Text: John Phelps Fruit, “A Masterpiece: The Raven,” The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (1899), pp. 114-126

[page 114:]

BEFORE 1845 Poe had settled in his own mind that the belief, that melancholy is inseparable from the higher manifestations of the beautiful, is omni-prevalent, and that the belief has a firm basis in nature and reason; and more, that rhythm and rime are, therewith, of essential and especial aid in attaining the finest effects of poesy (8:270).

He had also determined that, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world is the death of a beautiful woman, to be sung by the lips of a bereaved lover.

Under the stress of these convictions, Lenore seems to be the immediate precursor of The Raven.

If The Raven were written in the winter of 1843-44 (10: 157), in 1843 appeared also the “Pioneer version” of Lenore (10: 169). The Raven was published in January, 1845; in the same year was published the final form of Lenore (10: 166). May not the short verse of the “Pioneer version” of Lenore have been changed to the long, because of the long verse of The Raven? Who knows but the verse of the first draft of The Raven was short too? A suggestion has been made as to why the short verse of Lenore was made long. In any case, Lenore is the logical antecedent, in topic and treatment, of The Raven.

And thus we are brought to consider The Raven, that marvel of subtle conception, and of masterful skill in [page 115:] versification. Intuitively, we know its charm and own its spell: let us, discursively, seek to learn how its magic works.

Conceive the physical and mental state suggested in these lines. He was nodding, nearly napping, already in that obscure route to Dream-Land. It was most natural he should be, for it was midnight, and dreary, and he was weak and weary; he had been doing heavy work — he pondered — in quaint and curious lore.

But this company of words, to wit, “midnight,” “dreary,” “weak,” “weary,” “nodded,” “napping,” are for the reader, and the simple ideo-motor power of them con tributes to induce drowsiness. The hypnotist does little more than pronounce, monotonously, words that suggest sleep, depending upon their ideo-motor power for results.

Powerful as these words are individually, through suggestion, they come in the ascending order of their importance to the effect to be produced. And more wonderful, they come in a way that rocks the reader in rhythm, and lullabies him with concordances of sound and sense exquisite in sensation.

The purpose, however, of these lines is not to put the reader to sleep, — there is variety rich, for an antidote; but to have him incarnate, so to speak, that student, weak and weary, nodding, napping. There he sits, not a picture, but a veined human being, falling asleep with some curious thoughts, half-pondered, in his mind. He is flesh, he is weary; his blood flows as the lines are rhythmic.

But, — [page 116:]

Observe that the first half of the stanza is a record of his falling asleep, and the second half, his awaking out of that sleep. The word “suddenly” is used with rare appropriateness. Hold it in mind while you glance at the events of his awakening to rational consciousness.

He is first awake to a “tapping,” which means less noise than “rapping;” as consciousness returns it sounds like one “gently rapping;” the repetition of “rapping” recovers him his consciousness, so that he concluded that it is some one “tapping,” and nothing more. The expression, “only this and nothing more,” betrays a secret anxiety that interests us in him. What has he been reading? What is he vaguely expecting?

This man is become a nervous, quivering creature, talking to himself, with a thrilling experience to tell, could we hear it.

The student is the speaker in the first stanza, but the impression is that he is talking in a dream, so we feel that it is the poet who introduces him to our interest.

But from the first word of the second stanza, he is wide awake, and enchains us with his story as a traveller new-returned from Wonderland.

Hear him, —

The word “distinctly” promises what the reader craves. [page 117:]

Add “in the bleak December” to “midnight dreary,” and you have made way for the dying embers at their ghostly tricks upon the floor. That, so suggestively, describes a most distressing state of mind. His grief for the lost Lenore is inconsolable. No wonder, for she was the familiar of the angels; she was rare and radiant; they named her; for him to name her would be profanity. So poignant was his sorrow that he could find no respite from it, in pondering quaint and curious things; he “eagerly” wished for morning; in his despair he felt, naturally, something hauntingly imminent: the ghostly flickerings on the floor reveal most poetically his mental condition.

