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Notes
3
This paragraph follows very closely what Poe wrote in the first paragraph of his review “Drake's Culprit Fay” (which also reviews Halleck's Alnwick Castle with other Poems) from the Southern Literary Messenger of April 1836. We reproduce that paragraph here for comparison:
Before entering upon the detailed notice which we propose of the volumes before us, we wish to speak a few words in regard to the present state of American criticism. It must be visible to all who meddle with literary matters, that of late years a thorough revolution has been effected in the censorship of our press. That this revolution is infinitely for the worse we believe. There was a time, it is true, when we cringed to foreign opinion — let us even say when we paid a most servile deference to British critical dicta. That an American book could, by any possibility, be worthy perusal, was an idea by no means extensively prevalent in the land; and if we were induced to read at all the productions of our native writers, it was only after repeated assurances from England that such productions were not altogether contemptible. But there was, at all events, a shadow of excuse, and a slight basis of reason for a subserviency so grotesque. Even now, perhaps, it would not be far wrong to assert that such basis of reason may still exist. Let us grant that in many of the abstract sciences — that even in Theology, in Medicine, in Law, in Oratory, in the Mechanical Arts, we have no competitors whatever, still nothing but the most egregious national vanity would assign us a place, in the matter of Polite Literature, upon a level with the elder and riper climes of Europe, the earliest steps of whose children are among the groves of magnificently endowed Academies, and whose innumerable men of leisure, and of consequent learning, drink daily from those august [page 45:] fountains of inspiration which burst around them everywhere from out the tombs of their immortal dead, and from out their hoary and trophied monuments of chivalry and song. In paying then, as a nation, a respectful and not undue deference to a supremacy rarely questioned but by prejudice or ignorance, we should, or [[of]] course, be doing nothing more than acting in a rational manner. The excess of our subserviency was blamable — but, as we have before said, this very excess might have found a shadow of excuse in the strict justice, if properly regulated, of the principle from which it issued. Not so, however, with our present follies. We are becoming boisterous and arrogant in the pride of a too speedily assumed literary freedom. We throw off, with the most presumptuous and unmeaning hauteur, all deference whatever to foreign opinion — we forget, in the puerile inflation of vanity, that the world is the true theatre of the biblical histrio — we get up a hue and cry about the necessity of encouraging native writers of merit — we blindly fancy that we can accomplish this by indiscriminate puffing of good, bad, and indifferent, without taking the trouble to consider that what we choose to denominate encouragement is thus, by its general application, rendered precisely the reverse. In a word, so far from being ashamed of the many disgraceful literary failures to which our own inordinate vanities and misapplied patriotism have lately given birth, and so far from deeply lamenting that these daily puerilities are of home manufacture, we adhere pertinaciously to our original blindly conceived idea, and thus often find ourselves involved in the gross paradox of liking a stupid book the better, because, sure enough, its stupidity is American.
“a national literature!”: Poe's concerns here intersect those of Herman Melville, who although generally skeptical of nationalistic excesses did once write that it would be better to praise even as weak an American work as “Pop” Emmons’ “Fredoniad” than a good foreign one. Both Poe and Melville were in contact with writers of the group called “Young America” (see McGill, “Poe, Literary Nationalism, and Authorial Identity”). There are common referents as well. Poe refers to the “Fredoniad” of Richard Emmons in his story “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.” (1844). That story purports to be the literary memoirs of an author, “Thingum Bob,” so vain he says he had thought of calling the piece “Memorandum to serve for the Literary History of America.” Since that is what Poe has in mind in this passage in “Exordium,” and since over-praise of mediocre or incompetent writers because they are national is his topic in both places, the connection is not gratuitous. Poe's character Thingum Bob is so crude in critical judgment that he equates Shakespeare with Emmons. Poor Emmons seems to have been a standard target. Patterns of intersection suggest the development of a body of common referents in American literary circles. See our note to ¶4 for further connections to the story and our notes to ¶6 for other connections to nationalism.
as if the world ... histrio: One of Poe's recurring literary allusions, this is a variation on the Latin proverb Totum mundum agit histrio. Its appearance here ties “Exordium” again to the “Drake-Halleck Review,” where it also appears. See our note to ¶5 of “The Philosophy of Composition” for more details. [page 46:]
Cooper ... Paulding: Poe uses James Fenimore Cooper and James K. Paulding as examples because they belong to the first generation of national artists to have acheived some secure international reputation. Cooper, Washington Irving, and William Cullen Bryant are the writers usually mentioned. Poe had special ties to Paulding, who had tried to help him publish his work and who offered Poe constructive advice.
“A prophet ... land”: See Matthew 13:57 and Mark 6:4.
“a hero ... valet-de-chambre”: A saying attributed to the Duc de Condé (d. 1686) but so widespread by Poe's day that it could have been picked up in innumerable sources.
