Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter II.II,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 107-154 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 107, continued:]

Poe not only found ample justification for his treatment of horrible situations and mind-disturbing terrors in the literature popular in his time, but he had precedents for his dealing with the Gothic subject-matter in concentrated form. We are accustomed to hear him referred to as the originator of the short story, but this is crediting him with more than is his due. German authors had been writing the short fiction for a good many years. In France the German models had been effectively improved upon, and exactly contemporary with Poe, de Nerval, Balzac, Janin, Gautier, as well as many lesser figures, were turning out exquisitely finished tales. In England there were dozens of tale-writers contributing to the magazines well-constructed stories. Poe had also been preceded in America in the field of the tale, notably by Washington Irving, who had succeeded best in the anecdote and the descriptive sketch rather than in the [page 108:] carefully concentrated story. Most of the other tale-writers of the time were doing the tale only at intervals and apparently regarded it as a lesser form of writing, not worthy of careful analysts and painstaking workmanship. Poe's priority in the short story lies rather in his having worked with and on the tale as a literary form until he made of it a distinctive, artistic thing. “In other words, the world of the short story had been discovered: Poe was the first to make an accurate chart of the new regions and to demonstrate how this chart might best be used.”(24)

For some years it appears to have been generally accepted that Poe chose Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for his principal model in magazine methods. Miss Alterton, for one, has traced with care evidences of his familiarity the tales and especially the critical standards of that journal. She writes:

Miss Alterton points out, further, that Poe and Blackwood's agreed in believing terror a legitimate sphere for fiction; that both favored strongly, however, a kind of terror arising from real experience instead of from mere German diablerie; and that they both dealt with certain themes of terror, as life-in-death, the galvanic battery, beauty coupled with disease. In the course of her study Miss Alterton cites numerous specific resemblances between the materials and the manner of Poe's stories and Blackwood's tales. Professor Clark has traced the influence upon “The Pit and the Pendulum” not only of the one Blackwood's story referred to above, but of two others, “The Iron Shroud” and “The involuntary Experimentalist. “(26) Mr. Daughrity has noted some specific indications of other uses which Poe made of the British periodical.(27) Professor Napier Wilt has called attention to a group of stories in American and British periodicals of the time which resemble Poe's work. He has, I believe, suggested the real truth of Poe's use of periodical materials. He was not confining himself exclusively, [page 110:] or chiefly, to the files of one journal for ideas, but was turning to whatever periodicals of the time he found available. When other periodicals of the 1820's and 1830's are studied as assiduously as Blackwood's has been with a view to discovering materials similar to Poe's, it will be found, in my opinion, that others, notably the New Monthly and Fraser's, will yield similar analogues. Such studies will lead, I think, to what is perhaps the correct inference: the similarities which appear so striking between Poe's work and that of some of the magazine stories were due chiefly to their having been drawn from a common literary background. Poe was indebted for his material and his method in tale-writing, not to any one periodical, but to the taste of the time as exemplified in the magazines of the 1820's and 1830's.(28) [page 111:]

Poe must have had, however, certain models, or masters, among; the more successful writers for the British magazines. Professor Pattee believes that his “master in the early period was Bulwer-Lytton” of the Pelham period.(29) He does not make clear that Bulwer was also a writer of shorter fictions, with which Poe was undoubtedly familiar, and that he contributed steadily to the magazines, particularly to the New Monthly, tales and sketches which Poe read. In his letter to T. W. White of the Messenger, April 30, 1835,(29) Poe referred to two of Bulwer's tales as being in the horrible vein he himself had chosen for “Berenice.” He mentioned “Manuscript Found in a Madhouse” and “Monos and Daimonos” as having appeared in the London New Monthly “by no- less a men then Bulwer.”(30) [page 112:] He alluded to the latter tale in a laudatory review of Bulwer's Rienzi in the Messenger for February, 1836.(31) Upon at least two occasions Poe mentioned the Conversations with an Ambitious Student in Ill Health.(32) He was probably referring to the volume collection of 1832, but he very likely saw the separate “Conversations” when they were appearing in the New Monthly from December, 1830, till March, 1832. In his review of Bulwer's Critical and Miscellaneous Writings Poe wrote, “They embrace all the known minor writings of Bulwer, with the exception of his shorter fictions; and we recognize in the collection several very excellent articles which had arrested our attention and excited our curiosity when their authorship was undivulged.”(33) Since the critical materials in these volumes appeared on as anonymous articles in the New Monthly in the early 1830's, it is apparent [page 113:] that Poe was reading during that time this particular British periodical and was making the acquaintance of Bulwer the magazinist as well as Bulwer the novelist:(34)

Poe watched Bulwer's career as a novelist apparently with great interest. He reveiwed [[reviewed]] Bulwer's novels as they appeared, and though he frequently denied him genius, he never withheld recognition of his talent, industry, and general importance. In 1836 he wrote, “There may be men now living who possess the power of Bulwer — but it is quite evident that very few have made that power so palpably manifest.”(35) Although he admitted the superiority of Scott and Disraeli in some respects, he was of the opinion that no other novelist of the time united so many qualities of excellence as Bulwer. He noted significantly that Bulwer displayed “a calm certainty and definitiveness of purpose”’ and a “power of controlling and regulating by volition his illimitable faculties of mind.(36) [page 114:] Later critiques indicate that Poe modified natural opinions expressed in the early period of his literary apprenticeship when he was most susceptible to influence.

