Text: Edward Everett Hale, Jr., “Introduction,” Stories and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe, New York: University Publishing Company, 1904, pp. v-xviii

[page v, unnumbered:]

THE life of Poe was not long, but it was unfortunate for himself, for his fame, and for us who have only a few perfect things from his hand when we might have had more. He lived in constant difficulties, some financial, whereby he was compelled often to write for bare subsistence, some personal in which he squabbled or quarrelled with friend and enemy, and made a normal life impossible, some physical, for he was constantly tempted to excess in drink, and, too often, gave way. He had very great powers and undoubted genius, but he lacked the character that would have given them fullest scope.

He was born in Boston, January 19th, 1809, but his parents were Southerners, and he passed his early years in the South. [[His]] Father and mother died when he was very young, and he was adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Allan of Richmond, Va., and by them brought up. He was well educated, lived much of his life as a boy in England, and passed a time at the University of Virginia.

So far his life had been fortunate, indeed exceptionally so, save for the irreparable loss of parents. But not that his character had developed and settled, began that series of erratic ups and downs, which ceased only with his life. Mr. Allan took him from the University on account of his gambling debts and put him into business in Richmond. Poe was dissatisfied and left the business, the Allans, and they city, After some wandering he enlisted in the army, where he remained for two years. His former guardian was [page vi:] reconciled to him, procured his discharge, and gained him an appointment at West Point. Here he remained about a year, but he would not submit to military discipline and was dismissed. He had already made a beginning as a poet. In 1827 he had published “Tamerlane and Other Poems.” In 1831 he published “Poems” containing his earlier verses and some others.

Now began his literary life, but we need not detail the circumstances of it. He became one of the chief men of letters of his day, but his life was strangely checkered. Sometimes he was in great want, writing for a mere livelihood. Sometimes he was well-to-do, generally in the position of editor of a literary magazine. But when in good fortune, he always got into difficulties and lost his place. And when in the severest straits, he always found a friend to put him on his feet again. The strange mixture in his character of charm and irritability, as well as his lack of any real self-control which might curb his tendency to drink caused unnumbered ups and down.

He died October 7th, 1849, in a Baltimore hospital wither he had been brought after one of his lapses into excess. He had been a man of letters for eighteen years and had achieved a reputation, which has not settled into a permanent fame as secure as that of any other American author. Like not a few others he was not, at first, fully recognized in his own country. The excesses and violence of his personal quarrels left to strong an impression for that. But Poe is by this time recognized, not only abroad, but at home, as a writer superior not only to most, but to all, in the particular direction in which his best work was done.

This is not precisely the direction in which he was best known in life. His first reputation was made as a critic: but now, save for some acute remarks, interesting as being from his pen, he is hardly considered in this field. He next became known as a story writer, and here his reputation endures and has increased, now that the form of literature, [page vii:] in which he excelled, has so wonderfully extended. It was not till toward the end of his life that he became widely known as a poet. He had written poetry from youth, but not till he wrote “The Raven” did he catch the public ear. It is in this last form of art — since the general mind holds the poet to be the greatest in the domain of letters — that Poe is really great and to be chiefly remembered.

THE TALES.

The Tales, as short stories were commonly called in the time of Poe, form a good proportion of his work. Living at the same time as Irving and Hawthorne, he found the tale a natural mode of expression, and poured out his ideas freely in this form in magazines and newspapers. He wrote all kinds of fiction, realistic stories of inordinate adventure like “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” romantic stories of mysterious horror like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” intricate stories of intellectual puzzles like “The Purloined Letter” and “The Gold-Bug,” and also humorous or satiric things like “Some Passages in the Life of a Lion,” burlesques or hoaxes like “The Sphinx” or “The Premature Burial,” descriptive pieces like “The Domain of Arnheim” or “Landor's Cottage,” as well as the slightest reproductions of momentary fancy, almost always having something of a story, and handling it in a manner grotesque, serio-comic, terrific, realistic, romantic, according to his humor. We cannot include his stories under any one definition as was natural from his way of life he wrote too much and was too likely to publish anything that an editor would pay for. But among the mass of collected fiction we can readily pick out a number which may, even to-day after half a century of most industrious production, stand among the very best of the short stories of America.

We may note a few of the most characteristic under several heads: [page viii:]

We shall add a slight comment upon each of the stories in our volume.

A Descent into the Maelstrom.

