∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
POE'S EXTENSION OF HIS THEORY OF THE TALE
The discussion of narrative technique contained in Poe's review of Hawthorne (1842) has been correctly signalized as establishing in America — with a solidarity for which there seems to be no counterpart in European literatures — a doctrine of the short story. The constant implication, however, that the 1842 statement stands by itself, complete and without antecedent, should not pass unchallenged. There occur in Poe's works various foreshadowings of the theory, and certain ramifications, which are worthy of mention. I do not refer to the parallel theory of the brief poem, already clearly presented in 1836, for the relationship in this case has been repeatedly indicated; I have in mind certain remarks which directly concern prose fiction. In part these demonstrate merely that the principles of the Hawthorne review had been formulated a number of years previously; in part — and this weighs more heavily in the scale — they have some interpretative value.
The idea of unity of effect, the heart of the 1842 statement, already finds expression, and is already applied to fiction, as early as 1835, when Poe writes of Lady Dacre's Winifred, Countess of Nithsdale:
The absolute conclusion of this tale speaks volumes for .the artist-like skill of the fair authoress. An every day writer would have ended a story of continued sorrow and suffering, with a bright gleam of unalloyed happiness, and sunshine — thus destroying at a single blow that indispensable unity which has been rightly called the unity of effect, and throwing down, as it were, in a paragraph what, perhaps, an entire volume has been laboring to establish.(1)
Comparison proves the identity of this principle with that described the following year in the brief-poem criticism mentioned above, in which the author speaks of “what is rightly termed by Schlegel, ‘the unity or totality of interest.’”(2) It is evident in this second case that Poe had been reading Black's translation of August William Schlegel's [page 28:] Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, published in Philadelphia in 1833,(1) and that the reference is to certain remarks in the chapter on the French classical drama.(2) Presumably this is also the source of the 1835 comment; if so, Poe's theory of fiction is related to Schlegel directly, and does not depend, as has been supposed,(3) upon an intermediate brief-poem doctrine.
Schlegel in turn, we may note in passing, relates his idea to “De la Motte, a French author, who wrote against the whole of the unities.”(4) The reference is evidently to the Premier Discours sur la Tragédie by Houdar de la Motte.(5) Certain sentences in this Discours offer a parallel to the most frequently quoted paragraph of Poe's 1842 declaration. La Motte discusses the application of his theory of unity as follows:
Mais en quoi consiste l’art de cette unité dont je parle? c’est, si je ne me trompe, à savoir dés le commencement d’une Piéce, indiquer à l’esprit et au coeur, l’objet principal dont on veut occuper l’un et émouvoir l’autre. . . . Ensuite à n’employer de personnages que ceux qui augmentent ce danger ou qui le partagent avec le Héros; à occuper toujours le Spectateur de ce seul intérét, de maniére qu’il soit présent dans chaque Scéne, et qu’on ne s’y permette aucun discours, qui sous prétexte d’ornement, puisse distraire l’esprit de cet objet; et enfin à marcher ainsi jusq’au dénofiiment.(6)
And Poe writes:
A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents — he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.(7)
But the American nowhere makes any allusion to the French author; and he seems equally unaware of the considerable body of Novelle criticism produced by the Schlegel brothers. [page 29:]
In 1836, in a review of Sketches by Boz, special unity is again discussed, with reference to fiction, together with two other principles — the fallacy of sustained effort, and the desirability of a single, uninterrupted presentation of a story — which with it constitute the three essentials of the ultimate formula:(1)
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that less actual ability is required in the composition of a really good “‘brief article” than in a fashionable novel of the usual dimensions. The novel certainly requires what is denominated a sustained effort — but that is a matter of mere perseverance, and has but a collateral relation to talent. On the other hand — unity of effect, a quality not easily appreciated or indeed comprehended by an ordinary mind, and a desideratum difficult of attainment even by those who can conceive it — is indispensable in the “brief article,’ and not so in the common novel. The latter, if admired at all, is admired for its detached passages, without reference to the work as a whole — or without reference to any general design — which, if it even exist in some measure, will be found to have occupied but little of the writer's attention, and cannot, from the length of the narrative, be taken in at one view, by the reader.(2)
Six years earlier, therefore, than the 1842 declaration its chief features are already thought out.
