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CHAPTER I
POE'S SATIRE OF MAGAZINE PRACTICES
It seems proper to begin this study with a discussion of Poe's satiric attacks upon contemporary magazines, not because they stimulated Poe to his greatest satiric efforts but because they were his most consistent subject of satire. Poe's satire of the English literati began with his earliest tales and dwindled away around the middle 1840's. His satire of the Bostonians began around the turn of the ‘forties and continued until his death in 1849. The New York literati he satirized primarily during the last five years of his life. The political satires were grouped about the Jackson-Van Buren terms of office, especially 1835 and 1840. Poe's satire of magazine practices, on the other hand, started with his earliest stories, in 1832, and continued until his last story, “Xing a Paragrab,” in 1849.
Roughly, these satiric tales can be clustered around three poles: Poe's satire of the material used in Blackwood's magazine stories, his satire of the manner in which those stories were written, end his satire of the current American editorial practices of his day. [page 24:] The first pole is illustrated by his tale, “Loss of Breath.” The second is represented by “How to Write a Blackwood Article” and its companion piece, “A Predicament.” The third grouping includes “Lionizing,” “Never Bet the Devil Your Head,” “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” and “Xing a Paragrab.” Since these divisions fall into a roughly chronological sequence, it will be convenient to discuss them in order.
“Loss of Breath” is one of two stories which Poe admitted were intended to be “satires properly speaking. “(1) It is a satire, he explained, of the kind of stories he labelled “extravagancies” in Blackwood's.(2) Blackwood's magazine must have been an early favorite of Poe's, or he studied its files closely, for he mentions articles which appeared there as early as 1819 and 1821.(3) Poe was actuated through most of his career by the ambition to become the owner and editor of a literary magazine, and a good case can be drawn to show that his ideas of a successful magazine were molded by his admiration for the Blackwood's magazine. The evidence is too well known [page 25:] to make citation necessary.
“Loss of Breath” is a burlesque of the extravagant tales which appeared not only in Blackwood's but also in most of the popular American and English periodicals of the period. Poe mentions a few of these tales himself: “The Man in the Bell,” “The Involuntary Experimentalist,” “The Diary of a Late Physician,” “Monos and Daimonos,” and “Confessions of an Opium Eater.”(1) Napier Wilt has suggested others to show how prevalent this type of tale was: “The Unearthly Witness,” “Who Murdered Beglie,” “The Metempsychosis,” “The Last Man,” “The Man with a Nose,” “The Haunted House,” “The Doomed Man,” “The Proselyte,” and “The Spectre Fire Ship.”(2) Other tales will be added during the course of the discussion, for the list can be expanded with ease. Nevertheless, unless one has browsed among nineteenth-century magazines and especially early numbers of Blackwood's, one may fall to get the full effect of Poe's satire.
“Loss of Breath” begins with Mr. Lackobreath about to scold his wife when, suddenly, he is thrown into confusion by discovering he has lost his breath. Feeling that it would be a disgrace to let such a matter become known, he tries to disguise the fact by reciting from [page 26:] current dramas. Thisruse failing, he leaves home. On the stage coach he is thought dead and thrown off, his trunks after him. An apothecary picks him up and practices dissection on him. Two cats vie for his nose. Indignant over the misuse, Mr. Lackobreath jumps from the window and lands in a cart taking the condemned to the gallows. His bad luck holds and he is hanged and buried. In the vault he meets a neighbor who has “caught his breath.” After a more equal division of respiration, they are able to clamor until they are freed.(1)
The prolonged bouncing from one calamity to another which the hero endures in “Loss of Breath” was characteristic of the tales Poe was satirizing. The first chapter of “The Diary of a Late Physician” gives the story of a merchant who earns vast wealth but who, through his wife's extravagance and his daughter's attempt to marry a penniless noble, is forced to speculate wildly, loses his money, endures bankruptcy, loses his wife, his daughter, his son, his friends, and finally falls dead himself from the oppressive weight of his calamities.(2) [page 27:] It is this heaping up of calamities that Poe is burlesquing in “Loss of Breath” where Mr. Lackobreath not only suffers the initial calamity of lost breath but also loses his home, breaks his legs in being thrown from the stage, suffers fracture of the skull when his trunks land on him, has several lengths of intestine removed by the apothecary, is hanged, and buried alive.(1) Poe has, of course, exaggerated these calamities wildly; nevertheless, the picaresque journey from calamity to calamity was a characteristic element of many Blackwood stories.
