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Part IV: Satiric Intent of His Devil Stories
Poe's chief originality in his treatment of the devil lies in his manner of turning the stories in which this character appears: Frenchman who outdoes the devil not only in cards but in politeness, a drunken philosopher-restaurateur who is even more eager for a bargain than his satanic visitor, a devil of mischief who turns completely topsy-turvy the unchanging routine of a Dutch village, and a devil of reverend aspect who unexpectedly takes and wins a bet. Also in considering the nature of his grotesquerie in these tales, we must not overlook the fact that the devil figures are not the only exaggerated characterizations in them. We must keep in mind, too, that at the same time that Poe was depicting the grotesque figure of the devil, he was in each case doing so for burlesque or satiric purposes.
As for the satire in the devil stories, it is less obvious and at the same time more general and gayer in tone than in the group of stories examined [page 423:] in the preceding chapter as typical burlesques. “The Duc de L’Omelette” is I think, unquestionably a quiz on the fashionable figure who posed as a connoisseur and an ultra-sophisticated individual. Whether or not Poe had N. P. Willis in mind and wrote the tale as a “quiz on Willis,” as Mr. Daughrity has suggested,(61) it must have been aimed at some of the obnoxious posers who belong to all times as well as to Poe's period. If we must seek a suggestion or model for Poe's slight sketch, we need look no further, I think, than the English novels of his time. Certainly the “Duc” is an excellent caricature of many of the dandified heroes of the fashionable fictions, young men who had sojourned in France, had learned much of French cookery and tailors, and were always eager to share their information in French phrases when they returned home. There was sufficient material, for example, in Pelham alone for the characterization of the “Duc.” Henry Pelham adopted the most desperate French mannerisms and consciously cultivated foppishness. One of his early and unforgettable experiences in Paris was a dinner at the celebrated restaurateur's [page 424:] of the Rue Mont Orgueil.” In recalling its delights Henry delivered a fervent apostrophe to the “exquisite foie gras”: “Have I forgotten thee? Do I not, on the contrary, see thee — smell thee — taste thee — and almost die with rapture of thy possession? The goose tortured to produce the delicious tid-bit he addressed as “O exhaled among birds — apotheosized goose.” One of Henry's boon companions was a celebrated gourmand, Gusoleton, proud of his luxurious little apartment with its voluptuous Titian's Venus and of his unexcelled taste in Preach cookery. Henry and his friends discoursed knowingly of Parisian tailors and especially of Stulz, whose coats “you can tell anywhere,” for he “aims at making gentlemen, not coats.” But in itself, “The Duc” needs no more explanation thnn its own light tone to place it as a product of the “spirit of eccentricity,” as one of its early critics enthusiastically wrote.(62)
In its original state “The Bargain Lost” may have been intended as a satire on the pompous assumptions or certain people to the rôle of philosopher. It has already been pointed out, in connection with the discussion of the satires directed against Bulwer, that [page 425:] he was derided by some of his reviewers, just as he was praised by others, for his pretensions to philosophy in his novels: Poe himself repeatedly spoke of this trait in his critiques of Bulwer. There must have been others who offended in the same fashion and thus laid themselves open to satire because of it. Poe describes Pedro Garcia, the metaphysician of Venice, as the person “to whom Kant was mainly indebted for his metaphysics.”
The doctrines of our friend were not very generally understood, although by no means difficult of comprehension. He was not, it is true, a Platonist — nor strictly an Aristotelian — nor did he, with Leibnitz, reconcile things irreconcileable [[irreconcilable]]. He was, emphatically, a Pedronist. He was Ionic and Italic. He reasoned a priori and posteriori, his ideas were innate, or otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizond, he believed Bossarion. Of his other propensities little is recorded. He is said to have preferred Catullus to Homer, and Sauterne to Medoc.(63)
“A Modern Phtyagorean,” it will be remembered, made gentle fun of amateur philosophers in “The Metempsychosis,” when he portrayed Frederick Stadt and the devil discussing long and heatedly the relative merits of various systems and schools of philosophy. A still better illustration of Macnish's ridicule of philosophers may be found in his tale, “The Loves of [page 426:] the Learned,” directed specifically, we may guess from the contents of a letter to Blackwood, at some professor on the staff of the University of Glasgow.(64) He undertook in this tale, he said, a difficult theme — “to celebrate the Loves of the Most Learned Doctor Dedimus Dunderhead, Professor of Moral Philosophy to the University of Göttingen.”