During the intervening period, however, Poe varies in the interpretation of one essential of his theory. In the same year in which he alleges that the average novel cannot, from its extent, be regarded as a whole, he points out the peculiar unity of effect of Bulwer's Last Days of Pompeii: “This justly admired work owes what it possesses of attraction for the mass, to the stupendousness of its leading event . . . . to the skill with which the mind of the reader is prepared for this event.”(3) In 1837 he praises, in a review of a novel, the “exceeding ingenuity and finish in the adaptation of its component parts” and adds that “nothing is wanting to a complete whole, and nothing is out of place, or out of time.”(4) And in 1841 he condemns the absence of special unity in Barnaby Rudge, affirming [page 30:] that Dickens has not properly persisted in developing only “the soul of the plot” and that he has shown “no positive genius for adaptation.”(1) Perhaps Poe does not choose to regard these as typical examples of extended fiction; in that case the inconsistency vanishes, for the initial (1836) criticism is applied only — although with no particular stress upon this point — to the “common novel.” Be that as it may, here are three instances(2) where the critic measures a long story by his special standard. This tendency of Poe's to extend his narrative principle to all fiction has not, I believe, been sufficiently recognized.
A fourth instance includes a qualification which leads back toward the original attitude, but the conception remains less narrow. Poe writes of Bulwer's Night and Morning that the author has been so careful in “this working-up of his story — in this nice dovetailing of its constituent parts — that it is difficult to detect a blemish in any portion.” Yet he holds that the tension has been too great, that the author has tried too hard, since “narratives, even one-fourth as long . . . . are essentially inadapted to that nice and complex adjustment of incident at which he has made this desperate attempt.”(3) In thus reverting Poe takes the standpoint of the practical. Sustained effort (which according to the earlier statement required only perseverance) is disapproved because it is so difficult as frequently to be out of reach of both writer and reader.
Why this is so was precisely explained, in 1841, in the following remarks, on the nature of plot — remarks which, in so far as they reveal the mechanics of totality of effect, supplement to some purpose the 1842 doctrine:
The word plot, as commonly accepted, conveys but an indefinite meaning. Most persons think of it as a simple complexity; and into this error even so fine a critic as Augustus William Schlegel has obviously fallen, when he confounds its idea with that of the mere intrigue in which the Spanish dramas of Cervantes and Calderon abound. But the greatest involution of incident will not result in plot; which, properly defined, is that in which no [page 31:] part can be displaced without ruin to the whole. It may be described as a building so dependently constructed, that to change the position of a single brick is to overthrow the entire fabric. In this definition and description, we of course refer only to that infinite perfection which the true artist bears ever in mind — that unattainable goal to which his eyes are always directed, but of the possibility of attaining which he still endeavors, if wise, to cheat himself into the belief. The reading world, however, is satisfied with a less rigid construction of the term. It is content to think that plot a good one, in which none of the leading incidents can be removed without detriment to the mass. Here indeed is a material difference; and in this view of the case the plot of “Night and Morning” is decidedly excellent. Speaking comparatively, and in regard to stories similarly composed, it is one of the best.(1)
The interest of plot, referring, as it does, to cultivated thought in the reader, and appealing to considerations analogous with those which are the essence of the sculptural taste, is by no means a popular interest; although it has the peculiarity of being appreciated in its atoms by all, while in its totality of beauty it is comprehended but by the few. . . . . A good tale may be written without it. Some of the finest fictions in the world have neglected it altogether. We see nothing of it in ‘’Gil Blas,” in the “Pilgrim's Progress,” or in “Robinson Crusoe.” Thus it is not an essential in storytelling at all; although, well managed, within proper limits, it is a thing to be desired.(2)
The proper limits, he here contends, would normally be those of the brief tale.(3) But in general the assertion is not so sweeping as the earlier one, and it is to be observed that in the comment on perfection of plot Poe is speaking of fiction as a whole and not exclusively of the short story.
