Text: Charles W. Hubner, “Poe and Some of His Critics,” in Representative Southern Poets, New York and Washington: Neal Publishing, Co., 1906, pp. 194-205

[page 194:]

POE AND SOME OF HIS CRITICS

No poet of great distinction — certainly none in America — has been more persistently, and frequently fiercely, criticised, both for his life as a man, and in regard to the quality and value of his poetry, than Edgar Allan Poe. As to the former — Poe's moral transgressions and defects of character, a word or two, here, will suffice. The mentors have fully done their duty, long ago, in pointing out his grievous sins, and in drawing the appropriate and obvious moral, deducible from such a deplorable life as his was. Without doubt Poe sinned grievously, but also, most grievously did he suffer for his sin; but quite as deplorable and obnoxious must be held the fact that some of his most distinguished critics were not satisfied with honest condemnation, but permitted uncharitableness and even downright malice to pervert and poison their spoken and printed judgments. So virulent, at one time, was this attack upon the dead poet, that, in one specially scurrilous case, it caused a European writer to ask whether there was no law in America “to keep curs out of the cemeteries.” Let us rather say, with our Halleck, in his poem on Bums: [page 195:]

But in regard to the quality and value of Poe's poetry, there is always ground for legitimate and candid expressions of opinion. Such criticism is always in order, and worthy of respectful consideration. To one of these critics of Poe's poetry, I wish to devote brief attention, because he expresses a view of it which I know to be shared by some other recent reviewers of Poe's poetic work.

“Poe's gift,” says this writer, “flourished upon him like a destructive flame, and the ashes that it left are like the deadly poison which some one has learned to powder out of a plant-root. As a mere potency, dissociated from qualities of beauty or truth, Poe must be rated almost highest among American poets, and high among prosaists; no one else offers so much pungency, such impetuous and frightful energy, crowded in such small space.

“We owe to Poe the first agile and determined movement of criticism in this country, and, though it was a startling dexterity, with but little depth, which winged his censorial shafts, he was excellently fitted for the critic's office in one way, because he knew positively what standards he meant to judge by, and kept up an inflexible hostility to any offense against them. He had an acute instinct in matters of [page 196:] literary form; it amounted, indeed, to a passion, as all his instincts and perceptions did; he had also the knack of finding reasons, good or bad, for his opinions, and of stating them well.

“Whatever the cause, his brain had a rift of ruin in it at the start. For him there was always ‘a demon in the sky’; and, though he kept a delicate touch, that stole a new grace from classic antiquity, it was the frangibility, the quick decay, the fall of beautiful things that excited him.”

On the surface this criticism appears to be blandly conservative and plausible, but when carefully analyzed it will be found to have the same fault which this critic charges against Poe's method of criticism — it has but little depth. For instance, I cannot see any force in the distinction this critic makes between Poe's potency and his poetry. He says he would rate him almost highest among American poets merely as a “potency,” and dissociated from qualities of beauty or truth, whereas, as a matter of common sense it follows, that to dissociate Poe from the qualities of beauty or truth, which characterize his poetry, is to deprive him of his potency altogether, and make him as flabby as a jelly-fish. I know of no other potency in Poe except that which is derived from the charmful beauty, the fine inspiration of his poetry; and if, as his critic maintains, Poe's potency entitles him to be rated “almost highest [page 197:] among American poets,” it is simply because his potency and his poetry are synonymous.

To me the most remarkable element of Poe's poetry seems to be the poet's almost idolatrous worship of Beauty — of Beauty manifesting itself not only in exquisite material forms, but also in intangible, supernatural and spiritual revelations. In this, in my opinion, lies his finest, his most subtle strength; in this, and through this, he exercises his utmost potency.

To Poe, Beauty was Truth. To him nothing was essentially true which, in form and spirit, did not reach the standard of his ideal conception of the Beautiful.

The durability of his fame as an artist in poetry, the cause of that unique excellence, the spirit of originality which breathes from his writings are largely due, I think, to Poe's marvelous idiosyncrasy concerning Beauty, and his peculiar belief in Truth as the essence of Beauty. Poe himself has asserted his profound reverence for the True, and he insists that it is the office of Taste to inform us of the Beautiful, that we may wage war against Vice on the ground of her deformity, her opposition to that which is harmonious, in a word, to Beauty. In his famous essay on “The Poetic Principle,” Poe says:

“He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or without however vivid a truth of description of the sights, and sounds, [page 198:] and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind — he, I say, has failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no more appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above.

“Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness, whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And thus, when by Poetry, or when by Music — the most entrancing of the poetic moods — we find ourselves melted into tears — we weep then, not as the Abbot Gravina supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant, im- patient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.

“The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the world [page 199:] all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.”

And in another place he defines the poetry of words as the “rhythmical creation of Beauty.”

To this ideal of his Poe adhered loyally, and the quickening spirit of it is felt, in its fullest power, in his splendid, soul-haunting Raven, and in others of his best poems. The idea of dissociating this worship of esthetic Beauty, this adoration of the holiness of Beauty and of the truth of Beauty, from the poetic potency of Poe, seems to my mind a preposterous proposition.

That Poe's gift “flourished upon him like a destructive flame,” is, unfortunately, as true of him as it is and has been true of many who possess the fatal gift of genius, and who, for various reasons, and through the power of evil influences, do not rule their spirits wisely and well. It is one of the deplorable aspects of genius, and the history of the world is full of instances of its misconduct and moral aberrations. But in Poe's case, I deny that “the ashes it left are like a deadly poison.” If the works left by Poe are ashes, they are ashes of glory, and the spark of genius still lives, and will forever live, in them. His gift harmed no one but himself; nor has he left us a line which any one can, consistently and honestly, declare contains a deadly poison. I feel sure that, for all time, [page 200:] Poe will rank among the eminent poets of the nineteenth century, and as the most original, entrancingly lyrical of American poets.

EDGAR ALLAN POE.