The Doctor was a profound Metaphysician; — so profound, indeed, that his lectures were often unintelligible even to himself. This, however, so far from diminishing, enhanced their value; it proved that they were full of deep thought; and while he doled them out, in solemn strain, his audience looked up to him, with an admiration approaching to awe; and he was unanimously deemed the most recondite philosopher, not only in Göttingen, but in all Germany — Kant himself not excepted.
The Doctor was a short, stout, big-wigged, car-buncle-nosed gentleman of some sixty years and a bachelor to boot. He was, moreover, Provost to the University; and in virtue of his office, wore upon his head, a low-crowned, three-cornered hat, and upon his person a superb black velvet coat, while he carried in his right hand a long silver-headed cane, with which he strutted up and down, with an air of prodigious dignity. No wonder the students regarded him with reverence. ... No wonder they looked upon him as the greatest man in Göttingen, ergo in Germany, ergo in Europe. Nor was this excellent opinion of the Doctor confined to the students: he entertained it himself in all its force, and verily conceived that he was one of the metaphysical pillars of modern times, and worthy to stand side by side with Locke, Kant, Bacon, Leibnitz, or Helvetius — if not to rank above them. [page 427:]
Now the Doctor, for above half a century — that is, since he was ten years of age — had been so occupied in study, that he had no time to think of anything else. During that period, he had pored over all sciences, human and divine. The works of Newton, Euler, and Laplace, were familiar to him as household words. He was versed in theology, ethics, pneumatics, hydrostatics, logic, philology, criticism, astronomy, geography, and natural history. Homer, Thucydides, Strabo, Heroditus, Virgil, and some score besides of the classics, he had got by heart — not to talk of Plato, Aristotle, &&&. In a word, he was the most erudite man in Gottingen — the metaphysical pillar of Germany — and the wonder of the whole college: — equal, aye, superior to Locke, Kant, Bacon, Leibnitz, Helvetius, &&&.
The erudite doctor had the misfortune to fall in love with Angelica, who giggled at his philosophical disquisitions on love and insulted him, in spite of her parents’ favoritism for him.
“Most improper behavior,” said her father
“Most abominable behaviour,” said her mother.
“Most noble behaviour,” said Frank Bernard, who, a moment before made his appearance.
“She has lost the most learned man in Europe,” exclaimed papa; —
“And fifty thousand guilders, to boot,” added mamma; —
“Psha!” said Frank, “I shall take her myself, and make her happier than Doctor Dunderhead, with all his wealth.”