In the perpetually emphasized 1842 review the critic focuses his attention, it is evident, upon the special problem of the brief tale. One month after the Hawthorne criticism, however, its chief principle is again extended to the novel when Poe says of Bulwer's Zanoni that “the necessity of preserving the oneness and entireness of effect, of which we have spoken so much, exists in peculiar force in a highly imaginative work like this.”(4) In 1844 the nature of plot is discussed [page 32:] in its most general terms, and once more in application to all fiction, as follows:
The pleasure which we derive from any exertion of human ingenuity, is in the direct ratio of the approach to this species of reciprocity between cause and effect. In the construction of plot, for example, in fictitious literature, we should aim at so arranging the points, or incidents, that we cannot distinctly see, in respect to any one of them, whether that one depends from any other, or upholds it. In this sense, of course, perfection of plot is unattainable in fact — because Man is the constructor. The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a Plot of God.(1)
The attainable in fact is mentioned briefly a year later in a discussion of the drama,(2) to which also Poe applies his theory.
It is manifest that plot, as he views it, is absolutely and singly essential to totality of effect, and that plot in this sense is by no means the monopoly of the brief tale. These are the outstanding features in the miscellaneous remarks, too often neglected, which complete the 1842 pronouncement. Certain other bits of criticism are of interest because they suggest points generally accredited to other theorists. One of these anticipates Spielhagen. When Poe writes, in 1849, that “in the tale proper . . there is no space for development of character,”(3) he emphasizes a condition which the German critic, several decades later, declares the prime requisite for the Novelle.(4) In a discussion of Barnaby Rudge, Poe applies the dramatic unities to fiction, as Professor Matthews has since done(5) in the case of the short story.
The effect of the present narrative might have been materially increased by confining the action within the limits of London. The ‘Notre Dame” of Hugo affords a fine example of the force which can be gained by concentration, or unity of place. The unity of time is also sadly neglected, to no purpose.(6) [page 33:]
In the same review he remarks upon what has since become one of the most frequently used devices of the short-story adept, the deliberate and repeated insertion of forward-pointing remarks destined to emphasize the singleness of effect. Dickens, he believes, should have employed it:
The raven, too, intensely amusing as it is, might have been made, more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama. Its character might have performed, in regard to that of the idiot, much the same part as does, in music, the accompaniment in respect to the air. Each might have been distinct. Each might have differed remarkably from the other. Yet between them there might have been wrought an analogical resemblance, and although each might have existed apart, they might have formed together a whole which would have been imperfect in the absence of either.(1)
And here once more is the principle of totality of effect applied not to the brief tale but to the novel.(2)
This frequent extension of the doctrine constitutes a fresh piece of evidence as to the interplay of influences between the short and long fiction forms. Investigation of the genesis of modern brief narrative has repeatedly shown instances where the gap between the two forms has been bridged, in actual practice, by tales that approach the short story, or the Novelle, or the conte and nouvelle, but remain “long short-stories”’ or condensed novels.(3) Contemporary criticism, in the early stages, rarely sensed the relationship. But Poe is explicit. A statement by which he may very possibly have been influenced appears in the preface (1832) of William Godwin's Caleb Williams:
I felt that I had a great advantage in thus carrying back my invention from the ultimate conclusion to the first commencement of the train of [page 34:] adventures upon which I purposed to employ my pen. An entire unity of plot would be the infallible result; and the unity of spirit and interest in a tale truly considered gives it a powerful hold on the reader which can scarcely be generated with equal success in any other way.(1)
Poe expresses his approval of Caleb Williams,(2) and commends the American novel, George Balcombe, for being planned in a similar manner.(3)
