Text: John Burroughs, “Mr. Gosse's Puzzle over Poe,” The Dial (Chicago, IL), vol. XV, whole no. 176, October 16, 1893, pp. 214-220

[page 214, column 1:]

MR. GOSSE'S PUZZLE OVER POE.

Not long since, the readers of a New York literary journal were asked by its editors to name the best ten American books. The list as finally made out, or selected, by six hundred and thirty-two readers, was as follows, with the number of votes given each book: Emerson's Essays, 512; Hawthorne's “Scarlet Letter,” 493; Longfellow's Poems, 444; Mrs. Stowe's “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” 434; Dr. Holmes's “Autocrat,” 388; Irving's “Sketch-Book,” 307; Lowell's Poems, 269; Whittier's Poems; 256; Wallace's “Ben Hur,” 250; Motley's “Rise of the Dutch Republic,” 246.

It will be seen that this list does not include the name of Poe. Mr. Edmund W. Gosse, the British poet and critic, thinks the omission “extraordinary and sinister,” and says that if he were an American he would be inclined to call it disastrous. It makes him wonder what is the standard of American style. Poe he regards as our most perfect, most original, most exquisite poet; while some of the writers included in the list he had apparently never heard of.

The omission of Poe's name was certainly significant and does undoubtedly indicate that the taste of our people demands in an author or a poet something more than mere literary genius; and it is probably true that the world of readers generally cares less and less for poets of the Poe, the Swinburne, the Rossetti type. Emerson did not admit Poe in his “Parnassus,” though he admitted other American poets much less famous. Emerson's taste in this respect was fairly representative of that of his countrymen. Poe's literary genius, as such, was undoubtedly of a high order, higher in some respects than that of Whittier or Longfellow or Lowell; but he was much less than these men in other important respects. He had less heart, less soul, less sympathy, — in fact, was far less as a man, a human being. His work is interesting to poets and critics because of its technical perfection and originality. It is not imitative, it shows great mastery in fields where masters are rare. But back of his literary and artistic talent what is there? Not a large, brotherly, helpful man surely. Hardly any normal, healthful human throb; hardly one valuable idea. Indeed, there is not one crumb of the bread of life in Poe, not one line that a man, as such, need read. His poems are literary feats — two of them quite extraordinary feats, it is true. I mean “The Bells “ and “The Raven.” This, it seems to me, is the best that can be said of them; while his famous “Annabel Lee” is to many readers like sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.

Poe, like Swinburne, was a verbal poet merely; empty of thought, empty of sympathy, empty of love for any real thing: a graceful and nimble skater up and down over the deeps and shallows of life, — deep or shallow, it was all the same to him. Not one real thing did he make more dear to us by his matchless rhyme; not one throb of the universal heart, not one flash of the universal mind, [column 2:] did he seize and put in endearing form for his fellow men. Our band of New England poets have helped enrich and ennoble human life; the world is fairer, life is sweeter, because they lived and sang; character, heroism, truth, courage, devotion, count for more since Emerson and Longfellow and Whittier and Lowell were inspired by these themes. I am not complaining that Poe was not didactic: didacticism is death to poetry. I am complaining that he was not human and manly, and that he did not touch life in any helpful and liberating way. His poems do not lay hold of real things. I do not find the world a more enjoyable or beautiful place because he lived in it. I find myself turning to his poems, not for mental or spiritual food, as I do to Wordsworth or Emerson or Whitman, or for chivalrous human sentiments as in Tennyson, but to catch a glimpse of the weird, the fantastic, and, as it were, of the night-side or dream-side of things.

But the man whose days are a dream, no matter with what skill he portrays his dream, will never take deep hold upon men's hearts. Think of the difference, for instance, between Burns and Poe. We are drawn to Burns the man; he touches our most tender and human side; his art does not occupy our attention. With Poe it is quite the reverse: we care nothing for the man, nothing for the matter of his poems; his art alone seems important, and elicits our admiration.

The full-blown professional literary critic, like Mr. Gosse, disassociates literature from all human or religious or scientific or personal values whatever. Its purely art value — its value as addressed to our sense of form, of proportion, of music, of color, etc., — alone counts. But with the mass of readers, as I have said, this view counts less and less. With the coming in of science, of democracy, of the industrial age, there has come in a new spirit, which demands of the book or the poem, What is it for? what message has it for struggling, thinking men? which mood and temper begot it? in short, what ethical and human value has it? This spirit is not insensible to the manner of the work, but it finds the final value in the matter, and especially in the man out of which the matter grew. Arnold's saying that all good poetry is indirectly a criticism of life, is a wise one. But more than two centuries before him, Sir Thomas Elyot said that poetry was the first philosophy, and that its chief office was to teach men “ how to live well.” A French critic and essayist was recently quoted in this journal as saying that in France there is a growing belief that letters “ are not merely a relaxation, an amusement, or a consolation, but that they ought to result in some direct teaching and help to man, tracing for him a line of Conduct in life.” In other words, in estimating a writer's work, verse as well as prose, its moral and human value is to be taken into account — its value as thought, and its value as a stimulus [page 213:] to high thinking and noble living. Art for art's sake, in our age and country, sounds hollow and mocking. Art for life's sake and for the soul's sake, is the cry of the coming literature.

I would not undervalue Poe. He was a unique genius. But I would account for his failure to deeply impress his own countrymen, outside the professional literary guild. His fund of love and sympathy was small. He was not broadly related to his fellows, as were Longfellow and Whittier and Whitman. His literary equipment was remarkable; his human equipment was not remarkable: hence his failure to reach the general fame of the New England poets.

JOHN BURROUGHS.