Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter V.II,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 488-509 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 488, continued:]

In her study of the “Origins of Poe's Critical Theory” Miss Alterton has pointed out that Poe saw demonstrated in the stories which he read in Blackwood's the principle of effect and that he might have learned from the critics of the drama, who wrote for the periodicals, the meaning of “stage effect” in the drama.(14) It is evident, I think, from an examination [page 489:] of reviews of fiction, poetry, and even tales that in the early 1830's at least, the word “effect” had come to be a common one in criticism. He neither needed to derive a new application of it from his own observation nor was it necessary that he depend upon dramatic criticism for the suggestion. In the preceding reviews which I have cited, the expression is used freely. One reviewer wrote of “every atom of the sublime work [King Lear] is made to conduce to one and serve to one effect.” Another spoke of the “competent stores of knowledge” requisite in the novelist for adorning and giving effect to his design.” A third declared that a critic must understand “by what means he [the poet] produces his effect. Still a fourth explained the province of the critic as the “examination of the principles by which the effects of literature are produced.” And as I have said, Poe did not need to learn thus at second-hand the doctrine of Schlegelian effect; he himself had read Schlegel, if not by 1831 as Professor Prescott believed, at least by the time that he wrote his reviews of “Zinzendorff and Other Poems” and of Lady Dacre's Tales of the Peerage and the Peasantry and [page 490:] put together the interesting items of his “Pinakidia.”(15)

That which has more bearing upon Poe's handling of his materials in the form of the short story is the evidence of a growing conception of the tale as a distinct literary form in itself. He was, however, decidedly among the critical pioneers in this respect. As has been repeatedly pointed out, he himself recognized that Blackwood's had been publishing for some years “many fine examples” of “tales of effect.”(16) He did not hesitate to imitate the manner of these tales, and of those he read in other periodicals, and he worked out carefully for his own purposes, though he exposed that purpose in satire, the means by which [page 491:] the effects were obtained — sensations, shows of erudition in the “filling up,” plenty of hair-raising thrills. He was acquainted with the shorter fictions of the Germans, some of which were well-constructed; he knew their methods of dealing with mind-disturbing terrors and of weaving into their tales some of the strange problems of identity and personality which lie upon the outskirts of the mind. He knew the machinery of horror — its manias, bizarre maladies, vision, ghostly sounds, subterranean vaults, tortures of mind and body, and lonely souls exiled from human understanding. But he found in many of the shorter fictions which passed under the name of tales a certain looseness, a lack of appreciation of the necessity for concentration, sometimes a disturbing absence of verisimilitude, frequently an irritating neglect of the niceties of language that would have immeasurably to the value of the brief work.

His feeling for the value of brevity in the lyric poem laid the foundation, we may be sure, for a similar attitude toward the tale. He probably came across reviews and critical utterances which served to strengthen this conviction in his mind. A Blackwood's [page 492:] reviewer of Gillies's German Stories(17) selected from among the tales included in the three-volume collection the “Siege of Antwerp” by Tromlitz as the “best story, the most effective, and in the noblest tone of feeling.” He objected to the suggestion of the translator that it might with profit be expanded into three volumes because “in our judgment the interest gains much by the present rapidity and concentration of the narrative.” In the March, 1830, issue of Fraser's appeared a critique, under the title of “Fashionable Novels,” of The Dominie's Legacy, which the reviewer hailed as modest, unpretending volumes in those days of puffery. The Dominie's Legacy was a collection of tales built around the quaint and genial personality of the narrator, the dominie. These tales, the reviewer found, were particularly marked by a tone of realism, but were sometimes lacking in recognition of the value of effect. The reviewer concluded his discussion thus:

Perhaps it will be remembered that in connection with an examination of the current French literature of which Poe might have been cognizant,(19) I quoted from a review in the Foreign Quarterly which analyzed the manner of many of the French contes. The reviewer wrote that in spite of its many faults, this kind of literature had “great variety, intense force, and a perfect command of those means of effect ... which are perhaps the best instruments for making an impression on minds which the strong excitement of the time has rendered callous to slighter emotions.” Some of Balzac's shorter sketches, the reviewer declared, were done with such impressive concentration that they seemed like a “series of frightful grotesques” dancing before the eye. Guzlan's “Morgue,” he wrote, had availed itself “of the horrible, and even the physically disgusting, as an engine of effect. [page 494:]

A review of Tales from Tieck, which also appeared, in Fraser's is of especial interest in that it pointed out in definite fashion the distinction between the tale and the longer fiction. The reviewer wrote of Tieck's tales as perfect models of a kind of composition which had but lately arisen and which differed from the novel in “something else than quantity.”