The consequences of such a conception of totality of effect may be far-reaching. Has there not been since Poe — I would not suggest any direct influence — a tendency to apply to novel construction his special standard of unity? Consider such artists as James, Bourget, Dostoevski, such novels as The American, Le Démon de midi, Crime and Punishment. In each of these books attention is focused, somewhat sharply, upon a single narrative idea. James explains the conception of The American as follows:
I recall that I was seated in an American “horse-car” when I found myself, of a sudden, considering with enthusiasm, as the theme of a “story,” the situation, in another country and an aristocratic society, of some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot: the point being in especial that he should suffer at the hands of persons pretending to represent the highest possible civilisation and to be of an order in every way superior to his own. What would he “do” in that predicament, how would he right himself, or how, failing a remedy, would he conduct himself under his wrong? This would be the question involved, and I remember well how, having entered the horse-car without a dream of it, I was presently to leave that vehicle in full possession of my answer. He would behave in the most interesting manner — it would all depend on that: stricken, smarting, sore, he would arrive at his just vindication and then would fail of all triumphantly and all vulgarly enjoying it. He would hold his revenge and cherish it and feel its sweetness, and then in the very act of forcing it home would sacrifice it in disgust. He would let them go, in short, his haughty contemners, even while feeling them, with joy, in his power, and he would obey, in so doing, one of the large and easy impulses generally characteristic of his type.(4) [page 35:]
Bourget writes, more succinctly, of Le Démon de midi:
J’entrevis comme un théme possible 4 un roman d’analyse, cette douloureuse dualité: de hautes certitudes religieuses coexistant, chez un homme public, avec les pires égarements de la passion.(1)
Neither man ever forgets the business at hand; each unfolds the results of one situation and then stops.(2) A parallel recently drawn between Dostoevski's titanic work and a famous short story emphasizes the same structural characteristic. Professor Knowlton, in an article on A Russian Influence on Stevenson, affirms:
Stevenson's Markheim is a Dostoevski's Crime and Punishment on a greatly reduced scale, a cameo version of a colossal frieze. Both are stories beginning with the murder of a pawnbroker and ending, after an experience of highly crowded mental life, with the self-surrender of the murderer to the police. When we compare the short story and the novel, we perceive at once the literary relationship between the two in method and in theme.(3)
Examples of this procedure among modern novelists might be multiplied. These men could hardly be aware of the scattered criticisms of Poe, who would be represented for them, at most, by his 1842 review; yet his theory sharply foreshadows their practice.
HORATIO E. SMITH
YALE UNIVERSITY
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 27:]
1 Works (New York, Crowell, 1902), VIII, 74-75. Here and elsewhere the somewhat unusual punctuation of the original text is reproduced.
2 VIII, 126.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 28:]
1 As to Poe's familiarity with this translation, cf. Woodberry, Life of Poe (Boston, 1909), I, 179-80.
2 Pp. 189-90. Schlegel's expression, in the original text, is “Einheit des Interesse.”’
3 Cf. Baldwin, American Short Stories (New York, 1909), Introduction, p. 22.
4 Ed. cit., p. 189.
5 Œuvres, 1754, IV, 37-46.
6 P. 45.
7 XI, 108.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 29:]
1 I disregard one point of the final statement, namely the contention, generally accepted as an axiom in American criticism, that prose and not verse is the proper vehicle for brief fiction.
2 IX,46. Poe applies the term “brief article” without discrimination to such pieces as The Black Veil, which has genuine plot, and The Pawnbroker's Shop, which has none. This fusion of what Dickens himself afterwards separates into Scenes, Characters, and Tales (cf. the preface to the 1850 edition) is interesting in the light of current opinion as to the interrelation of these forms (cf. Canby, The Short Story in English [New York, 1909], pp. 180-82). Elsewhere (XI, 110), Poe uses “‘article’‘ as synonymous with “tale.”
3 IX, 153.
4 IX, 265.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 30:]
1 XI, 57, 64.
2 Cf. also the criticism of Winifred (see above, p. 195).
3 X, 119-22. Poe continues, making the point already suggested in 1836 about the desirability of presentation at a single sitting. He here speaks of “unity or totality of effect,” meaning what he means in the 1836 brief-poem statement by “unity or totality of interest.”