In the next version of “The Bargain Lost,” as “Bon-Bon,” Poe superimposed upon the figure of the metaphysician that of a French restaurateur. The combination produced is indeed a grotesquerie. Probably [page 428:] some contact with the extravagancies of French literature or its imitators, or perhaps merely the accident of Pedro's discussion with the devil of “fricasseed shadows” in the original tale, prompted Poe to change the story in order to bring out a different effect. He may have wished to satirize the fashion of exalting French Gastronomy to an art and science, as was being done in such novels as Pelham.(65) It is possible, too, that his re-shaping of the tale [page 429:] was connected with his plan for the “Tales of the Folio Club” and that he wished to point its satire toward some particular foible in literature. It may have been meant, therefore, as a satire upon the lighter literature, the tales and sketches which filled the magazines and the flimsier novels which were being poured out for public consumption. In a review of I Promessi Sposi, or The Betrothed Lovers, which Poe wrote for the Messenger in May, 1835, at about the time when he might have been revising “The Bargain Lost” for publication in August, 1835, and certainly at the time when he seemed on the verge of at last publishing his collected tales, he expressed himself as follows:
Men can no more read everything than they can eat everything; than they can eat everything; and the petits plots that are handed round hot-and-hot, leave us no room to do honor to the roast beef of old England, nor to the savory Virginia ham. But these are the food by which the thews and sinews of manhood are best nourished, they at once exercise and help digestion. Dyspepsia was not of their day. It came with French Gastronomy. Are we mistaken in thinking that we see by symptoms of a sort of intellectual dyspepsia arising from the incessant exhibition of the bon-bons, and kichshaws of the press? Well, here is something (I Promessi Sposi) that will stick by the ribs. [page 430:]
If Poe meant to include in the “petits plots that are handed round hot-and-hot,” as substitutes for the old “three-decker” novels, short stories such as he created, then he must have regarded their production as an apprenticeship to be served before achieving that which would “stick by the ribs.”
In intent “Never Bet the Devil Your Head, A Tale with a Moral” is a sort of companion piece to “King Pest, A Tale Containing an Allegory,” which aimed, in part, to satirize the tale with an obvious moral. In the devil story, however, the satire is pointed somewhat differently; instead of aiming at the tale with a moral, it directed its satire rather at the critics who insisted that every story should have a moral and proceeded to find the moral in every story. Apparently the satire was meant particularly for the group of New England journalists to whom Poe was consistently hostile.
Every fiction should have a moral; and, what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every fiction has. ... These fellows demonstrate a hidden meaning in “The Antediluvians,” a parable in “Powhatan” new views in “Cock Robin” and transcendentalism in “Hop O’ My Thumb.” In short, it has been shown that no man can sit down to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for example, need have no care of his moral. It is there — that is to say it is somewhere [page 431:] — and the moral and the critics can take care of themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended, and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the “Dial,” or the “Down-Easter,” together with all that he ought to have intended, and the rest that he clearly meant to intend, — so that it will all come very straight in the end.
He had been accused, the narrator complained, of never having written a tale with a moral, but the fault lay in his critics: they were simply not the critics predestined to bring him out, and develop his morals. In the meantime by way of mitigating these accusations, he would offer the tale of Toby Dammit with such an obvious moral that no one would be able to miss it.
As a pendant to his design to satirize critics and those of New England in particular, Poe ridiculed specifically the transcendentalists. He wrote of Toby ‘s peculiar manner of speech, which:
... for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to call queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twisted, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitical.
When Toby's behavior became excessively lively, the narrator grew suspicious of a secret and mysterious ailment: [page 432:]
It is not impossible that he was effected with the transcendentals. I am not well enough versed, however, in the diagnosis of this disease to speak with decision upon the point; and unhappily there were none of my friends of the “Dial” present. I suggest the idea, nevertheless, because of a certain species of Merry-Andrewism which seemed to beset my poor friend, and caused him to make quite a Tom-Fool of himself. Nothing would serve him but wriggling and skipping about under and over everything that came in his way; not shouting out, and now lisping out, all manner of odd little and big words, yet preserving the gravest face in the world all the time.
He would not believe that Toby's threat to cut a pigeon-wing over all kinds of style, was my friend Mr. Carlyle, and ... I knew he could not do it.” Toby's adversary in the bet, the devil himself, enjoined him to “go over it handsomely, and transcendentally,” and not to omit any “flourishes of the pigeon-wing.” And it was the transcendentalists who refused to honor Poor Toby's moderate funeral expenses so that he became dog's meat. In spite of his indulgence, in this tale, in a cheap form of humor by punning, Poe succeeded, I think, in making it one of the cleverest of his burlesqueries.