When we hear the word “remember,” and next, the word “December,” there is then musically emphasized to our attention “ember,” the causative word of the series, — causative of the shadows so symbolical.

In the same way think of “morrow,” and “borrow,” and “sorrow,” and “sorrow” repeated becomes a wail.

Seeing ghostly figures is agitating enough, but hearing therewith ghostly noises is racking. Listen, —

“Rustling” is the chief onomatopoetic word, but see what further differentiation takes place in the addition of “sad,” and on top of that the word “uncertain;” “each” purple curtain — a ghostly company — “flaps shadowy sounds from visionary wings.” No apter word could describe the effect, in its process of taking place, than “thrilled;” and in its finished state, than “filled,” — filled with fantastic terrors.

If the reader will undertake to trace the sense-suggestions in their intricate interworkings in the first line, and [page 118:] then observe their unification by the rhythm, he will be “thrilled” with the .means and the manner of execution.

Full of fright, he stood, and to still the beating of his heart, like some boy whistling to keep up his courage, he kept repeating, —

These lines labor in the reading, suiting so well the stages of hesitation, deliberation, and decision, all in such marked contrast to the first lines of the stanza.

After the deliberation indicated in the repetend and the decision expressed in the refrain, it is time for action, so —

That is a smooth apology, but it is made behind a closed door to a “Sir” or “Madam” without. It portrays finely his trepidation. He was dead sure of opening to some one; but there was naught but darkness. He could not believe it, —

His vision could pierce to nothing, but his imaginings ran riot with his senses. He listened, —

He stood there “long,” and looked and listened, but all was blank and void darkness.

so he called in a whisper, “Lenore?” What evil thing he was fearing was not there, nor was his good angel. The echo of his own heart's sorrow was all that was murmured back.

Turning back into his chamber, he was still more perplexed to hear a tapping at his window lattice. This time he concludes it is the wind, and is more prompt to explore the mystery.

A visitor through the window! Note his strange impoliteness.

The whole incident is diverting; the current of his thought and feeling is for the while turned about.

The bird is regarded as ominous though. He is “of the saintly days of yore;” he is the “ghostly grim and ancient Raven” from the “Night's Plutonian shore.” That darkness into which he had just been peering was to his soul Plutonian. His first “Nevermore” was rather startling.

What had little meaning at first, soon came to bear a significant relevancy. He barely thought aloud that this visitor, stranger, would be gone to-morrow, as his friends and hopes had taken leave, but the Raven's answer aroused a new strain of feeling and speculation, —

His interest becomes more serious. [page 121:]

This is a wholly different mind-state from “wondering,” “fearing,” “doubting.” But see how it changes, —

How naturally is the thought-connection between the Raven's “Nevermore” and the lover's lost Lenore made! It is quickly and intensely realized.

At the most propitious moment for his peace of mind, when he hears the footfalls of the angels, and is persuading himself that they bring him respite and nepenthe for his sorrow, the cup is dashed from his lips with a cruel “Nevermore.” The word becomes ominous to him,

There is no surcease of sorrow for him here, but what about it beyond this mortal weeping?

What is left now but defiance to the confirmation of his own prophetic soul?

In The Philosophy of Composition, Poe speaks some words on the two closing stanzas of The Raven.

“But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required: first, some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, second, some amount of suggestiveness, some under-current, how ever indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. It is the excess of [page 123:] the suggested meaning — it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under current of the theme — which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.

“Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the poem — their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded them. The under-current of meaning is rendered first apparent in the lines —

“It will be observed that the words, ‘from out my heart’ involve the first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer, ‘Nevermore;’ dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematical — but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza that the intention of making him emblematical of Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen: —

True it is that The Raven is not an allegory, but that it is allegorical the careful reader must surmise long before he reaches the last two stanzas. And Poe's statement of the allegorical theme is not specific enough: it was more than a mournful remembrance, it was painful with fear and [page 124:] trembling, as if half-conscious that Nemesis was at hand. He might have sinned as Tamerlane: in unearthly pride.

