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Chapter V
The Origin of Poe's Manner in the Short Story
Part I: Poe in Relation to the Magazine Movement of His Time
There is sufficient evidence, I believe, offered in the foregoing chapters to indicate conclusively that Poe could lay claim to very little originality in his subject-matter. We have seen that practically every kind of character, setting, and theme rich which he chose to work had been used in some fashion by his immediate contemporaries. The preceding discussion has failed lamentably in its purpose, however, if it has not suggesting that Poe's originality rests upon a more solid foundation than mere choice of subject matter. He once wrote that “To originate, is carefully, patiently, and understandingly to combine.”(1) It is upon exactly this basic of careful, patient, understanding, and — let us add — purposeful combining that his own originality rests. The material — the cloth from which he fashioned his creations — as the popular fabric in shade and in texture, perhaps, but his pattern was his own. [page 469:]
It becomes obvious, when we examine tales which offer parallels to Poe and compare them with his if only in a general way, that he apparently was never satisfied to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors those themes he may have been borrowing. If he were fashioning a burlesque tale, he drew his caricatures a little more boldly, exaggerated the ludicrous elements a bit more daringly, and sketched his incidents with sharper lines. If he purposed writing a tale of horror, he was careful to prepare his results by laying his causes in the temperament, studies, or occupation of his characters; he took care to anticipate his climax of horrors by making every detail point in that direction; he stayed near the reality of horror in the human soul. If he were creating the strange and mystical, as in “Shadow” and “MS. Found in a Bottle,” he reminded his readers that there are some things beyond the realm of reality; there are times then experience steps beyond knowledge and reason and understanding and deals with those things which mortals feel rather than know. All of this is only another way of saying, of course, that Poe had learned the lesson of creating by means of the tale the mood, or impression, which goes with [page 470:] poetry. The one technique he seems to have possessed, both as young poet and young fictionist, for this mood-creation this dealing with “our organ for the infinite,” as Schlegel called feeling, — was that of concentrating the feelings of his readers by heightening the colors and sharpening the outlines of his design. Let us not forget that long before Poe wrote of “a single, unique preconceived effect” in the tale, he had been at heart a lyric poet who knew a good deal about impression and tone in poetry.
Much has been written about the origin of Poe's critical theories and his indebtedness to this source or that. It is a topic that cannot be separated from a consideration of his quality of mind — his propensity for analysis — and of his combination of the points of view of a poet, fictionist, critic, and avowed magazinist. He may have derived originally from Coleridge or from magazine critics, suggestions for his critical doctrines, but in either case the germ of those ideas probably went back ultimately to Schlegel, who had said in one way or another practically all that Poe ever formulated in regard to the rules of literary art. Poe had unquestionably read Schlegel thoughtfully and understandingly before he [page 471:] put into definite shape his statement of the rules governing the writing of poetry and of the tale. But again, the formulation and the application of those principles were peculiarly his own and came from the interplay of poet and fictionist and critic in his temperament, directed by his experience as a magazinist. It was this combination that produced the critique on Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales in 1842 and The Philosophy of Composition in 1846.
Poe began, as we have seen, his career as a tale-writer and a magazinist by accident — by the pressure of circumstances that made the poet into fictionist and critic. He was not satisfied, however, to do anything haphazardly. It seemed evident to him, I think, shortly after his definite connection with the Southern Literary Messenger that his future career was tied up with the magazine world. He saw that the tendency of the age “magazine-ward” had come to stay; that the magazines would afford the chief means of literary expression in his day. He bent his efforts, then, toward improving: this medium and toward making his own place in the magazine world a significant one. We may impugn Poe's motives in many things and question the sincerity of some of his [page 472:] utterances to the public, but we cannot for a moment doubt, in my opinion, that he was genuinely interested in the improvement of the matter of periodical publication, that he was honestly concerned with raising the tone of American literary appreciation, and that he thought it possible and imperative that definite principles of art should be made to play a part in magazine literature. Again and again he expressed himself upon the subject; no topic was more frequently touched upon when he came to the control of a periodical of his own, The Broadway Journal. He did not succeed, in making the Journal even a shadowy reflection of the magazine of which he had dreamed; he found in it a mouthpiece, however, for some of his favorite ideas.