Professor Wilson has suggested that “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” belonged to the original sixteen of the Folio Club group and was meant to be told by [page 433:] the little black-eyed man in a black suit.(66) He interprets the little man in black among the members of the club as a representation of the devil himself, and he points out that in the original version of “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” “me” occurred throughout the narrative for the later “Devil.” This he believes to be an indication that the narrator and the devil in the story were originally the same person. I am unable to see, however, that the original form with “me” instead of “Devil” in the phrase, “he would bet me his head,” indicates that the narrator was the devil. It appears to have been merely a device to withhold the climactic statement, “I’ll bet the devil my head, until the occasion was ripe for the appearance of the devil to collect the bet. The presence of the narrator and the figure of the reverend little gentleman who introduced himself at the elbow of the narrator with an “ahem” cannot be reconciled as the same person. Perhaps Poe decided that the point of his story would be more effective if he represented Dammit as consistently betting the devil his head until the patience of the poor devil was exhausted, [page 434:] and he appeared to “call the bet.” Poe might have been motivated also by a desire to follow up his early declaration of a moral purpose by making that moral ridiculously obvious.
I am inclined, moreover, to give the tale a date of composition very near the time of its publication instead of assigning it to the “Tales of the Folio Club.” There is, in my opinion, a certain maturity in its style and a sting in the assurance of its satire that distinguished its tone from that of the earlier burlesques. Certain other elements seem also to point to its later composition. Although Poe himself was ridiculing transcendentalism as early as his Messenger version of “Loss of Breath,”(67) the transcendentalists as a group in America did not become active until the late 1830's. The Transcendental Club was not organized until 1836, and it was only after that date that “transcendental nonsense” became in America a general term of ridicule. The Dial was not established as the mouthpiece of the group until 1840, and it was in the late thirties that Emerson and Carlyle became famous for their “pigeon-winging” styles. One must admit, of course, that Kant and [page 435:] Coleridge belonged to the older group of transcendentalists and that transcendentalism had been satirized at least as early as Peacock's Crotchet Castle in 1831.(68) Poe's entire appears to me, however, to be directed at the organized group of transcendentalists in America whom he associated with the despised New England coterie.
Two of the books to which Poe alluded in his tale were reviewed by him in 1841, The Antediluvians in February and Powhatan in July. Poe's tale appeared in September. The original version alluded to Mr. Pue,” whose Grammar Poe had reviewed very severer in Graham's in July, 1841. In 1845 Poe substituted for Pue's name that of Lord, to whose Poems he had just been meting out the same kind of stern reviewer's justice the Broadway Journal. Allusions to books and authors may mean very little in Poe's tales, as he customarily altered names and titles to fit the time and place of publication. It would of course have been simple matter for him to substitute titles which he considered appropriate in 1841 for those of an earlier version. It may be of significance, however, [page 436:] that he did not alter the titles, The Antediluvians in 1845 when he made the substitution of Lord for Pue. In his reviews of Wilmer's The Quacks of Helicon in August, 1841, Poe alluded to “the last diamond edition or Tom Thumb,” and echoed this allusion in “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” with a reference to “Hop O’ My Thumb.” Indeed, there is a great deal in his review of Wilmer's satire that suggests the tone of “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.”
Finally, some weight must be given, I think, to the statement made by the narrator that critics that changed him unjustly with never having written “a tale with a moral.” Poe would not have been likely to introduce such a statement in a tale written by himself as a youthful unknown. It seems to me, therefore, that if “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” was one of Poe's early group, it must have been so radically revised before its ultimate publication that we can get only a faint notion, from the versions which are available to us, of what it was like in the original.