When Poe assumed his duties in connection with the Messenger, it was inevitable that sooner or later he should give expression to his opinion of what constituted the effective tale. His first utterance of this nature was in connection with his review of Lady Dacre's Tales of the Peerage and Peasantry in the December, 1835, issue of the Messenger.(21) He praised particularly the “thrilling and spirited” story, “Winifred, Countess of Nithedale.” “But the absolute conclusion of this tale,” he wrote, “speaks volumes for the artist-like skill of the fair authoress.” An ordinary writer would have spoiled the conclusion with too bright a ray of sunshine, he declared, “thus destroying, at a single blow, that indispensable unity which has rightly been called the unity of effect, and throwing down, as it were, in a paragraph what, perhaps, an entire volume has been laboring to establish.” Poe believed that Lady Dacre had given conclusive proof of her talent and skill in her final sentences of the tale, but it was an evidence, “which will not be generally appreciated, or even extensively understood.” The Countess of Nithsdale” is a mild, sentimental, commonplace sort [page 496:] of narrative to a modern point of view. It is difficult to catch a glimpse of what it was in the tale, which Poe praised thus lavishly, that caught his fancy. It was probably just that happy choice of a final detail — the tolling of a bell at evening which reminded Winifred and the Earl of Nithsdale of their former trials and sorrows — which convinced Poe of the author's “artist-like skill.” He called the ending an “absolute conclusion,” just as Schlegel, in Black's translation, had explained the “unity and integrity of tragedy in the sense of the ancients; namely, its absolute beginning is the proof of liberty, and its absolute end the acknowledgment of necessity.”(22) It is possible that Poe was crediting his “fair authoress” with more skill than she possessed simply because he read into her work what he believed to be a profound artistic principle. It is interesting to note in this connection that Poe was expressing the opinion, frequently voiced by him, that unity of effect is not rightly understood or generally appreciated. One can imagine that he had perhaps just been struggling with the difficulty of comprehending Schlegel's utterances on the same subject. Schlegel's [page 497:] whole discussion of the meaning of unity has a very profound and almost metaphysical tone; there is no question but that one would believe the whole subject difficult of comprehension if he came to it without a knowledge of subsequent simplifications of the doctrine, particularly of Poe's own clear statement. Poe himself later referred to the “somewhat over-profound criticisms of Augustus Wilhelm Schlegel.”(23) Certainly, too, Schlegel himself left the impression in his discussion that not many others had comprehended the meaning of the unity he required of tragedy — “a unity which lies much deeper, is much more fervent, and more mysterious than that with which most critics are satisfied.”(24)

In the very next number of the Messenger, January, 1836, Poe elaborated upon the opinion of unity and effect which he had expressed the month before, this time not in connection with the tale, but in relation to the brief poem. In a review of Mrs. Sigourney's “Zinzendorff and Other Poems,”(25) he again had [page 498:] recourse to the language of Schlegel in order to explain exactly what he meant by the unique pleasure to be derived from a brief literary composition.

Certainly Poe was here merely paraphrasing and restating more simply Schlegel's involved discussion in regard to the meaning of “magnitude” in a work of art, and the necessity of considering the understanding” in relation to the aim of such a work, and the necessary subservience of all the separate parts of the production to the one aim of making a joint impression on the in part Schlegel had written:

It does not belong to the province of this paper to consider at any length the question of whether Poe was able to read German in the original or not. It is of interest in tracing some of his habits of work, however, to point out the possibility of his having studied with great care the passages in Schlegel which dealt with unity. In his article, “Poe's Philosophy of Composition,” Professor J. S. Wilson has discussed Poe's phrase, “unity or totality of interest,” in relation to Schlegel's phrasing.(27) He has pointed out that Poe's choice of words, “unity or totality of interest,” [page 500:] and “totality of impression,” are really truer translations of the idea which Schlegel conveyed in his German, “Einheit des Interesse” and “Gesammt-Eindruck auf das Gemüth,” than the translator's words, “joint impression.” It is clear, at any rate, that Poe felt that since the word unity had become a cliché in literary criticism, it did not convey to the average mind, the new kind of oneness which he wished to suggest; accordingly, he attempted to substitute an adequate synonym in totality, derived perhaps from a combination of the ideas conveyed in Einheit and Gesammt-Eindruck. It is certainly not attributing to Poe any great amount of erudition or any extraordinary energy of mind to suggest that a copy of Schlegel in the German version was probably accessible to him and that he consulted the original text in order to try to clear up for himself a passage which in translation seemed involved and obscure. It would not have required anything more than a German dictionary and Poe's natural intellectual curiosity to enable him to translate passages here and there. It is worth noting that in the same issue of the Messenger in which his review of Mrs. Sigourney's poems appeared, there is only one brief “filler” at [page 501:] the bottom of the column, and that is a reference to a passage in Schlegel: “A. W. Schlegal says that in a German drama is the following stage direction, ‘He flashes lighting at him with his eyes, and exit.’ (Er blitz ihn mit den augen an).”(28) Unquestionably his “Pinakidia” in the August number of the Messenger, 1836, with its ten or more items borrowed from Schlegel, proves that during these months he was reading at least the translation with interest and profit.

