Text: William Mentzel Forrest, “Poetic Resemblances to the Bible,” Biblical Allusions in Poe, 1928, pp. 101-129 (This material may be protected by copyright)

[page 101:]

Poe's poetry, like his prose, has contact with the Bible only here and there, whether its thought or its structure is considered. It is in its thought and purpose, however, that fewest similarities can be found between it and biblical poetry. Hebrew verse is usually beautiful, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a single poem or even a single passage in the sacred poems where beauty is the end or object sought. Commonly the poems are the wings used by the poet and his readers whereby the soul is raised to the heights of supplication or adoration. Though God is beauty and holiness is beauty, both are so much more that the poets cannot be satisfied with producing an aesthetic thrill. It is the moral and spiritual thrill that moves them to melody. As God, and not merely beauty, is the inspiration of Israel's poets, so instruction, and not enjoyment of the beautiful, is their object. That is to say, a large part of biblical poetry is didactic — is used as the vehicle of truth. But didacticism in poetry was the abominable thing which Poe's soul hated.(1)

Quite in keeping with the Hebrew poet's didactic bent was his attitude toward nature. The men of [page 102:] ancient Israel were sensible of the beauty around them. And modern poets are not unmindful that all the beautiful things of the world may be a parable of the things which are unseen but eternal. Where the modern differs from the ancient is partly in emphasis, partly in a greater concern for detail, but chiefly in his appreciation of art for art's sake. It is necessary to remark again that the Hebrew Bible affords almost no poetry but the religious. Yet modern religious poetry is as likely to revel in beauty, and to linger lovingly over the flowers and perfumes and music of nature as are other metrical productions. Especially does it create finished pictures of things with delight in artistic skill, while biblical poetry gives only a bare outline or rough sketch of the most magnificent or beautiful things, and hurries on to the moral and spiritual meaning. Even the noted description of the war-horse is hardly an exception.(2) With hastier stroke another poet touched upon the majesty of a storm at sea:

Of the same sort is Psalm one hundred and four, unsurpassed in its rapid panorama of all the majesty and mystery of the universe. But, when compared with present-day standards, it is not so much a poem as a rich mine of the materials from which poetry may be made.

Nature, then, to Bible writers, is simply God's vesture, or man's handmaiden. What there is in it able to declare the glory of God, or to minister to man's material and spiritual necessities, is used by the poets of the Bible as aids to meditation and worship. Flowers of the field, trees of the forest, waves of the sea, storms of the heavens, stars of the sky — all these and much more the sacred writings abound in. But they are used only to remind us that man is like a flower in evanescence, that his good fortune makes the trees to clap their hands, that God makes stormy winds do his bidding, that his omniscience telleth the number of the stars and calleth them all by name. For the rest, it is enough that it is all given to bring seed to the sower and bread to the eater.

Poe's antididacticism did not remove him further from the Hebrew poets than did his romanticism and [page 104:] impressionism. He was a true modern in his treatment of nature. Though dealing in detailed pictures of natural beauty as little as the Hebrews, he none the less gloried in nature's loveliness. Somber as are his themes, the colors of his poems are often gorgeous. Black and gray and white are relieved by red, purple, violet, green, and yellow — especially golden yellow. On the other hand the poetry of the Bible is well-nigh colorless and devoid of any appreciation of color. It seems odd that not the Psalms and Job, but such an extremely prosaic book as Exodus should be resplendent with crimson and purple and gold. That such richness of color belonged to tabernacle and temple adds to the wonder that the people could so employ color in their house of worship and so leave it out of their poetry of worship.