Another characteristic of these stories was the didactic introductory passage. Even in the very shortest of tales, like “The Idiot,” we find this the initial exposition:
The heart, in many instances, is a better judge even of propriety in manners than the judgment. The judgment, in cases touching the conduct of individuals, is perhaps often too severs; for example, we are apt to regard with equal contempt the behavior of the weak and the silly, without considering, that under the zero of reason there are many degrees before the human intelligence sinks to that of the animal instincts. At least it is charitable to believe so, and it sharishes amiable sentiments to inculcate that doctrine.(2)
The tale goes on to tell how an idiot child, who could recognize only motherlove, could recognize Death because it withdrew that love. Poe, too, has the didactic introduction. [page 28:]
The most notorious ill-fortune must in the end yield to the untiring courage of philosophy — as the most stubborn city to the ceaseless vigilance of an enemy.(1)
This weighty introduction having been accomplished, Poe's satire skips blithdly on — just as some Blackwood stories seemed to lose sight of the ambitious moral they set out to illustrate.
Another element of a Blackwood story was the convention of “awakening” to one's predicament. This “awakening” was always an occasion for mental torment and thoughts of death on the part of the victim. A typical example of how this “awakening” occurred appears in “The Last Man,” the story of a man who finds he is the last human on a dying world.(2)
I started up with a loud cry of despair — I saw the whole world reeling around me, . . . I was dying, — I was dead, . . . No, no — I had not felt the pangs of dissolution, and my reason seemed to recall untome all that I had suffered, and all that I had endured, I repeated the list of my miseries, — it was perfect, but Death was not there.(3)
Poe's tale:
Behold me then safely ensconced in my private boudoir, a fearful instance of the ill consequences attending upon irascibillty — alive, with the qualifications of the dead — dead, with the propensities of the living — an anomaly on the face of the earth — being very calm, yet breathless.(4) [page 29:]
The two paragraphs might be interchanged except that Poe's final phrase — ”being very calm, yet breathless” — twists the whole “awakening” into burlesque.
The awakening is usually followed by some period of melancholy contemplation. Florian, the central figure in “The Headsman,” is fleeing from an accusation of murder, but his flight is not so precipitous that he has no time for soul-searching.(1)
In vain did he (Florian) endeavor to console hime self with the consciousness that he was innocent, and under the protection of a just and merciful Providence. The judicial murder of Calas, and of other innocent sufferers, detailed in the “Causes Célébres” of Pitaval, were ever present to his fevered fancy. . . .(2)
Mr. Lackobreath, too, has his moment of contemplation.
Throwing myself upon a chair, I remained for some time absorbed in meditation. My reflections, be sure, were of no consolatory kind. A thousand vague and lachrymatory fancies took possesion of my soul — and even the idea of suicide flitted across my brain; but it is a trait in the perversity of human nature to reject the obvious and the ready, for the far-distant and equivocal.(3)
Here, as earlier, we are jerked up by Poe's sardonic burlesque of the conventional story. No Blackwood story ever accepts the “obvious and ready” when it is possible to select the “far-distant and equivocal,” Poe seems to be [page 30:] saying. The hero of such a story prefers to wiggle through a whole series of crises before extricating himself.
A prominent characteristic of the hero of a Blackwood story was his readiness, at the stimulation of a thought, to give a discourse on art or philosophy. In The Modern Gyges: a Tale of Trials,” which appeared in Blackwood's in February, 1829, Walstein — a ‘pure’ painter who was betrayed into seeing and painting a nude woman — confronted with his immodest representation, defends him self thus:
Poets prize those compositions which are founded in nature and ennobled by art far above the mere imaginative in poetry, and the same rule applies to the sister art of painting. Thus, Dante and Michel Angelo, Ariosto and Titian, Tasso and Rafaelle, were respectively animated by the same spirit. . . . How greatly would all the arts benefit were the votaries of each in more intimate communion; but it is the calamity and curse of fine art that its disciples too often want bread. The fear of destitution fosters a mean spirit of detraction, and divides those kindred minds, which were intended to develop and improve each other — (1)
Now we return to Poe's Mr. Lackobreath who is diligently searching for his lost breath.