At least three of Bulwer's works have been pointed out as having had some degree of influence upon Poe's tales: “‘Too Handsome for Anything” as a model for “Lion-izing,” a scene from The Last Days of Pompeii as parallelling “The Cask of Amontillado,” and “Monos and Daimonos” as a prototype of “Silence.”(37) It is necessary, therefore, in estimating Poe's literary backgrounds, to examine some of the similarities between his work and the shorter fictions of this Englishman whom he admired and perhaps followed. [page 115:]

A summary of the plot of Bulwer's “Monos and Daimonos” does not adequately represent the fundamental resemblance in mood and style between this tale and “Silence.” It will be helpful, however, in showing how Poe was able to isolate and heighten a detail or a quality of style frequently only incidental in his predecessor's work. Bulwer's tale is an autobiographical account of a young Englishman, reared by his father on a bleak and isolated rock. There he learned the beauty and luxury of solitude; his education was that of “Nature, in a savage and stern guise, instilled ... by silent but deep lessons.” When he was eighteen, his father died and he was transferred to a social life in London. As soon as he came of age, however, he sought again the solitude in the desert — “here human step never trod, nor human voice ever startled the thrilling and intense solemnity that broods over the great solitudes, as it brooded over chaos before he was.” Years passed; his “manhood grew gray with the first rose of age; and a longing for the sight of men came over him. He left his wilderness and took ship for England. On board ship he found himself irritated and dogged by a certain fellow-passenger. Shipwreck threw the two together on a lovely little [page 116:] island. In vain he sought to free himself from his companion, but found him always tauntingly present. At length he resorted to murder. This resulted in a more terrible experience — the silent but ever-present nearness of the man's shadow. Desperately he sought London and its crowds, but even there he could not lose his evil companion. He was destined never to escape the nearness of the demon.

Poe's “Silence” appears to be a mood-study of that solitude to which Bulwer's character returned in manhood and of the desolation which came over him when he found himself alone upon the island after the murder of his companion. The significant resemblance between the two tales lies, as I have said, not in their incidents but in their tones. The important thing, as is usually the case whenever Poe appears to have followed Bulwer, is that the American writer adopted the manner of his British contemporary, and even in the earliest form of his tale — “Siope” — used it more effectively. His dreamy Biblical phrasing preserves its sameness of tone, its hypnotic quality, perfectly. Only a part of Bulwer's narrative approaches Poe's treatment.(38) [page 117:]

Bulwer's “Monos and “Daimonos” may have also furnished Poe with a suggestion for another tale: from the idea of inescapable second person, he may have drawn the theme of “William Wilson.” Bulwer, it is true, does not suggest his Daimonos as physical counterpart of nonce, but Poe might have derived this conception from his knowledge of the popular tradition in Germany of a “doppel-ganger.” It seems to me that Poe's treatment in “William Wilson” more closely parallels that of Bulwer than it does Hoffmann's confused and diffuse two-volume narrative, The Devil's Elixir, which has been suggested as having furnished Poe with the theme of double identity.(39)

Another of Bulwer's tales, “The Tale of Kosem Kesamin, The Magician” is done very much in the manner of “Monos and Daimonos,” and, in my opinion, “Silence” resembles its style even more closely than it does that of “Monos and Daimonos. It formed a part of Bulwer's extended social satire, “Asmodeus at Large,” which appeared in the New Monthly in 1832 and 1833 in ten sections.(40) Kosem Kesamin related the [page 118:] story of his search for the answer to all mysteries; his desire to know the living principle of the world ended in his knowledge that without God “it is Death and Corruption.” In order to show the similarity of its phrasing and general tone to Poe's tale, I shall quote extracts at some length:

The account of Kosem's search for knowledge and its terrible end occupies the remainder of the tale. The answer to his quest came to him in a series of fearful revelations. [page 119:]

At length the young Magician sought a wise old Egyptian, who had taught him much of his lore, and asked him to explain the mystery of the fire when he had vainly pled with Kosem to retract hi question, the old sage addressed the flame and learned that it was “the living principle of the world.”

Still further he sought to penetrate the mysteries of life. He learned that not until he was thoroughly dissatisfied with his present state would he be allowed to see the invisible being of the flame. “Dread demon, I am so now!” he cried.

The voice of the Demon bade him look forth over the world, and he beheld it as “one blue and crawling mass of putridity,” filled with a “leprous life.”

In anguish Kosem cried out to the bright lamp of heaven” his question as to whether Corruption were the sole principle of the world, and like “the voice [page 121:] of thunder above the valley of the shepherd” came the reply, “Such is Nature ... such is the universe without a God!”

