Text: William B. Cairns, “Some Notes on Poe's ‘Al Aaraaf’,” Modern Philology (Chicago, IL), vol. XIII, no. 1, May 1915, pp. 35-44

[page 35:]

SOME NOTES ON POE'S “AL AARAAF”

The two longer early poems, “Tamerlane” and “Al Aaraaf,” have heretofore received but scant attention in proportion to that which has been bestowed on most of Poe's work. “Al Aaraaf,”’ in particular, has been the subject of interpretations and comments the diversity of which indicates that some of the ablest critics of Poe have passed it by with little more than a cursory reading. While “Al Aaraaf” is not a poem of great intrinsic merit, it is the most important production of a period that is significant in the history of Poe's literary development, and for this reason if for no other it is entitled to consideration.

HISTORY OF THE POEM

The facts regarding the publication of “Al Aaraaf” are well known, and are repeated here only for convenience. Poe had published Tamerlane and Other Poems in June, 1827, when he was eighteen years of age; and he brought out Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Other Poems at the close of the year 1829. There is evidence, however, that the poem which occupied the place of honor in the latter collection was virtually completed some months earlier;(1) and it can hardly be doubted that it was written after the publication of Tamerlane and Other Poems. If it had been available Poe would almost certainly have included it in the earlier pamphlet; and the verse differs so greatly from that of “Tamerlane,” and shows so great an advance toward Poe's later manner that it seems to mark the beginning of a new period in the author's development.(2) If these conjectures are true “Al Aaraaf” must have been written some time between June, 1827, and the spring of 1829. During most of this time Poe is supposed to have been serving as private and noncommissioned officer in the United States army. [page 36:]

“Al Aaraaf” was reprinted with unimportant changes in the volumes of 1831 and 1845, and a portion of it appeared in the Philadelphia Saturday Museum in 1843. In 1845 it received some notoriety from the fact that Poe delivered it before the Boston Lyceum, the members of which had expected a poem composed for the occasion.

PLAN AND MEANING OF THE POEM

“Al Aaraaf” is in places somewhat obscure, owing in part to the allegorical nature of the subject-matter, in part to involved sentence construction. There seems, however, to be no serious difficulty in the interpretation of the story.

If my understanding of the poem is correct, the entire action takes place on Al Aaraaf.(1) This is a wandering star, of which Poe said in a footnote to the title: “A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which burst forth, in a moment, with a splendour surpassing that of Jupiter — then gradually faded away and became invisible to the naked eye.”(2) To this star the poet assigns two attributes. [page 37:] It is the domain of Nesace, a celestial maiden whose mission it is to bear the divine message of beauty from world to world throughout the universe; and it is the abode of certain spirits. “Al Aaraaf” is a poetic spelling of the Arabic Al Araf, which according to the Koran is a narrow partition between heaven and hell, inhabited by souls which have not as yet been assigned to either; but Poe takes even greater liberties with the meaning of the term than with its orthography.(1)

At the opening of the poem the star, after bearing its mistress and her message to distant spheres, “And late to ours, the favour’d one of God”’ (1. 257), is anchored near four bright stars (Il. 16-29). Nesace kneels upon a bed of flowers, whose odors carry her message, or prayer, to heaven (ll. 30-81). In response to this prayer (Il. 82117) the Deity commands that she and her train disperse themselves throughout the heavens and bear his message to other worlds (ll. 133-50). Part II of the poem opens with a description of the temple or palace on Al Aaraaf to which Nesace takes her way after receiving the divine command (ll. 159-217). Here, in a lyric which is the most effective part of the poem (ll. 226-313), she calls on her sleeping attendants, and bids Ligeia, the personified music of nature, to awaken them. All respond but two, “A maiden angel and her seraph-lover”’ (1. 336), the latter a spirit from earth. These are so engrossed in their mutual feeling that they fail to hear the summons, and so perish (ll. 340-422).

While the main facts of the slight story seem clear, the allegorical meaning is somewhat more troublesome. Al Aaraaf is

and Nesace is its ruler (1. 26). Her significance and the exact nature of her message are nowhere definitely stated, but are to be inferred from her prayer and the reply of the Deity (ll. 82-150). Professor Fruit, in The Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry (pp. 24-25) says: “The message is to the effect that the beings whom Nesace has known, have dreamed for the Infinity of the Spirit ‘a model of their own’; the will of God though has been done through the career of the wandering star. What that purpose was will become known —

Professor Harrison accepts virtually the same view.

A portion of the prayer or “message” reads:

The interpretation seems to turn on the question whether the interrogation point at the close of l. 101 marks a full stop or a subordinate pause. If a full stop, then Professor Fruit's reading, which makes important the anthropomorphic conception of Deity, is justified. It seems more probable, however, that ll. 100-101 are merely a rhetorical question in a doxology, or address of praise, which extends through l. 105; and that the sense, directly stated, is: “Though man has imagined thee in his own image, no spirit can know or comprehend thy form.”