Practically every issue of the Journal carried some notice of the current magazines and criticisms of the form and general appearance as well as of the merits of the contents. The following statement from an early number indicates the general trend of its comments on the magazines which came to its attention:
Whatever may be the merits or demerits, generally, of the Magazine Literature of America, there can be no question as to its extent or influence. ... The bulk, and the period of the issues of the Monthly Magazine, seems to be precisely [page 473:] adapted, if not to all the literary wants of the day, at least to the largest and most imperative, as well as to the most consequential portion of them.(2)
So far as Poe's own utterances are concerned, it is evident that he was attempting to bring higher standards to bear in judging the periodicals. His efforts to establish a magazine of his own were connected with his belief that there was an opportunity and need for a periodical with artistic standards above the average.(3) If we may claim for him altruistic purpose anywhere in his literary career, it is in connection with his ardent ambition to establish a magazine that should not only set up new ideals for ephemeral literature but should also by that means lift the critical tastes of the American people.
The transformation of Poe's attitude toward magazine literature, from one of acceptance of it as a pleasant diversion to a positive belief in its mission, may be seen in a comparison of his first and second review of “Peter Snook.” They are virtually the same article, of course, but are changed [page 474:] entirely in import by a change in the introductory and concluding remarks. I have already alluded, in chapter three, to Poe's review in the Messenger; it must be re-examined briefly in connection with his changed attitude toward the magazine writer. Poe himself did not know the name of the English writer who signed himself as “the author The Invisible Gentleman and the author of Chartley the Fatalist. He even suspected, in 1838, that he might be identified with “Boz,” but he recognized his productions as belonging to “a class of work which every one takes pleasure in reading, and yet which every one thinks it his duty to condemn.” Purloining phrases from a critique of his own tales,(4) he declared that the author “is one of the best of the English Magazinists — possessing a large share of Imagination, and a wonderful fertility of Fancy or Invention.” From the group of tales in the collection, The Old Maid's Talisman and Other Strange Tales, Poe selected for detailed review “Peter Snook,” as best illustrating the piquancy and [page 475:] prevalent “slight exaggeration” which he identified with the magazine article.
The first of the series is also the best, and presents so many striking points for the consideration of the Magazine writer (by which we mean merely to designate the writer of the brief and piquant article slightly exaggerated in its proportions) that we feel inclined to speak of it more fully than in our usual custom in regard to reprints of English literature. ...
The incidents of the story are forcibly conceived, and even in the hands of an ordinary writer would scarcely fail of effect. But in instance so unusual a tact is developed in the narration, that we are inclined to rank ‘Peter Snook’ among the few tales which, each in their own way, are absolutely faultless.(5)
By 1845 when he republished his review of “Peter Snook,” Poe had come to feel that no apologies were necessary for reviewing a magazine piece and that his comment upon an English tale night be made to serve as a text for his general criticism of the American magazine in comparison with the British. He expressed the opinion that the power, the capability of the magazine paper, is illimitable and that the whole field of the magazine is a branch of letters, “which, in the end (not far distant), will be the most influential of all.” He found the matter of the American magazines lamentably deficient in variety and tone as compared with the English and French. [page 476:] American reviews made no attempt, he thought, to present that something beyond a criticism which makes it Art. But, most of all, he found deficient the tales published in American journals. Those which deserved commendation had, for the most part, been constructed excellently only by accident and not at all by design.
It is, however, in the composition of that class of Magazine papers which come properly under the head of Tales, that we evince the most remarkable deficiency in skill. If we except first Mr. Hawthorne — secondly, Mr. Simms — thirdly Mr. Willis — and fourthly one or two others, whom we may as well put mentally together without naming them — there is not even a respectably skilful tale writer on this side of the Atlantic. We have seen, to be sure, many well-constructed stores — individual specimens of the work of American Magazinists; but these specimens have invariably appeared to be happy accidents of construction; their authors, in subsequent tales, having always evinced an incapacity to construct.(6)
However ephemeral he may at first have conceived magazine literature to be, he was not content to create it without some understanding of the rules which governed it and made it serve as pleasant reading for a great part of the public. The chief medium of artistic expression in the magazines Poe believed [page 477:] to be in the tale. It was not by accident, therefore, that he happened to find successful means of writing it. His mind was such that he had to have a theory of some kind — standards by which to work. This trait he early evinced in the “Letter to B——,” with which he prefaced the 1831 issue of his poems, he stated, as clearly as his youthful reading and experience permitted, his notion of what constituted the essence of genius poetry. At the outset of his career as a tale-writer, he was analyzing shrewdly, as we have seen, the types into which current tales might be classified.(7) In the preceding chapters attention has been called repeatedly to the evidences existing in the work of Poe which show that he was keenly alert to the type of thing which was making an appeal to his own generation. The letter which he wrote to the proprietor of the Messenger, in which some of his early tales were appearing, is of great significance in indicating that his reaction to the current stories was more than a mere feeling [page 478:] for what was effective; he had sought to shape definitely for his own guidance a neat formula of the kinds of stories which had the greatest appeal.