I have perhaps dealt more fully with Bulwer's sketch than its remote connection with Poe's work merits. It seemed worth while, however, to treat at some length At least one of his strange, poetically phrased sketches in order to make clear that some of Poe's predecessors had also tried their hands at prose poems. In the Preface to his edition of The Student in 1835, Bulwer himself said that he would call such papers “Minor Prose Poems” if he were not afraid, of appearing presumptuous, for, he wrote, “they utter in prose what are the ordinary didactics of poetry.”(41)

Bulwer loved to expatiate on the “Interesting state of ill health. One of the shorter sketches in his The Student, “On Ill health, and Its Consolations,” presents the idea that ill health may be an advantage in that it will give one an opportunity to learn the value of life.(42) “The Conversations” treats at some [page 122:] length a similar theme: a young man of scholarly attainments and keen perceptive faculties watches the approach of death with philosophical calm; ill health seems to increase his mental powers and ambitions. “The Conversations” assumes naturally the form of dialogue, which Bulwer in his introduction professes himself to have always loved, and there is much in them which would have pleased Poe — an autobiographical account that parallels his own method of narrative, a love story with the tragic death of the beautiful young woman, a wealth of critical opinions, and a half-poetic style.

Nothing in the whole collection of sketches is more impressively executed, from the point of view of energetic narrative, unified tone, and convincing climax than “Manuscript Found in a Madhouse.” Professor Campbell is of opinion that this may have given Poe a suggestion for his title, “MS. Found in a Bottle.”(43) I feel, however, that its influence was far more it than merely furnishing Poe a title for a story. He recognized its power when he referred. to it as an example of the successful magazine tale of horror; [page 123:] more important, he noted the element of horror, in most exaggerated form, as being susceptible of effective treatment and not necessarily bad taste.”(44) In effect, he offered in support and in extenuation of his own themes of horror such a tale as “Manuscript Found in a Madhouse.”

It relates the history of a human monster, hideous in form but normal in intelligence and in soul, born into a world of normal people. It begins in the autobiographical manner customary in much of the fiction of the period:

The monster lived apart from men and turned his energies toward conquering knowledge. “The past lay before me like a scroll; the mysteries of this breathing world rose from the present like clouds; — even of the [page 124:] dark future, experience shadowed forth something of a token and a sign.” He longed for love, however, and at length overheard a maiden declaring that she could love a beautiful soul, however monstrous its outward form might be. They met under cover of darkness, and be wooed and on her love. “At last the fruit of ... ominous love could no longer be concealed,” and he was forced to agree to a marriage. At the altar when she saw him revealed. In all his loathsomeness, she shrieked and fell senseless. The monster fled to the cover of his kindly wood, but by night he stole to her room and found her body laid out as a corpse and beside it “a little infant monster.” ... The ghastly mouth, and the laidley features, — and the delicate, green, corpse-like hue, and the black shaggy heir, — and the horrible limbs, and the unnatural shape, — “revealed its lineage. He bore away the bodies of wife and child and kept them in a cavern until they were all gone but the bones. Then he came into possession of wealth and family estates and lived happily enough until the world found him out as the unknown philosopher and divine poet. The mobs beset him and — he was never alone again.(45) [page 125:]

Another source of influence which Bulwer may have exercised upon Poe, and incidentally upon other tale-writers, is to be found in the numerous “histories” imbedded in his novels, single chapters which have the quality and effect of a short story. Usually a certain character in the novel takes occasion some propitious evening “by a blazing fire” to unroll for his friend the dark secret of his life or to reveal the peculiar combination of traits or circumstances instrumental in weaving the pattern of his life. Such is “The History of a Vain Man,” which the elderly Talbot, friend and benefactor of Clarence Linden in Disowned, narrates for his ward. “The old man thus commenced:”

Devereaux contains a striking specimen of a tale within a novel in “The Hermit's Manuscript,’” in which Aubrey Devereaux cleared up the mystery of his disappearance, as well as the violent death of his brother's wife and of many other strange events in the course of the novel.(47) A similar account occurs in Pelham when the mysterious Glanville finally revealed to Pelham some of the motives for his eccentric behavior. Although the two friends have been seeing each other almost daily, “The History of Sir Reginald Glanville” begins as if it were the story of a virtual stranger:

When we come to a closer examination of the tales of horror, or of morbid tone, current in the magazines of Poe ‘s time, we find ourselves lost in a wealth of material. One can pick almost at random numerous [page 127:] tales which bear a strong family resemblance to the work of Poe. I shall mention a few which illustrate the preoccupation of writers with the fantastic and terrible in human experience, not because, in each case, there is a possibility of a certain story's having furnished Poe with a suggestion or a model, but because the whole group will throw light upon the prevailing taste.

Perhaps enough has already been done to call attention to the type of stories prevalent in Blackwood's.(49) It has been generally recognized that Poe learned from it the method of analyzing senations [[sensations]] minutely in order to heighten his effect of terror. The tales to which he himself alluded — “The Involuntary Experimentalist,” “The Man in the Bell,” “The Diary of a Late Physician,” — show that their authors believed with Poe, “If you wish to write forcibly ... pay minute attention to the sensations.”(50) As various critics have noted, a reading of the last mentioned story, “Passages from the Diary of a Late Physician,” [page 128:] which appeared in Blackwood's over a period of several years, will at once suggest its apparently tremendous influence upon Poe.(51) It contains an account of the anticipated destruction of the world, by a comet; descriptions of strange maladies — catalepsy, epilepsy, cancer, consumption, insanity induced by a horrible experience or by the effects of drugs or drink — and of medical remedies and treatments; the details of the use of the galvanic battery, of body-snatching, of premature burial. We must not forget, however, that at the same time that Poe deliberately made use of such exaggerated methods of stimulating excitement, he also recognized the exaggeration and artificiality sufficiently to satirize it in some of his early sketches.

