Text: Henry Edward Cain, “Chapter I,” The Poe-Mangan Question (1929), pp. 1-14

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The poetry of James Clarence Mangan (1803-1849) lies today in deepest obscurity. It lies not in that obscurity into which time is apt to fling even the best of what is old; but it lies rather in that obscurity in which it was born, and in which its very natal cry, piercing and plaintive as it sounded, was rudely smothered.

For three reasons, Mangan's poetry deserves to be drawn now out of this obscurity, and brought into the clear and open light. First, he furnishes one of those numerous cases of neglected genius, the flame of which burned and blistered and at length consumed itself; even so, it cried out with a voice that tenderly touched the most soulful chords of lyric song.

Second, writers, critics, litterateurs of all kinds have, for the better part of a century now, been consistent and persistent in joining the name of James Clarence Mangan, sometimes in a particular way and sometimes in a general and vague way, with that of Edgar Allan Poe; a few of these writers allege that Mangan influenced Poe in some way; but all agree that there is a remarkable likeness between them. None of those who allege that Mangan influenced Poe is able to offer any proof for his allegation, or even to establish any formidable or convincing degree of probability in favor of it. None of those who have discussed the striking relationship which exists between the two has ever adequately defined this phenomenal affinity.

Third, a great part of Mangan's poetry consists of translations, or alleged translations, from various languages. The works of German authors provided the subjects of the major portion of these translations; yet as a translator Mangan seems to be totally unknown in Germany.

In order to validate the reasons stated above, the following is set forth: [page 2:]

Only in some of the most specialized or most comprehensive works on literature is the name of Mangan mentioned. Other such works have neglected him entirely.

It may safely be ventured that he is not so well known in England as in America, and this circumstance is readily accounted for John Mitchell, in presenting “modestly and bashfully” his volume of Mangan's poems to the American people, said:

“The comparative unacquaintance, also, of Americans with these poems may be readily accounted for, when we remember how completely British criticism gives the law throughout the literary domain of that semi-barbarous tongue in which I have now the honor to indite. For this Mangan was not only an Irishman, — not only an Irish papist, — not only an Irish papist rebel; — but throughout his whole literary life of twenty years, he never deigned to attorn to English criticism, never published a line in any English periodical, or through any English bookseller, never seemed to be aware that there was a British public to please. He was a rebel politically, and a rebel intellectually and spiritually, — a rebel with his whole heart and soul against the whole British spirit of the age. The consequence was sure and not unexpected. Hardly anybody in England knew the name of such a person; and the only critique of his volumes called ‘German Anthology ‘ which I have ever met with, is a very short and contemptuous notice in the Foreign Quarterly, for October, 1845.”(1)

It seems probable then that racial antipathies, not all on one side, have operated to withhold from Mangan his just due. At any rate, Gilbert K. Chesterton, writing for the Speaker, has remarked with customary vigor:

“Englishmen of the fiery Unionist type will be only too glad to admit that Mangan had a genius that towered up to the stars, and a sympathy that descended into hell, if only they can insist along side of it that he owed money to a landlady and took opium. . . .”(2) [page 3:]

With regard to the relationship between Mangan and Poe, there is adducible an abundance of evidence to indicate that the exact state of the problem is not generally or clearly understood; that the mass of accessible information on the subject is sometimes unreliable and sometimes biased; that this information is usually indefnite and fragmentary; and that there seems to be an almost irresistible tendency on the part of many who discuss Mangan to link his name in some general or vague way with that of Poe.

The first to place these two names side by side was John Mitchel. He wrote:

“I have read the lives and sufferings of Edgar Poe and of Richard Savage. Neither was so consummate a poet, neither so miserable a mortal [as Mangan]. Yet in one respect poor Mangan compares favorably with them both; he had no malignity, sought no revenge, never wrought sorrow and suffering to any human being but himself. In his deadly struggle with the cold world, he wore no defiant air and attitude; was always humble, affectionate, most prayerful. He was never of the ‘Satanic school,’ never devoted mankind to the infernal gods, nor cursed the sun; but the cry of his spirit was ever, Miserable man that I am, who will deliver me from the wrath to come!”(3)

It is at once apparent that Mitchel saw no resemblance in the products of their genius; or if he did, he did not feel certain enough of it to venture a comparison.

