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SOME TWENTIETH-CENTURY ESTIMATES OF POE.
IN connection with the Poe centenary celebrations one cannot fail to detect the evident eagerness on the part of writers of recent notices of the poet to atone for past neglect, and to indulge in “ superlatives of praise,” such as “the most original genius of American literature,” “the literary wizard,” “the transcendant poetic genius of America,” all of which contrast strangely with the half-hearted recognition which the poet has hitherto received at the hands of his countrymen. Mr. Morris Bacheller (January Munsey's) gives it as his opinion that if the whole body of those who have made a name for themselves in American literature were passed in review Longfellow would be named as the most popular, and Emerson, — or possibly Whitman, — would be chosen by many as the most original, but that, “‘ taking him for all in all, most judges would agree that the palm for originality belongs to Edgar Allan Poe.” Poe, we are told, resembled his mother, who as an actress “won the hearts of those who saw her by her archness, her romantic grace, and her exceeding sensitiveness.” This sensitiveness, Mr. Bacheller considers, “did much to make Poe the remarkable master of prose and poetry that he afterward became.”
So susceptible was he to every impression that we might call his nature almost feminine. In the world of imagination this quality stimulated all his powers. In the prosaic, external [column 2:] world of fact it made his life unhappy, and was responsible for the tragedy of his premature end. A man of more robust physique and of steadier nerves would have kept his friends and would have established himself in a settled home; but it is doubtful whether any one save the Poe who really lived could have written “The Bells” and “The Raven” and some of the strangely romantic stories which have made his name immortal on both hemispheres. One ought to remember this peculiar sensitiveness in judging him.
Not only is Poe the most original; he is unique. Walt Whitman, — to quote Mr. Bacheller further, — “is to be styled eccentric rather than original. Emerson crystallized [page 226:] in brilliant phrases the wisdom that had belonged to men before him. But Poe, sensitive almost to the point of neurasthenia, stands quite alone, not merely in our literature, but in all literature.”
His exquisite sense of harmony was able to evoke from our language combinations of words which, as Tennyson said of poetry, keep continually ringing “little bells of change.” . . . It was this extraordinary gift, this wizard-like command of tinkling, silvery words and cadences, which stirred Emerson to impatience and led him to call Poe “the jingleman.” There is little need to speak of what ke did in prose. Here, too, his sensitiveness is scarcely less conspicuous, while his imagination, at times grotesque, at other times romantic, plays like summer lightning through the pages which one most readily recalls.
Mr. W. C. Brownell, in Scribner's for January, is somewhat paradoxical in his criticism of Poe. In his opening paragraph, he says:
There is no more effective way of realizing the distinction of Poe's genius than by imagining American literature without him.
Further on in his article he remarks:
The truth is it is idle to endeayor to make 4 great writer of Poe, because, whatever his merits as a literary artist, his writings lack the elements not only of great, but of real, literature.
Between these two apparently contradictory statements he says:
Poe's antagonism instinctively inclined him to art. He is in fact the solitary artist of our elder literature. This is his distinction amd will remain such. Poe's art was unalloyed. It was scrupulously devoid, at any rate, of any aim except that of producing an effect, and generally overspread, if only occasionally clothed with the integument of beauty. As such it was in America at the time an exotic. His great service to his country is in a word the domestication of the exotic. In his hands the method and even the material that he adopted resulted in a very striking body of work, which still has the compactness and definition of a monument. Incarnated in the vivid forms his pronounced individuality imagined, illustrated by the energy of his genius, the spirit of romanticism entered the portals of our literature and illuminated its staid precincts.
Poe had “what might be called the technical temperament.” As a technician “his most noteworthy success is the completeness of his effect. He understood to perfection the value of tone in a composition, and tone is an element that is almost invaluable.”
Speaking of Poe's tales, Mr. Brownell says:
There is unquestionably power in the best of [column 2:] them, but it is a repellent power. In fact, his most characteristic limitation as an artist is the limited character of the pleasure he gives. He has a perverse instinct for restricting it to that produced by pain. In the most characteristic of his writings this motive is exactly that of the fat boy in “ Pickwick,” who announced to his easily thrilled auditors that he was going to make their flesh creep. . . A writer who declares at every turn his constant harping on the string of “horror” fails in his attempt. . . . In most instances it may be said that one does not get enough pain out of Poe to receive any great amount of pleasure from him.
Poe's theory of poetry “is briefly that it has nothing to do with truth, that it is concerned solely with beauty, and that its highest expression is the note of sadness,” — the sadder the better.