This is a story of pure adventure. There is nothing of plot or of character, no pictures of manners or of social life, no puzzles for the intellect, no stimulants for the nerves. Poe wrote a few other tales of this sort, but none so condensed, so realistic, so strong. It is true that the story, being by Poe, is not without its intellectuality. It has its references to the Nubian Geographer and to Athanasius Kircher. It has its speculations as to the cause of the maelstrom and its reasonings as to the hydraulics of the vortex. But these are not out of place, being chiefly put into the mind or mouth of him who tells the story, and where they are the speculation of the Norwegian fisherman, being eminently simple and inductive. They serve to give a little contrast or background to the otherwise pure narrative of adventure. And this narrative, — we can hardly pronounce it impossible, for it is all made eminently probable, and, indeed, likely, by the art of the story-teller. That particular art, though now used by Poe the romancer, was invented in modern fiction by De Foe, and consists in detailed realism. [page ix:] Everything is told with such particulars as might occur to one to whom it all happened. It was by power of imagination that Poe could tell us that the boat floated at an angle of 45° on the side of the abyss, that across the bottom was a magnificent rainbow, that on the whirling sides below the boat were masses of timber and fragments of vessels and smaller things, bits of household furniture and the like. Whether these details make a correct statement of the inside of the maelstrom, who can say? But Poe tells of it all with such simple conviction that it seems as though it must have been so.

The Purloined Letter.

Here we have something different. There is no adventure, or, rather, we do not have much of it. Doubtless it was an exciting time for that “exalted personage” and for M. D——. But Poe does not tell us much of that; he does not even try to interest us in the beautiful woman of rank and the clever intriguer opposed to her. The story is really a puzzle. Where is that letter hidden? The police have tried in every possible place, and have not found it where can it be? We cannot even speculate. Then we hear that Dupin has got the letter, that the puzzle is solved. How did he get it? Now comes the explanation of method.

Here the interest is intellectual, or, if not exactly intellectual in itself, it is an interest in things of the intellect. We cannot ourselves, doubtless, solve such problems as this: we have not the original cleverness. But we can understand the solution when it is made by another. We should not have thought, perhaps, of how to play odd and even at marbles, but we appreciate the smartness of the schoolboy. We should not have thought, perhaps, of that way of playing the game on the map, but we can appreciate the method of Dupin. As is always the case in a detective story, whether we ourselves could have solved the problem or not, we follow along with interest the solution of the analyst, enjoying [page x:] his original ideas, admiring his subtle inferences, and feeling ourselves almost at one with him. The interest in this story lies, not in the realism, but in our sympathy with the subtle workings of an original mind.

The Gold-Bug.

In “The Gold-Bug” we have the two strains of interest joined. There was little analytic in “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” There was little of adventure in “The Purloined Letter.” In “The Gold-Bug” there are both in fact, the story has two parts, first there is the search for the treasure, that is a story of adventure; then comes the question of the cryptogram, and that is a story of analysis. For the perfect story we need both parts, and “The Gold-Bug” is therefore a greater story than either of the two others, and more characteristic of Poe, for, while the others show us one side only of his genius, this shows us two. The “Descent into the Maelstrom was written by a lover of intellect, as has been remarked above. “The Purloined Letter” was written by one who could imagine adventure. But “The Gold-Bug” was written by one with a feeling for both, and with power to express his feeling in definite and elaborate form.

The Fall of the House of Usher.

In this story we have a new element and that the main element of interest. There is almost nothing of the intellectualism that we have been studying, we do not follow the working out of any problem of the mind. Nor is there much of that active adventure that excites us in the fisherman's escape from the peril of that immense vortex, or the student's intent search for the buried treasure. Certainly we have a little of each. Roderick Usher is a man of intellect, and we hear something of his studies and his occupations, and throughout the story, though not much happens till the end, we are continually in suspense to see what will happen. Still these [page xi:] are not the main motives (as a critic might say) of the story as they are of “The Gold-Bug.” What is the chief source of interest? It seems to lie in the strange situation so full of mysterious hints at things that stir our sensibilities. The old, decaying house, the ancient and degenerate family, the eccentric tastes and remote originality of Usher, and, above all, the gradual sense of unsettled intellect, the consciousness of an increasing failure in mental power and restraint, these are the things in the story that rouse curiosity and sympathy and lead us to the horrible climax. It is romance, of a kind of which we may get a hint elsewhere. Roderick Usher, brooding over ancestral influences and strange connections between the material world and the spiritual, is not so unlike the poet of “The Raven” and “Ulalume.” The feeling is not uncommon in Poe: we may find it in the first set of stories mentioned above as Tales of Horror. “Berenice,” “Ligeia,” “Morella,” “The Assignation,” are molded by the same power and become its expression to us. We cannot analyze it, perhaps we may feel that it has little relation to our present life and interests, yet when we once submit ourselves to it and take the writer's view for the time being, we can feel its hold upon us, and admire the genius of the writer who handles it with such mastery.