In a review of The Life and Writings of James Clarence Mangan by D. J. O’Donoghue is found a somewhat more definite statement:

“He [Mangan] wished, half-whimsically and half-seriously, to make his readers believe that he knew some dozen languages; certain it is that he had a strong philological instinct, and much of that aptitude for acquiring a vast, half-knowledge of many things not commonly known, which he shares with the very similar, and dissimilar, Poe.”(4)

Directly below this may be placed a comment which points out [page 4:] one specific dissimilarity between Mangan and Poe, though it appears to have been indicated more by way of contrast than assertion:

“These [his original poems] are not the theatrical morbidezza of a Byron or a Poe, but, like the lamentations of the lonely Job, only the irrepressible moans of his own soul.”(5)

Several couplings of the names of Poe and Mangan, which are characteristic of what appears to be, in dozens of cases, an almost subconscious tendency to join them, follow:

“A more dismal, dreary life than his [Mangan's], no poet ever lived. Even the dim career of Poe was bright and pleasant by comparison.”(6)

“It is not essential for our present purpose to examine the kind, the extent, the gravity of his indulgence in these methods of obliviousness or exaltation [the use of alcohol and opium]; the evidence of his contemporaries is conflicting; enough to say that in whatever degree Mangan must share the reproach of Coleridge, De Quincey, Poe, of the Scottish Ferguson and Burns, he yet claims our compassion rather than our contempt.”(7)

“It is well that we should remember him [Mangan], for he was a poet, and a poet, moreover, who, not consciously like Baudelaire and Poe, was yet true to the divine suffering within him. This was a suffering of which attorneys’ clerks and well-meaning philanthropists never dreamed. And he gave it out in song, too bewildered to recognize that the artist's fire and the poet's rapture were really his.”(8)

“In spite of his own efforts and those of his friends, he found himself drifting toward what he calls, ‘ the gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns,’ and, like Poe and Chatterton, he flew for comfort to the twin fiends which were sapping his life.”(9)

However, these four quotations embody among others three [page 5:] typical assertions: that Mangan's career was darker than Poe's; that Mangan was the more sincere poet; and that both had recourse to alcohol and opium.

There are, on the other hand, those who have commented in a more direct, assertive, and definitive way. The reader is struck by the variety of points upon which critics attempt to hinge their comparisons:

“False Frances was the first and the last that thrilled his [Mangan's] ‘ desert breast.’ He soon became callous to the beauties of the world. Life for him had no more attractions. With the Latin poet he could sadly but sincerely say, ‘ Nihil amplius volo.’ Like Edgar Allan Poe, he ‘ loved and lost,’ and like him, too, he fell into despair.”(10)

This comparison can hardly strike one as being soundly made, and is quoted as a lead to further discussion.

Alfred M. Williams furnishes us one of the earliest allegations of close, definite, and many-pointed affinity:

“In many respects, both in life and in genius, Mangan bears a resemblance to Edgar Allan Poe, and, if he did not achieve a single marked success like ‘ The Raven,’ his poetical faculty was of the same sombre sort, and his command of original and musical rhythm almost equally great.”(11)

However, as one reflects upon this statement, he is puzzled to know why its author did not say that both did achieve a single marked success: Poe The Raven, and Mangan Dark Rosaleen; for, as it will be pointed out in another chapter, this is a point of likeness rather than difference.

In the quotations cited below there is little to reflect the light of clear definition, except that their authors feel certain there is a likeness both in the lives and characters and in the poetry of the two poets:

“His [Mangan's] place among poets is as difficult to define as that of Edgar A. Poe, with whom, both spiritually and materially, it may be said that he had much in common.”(12) [page 6:]

“At the Meath Hospital in Dublin a man died just three months before Edgar Allan Poe died in a hospital at Baltimore. There was a difference of only six years in their ages, and to one studying the life and poetry of each it would seem that they had been born of the same parents and under a common star.”(13)

“It is a strange but fitting fact that the year of Mangan's death witnessed the passing of three other souls whose lives and experiences had been thrown in much the same paths as his had been: Emily Brontë, Hartley Coleridge, and Edgar Poe all died while black shadows were over their unfulfilled hopes and unfinished labor.”(14)

“In his personal life and in the essential characteristics of his poetry James Clarence Mangan bears a remarkable resemblance o the American poet Edgar Allan Poe.”(15)

(Below this last statement the author gives a quotation from the article by John J. O’Brien in the February 1909 number of the Catholic University Bulletin.)

