Text: Frederico Olivero, “Symbolism in Poe's Poetry,” Westminster Review (London, UK), August 1913, pp. 201-207

[page 201:]

THE creative power of Poe's imagination appears in his poems in a different way than in his tales; did we admire in his poetry the wild beauty of the scenery for its own sake, without considering its symbolic significance, we should lose a great part of the æsthetic effect. Landscape description was to Poe an artistic device to express his personal emotions; the suggestive capacity of musical words offered to him the means to emphasize the subtle analogies between image and feeling, between matter and spirit. The peculiar charm of his landscapes can only be adequately felt by those readers who perceive that the poet did not merely intend to evoke a real scene, but rather to give us a symbol of his psychological condition, of his strange melancholy, of his sumptuous and bizarre dreams, of his deep sorrows. In no lyric, perhaps, more than in “Ulalume,” does he clearly show us his conception of Nature as a symbolic representation of ideas and sentiments; we see the intimate correspondence between landscape and soul in the I. and III. stanzas,(1) and the spiritual current underlying the material appearance of the scene, is visible again in the IX. strophe.(2) The star of Astarte is an emblem of Love; its meaning is manifest in “Eulalie”(3); in “Ulalume” however, — an elegy and a dirge, — the symbolic star assumes a cruel, fateful look; it shines with a sinister radiance above the “Titanic cypresses”; its “bediamonded crescent “ casts a lurid spell on the misty woodland, the black tarn, [page 202:] the dying forest; it is here the star of Love and Death.(4) The “sinfully scintillant planet” floods the scene with a vivid, weird splendour, with a crystalline light instinct with a hellish power; it leads the poet to the forgotten grave of his dead Ulalume.

In “The Sleeper,” too, we have an emblematic setting to the central figure of the strange lady.

The moon sheds a golden vapour, which “steals drowsily, musically into the universal valley”; the moon is here a symbol of Love, but of Love in ecstatic peace, as in the poem “To Helen,” where, dreaming in the pale enchantment, the roses

here the soft brilliance is soothing the world in a sleep, calm and profound as a mystic trance, since Irene is dead, and the pure love born in her beautiful soul is now eternal. The ruined castle, wrapt in white fog, the rosemary leaning on the tomb, the lily afloat on the dark waves, the lake, evoke a romantic scene not unlike the landscapes dear to Scott and Byron, and yet instinct with such a weird sadness, surrounded by such a deep stillness as to suggest the silence of spaces beyond the world, — an impression we never get from Scott's or Byron's lines. The lake is to Poe an emblem of forgetfulness, and sometimes, of Death; here the calm of its waters blends in a fine accord with the figure of the sleeper.(5) The world is far away; its unhallowed passions, its cruelty, its vain tumult are excluded for ever from this magic circle, where the symbols of Purity and Remembrance, the lily and the rosemary, shed an everlasting fragrance, where the ruins mirrored in the dim waters appear like pale shadows of the Past, like memories looming in the inmost soul and soon vanishing into oblivion. The lake has elsewhere a more sinister meaning, as if Death were lurking [page 203:] under its grim surface; to the poet wandering on the lonely shore it is, indeed, a symbol of Death; on its magic mirror vain aspirations, illusions, unearthly dreams, are passing in gorgeous pageants, alluring him with the strange fascination of terror, with the maddening sortilege whispered by the rippling waters.(6) Likewise, in “The City in the Sea,” the enchanted ocean seems to hide Death's palace; its depths are haunted by dismal visions, and through its waters glimmer the pale foreheads, the wicked eyes, the cruel smile of the fabulous Daughters of Darkness and Horror, the Gorgons. And reflected in this mournful sea we behold the structures that

The glamour of this picture, and of many others throughout his poems, depends on the fact that they are emblems of the dark Power Mallarmé had descried, through the quaint arabesques, of the severe thought forming the base of his art.(7) It is a gloomy world he lets us in; his fantastic universe is only gleaming here and there with faint reflections of mysterious lights, of astral splendours, of red fires(8); nevertheless, the murky atmosphere is sometimes pierced by violent beams, by the rays of a mystic sun, is kindled by opal flames, by a purple lustrousness.(9) When the poet's soul, in moments of truce during the lifelong struggle, is dreaming in blessed repose, the landscape becomes a lucid reflection of the exquisite calm; through the “silvery-silken veils of light” we see banks of violets, and the golden image of autumn trees in the pond starred with lilies, and roses of amethyst and fire; and then, [page 204:] after the moon has set, we only descry Helen's eyes and understand their imperious meaning.(10) Only the babbling of fountains hidden among flowers, only the rustling of angelic wings break the calm of the air dimmed by the blue vapours curling out from invisible censers. And yet the idea of sorrow is not far from this entranced garden.

And, with the image of Sorrow, there comes the idea of Hope and divine Light.