It might have a vapory — it might even have a tangible form. Most philosophers, upon many points of philosophy, are still very unphilosophical. William Godwin, however, says in his “Mandeville,” that “invisible things are the only realities,” and this, all will allow, is a case in point. I would have the judicious reader pause before accusing such asseverations of an undue quantum of absurdity. Anaxagoras, it will be remembered, maintained that snow is black, and this I [page 31:] have since found to be the case.(1)
In spite of the buffoonery it is easy to recognize the discursive aside that Poe is burlesquing.
Blackwood stories — for along with Poe we are using Blackwood stories as representative of a type of current 19th century fiction-frequently stopped in midflight to quote from some literary or scientific source. Such quoting usually resulted in artificiality because it diverted the reader's interest, as Poe realized. “Passages From the Diary of a Late Physician” was a popular series of tales which appeared in Blackwood's irregularly during the 1830's and which will serve to illustrate this practice. In this tale the merchant is trying to retrieve his fortune, lost by his wife's extravagance, and his commercial friends are puzzled by the actions of this former genius of the exchange.
At first they gave him credit for playing some deep and desperate game, and trembled at his hardihood; but after waiting a while and perceiving no
— “wondrous issue
Leap down their gaping throats to recompense
Long hours of patient hope” —
they came to the conclusion that . . . he had determined to draw his affairs into as narrow a compass as possible, with a view to withdrawing altogether from active life, on a handsome independence.
Poe, in satirizing this device, ridicules the nineteenth-century [page 32:] writer's faith in the respectability of literary gems. Mr. Lackobreath has just been sent to a public vault after his supposed death by hanging.
Here, after due interval, I was deposited. The sexton departed and I was left alone. A line of Marston's “Malcontent” —
“Death's a good fellow and keeps open House” — struck me at that moment as a palpable lie.(1)
The preceding parallels are enough to show how complete was Poe's satire of the characteristic elements of the stories that appeared in Blackwood's. The episodic quality of the stories, the didacticism, the sudden awareness of one's predicament, the melancholy contemplation, the dissertations on art or philosophy, and the peppering of literary quotations were all elements of Blackwood stories and, consequently, were elements satirized by Poe. Yet, it must be emphasized again, these were not narrative techniques peculiar to Blackwood's, but rather were best represented there and, because of the magazine's success, were underscored in Poe's mind as being typical Blackwood stories.
“Loss of Breath” was not limited in its satire to Blackwood's alone. There are allusions to contemporary drama, to John H. Hewitt and to political journals.(2) [page 33:] However, the main satire is independent of these asides. These scattered allusions are principally interesting be cause of the insight they give into Poe's personal likes and dislikes, for they seem to have no direct connection with the tale itself.
The next satiric tale to be considered, “Lionizing,” is a satire of the rage for celebrities and, as such, is considered later. However, the narrator in the tale be comes the rage of “Fum Fudge” for his paper on Nosology, and the people have already accepted him when the English magazines hasten to write their critiques: calling him “superb physiologist,” “wonderful genius,” “profound thinker,” and so on through a modest list of superlatives.(1) This is but a single arrow directed at the English journals, it is true, but it pokes its satire at the magazine tendency to find everything good that has already been accepted, to follow public opinion rather than to lead it.