Much the same contrast obtains between Poe and the Bible respecting odors and fragrance. Like all Orientals, the Hebrews delighted in heavy perfumes. But aside from burning incense and burning flesh in the temple service their literature reflects almost nothing of delight in sweet smells. Poe, to whom of course the stench of burning flesh or other nitrogenous substances would have been revolting, dwelt upon the perfume of roses and hyacinths and violets and pansies and rosemary and rue. Flowers and music and moonbeams and starlight contributed to the beauties of his poetry in a way common enough to modern poets, and most uncommon to the Bible. Yet what we might find in Hebrew poetry if that which has survived were not so exclusively religious is intimated in [page 105:] the Song of Solomon, that solitary book of love songs which has held its uncertain place in the Scriptures only by virtue of an untenable allegorical interpretation. There may be found, with a certain voluptuousness and joy in beauty, womanly charms and graces, flowers and fruits, music and all sweet odors in bewildering and intoxicating profusion.(4)

One more quality separating Poe's poetry from that of the Bible may be noted before passing to matters of structure. To the Hebrews there was ever present a sense of divine immediacy that excluded the mention of secondary causes and intermediate beings. There was also a rigid monotheism, perhaps developed rather late, but dominating the redactors of the earliest writings. It banished the mythology used by all ancient and most modern poets, and kept subordinated to Deity any angels or other agents introduced.(5) The Genesis accounts of Creation and the Flood are epic in character and at least partially poetic in form. They are closely related in substance and structure to the Babylonian epics recounting the same events. But one narrative is exceedingly simple with its lone God as the great actor. The other is polytheistic and mythological to a high degree. Chaos and Darkness and everything else are gods, in conflict or co-operation, in defeat or triumph. Thence resulted an altogether [page 106:] foolish cosmology. So to the classical poets, all the heavenly bodies and forces of nature were gods; so also were they, in name at least, to all the modern poets of the classical school. Even since the passing of that fashion and our emancipation from dictionaries of mythology and Greek and Roman antiquities when reading poetry, no little of it survives in the common personifications of many writers of other schools.

During the dominance of classicism biblical poetry seemed rather barren and lifeless by reason of its lack of mythological coloring. But its temporary loss was its permanent gain. It was saved from entanglement with a mythology which would have been necessarily Semitic and therefore repugnant to the classicists. It was kept for a day whose taste is increasingly offended by any and all mythologies.

Poe was but slightly tainted with classicism. Hence but little use of mythology will be found in his poems. That little, however, separates him from the biblical poets. They would not have written of Echoes answering,(6) of Psyche walking with a man,(7) of dear Dian sinking from sight upon a couch of thunder cloud,(8) or of Science, daughter of Old Time, dragging Diana from her car, driving the Hamadryad from the wood, and tearing the Naiad and Elfin from flood and green grass.(9) But the paucity of such allusions in his poetry, and their minor importance where introduced, [page 107:] is one of the guarantees of Poe's hold upon the future.

Structurally Poe's poetry is related to the biblical in two ways. In the first place, it is practically all lyrical; in the second place, it abounds in artistic and varied repetition. Beyond that, nearly every feature of his versification removes it far from the Bible. It is not worth while to carry a comparison into the Hebrew original. Poe was interested in the question of the structure of Hebrew poems.(10) But he was ignorant of the language, despite his repeated use of a few words and phrases picked up from various sources.(11) Moreover, in his day very little was known or written about Hebrew meter and rhythm, even for the special scholar, and what was written supported conflicting theories that were mutually destructive. Biblical influences upon Poe reached him almost exclusively through the King James English version.

The most casual reading of the Psalms and other poetical books of the Bible shows that they bear little resemblance to any other poetry, ancient or modern, with which we are familiar, except the unmetrical and irregular poems of Walt Whitman, and the new verse of the past few years. When the lines and stanzas of these poems are indicated on the printed pages of our modern versions, their resemblance to Whitman is even more apparent. About both there is a rhythm without meter or rhyme, and a general lack of conformity to any of our other principles of verse. Yet both have their music and their charm. Especially [page 108:] does the Bible possess a noble rhythm that is none the less beautiful and majestic because it is usually as irregular as the rustle of leaves, or the sough of winds, or the roll of surf, or the fall of cataracts. It is a rhythm that we prefer to the most faultless art — the natural beauty of flowers freely growing upon their own stems, not the stiff monstrosity of flowers tied on toothpicks and fashioned into conventional designs. Not even Milton's metrical psalms can charm us from our allegiance to the more primitive music of our common version. Small wonder, then, that all lesser metrical versions seem barbarous to everyone who has not become sentimentally attached to them through lifelong use as church hymns.(12) After all that has been said concerning systems of Hebrew meter it does not appear that the first readers of biblical poetry found it very radically different in form from what now exists in our best English versions.(13)