These are the chief directions in which the power of Poe shows itself in his prose, extraordinary adventure, intellectual analysis, and romantic horror. We shall find in his other tales the same things, with other qualities less interesting, but in these stories we have his best work in putting into the form of a story motives which appeal to us in the work of many authors, though rarely with such power as in these masterpieces.

THE POEMS.

The poetry of Poe is far less in bulk than his prose, and of this small amount only a little is Poe's best, yet that best [page xii:] is the very best of its kind. Poetry, he said, was a passion with him. Still he understood that in general his verses, many of them written in youth, were trifles, “not of much value to the public or very creditable to himself.” Yet in the number of his poems are a few that are very beautiful.

Beauty, not wisdom, was the ideal of Poe the poet. Of Ellison, the fantastic millionaire of “The Domain of Arnheim,” he writes, “In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole proper satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty.” So Poe created forms of beauty: but these forms were not renderings of the world about him, forms of the beauty that we all know. They were generally forms that expressed his own deepest moods and passions. Of the poems here selected “The Bells” is a descriptive poem in it the poet gives an account of things known or felt by all of us. “For Annie” is a lyrical poem in it the poet gives directly his own thoughts and emotions. But the others — “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven,” “The Haunted Palace” (p. 94), “Ulalume,” “To Helen” — are poems in which the emotion of the poet takes some external form. It may be a simple ballad-like tale of love, or a romantic episode in the life of a lonely scholar, a vague legend of romantic fancy, a fantastic wandering with that mystic companion of each one of us, our soul, or a beautiful classic face and figure. But whichever it be, these forms express to us, each a poetic mood. That mood is generally much the same, regret for a lost love. In the following paragraphs a little comment is given upon each, though without attempt at a complete interpretation. In the case of “Ulalume,” indeed, anything like even an attempt at interpretation is most venturesome; yet the poem appears to be, like several others, a fantastic rendering in material form of a mood or a phase of thought, so that it seems worth while to [page xiii:] try to make it something more than a meaningless sequence of melodious rhythm and rhyme.

It would be impossible here even to attempt a statement of Poe's poetic art. The most important element, though not the most obvious, lies in the subtle feeling for the effect of the sounds, as sounds, of vowel and consonant. As it appears in alliteration, this quality is common in poetry; as it appears in what is called “tone-color” it is more rare. Poe himself writes, in his critical pieces, of the particular sentiment of particular sounds — o and r he says are sonorous sounds, hence the sound-effect of the word “Nevermore.” But the full power of the matter has never been analyzed. More noticeable than the choice of sounds and even than the wonderful choice of words, are certain metrical devices.

Repetition is the soul of metre, whether in rhyme or rhythm. Poe felt the value of another kind, the actual repetition of words, even of whole lines, sometimes slightly varied, sometimes unchanged. It is not necessary to give examples, for every poem presents them. It is well, however, to suggest that this repetition in form is eminently characteristic of the especial thought or mood that Poe best expresses. That mood is regret. Now, nothing is more characteristic of regret than that it is always giving over and over the same thing. Healthy thought goes on from one thing to another connected with it. But regret broods. It calls the same thought to mind over and over again. Perhaps this was dimly felt by Poe, when he expressed his moods of meditative regret in these poems in which repeated words, rhymes, lines form so striking an element in the poetic art.

The Bells.

This poem is not the expression of a mood of the poet's, so much as a rendering of the different impressions made by the sound of different bells, gay sleigh-bells, happy wedding-bells, the terrifying alarm of fire, and the solemn [page xiv:] tolling for one dead. The loose metrical structure is much the same in each stanza, but the difference in the tone is remarkably given. The poem is not very characteristic of Poe, but it is so well known and so wonderful in its way, that it would be rather a pity to leave it out.

Annabel Lee.

The poet puts the regret for a lost love into the form of a romantic tale of the child loved long since, carried away by death, and ever since remembered. The poem is of a simple ballad-like character, with the repetitions and refrains so characteristic of Poe, as well as the recurrence of the same rhyme throughout, and the one or two following midrhymes; in “Chilling and killing,” “Can ever dissever.” The language is so simple that it needs no notes.

The Raven.

The poet, who has been trying by abstruse intellectual pursuits, to drown his regret at the loss of one beloved, is startled at the grotesque appearance of a Raven at his window. Beginning, half in jest, to talk to the bird, he is led on and on by the raven's monotonous croaking of a single word that he has learned, till he finds himself lost in the bitterest hopelessness.

With this line compare the curious reading of Roderick Usher, p. 96.

Notice the following mid-rhyme, as twice in “Annabel Lee.”

