Text: Jefferson Butler Fletcher, “Poe, Hawthorne and Morality,” Harvard Monthly (Cambridge, MA), vol. III, no. 5, February 1887, pp. 176-181

[page 176:]

POE, HAWTHORNE AND MORALITY.

THIS is an age of little things. The world, forever peering through microscopes, grows near-sighted. Authors are tending to discard the old novel with its mass of extraneous incident and bewildering multiplicity of characters, for the tale that can be read at a sitting. The short story not only allows of a finish and symmetry Quixotic to strive after in a novel of two octavo volumes; but, deeper than this mere ease of polish, possesses “unity of impression.” Poe has enlarged upon the philosophy of this advantage in his Poetic Principle, an essay so generally known, that I have only to quote the above principle to recall the argument to your minds.

In American literature, Poe and Hawthorne are the godfathers of this tendency — if so neuter a thing as a “tendency” may properly be said to have sponsors at all. Hawthorne, to be sure, was not so radical in brevity as Poe. His Marble Faun is the reverse of brief. But there may be a brevity and simplicity in treatment as well as in length. Hawthorne's longer romances have but few more characters or incidents than his tales. Both are built on similar scaffoldings; each takes a moral problem and works it out to a solution; only in the longer romance the solution is carried to a fuller development.

In matter as well as in method, Hawthorne and Poe have left a deep impress on the writers coming after them. If a generalization can be made on so nice a point, the profounder Hawthorne has influenced more strongly the English speaking peoples; Poe, the shallower French. Without pretending to authority or comprehensiveness, as mere illustrations of this wide-spread influence of Hawthorne and Poe, I may name a few familiar authors. In the United States there occur to me Hale, Bret Harte, Crawford, Stockton, Wendell; in England Conway, Stevenson, Haggard; while in France Baudelaire's brilliant translation of Poe called forth many enthusiastic imitators. Perhaps the present school of Realism in France owes something to Poe — at least many passages from Flaubert, the father of French Realism, read astonishingly like Poe — notably Salammbô written soon after the appearance of Baudelaire's translation. However, be this as it may, enough has been said to show how largely Poe and Hawthorne [page 177:] mould the fiction of today; and, through their disciples in this generation, the fiction of the next.

It is my purpose here to examine the prevailing characteristics of the two authors, their similarities and their differences, and to see if there be a sufficent [[sufficient]] cause for preferring one to the other. But as my space is too limited for a comprehensive survey, I shall dwell only upon a common peculiarity, — common, yet widely different in its application by each, — the extensive use of the weird and horrible. So striking a peculiarity is this, that we often hear people using the term Poesque or Hawthornesque to indicate a shading from the general adjectives “weird” or “horrible.” Hawthorne has had a host of imitators in America, and we should naturally expect to hear the epithet Hawthornesque applied to their productions; but it is a curious fact, that in nine cases out of ten, Poesque is more fitting. There is a reason for this — a reason which, I hold, is deeply important for the welfare of our national literature to be thoroughly understood. This reason I shall endeavor to bring out.

In the first place, do we wisely choose as a literary type either of two authors whose common theme is the dark side of humanity? Sin and remorse, folly and shame are the ever-recurring motifs in their sombre symphonies of life. Are these then worth while? Is there not enough sadness in the world already, without calling in fictitious ills? With equal truth we may answer “yes” and “no.”

Fear unquestionably exerts a more potent sway over the human mind than hope. “Fear made Gods,” said Lucretius; and whether we accept the dictum as an explanation of theism or not, we must at least admit that fear has more generally driven men to right conduct and God-worship than the opposite principle. Philosophers have ever allowed this, while deploring it as the saddest of human frailties. Fear is an imperfection; but it is also a keen weapon against evil, and evil is our immediate foe. Would it not be foolish, therefore, to throw away the sword that suits us now, because higher natures, we are told, wield more effectively the battle-axe of hope ? It is too heavy for us, and the mightiest blow we can deal with it but stupefies evil, — and evil soon revives.

