Text: Anonymous, “Edgar Poe and New York,” Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art (London, UK), vol. LI, January 29, 1881, pp. 139-140

[page 139, column 1, continued:]

EDGAR POE AND NEW YORK.

THE City of New York is going to do itself the honour of erecting a memorial to Edgar Poe, the one poet of really original poetical talent whom the United States have produced. Perhaps it is the very fact contained in this sentence which has so long made Americans unjust to the memory and merits of their greatest literary champion in verse. The difference between Poe and all other American composers of verse has hitherto been so marked, and has been so much insisted on by foreign critics, that the acceptance of it seemed to imply a confession of inferiority for all the others. No doubt also the personal element, and some other elements akin to the personal, entered into the matter largely. Poe, though born in Boston, was half a Southerner and half an Englishman by race, education, and sympathies. He was all his life outside of the two great literary cliques of Boston and New York. He attacked his brother men of letters all round with ridicule, which, though it was generally very clumsy, must have been sufficiently annoying; with pers personalities more annoying still; and very often with perfectly just and acute criticism, which must have been most annoying of all. Although his moral delinquencies have been grossly exaggerated, he was in many ways a puzzle and a scandal to the orderly respectability of the Eastern States. In business relations, though perfectly honourable and trustworthy, he was irregular and capricious. His violent and demonstrative sensibility must have been nearly as trying to those whom he loved as his aggressive quarrelsomeness was to those whom he hated. He was not prosperous, and he lived in a community which insists that its members shall prosper, and regards it as in some way an outrage on the Bird of Freedom and the Setting Sun if they do not. When to all this was added the ingeniously malevolent mendacity of the official life which immediately after his death appeared as a preface to his works, it is perfectly easy to understand the attitude of the inhabitants of the Northern States towards Poe during the quarter of a century or so which followed his death. Literary misunderstanding and want of sympathy culminated in the remark made some five years ago by the most brilliant of living American novelists that the greatest poet, living or dead, of America wrote “very valueless verses.” Even moral repulsion never got quite so far as this in its own direction, but until within a very few years a kind of Poe-myth existed which represented the author of “The Raven” as a drunken scoundrel, who would have been much more at home at the cart's tail than anywhere else.

All that, however, has been changed. In England Poe has always been rated high, both as a poet and a tale-teller, and English critical opinion still counts for something in America. In France, for which the literary men of the United States profess, if they do not feel, a still greater affection and reverence than for the mother-country, Baudelaire's wonderful translation established the tales in popularity. But neither French nor English critics for a long time troubled themselves much about the Poe-myth, except in so far as to build ingenious theories about the psychological puzzle which it seemed to propound. At last, chiefly owing to the efforts of an Englishman, Mr. Ingram, seconded by some of the poet's countrymen, the myth was approached in proper form, and shown to be a myth. Perhaps of late years there has been almost too much written about Poe's life, and he needs, like Villon, to appeal to the people from his too enthusiastic and inquisitive friends. But the labours of Mr. Ingram and others have at least solidly established a coherent history, instead of a fantastic legend. Instead of the drunken, dishonest, violent rowdy of legend, the history gives us a man very much like other men, subject to many infirmities of temper and physical constitution, abnormally sensitive, and yet hardly amiable, a persistent and honest worker, singularly unfortunate in the conditions of his work, yet struggling bravely against them, affectionate to those with whom he had most [column 2:] to do, and honourable in his dealings with outsiders. An extraordinarily unhappy life Poe's certainly was, and a good deal of the unhappiness was his own fault; but, though he was somewhat wrong-headed, he was not bad-hearted, and the word “vicious” can only be applied to him by the most pharisaic disciples of Sir Wilfrid. For ourselves we confess that the fuss made about Poe's moral character seems to us to have been altogether gratuitous. But there can be little doubt that his evil reputation stood in the way of the enjoyment of his good work by some people, and no doubt at all that it stood in the way of his statue. The proposed monument, to the funds for which Mr. Edwin Booth has been a principal contributor by his professional exertions, is not indeed the first of the kind in America. For Baltimore, with which place the poet had special connexions, paid him this honour four or five years ago. But Baltimore is in no sense a metropolitan city, while New York is; nor had Maryland the same reason to make an amende honorable to Poe as those which ought to induce the Northern States to make it. Therefore the New York memorial, whether it take the form of a statue or of anything else, may be taken to be a kind of formal cancelling of Poe's moral attainder on the part of the United States, and a recognition of the fact that he has at last been judged on his merits, and that his merits are pronounced to be high. Their relative height we have already hinted at, and it would be ungracious to insist upon it any more at this moment.

