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Chicago Letter
STONE & KIMBALL are about to issue the first three volumes of the new edition of Poe, of which so much has been said and hoped. The small-paper edition appears in attractive octavo form, well-printed and set forth with the quiet good taste which distinguishes the books of this firm. The first volume opens with a memoir by Prof. George E. Woodberry, and continues with an introduction to the tales by Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, after which the stories proceed through these three volumes. The memoir is a plain statement of such cold facts about the poet's life as were accessible to his biographer, dryly related by a man unconscious of prejudice, but incapable of sympathy with his subject. In these days no one demands any sentimentality about Poe, but surely, the iciest New England formalism is scarcely a just medium for the interpretation of this imperious dreamer's character. A man whose fierce contending impulses, at best difficult to handle, were set at war by drink; who gradually, in spite of an incessant and heroic struggle, threw his finer qualities as sops to the demon which finally destroyed him — such a man, even if he were a hod-tarrier, would have a right to demand that his pitiful story, if told at all, should be told sympathetically. In the present case, he is the most lyric of our poets, one of the most precious of our literary possessions, His life, moreover, is typical of thousands of hidden tragedies which are continually destroying the flower of American manhood. It would seem that no one could follow this demoniac battle without entering imaginatively into the horror of it. On one side we have a man of noble gifts, of unflinching reverence for art, of a certain innate distinction, which all his lapses could Mot destroy; on the other, a hereditary appetite, which became a [column 2:] destructive disease. Manifestly Prof. Woodberry has never known the wild agony of that struggle; but how can he live in this age without meeting its heroes or victims, without understanding the ever-present terror of their fate? There is material for a great tragedy here, but Prof. Woodberry stands at a virtuous distance with his note-book and smelling-salts, recording so many disgraceful sprees, and noting so many outcries and evil odors; transmitting the impression of something offensive, which discreet souls will pass by on the other side. Verily, Poe's lot was cast among Philistines, and he has not done with them yet!
Surely, a biographer of Poe, even if not finely imaginative, might have made us feel the poet's magnetism a little, so that we should understand why men were drawn to him and women adored him, He might have recorded less grudgingly the poet's exquisite tenderness to his poor, little, loving child-wife and her mother through years of grinding, miserable poverty, He might have done justice to the poet's artistic ideals, so remote from the temper of his time, and to the severity of his struggle to uphold them against the buffetings of fate and the advice of the well-meaning. He might have — but the list is long enough. The memoir has one point — it is short. It does not detain us long from the more sympathetic portion of the work.
Here we encounter an editor of a different temper, one aware of his man and qualified to illuminate his subject. The introduction to the tales is a keen and sympathetic analysis of Poe's genius as a romancer, and of the qualities of mind and heart which his work unconsciously reveals, For, after all, Poe was unconsciously his own biographer: —
“The revelation of his temperament in these enthralling and often piteous stories,” says Mr. Stedman, ‘lends force to the saying that absolute impersonality is almost unknown in art. * * * Their author was a being of extreme physical and spiritual sensibility, proudly reliant upon his mental force, and terribly cognizant of his infirmities; so intent upon the one and the other as to bound a world by his own horizon, The insight which goes beyond self-experience requires an altruism which he did not possess, * * * Evidently he was the victim of a neurotic malaise, intensified by frequent excesses, and the theory is credible that he owed to feverish crises some of his most striking notes and fantasies. * * * With all his recklessness, he was neither vicious nor criminal, and he never succeeded or wished to succeed in putting down his conscience: That stayed by him to the bitter end, and perhaps the end was speedier for its companionship.”
Mr. Stedman finds in the tales “the fullest exhibit of their author's genius, if not the highest,” feeling that they, with their greater volume and diversity, lose nothing in comparison with his poetry. ‘His resources of imagination and construction are at their full in such bits of absolute art” as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “Ligeia” and “Eleonora.” In these “the characters are nothing: the high-born ecstatic dames and maidens move through stately halls, or linger in the gardens of mist-haunted vales; they are ‘such as one in pictures sees’ and come from very faraway. * * * He pursued, by choice, the very shadow of a shade. All, so far as it belongs to any time or place, is mediæval; * * * it was pre-Raphaelite in a sense, before the brotherhood achieved a name.” The editor dwells upon the purity of Poe's ideal, free from all trace of sensuality, or even sensuousness; upon his “primitive and childlike” love of beauty — the imaginings of sumptuous color and sound, of vast spaces richly filled, by which his soul escaped the depressing ugliness of mid-century American design. He analyses his imaginative comprehension of science and mathematics, on whose possible achievements he built up some of his aspiring dreams. He denies that he was a master of style in the modern sense, finding his art often slovenly and disjointed, though in its triumphant moments it acquires the inevitable phrase, the ineffable harmony of thought and sound and color, which are necessary if art is to conquer time. And through these masterpieces of prose romance Mr. Stedman sees ‘a dramatic energy in reserve which, had it not seemed otherwise to the fates, might have enabled this Numpholeptos to escape from out his ‘pallid limit’ of the moonbeam,” and attain the dawn. Surely, this chained idealist was born too soon, To-day the fairy prince has escaped from his prison and doffed his rags. His rich banner is unfurled, and from far and near the poets of the decadence are his followers.
It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this edition to our conception of Poe. For the first time his work has careful editing, all irregularities of text and eccentricities of punctuation being removed. And what is more important, Mr. Stedman gives the tales a symphonic unity by his orderly arrangement. We have [page 16:] first the Romances of Death, advancing from “Shadow,” the overture, through terrestrial and celestial. motives to “Silence,” the finale, Then follow the Tales of Old-World Romance, of Conscience, of Natural Beauty, of Pseudo-Science, of Ratiocination and of Illusion, which closes the third volume. By this arrangement chaos is reduced to order, and a great writer is at last sympathetically presented, so that the phases of his mind develop harmoniously in the reader's imagination, The gain to Poe's reputation will be incalculable. His biography is, perhaps, yet to be written; but this edition of his works will probably establish its claim to be definitive, No more sympathetic interpreter of the mystic harmonies of this man of genius will ever appear to challenge Mr. Stedman's masterly presentation of his work.
H. MONROE,
CHICAGO, 1 Jan., 1895.
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Notes:
Harriet Monroe (1860-1936) was an author, poet and editor. She graduated from Visitation Academy in Washngton, DC in 1879. Although she never strove for higher education, she managed to establish herself in the field of literature and scholarship. After winning a large legal award, she co-founded Poetry magazine in 1912. For the first two years, she had to serve as editor without a salary, while also working other jobs for income. In many circles, she is still seen as a pioneer in promoting modern poetry.
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[S:0 - CNY, 1895] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Review of the Stedman and Woodberry edition (Harriet Monroe, 1895)