Poe maintained that the best poetry is the most prosaic.(14) But he did not try to apply his principle beyond the order and form of words. To him poetry was nine-tenths mathematics.(15) That is to say, the spirit never predominated; structure and form were depended upon for music and beauty and were supreme. Thought and meaning were subordinated to harmony of sound and symmetry of form. No poet ever excelled Poe in the technique of verse or used [page 109:] more faultless and wonderful meters and rhymes. Therein he stands far removed from his contemporary, Whitman, and the latter's great forerunners, the Hebrew poets.

But to return to the two points of resemblance. The first, the lyrical form of the two bodies of verse, need not detain us long. Poe's detestation of narrative and didactic poetry kept him from attempting epics and gnomes. He said, “For my own part, I would much rather have written the best song of a nation than its noblest epic.”(16) The biblical writers did not share Poe's antipathy to didacticism and introduced a large gnomic element into their lyrical books.(17) But they wrote no epic poems, and nothing nearer to a drama than Job and the Song of Songs.(18) The use of lyrics by Poe and the Bible only accentuates the difference in the spirit of their utterances. Poe partook, in superlative degree, of the morbidness, overrefinement, and aloofness that are justly charged to the account of most modern lyrics. The Bible has the deep human sympathies which have ever made its poems the songs of humanity and fitted them for voicing the united feelings and aspirations of congregations of people.

The second structural resemblance of Poe's verse to the biblical requires more detailed attention. His repetends are numerous and varied; so are those of the Bible. The refrain is one type of them. In the [page 110:] Psalms it is used in greater variety than in Poe. There we have continuous refrain:

So through twenty-six stanzas, each a single line followed by the same refrain.(19)

The Raven also gives us a refrain used continuously at the end of every stanza, but the stanzas are longer and the refrain shorter, so the burden of it is lessened. In parts of For Annie there is a suggestion of the same effect produced by the recurrence of certain words. In the eighth stanza the word is “bed”; in the fourteenth, both “bed” and “dead.” But Poe's keen appreciation of the value of the refrain as a form of repetition was modified by his desire to avoid carrying monotone to the point of weariness, so he never constructed a poem closely conforming to the psalm just examined.(20)

Double refrain is another form used by psalmists but only faintly suggested in Poe:

There are four such strophes with modifications of the twofold refrain, and an introductory and a concluding strophe without it.

Annabel Lee gives us a suggestion of this:

This is found with slight variations as to wording and placing in four stanzas, and with greater variations in the other two.

Initial refrain is common to Poe and the Bible. A psalm opens with the following line:

This is repeated at the beginning of the second strophe with slight change:

One of Poe's poems, containing six stanzas, begins the first and fourth with identical lines, which are followed by lines slightly varied for artistic effect in the second case:

What is known as envelope structure is the use of an initial refrain repeated at the end of the poem instead of in the opening of its middle stanza. As so used it encloses the thought which should be read in the light of the refrain:

This is repeated at the end:

A perfect example of this is found in Dream-Land, like the psalm even to having the refrain at the beginning a little longer than its repetition at the end:

At the end it reads the same except that the last two lines are omitted and the fifth and sixth are modified:

The One hundred third and One hundred fourth Psalms, I Saw Thee on Thy Bridal Day, and Ulalume furnish other examples of this structure. The last-named poem exemplifies Poe's skill in overcoming monotony and making even a refrain carry forward his thought.