We have, however, no doubt that, as time goes on, Poe's literary merit will be more and more, not less and less, recognized. For he was remarkable in three different ways — as a critic, a taleteller, and a poet; and in each of these ways he had merits which are almost exclusively his own. He is indeed always unequal, and he is most unequal as a critic. It may be said deliberately that many of his scattered dicta exhibit an almost unparalleled acuteness of critical wit. His demonstration of the impossibility of long poems, his indication of the indefinite as an essential property of poetry, a dozen other things of the kind may be alleged in support of this. He was, moreover, a very painstaking as well as a very acute critic. Mr. Lowell has probably by this time repented his sneer at Poe's talking of “iambs and pentameters,” and indeed it may be suspected that he was seduced into the sneer by some lutin who suggested the ingenious rhyme wherewith he has accompanied it. Poe's education was certainly defective, yet he made the utmost of it in the service of his art. But, though he is often one of the most luminous, he is also one of the most untrustworthy, of critics. He was entirely devoid of humour, which is almost a necessity of the critic's equipment, and he seems to have entirely lacked what must be vaguely called taste — that is to say, the power of estimating the relative values of things. Perhaps no man of decidedly high talents ever made such a ludicrous blunder as the statement that “for one Fouqué there are fifty Molières.” If he would only have indicated to us the whereabouts of the forty-nine! The truth is that Poe was positively deficient in the power of appreciating a good many things, and that he never suspected his deficiency. The romantic mystery of Fouqué appealed to him; the consummate knowledge of ordinary human nature, and the polished style of Molière, did not. This makes his criticism worthless as a guide; it makes it all the more interesting as an independent study. When he talks thus of Molière, of Mr. Carlyle, and of many other persons whom he did not understand, perhaps the best thing to do is to remember his unfortunate, but delightful, paper on “ The Philosophy of Furniture.” An honest but wholly uneducated soul, ohne organ of the particular kind required, here tries its hand at æsthetics. The bodily eye would involuntarily seek the shelter of its fringed curtains in Poe's awful drawing-room; but the eye of the mind, more catholic and tolerant, contemplates it with some pleasure and a good deal of instruction.

It is almost unnecessary to speak of the tales. They are not quite faultless, but they are almost without fault. In this direction Poe's hand was surest. He never, like his imitators, embroils an interesting plot only to huddle it up with an insufficient disembroilment. He rarely introduces a single jarring note. He very seldom oversteps — though it must be admitted that he sometimes does this the narrow and perilously winding line which separates the sublime and horrible from the simply ludicrous and wearisome. His mere puzzle-pieces we care less for. “The Gold Bug,” perhaps, is the only one which, from the vigour and animation of the narrative, deserves to rank in the first class. But “Ligeia,” “The House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Descent into the Maelstrom” — these are all different and all perfect. They have at one time the vague and floating charm of the best German märchen; at another the sustained narrative interest of English story; at almost all the literary grace and careful proportion of the French nouvelle. Even the minor stories — always excepting the humorous ones, which for reasons given already are wholly worthless — would be masterpieces for any one else. But, indeed, the tales have so thoroughly conquered their place that that place needs little description. It is not so with the poems. Here Poe is as unequal almost as in his criticisms; as perfect occasionally as in his tales. In one particular respect it may be said that no poet has surpassed him — that is to say, in the power of setting words together so as to produce an indefinite, and indeed indefinable, sensation of beauty in colour and form and sound at the same time. No one ever wrote in words a piece more thoroughly and suggestively musical than “Annabel Lee,” no one has ever excelled the soft lapse of the trochees — we shall make His Excellency the American Minister “d—n metres” once more — in the [page 140:] “Haunted Palace.” All his strength and all his weakness may be seen in these two pieces, with “ Ulalume” and “For Annie.” Of the two horses which drew his poetical car, Sense and Sound, the former was terribly restive, though the latter was obedient enough, and occasionally he drives heavily. But, for the most part, the Sound is able to drag the recalcitrant Sense with it, and sometimes they keep step and time with the most marvellous harmony. Praise of Poe usually excites, in people who do not like him, a peculiar, but intelligible, feeling of irritation. It is credible, indeed certain, that the line from the “Haunted Palace “

which is sufficient for a test examination of poetical critics, does actually strike some people possessed of a fair complement of intellectual faculties as nothing at all particular. To these persons admiration of Poe's poetry will always seem preposterous; as preposterous as admiration of Molière seemed to Poe himself. Does one incur the penalties of the Pharisee for thanking the Muses that one is able to admire both Molière and Poe? Let us hope not; and let us congratulate the inhabitants of the Empire City on having done, or rather on being about to do, a very sensible thing. The Northern States of the Union have already and quite recently produced, in Mr. Stedman's essay, the best critical examination yet published of the poet they so long undervalued; and the projected memorial fairly supplements that criticism and the biographical labours of Mr. Ingram. Poe has now got his Life, his éloge, and his memorial; it only remains that some one should give us a really well-printed edition of his poems, and perhaps his best tales. Mr. Ingram's edition of the works is exhaustive, but not beautiful; all the others are neither the one nor the other.