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ORIGIN OF POE’S ‘RAVEN.’

THERE is no doubt of one fact, that the merits of any work of art are entirely independent of their appreciation by the public; although, when we see any particular new creation universally imitated, it is prima-facia evidence of its superiority. Not that the Popular Mind is at all qualified to judge of any superior work of art, but that there are minds, within the compass of the great Sea of Mind, able so to judge of it, as, by their repeated imitations of it, to give it the name of a superior work under the sun.

There is a vast difference between a poem whose rhythm is original, and one that is modelled entirely after it. It is very easy to write in the rhythm of another; but it is very difficult to create one that does not exist any where. Byron wrote after the manner of another man’s rhythm — so did Southey, Moore, and nearly all the English Poets. The great fault with American Poetry is, that its rhythm is copied entirely after that of the Old English forms.

In an able article, published two or three years ago, in the “Literary Union,” of Syracuse, N. Y., entitled “New School of Poetry,” I find the following words:

This is truly refreshing indeed — a green Oasis in the desert waste of life — a real rainbow of hope to any man whose soul has ever actually thirsted after the healing well-springs of immortal life. But what does it all amount to? Merely this and nothing more — namely, that the writers of such articles betray not only a deplorable ignorance of the current literature of the day, but the most abject poverty of mind in the knowledge of the true nature of Poetry.

In a volume of poems which I now have before me, entitled “The Lost Pleiad,” &c., by T. H. Chivers, M.D., I find a poem entitled “To Allegra Florence en Heaven,” published in 1842, the following verses of which I will now quote, in order to show the intelligent reader the true source, and that alone, from which Poe obtained his style of the “Raven.” Here are the verses:

Now what does Poe say of the RAVEN? He calls it “trochaic catalectic in the fourth, repeated in the fifth, verse.” This is precisely the nature of the Poem of Dr. Chivers — with the exception of the repetition in the fifth verse or line.

I will now give you one of the verses of the Raven, to show you that it is precisely the same:

Here we see that the rhythm is precisely the same — the artistic finish being the same, with the exception of the Refrain of Nevermore, which he also stole from the same author, as I shall now proceed to prove.

In an old number of the “Sentinel and Witness,” published in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1839, I find a poem entitled, “Lament on the Death of my Mother,” the following verse of which I now give to show the reader [column 2:] that Dr. Chivers was the first writer in the world who ever made use of the word Nevermore as a Refrain. Here is the verse:

This shows that Poe is not the inventor of either the style of the “Raven,” or the Refrain, which is the principal beauty of it. In doing this, I show, at the same time, that the honor of having originated that style belongs alone to Dr. Chivers, the author of “The Lost Pleiad and other Poems,” of which Poe himself spoke in the highest terms in the “Broadway Journal,” in 1845. But this is not all. The very paucity of rhyme in Poe’s Hexameter lines proves that his “Raven” was copied after the one by Dr. Chivers, entitled, “To Allegro Florence in Heaven.” But, independent of all this, we know, most positively, that it was.

On looking over the “Broadway Journal for the same year, I find another poem which must have been written by Poe, the following verse of’ which I will now quote, to show that it was taken from the same poem. Here it is, entitled “The Departed:”

Poe was a great artist — a consummate genius — no man that ever lived having possessed a higher sense of the poetic art than he did ; but he chose, rather, to carry out the somewhat true adage that, “to appropriate is the province of genius,” than to invent, himself. He was forever in search of something which, by his Ithuriel pen, he could convert into that which was Bizarre.

It is, indeed, a good thing for this world that “a lie cannot live forever.” It is, also, a blessed thing for all men that truth is mighty and will prevail. Magna est veritos, et prevalebet

Now, in summing up the evidence which I have adduced to prove that the Raven, by Edgar A. Poe, was stolen from a Poem entitled, “To Allegra Florence in Heaven,” by Dr. T. H. Chivers, I would beg leave to say that the rhythm is precisely the same — the Refrain having been taken from another Poem of his, entitled “Lament on the Death of my Mother,” which I find in the Middleton “Sentinel and Witness,” for 1839. Not only is the rhythm the same, but the pathos of the Poem is, also, imitative of it — that verse in which he speaks of the “ melancholy burden “ which he always bore in his songs for the “lost Lenore,” having been taken from the real, deep-rooted sorrow which gave birth to Dr. Chiver’s Poem, and which was noticed by William Gilmore Simms, when he reviewed this same Poem in his Magazine, in Charleston, South Carolina. The truth is, it is copied precisely after it — the only difference between the two Poems being that one is the offspring of a real, bitter sorrow — the other only an artificial imitation of it. Poe never had any experiences — only those which his bad behavior created for him — which were not the themes for song. He was, therefore, compelled, whenever he did write, to copy the experiences of one who had really tasted of the bitter cup of sorrow to the very drugs — as in this instance.