Of the rhyme “glade and — maiden” in “Al Aaraaf,” Poe writes: “The rhyme in this verse . . . has the appearance of affectation. It is, however, imitated from Sir W. Scott, or rather from Claud Halcro — in whose mouth I admired [page xv:] its effect.” This rhyme is of the same kind though better the same thing occurs in the next stanza.

The floor had some rich, heavy covering: in the story “Ligeia” Poe speaks of “carpets of tufted gold.”

The draft of forgetfulness first offered long since in Egypt to Helen of Troy.

The Haunted Palace.(1)

In this poem is presented in the form of a material symbol the wreck of a beautiful mind, “the tottering of a lofty intellect upon her throne.” So much we might easily conjecture from its place in the story, and from the words just quoted; so much would follow from the lines

In reading the poem, however, as with many another which symbolizes something immaterial, we must be careful not to push the attempt at allegory too far. Poe presents the Palace of the Mind as a physical thing: we readily see the analogy in the main, as also in the comparison of the “two luminous windows” with the “red-litten windows”; in the ruler of the realm born in the purple, and the evil things in robes of sorrow. But much farther one should hardly try to go. The poem presents us a type, not an analogy. We shall do best if we let the picture remain in our mind as a suggestion, and do not try to follow it out as a careful parallel rendering.

Ulalume.

This poem has been spoken of as having nothing that could be called thought. Mr. Andrew Lang says that it [page xvi:] “attracts or repels by mere sounds as vacant as possible of meaning.” It is true that the poem is melodious to a high degree, but it is not wholly without sense. The poet meditates, and his thought is gloomy: he wanders with his soul through Titanic alleys of cypress. His thought follows unconsciously ways that he has followed before though he does not realize it. As he meditates and broods, he thinks he sees rest and peace in a vaguely perceived but lofty and beautiful ideal. In spite of warning (“Psyche uplifting her finger”) he follows on and on. Then, unwittingly, he is brought face to face with a sudden thought of one whom he has loved and lost, and realizes the impossibility of escaping from his bitter regret.

In the first stanza, the dying autumn landscape typifies the lifeless mind of the poet. “The dim lake of Auber,” “the misty mid region of Weir,” are but examples of that suggestive geography, as we may call it, that is wholly imaginative. So Mount Yaanek in the next stanza. The power of such allusion is in their suggestion of strange wonder.

If we think of the poet's wanderings with Psyche, his soul, as symbolizing the wanderings of his brooding thoughts, this would mean that he was unconsciously following out a succession of ideas that he had followed out in time past, perhaps with his now lost love.

Astarte was the Phoenician goddess of love. As is said later, “She is warmer than Dian,” the maiden goddess of the moon.

His soul warns him to go no farther. So we often feel within, warnings and admonitions that seem almost as though they were uttered by another. [page xvii:]

He trusts the new ideal as though it were some prophetic Sybil.

His reverie suddenly comes to an abrupt end at the realization of Death.

For Annie.

This poem expresses the calm peace of the mind after a rescue from some mad insanity of passion. “The fever called ‘Living”“ must be understood to be that sort of experience, sometimes known as “ seeing life,” the indulgence in any sort of extravagance that offers itself.

The remedy for senseless indulgence in passion is not far to seek, though not seen unless sought.

A reminiscence of Ophelia's flowers:(1) “There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that's for thoughts.” Ophelia gives rue to the guilty Queen, “even for ruth,” even for ruth,” as the Gardener says in Richard II.(2) Remembrance, thought, repentance, are typified by the flowers which take the place of the roses and myrtles of love and beauty.

To Helen.

This poem expresses the relief and satisfaction and peace of the poet, after the extravagant moods of some of the other poems, in the contemplation of pure beauty as typified in the figure of Helen. [page xviii:]

The name “Nicean” has probably but a vague significance of the remote in time and place.

Poe may have had Ulysses in mind, but the figure may well stand for the poet or any one else who is tired out by the passion of errant romantic sensations.

The word “desperate” here means hopeless.

Of Berenice, in the story named after her, Poe writes that “her hair . . . clustered round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth.” So the Lady Ligeia had “naturally curling tresses, setting forth the whole force of the Homeric epithet hyacinthine.”“

The Naiads were nymphs of fountain and stream.

Something of the same difference between the genius of Rome and of Greece will be remembered in the well-known lines of Swinburne on Walter Savage Landor:

The statue, with its simple, clear outline, is typical of classic art, as the picture is of romantic art.

Perhaps with recollection of the antique statue of Psyche, perhaps with some thought of the soul.

The poem is noteworthy for the simplicity and perfection of its form. It lacks Poe's usual poetic means, but is sufficient without them.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page xv:]

1.See p. 94.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page xvii:]

1. Hamlet, IV., 5, 175.

2. III., 4, 106.