Text: John Phelps Fruit, “Allegory,” The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (1899), pp. 108-113

[page 108, unnumbered:]

BECAUSE of Poe's penchant for allegory, it is apt to speak of the fictional side of his art. The two characteristics of fiction and of sound came to view in Al Aaraaf. We have kept trace of the course of the two elements in revisions of poem of 1831 that form a part of the volume of 1845. Recall Israfel, The City in the Sea, The Sleeper, and Lenore.

There are, of course, other poems in the edition of 1845 which were published first along through the years from 1833 to 1845. None of these had such a recasting as Lenore, they are for that reason all the more interesting for our study.

Does it occasion surprise at this juncture to mention that The Coliseum, of 1833, is blank verse of epic sentiment and power? Let the reader be warned against that spirit of criticism which thinks it sees in Poe a mere ballad-monger. He is too versatile for that. A grand theme he can handle grandly. And Scenes from “Politian” shows his ability to appreciate dramatic situations. &

Poe was wise enough to know his power, and shrewd enough to know his gift.

The Bridal Ballad (1837) recalls us from this diversion in thought to plunge us into a tide of rhythm and rime. Read this stanza, — [page 109:]

Now scan it. Does your scansion mean anything? The last stanza runs, —

These two stanzas give strong hints of the repetend and refrain. Here in 1837 are suggestions that come to fulness of realization in 1845. This we have already seen in part in Lenore.

The City in the Sea is allegorical, but The Haunted Palace (1839) is pure allegory. The thought of it is grand and solemn. The poet, in effect, builds for us, as Abt Vogler, his “structure brave,” a radiant palace in the monarch Thought's dominion, —

We are wanderers in that happy valley, see the glorious, golden, banners floating in the breezes, and snuff the winged odors in their dallyings with the gentle air in that sweet day. We see in through two luminous windows to where the ruler of the realm sits on his throne in state of glory well befitting. We see the fair palace door of pearl and ruby open, whence issue —

What can be richer, fairer, brighter? To think that was Poe in his heyday! What a piece of work the man must have been! How does the reader become a living witness of such beauties and splendors except through the force of the rhythm and rime?

But evil things in robes of sorrow brought down the monarch from his high estate, and nothing is left but a dim-remembered story. Travellers from that valley tell us now that in through the red-litten windows they can see —

and that, out through the pale door rush a ghostly hideous throng that laugh, but'smile no more.

That is dark and solemn as the grave! To the same music this palace of thought crumbles to ruin.

In no other poem, as a whole and in part, is the fictional element so richly, simply, and clearly, exhibited; and the music in nice adjustment gives motion to the “airy stream of lively portraiture.”

This stanza, the last, of To One in Paradise (1843) is finely assonant, for it fits so well the sentiment, —

Another pure allegory, The Conqueror Worm (1843), is framed on a larger scale of thought than The Haunted Palace; it is the tragedy “Man,” and the hero is the Conqueror Worm.

Let us think about the consistency of the perceptible images. We look into a theatre on a gala night; there sit [page 111:] a throng of angels in veils, and tears; it is to be a play of hopes and fears; the orchestra breathes the music of the spheres, fitfully. The curtain is up: mimes, in the form of God, begin their muttering and mumbling, and move hither and thither; they are mere puppets, that come and go at the bidding of vast formless things, which, while they shift the scenery, flap invisible woe from their condor wings. It is a motley drama: the crowd chase a Phantom, evermore, that they can never seize; and there is Madness, and Sin, and Horror the soul of the plot. There comes out from the scenic solitude a crawling shape; it writhes; the mimes become its food. Exit: the lights are out; the curtain, a funeral pall, comes down over each quivering form; the angels uprise, unveil, and pallid and wan, affirm —

Was it, in its progress, an enigma to the spectators? It opens a mine of suggestion for doleful, but lofty, contemplation.

They are not still-life pictures, but moving pictures. Not that, merely; we look quite through the pictures at moving things! The rhythm and the rime assist so perfectly and powerfully that the illusion is complete; not better than in The Haunted Palace, but as good.

Observe it in this stanza, —

Dream-Land (1844) is a companion piece for Fairy-Land.

Under the guise of a traveller he relates his journey to, and through, this realm of “unsubstantial pageantry,” —

By bottomless vales, by chasms, caves, and Titan woods, by surging seas, and lakes with their lone waters, by dismal tarns and pools, the traveller meets “sheeted Memories of the Past,” —

But to the traveller travelling through it, its mysteries are never exposed; its king forbids the fringed lid to be uplifted, —

That is a shrewd excuse for being so indefinite. The poem closes with singular aptness, as it began, —

In difference from Fairy-Land, the traveller journeys through the realm, and thus motion is suggested and therewith changing scenes, to all which the rhythm and the rime contribute a living sense.

With Dream-Land ends the list of poems ranging from 1833 to 1844, which exhibit the growth of Poe's art up to [page 113:] the stage represented by the revised form of Lenore in 1845. It is plain from this series that he is masterful enough to yoke sound in such congenial fellowship with sense, no matter what the topic, as to have the reader realize, livingly, the sentiment.