Finally, there is the varied refrain. Quite commonly in the other forms, especially as used by Poe, some variation is found. But it is well to notice this as a distinct form. No better example can be found than one of the Psalms of Asaph, which gives a refrain four times, thrice at the end of strophes with minor changes, once in the midst of a strophe with great modification. Its four forms are as follows:

Our poet in his Bridal Ballad rings the changes on his single line refrain at the end of every stanza:

His Dream within a Dream uses at the end of the second strophe the identical words that conclude the first. But both form and thought are slightly varied by transferring one word from the second to the first line of the refrain in its final occurrence:

It is The Raven, however, that furnishes Poe's masterpiece in refrain in variation. His own explanation of it may be quoted:

So “nevermore” sounds through the poem, varied by the stanzas themselves from an almost comical note at its first occurrence, through a tone of pensive sadness to one of sharp pain, and finally of settled despair.

Over against this dirge of despair may be placed one of hope wherein the ancient poet anticipates by many centuries the device of our modern poet in varying the meaning of its practically identical words of refrain by the changing tone of the stanzas preceding it. The poem is wrongfully divided in the Bible into two separate psalms. It has three strophes. The first voices a mingling of longing and despair which tinge the refrain. Beginning in deeper gloom, the second strophe moves on to hope that God will ultimately enable the poet to rejoice even in his night of trial. That hope rises above the taunts of enemies and gives color to the refrain upon its second occurrence. The third strophe passes from the longing mingled with despair, of the first, and the despair mingled with hope, of the second, to triumphant confidence. The joy and singing of its closing lines make the question of the refrain no longer one of doubt, and the call to the soul no longer a hope against hope:

A closer inspection of repetition brings us to the leading feature of Hebrew poetry, which is called parallelism of members.(28) A number of kinds of parallelism have been differentiated, and the various kinds are modified and combined in many ways. It is not necessary to enumerate and describe them here except insofar as something analogous is to be found in Poe. The simplest form consists of two lines, the second being parallel to the first in position, and, to some degree, in thought. It is thus a simple couplet, and is the base of all Hebrew versification. The tendency is to make every line complete in itself. That feature, and the lines of unequal length and no marked rhyme or meter, set the poetry apart from that of most peoples in a manner already noted. Since parallelism is the chief feature of the poetry of the Bible, unlike the leading characteristics of most poetry, it lends itself to translation in a way not destructive to the charm of the original.

This turning back of the thought upon itself has been likened to “the heaving and sinking of a troubled heart.” It belongs most naturally to the slow pulsations [page 118:] of the heart when grief and woe have driven the blood in upon it. As joy quickens the pulse, so it naturally causes music and poetry to move trippingly and swiftly. Parallelism, after becoming the conventionalized form of Hebrew poetry, was used to express every variety of feeling as best it could. Nevertheless it is most fittingly the vehicle of a pensive or somber mood. That Poe should share its use with the Bible is, therefore, not strange.

As the couplet is the simplest combination of parallel lines, so synonymous parallelism is the simplest form of the couplet:

Here the second line is only a slightly varied statement of the first. Poe's synonymous parallelisms are often in practically identical words, though sometimes varied like most of the biblical examples:

Antithetic parallelism is of frequent occurrence, the second line setting a thought in opposition to the first:

Synthetic parallelism has no very marked characteristic. Any line completing the thought of the preceding line, without being synonymous or antithetic, gives the form:

Any two lines in Poe that give a complete thought will serve as an example:

Climactic parallelism occurs chiefly in verses marked by strong feeling. The speaker is overcome and catches his breath. He then turns back and takes up his sentence and carries it on to completion:

Poe's poetry has many lines broken in various ways by feeling:

But he furnishes a better example in a passage of poetic prose:

There we have the identical form found in:

Emblematic parallelism is a very beautiful variety. One line states some fact in the physical realm; the other applies it to some truth in the moral or spiritual world. Usually it takes the form of a simile:

Such forms cannot be found in Poe. But occasional similes used by him are of the same general type. Take the first stanza of To the River:

If that comparison of a woman's spiritual charms to the beauty of a clear stream were cast into a sententious Hebrew couplet; it would give us: [page 121:]

Such recasting of the poet's lines is of no value except to show the essential kinship of all who use physical things as emblems of spiritual qualities. Taking a modified biblical example of this type,

Through the difference in form may be seen in Poe's and in the Bible lines the essence of emblematic par-allism. One likens a good word, the other an aspiring soul, to something in the world of visible objects.