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 31:]
1 X, 116-17.
2 X, 120-21.
3 Poe here states that the brief tale is ‘’a species of composition which admits of the highest development of artistical power in alliance with the wildest vigour of imagination’‘ (X, 122). Cf. the remark in the 1842 statement: “We have always regarded the Tale . . . . as affording the best prose opportunity for display of the highest talent” (XI, 102).
4 XI, 120. In 1844 Poe, after enumerating the good qualities of Fouqué's Undine, refers to “the high artistical ability with which all are combined into a well-kept, well-motivirt whole of absolute unity of effect” (XVI, 50).
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 32:]
1 XVI, 10. These remarks are reproduced in Eureka (XVI, 292; cf. XVI, 306).
2 XIII, 44-45. Cf. the remarks on plot published in 1845 in A Chapter of Suggestions (XIV, 188-89). Here Poe reiterates points already made.
3 XVI, 171. Poe adds, reverting in some degree to the 1842 view, that in the tale “mere construction is, of course, far more imperatively demanded than in the novel.”
4 Beitrage zur Theorie und Technik des Romans (Leipzig, 1883), p. 245. Cf. two articles in Modern Language Notes: “Edgar Allan Poe and Friedrich Spielhagen. Their Theory of the Short Story,” March, 1910; “Poe and Spielhagen; Novelle and Short-Story,” February, 1914. In the first Professor Cobb maintains that Spielhagen accepted and exploited in Germany Poe's theory of the story; in the second Professor Mitchell very justly refutes this view. Neither refers to the remark of Poe here quoted.
5 The Philosophy of the Short-Story (New York, 1912), pp. 15-16.
6 XI, 59.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 33:]
1 XI, 63.
2 One other item suggestive of another theorist may be listed. Poe writes of a novel: “The general plot or narrative is a mere thread upon which the after-dinner anecdotes . . . . are strung with about as much method . . . . as we see urchins employ in stringing the kernels of nuts” (XI, 92). No doubt the figure has been imagined, in this application, a thousand times, but it is of interest that the same principle is applied with the same illustration by Marmontel in his pioneer definition of the conte (although Marmontel objects to this characteristic specifically in the conte and not in the roman). Cf. Nouveau Dictionnaire pour servir de supplément aux dictionnaires des sciences, etc. (Paris, 1776), II, 569. Poe refers several times to Marmontel (IV, 193; XII, 223; XIV, 46), but not to his article on the conte.
3 Cf. Canby, The Short Story (New York, 1902), p. 21; Mitchell, Heyse and His Predecessors in the Theory of the Novelle (Frankfurt, 1915), p. 30; Smith, “Balzac and the Short-Story,” Modern Philology, XII (December, 1914), 84.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 34:]
1 I quote from the edition of London, Routledge, 1903.
2 XI, 64; XIV, 193.
3 1X, 265. Balzac, a pioneer in modern French brief narrative as well as in other fields, is enthusiastic in his praise of the unity of Caleb Williams (Annette et le criminel [Paris, 1824], I, 15-16; this preface is reprinted by Lovenjoul, Histoire des euvres de Balzac, 450-53).
4 Novels and Tales of Henry James (New York edition), II, Preface, vi-vii.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 35:]
1 Le Démon de midi (Paris, 1914), Dédicace, iii.
2 Concerning the method of Henry James, cf. the N. Y. Nation, April 15, 1917, p. 398. As to the distinction which, in spite of the similarity between these long and short stories, remains, cf. the remark by James himself, in the Preface to Roderick Hudson (N. Y. edition, p. vi).
3 Modern Philology, XIV (December, 1916), 65. De Vogüé writes of this novel in a similar vein, adding that the method is essentially Western (Le Roman russe, Paris, 1886, p. 247). a
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Notes:
None.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
[S:0 - MP, 1918] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Poe's Extension of His Theory of the Tale (H. E. Smith, 1918)