4
editors ... publisher: Because the United States had not yet ratified the international copyright agreement, American publishers could freely steal continental works; they were not obliged to pay royalties except to American authors. This made works by national writers commercially much less attractive and contributed to the corrupt situation to which Poe alludes. An author who wanted publication could do no better than to work as editor of a magazine; if the editor-author praised (“puffed”) productions of a publisher, the publisher would likely be willing to publish the editor's work. See Moss (Poe's Literary Battles) for full details. This passage again ties “Exordium” to the “Drake-Halleck Review,” which attacks puffing, and to “The Literary Life of Thingum Bob,” which describes it in very great detail — Thingum Bob's reputation is entirely based on “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
5
British Quarterly Reviews: Despite his complaints here, Poe fed upon the famous journals published in Edinburgh, Scotland, which were one of the literary glories of his era. Brilliant, contentious, cantankerous, and often biased and unfair, they provided contact for a varied stable of writers with a devoted public and with one another. American magazine editors had no choice but to compete with them, for they were popular enough in the United States to motivate the publication of both authorized and pirated American editions. See Hervey Allen, Israfel, for details of Poe's interaction with them.
lucus a non lucendo: a misnomer. Literally, “a grove is called that because it is not lighted,” a Latin gag about etymological mistakes. The pun, of course, does not work in English.
Macaulay's ... established: In Collected Writings (2:473-74) is an extended discussion of Poe's other uses of Thomas Babington Macaulay's review of Leopold von Ranke's History of the Popes of Rome, translated by Sarah Austin (1840), though not of Poe's use of it here in 1842. In Poe's review of Macaulay's Critical and Miscellaneous Essays in the June 1841 Graham's, he wrote that Macaulay's “strength is here put forth to account for the progress of Romanism, by maintaining that divinity is not a progressive science.” Those words echo in the language Poe uses here in “Exordium,” but they are not echoes of Poe, who was “largely using Macaulay's words verbatim.”
6
“there shall be no more cakes and ale”: Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (II, iii, 124) is the source. Sir Toby speaks: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” and Clown responds, “Yes, by Saint Anne; and ginger shall be hot i’ the mouth too.” [page 47:]
Arcturus: Arcturus: A Journal of Books and Opinion, founded in 1840 (it died in 1842) by Cornelius Mathews (see our note to ¶7) and Evert A. Duyakinck [[Duyckinck]]. Poe's reference to a project by these two New York literati is evidence that Poe had the literary nationalism of Young America in mind. See Poe's discussion of Young America in the Broadway Journal for July 19, 1845, glossed in Collected Writings (4, pt. 2, 129-31).
Prose poem [[prose-poem]]: See discussion of the title for Eureka in our edition of that work (xxvi).
7
Mathews: Cornelius Mathews (1817-99). A good account of Mathews's career by Donald Yannella appears in John Bryant (A Companion to Melville Studies, 63-81, esp. the passage beginning on 71)) [[sic]]. See the item “Arcturus” in the explanatory note to ¶6. Mathews was an editor and author widely felt to have pandered to popular tastes and fads in an attempt to build his career. He was associated with a large number of different periodicals. Poe praised Mathews's Acturus [[Arcturus]] in “The Literati of New York,” calling it “decidely [[decidedly]] one of the best magazines in many respects ever published in the United States” (Complete Works, 15:59), but in his review “A Fable for Critics” he says of him, “if [he] ... be not the very worst poet that ever existed on the face of the earth, it is only because he is not quite so bad as [William Ellery Channing]” (Complete Works, 13:165-75).
French Reviews: Poe is correct about the high quality of French periodical reviews though French publications suffered interference, censorship, and revolutionary revisions of government regulations during the chaotic era in French history defined by Poe's lifetime. Major authors and critics wrote reviews for even daily newspapers in France in the 1830s and 1840s. And reviews generally were signed in, for example, the Revue des Deux Mondes.
the Germans: Poe's praise here in 1842 contrasts with his scorn in 1846, when, in “Marginalia” item 18 in the same magazine he wrote, “At the German criticism ... I cannot refrain laughing all the more heartily, all the more seriously I hear it praised” (Collected Writings, 2:306).
Winckelmann: Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-68). The ideas of this well-known German archeologist, considered the founder of art history as a field of study, had a profound effect on German romantics such as Goethe and Schiller.
Novalis: Pen name of Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801). Poe treats him much less respectfully in “Marginalia” item 164. He had also briefly noted an 1841 pirated U.S. edition of a London 1841 translation of a book that included prose by Novalis (Collected Writings, 2:274).