Not all of the Blackwood's stories, however, were plotless tales of sensations. Occasionally one comes across a well-written story of intrigue and action. “Di Vasari” to just such a story, dealing with a theme which would have interested Poe and in a manner of which he would have approved.(52) It is an exceptionally effective tale of Florence in time of plague, by the [page 129:] “late Charles Edwards.” Its beginning suggests some of Poe's treatments of the horrors of plague; I fancy, indeed, that I catch echoes in its descriptive passages of parts of “King Pest.” Even its motto is Poesque:

Young Di Vasari and his servant, riding secretly at night-fall through the deserted streets of Florence, viewed the ghastliness of the plague-ridden city:

The streets were encumbered with rubbish, mire, and filth; here and there a horrible corpse sprawled; rats scurried everywhere. It was indeed a “locality where the boldest might have feared to enter.” [page 130:]

But Di Vasari, who had posted from Genoa in order to see his dying mistress, the wife of the Count Aretino, hurried on through the hideous sights. He found the Countess sinking rapidly. She reproached him with having wooed another in Genoa and expressed her fears that he would marry the fair Genoese as soon as death claimed her. As they talked, they heard footsteps without; she bade him hide in a secret place which she designated. Her husband entered just in time to witness her dying struggles. In the months that followed, many questions were asked and many rumors were current as to that had happened to young Di Vasari. A certain robber was tortured in a vain attempt to extort from him a confession of murder; it was generally believed that a body discovered in a wild ravine just outside of the city was that of the murdered man. Years after the events of the opening scene, the bridal of a new heir of the Aretino was bet of celebrated in the count's home with masque and revelry. The half-forgotten story of the countess and her lover was recalled. The bride became curious to visit the closed apartment and see the unopened jewel cases and treasure chests of the former countess. When she opened a beautiful old Spanish robe-chest with [page 131:] a spring lock, a skeleton clasping s dagger, on which was engraved “Di Vasari” lay before her horrified, eyes. The diabolical cleverness of the dying countess in keeping her lover for herself was revealed — at last to the reader, but there had been no hint of his fate until the last sentence of the tale.

The closing episode, with its atmosphere of masquerade and merriment ending in the discovery of the skeleton, is of course a stock situation in many of the tales of terror of the tine; death customarily chose a scene of revelry, feasting, and often masquerade for making his presence known in some fashion. Poe used the same device for his tale, “Shadow,” in which a group of young men drank deep of red Chian wine and sang the songs of Anacreon while the body of young Aoilus, a victim of the plague, lay in their midst. They felt at length a nameless presence, and the voice of the SHADOW of all who had died spoke to them. The appearance of the Red Death as a guest at the voluptuous masquerade in the castle of Prince Prospero is, of course, Poe's most complete visualization of the old theme of the skeleton at the feast. But the story of “Di Vasari” has, in my opinion, a greater significance than its subject-matter; If Poe

[page 132:] chanced to read it, he found there a good illustration of a skillfully constructed tale, with the striking beginning and the absolute conclusion which be recognized as essential to an effective tale.

A theme not only popular with Poe but with his contemporaries who contributed to the magazines was that of metempsychosis, it appears to have been in vogue for a number of years. A well-written study of metempsychosis, done in a tone of banter and half-satire, appeared in Blackwood's for May, 1826, “The Metempsychosis” by “A Modern Pythagorean,” otherwise Robert Macnish.(53) It deals also with premature burial and reanimation on graphic fashion. The student who had suffered the experience of metempsychosis had to die in one body in order to regain his rightful form. He faced with horror the thought of awakening within the grave, but he preferred that terrible possibility to his present existence. The details of his reanimation suggest Poe's hand:

He found, however, that he could breathe freely, but still he did not venture to open his eyes. He thought that he must be in “an unconscionably large coffin,” groped above, around him, and found no sides. “This is ... a most extraordinary shell to bury a man in.” In his struggle to loosen a fillet from around his head, he fell from what he believed to be his coffin, pulled it upon him, and learned from some men whom the noise summoned that he was in the anatomical theater of the university. His body had been brought thither by resurrectionists. [page 134:]

A tale upon the same theme of reanimation and metempsychosis appeared several years after Macnish's in Fraser's Magazine.(54) It opens with a statement of the “doubts of this age and the narrator's right to express belief in the seemingly impossible because he has actually experienced It:

It is hardly necessary, I think, to point out that Poe's treatment of the sensations of swooning and regaining consciousness in “The Pit and the Pendulum,” of death and sentience afterward in “The Colloquy of Monos and Una,” and of the horror of awakening in the grave in “The Premature Burial,” are precisely in the tone and manner of these extracts from the Blackwood's and Fraser's stories. It seems almost like the repetition of a formula, too, to remark that the difference in Poe's manner and that of was contemporary magazinists represented here is one of degree; Poe had a more discriminating feeling for the value of concentration and of pointing the details to a more effective culmination. [page 136:]