The reply of the Deity runs:

Of this Professor Fruit says: “The eternal voice of God answers her in a show of wrath, not towards her, but towards the creatures to whom she had been sent, because they had imagined a model of His Infinity. The consequence is His love is folly, and the crowd think His terrors manifested in the thunder-cloud, the storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath, when in fact there is an ‘angrier path’ in which they will cross Him.” The passage does not seem to me, however, to express present anger or to convey a definite threat, but to emphasize the power of God, and to contrast the resplendency and permanency of Nesace with the briefer span of earthly affairs. The “guilt of man” is not defined. Professor Fruit says it is “evidently that his conception of God is anthropomorphic and therefore utilitarian.” More probably, however, the phrase is merely an indefinite term for “sin,” which, as it comes from passion, will be prevented by a devotion to the higher beauty.

The state of the spirits in Al Aaraaf is pictured in ll. 317-31:

With this passage should be connected the sonnet “To Science,” which originally formed a sort of preface to the poem. In these obscure lines the poet seems to picture a state of innocence in which “error” — that is, absence of “Knowledge” — is a blessing.(1) “Knowledge,” or Science, dims even earthly joys, and to these angels whose essence is devotion to beauty it would be a destroying Simoom.’ The death or annihilation referred to in ll. 320 and 326-29 is explained by Poe in a footnote:

It was “the passionate excitement of Love” which caused the downfall of Ianthe and Angelo, though it must be confessed that their conversation shows little passion in the ordinary understanding of the [page 41:] term. Angelo's long speeches tell of his earthly death, which happened at the time when Al Aaraaf was nearest our planet, and of his translation to that abode of beauty; and both he and Ianthe pay tribute to the beauty of the world.

INFLUENCE OF ENGLISH POETS SEEN IN “AL AARAAF”

“Tamerlane” is unquestionably imitative of Byron. “Al Aaraaf” as unquestionably shows a new manner. It has been customary to consider Moore as the chief influence in bringing about a change; and Professor Woodberry also names Milton.

It is clear that Poe had been reading “Lalla Rookh,” and the “Loves of the Angels,” and his indebtedness to Moore's notes is obvious.(1) His own habit of using pedantic erudite notes was doubtless encouraged by the bad example of Moore, though Southey, Shelley, and others were guilty of a similar affectation, and Poe had begun the practice in “Tamerlane.” But this indebtedness to the machinery and accessories of Moore's poems does not seem to have been accompanied by much indebtedness to the poems themselves. Except that there is a suggestion of orientalism — and orientalism was in the air from 1810 to 1830 — there is little similarity in content or situation. Indeed, I have been able to find no greater likenesses than the reference to many flowers in the passage Il. 42-82, as in several passages of Moore; and such very natural correspondences as that between Nesace's awe and exaltation, ll. 118-21, and that of [page 42:] the maiden after her prayer in the “Second Angel's Story.”(1) The verse is not that of Moore; except for proper names there are no striking resemblances of vocabulary; and the tone and spirit are different, since Moore is usually telling a story for the story's sake, while Poe is attempting an allegorical presentation of abstract truth. It seems that, though Poe was indebted to Moore for some poetic botany and bits of oriental erudition, he really took few hints of poetic form.

Nor is the indebtedness to other poets easier to trace. In the edition of 1829 the title was followed by a quotation from Milton, Milton is three times referred to in the notes, and there are several suggestions of Miltonic imagery.(2) In a footnote Poe credits the hint for two slightly affected rhymes to Scott. I have always suspected that his fondness for a special poetic vocabulary of onomatopoetic words, and for sonorous proper names, such as “Al Aaraaf” and “Ligeia” was derived in part from Shelley, but I am unable to trace definite Shelleyan influence in this poem. Nor, more strangely, considering Poe's devotion to Coleridge, is there obvious influence of that poet. Indeed, the verse is, for the work of a boy of twenty, remarkably free from striking imitations; and in some passages, notably the lyric beginning, “ Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one,” and such lines as

or,

Poe shows unmistakably his own later manner. [page 43:]

”AL AARAAF” AND POE'S CRITICAL IDEAS

The idea of beauty indefinitely bodied forth in “Al Aaraaf” seems to foreshadow the critical theory of poetry which Poe formulated in his review of Longfellow's Ballads and Other Poems, in 1842, and which is probably better known as restated in the Philosophy of Composition and the lecture on the Poetic Principle. Poe here defined poetry as “the rhythmical creation of beauty.” He took pains, however, to make plain that he meant “no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above . . . . the struggle to apprehend the supernal loveliness.”(1) The province of the poem is not, he says, primarily truth, or passion. “Tn the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart.”(2) “In enforcing a truth . . . . we must be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical.”(3) “A passionate poem is a contradiction in terms.”(4) There is, however, no conflict or antagonism between beauty and truth or morals; and taste, the arbiter of beauty, is intimately related with both the intellect and the moral sense. It is a corollary to this theory that since the yearning after ) the supernal beauty leads to sadness, “Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.”(5)