It is in The Philosophy of Composition that the poet speaks of the interview between the student and the Raven, and how the “Nevermore” of the bird finds echo in his heart. He says: “The student now guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by superstition, to pro pound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer ‘Nevermore’” (6: 45).

It should be remembered that the lover is to be looked at as both the victim, so to put it, of the experiences, and as their raconteur. When we follow the flow of the human wondering, fearing, trembling, doubting, through the suc cessive stanzas, we can see no intention to luxuriate in sorrow, but when we think of the lover celebrating them as his own experiences, then is he indulging in sorrow as a luxury. Not in the moments of suffering is sorrow a luxury, but in the after-moments of recalling and nar rating.

With regard to the technique of the poem, it seems opportune to quote this from The Rationale of Verse. “Verse originates in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment, also, all the moods of verse — rhythm, metre, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analogous effects — are to be referred.”

Certainly The Raven is Poe's finest exemplification of “equality” and “fitness” in all the particulars of verse.

For “equality” in particular, he has this to say which has a significance applicable to The Raven. “The perception of pleasure in the equality of sounds is the principle of Music. Unpractised ears can appreciate only simple equalities, such as are found in ballad airs. While comparing one simple [page 125:] sound with another they are too much occupied to be capable of comparing the equality subsisting between these two simple sounds, taken conjointly, and two other similar simple sounds taken conjointly. Practised ears, on the other hand, appreciate both equalities at the same instant — although it is absurd to suppose that both are heard at the same instant. One is heard and appreciated from itself: the other is heard by memory; and the instant glides into and is confounded with the secondary apprecia tion. Highly cultivated musical taste in this manner en joys not only these double equalities, all appreciated at once, but takes pleasurable cognizance, through memory, of equalities the members of which occur at intervals so great that the uncultivated taste loses them altogether. That this latter can properly estimate or decide on the merits of what is called scientific music is of course im possible. But scientific music has no claim to intrinsic excellence; it is fit for scientific ears alone. In its excess it is the triumph of the physique over the morale of music” (6: 57).

This drawing of the line on what is “caviare to the general” may seem to smack of sour grapes, but who could write The Coliseum in 1833, and To M. L. S. in 1847, and To —— —— and To Helen in 1848, should be secure from the taunt.

Defiant disregard of authority, or better, his daring com mon sense, though rude in utterance in. many instances, — common sense is generally rude to the conventional, — brought him to know his gift and how to exercise it.

It is doubtless true that Poe did not know enough, but he was wise about what he did know.

But there is one other passage to quote from The Rationale of Verse before recurring to the thought of the above extract. He has spoken of the essentialities of verse, then, [page 126:]

“What follows may, strictly speaking, be regarded as embellishment, merely; but even in this embellishment, the rudimental sense of equality would have been the neverceasing impulse. It would, for example, be simply in seeking farther administration to this sense that men would come, in time, to think of the refrain, or burden, where, at the closes of the several stanzas of a poem, one word or phrase is repeated; and of alliteration, in whose simplest form a consonant is repeated in the commencements of various words. This effect would be extended so as to embrace repetitions both of vowels and of consonants, in the bodies as well as in the beginnings of words; and, at a later period, would be made to infringe on the province of rhyme, by the introduction of general similarity of sound between whole feet occurring in the body of a line.”

What, now, has Poe accomplished as an artist? He has chosen, in The Raven, the simplest form of verse enjoyed by the unpractised ear as possessing all the essentialities of verse, and has introduced into this confined form all the “equalities” that he designates “embellishments.” The equalities of similarity which the “scientific” musician puts at intervals too great for the untrained ear to enjoy, are caught up and brought together for all to appreciate. This artistic feat cannot be despised; it challenges admiration.

There is pleasure in The Raven for the boor; there is melody for the connoisseur, —