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THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION
“The Raven” had brought Poe great fame, and although he seems to have been genuinely modest about the quality of his poetry, he did like “The Raven.” In an interesting letter to G. W. Eveleth dated December 15, 1846, he said that he was delighted that Eveleth admired his poem “The Sleeper” (called “Irene” when it first appeared in 1831) because, Poe felt, in “the higher qualities of poetry, it is better than ‘The Raven.’” But, he went on, “‘The Raven,’ of course, is far the better as a work of art.”
The fame and his confidence in “The Raven” as a work of art were probably critical to his decision to write an essay on how a poem is made. When he told Eveleth that “The Raven” was better than “The Sleeper” as a work of art but somehow less impressive in “the higher qualities of poetry,” he may have meant that it was more artful, better planned, more skillfully crafted, perhaps, but — and here one should be cautious, because this is in effect putting words in his mouth — less sublime. This educated guess about what his comment means is supported by his important one-paragraph preface to The Raven and Other Poems of 1845, presented elsewhere in this volume; it suggests that Poe was fine enough as critic to know exactly the limitations of his own poetry. “The Sleeper,” like “The Raven,” is about the death of a beautiful woman. In each poem the reader becomes certain of the real subject only after several stanzas. “The Sleeper” is perhaps closer in its time-worn conceit about sleep and death to the generic “alas thou art gone alas” death poetry of the era, but it is also quite powerful in its use of gothicism. The juxtaposition of gothic material — worms, sepulchres, tombs — with the sentimental is surprizing and strong. Poe's apparent sense that “The Sleeper” was a little flawed, perhaps even a bit crude, is shared by modern readers. Less of a “work of art” seems about right.
But now, with “The Raven” Poe had a “work of art” that was also very famous, so he used it to do what he had thought of doing in 1844, when he wrote, in “A Chapter of Suggestions,” [page 56:]
An excellent Magazine paper might be written upon the subject of the progressive steps by which any great work of art — especially of literary art — attained completion. How vast a dissimilarity always exists between the germ and the fruit — between the work and its original conception! Sometimes the original conception is abandoned, or left out of sight altogether. Most authors sit down to write with no fixed design, trusting to the inspiration of the moment; it is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that most books are valueless. Pen should never touch paper, until at least a well-digested general purpose be established. In fiction, the dénouement — in all other composition the intended effect, should be definitely considered and arranged, before writing the first word; and no word should be then written which does not tend, or form a part of a sentence which tends, to the development of the dénouement, or to the strengthening of the effect. Where plot forms a portion of the contemplated interest, too much preconsideration cannot be had. Plot is very imperfectly understood, and has never been rightly defined. Many persons regard it as mere complexity of incident. In its most rigorous acceptation, it is that from which no component atom can be removed, and in which none of the component atoms can be displaced, without ruin to the whole; and although a sufficiently good plot may be constructed, without attention to the whole rigor of this definition, still it is the definition which the true artist should always keep in view, and always endeavor to consummate in his works. Some authors appear, however, to be totally deficient in constructiveness, and thus, even with plentiful invention, fail signally in plot. Dickens belongs to this class. His “Barnaby Rudge” shows not the least ability to adapt. Godwin and Bulwer are the best constructors of plot in English literature. The former has left a preface to his “Caleb Williams,” in which he says that the novel was written backwards; the author first completing the second volume, in which the hero is involved in a maze of difficulties, and then casting about him for sufficiently probable cause of these difficulties, out of which to concoct volume the first. This mode cannot surely be recommended, but evinces the idiosyncrasy of Godwin's mind. Bulwer's “Pompeii” is an instance of admirably managed plot. His “Night and Morning,” sacrifices to mere plot interests of far higher value. (Collected Writings, 2:468-69)
Poe's piece in “A Chapter of Suggestions” refers to fiction but applies to poetry as well; the common allusion to Dickens, indeed, marks the connection in Poe's mind. The essay below opens with Poe “quoting” Dickens on how Godwin wrote Caleb Williams. [page 57:]
“The Philosophy of Composition” is a healthy corrective to over-romantic portrayals of the poetic process. A pedant could perhaps demonstrate that it contradicts much of what Poe himself said about what it is to be a poet. It does contain, however, tucked into parentheses, a redeeming echo of Poe's usual transcendental credo about the nature of inspiration, for in paragraph 4 he writes that having made his calculated decisions about effect and method, he next looks “about me (or rather within)” for the “combination” he needs. Thus, although “The Philosophy of Composition” is about the importance of craftsmanship, energy, and planning, Poe remembers inspiration. We may be quite certain that he thought of inspiration in transcendental terms even in this essay. In paragraph 36 appears his usual snide comment about Transcendentalists, but along with it is a frank statement that he agrees with their intention. The trouble is that they are poor poets who try to make transcendence too literal, to spell out what is ineffable. “The Philosophy of Composition” does not, in fact, really claim that poetry grows from merely mechanical planning or even from mechanics combined with inspiration. Its fifth paragraph includes a frank confession that besides planning there are a lot of bumbling efforts, false starts, failed experiments, and serendipitous revelations. Poe says that plans develop and change as the poet proceeds. So there is no need to believe that he is claiming that calculation is the only force at work.