The two satiric tales that most readers feel they understand best are the two companion pieces, “How to Write a Blackwood Article,” and “The Predicament.”(2) These stories [page 34:] are burlesques of the manner in which the kind of tales Poe calls “intensities are written. In the first story, an ambitious, obtuse, young bluestocking writer, Psyche Zenobia, is trying to learn the secret of publishing in Blackwood's magazine. Mr. Blackwood, the editor, is very certain of the characteristics of an acceptable story: it mast have style, it must show learning, it must record sensations. In order to achieve these ends there are various devices at the writer's command, so Mr. Blackwood assures Zenobia: one may write with an old pen, compile or borrow a list of similies, use well-proven expressions, pattern one's story after such classics as “The Dead Alive,” or one may adopt an attitude — such as damning Locke to add character to one's work. But, above all, one must be careful to choose a tone for the story. Some suggested tones are: didactic, enthusiastic, natural, elated, diffusive, interjectional; laconic, curt, metaphysical, transcendental, heterogeneous.(1)
“The Predicament” is the sequel to the preceding story. Zenobia attempts to put all of Mr. Blackwood's advice to immediate use. She adopts the tone heterogeneous and records her sensations as the hands of a huge clock sever her head. Zenobia endures all in the interests of her story. She remembers everything Mr. Blackwood has [page 35:] told her — and uses it all.(1)
One of the reasons that these two stories seem to be better than most of Poe's satires is that we feel behind the satire a sound literary philosophy that furnishes a satiric norm less arbitrary and less personal than the foundation of the majority of Poe's satires. A few comparisons between Poe's canons of the tale (in his later review of Hawthorne's Twice-told Tales) and Mr. Blackwood's instructions to Zenobia will serve to show how basic the norm underlying the satire was to Poe.(2)
One of the “tones” which Mr. Blackwood suggested to Zenobia was the tone he called heterogeneous.
As for the tone heterogeneous, it is merely a judicious mixture, in equal proportions, of all the other tones in the world, and is consequently made up of everything deep, great, odd, piquant, pertinent, and pretty.(3)
This levity in writing of tone is in sharp contrast to the seriousness with which Poe treated it in his review of Hawthorne's stories.
But the nature of originality, so far as regards its manifestation in letters, is but imperfectly understood. The inventive or original mind as frequently displays 1fself in novelty of tone as in novelty of matter.(4) [page 36:]
The difference between these two approaches toward a single element of the short story further emphasizes how wide was the disparity between what Mr. Blackwood advocated to Zenobia and what Poe had come to feel were the basic principles of the short story art. Poe criticized Hawthorne for the “mysticism evidenced” in the tone of his stories yet he had Mr. Blackwood include that as one of the possible tones to be used.(1) Obviously Poe felt that Blackwood stories too seldom showed the novelty of tone that would indicate originality: that their tones, although varied, fell into conventional types — except where, like Zenobia, the author used all the tones at once.
The importance given to tone or manner in this satire indicates that Poe is not satirizing the Blackwood story as a type but only the manner in which it is written; this is borne out by the rest of the story. It is borne out, too, by Poe's criticism of the stories of John Neal, who had written for Blackwood's in the 1820's.
Some of the pieces of Mr. John Neal abound in vigor and originality; but in general, his compositions of this class are excessively diffuse, extravagant, and indicative of an imperfect sentiment of Art.(2)
Diffuseness was another of the tones offered by Mr. Blackwood, but our attention is arrested by Poe's feeling that these errors come from an imperfect understanding of the [page 37:] art of the short story. Was, then, the satire of Blackwood's magazine aimed at the nature of the stories or at the stories as an “imperfect sentiment of Art?” As we shall show, Poe seemed to be concerned with these stories as exhibiting a faulty conception of the short story art.
We have only to look at Poe's own stories and to his defence of such stories in the review of Hawthorne's stories —
And here it will be seen how full of prejudice are the usual animadversions against those tales of effect, many fine examples of which were found in the earlier numbers of Blackwood. The impressions produced were wrought in a legitimate sphere of action, and constituted a legitimate although sometimes an exaggerated interest.(1)
to see that Poe accepted such tales as a valid kind of short story. But, if he approved of the Blackwood story and yet was ridiculing its tone, its subject, and its elements, what was the aim of the satire?
If our analysis is correct we have the key to Poe's satire in this statement of the aims of the short-story teller.
A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his Incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the [page 38:] tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre- established design.(1)
Poe was not satirizing the Blackwood story as a type but because a “unique, single effect” was not chosen first and then the incidents worked out to contribute to it — in other words, the stories were imperfectly conceived and constructed.