Stair-like parallelism is the only remaining kind requiring notice. In it the thought advances through a number of lines by carrying a word or words from one line to another. Sometimes synonymous or kindred words are substituted for the words carried forward:

The Song of Deborah is a more striking example. As it is rather long to quote in full, a single impressive stanza may be cited:

Lenore approximates this structure, especially when written in the short and broken meter in which Poe once published it: [page 123:]

Ulalume, whose weird music infolds upon itself in so many ways, gives another example:

In leaving the subject of parallelism it may be remarked that the Hebrews were influenced by lack of rhymes to give prominence to thought rather than sound in versification. Thus they used strophes made up of couplets parallel in thought in the place of our verses rhyming in pairs. Also they employed quatrains of which the first and second lines were parallel, or the first and third, and second and fourth; or the first and fourth, and second and third. So they carried their combinations through every variety of thought resemblance, from the couplet to the strophe of fourteen lines. Merely to show how they thus supplied the place of sound resemblance in Poe and others, a single example of the combination known as introverted parallelism will suffice:

The “thine,” “thy” of the first and last lines belong together, as do the “mine” and “my” of the middle two. This combination of a b b a is very common in our modern poetry in sound instead of sense grouping. Where the moderns succeed in tying together with rhymes lines that are kindred in sense they undoubtedly gain in excellence over those who are content to pair by rhyming lines unrelated in thought. At times Poe attained that excellence:

Although part of a stanza running beyond a quatrain these lines fall into two pairs of kindred thought as well as kindred sound. The “sober skies” and “night” of the first and last, and the leaves “crisped” and “withering” of the two middle lines, join them in sense in a manner that renders appropriate their introverted rhyming. Usually Poe contented himself with introversion of sound without regard to thought:

A comparison of biblical resemblances in Poe due to repetition of single words and phrases may conclude this study of his poetry.

Epizeuxis, as noted in the chapter on prose, is the repeating of words for emphasis. In poetry the repetition is as likely to be simply euphonic as emphatic.

Poe's fondness for repeating affords many like passages:

Epanaphora is the repeating of initial words in successive lines. In translating poetry from Hebrew to English this figure is often broken up, but examples of it are preserved:

There is a tendency to include in this figure the next one to be examined, by having repetition at the end of the lines also. Such is the case with Poe:

Epiphora is the counterpart of the preceding figure, having its duplication at the end of lines or sentences:

This abounds in Poe: [page 127:]

It is found in the two lines preceding the refrain in every stanza of The Raven; in Lenore it is in three of the four stanzas; every stanza of Eulalie concludes with it. Ulalume has it once in every stanza, and twice in all but two. It occurs twice in Annabel Lee. If printed like Lenore and The Raven, For Annie would be full of it. The Bells, Bridal Ballad, Politian, and even the unrhymed To Helen have it. In short, nearly all of his most beautiful verse owes a large part of its music to this figure, generally combined with epanaphora.

Anadiplosis repeats at the beginning of a sentence or clause a word or phrase from the end of the previous line:

Our modern master of repetition levies tribute upon this figure also:

From this, epanadiplosis differs by putting the repeated word at the beginning and the end of a sentence or line. Thus the repetend folds up within itself the thought of the line or sentence, much as introverted parallelism does for a stanza, and envelope refrain does for an entire poem. This is rarely met either in Poe or the English Bible, though rather common in the Hebrew:

To find our modern, Occidental, Aryan poet of aesthetics using so largely the same literary devices [page 129:] employed by the ancient, Oriental, Semitic poets of religion is interesting. In varying degree they had been used by many other poets of many times and climes.(69) Poe may have followed other masters than the Hebrew poets. But his intimate knowledge of the Bible writers is hardly open to question, and his dependence upon them is most probable. Be that as it may, when he reached the perfection of his art he was closely akin to the Hebrews. Has any other non-Semitic bard ever so largely and so skillfully employed the methods of the biblical poets in making music through elaborate and varied repetitions of words, sentences, and stanzas?