Two things are made perfectly clear by such theorizing: One, that the theorist is primarily not a poet, but an artist, — concerned, not with expression, but effect; and the other, that he is not a natural but an eccentric artist, since sadness voluntary and predetermined is artificial and morbid. “The Raven” itself, — undoubtedly Poe's star performance, — confirms these inductions. It is not a moving poem. . . Whatever injustice is done its real genesis is Poe's farrago about it. “The Raven” is in conception and execution exceptionally cold-blooded poetry. But distinctly on the plane of artifice, it is admirable art.
Mr. Percival Pollard, in the New York Times for January 10, relates that when Georg Brandes was asked what external influences he deemed paramount in French literature, he put first the name of Edgar Allan Poe. And Mr. Pollard adds that, in the course of a visit to Germany, he has found there quite as many artistic sons of Poe as are known to be in France. “Wherever you go on the Continent of Europe you will find they know only one American man of letters, — Poe.” This fact, he says, in effect, is a notable commentary on Henry James’ criticism that as between Baudelaire and Poe, “Poe was much the greater charlatan of the two, as well as the greater genius.” James added that “an enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” As for Mr. Brownell, whom Mr. Pollard designates as “a current calamity in criticism” (how these critics love one another!), the latter has “only made Mr. James’ argument more meticulous.” Mr. Pollard is very severe on the American public for delaying so long the appreciation which was Poe's just due.
We here in America have come but slowly and half-heartedly to a conclusion that Europe [page 227:] reached several decades ago. For purposes of celebration, our courage propped by our numbers and the contagion of being members of a crowd, we are about to do all possible honor to the name of Poe. We shall be magnanimous; we shall forgive one another the many little cowardices of the past, and join pompously in solemn appreciation of one the rumor of whose genius seems somehow too true to be denied. . . . Since posterity has in some curious and unexpected manner done its work without consulting us, — who had imagined ourselves as quite properly playing the part of posterity, — well, we shall have to pretend that we agree with her. . . . Much spilling of ink, many professorial gentlemen in earnest conclave, even a bust or so, or a statue, — yes, with the poet safely dead these hundred years, and Europe determined to remember him, we shall certainly have to go through with the thing.
Alluding to the poet's unfortunate addiction to intoxicants, Mr. Pollard contrasts him with Verlaine and Villon; and he observes:
These did no harm to others. But what did poor Poe do to others? . . . No, the answer to those who only yesterday said “ Drunkard,” when Poe's name was mentioned, — though now, with the votive offerings and the incense in the air, they are as humbly devout as only Pharisees can be, — is the answer that Lincoln made when they ‘told him of Grant's fondness for whisky. Yes, if only one could find some of that brew of Poe's and ladle it out to our latter-day American poets! He drank; but that is nothing. Here is the great sin he committed: He was not a gay drunkard. As a roysterer Poe was a failure.
Mr. Pollard thus delivers himself on Poe's place in American literature:
Well, we have come well toward sanity if we stay in our present celebrating mood. For besides Poe there has been no other in America, drunk or sober, so single in devotion in art, so careless of money, so entirely honest in his literature. . . . Poe was entirely, without greed or selfishness, a man of letters. We have had no other such.
It is curious that at this late day doubt should still exist as to the very birthplace of the man whose centenary two continents have been celebrating. Elizabeth Ellicott Poe, a member of his own family, says, in the February Cosmopolitan, that Poe was born at No. 9 Front Street, Baltimore, and that in the poet's family this house has been pointed out as his birthplace for generations ; but Mr. Bacheller, in the article cited above, states that Poe was born in Boston while his mother was fulfilling a theatrical engagement in that city; and he prints an announcement in the Boston Gazette of February 9, 1809, congratulating the frequenters of the theater on Mrs. Poe's recovery, and informing [column 2:] them that she will make her reappearance the following evening.
In a critical estimate, in a recent number of Harper's Weekly, Mr. W. D. Howells, in referring to the fact that the French reading public has always rated Edgar AIlan Poe as a “genius,” says that, “ for us Americans it has remained to say, however unwillingly, unhandsomely, and uncouthly, that they do not think so.” While admitting that Poe is subtle, Mr. Howells contends that he is not delicate. Comparing him with Turgeniev and Tolstoi, he says: “Tt would be impossible to explain how you know it, but it is somehow from your sense that the Russian masters are sincere artists and the American master is not.” So far as I am able to be candid about it, concludes Mr. Howells, “I find that Poe's method is always mechanical, his material mostly unimportant.” Mr. Howells, however, admits Poe's mastery of literary technique.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - ARR, 1909] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - A Poe Bookshelf - Some Twentieth-Century Estimates of Poe (Anonymous, 1909)