∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
A CLASSICAL ALLUSION IN POE
The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL. D., in his Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, under the caption “Nicean Barks or Nycean Barks,” makes the following profoundly ætiological statement:
“Edgar Poe, in his lyric To Helen says,
Helen thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o’er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.
The way-worn wanderer was Dionysius or Bacchus, after his renowned conquests. His native shore was the Western Horn, called the Amalthean Horn. And the Nicean barks were vessels sent from the island Nysa, to which in infancy Dionysus was conveyed to screen him from Rhea. The perfumed sea was the sea surrounding Nysa, a paradisal island.”
In the first place, it requires a somewhat elastic philological imagination to identify Nicean and Nysaean. Secondly, the Nysaean nymphs had nothing in particular to do with Dionysus after his infancy. Lastly, according to the common account, it was Juno, not Rhea, who entertained hatred against Dionysus, since he was the offspring of the mortal Semele. According to some accounts Rhea assisted in the rescue of the infant Dionysus from Juno.
Now since this interpretation seems to be a trifle erroneous, what is the correct one? Certainly the reference cannot be to Nicaea famed for its Councils. Nicean apparently has no meaning at all. Poe wrote the poem presumably at the age of fourteen. Perhaps there was some confusion of myths in his mind, or perhaps Nicean was the unconscious substitution in the writing of one word for another of similar sound. Now to attempt an emendation of Poe upon no other ground than the interpretation of a passage is, of course, a doubtful procedure, particularly in view of the fact that Poe wrote in the preface to his poems: “I am naturally anxious that what I have written should circulate as I wrote it, if it circulate at all.” But while Poe might wish us to read it as he wrote it, [page 85:] he certainly would like us to understand it as he meant it. Poe meant not Nicean but Phaeacian. This word accords perfectly with the sense of the poem. The conquests of Dionysus were on land: Odysseus, on the other hand, is the hero of the sea. He is the weary, way-worn wanderer whom the Phæacians bore home to his native shore of Ithaca wrapped in a sleep that might well make the sea seem perfumed, particularly when a very young poet is telling about it. Besides, what excuse has Dionysus, the god, for being tired? The fact that the wanderer is a wayfarer over the sea is brought out by implication in the second stanza:
On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.
The beauty of Helen has brought Poe home “To the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome,” just as the Phæacian ship brought Odysseus home of old. Her beauty intuitively guided him, just as the magic ships of the Phæacians held to their course without pilot or rudder: “For the Phæacians have no pilots nor any rudders after the manner of other ships, but their barques themselves understand the thoughts and intents of men; they know the cities and fat fields of every people, and most swiftly they traverse the gulf of the salt sea, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never do they go in fear of wreck or ruin.”(1)
HERBERT EDWARD MIEROW.
Lakewood, N. J.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 85:]
1. Odyssey VIII, lines 557-563; translation of Butcher and Lang.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - MLN, 1916] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - A Classical Allusion in Poe (Herbert Edward Mierow, 1916)