∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[page 10, column 2, continued:]
POE'S WORKS.
THE LIFE AND POEMS OF EDGAR ALLEN [[ALLAN]] POE. A Now Memoir, By EUGENE L. DIDIER Introductory Letter by SARAN HELEN WHITMAN, New-York: W. J. WIDDLETON, 1879.
Mr. Eugene L. Didier tells us nothing new about Poe. His biography is mainly a defense of the post against insinuations and abuse of writers long buried in obscure open graves, and that is something which has been done before. In his praise Mr. Didier is excessive, and in his criticism indiscriminate. Since he professes a high opinion for the critical abilities of Poe, it is not easy to see why should expend eulogies preferably upon the one poem of all others which Poe seems 1 to have felt of doubtful worth, the only poem, in fact, which he published under a nom de plume. “The Raven” is certainly the most popular poem that he ever wrote, but it does not follow that it is his best, nor is the matter advanced in any way by the testimony of the “American scholar,” Prof. Shepherd, of Baltimore, in whose critical faculty Mr. Didier has a childlike confidence. Prof. Shepherd writes great stuff about “The Raven,” in the face of Poe's evident undervaluation of that poem. When an author elaborately apologizes for a piece of literary art, and exposes all the machinery by which it has been brought into shape, he can not be said to have special affection or admiration for it. Poe wrote least five poems much more exquisite, much fuller of his particular genius, than “The Raven,” or “The Bells.” The latter are poems in which the thought is trivial and the execution mechanical, when compared, for instance, with “Annabel Lee,” “The Valley of Unrest,” or “A Dream within a Dream.” But these are too intangible and gossamery in their substance to find their way into the school readers, while their less poetic and more mechanical comrades serve the very purpose for which Poe designed them, that of appealing to the indiscriminate reader.
Much more satisfactory is the introductory letter of the late Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, dated July, 1876, since the present is a revised edition of one issued during that year by the same publisher. Mrs. Whitman died in 1877. It forms a last defense of her old friend and one-time lover against the attacks of careless or prejudiced persons. But from neither source do we get a very powerful, vivid idea of Poe. There exist comparatively few anecdotes about him. He had few friends that were intimates, it seems, and to others he was polite but cold. “An Enigma” is a sonnet that contains at least one name of a lady friend, that of Sarah Anna Lewis, but Mr. Didier has not called attention to it, although he has pointed out a similar poem to Frances Sargent Osgood in “A Valentine.” The sonnet runs as follows:
“ ‘Seldom we find,’ says Solomon Don Dunce,
‘Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet,
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
As easily as through a Naples bonnet —
Trash of all trash — how can a lady don it !
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff —
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
Twirls into trunk -paper the while you con it.’
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles — ephemeral and so transparent
But this is, now — you may depend upon it —
Stable, opaque, immortal — all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.”
Such verses exhibit Poe in a more genial light than his other work does. We catch him at something different from his usual employment, whether polishing his wonderful poems, waging deadly war in prose with the New-England and New-York Philistines, watching over his dying, wife, or afterward trying to cheer his loneliness and poverty by doing what almost everybody at the time did without reproach — by drinking. The difficulty was that the drink which was for other men merely bad was poison to his system.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - NYT, 1879] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Review of The Life and Poems of Edgar A. Poe (Anonymous, 1879)