The legitimacy of arousing fear, horror and their kindred emotions by [page 178:] literary skill depends, then, plainly on the utility of the emotion. The law may be stated thus: the repulsive which makes for right conduct is alone permissible in literature. With this canon in mind we must judge between Poe and Hawthorne.

A recent English writer, Mr. Leslie Stephen, calls Poe “a kind of Hawthorne and delirium tremens.” I do not think this quite expresses the truth. Poe is not Hawthorne and something more, but Hawthorne less something. If, by way of illustration, we compare Hawthorne to a clock, Poe would be a clock without a pendulum. This pendulum is a deep moral purpose. Hawthorne does not scruple to introduce the most horrid, repellent images and ideas into his work, if by their agency he may force home upon the reader the moral lesson. Though not rich, Hawthorne, not being ever in absolute want, could afford to be critically nice in his work. No tale, however slight, ever left the workshop of his brain until it had undergone there the refining process of many scrupulous revisions. Poe, on the other hand, was always pinched; any delay in publishing a tale or other literary article usually meant to himself and his family a corresponding period of dis- comfort. Much of his work, therefore, left his hands in a crude unfinished state ; if there was any revision, it was in subsequent editions, when the inspiration of the story had perhaps grown cold on his mind. Poe would no doubt have met this charge of moral purposelessness, either by an abrupt denial of the need of moral depth in avowed fiction; or, by the confession that he could not afford to lessen the sensational interest in his tales because it conduced to no deeper end than the producing of a certain effect upon his reader — an effect which, pandering to the human mind's craving for excitement, morbid or healthy, brought him bread and butter; and, what he more eagerly coveted, a reputation for literary power, however dark, and for originality, however unworthy in direction.

Circumstances to a certain extent excuse this selfish and immoral aim of Poe, but we must look deeper for the fundamental lack in the man. Adequately to perceive the real cause of Poe's inferiority to Hawthorne we should examine the lives and personal characters of the two; for more than any other authors that I recall, save perhaps Shelley, these two live in their

works. Their individuality is so clearly written between the lines of their [page 179:] stories, that from the perusal of these alone a skilful analyst could paint the authors’ portraits. Their lives give us a key to all their similarities and differences. It is often said that circumstances make men; but Poe and Hawthorne, at least, made their circumstances. Had Poe had the prudence and patience of Hawthorne, he would have had the same leisure to meditate on human life, and might have drawn from it the same invaluable lessons.

Poe was ambitious — intensely ambitious; but his was the ambition of seeming, not of being. In his eagerness for seeming learned, he was in the habit of quoting at the bottoms of his pages from spurious authors or from others, whose works, never translated, were written in a language strange to him. He does not work to make man better, wiser or happier, but to startle or horrify or enrage them. In a few rare cases, in the tale of Leonora for instance, he is uplifting and noble in sentiment; the hideous and morbid, however, prevail; and, while they cannot wholly conceal the man's splendid genius, they cover it with a disgusting scum.

Take a striking example: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. A dying man is mesmerized and kept in the hypnotic state for seven weeks after death. The description of his condition and appearance, which makes up the sum of the story, is simply loathsome, as you may judge by the concluding paragraph: “As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of ‘dead! dead!’ absolutely bursting from the tongue and not the lips of the sufferer, his whole frame at once — within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk — crumbled — absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome — of detestable putrescence.”

Now Hawthorne never commits a wanton monstrosity like this, yet he can be quite as powerful. The Bosom Serpent — that terrible allegory of Egotism — is equally effective and more lasting in its impression. Long after reading the story, the idea of the snake writhing in Roderick Elliston's breast kept rising sombrely before me; the fearful monotone of “it gnaws me — it gnaws me!” rang in my ears. On the other hand, after the first feeling of sickness and disgust, M. Valdemar's semi-fluid corpse touched rather my sense of the ridiculous than any deeper emotion.