On the contrary “Dreamland” is the creation of a melancholy, forlorn soul; it is the Realm of the Shadow; we are surrounded by “caves and Titan woods,” and bleak crags; of a sudden the leaden hues brighten up, the dreary mountain range opens, and through the gap the sunset skies appear, blazing with a sullen glare. A heart-rending melancholy, a deep pathos — the pathos of his soul — pervades the scene; the slender lilies are dying shivering on the lonely pools; tears of immortal sorrow are dripping from the wandering mists, the sea aspires in a vain, eternal effort to the skies; and in the grey forest we meet

The pathos is milder in “The Valley of Unrest,” where the trees, stirred by no wind, are mournfully rustling, and the clouds are driven in endless, desperate race, and the violets open in the twilight, in the red, perennial twilight, their dreamy eyes, unutterably sad, and the lilies weep

It is a sweet and tender dream of natural beauty, transfigured into an image of tue poet's soul, and, as the soul itself, lovely, [page 205:] yearning, and for ever sad ; it is the same conception of Nature that we find in Mallarmé's “Fleurs”:

Side by side with symbolic representations of psychological states we find allegories, which express either a wide view of mankind (as “The Conqueror Worm”), or a spiritual tragedy (“The Haunted Palace,” “The Raven”). In “The Conqueror Worm” his object is to show — in a forcible, impressive image — Ligeia's sombre conception of Life; on the dark stage, men are wandering, helpless, sad, ruled by terrible, winged Chimeras, torn by the merciless claws of their own blind Passions. At last, as in an old Morality quickened by an ardent inspiration, Death comes, a red snake; it writhes, and kills, and the music of the spheres is hushed, and the weeping spectators, the Angels, affirm

The song of Roderick Usher is a transparent allegory of his inward drama; the fairy palace, glittering with gold, glowing with rubies and pearls, is a figuration of a beautiful face; the “ golden, glorious banners” allude to the flowing, fair hair, the “luminous windows” to the eyes, the joyous spirits praising the wisdom of their master to the words expressing musically, pictorially, the noble feelings, the sublime dreams of the soul. And now let us look at the ruined temple of the mind; it is a sinister, wan face with eyes glaring savagely, and the words are rushing wildly out of the livid lips. In “The Raven,” the undercurrent of thought is pointed out by the poet himself in his essay, “The Philosophy of Composition,”(11) and the meaning of the tragic bird is self-evident. The quoted passage of this essay is worthy of consideration, inasmuch as it enables us to support our views with the words of Poe himself. Intellectual beauty — especially when its radiant serenity is contrasted with the turmoil of corrupted life — is often represented by a symbol, either by a landscape — an enchanted island in a desolate, stormy ocean, a limpid river — or by an object, an altar wreathed with fairy, luminous roses, an Oriental bark “over [page 206:] a perfumed sea,” a melodious fountain.’(12) Dreary images are used whenever the poet wants to lay stress on his horror of death, on his passions, on his blighted hopes; he turns to the Past as to a “ dim gulf,” and a desperate gloom pervades his soul, benumbing all his youthful activities, destroying his energy; then, “No more shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,” he exclaims, “ or the stricken eagle soar”; never will Hope — a star risen to be soon overcast — shine again over his life, a drear path to his bleeding feet.(13) In “ The Bells,” the symbolic treatment has a widening effect on the subject ; all the suggestions latent in it are brought out into the lurid illumination created by the poet's ardent fantasy ; the various impressions produced by the different sounds extend to the whole compass of human life, to birth, wedding, disaster, death, the silver and golden chimes blending with the brazen alarum, with the knell. In “ Eldorado,” the allegories bring with them a solemn sadness, the yearning melancholy of a heart placing its hopes beyond life. It may be interesting to compare the theory expounded in “ The Power of Words” with the symbols used in “ Ulalume” to express the passions which troubled the poet's soul, the fiery torrents of lava signifying the ardent feelings of an impassioned heart, as in “ For Annie” “the naphthaline river Of Passion accurst.”

The last-mentioned lyric is all woven out of symbols: the Water of eternal Life, the Water “that quenches all thirst,” the vain torments of love, the “ old ogitations of myrtles and roses,” the holy thoughts inspired by the chaste flowers adorning the tomb, a rosemary odour commingled with rue and the beautiful “ puritan pansies.”

The sibylline utterances in “ Stanzas,” when closely examined, allow us a glimpse of Poe's singular psychological state in his moments of inspiration; then he drew from Nature not only elements of material loveliness, but “a passionate light,” which, breaking the charm of physical sensations, awoke the soul to a vision of spiritual beauty; this vision to his spirit, crowned with the diadem of sorrow, was “ a symbol and a token “ of unknown worlds, of unexplored depths of feeling, of everlasting existence.

In the after-death vision of “Spirits of the Dead,” every detail is symbolic, as in a drawing by Blake; the breeze — the divine breath of life — is still; the mist, the shadowy mist hanging low upon the hills and the trees, “veiling the dreadful horizon,” is a symbol and a token;

To find such a symbolic treatment of the landscape we must turn to Coleridge, whose mystic scenery in “The Ancient Mariner” and “Kubla Kahn” opened new perspectives to the dreamer, the artist, the poet, by showing them how a desolate sea, haunted by glittering, uncanny forms of strange loveliness and horror, how a stately, fantastic palace could express, forcibly and vividly, those peculiar shades of feeling, those rare moments of exquisite, undefinable beauty, which seemed confined in the domain of Music, which appeared to be conveyed to mankind exclusively through the suggestive power of sound. In Coleridge's landscapes, however, we find chiefly reflections of a purely intellectual ecstasy; in Poe's lyrics the “paysage intérieur” is pervaded by the impassioned glow of his heart; while Coleridge intends to create new symbols of a metaphysic, abstract beauty, Poe tries to bestow upon his emblematic scenery the deep pathos of his soul.

FEDERICO OLIVERO.

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11. “Two things are invariably required — first, some amount of complexity ... . and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness — some under-current, however indefinite, of meaning.”

“The reader 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 Remebrance,’ is permitted distinctly to be seen.”

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12. “To One in Paradise,” 1-6. “To F — ,” 7-14. “To Helen,” 1-5.

13. “To One in Paradise,” 7-20.