Text: Della Courson, “Poe and the Raven,” Education (Boston, MA), vol. XX, no. 9, May 1900, pp. 566-570

[page 566:]

There is an amusing anecdote related of Poe. It is said that he and a friend were in the habit of exchanging confidences over their literary productions, and that Poe, having just finished The Raven, read it to the other for criticism. “Good,” was the verdict of his friend; “a very good poem, indeed.” “Good!” ejaculated Poe, in extreme disgust; “why, man, it is the best poem ever written.” Whatever Poe's opinion may have been, however, that of the world differs much as to the literary value of The Raven.

The analysis of the poem, as given by the poet himself, while unusual, and giving the impression that his method of composition was elaborate, so far as structure is concerned, hardly goes so far as to explain why Poe declared it “the greatest poem ever written.”

To review his analysis briefly, he regards beauty as the one requirement of a poem; asserts that beauty in its intensest form is melancholy; therefore the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world. “I determined to produce continuously novel results by the application of the refrain . . . I made the night tempestuous for the effect of contrast with the serenity of the chamber. I determined to place the lover in his chamber, rendered sacred by the memory of her who had frequented it”; and so he proceeds to the closing stanzas, “it will be observed that the words ‘from out my heart’ involve the first metaphorical expression. They with the answer ‘Nevermore’ dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously related. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as emblematic — but it is not until the very last line of the very last stanza that the intention of making him emblematic of mournful and never-ending remembrance is permitted distinctly to be seen.”

If Poe be truthful in his account of the poem's construction, it is certainly marvellously made, even though the close attention to minute detail detracts from the intensity of the thought. But we like to believe that, even if he is “three-fourths fudge” in his [page 567:] minor details, unconsciously to himself, his soul worked out an intensity of emotion which characterizes no other poem from an American pen.

Of all our poets none other has a life so teeming with interest; so brilliant in its intellect; so sad in its lack of moral foundation; so pitiful in its wreck. We view it with wonder; we are lost in admiration; but we must pity, yes, even condemn. His peculiar temperament presents a study in psychology, and it is a question whether this study can be best approached by the objective method; but we believe it will be safer, and undoubtedly more generous, to judge him so than by comparison, for he himself says: —

Perhaps it is to this “mystery that binds him still” that we may look for a true interpretation of The Raven.

That imagination was the predominant element of Poe's mind is generally conceded, but surely Griswold is not right when he asserts that in all the poet's productions no trace of conscience is to be found. His virtues were emotional rather than intellectual, and unknown perhaps to himself, the moral is not lacking in his poems. True, he has seemed in his essay, “The Poetic Principle,” to abjure truth, and deny that it is a requisite of poetry. He says: “The demands of truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable [page 568:] in song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do.” He argues that it is a paradox to flaunt her in gems and flowers; that the presentation of truth requires severity, which is the converse of poetry. He divides the world of mind into the intellect, taste and the moral sense, claiming that the first concerns itself with truth, taste with the beautiful, and the moral with duty; that unless incidentally, taste has no concern whatever with either duty or truth. This is Poe's view. Better authorities in the realms of psychology tell us that consciousness has always three aspects — the intellectual, the emotional and the volitional; taste is simply one phase of the emotional self. These three aspects of mind are mutually dependent; intellect is simply the universal element, while feeling is the individual element of the same consciousness, and will the connecting link. One of these phases cannot undergo a change without a corresponding change in the others; for instance, the lack of moral tone proves the failure to grasp a knowledge of the import of right and wrong.

Language also proves to us that beauty and goodness are inseparable, for the former word is but a classical evolution of our Saxon “good.” Primarily from the Low Latin root benus, which means good, through the inflections of the Italian and French we get the English word “beauty.”

Now, if Poe was so very much in error as to his psychological analysis and its bearing on poetry, might he not equally have erred in reading his own mind and have been an unconscious exponent of the depths of his own soul?

The Raven is no fantastical production of a slightly disordered brain. The intensity of its feeling is evident in its effect. It electrified the literary world of America; and Mrs. Browning, than whom there can be no better authority, thus speaks of its reception in England: “This vivid writing, this power which is felt, has produced a sensation here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it.” If Poe could produce an emotion in others which was not the reflection of his own, then he is the exception.

Let us for a few moments review the metaphorical picture which he presents. The soul, weary and dreary and worn, turns for mental diversion to books; vainly sought to borrow [page 569:] from them surcease of sorrow, — sorrow for the lost innocence, so beautifully termed “the rare and radiant maiden.” All the ghostly reflections of the once promising past cast their shadows over him, and sad, uncertain memories, vague as yet, terrify him as nothing had before. But his terror is only increased by the continued knocking of that grim monster who knocks and knocks, and will not be denied. He tries to convince himself, at first, that this mental condition is but ordinary, and his courage revives; he flings the doors of his soul open, but as yet there comes to him only the whispered “Innocence.” But the unrest continues, and all his soul within him burning, once more he bids his guest come in. Then Remorse enters, and fixes itself firmly on his mind, “the bust of Pallas,” the emblem of intellect. Not yet intensely moved, with smiling sadness he greets the mysterious one, but the only reply he can extort is that terrible “Nevermore.” This one word clings to him with an intensity that is indescribable, though at first he hardly understands its meaning; it little relevancy bore. He comforts himself then with the hope that as friends had left, this creature, too, must leave him, and he tries to believe that his emotion is foolish, — simply the result of the “unmerciful Disaster,” which surely had pursued him through life. Then he decides philosophically to accept the inevitable, and to make himself comfortable as possible physically, “at ease reclining,” but he cannot banish the thought that whatever his attitude, innocence can never more be his. He tries artificial means to produce forgetfulness. This failing, his agony renders him frantic; he feels his utter powerlessness to conquer; and in sheer despair his soul cries out, “Is there, is there balm in Gilead? Tell me, tell me, I implore!” Where in American literature can be found another expression conveying such strong emotion? Perhaps Longfellow most nearly approaches it when he says of Robert of Sicily, “And the burden of his woe burst from him with resistless overflow”; or of Hiawatha: —

But these are not hopeless griefs; they are not the cry of the lost soul for the infinite and unobtainable, — unobtainable through its own failure. [page 570:]

Now, his hopelessness produces positive insanity, and he madly shrieks, —

But his guest takes no heed, and he sinks into passive melancholy as he realizes that his “soul from out that shadow shall be lifted nevermore.” What infinite pathos!

Rhetorically, poetry has been defined as that which arouses feeling and awakens the æsthetic emotions. Can there by anything else so laden with feeling as the soul's contemplation of the loss of the stamp of its Divine Creator? Can we find any other American poem so beautifully musical? And even if as musical as some might claim for Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal, can it be denied that Poe's minor key stirs the soul to a depth to which Lowell's major can never reach?

Whether Poe intended it so or not, the Raven is emblematic of his life; his death was a fitting climax to the miserable whole. We so much wish that he could have ended his poem as well as his life with the sunshine of faith with which David sings, lamenting his past, “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow”; that he might have realized that none need to be prisoners of Giant Despair, but that as Longfellow, Tennyson and others have sung to us, we may make the mistakes, even vices of the past, stepping-stones to a nobler, better future; for all