Mr. Blackwood advises Zenobia, “The first thing requisite is to get yourself into such a scrape as no one ever got into before.”(2) Actually Poe is saying the trouble with Blackwood stories is that they chose the incident befor [[before]] they have decided on the effect they want. But Mr. Blackwood goes on, “Having determined upon your subject, you must next consider the tone, or manner, of your narration.”(3) Here again Poe would say that the tone as well as the subject must be subordinated to effect. The whole point of the satire is this failure to secure totality” because an effect is not chosen to which the whole story is trimmed and fashioned.
The unity of effect that Poe desires in a story explains, in terms of an artistic norm, his burlesque of the requirements of a Blackwood story. [page 39:]
Turn up your nose at things in general, and when you let slip any thing a little too absurd, you need not be at the trouble of scratching it out, but just add a footnote and say you are indebted for the above pro found observation to the ‘Kritik der reinem Vernunft,” or to the “Metaphysithe Anfongsgrunde der Noturwissens chaft.” This would look erudite and — and — and frank.(1)
The review of Hawthorne's tales, as the best single statement of Poe's principles, declares that nothing should be included which is irrelevant to attaining this unity of effect. Mr. Blackwood's advice is just the opposite.
Let us suppose now you have determined upon your incidents and tone. The most important portion — in fact, The soul of the whole business, is yet to be attended to — I allude to the filling up.[[(2)]]
Then follow “piquant facts for similies” and “piquant expressions to be introduced as occasion may require” which may be used to fill up the stories.(3) Under “piquant facts for similies” Mr. Blackwood gives such extraneous bits of knowledge as, “there were originally but three Muses — Melete, Mneme, Aeode — meditation, memory, and singing.” Under piquant expressions” he lists such expressions as “Aussi tendre que Zaire”“ and “ignoratio elenchi” — the first an allusion to Voltaire's tragedy.[[(4)]]
The hypothesis we have set up — that Poe is satirizing [page 40:] the failure of Blackwood stories to be created by sound principles of the story-telling art — is convincingly proved by a second story, “A Predicament.” That these two stories are to be considered as a unit is evident from Poe's always publishing them together, one immediately following the other.(1) “A Predicament” is the ludicrous, exaggerated result of a writer who followed the principles upon which Blackwood stories were written.
Zenobia chooses the subject of her tale first, a decapitation by the hands of a huge clock.(2) Sensation is all-important. Zenobia even records her sensations as her eye drops out, rolls down the roof, into the gutter, and looks up at her.(3) The tone is heterogeneous. The “fillers” are used to the best of Zenobia's ability. She disgorges Mr. Blackwood's “piquant expressions for similés” in a slightly adulterated condition-indicating Poe's satire upon the actual ignorance behind the pretended erudition of the Blackwood writers.
We were three. Thus it is said there were original ly axe three Furies — Melty, Mimmy, and Helty — Meditation, Memory, and Fiddling.(4)
And Zenobia's pretentious use of piquant expressions for [page 41:] use on every occasion” resulted in such ignorant distortions as Mossi tender que beefsteak” for “aussi tendre que Zaire” and “ignoramus e-clench-eye” for “ignoratio elenchi.”(1)
The whole effect of “A Predicament” is to burlesque to the farthest point of exaggeration the stories constructed on the principles Mr. Blackwood set down. Yet the nature of the story is enough in keeping with the usual Blackwood stories that readers have frequently assumed the second story was just a restatement of the earlier burlesque, rather than the climactic demonstration of how such principles of narrative art as those held by Blackwood would result in inartistic monstrosities.
In the story, there are numerous other allusions, for the most part slight and not essential to the basic satire, which we will deal with in other chapters; but the Important thing to keep in mind is the approach this gives us to Poe's own attitude toward his narrative materials. It explains the seeming contradiction between Poe's satirizing a type of story on the one hand and then turning to use it seriously. Poe thought that he was correcting the artistic errors which he saw in other Blackwood stories by subordinating everything to the creation of a single effect: that is why he assured Thomas White, in a letter we have quoted earlier, that in writing stories he was [page 42:] paying great attention to style and spending much labor in their composition so that no two stories would be alike in matter and manner, although there might be similarity of effect.(1) A study of the unity of effect in “Ligeia,” which Poe published two months earlier than these two satiric tales, supports Poe's reasoning.(2) Ligeia, by her very will to live, conquers death and reappears in the body of Rowena. The whole story is unified around this struggle; and the references to her learning and even the poem Poe includes in the story are subordinated to this single effect, for the “tragedy” is the intellect of man falling before the “Conqueror Worm.”(3)
Not all of Poe's satires had such a basic concept as a backdrop to their satire. “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” contains some minor satire on The Dial, a magazine which was the literary organ of the Transcendentalists.(4) However, Poe is not satirizing The Dial as a magazine as much as he is satirizing the group behind it.(5) For this reason we have included this story in the chapter on the New England literati. [page 43:]
Two of Poe's stories deal with the editorial practices of American magazines. The stories, “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob” and “Xing a Paragrab,” are discussed fully in other chapters so we shall deal with them only briefly here, where they are important largely as showing Poe's displeasure with the accepted magazine practices of his age.