Professor Wilt emphasizes the fact that Poe aid not in this letter express his opinion of what constituted an artistic story, but gave merely his conception of what made a story of the kind which the public “sought after with avidity.” He had not then decided perhaps, that the tale was an art form; he was writing his own tales, as Professor Wilt has suggested, as mere “pot-boilers, as a means of earning a living. His nature was such, however, that he was unwilling to write even “pot-boilers” which did not have some intrinsic merit and which could not compete in their own field for public approbation. He was too avid for popular favor and for reputation and had, I think, too much integrity as a craftsman not to expend his best efforts in doing the tale well. But the chief thing to be remembered in tracing the development of his attitude toward his tales is that Poe could never be satisfied with doing a thing well; he must examine carefully how he did it and know why he did it in one way instead of in another. [page 479:]
Except for an occasional tale which he came across in his early reading, he did not find in the stories current in that period those peculiar characteristics which he came to believe set a brief composition in fiction apart from the long one. The short story of his time had arisen in answer to a demand and to take advantage of an opportunity for magazine publication. But it had never been given serious consideration as an art form in itself; it was an accident, as Poe declared of American stories, rather than a deliberate intention. Poe cane to feel that the tale was not brief merely in answer to a demand for something short enough for the magazines, but that it was brief because it afforded one of the highest mediums for artistic expression — for the successful creation of that mood which he associated with the true fulfillment of a work of art. His experience in working with his own tales showed him perhaps that the ideals and aims underlying the construction of the story were not after all very different from those underlying the poem — at least the poem and the tale as he wrote them. He was early imbued with the conception that the plot was not the all, but that the impression counted for more than [page 480:] the material itself. In other words, with him the necessity of conforming to the demand of the magazines led to a great artistic result in his finding that after all the tale was a medium superior, as he saw it, to the novel in scope and opportunity for artistic creation. The demand. of magazine literature made Poe a short story writer to begin with, but his own experiences in writing both the lyric poem and the tale, strengthened by his analytical habit of mind, developed his conception of what constituted the merits and possibilities of the skilfully constructed tale.
He believed sincerely, too, that theory and practice could not be separated. Certainly he illustrated that precept with all that he uttered in the way of criticism and very nearly all that he achieved in the way of creation. In his famous review of Dickens's Barnaby Rudge he wrote of those literary Titmice who sneer at Critical Art, who say that a proposition may be good in theory but it will not answer in practice.
The mistake into which the Titmice have been innocently led, however, is precisely that of dividing the practice which they would uphold, from the theory to which they could object. They should have been told in infancy, and thus prevented [page 481:] from exposing themselves in old age, that theory and practice are in so much one, that the former implies or includes the latter. A theory is only good as such, in proportion to its reducibility to practice. If the practice fail, it is because the theory is imperfect. To say what they are in the daily habit of saying — that such or such a matter may be good in theory but is false in practice, — is to perpetrate a bull — to commit a paradox — to state a contradiction in terms — in plain words, to tell a lie which is a lie at sight to the understanding of anything bigger than a Titmouse.(8)
If Poe had not been so much inclined within himself to analyze his methods and formulate the working principle back of them, the tendency of reviewers and critics in the current magazines would have impressed upon his mind the necessity for a clear understanding of his procedure. Critics were constantly attacking one another for not getting at the true basis of criticism in their examination of works of art, and they censured novelists and Poe's for not first understanding lust what they were aiming to do before putting their effusions before the public. A reviewer of Bulwer's novels in one of the early issues of Fraser's attacked Bulwer for not having been guided in his novels by some definite principles his exotics for not having recognized his limitations. [page 482:] The reviewer believed it indicative of the state of criticism in England that Bulwer's “writhings and contortions” had been mistaken for “wit and wisdom.” In a neighboring country [Germany] these pretensions would have been soon unmasked by critics who had actually cultivated philosophy and where it was deemed an essential qualification in a critic.