Another critic, who reaffirms some of the assertions already quoted, adds at the same time several specific observations:

“There is a strange likeness between the lives of James Clarence Mangan and Edgar Allan Poe; but that of the Irishman was one of more unredeemed wretchedness. Some critics have traced a curious identity in the genius of the men. Taking into account only the verse of Poe, I shall make bold to hold the Irishman the greater poet. He has less artifice in matching rhymes, but he has vastly more power and a far larger share of natural feeling. Mangan's sincerity is his distinguishing note, and it is not the least estimable of poetic qualities.”(16)

Perhaps no single phase of the Poe-Mangan affinity has called up so much conjecture as that which now presents itself for discussion — namely, Mangan's use of rhythm and the refrain. It appears plain that Mangan had command of the refrain before Poe. [page 7:] Mangan could not, then, have been influenced by Poe. Alfred P. Graves writes:

“When did Mangan acquire a distinctive poetical note, and what was its peculiar character? Before the year 1840 he had begun to experiment with the ‘ refrain,’ as before he had experimented in rhythms that were absolutely novel. Some of the best of these refrains and rhythms, which contained a mystical music all their own, occur in his so-called translations. Edgar Allan Poe, a fellow-Celt, is generally credited, in the Raven, with that Modern adaptation of the refrain which consists of repeating it with musical variations. Indeed, Poe himself states that this use of the refrain in that poem was his first experiment of the kind. Now the Raven was not published until 1845, whereas from 1839 onward Mangan, as Miss Guiney points out, bestowed upon almost everything he wrote, the curious, involved diction in question.’”(17)

Only one question, then, can be asked, “Did Mangan influence Poe?”

A well-known authority on Irish Literature has lately suggested an answer to that question:

“He [Mangan] was an original metrical artist, and it is possible that Edgar Allan Poe learnt some metrical devices from him.”(18)

In a footnote on the same page he adds:

“Mangan published in the Dublin University Magazine, a publication which Poe had opportunities of seeing. Compare with Poe's Mangan's use of repetitions and internal rhymes.”(18)

But that which seems to be far and away the boldest and the most specific allegation of all, but which at the same time, as far as it is now clear, is without basis in fact, has been cruelly subjected to the indignity of a subordinate clause. It is contained in one of the most popular histories of Irish literature.

“Poe, who was a student of Mangan, had an ear for the Irish Mode.”(19) [page 8:]

As it appears in the volume, there is no explanation or elucidation, and it is stated as if it were a fact well known.

So it is apparent that there has been working here a peculiar psychology of courage. Each succeeding critic has been emboldened by the temerity of his predecessor, so that if one reads down the long list of commentary, from the modestly suggestive sentence of Mitchel in 1859 to the assertive clause of MacDonagh in 1916, he cannot but be struck by the evolution which opinion on the Poe-Mangan case has undergone, and which has always tended to bring that opinion into clearer definition and to particularize it. This growth of opinion is evident to the casual investigator, who quite naturally looks to find a corresponding growth of knowledge on this subject. But he is disappointed.

The following quotation embodies a typical reference to the Poe-Mangan affinity, and it is inserted here because it indicates a number of points which are held to be common to both men, and because it exhibits a characteristic vagueness:

“Both poets had been in abject poverty, both had been unfortunate in love, both had been consummate artists, both had been piteously unlucky in a thousand ways, both had been cursed with the same self-imposed curse of drink, and both had died in the one year and in common hospitals. Two more miserable stories it is impossible to read anywhere. I would recommend those of sensitive natures to confine their reading to the work these men did, and not to the misfortunes they labored under and the follies they committed. I think, of the two, Mangan suffered more acutely; for he never rose up in anger against the world or those around him, but glided like an uncomplaining ghost into the grave, where, long before his death, all his hopes lay buried. He had only a half-hearted pity for himself. Poe, in his Raven, is, all the time of his most pathetic and terrible complaining, conscious that he is complaining as becomes a fine artist. But the raven's croak does not touch the heart. It appeals to the intellect; it affects the fancy, the imagination, the ear, the eye. When Mangan opens his bosom and shows you the ravens that prey on him, he cannot repress something like a laugh at the thought that anyone could be interested in him and his woes.”(20) [page 9:]

One who edited a selection of Mangan's poems, and perhaps one of his most authentic commentators, repeats some thoughts which have already been noted, while, at the same time, she implies that a biased English public withheld from Mangan the credit that was his due:

“The unmistakable shibboleth of Poe's maturer poetry, the employment of sonorous successive lines which cunningly fall short of exact duplication, belongs also to Mangan, in the same degree. The Raven was first published in January 1845; it spread like wildfire in America, and reached London the next year. The English parodies of it, which would certify that it was popular and familiar, began in 1853. Mangan, back in 1839 and 1840, bestowed on heedless air the same emphatic melancholy notes in “Night is Nearing” and “The Time of the Barmecides” and something not far from them in the howling song; indeed, as this article proves, it is difficult to quote from him at all and not detect the accent associated forever and mistakenly with Ulalume, Lenore, For Annie and the rest.”(21)