Eric Carlson, in his graceful “New Introduction” to the 1981 reprinting of Prescott's Selections speaks sensibly about why Poe exaggerated:
When the vulgar theory of romantic inspiration degenerated into a distrust of rational controls, Poe sought to correct the bias or imbalance by extolling disciplined craftsmanship. Unfortunately, he claimed to have reduced the whole process to “the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.” In reality, Poe the polemicist and analyst was not able to suppress Poe the intuitive poet. For example, when he insists that the poem be neither too long nor too short, so that it “intensely excites, by elevating, the soul” and such excitements must, of “psychal necessity,” be brief, one wonders how the composing poet realizes this psychal intensity while in a state of cool calculation. (xiii-xiv)
An obvious observation but one that in conscience should be repeated each time “The Philosophy of Composition” is introduced: no critic, no literary historian, no poet has ever believed that Poe literally produced [page 58:] “The Raven” as systematically and cold-bloodedly as he says. That fifth paragraph admits as much. Although in most of the rest of the essay Poe exaggerates how methodical he was, he does so as a corrective. He was quite frank about what he was doing. Years after Poe's death, his former boss, George R. Graham, wrote that it was Poe's “foible to mislead his readers. His published analysis of ‘The Raven’ is a good specimen of his capability in this kind of fiction” (TOM, citing Gill, 137). Graham, if his memory was accurate (he was writing in 1877), should have known; Poe had sold “The Philosophy of Composition” to him. Graham wrote to Poe's early biographer, William F. Gill, who was able to find other firsthand testimony as well. Susan Archer Talley Weiss wrote Gill that Poe had told her he had not been serious.
A second observation is perhaps less obvious: this is by no means Poe's only statement on composition by plan and calculation. There is, for instance, this late “Marginalia” squib that ran in the July 1849 Southern Literary Messenger. “I cannot help thinking that romance-writers, in general, might now and then, find their account in taking a hint from the Chinese, who ... have ... sense enough to begin their books at the end.” That says pretty much what “The Philosophy of Composition” says: Good writers plan carefully.
Poe also understood that the danger of writing by recipe and through calculation was that one would produce hack work. In “How to Write a Blackwood Article” / “A Predicament” (1838), for example, Poe parodied the very process he propounds here, composition by careful calculation. The difference, of course, as Poe well knew, was that formulas and good advice alone will not produce art when there is no talent. Poe, indeed, knew other writers who understood the distinction between craftsman-like planning and formulaic hackwork. In the prologue to Part 1 of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes spoofed the idea of writing by formula. Poe knew that portion of Don Quixote and quoted from it in “How to Write a Blackwood Article” / “A Predicament”; it is also likely that he was familiar with Marryat's “How to Write a Fashionable Novel” (1833), yet another satire on writing to order.(1)
So Poe was discussing an issue he thought about a number of times in his career, and also knew that he was exaggerating. The poet as seer, truth-giver, and transcendent visionary is part of his artistic creed; the [page 59:] poet as skilled and calculating artisan is there as well. In commonsense terms, the two are not really contradictory at all; Poe says for poetry what Thomas Edison said for invention. One needs both inspiration and perspiration. “The Philosophy of Composition,” indeed, struck Thomas Ollive Mabbott as so far from “true” that he wanted to include it among the Tales and Sketches in The Collected Works and not among the critical essays at all.(2)
But having said all that, one should also say that “The Philosophy of Composition” is splendid stuff. If it does not really tell how Poe's great crowd-pleaser was composed, it does say a great deal about how it works on a reader and about how a skilled writer is aware of audience response. Carlson summarizes its forceful impact upon poets:
“The Philosophy of Composition” has been called “one of the most masterly examples of literary criticism in the language.” Certainly, if measured by its impact on Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Valéry, Par Lagerkvist, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Gottfried Benn, among many others, it is Poe's most influential essay. Regardless of whether it is “a hoax, or a piece of self-deception, or a more or less accurate record,” T. S. Eliot notes, it led Valéry to ask “What am I doing when I write a poem?” Thus Poe's essay acquired “capital importance” for Eliot, as did Poe's work as a whole when seen through the eyes of the three French writers. (“New Introduction,” xiii)
“The Philosophy of Composition” has also been called the founding document of the New Criticism. It is very clever and deserves its reputation as a landmark in the history of criticism.
A Note on the Text
This was published just once in Poe's lifetime, in the April 1846 Graham's Magazine. We have left untouched the strange spelling “referrible” in paragraph 7 because it has adequate historical precedent. But we added a hyphen to “under current” in paragraph 36 to make it match “under-current” in paragraph 37. “Under-current” does not appear in Poe's fiction, but it does in his criticism, with the hyphen (see ¶36, note). Moreover, [page 60:] Pollin (Word Index) does show “under-tow”; near enough. Poe made one alteration in quoting the text of “The Raven.” It is explained in our note to paragraph 31.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 58:]
1. Levine and Levine, “ ‘How to’ Satire,” 21.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 59:]
2. TOM. Leland S. Person Jr. has another way of treating the contradiction: “Having demystified the compositional process, Poe proceeds to remystify it .... ‘The Philosophy of Composition’ both parodies the creative process and doubles it. The essay becomes a kind of demonic double or ‘spectre’ in the path of our access to the poem .... And Poe's ‘philosophy’ is ultimately, originally, a ‘philosophy of composition’ — that is, a ‘composition of philosophy,’ a writing as much as a reading” (Person, “Poe's Composition of Philosophy,” 6, 7, 13).
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - SSLCT, 2009] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Editions - EAP: Critical Theory (S. and S. Levine) (The Philosophy of Composition - Headnote)