There is no difficulty in recognizing that “The Devil in the Belfry” pokes fun at “small-town complacency.”(69) At the same time it was probably meant [page 437:] to satirize somewhat the kind of people who boast that system and order derided in “The Business Man.” It might even have been directed specifically at the best known of American Dutch towns, New York,(70) and at some of its pretensions to progress and well-being. Poe dreamed of the magnificence of London and Paris, and no doubt felt that the American metropolis arrogated to itself a great many airs of superiority and false importance. Even if he did not have in mind satirizing the New York his own day, he undoubtedly was in his ridicule of Dutch smugness and order, maybe only for the sake of droll humor instead of satire.(71) Poe's debt to Irving in his caricature of Vondervotteimittiss inhabitants is greater than a mere following of the manner, however. He would, I think, have had to re-read Irving in order to follow as closely as he did some of the details of his description. The appearance of his village and its inhabitants is a sort of composite of details drawn from Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York and “Wolfert Webber” in Tales of a Traveller.(72) Knickerbocker told the story of the founding [page 438:] and development of the village of Communipaw, from which “the mighty city of New York” was “hatched” in order to preserve for posterity its history, when, like Babylon, Carthage, and other great cities, it should be perfectly extinct and have become the subject of controversy among indefatigable historians. “The honest burghers of Communipaw, like wise men and sound philosophers ... never look beyond their pipes nor trouble their heads about any affairs out of their immediate neighborhood.” They had handed down inviolate the dress of the original settlers and had kept unadulterated the language of their forefathers. In New Amsterdam, which sprang from the mother village Communipaw, the same correctness of tradition was long preserved. The houses were constructed of wood, excepting the sable end, which was of small, black and yellow Dutch bricks,” and which always faced on the street. Every house boasted a “fierce little weathercock to let the family into the important secret which way the wind blew.” Since these indicators were likely to point in every imaginable direction, the loyal citizens went by the weathercock on the top of the governor's house, which was certainly “most correct, as he had a trusty servant employed every morning [page 439:] to climb up and get it in the right quarter.” The center of each home was a fireplace of “a truly patriarchal magnitude, where the whole family, old and young, master and servant, black and white, may, even the very cat and dog, enjoyed a community of privilege.” The men were dressed exactly alike upon all occasions in a linsey-woolsey coat “ga1lantly bedecked with abundance of large brass buttons,” a half a score of breeches, shoes adorned with enormous copper buckles, and a low-crowned broad-rimmed hat. Each honest burgher sat on sultry afternoons in front of his peaceful house, dozed, smoked his pipe, and listened to the combined melody of clucking hens, cackling geese, and grunting swine. The good housewives were alike, too, in their thriftiness, in the abundance and number of their “petticoats of linsey-woolsey ... striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes,” and in the shortness of their skirts, a practice “doubtless ... introduced for the purpose of giving the stockings a chance to be seen, which were generally of blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks.” The burgo-masters of this contented village were chosen for their rotundity and their resulting well-regulated minds, and they administered justice over a hearty meal. [page 440:]
Wolfert Webber, the central figure of Irving's tale by that title, is merely a more specialized portrait of the typical burgher. He was descended from one of the original settlers of Manhattoes, “famous for introducing the cultivation of cabbages.” ‘The whole family genius, during several generations, was devoted to the study and development of this one noble vegetable.” The Webber dynasty had long been distinguished for its marvelous heads which resembled in “shape and magnitude the vegetables over which they reigned.” For many years Wolfert “reigned and vegetated over his paternal acres,” until he was at length reduced to despair by the encroachments of a prosperity and the irruptions of a disturbing element from without his own borough. This expansion brought him at length immense wealth, and he succeeded happily to the dictatorship of the little world at the village inn and occupied its throne beside the fireplace — “a huge leather-bottomed. arm-chair.”(73) [page 441:]