Schelling: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), German romantic philosopher, one of the circle of Jena romantics that included the Schlegels, Tieck, and Novalis. His “doctrines of identity” deeply stirred the character Morella in Poe's short story “Morella” (1835). But Poe cut references to Schelling from “Loss of Breath” (1832) and “How to Write a Blackwood Article/A Predicament” (1838) and mentioned him only in passing in a review (1842) of Rufus Dawes's poetry (Complete Works, 11:136).
Göethe: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). In “Marginalia” item 181 (see “the Germans” above), Poe writes, “I am not ashamed to say that I [page 48:] prefer even Voltaire to Goethe.” Yet he utilized Goethe repeatedly. See Collected Writings 2:307 and index.
Augustus William Schlegel: See next item.
Frederick Schlegel: In “Marginalia” item 181 (see “Göethe” above), Poe says he holds “Macaulay to possess more of the true critical spirit than August William and Frederick Schlegel combined.” Yet, as Pollin points out, he leaned heavily on the Schlegel brothers in the “Pinakidia” items and elsewhere. See index to Collected Writings, 2. Poe's knowledge of German critics and philosophers does not seem to have been profound, but he was well informed. A. W. Schlegel's critical ideas influenced him strongly throughout his career. Scholars (Margaret Alterton, G. R. Thompson, Vincent Buranelli, and Alberti J. Lubell) agree that even as unsystematic a scholar as Poe would have had no difficultly in learning about major German thinkers. Translations, explanations, and analytical discussions of Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, the brothers Schlegel, and Schelling were very widespread in the United States and in the British magazines Poe liked to read. Their ideas were expounded by Coleridge, whom Poe always took seriously (although he sometimes tried to distance himself from Coleridge's opinions, apparently to assert his own independence); by Carlyle (for his great impact on Poe, see Short Fiction, 355-56, 430-32); by Scott in Great Britain; and by George Bancroft in the United States (Lubell, “Poe and A. W. Schlegel”; Alterton, Origins). See our notes to “Letter to B———.” and to “The Philosophy of Composition.”
Kaimes [sic]: Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), Scottish critic and philosopher, author of The Elements of Criticism (1762), an influential treatise on aesthetics and style.
Johnson: Samuel Johnson (1709-84), scholar, poet, editor, and critic. As a critic, he assailed the “anarchy of ignorance, the caprices of fancy, and the tyranny of prescription,” faults to which he was himself by no means immune (quoted by George Sherburn in Baugh, A Literary History, 1001). Poe refers to Dr. Johnson in an interesting context in “Marginalia” item 191 (published in January 1848): Johnson, Poe says, is wrong in statements about poetic metrics. Poe says that his own “Rationale of Verse” will soon be in print and will clear up the matter.
Blair: Hugh Blair (1718-1800), important teacher and literary tastemaker who influenced Robert Burns and delighted Dr. Johnson. His best-known works are Sermons of 1777 (he was a minister) and Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres (1783).
in the days of the “Dunciad”: Pope's satire on pedantry, bad poetry, and the goddess “Dulness” first appeared in 1728; by the 1743 version Pope had used Colley Cibber as the champion of vapidity. The era in which it appeared is notable in the development of British critical thought and style; Poe's strong tie to it is via the medium of the magazine, for the previous century was the first great age of British periodicals.
Mirabeau ... If: Poe intends a bilingual pun. In 1774 the Comte Honoré de Mirabeau (1749-91) was imprisoned in the Château d’If.
8
Orphicism ... Dialism ... Emersonism: The Concord educator and philosopher Bronson Alcott (1799-1888) published his “Orphic Sayings” in the organ [page 49:] of the Transcendentalists, The Dial, between 1840 and 1844. Poe enjoyed sniping at Emerson and his circle though in most important respects his artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual codes were very close to theirs.
10
proem ... epopea: The prelude (or introduction) to the true epic.
“he ... feeling”: In the November 1841 issue of Grahams (250-51) Poe had reviewed the Critical and Miscellaneous Writings of Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer (the name is also written Bulwer-Lytton), from which he here approvingly quotes “Upon the Spirit of True Criticism.” Poe complained that Bulwer was “never lucid and seldom profound” but warmly praised his taste, purity, and ethical sense. Poe liked especially this piece. Poe's complete quotation from Bulwer is omitted in Complete Works. It does appear in Essays and Reviews, edited by G. R. Thompson (161ff).
a solemn indifference to abuse: Poe in 1836 published a collection of reviews of his own work as editor and critic; some were in fact very unfavorable (Levine, “Poe and American Society”). Yet there is plentiful evidence that although he knew well the commercial value of being a controversial reviewer and could reprint even hostile notices of his own work, he was not really as thick-skinned as he here suggests a critic should be.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:1 - SSLCT, 2009] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions - EAP: Critical Theory (S. and S. Levine) (Exordium - Notes)