There is a striking relationship between this theory and the conception of beauty presented in “Al Aaraaf.”’ It is the idea of beauty which the Deity disseminates throughout the universe as his special message, and which is to keep the worlds from tottering in the guilt of man. That an excess of truth, or “knowledge”’ is fatal to beauty is stated in the prefatory sonnet “To Science,” and apparently in the passage ll. 317-25, already quoted. On the other hand the antagonism between beauty and passion is shown by the fact that while love is admirable,

excess of passion is fatal:

and this truth is illustrated by the fall of Angelo and Ianthe.

The thought of melancholy as an accompaniment of beauty is hinted at in the lines on Nesace's temple (Il. 186-89):

and in the continuation of the same passage, which represents the niches of the temple as filled with earthly statues.(1)

That “Al Aaraaf” was intended as a presentation of Poe's view of poetry, or that he had consciously formulated his critical theories in 1829, is hardly to be believed. His first definite utterance on the nature of poetry is found in the somewhat rambling “Letter to B — ,” prefixed to the volume of poems issued in 1831. This showed Poe to be strongly under the influence of Coleridge; and the essay is most interesting for its acceptance of Coleridge's distinction between poetry and science, and for the young author's attempt to improve on his master's distinction between poetry and romance. The term “beauty” does not occur. It was apparently not until thirteen years after the publication of “Al Aaraaf” that Poe put in definite form the theories associated with his name. Yet it can hardly be doubted, in view of his earlier critical utterances and the nature of his own poetic attempts, that the striking statements in the review of Longfellow's Ballads, and in later critical writings, were the expression of ideas that he had long been evolving. If the parallelisms here pointed out are significant, it is probable that he had at least the germs of these ideas at the very beginning of his literary career.

WILLIAM B. CAIRNS

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

December 1913

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 35:]

1 Selections from the poem were printed in the Yankee for December, 1829, and a note in the preceding issue seems to show that they were in the hands of the editor at least as early as November. According to Professor Woodberry (Life of Poe, 1909, I, 54) William Wirt wrote on May 6, 1829 regarding a poem which the young author had sent him for criticism, and which “must have been ‘Al Aaraaf.’” Poe also showed the manuscript to William Gwynn, a Baltimore editor.

2 In this connection may, however, be noticed Poe's statement, usually discredited, that he wrote the poems of the Tamerlane volume in 1821-22.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 36:]

1 I should feel more hesitation in contradicting earlier interpreters of the poem if they did not contradict each other, and in some instances even themselves. Professor Harrison thus summarizes the first part of the poem (Virginia ed. of Poe, VII, 161):

“Nesace — personified Beauty — takes up her abode on earth, where surrounded by beauty she reverently looks into the infinite. Flowers are grouped around her to bear her song, in odors, up to Heaven. The Song has to do with the thought that, though humans conceive God after a model of their own, He has revealed himself as a star. Abashed Nesace hears the sound of silence as the eternal voice of God speaks to her, bidding her tell man everywhere that he is guilty (because he believes God is only magnified man?), Let man behold Beauty as the revelation of God. This maiden worshipping a vanishing star dwells on a vanishing island over which she now takes her way.”

From an editor usually so careful this is surprising. It is “yon lovely Earth” (1. 30), not “the earth” in which Nesace kneels. God has not “revealed himself as a star,” but a “spirit” (1. 82), unknowable in material form,

Nesace is not bidden to tell man that he is guilty, unless ‘’man”’ includes the inhabitants of the other worlds to which she is sent (ll. 143-50). She neither worships a vanishing star nor dwells on a vanishing island. This last statement is evidently based on a misunderstanding of Poe's note on 1. 158 — ‘’but left not yet her Therasaean reign.’ In explanation of the adjective ‘’Therasaean,’‘ which he applies to the wandering star, Poe says: ‘’ Therasaea, or Therasea, the island mentioned by Seneca, which, in a moment, arose from the sea to the eyes of astonished mariners.”’