It will be noted that all the foregoing quotations are to be found in books or articles on Mangan. In books of which Poe is the subject, however, it is only rarely that the name of Mangan is found. Yet there is one noteworthy case of the kind, to which both Miss Guiney,(22) and O’Donoghue,(23) Mangan's biographer, have referred. The author of it is Joseph Skipsey. He says:

“. . . he [Poe] has been all but equalled at times by one who in other respects was altogether unlike either Collins or himself — I mean the Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan. It has been supposed that Poe caught the idea of utilising for musical effects — as he has done in “Lenore,” “Eulalie,” and other pieces — the refrain derived from the repetition of some emphatically significant word or line of the poem, from the practice of Mangan, in whose “Times of the Barmecides,” and “Dark Rosaleen,” such refrains are made to play a similar effective part. That may be, [page 10:] but it must not be overlooked that Edgar Poe was essentially lyrical to the very core, and that he has produced melodies as fine as “Lenore” or “Eulalie,” in which the refrain is not adopted, as “Israfel” and “The Haunted Palace,” for instance, and that his melodies at all times — even those which possess the refrain — have a distinct character, and bear the Edgar Poe impress just as Clarence Mangan's bear his. I speak of Mangan on the merit of some lyrics solely, which are to be found in two or three Irish ballad books published by Duffy of Dublin, and which, besides the splendid and pathetic “Times of the Barmecides,” and “Dark Rosaleen,” the “Lament for the Tironian Princes” and “Cahal Mor of the Wine Red Hand,” are equally worthy of special remark. The most of these lyrics are professedly translations, for which profession there may just possibly be a groundwork of fact; but setting aside these, and judging him upon the pieces which were all his own, he was a sublime lyrist, but unfortunately one who, like his more famous brother bard of “The Bells” and “The Raven “ — in whose veins also, by-the-by, the wild Irish blood ran was unhappy in his life and unhappy in his death.”(24)

Up to the present time there has been published but one study dealing with the comparison of Mangan and Poe. This is in the form of an article by J. J. O’Brien, which appeared in the Catholic University Bulletin twenty years ago; and the treatment of the subject, which covers a little less than seventeen pages, if adequate and acceptable in its day, is not so now, since confusion has multiplied and opinion changed in that score of years and since additional bibliography has shed better light on the subject. The gist of the article may be gathered from the following excerpt:

“A comparison of the writings of these two poets [Poe and Mangan] reveals a curious parallelism, one of those unaccountable phenomena not altogether uncommon in the history of literature, a similarity at times approaching almost to a sameness, but broken occasionally by sharp contrasts, which only accentuate the points of resemblance. And this likeness is all the more surprising when we find that there is not one particle of direct evidence that either poet knew of the other's existence. The question, therefore, [page 11:] whether Poe, as has sometimes been stated, borrowed from the Irish poet, cannot be settled with any degree of certainty. The theory, however, that he did so appears extremely probable.”(25)

Let us turn to the discussion of the question of Mangan's translations from the German.

Translations of pieces from no less than forty-three German authors of lyric poems appeared in the Anthologia Germanica, which was first published at Dublin in 1845. The list includes the names of such men as Goethe, Schiller, Richter, Tieck, Eichendorf, Rueckert, Uhland, and Klopstock. There is much from Uhland, Schiller, and Goethe. Yet all of these translations seem to have escaped the focus point of German literary criticism. German litterateurs have copied Englishmen in relegating Mangan to a place of comparative obscurity; and, strange as it may seem, they have taken only passing notice of his translations from the Irish without remarking at all those from the German. For instance, in one of the popular, authoritative, and specialized works on English literature written in German, dealing with that period to which Mangan belonged, there is to be found a scant mention of Mangan; but had Mangan not been concerned in the revival of Irish legendary and folk lore, he would, in all probability, have been accorded no notice at all. The excerpt reads:

“So sehen wir, wie sich irische Sagenkunde und irisches Volksempfinden eine englische Stimme suchen, die aber die Klangvollendung immer noch nicht erreicht. Und doch schon so lange sucht! Thomas Moore hat, wenn das irische Herz ihm lauter pochte, den Ton getroffen in seltenen Momenten, James Mangan (1803-1849) einmal nur in seinem Dark Rosaleen, der prächtigen Paraphrase des alten Liedes Roisin Dubh.”(26)

Mangan's own countrymen are high in their praise of his German translations. Mitchel gives us a typical sample of their enthusiasm:

“The German Translations are likely to be always greatly most attractive to readers in our own language, except perhaps Irish [page 12:] readers. Indeed some few of these must be regarded as perfect works of art in themselves, whether translations or not; never perhaps exceeded for strength, sweetness, clearness, and beauty of finish. If this judgment appear extravagant, let the reader before so pronouncing it, only read “The Dying Flower,” from Rueckert, the “Spectre Caravan” from Freiligrath, and “Charlemagne and the Bridge of Moonbeams” from Geibler — and if he can point out how any phrase or word could be altered without loss; where the meaning could be made more transparently clear, the melody more perfect, or the whole (meaning and melody together) more admirably summed up in the last stanza of each, as in the finale of a piece of music, then the praise I have awarded is too high.”(27)

The poet's most popular biographer is not so prodigal in his praise. By comparison, he is conservative:

“. . . Mangan decidedly excels, in many of his translations, the German originals. Where he seriously admires, he nearly always does well, but he is occasionally in a sportive mood, and twists the German author's meaning beyond legitimate bounds in order to illustrate his own feelings or mood of the moment. Very few poets have succeeded so triumphantly in producing translations which are not merely faithful in spirit, but are at the same time really first-rate as poems; and though, to secure this end, he has sometimes deviated a good deal from the precise meaning of the German poet, he always inimitably reproduces the spirit. From no other translator do we obtain so pleasurable an impression of the nature and special excellences of German verse. Other translators may be more literal — none are more genuinely poetical.”(28)

Outside of Ireland comment varies widely, sometimes striking a note of deep-sounding praise, only to be raised to the pitch of sharp censure. But, in the main, English and American appreciation of Mangan's fine German translations has not been coterminous with their obvious merits. Indeed, it has fallen short. [page 13:] However, an American student of English translations of German poetry has given Mangan a more generous share of praise than one might expect from the pen-point of an Englishman; and, although she disagrees partially, without saying specifically why, with one who has praised Mangan highly, she concedes, nevertheless, that his translations deserve a better fate than they have met:

“None of the anthologies of the following years [1836 onward] have any particular merit or novelty, nor do they emphasize Goethe's work as a lyricist. No convincing note was struck until 1845, when the versions of J. C. Mangan, which had previously been made for the magazines, were collected and published under the name German Anthology, in two volumes.

“. . . However, the collection seems never to have found the broad circulation which its merits warranted. That Mangan had a true appreciation of the great task that lay before him, when he tried to present Goethe to his English readers, is shown by his own words in an article appended to some of his translations in the magazine:(29)

“‘Goethe probably wrote more for an undeveloped future than for his own era. Throughout his work we frequently stumble upon skeletons of thoughts whose gigantic and foreign aspect startles us, but which, we have no doubt, hands competent to the task will hereafter fill up with the flesh and blood essentials of vitality. It forms indeed the great glory of this wonderful man that his obscurity rarely strikes us as being other than ‘ veiled luminousness.’

“To this true sense of value he added a splendid poetic talent, a fine command of language, a facility in rhyming and a keen sense for melody. The reviews and criticisms which his anthologies received show that he stood high in the esteem of his contemporaries. One of them states very clearly a quality which is at once noticeable in his translations and which has been largely lacking in his predecessors:(30)

“ ‘Mr. Mangan's mind is precisely of that plastic character which is indispensable for spirited and truthful translation. He possesses in a high degree the art of thoroughly divesting himself in his capacity of translator, of every individuality of thought and [page 14:] manner, and of becoming, so to speak, the mere instrument of the author whom he translates, so that the thought, the words, the form, the style, the manner, are faithfully rendered back.’

“After a thorough study of his translations, we can scarcely give them such unqualified praise, although they do take very high rank.”(31)

Unfortunately this writer has not set down in detail the results of her study. Thus it will be one partial purpose of this study to show that these translations deserve to “take very high rank.”

It is thus made evident that the poet James Clarence Mangan needs to be carefully studied and evaluated, especially with respect to his relationship to Edgar Allan Poe and his translations from the German.

The remainder of this work will consist of three chapters: One chapter will be given to a comparative study of the life, character, mentality, and ideals of the men; another will treat of the comparative critique of their poetry; and a third will be directed toward the determination of Mangan's merits as a translator of German poetry.

These chapters will serve two major purposes: first, they will attempt to define accurately the Poe-Mangan affinity with respect to their lives, genius, and poetry; and, second (since the genius of Poe is broadly acknowledged and widely known), they will try to evaluate the strength of Mangan's poetry and personality as such. In addition, they will be fashioned to admit some light on Mangan's place in the history of translations of German lyric poetry in English and upon his genius as the Irish exponent of the ideals and spirit of German romanticism. At the same time one will be enabled to glean from these chapters some notion of Mangan's talent as a linguist.

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