“The Literary Life of Thingum Bob” is the satiric autobiography of a young man who wished to become. an editor. Naturally Thingum Bob starts first as a poet since all editors write poetry. When he submits his poems he finds that editors neither wish to publish the poetry of an unknown nor to pay for it if they do publish it. When an editor does accept the poem he praises it all out of proportion to its worth. The editor having praised the poem, all the magazines in his clique praise the poem. From poet, the young writer advances to being a critic, where he finds that an editorial page is but the shreds of things published elsewhere, His real success comes when he attains part-ownership in a magazine, for immediately, by a form of literary blackmail, he forces the other magazines to “toady” to him, until he finally becomes sole editor of the Rowdy-Dow, Lollipop, Hum-Drum, and Goosetherumfoodle magazines.(1)
The names of these magazines raise the suspicion that Poe may have had reference to specific magazines, [page 44:] However, a long, and perhaps fruitless, search would be necessary to establish their identity. The suspicion is supported, nevertheless, by the other references we have to these nicknames. We know, of course, that Poe referred to the North American Review as the “North American Quarterly Humdrum.(1) We recall, too, that Dickens, in Martin Chuzzlewit, called the periodical he satirized the New York Rowdy Journal.(2) And Killis Campbell, an eminent Poe scholar, was led to conclude, through his own research, that the “Lollipop” had reference to the Knickerbocker magazine.(3)
On the surface the story is a satire of the editorial vices of toadying, puffing, cliques, and tomahawking. The prevalence of these practices is so well known that we shall only allude to them tangentially. But lt is interesting to point out how Poe himself engaged in these same practices which he satirized. He spoke from intimate acquaintance.
Poe seems to have done little toadying although he suspected others of trying to “toady” to him.(4) And he [page 45:] particularly scored Cornelius Mathews because he was too subservient to Margaret Fuller.(1)
“Puffing” was a vice which Poe seems to have felt was necessary for his literary success, for his letters are replete with requests for lauditory notices.(2) As early as 1835 he secured four ‘puffs’ of his satire, “Lionizing.”(3) Yet in December of the same year he could write of Theodore S. Fay's Norman Leslie,
Well! — here we have it! This is the book — the book par excellence — the book bepuffed, beplastered and be-Mirrored: the book “attributed to” Mr. Blank, and “said to be from the pen” of Mr. Asterisk: The book. which has been “about to appear” — “in press” — “in progress” — “in preparation” — and “forthcoming:” the book “graphic” in anticipation — “talented” a priori — and God knows what in prospectu. For the sake of everything puff, puffing and puffable, let us take a peep at its contents!(4)
And again in the review of The Quacks of Helicon Poe criticized this practice.
To so great an extent of methodical assurance has the system of puffery arrived, that publishers, of late, have made no scruple of keeping on hand an assortment of commendatory notices, prepared by their men of all work, and of sending these notices around to the multitudinous papers within their influence, done up within the fly leaves of the books.(5) [page 46:]
That Poe could oppose puffing in his criticisms, satirize it in his stories, and yet indulge in it himself is an example of his duality of idealism and pragmatism.