Professor Woodberry is less definite in his outline of the poem, and he does not make quite clear where he supposes the action of the poem to take place. Most of his discussion (Life of Poe, A. M. L. series, 1884, pp. 48-50; Life of Poe, 1909, I, 60-62) seems to imply that it is on Al Aaraaf; but he says: ‘’ The action of the maiden in whom beauty is personified begins with a prayer descriptive of the Deity, who in answer directs her, through the music of the spheres, to leave the confines of our earth and guide her wandering star to other worlds.’‘ Nesace is, however, upon Al Aaraaf, and this star is so far from the confines of our earth that the latter appears dim (1. 356); and the Deity commands her not to guide, but to leave, her wandering star (1. 143; and compare lI. 158).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 36, running to the bottom of page 37:]

2 A superficial search fails to bring to light any reference by Tycho Brahe to this star; and it is unlikely that such a reference would be significant if it were found. Indeed I half suspect that the whole note is one of Poe's inventions. In view of Poe's usual [page 34:] appearance of accuracy in such matters the phrasing is peculiar. In an age when everyone watched the heavens it required no learned astronomer to discover a star “which burst forth, in a moment, with a splendour surpassing that of Jupiter.” It may have been this consideration which led Poe to change the wording, which in later editions ran: “A star was discovered by Tycho Brahe which appeared suddenly in the heavens — attained, in a few days, a brilliancy surpassing that of Jupiter — then as suddenly disappeared, and has never been seen since.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 37:]

1 Poe may have gained his knowledge of Al Araf only from Moore's note to the “Second Angel's Story” in the “Loves of the Angels”; but it is probable that he had also read the rather obscure reference in chap. vii of the Koran as translated by Sale, and an interesting passage, too long to quote here, from Sale's “Preliminary Discourse,” sec. IV.

2 The numbers of lines refer to the text of the 1845 edition as given by Harrison, Virginia ed. of Poe.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 40:]

1 This is the most perplexing passage in the poem; and I am not quite certain that 1. 317 does not mean just the opposite of what I have assumed above, and that the poet does not try to say that the spirits on Al Aaraaf have knowledge, while seraphs have not. Ll. 317-19 lend themselves more readily to this explanation than to the other; and the distinction between cherubim as spirits of wisdom and seraphim as spirits of love was frequent in the poems of the time, and conspicuous in the “Loves of the Angels.” I am unable, however, to fit this reading with the lines that follow, and particularly with the statement,

where the tenses in the last line clearly imply that the spirits did not have Science. It is just possible that the poet distinguishes between “Science” and the “Knowledge” which was refracted upon Al Aaraaf, the latter being enough to introduce the possibility of death, but not to destroy. This, however, seems fanciful; and if this is the meaning, what is “that error”?

With regard to the attributes of seraphim, it may be said that though the cherubim are sometimes distinguished as ‘'Spirits of Knowledge,’ as in the introduction to the “*Second Angel's Story,’‘ their chief characteristic seems to be definable rather as wis- dom, and it is hardly to be assumed that the seraphim, the “Spirits of Divine Love,”’ were wholly without knowledge. Besides, as Moore's notes more than once remind us, the two orders were continually confused, and reasons of euphony might well have led Poe to prefer ‘'seraph”’ to ‘’cherub.”’

2 I am quite unable to understand Professor Fruit's comment (Mind and Art of Poe's Poetry, pp. 29-30) which seems to interpret the Simoom (l. 323), as Nesace's summons to her train, or its response.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 41:]

1 It is very likely that the title of the poem was suggested by Moore's note on Al Araf, already quoted. The names and special attributes of several of the flowers mentioned (ll. 42-80) — the Sephalica, the Nyctanthes, the Nelumbo — are taken from the notes to “Lalla Rookh.” In some cases Poe did little more than borrow the idea, but in others he merely took a hint which he developed by his own imagination. Thus, Moore writes in the “Fire-Worshippers”:

and adds in a note: “There is a kind of Rhododendros about Trebizond, whose flowers the bee feeds upon, and the honey thence drives people mad. — Tournefort.” Poe develops from this a passage of fifteen lines (ll. 50-65), in which he describes the earthly flower as the prototype of that which produced the nectar in heaven, and represents the honey, not as driving men mad, but as

a conception surely more poetic than that of Moore. Poe's note reads: “This flower is much noticed by Lewenhoeck and Tournefort. The bee, feeding upon its blossom, becomes intoxicated.” “Lewenhoeck” is, I surmise, the Dutch scientist, Leeuwenhoek, who, according to the biographical dictionaries, was a microscopist and physiologist. He probably owes his place in the note to the sounding quality of his name.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 42:]

1 Poe says:

and Moore:

2 A line like

is clearly Miltonic. It is harder to say whether the prevailing influence is Milton, Spenser, or Keats in the following:

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 43:]

1 The Poetic Principle.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Marginalia, note on Amelia B. Welby. See also review of Horne's “Orion.”

5 The Philosophy of Composition.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 44:]

1 Poe wrote to Neal: “I have supposed many of the lost sculptures of our world to have flown (in spirit) to the star ‘Al Aaraaf’ — a delicate place, more suited to their divinity.”