The fact is, the novel has its rules, as well as the epic and the drama, and, indeed, no work of art is without them. Neither can the principles be too often enforced, that libertines are equally objectionable in literature as in life. It is not so much the thing produced as the art with which it is produced, the concentration of the interest, and the enforcement of the moral. Not that a work of fiction should be written to illustrate a trite maxim; this, Göthe has well observed, is a very confined nation of the uses of such works. No: a catholic spirit should pervade every such production, which should exhibit the nature of humanity in a broad and grand light, and by an enlarged view of the spirit which is in man, develope, in a practical manner, a code of morals. But, whatever the variety, it should have limits; and, whatever its extent, it should have unity. It should have unity of plan and of purpose, a unity of action and keeping. ... To all criticism on works of art, philosophies, principles are peculiarly necessary. For want of these, for how long a time did mechancial [[mechanical]] critics err regarding the merits and productions of Shakespeare. ... See in King Lear, how every event, every scene, every character, mutually reflect light and shadow upon every part of the composition; and by the all-subduing powers of the imagination, every atom of the sublime work is made to conduce to one end and serve to one effect.(9) [page 483:]
Another long and well-written review in Fraser's on “Historical Romance” laid emphasis on a knowledge of critical rules of art both for those who possess genius and for those who have only talent. Every artist has acquired any degree of excellence in his art has had knowledge of the principles which governed his predecessors and has learned to perfect them by his own experience. The reviewer declared that such rules of art are valueless to all except men of ability, but even a genius may work in vain if he is ignorant of the precepts of enlightened criticism.
A man of genius who comes to the execution of a work of art without competent stores of knowledge, can hope to do but little: he must be deficient in all the associations which are calculated to adorn and give effect to his design. It is not enough that he has acquired some facility in the use of the instrument of language, but he must accumulate a stock of ideas by extensive reading, and improve his style by the sedulous study of the best models. Let it not be supposed that too much acquaintance with the previous works of genius will preclude invention — it will rather enable a man to decide when he is really original, and prevent him from wasting his powers in anticipated efforts. Neither let him despise the rules and principles proper to the nature of the works in which he is engaged, as exemplified in the production of his predecessors. We do not say, with a great painter, “You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.” We, on the contrary, hold that the rules of art are of no use but to a man of ability, — they are [page 484:] only fetters on the incompetent; but with such writers as Milton, for instance, they are the ornaments and defences of their genius. We grant that the kind, and not the degree, of excellence constitutes genius, which, as it originates in nature, is independent of the rules of art. But it is only in the degree of excellence that genius can expect to be recognized; and no degree of excellence was ever attained without diligence and the observance of principles, not, indeed, always expressed or expressible, or always deprived from example, — yet, at any rate, discovered by a sort of scientific sense, evolved by experience, and rendered perfect by practice. He who, from the study of the best models of composition, or taught by criticism, ascertains beforehand the rules upon which he should proceed, is placed in advance of him who is compelled to detect them in the course of experiment, and by the necessities of his own mind during the process of its exertion. Upon this vantage ground it has been our endeavour to place the growing race or novelists in former papers. We have had occasion to show, that the knowledge of rules, without that genius which compelled their necessity to be felt — and works like instinct — avail nothing towards the production of a living work. The compositions which we have now to examine make it expedient to enforce, on the other hand, the doctrine, that genius also may work in vain, unsupported by the practice of scientific principles and the precepts or enlightened criticism.(10)
According to the reviewers, poetry needed charting and guidance as well as the novel, and critics should study poetry with diligence in order to see by what means the poet has created his effect in order to pronounce judgment competently upon the results of his endeavours. The author of a critique called “The [page 485:] Poets of Our Age Considered, as to Their Philosophic Tendencies,” pointed out that in the past there have been only two kinds of criticism of poets, that “which poetizes the poet” and “depends for its interest on the reproduction of those feelings which been excited by the author under review,” and, secondly, that kind which may be called “petty criticism,” set forth by great lovers of little matters” who, with “rule in hands, and arithmetic on their fingers,” have measured and estimated the “structure of imagination.” The reviewer then set forth his own conception of the province of the critic in relation to the poet.
It is not the part of the critic, on the one hand, to imitate the raptures of the poet, as it certainly is not his office, on the other hand, to weaken or disturb their influence. His duty is to explain. The critic not elbow the poet, but he will follow him through all the ... mazes of his thought; will presume to judge of him in his loftiest ecstasies; will know always what it is that he does, and by what means he produces his effect; will have estimated the force and frequency of those passions and sympathies to which he makes his appeal, and will thus be able to pronounce on the nature and success of his endeavour. He will also discriminate those philosophical ideas (if such there be) which have the imagination of the poet, or towards the establishment of which his writings have assisted. ... If Poetry has extended her empire, the critic must, in the same proportion, enlarge his knowledge and his capacity or feeling; and, since she [page 486:] now finds the material of her power in those deep emotions which attend on the inquiry after truth, it is here also that he must follow her.(11)
Even the humorous production should be subjected to analysis, according to the reviewer, in order that all may understand the principles by which the humorist achieves his art. A reviewer of the works of Theodore Hook took occasion to call attention to the customary neglect of comic literature by the critics and to score those critics who had failed to treat of the principles by all the effects of literature are produced.