Cliques were another vice in the magazine world Poe attacked. His opposition to cliques seems to have centered on the two most powerful ones, a group of antagonistic New York editors(1) and the North American Review clique.(2) Poe was never able to become the center of a clique, because the men favorable to him — men like Lowell, N, P. Willis, and George P. Morris — were never in any sense followers of Poe. Their defense of him was spasmodic and based on their perception of his merits rather than on persistent, blind following of his leadership. Yet Poe's complaint that American letters were “clique ridden” was a consistent theme in his criticism.(3) As late as 1849 Poe was writing, “He (the editor) should point out the ‘easy arts’ by which any one, base enough to do it, can get himself placed at the very head of American Letters by an article in that magnanimous journal The Review.”(4)
Of all the journalistic arts Poe satirized, he himself was best known for his ‘tomahawking.’ One contributor [page 47:] called him ‘the tomahawk man’ and ‘Comanche of literature.(1) Another man wrote, “We solemnly summon Edgar Poe to do the devoir of Coeur de Lion — no man's weapon is half so trenchant.”(2) One young author wrote to N. P. Willis, editor of the Mirror, “I am glad to see that Edgar Poe is in your clearings. He is a man of the finest ideal intellect in the land — carries a nasty tomahawk as a critic — bitter as gall to the literary flies who have been buzzing around his windows.”(3) In 1849 Briggs, a former co-editor of Poe's, wrote of Poe,
With tomahawk up raised for deadly blow
Behold our literary Mohawk, Poe!(4)
Probably the most notorious job of tomahawking in American literature was Poe's own attack on Longfellow for plagiar18m Yet Poe was not the only practitioner of this literary scalping. The North American Review said Poe's tales belonged to “the forcible-feeble and shallow-profound school.” And Poe wrote to F. W. Thomas, in 1842,
Have you seen how Benjamin & Tasistro have been playing Kilkenny cats with each other? I have always told [page 48:] Graham that Taslstro stole every thing, worth reading, which he offered for sale.(1)
Further proof that Poe understood by experience what was meant by ‘tomahawking’ will be found in the following chapters, where we trace some of the editorial scraps in which Poe was involved.
Poe's reference, in “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” to the low pay given to authors for their writing was quite in keeping with the feelings of his day. One article, “Authors’ Pay in America,” even suggested that Poe take up the ‘cause.’(2) Whether as a direct response to this plea or not, Poe did satirize the trifling sums given writers for their work in “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” published two months later.
“Xing a Paragrab” has minor importance as a satire of the magazine practices of the age. It is a tale about two editors who carry on an editorial argument until one printer's devil steals the o's out of the type box of the rival paper and thereby forces the typesetter to substitute x's for o's in the next day's editorials, with “results so ludicrous that the victim is obliged to leave town.(3) The story has specific reference beyond this general [page 49:] Application which we shall discuss in the chapter on Poe and the New England Literati. However, on its surface the story is’ a burlesque of two editors playing “kilkenny cats” with each other. The emptiness of editorial struggles is humorously pointed up by the tale, but little more can be said of it from the standpoint of a periodical-burlesque.
In summary: Poe satirized the magazine practices of his era with consistency all through his writing life, showing a steady interest in and feeling toward his profession that he did not exhibit toward the other subjects of his satire. The study shows, too, that Poe's ridicule altered in its specific targets: at first he burlesqued the materials of the Blackwood tale, then he burlesqued the manner of writing a Blackwood story, and then, later in life, he veered to satirizing current editorial practices in America. This shift from foreign subjects to American subjects in his magazine satires is a general shift common to all the major topics of his satire with the exception of politics, which was always completely American in its subject matter.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 24:]
1 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 84. The second tale was “Lionizing.”
2 Ibid.
3 Kenneth L. Daughrity, “Poe and Blackwood's,” American Literature, II (November, 1930), 289-92. Poe Was only ten years old when the first of these articles was published, although it is reasonable to suppose that he didn’t read it until later.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 25:]
1 Ibid.
2 Napier Wilt, “Poe's Attitude Toward His Tales: a New Document,” Modern Philology, XXV (August, 1927), 101-05.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 26:]
1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 106 ff. Poe first called the tale “A Decided Loss” when it was published in the Saturday Courier, November 10, 1832.
2 “Passages From the Diary of a Late Physician,” Blackwood's, XXX (July, 1831), 60-81.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 27:]
1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 106-15.
2 “The Idiot,” Blackwood's, XXVI (October, 1829), 631.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 28:]
1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 106.