The Poem “To Allegro Florence in Heaven,” was written at a time when the soul of the author told too truly how the Demon of the Plague had chained a more than sensitive heart to the iron Caucasus of an everlasting sorrow! Poe’s Raven was only written as an imitation of it — bearing the same relation to it that a Painting of Prometheus does to the real Providence suffering on the Rock. How easy, then, is it for a good artist, like Poe, to draw out of the unfathomable fountain of the bitterest Marah that ever welled up out of a broken heart, whole eternities of imitative sorrow. But how more than ridiculous it is for any man to talk about this being “one of the most terrible confessions of torture of an all-absorbing passion that man has made since Prometheus was chained to the Rock” — as was said by M. Didimus of Poe’s Raven, when speaking of the musical talents of Gotscholtz, in a late number of “Graham’s Magazine.”

The truth is, Dr. Chivers was the first man who ever made use of the Trochoic rhythm to express an Elegiac Theme. It would appear from the derivation of the word Trochee, which comes from the Greek word trachein, to run, that it was very little adapted for Elegiac verse; but, under proper management — as appears from this very Poem — no other rhythm can be compared with it. Nor is it altogether the old Greek Trochoic measure, but an artful combination of other feet which gives the Poem “To Allegra Florence in Heaven” such an ineffable charm — this not altering the trochaic rhythm at all, but making it more musical, as well as pathetic. This I could very easily show, had I either the time or the space. Nor is this all. Dr. Chivers was the first man in America who ever established that peculiar euphonious alliteration — (thereby creating a novel Poetical Language) — which we recognize in Poe’s Poems — as can be proven by referring to Poems written by him long before Poe began to write. In his early fugitive pieces — many of which are now collected in The Lost Pleiad and Virginalia, but which were published fifteen years ago — he always used the Refrain, which Poe afterwards adopted.

That peculiar responsive iteration and reiteration which characterize Poe’s Poems, you can find in his early Songs — as in the following lines from “The Lost Pleiad,” written in 1842: —

This was enough for Poe — or any man of fine poetical talents — for Poe was not the only one who imitated the style of Dr. Chiver’s Poem, but many of the [column 3:] finest writers in America — not to mention one particular case in “Blackwood’s Magazine.”

But to be more particular in my reference to the “Raven,” I would beg leave to show the reader the palpable resemblance between one of the best verses in that Poem and the one in Dr. Chiver’s Poem, from which it was directly copied. Here is the verse from Poe’s “Raven :” —

Now read the following from Dr. Chiver’s Poem’:

This is amply sufficient to show the nice affinity between the two Poems. There is no mistaking of this matter — one of the Poems was taken from the other, just so sure as the first Poem was ever written. The truth is, the only difference between the two Poems at all is, that one is a Monologue — the other a Dialogue.

The following verse, from a very peculiar poem, Written in 1841, I now quote:

Here, the monotonous and pathetic rhythm of the tolling bell can be distinctly perceived in the sonorous roll of the rhythm of the poem.

The following verse, from a poem written in 1836 now give, as a specimen of his peculiar use of the Refrain:

This refrain is used in every verse.

This shows that is was not anything very remarkably original in the “Raven” which made it so popular, but the eccentricities of its author. Had he been a strictly sober and temperate man, his notoriety (which is not fame,) would have died into an echo long ago.

We can now see that it was not the “Raven” by Edgar A. Poe, which “electrified the world of imaginative readers, and became the type of a New School of Poetry,” as asserted by Willis, but the poem by Dr. T. H. Chivers, from which it was taken. So, it was not Poe who “deliberately, powerfully broke loose from the conventional Schools, and proved his independence by a series of poems, the like whereof, we venture to say, has never been known before,” but simply, plainly, and truly Dr. Chivers, the author of “The Lost Pleiad,” &c. It was he who happened “not to be content with launching forth into strains of weird and unearthly grandeur, (bidding farewell to the dull pedantry of antiquated prosodists,) but created, for himself, a measure and a style not at all in accordance with their dicta — yet rich in melody, and all potent in strength.”

“Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall.”

FIAT JUSTITIA.