The critics have been encouraged in their neglect of comic literature by the fashionable fear, which forbids “the dulling of delight by exploring its cause.” Paltry as this species of nonsense looks, it has been an influential reason (along with the readier appreciation the glaring and gaudy qualities of literature receive almost necessarily, now-a-days, at the hands of the majority, both of readers and reviewers, in preference to the qualities which are really or permanently beautiful) why the most lauded articles of criticism of late years have been remarkable only for the brilliances of verbiage, the spangled patch-work not of the imagination but of the memory, employed to cover and bedeck the operation which distorts a commonplace into the likeness of a paradox. Critics who group the personages and qualities they ought to analyze, and present a picture when they ought to render a reason, will, of course, obtain the suffrages of those who delight most in the pleasures of art and eloquence when they least demand the pains of thought. But such critics degrade the calling. Forgetful that [page 487:] their province is the examination of the principles by which the effects of literature are produced, whether grave or gay — that when worthy of their vocation, they are expounders of the science of the humorous, the grand, the tender, the beautiful — these critics seem to have said with the poet,
“No, Science! to you
I have long bid a last and a careless adieu, etc.”
Criticism is the philosophy of literature; but the critics have treated almost every literary phenomenon in the spirit, if not in the language of Mr. Thomas Campbell's address to the rainbow, —
“I ask not philosophy
To teach me what thou art!”(12)
Aside, then, from Poe's own inclination to search for the principles which underlay his works of creation, he would have had every reason to consider the formulation of such principles necessary if he read, as we must believe he did, the reviews in the British periodicals. Among the many ideas which he possibly derived from Schlegel, also, was that of the necessity of an artistic understanding the rules by which he worked. Schlegel had written, “It belongs to the general philosophical theory of poetry, and the other fine arts, to establish the fundamental laws of the beautiful. ... For this purpose certain scientific [page 488:] investigations are indispensable to the artist.”(13)
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 468:]
1. “Peter Snook,” Broadway Journal, I (June 8, 1845), 23. Works, XIV, 73.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 473:]
2. Review of Graham's Magazine, Broadway Journal, I (March 1, 1845), 139.
3. Poe wrote much in his letters in his critical articles, and in his prospectuses about the ideal periodical. See particularly “Prospectus of The Penn Magazine,” Woodberry, I, 271ff., and his letter to Anthon, June, 1844, Letters, 175ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 474:]
4. See the letter in the Baltimore Saturday Visiter, Oct. 12, 1833, announcing the awarding of its prize to Poe's “MS. Found in a Bottle.” S. L. M., I (August, 1835), 716.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 475:]
5. II (Oct., 1836), 727ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 476:]
6. Broadway Journal, I, 23. Works, XIV, 73.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 477:]
7. See his letter to White, April 30, 1835, preserved in the Huntington Library, and discussed by Napier Wilt, “Poe's Attitude toward His Tales: A New Document,” Modern Philoy [[Philology]], XXV (August, 1927), 101ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 481:]
8. Graham's Magazine, Feb., 1842. Works, XI, 39.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 482:]
9. I (June, 1830), 509ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 484:]
10. V (Feb., l832), 17.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 486:]
11. Westminster Review, XXV (April, 1836), 60ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 487:]
12. Westminster Review, XXVIII (Oct., 1837), 170ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 488:]
13. Augustus William Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Translated ... by John Black, two volumes, London, 1815, I, 2-3. Poe probably read the one-volume American edition of Schlegel, Philadelphia, Hogan and Thompson, 1833. These two editions show no textual writings so far as I have been able to discover. Most recent critics, notably Professor Prescott and Miss Alterton, have compared Poe's utterances with the edition of 1845, or later one based upon it, “revised according to the last German edition by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison,” London, H. J. Bohn. This revised edition shows considerable variation in arrangement and phrasing from the earlier versions, and does not give a fair picture of the influence of Schlegel on Poe. For example, the reviewer substituted “view a poetic idea with complacency” for “view with pleasure” and “unity and wholeness of tragedy” for “unity and integrity of tragedy.”
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RLH35, 1935] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story (Hudson)