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 101:]

1 “The heresy of The Didactic” in The Poetic Principle, XIV. 271, 272.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 102:]

2 Job 39:19-25.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 103:]

3 Psa. 107:23-31.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 105:]

4 Note the mention in 1:10 and 7:5 of the girl's tresses and compare Poe's frequent references to woman's hair, e.g., Ligeia, II. 250; Helen VII. 46; The Sleeper, 52; Eulalie, 91; Annie, 113. See the author's volume on the Song of Solomon entitled King or Shepherd?

5 The one bold personification of the Old Testament that almost passes from figure of speech to hypostasis is in the Praise of Wisdom (Prov. 8) .

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 106:]

6 Coliseum.

7 Ulalume.

8 To Helen.

9 Sonnet to Science.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 107:]

10 See various remarks on, in Pinakidia, etc., XIV.

11 See below, pp. 205-208.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 108:]

12 Hutton speaks of our feeling against psalms in meter as like what would arise if the sea should begin to murmur sonatas, or the wind to whistle tunes (Literary Essays; The Poetry of the Old Testament, 244) .

13 See Cobb. Criticism of Systems of Hebrew Metre.

14 “The more prosaic the structure of verse, the better” (Marginalia, XVI. 58) .

15 Rationale of Verse, XIV. 209.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 109:]

16 Criticism, X. 44. He did neither, but kept to the singing variety of verse.

17 Prov. Eccl; Job.

18 The raw materials of epics abound in the great stories of the Old Testament. Genung calls Job The Epic of the Inner Life. Poe tried a drama and failed. Politian.

[The followings footnote appears at the bottom of page 110:]

19 Psa. 136.

20 Probably Psa. 136 would not have its present form had it not been intended for antiphonal singing. which would overcome the monotony. As a rhetorical and musical effect it is practically an example of epistrophe.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 111:]

21 Psa. 107.

22 Psa. 62.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 112:]

23 The first line is the only title of this poem.

24 Psa. 8.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 113:]

25 Psa. 80: cf. Psa. 49:12. 20.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 115:]

26 Philosophy of Composition, XIV. 199.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 117:]

27 Psa. 42, 43.

28 So called since the appearance of Bishop Lowth's monumental work, De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum, 1753.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 118:]

29 Prov. 16:28.

30 Ulalume.

31 For Annie. Four lines as printed by Poe.

32 Prov. 11:9.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 119:]

33 The Lake.

34 Prov. 15:3.

35 To F — s S. O — d.

36 Psa. 94:3.

37 Ulalume.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 120:]

38 Premature Burial, V. 268.

39 Psa. 92:9.

40 Prov. 25:25.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 121:]

41 Prov. 25:11.

42 To Helen.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 122:]

43 Psa. 121.

44 Judges 5:24-27.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 124:]

45 Prov. 23:15. 16.

46 Ulalume.

47 Israfel.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 125:]

48 Song of Solomon 6:13. In Dent. 16:20 a literal rendering of the Hebrew gives. “That which is justice, justice shalt thou follow.”

49 Conquering Worm.

50 Haunted Palace.

51 One in Paradise.

52 Politian.

53 Isa. 1:7.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 126:]

54 Psa. 24:7-9.

55 Lenore.

56 Ulalume.

57 Eccl. 3:16.

58 Psa. 90:5. 6.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 127:]

59 Eulalie.

60 The Raven.

61 Judges 5:23.

62 Job 35:9.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 128:]

63 Coliseum.

64 Eldorado.

65 Rom. 8:24.

66 Job 28:17.

67 Coliseum.

68 Al Araaf.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 129:]

69 See C. Alphonso Smith, Repetition and Parallelism in English Verse.