Some of the Fraser's tales of the early thirties are of interest for their manner of dealing with the solitary and melancholy exile from human understanding. “The Curse”(55) in a tale of a hereditary curse, violent death, madness, and desolation. It resembles Bulwer's “Manuscript Found in a Madhouse” in that it is a madman's confession of murder and violence, but it lacks the bizarre tone of the latter. A young man, long exiled from his family, returned, just as the wedding party of his brother was proceeding to the church, according to an old family tradition with the bride seated on a pillion behind the groom. The bride's veil blew aside as he watched the procession and revealed the face of Helen Vere, his plighted sweetheart. In a maddened fury he threw himself against the horse, and it plunged with its riders over the cliff. The returned brother sprang down the precipice and viewed the mangled remains of his brother and Helen. Sometime later he became sufficiently rational to discover that he was in a hospital and learned from the conversation of nurses that because the bride had been “timersom,” his father had persuaded the bridesmaid, Helen Vere, to preserve the [page 137:] family custom by riding behind the groom. He learned, too, that his father had died of grief after the terrible events of the wedding day. The exile then went completely insane for a time, was confined in a madhouse, and ultimately recovered a measure of sanity which enabled him to write the account and to accept the inevitability of the family curse — the house would be extinct with his generation. Certain scenes of this tale are done with powerful effect — the description of the guilty brother viewing the ghastly remains at the foot of the cliff and an account of a terrible and violent episode in the dungeon of the madhouse where he was confined. Like many of the other stories contemporary with it, it is told in retrospect and without conversation, a fashion which, of course, has bearing upon the origin of Poe's manner.

In “Singular Passage in My Own Life”(56) “A Modern Pythagorean” attempted without much success a romance of the serious type. The narrator fell in love with a beautiful stranger with “dark, melancholy eyes ... large, lustrous, and melting like two pellucid fountains,” [page 138:] but he could learn nothing about her or her family. In order to forget her, he set out upon his travels and in Paris saw her again fleetingly. Sometime later he took a boat for Naples which had only two other passengers besides himself, a brother and a sister. The girl was too ill to appear on deck, but the traveller found himself attracted by the man — “tall, thin, dark-complexioned,” with a delicately fine Spanish cast of countenance. The brother allowed no one to wait upon his sister except himself. At length she was “no more,” and only then the young traveller discovered that she was his beautiful unknown. He — the narrator, himself attended to All the burial arrangements. The crew could not provide a coffin, so he placed her body between two mattresses, sewed a canvas around these, and weighted it heavily. To his consternation the improvised coffin bobbed to the surface and floated for a little while. The brother became almost at once violently ill with consumption and died, leaving the mystery about himself and his sister unsolved. [page 139:]

It can be seen from this summary that the tale is ineffective. It illustrates perfectly the getting nowhere of which Poe frequently complained in regard to fictions which he criticized. It has interest, suspense, and atmosphere, but it dwindles into nothingness in the end. The beautiful unknown girl and the scholarly, interesting brother are typical Poe figures. The plot itself suggests remotely the kind of thing which Poe did in “The Oblong box.” I have cited it as an example of the unsatisfying and ineffective story which the magazines often printed because I believe that Poe's natural irritation, even in his apprenticeship days, with a tale of this sort had equally as much to do with his analysis of the method of creating an impressive effect as his reading of the more skillfully managed tales.

Another Fraser's story, “Some Passages in the Life of an Idler,”(57) shows the same quality of ineffectiveness mentioned above, possibly because It appears to have been designed originally as a work of novel-length. It ran in three or four installments in Fraser's and was discontinued, rather than completed. [page 140:] It is a long, rambling, autobiographical narrative centered around a purely Byronic hero — not the narrator, but his friend, Sir Reginald. Certain settings, characters, and incidents are done in the elaborately romantic fashion of the time followed by some of Poe's tales. The most interesting room in Sir Reginald's house was the library — a composite of the fascinating libraries of Poe — the doom-ridden one in “Berenice,” the exotic confusion of the Visionary's sanctum, the scholarly bizarrerie of Usher's. The owner used his library as a sanctuary from a chronic “lassitude of mind and body when neither was intensely engaged.” Like Roderick Usher he frequently shut himself and his melancholy within its walls.

In Sir Reginald's private study was a portrait, or portraits, of the beautiful girl with whom he had had an unfortunate love affair. The subject of these portraits might be compared, not unfavorably, with the Marchesa Aphrodite of “The Assignation.” [page 141:]

Sir Reginald lived also under the cloud of an ancestral curse resulting from the action of one of his ancestors who slew his blood-pledged friend on one of the Crusades. He completed the curse with the extinction of his family when he drowned under peculiar circumstances.