Perhaps I can make myself clearer by an analogy from music; all who [page 180:] have heard the overture to Wagner's Tannhaüser will remember the calm, sweet melody of the “pure love “ and the impure love “ as represented by u the shrill tremolo of the violins. After I heard the piece, the passionate, quivering intensity of the violins was at first by far the stronger memory. It seemed to jar every nerve in my body, until I was positively on fire with excitement; but slowly the physical impression wore away, — for I believe it was almost wholly a physical impression, — and I forgot all about it. Not so with the melody — its influence was not physical. If I choose I can call it to mind now — I whistle it, and it gives me the same exalted feeling that it did when rendered with all the harmonic effects of a full orchestra.

So it is with a tale by Poe as compared with one by Hawthorne. The former acts like an electric shock upon the sense — but there stops. There is nothing for the intellect — or the soul, if you please — to brood over. The latter, too, electrifies the sense; but furthermore includes, absorbed in the electric fluid as it were, an element of soul, which, by the affinity of like for like, incorporates itself with the soul of the reader. And again, Poe decreases in effectiveness by familiarity; Hawthorne increases. As we may become callous to the horrors of the dissecting room, so may we to the horrors which Poe paints for us. The effect of which he was so proud is gone, and there is nothing to take its place. On the other hand, when we take up a volume of Hawthorne, we find perhaps a curious story, with somehow a tantalizingly obscure secret in it, which tempts us to seek again. We go again and again and again — the secret gains in interest and extent, until little by little we lay bare the deep and rich vein of wisdom — the accumulation of years of patient and absorbed meditation.

Now we begin to see why so many who would pose as followers of Hawthorne yet wear the livery of Poe. Like him they are ambitious of seeming. They are too much in a hurry to build the foundations of fame, but begin at the second story, trusting to men's near-sightedness and credulity for the rest. They disclaim Poe because he is a lesser light. Hawthorne is their prophet — they study carefully his style; then they conceive a terrible idea, — the more lurid the better; mould it in veiled insinuations; paint it with local coloring; dress it up in hints of a dreadful denouement; give it an expression of childlike trust in ghosts and hob-goblins; teach it [page 181:] a mournfully suggestive refrain; throw over it a veil of pretended disbelief — and the simulacrum is complete. At first sight this miserable pretender seems really like the original, but after a few meetings you begin to find the mournful refrain exceedingly tiresome — small talk is all very well, but even it must make at least a show of variety. You press upon the simulacrum any serious problem, and lo! parrot-like, it still mechanically repeats its one refrain. And should you become violent in your queries, its borrowed finery, like Mrs. Bullfrog's when the chaise upset, falls and leaves nothing but a bare, unlovely, worn-out conceit.

I do not, of course, mean to class these abortions with Poe's creations; although the answers of the latter to our problems, when they vouchsafe any reply, are perhaps more specious and superficial than we should like, yet they at least give proof of original intelligence, and not of mere truisms got by heart.

Besides the lack of moral purpose in Poe, his work is inferior to Hawthorne's in human sympathy and interest. It is true that Hawthorne's life was lonely, but not self-absorbed, unless indeed we are to interpret self in that broad sense in which it includes mankind. Hawthorne was personally a lovable man. Poe led an active and restless life, which necessarily brought him into contact with all sorts of men and women. Yet all who knew him bear testimony that while he was interesting and romantic, he was essentially unlovable. He was thoroughly wrapped up in himself. Here again we find an explanation of how it is that the very same things that under Hawthorne's touch are ennobling, become with Poe hideous and degrading.

The test is now applied. Before it Hawthorne's most repulsive mood is transfigured into the beauty of moral earnestness — the moral earnestness which makes for right conduct; while the repulsive in Poe resolves itself into a mere will-o’-the-wisp of his morbid ambition. Hawthorne is a fit type for the new literature ; but his clear and starry eminence can only be attained by the same arduous and narrow path in which he toiled. There is no short cut. Poe with all his magnificent genius found none; and the dark immortality of his fame rests upon a few poems and tales, in which he gave up the quest for the short cut and sought the narrow way.

J. B. Fletcher.