The difference in the quality of Poesque and Irvingesque humor becomes at once apparent when details of Poe's village are compared with those of Irving given above. Where Irvin touched with ludicrousness and gained his effect by a long rambling narrative and much repetition, Poe compressed, heightened to absurdity immediately, and turned the droll village of Irving into a grotesque caricature. The narrator of “The Devil in the Belfrey [[Belfry]]” has sought varied historical monuments to establish the origin and unchanged condition of Vondervotteimittiss. The houses were, and had always been, exactly alike — “fashioned of hard-burned little bricks, red, with black ends, so that the all look like a chessboard upon a great scale. ... The gables are turned to the front.” Inside the houses the “wide and high” mantel-pieces, and “large and deep” fire-places were the center of everything. The housewife wore a dress of “orange-colored linsey-woolsey made very full behind and very short in the waist — and indeed very short in other respects, not reaching below the middle of her leg.” Her leg was “somewhat thick, and so are her ankles, but she has a fine pair of green stocking to cover them. “Her companion by the fireplace [page 442:] was a “fat tabby cat,” and outside a “corpulent and lazy pig had taken the place of the usual domestic pet, the dog. Men and boys dressed in “three-cornered cocked hats, purple waistcoats reaching down to their thighs, buckskin knee-breeches, red woollen stockings, heavy shoes with big silver buckles, and long surtout coats with large buttons of mother-of-pearl.” The man the house sat by the door in “a high-backed leather-bottomed armed chair,” puffing away on his pipe and watching the town clock instead of the weathercock of Irving's account. The Town-Council of Vondervotteimittiss were all very little, round, oily, intelligent men, with big saucer eyes and fat double chins.” The emblem and heraldic device, the evidence of prosperity, and the guarantee of food in the little village was the cabbage along with the clock. In Irving's tale of “Wolfert Webber,” and in the general story of New Amsterdam, influence from the outside world came gradually to upset the old order and disturb its complacency; in Poe's story the little village was thrown into a sudden uproar by the fantastic and mischievous devil from beyond the hills. [page 443:]
That Irving could achieve the true grotesque upon occasion, however, may be seen from his characterization of Governor Wouter Van Twiller and his incomparable staff of advisers. Poe perhaps owed something to this characterization when he created his Bon-Bon.
The person of this illustrious old gentleman was formed and proportioned, as though it had been moulded by the hands of some cunning Dutch statuary, as a model of majesty and, lordly grandeur. He was exactly five feet six inches in height, and six feet five inches in circumferance [[circumference]]. His head was a perfect sphere, and of such stupendous dimensions, that Dame Nature ... would have been unable to construct a neck capable of supporting it; wherefore she wisely declined the attempt, and settled it firmly on the top of his backbone, just between the shoulders. ... His legs were short, but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain. ... His face presented a vast expanse. ... Two small grey eyes twinkled feebly in the midst ... and his full-fed cheeks, which seemed to have taken toll of everything that went into his mouth, were curiously mottled and streaked with dusky red.(74)
His councillors were chosen on the principle that a “round, sleek, fat, unwieldy periphery is ever attended by a mind like itself, tranquil, torpid, and at ease.” The citizens of New Amsterdam believed with certain philosophers that “the body is in some measure an image of the mind.” [page 444:]
“Hans Pfaall,” as Professor Campbell has suggested, shows also unmistakably traces of Irving's humor, but it is likewise “touched up” beyond the Irving quality to the point of grotesquerie. The stolid city of Rotterdam, with its phlegmatic, pipe-smoking dignitaries, was upset by the appearance of a strange balloon, its bag made of newspapers and its car of an enormous beaver hat turned upside down. The “singular somebody” who was the sole occupant of this odd contrivance was sufficiently queer to inspire the citizens with a belief that he was veritably an inhabitant of the moon.
He could not have been more than two feet in height. ... The body of the little ran was more than proportionately broad, giving to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. ... His hands were enormously large. ... His hair was gray, and collected in a queue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue-satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions. [page 445:]
The tale of “Hans Pfaall’ was, so far as we know, Poe's first attempt to create something in the purely hoaxing spirit which inspired him frequently in later tales. It has no particular satirical ain, apparently, other than to take advantage of the credulity of human beings.