In spite of my reluctance to believe that the specific sources of Poe's tales can be easily pointed out in the mass of magazine material resembling his, I am inclined to assert that he must have read and have been influenced by one tale which appeared in [page 142:] Fraser's — “The Maelstrom, A Fragment.”(58) For one thing, stories of this particular variety do not appear to have been common; and, then, there are many striking likenesses between the Fraser's “The Maelstrom” and Poe's “A Descent into the Maelstrom.” “The Maelstrom” is an account of a memorable voyage which ended in the fatal “Moskoeström” off the shores of Lofoden. The interest of the story centers around a family group of a father and two daughters. A strange [page 143:] man, who remained apart from the other people on the vessel and was alluded to as “the outcast” and “the exile “claims attention also. The ship, the “Island Lass,” after a time of unusual beauty and calm, ran into a terrible hurricane when death seemed inevitable. All of the sails and masts were swept away in the gale, and the vessel was momentarily in danger of being swamped by the seas. But a day of beautiful calm again ensued; the people on the ship believed that their sinking vessel might not weather the seas. Suddenly, without warning and with no sails to aid them in changing their course, they found themselves inns fatal influence of the whirlpool. They were borne agonizingly on and on until they were lost in the maelstrom itself.

The similarities between this story and “A Descent into the Maelström” are more obvious when some of the details of “The Maelstrom,” especially its descriptive passages, are examined. Before the storm struck the vessel, the passengers enjoyed the beauty of a glorious night:

After a day and night of struggle with the unabated fury of the hurricane, the passengers gave up hope and went below to sleep or pray until the last moment came. Day dawned again, and all was serenity and peace on the face of the ocean; the ship, driven far from her course, drifted id/y northward. [page 145:]

In the face of inevitable destruction, the people on the ship showed their fears in various rays. Some of the sailors seemed stupefied; some drank madly; some shouted and danced in hideous glee; some were [page 146:] writhing on the deck. Some of the sailors in their madness blamed the captain for their plight; in insane fury they tossed him overboard. His large Newfoundland dog followed him into the ocean in a vain attempt to rescue him; both sank quickly into the abyss. The lovely Ellenore rebelled at the idea of accepting death supinely and in the midst of calm beauty, but her father reproached her with a reminder that God alone is powerful.

On the neighboring coast of Lofoden a throng of people had gathered; helpless to render aid, they watched in ere the last moments of the ship. The mate, who sat calmly awaiting the, end as a brave men should, shouted out to the spectators, though his voice of course could not be heard beyond the ship itself: “ ... there will not be much of us left for your picking: the old shaver here takes care to crack his nuts pretty well — he does not leave much of the kernel.” in the influence of the whirlpool the ship glided on. [page 147:]

The Fraser's story offers an excellent example of how suspense was handled in some of the early tales. For ten pages, after the ship was caught in the influence of the maelstrom, the writer played upon every conceivable chord to heighten the suspense and to give an impression of the agonies of the suffering, but helpless, passengers. Nothing happened, for nothing could happen; so the author was forced to analyze in detail the thoughts and the emotions of the people who faced death under such unusual circumstances. He wrote, for example:

At length, however, the author brought the ship into the rapids:

It seems to me that a comparison of Poe's story with “The Maelstrom” throws some interesting light upon the way in which Poe used suggestions from others and also upon the ray in which his mind must have corked occasionally. It is possible that he conceived the idea of writing his own account of the maelstrom in order to complete the unsatisfactory conclusion of the earlier story, that is, to explain what his predecessor had left to the imagination — by what means the one person had escaped to tell the story. No other explanation than a scientific one could satisfactorily account for a single survivor from the horror [page 149:] of the maelstrom. With a view, then, to a scientific explanation, Poe consulted other accounts of the maelstrom. In the Encyclopedia Britannica he found a description of the great whirlpool and its destructive powers. He also found there a long extract from Jonas Ramus, who in the seventeenth century had told of its dangers. As he reed, he discovered traces of his predecessor's unacknowledged use of Ramus's account; for example, the “howlings and bellowings” of the whole came directly from Ramus. Poe decided then, perhaps, to make his source of information perfectly clear.

Since he designed to offer a scientific explanation of the escape of the sailor, he presented an accurate description and chart of the whirlpool and its location. In order to document and make authentic his own incident, he alluded to the Britannica and to Ramus's account.(59) Then he came to the narration of the old sailor's experience, he reversed some of the details of the Fraser's story, but kept the general outline of the latter. In “The Maelstrom” a night of unusual beauty was broken by an unprecedented hurricane; [page 150:] that in turn was followed by a day of lovely serenity. In Poe's account the breeze fell away and the sailors were dead becalmed; then a hurricane, the like of which “the oldest seaman in Norway never experienced,” burst upon the little boat. It was night, but with the sudden abating of the storm, the noon “blazed forth ... with a lustre I never knew her to wear.” In the Fraser's story there is both an impressive description of the moonlight upon the ocean before the storm and of the sun. Shining forth without a cloud to dim its lustre on the day on which the ship drifted into the current of the maelstrom. As the father in the anonymous tale assured his daughter that God alone is powerful, that the heavens show his majesty, and that they should die rejoicing under the smiling skies, Poe's sailor “began to reflect how” magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was ... to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power.” Both writers allude to holding up the finger, or hand, to signal ‘listen,’ and to the screaming out of the word, “Moskoestrom!” Both paint the picture of maniacal fear and calm bravery under the spell of the awful [page 151:] maelstrom. The author of the Fraser's story compared the first sound of the maelstrom to “a low continual hum, like that of an army of bees”; Poe wrote of “a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie.”

