraordinary statement that an account of Mrs. Moran reading to the dying poet the fourteenth chapter of St. John's Gospel is “the only mention of religion in his entire life.” If the mere reading of the Bible to Poe, not by him, be construed as a “mention of religion” in his life, what, asks Professor Smith, shall be said of his familiarity with the Bible, of his keen interest in Biblical research, of his oft-expressed belief in the truth of the Bible or of his final and impassioned defense, in “Eureka,” of the sovereignty of the God of the Bible?

There is abundant evidence, the Professor tells us, that from early childhood, when Poe went regularly to church with Mrs. Allan in Richmond, to that last hour when he asked Mrs. Moran from his deathbed whether she thought there was any hope for him hereafter, God and the Bible were fundamental and central in his thinking. It is equally evident that tho himself an adept in scientific hypothesis and speculative forecast and tho living in a sceptical age in which science seemed to be undermining the foundations of religion, he remained uninfluenced by current forms [column 2:] of unbelief. More than that, he entered the lists against scepticism and fought in behalf of Christian faith.

Poe's intimate knowledge of the Bible is revealed not only in the many allusions in his writings to Bible history and imagery, but in his polemic efforts. Professor Smith quotes from a review of a book entitled “Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia, Petrala and the Holy Land,” by John Lloyd Stephens, a New Jersey lawyer, in which Poe speaks reverently of “the Book of Books” and tries to Show that “‘infidelity itself has often afforded unwilling and unwitting testimony to the truth.” Poe makes the statement:

“It is surprizing to find with what unintentional precision both Gibbon and Volney (among others) have used, for the purpose of description, in their accounts of nations and countries, the identical phraseology employed by the inspired writers when foretelling the most improbable events. In this manner scepticism has been made the root of belief, and the providence of the Deity has been no less remarkable in the extent and nature of the means for bringing to light the evidence of his accomplished word, than in working the accomplishment itself.’

Later on in the same review Poe expresses his belief in the literal meaning and literal fulfilment of Bible prophecies:

“General statements, except in rare instances, are susceptible of misinterpretation or misapplication: details admit no shadow of ambiguity. That, in many striking cases, the words of the prophets have been brought to pass in every particular of a series of minutiæ, whose very meaning was unintelligible before the period of fulfilment, is a truth that few are so utterly stubborn as to deny. We mean to say that, in all instances, the most strictly literal interpretation will apply.”

Poe's belief in the Bible, his aversion to scepticism, and his faith in the immortality of the soul find frequent assertion in his less known works. He commends an inaugural address of the President of Hampden-Sidney College because it shows “a vein of that truest of all philosophy, the philosophy of the Christian.” He [page 409:] argues that the lines

embody a false philosophy: “Witness the principles of our divine faith — that moral mechanism by which the simplicity of a child may overbalance the wisdom of a man.” In reviewing “Zanoni” he says: “All that is truly noble in Bulwer's imaginary doctrines of the Rosicrucians is stolen from the pure precepts of our holy religion.” Writing in 1844, he declares:

“Twenty years ago credulity was the characteristic trait of the mob, incredulity the distinctive feature of the philosophic; now the case is converse. The wise are wisely adverse from disbelief. To be sceptical is no longer evidence either of information or of wit.”

There was a time when Poe believed that immortality could be deduced from the “nebular matter,” the “rare ethereal medium pervading space,” out of which “all existing bodies in the universe are formed.”’ Subsequently he made the statement: “No man doubts the immortality of the soul, yet of all truths this truth of immortality is the most difficult to prove by any mere series of syllogisms.” And later still: “However well a man may reason on the great topics of God and immortality, he will be forced to admit tacitly in the end that God and immortality are things to be felt rather than demonstrated.”

Not a proof but an indication of immortality, “a forethought of the loveliness to come,” “a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave,” Poe found in poetry:

“He who shall merely sing with whatever rapture, in however harmonious strains or [column 2:] with however vivid a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which greet him in common with all mankind — he, we say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a longing unsatisfied which he has been impotent to fulfil. There is still a thirst unquenchable, which to allay he has shown us no crystal springs. This burning thirst belongs to the immortal essence of man's nature, It is equally a consequence and an indication of his perennial life. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is not the mere appreciation of the beauty before us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above. It is a forethought of the loveliness to come. It is a passion to be satiated by no sublunary sights, or sounds, or sentiments, and the sou! thus athirst strives to allay its fever in futile efforts at creation. Inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the things and thoughts of Time, to anticipate some portion of that loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to Eternity. And the result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly constituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denominate Poetry.