2 “The Last Men,” Blackwood's, XIX (March, 1826), 284-86.
3 Ibid., p. 284.
4 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 107.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 29:]
1 “The Headsman: a Tale of Doom,” Blackwood's, XXVII (February, 1830), 190-216.
2 Ibid., p. 198.
3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 107-08.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 30:]
1 “The Modern Gyges: A Tale of Trials,” Blackwood's, XXV (February, 1829), 235.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 31:]
1 Quinn and O’Nelll, Poems and Stories, I, 108.
2 “Diary of a Late Physician,” Blackwood's, XXX (May, 1831), 71.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 32:]
1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 112.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 32, running to the bottom of page 33:]
2 John H. Hewitt was editor of such magazines as the Emerald, Minerva, and the Saturday Visitor. He wrote [page 33:] verses for rural papers under the nsme, “Jenks.” He reviewed Poe's “Al Aaraaf” unfavorably. Later Hewitt's poem, “Song of the Winds” won over Poe's “Coliseum” in the Saturday Visitor contest. Quinn, Poe, pp. 165, 197, 202-03.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 33:]
1 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 157.
2 Ibid., pp. 234-48, The stories were originally called “Psyche Zenobia” and the “Scythe of Time.”
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 34:]
1 Ibid., pp. 234-41.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 35:]
1 Ibid., pp. 241-48.
2 Ibid., II, 946-53.
3 Ibid., I, 238.
4 Ibid., II, 951.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 36:]
1 Ibid., p. 953.
2 Ibid., p., 951.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 37:]
1 Ibid., pp. 950-51.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 38:]
1 Ibid., p. 950.
2 Ibid., I, 257.
3 Ibid.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 39:]
1 Ibid.
2 Ibid, p. 238.
3 Ibid., pp. 238-39.
4 Ibid., pp. 239-40. Voltaire's tragedy, Zaire, is an adaptation of Othello.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 40:]
1 Ibid., II, 1076. Compare the pages as well as the magazines in which the two stories were printed.
2 Ibid., I, 246.
3 Ibid., p. 247.
4 Ibid., p. 243.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 41:]
1 Ibid., p. 245.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 42:]
1 Quinn, Poe, pp. 210-12.
2 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, I, 222.
3 Ibid., p. 227.
4 Ibid., p. 365.
5 Poe showed this same willingness to satirize The Dial in Mr. Blackwood's instructions on how to use the tone “transcendental.” Ibid., p. 238.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 43:]
1 Ibid., II, 578.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 44:]
1 Ibid., I, 365.
2 Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit (London: Chapman and Hall, n.d.), I, 272-77.
3 Campbell, op. cit., p. 139. The other journals mentioned by Poe (The Toad, Mole, Owl, and The Daddy Longlegs) are less likely to refer to specific magazines, being intended primarily for the advantages of punning on their names, but one can’t be certain. Such names were used in referring to both editors and magazines.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 45:]
1 Ibid., p. 355.
2 Ostrom, op. cit., IL, 318-20. Poe is asking Joseph M. Field to publish some excerpts from a letter Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to Poe.
3 David K. Jackson, “Four of Poe's Critiques in the Baltimore Newspapers,” Modern Language Notes, I (April, 1935), 351-56.
4 Harrison, op. cit., VIII, 51.
5 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 924-25.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 46:]
1 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 283-84.
2 Ibid., II, 394.
3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 924.
4 Ibid., pp. 1051-52.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 47:]
1 Campbell, op. cit., p. 59.
2 Weekly Mirror, I (October 12, 1844), 15.
3 New York Evening Mirror, I (October 19, 1844), 2.
4 Campbell, op. cit., p. 59.
5 Harrison, op. cit., XII, 41-107.
6 Campbell, op. cit., p. 52. North American Review, LXIII (October, 1846), 350.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 48:]
1 Ostrom, op. cit., I, 212.
2 Weekly Mirror, I (October 12, 1844), 15, 28.
3 Quinn and O'Neill, Poems and Stories, II, 707 ff. “Xing a Paragrab”“ was published in May, 1849.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - WWJ51, 1951] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - A Study of Edgar Allan Poe's Satiric Patterns (Whipple)