There is, of course, a more fundamental similarity in the two tales than minor details: their basic idea in precisely the same. A ship, disabled by a fearful hurricane, its masts swept away and its course at the mercy of the current, is caught in the influence of the famous Moskoe-ström. Both tales depend for their effectiveness largely upon descriptions of sensations, but Poe constructed his story so that a great deal more happened in the course of the narrative than in the preceding account. Furthermore, he gave a new note to a tale of terror by means of a scientific point of view and by his seemingly logical explanation of how it would be possible for a human being to survice [[survive]] the experience of being engulfed in the great whirlpool.(60) [page 152:]

I have attempted in this section of my discussion of the origins of Poe's horror materials to suggest the nature of some of the stories which were appearing in the British magazines in the early 1830's. Perhaps an even clearer idea may be gained by examining a contemporary reviewer's comment upon such tales. In a survey of “The Annuals” for 1833, a writer for Fraser's discussed his general impression of the various annuals which had appeared and declared that he found the Book of Beauty, edited by Letitia E. Langdon, “a gem of the first water.”(61) In his effort to suggest, in a tone of gentle ridicule, the romantic subject-matter and etherealized style of the stories in Miss Langdon's collection, the reviewer summarized with a degree of accuracy many stories of the period under consideration:

Certainly, the reviewer's roll-call of the lovely maidens of the Book of Beauty indicates their kinship with Poe's languishing heroines. The “tall and imperial form of the enchantress,” Medora, who reclines on her bed of death,” Lalah, who “like an eastern queen reposes on a couch,” Laura, Leonora, Donna Julie, and the “laughter-loving Madeline,” in whom “the bloom of youth and hope have given place to that pallid hue and sunken cheek,” belong to the same literary family with the languishing ladies Ligeia, Rowena, Berenice, [page 154:] Morella, Eleonora, and Madeline of Poe's tales and similar figures in his poems. It seems simpler, therefore, to explain the origin of Poe's shadowy women by referring to the literary fashions of the time than to explain their, as one group of his biographers would do by attributing them to opium dreams or to an “unsatisfied libido.”

Perhaps one tale in the Book of Beauty should be mentioned more specifically because of its general resemblance to Poe's work, Miss Langdon's “The Enchantress,” which, in the opinion of the reviewer, was the best story in the collection. This tale he quoted practically in its entirety. It is very similar in tone to Poe's colloquies of the dead, though it does not equal the style of those poetic fantasies. In general conception, however, it is more like “Ligeia.” “The Enchantress” is a dreamy, melancholy account of the love of a spirit and a mortal girl against a background of magic and the spirit world. Physically the enchantress is almost a counterpart of Ligeia; and, with her longing for supreme knowledge and for immortality with her spirit-lover, she is so the spiritual sister of Poe's lovely figure. She drank of a magic fountain in order to gain dominion over death, but her immortality brought her also hatred of her lover and eternal separation from him.

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 108:]

24.  Pattee, 141.

25.  Margaret Alterton, “Origin of Poe's Critical Theory,” University of Iowa Humanistic Studies, II, no. 3 (1925), p. 13.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 109:]

26.  D. L. Clark, loc. cit.

27.  K. L. Daughrity, “Notes: Poe and Blackwood,” American Literature, II (Nov., 1929), 289f.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 110:]

28.  Upon this matter several investigators in the Poe field have expressed themselves in a general way. V. L. Parrington, The Romantic Revolt in America, volume II of Main Currents in American Thought (Harcourt, Brace et Co., 1927), wrote: “It is for the belletrist to evaluate ... the influence of the contemporary magazines on his conception of the length of a work of the imagination.” Professor Campbell (The Mind of Poe, 185) declared that “much yet remains to be done” in studying Poe's sources and that “A good deal [as to the origin of Poe's stories] will come out, if I am not much mistaken, with a more thorough examination of the newspapers and magazines of Poe's time.” Professor Pattee has already been quoted as believing that Poe was the product of the magazine movement of his time.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 111:]

29.  Cited. by Pattee, 140.

30.  “Manuscript Found in a Madhouse” had appeared in a British annual in 1828, The Literary Souvenir. Poe had either seen it when it was printed in the annual or, more likely, in the volume of Bulwer's sketches printed in America in 1832 under the title, Conversations with an Ambitious Student in Ill Health: With Other Pieces, New York, Printed and Published by J. & J. Harper, 1832. A preface to this volume noted that the pieces included in it were collected from the New Monthly and reprinted for the first time. (I have had access to this particular edition of The Student, as Bulwer later entitled it, in the library of Professor J. S. Wilson, University of Virginia.) “Monos and Daimonos,” also included in this volume, first appeared in the New Monthly, XXVIII (May, 1830), 387ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 112:]

31.  Works, VIII, 222.

32.  In “Lionizing” and in “Pinakidia,” S. L. M., Aug., 1836, Works XIV, 40. In the latter he criticizes Bulwer's argument on immortality.