But it is in “Eureka” that Poe recorded his deepest convictions about God and the [page 410:] world to come. This work is said to have occupied him for seven years. He seemed consciously in the grip of a central truth. “What I here propound,” he writes in his brief preface, “is true: — therefore it cannot die: — or if by any means it be now trodden down-so that it die, it will ‘rise again to the Life Everlasting.’‘” His wife was dead. His only companion was Mrs. Clemm. “When he was composing ‘Eureka,’” she has told us, “we used to walk up and down the garden, his arm around me, mine around him, until I was so tired I could hot walk. He would stop every few minutes and explain his ideas to me, and ask if I understood him.”

“Eureka” is more than a demonstration that Poe's intellect and imagination were functioning at their maximum through his lonely years; it is the mature expression of an abiding faith that

Two passages are quoted by Smith. The echo of the first seems heard in a line of Tennyson's “In Memoriam,”

Poe writes:

“That Nature and the God of Nature are distinct, no thinking being can long doubt. By the former we imply merely the laws of the latter. But with the very idea of God, omnipotent, omniscient, we entertain, also, the idea of the infallibility of his laws. With Him there being neither Past nor Future — with Him all being Now — do we not insult him in supposing his laws so contrived as not to provide for every possible contingency? — or, rather, what idea cim we have of any possible contingency, except that it is at once a result and a manifestation of his laws? He who, divesting himself of prejudice, shall have the rare courage to think absolutely for himself, cannot fail to arrive, in the end, at the condensation of Jaws into Law — cannot fail of reaching the conclusion that each law of Nature is dependent at all points upon all other laws, and that all are but consequences of one primary exercise of the Divine Volition.”

The second passage tells of creatures, animate and inanimate, 2nd continues:

“These creatures are all, too, more or less conscious Intelligences; conscious, first, of a proper identity; conscious, secondly and by faint indeterminate glimpses, of an identity [column 2:] with the Divine Being of whom we speak — of an identity with God. Of the two classes of consciousness, fancy that the former will grow weaker, the latter stronger, during the long succession of ages which must elapse before these myriads of individual Intelligences become blended — when the bright stars become blended — into One. Think that the sense of individual identity will be gradually merged in the general consciousness — that Man, for example, ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he shall recognize his existence as that of Jehovah. In the meantime bear in mind that all is Life — Life — Life within Life — the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine.”

Summing up, Professor Smith suggests that Poe's work will enter upon 4a still wider stage of influence when it is regarded not as allurement to doubt and despair but as an outcry against them. “Is it not unjust,” he asks, “to call Poe the poet laureate of death and decay in the sense in which we call Shelley the poet laureate of love, Wordsworth of nature, Tennyson of trust, or Browning of resolute faith?” The article concludes:

“Poe did not love death; he did not celebrate the charms of doubt or of darkness or of separation. He abhorred them. The desolate lover in The Raven does not acquiesce in ‘Nevermore.’ It flouts and belies every instinct and intuition of his heart. And in every poem and story of Poe's over which blackness seems to brood, there is the unmistakable note of spiritual protest; there is the evidence of a nature so attuned to love and light, to beauty and harmony, that denial of them or separation from them is a veritable death-in-life. Poe fathomed darkness but climbed to the light; he became the world's spokesman for those dwelling within the shadow, but his feet were already upon the upward slope. Out of it all he emerged victor, not victim.

“When I remember that Poe resented the charge of pantheism as keenly as that of atheism, when I recall that he ended his career as thinker and prophet with the chant, ‘All is Life — Life — Life within Life — the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine,’ the sunlight seems to fall upon ‘the misty mid region of Weir,’ even ‘the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir;’ and Edgar Allan Poe seems no longer our only autumnal genius, heralding an early winter, but the genius of winter itself. a late winter, with spring already at its heart.”