Only one other of Poe's tales seems to me to display this same droll grotesquerie, “The Angel of the Odd.” In order to represent in visible form the perverse little imp of eccentric chance and irrational accident, Poe put together the oddest of all his grotesque conceptions. He explained the apparition rationally enough by making it the product of a dream, but it remains, in my opinion, the worst example of this type of humor which he attempted. The Angel of the Odd announced himself to the doubting narrator in a most remarkable rumbling voice with a Dutch accent reminiscent of the burghers of Vondervotteimittiss.
His body was a wine-pipe, or a rum-puncheon, or something of that character, and had a truly Falstaffian air. In its nether extremity was inserted two kegs, which seemed to answer all the purposes of legs. For arms there dangled from the upper portion of the carcass two tolerably long bottles, with the necks outwards for hands. All the head that I saw the monster possessed of [page 446:] was one of those Hessian canteens which resemble a large snuff-box with a hole in the middle of the lid. This canteen (with a funnel on its top, like a cavalier cap slouched over the eyes) was set on edge upon the puncheon, with the hold toward myself.
In order to convert the doubter to a belief in the reality of himself, the Angel devised a series of unbelievable accidents to which the narrator fell victim. There is nothing subtle or particularly comical about the tale; it is obviously compounded of incongruous elements consciously put together for an effect and not at all resulting from a true sense of humor. In other words, it misses fire, in my opinion, because it lacks completely the essence of real humor — spontaneity. Perhaps Poe had outgrown his youthful sense of the ludicrously humorous, or perhaps the tale was written invita Minerva, as he said of Hood's work, and “his heart had no interest” in the production.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 423:]
61. “Poe's Quiz on Willis,” loc. cit. See the discussion of “Lionizing” in chapter III and note 40.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 424:]
62. See the commendatory notices printed in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 425:]
63. See reprint of early text in Edgar Allan Poe and The Philadelphia Saturday Courier, 50ff.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 426:]
64. Macnish wrote Blackwood (see Moir's life, The Modern Pythagorean, I, 43) that he was planning a story, or stories, which should deal with characters at the University of Gottingen, but which would really reflect “two professors belonging to Glasgow,” his alma mater. According to Moir, “The Loves of the Learned” was published in a British annual, 1828.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 428:]
65. Poe may have referred directly to the books of French cookery which were apparently becoming numerous at that time. From reviews of such volumes it appears that they were written sometimes as philosophical disquisitions upon food and at other times as satires. In the December issue of the Messenger, 1835, II, 62, there is a reference to two books on French cookery in a review of the London Quarterly Review for July 1835. The two mentioned are Physiologie du Goût: out Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante: Ouvrace Theorique, Historique, et à l’ordre du Jour. Dédié aux Gastronomes Parisiens, 1835; and The French Cook. A System of Fashionable and Economical Cookery; adapted to the use of English Families. The latter is described as written in “an exquisite spirit of banter” and was said to be irresistibly amusing. One of the popular French journals established around 1830 was the Gastronome, which published chiefly tales and sketches having to do with food and gastronomy.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 433:]
66. “The Devil Was in It,” loc. cit. So far as our present information goes, the tale was published first in 1841.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 434:]
67. Works, II, 362. Published Sept., 1835.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 435:]
68. Skionar is the character in Peacock's novel who represents the nonsensical ideas of the transcendentalists.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 436:]
69. Campbell, The Mind of Poe, 165.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 437:]
70. I am indebted for this suggestion to Professor J. S. Wilson.
71. Professor Campbell has pointed out the influence of Irving's humor in “Hans Pfaall” and “The Devil in the Belfry,” The Mind of Poe, 175.
72. Works of Washington Irving, New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1893, vol. I.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 440:]
73. I believe no one has called attention to the fact that “Wolfert Webber” might also have furnished suggestions for the buried treasure part of “The Gold Bug.” Webber, together with his physician and an old negro, set out upon a journey through country very similar to that described by Poe, and enacted a weird night scene of digging for Kidd's treasure.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 443:]
74. The Works of Washington Irving, vol. II, Knickerbocker's History of New York, 161.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RLH35, 1935] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story (Hudson)