33.  Graham's, Nov., 1841. Works, X, 212.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 113:]

34.  Poe gave other indications of his familiarity with the New Monthly in his critical writings. In a review of Mrs. Hemans's “Lays of Many Lands” during his Messenger days (Oct., 1836, Works, IX, 200), he mentioned its appearance originally in the New Monthly. In “Marginalia” (Graham's, Feb., 1848, Works, XVI, 132) he discussed at some length a plagiarism from Chinning in the New Monthly for August, 1828.

35.  Review of Rienzi, [[Works,]] VIII, 222ff.

36.  For other opinions of Bulwer, see review of Night and Morning, Works, X, 114f.: “Marginalia,” XVI, 61; “Marginalia,” XVI, 159.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 114:]

37.  “Too Handsome for Anything” will be discussed in chapter III in connection with “Lion-izing and Poe's burlesque manner. The scene from The Last Days of Pompeii was discussed in section I of this chapter; references were also given to various authorities who have noted its resemblance to “The Cask of Amontillado.” Stedman and Woodberry (Works of Poe, IV, 2.95) first pointed out the similarity between “Silence” and “Monos and Daimonos.” Professor J. S. Wilson has recently offered the interesting opinion that “Silence” is not an imitation of Bulwer's style, but a deliberate travesty of it. He believes that “Silence” was intended to burlesque the “psychological autobiographists” alluded to in Poe's tag, “In the Manner of the Psychological Autobiographists.” Wilson, “The Devil was in It,” loc. cit., 215.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 116:]

38.  “Silence” as a possible burlesque of “Monos and Daimonos,” in accordance with Professor Wilson's theory of its burlesque nature, will be briefly discussed in chapter III.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 117:]

39.  Palmer Cobb, The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (Studies in Philology, University of North Carolina, vol. III) Chapel Hill, The University Press, 1908.

40.  XXXIV, 38ff., 112ff., 312ff., 423ff.; XXXV, 24ff., 105ff., 409ff., 494ff.; two sections appeared in 1833. “The Tale of Kosem Kesamin,” No. VI of “Asmodeus at Large,” appeared in XXXV (Aug., 1832), 105ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 121:]

41.  The Student, in two volumes, London, 1835; I, lx.

42.  Originally published in the New Monthly, XXXVII (Jan., 1833), 24f.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 122:]

43.  The Mind of Poe, 107.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 123:]

44.  See his letter to White referred to above. In answer to White's charge of “bad taste,” he replied, “I have my doubts about it.”

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 124:]

45.  The Student, London, 1847, l63ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 125:]

46.  Chapter XX.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 126:]

47.  Book IV, chapter IV.

48.  Chapter LXXIV.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 127:]

49.  See particularly the analogues suggested by Professor Wilt, “Poe's Attitude toward His Tales,” Modern Philology (Aug., 1927), XXV, 101ff., and Mrs. Alterton study cited above.

50.  See Poe's allusions in “How to Write a Blackwood Article.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 128:]

51.  It ran irregularly from 1830 to 1837.

52.  Blackwood's XX (Dec., 1826), 793ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 132:]

53.  Since this tale is in a satiric vein and has some bearing upon Poe's treatment of diablerie, it will be discussed fully in chapter IV.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 134:]

54.  “The Confessions of a Metempsychosis,” XII (Nov., 1835), 496ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 136:]

55.  Fraser's, VI (Nov., 1332), 559ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 137:]

56.  Fraser's, III (May, 1831).

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 139:]

57.  [[Fraser's,]] III (April, 1831), 305ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 142:]

58.  X (Sept., 1834), 287ff. Perhaps it is worth noting as throwing light on the probability of Poe's having read this story to point out that the title, “The Dead Alive,” which he ascribed in “How to Write a Blackwood Article” to Blackwood's Magazine, appeared in Fraser's in April of 1834. But the brief summary of “The Dead Alive” given by Poe fits perfectly a Blackwood's tale, “The Buried Alive” (X, October, 1821), as Miss Alterton has pointed out in Origins of Poe's Critical Theories, and is not at all similar to the Fraser's story. It appears, therefore, that Poe remembered a title from one magazine story and attached it to a plot from another. Further indication of his probable familiarity with Fraser's is the fact that “The Miller Correspondence,” which suggested to Poe the idea for his “Autography” in the Messenger, appeared in Fraser's, VIII (Nov., 1833), 624ff. It would seem, therefore, that Poe had access to this particular periodical at least during the time of his association with the Messenger.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 149:]

59.  Poe's use of the Britannica was noted in the Stedman and Woodberry edition of his Works, IV, 290f. I have used the third edition of the Britannica, 1797, X, 407.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 152:]

60.  For a discussion of Poe's use of the pseudoscientific principle by which the sailor survived, see Killis Campbell, “Longfellow, Lowell, and, Poe,” Modern Language Notes, XLII (Dec., 1927), 520ff. For a discussion of the early dating of “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” see note 34 of chapter I.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 152:]

61.  [[Fraser's,]] VI (Dec., 1832), 653ff.