During that period also he was still occupied with the problem of applying the law of unity in the work of art. In June, 1838, he reviewed “Watkins Tottle” by “Boz” with especial appreciation of its effectiveness as a “brief article.”(29) He combined in this critique the ideas he had formulated upon the two earlier occasions and gave them an entirely new emphasis; for the first time he openly expressed his opinion that the well-executed brief article might equal in merit and display of talent the novel of the usual dimensions. And again he gave evidence of having: consulted afresh the pronouncements of Schlegel. [page 502:]

By this time he had appropriated for his own the phrase, “unity of effect”; he no longer prefaced it with the authoritative “rightly termed” and “rightly termed by Schlegel.” He went back, however, to his own review of Lady Dacre's tales and borrowed his idea that unity of effect is not appreciated or comprehended by the ordinary mind. From his critique of Mrs. Sigourney's poems, he took his statement that the reader admires, if at all, only detached passages in a longer work without reference to the work as a whole. And from his re-examination of Schlegel, he probably picked up the exact phrase, “taken in at one view.” He had put his own interpretation upon [page 503:] Schlegel's description of the magnitude of a work of art as “a certain measure which is neither so small as not to allow us to distinguish its parts, nor so extensive as to prevent us from taking the whole in at one view.” “To take the whole in at one view” became in a short time with Poe to “read at one sitting,” a perfectly sensible application of Schlegel's law of the dram to the reader in lieu of the spectator.

Upon the next occasion of his giving clear expression to his conception of the artistic value of the tale, Poe had launched out for himself in the wider application of a doctrine of effect. The years of activity as a critic and, more important, as a creator of hypnotic tales had developed an assurance in the rightness of his own technique. In April, 1841, he contributed to Graham's Magazine a significant critique of Bulwer's Night and Morning.(30) He had lost some of his early enthusiasm for Bulwer and made a somewhat severe attack upon what he considered the British novelist's over-elaboration of plot. His emphasis had shifted definitely from defense to open advocacy of the high “artistical” power of the brief tale as contrasted with the mere perseverance required [page 504:] by the longer narrative. He had left behind any dependence upon the authority of Schlegel and wrote haughtily of the doctrine he had adopted as his own as “unity or totality of effect” — the only species of unity “worth the attention of the critic.”

There was then but a single stride to be taken to bring Poe to his most famous utterance in regard to the tale, his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told [page 505:] Tales in Graham's Magazine, May, 1842.(31) This critique has been so often quoted as Poe's theory of the short story that it is easy to believe that he always felt thus positively and thought thus clearly about his own work. It is only by a patient tracing of his progression toward this pronouncement that the full significance of its meaning becomes clear and a complete appreciation of his development as a critic and as a craftsman possible. At the risk, then, of being tiresomely repetitious, I shall recall the steps which reveal this progression: He recognized, first, as a sort of discovery, the existence of a unity which might be termed that of impression or effect. Next, he identified this species of unity as an essential consideration on the part of those who would write the brief poem or tale. Thirdly, his preoccupation with the problem of gaining this effect had brought to him a belief in the actual artistic ability required for writing the effective tale to which this kind of unity was so essential. Then, he asserted that the brief tale, requiring as it did a peculiar impression of totality, admitted of “highest ... artistical power.” Whether or not he would have [page 506:] spoken out so boldly in 1842 in praise of the superior artistry merits of the tale if he had not been supported by the great artistry of Hawthorne's work, we can only surmise. It was sufficient that the occasion offered itself and that he had reached by gradual steps a positive faith in the tale as a great literary form.

He was ready then to declare that the tale proper “affords unquestionably the fairest field for the exercise of the loftiest talent, which can be afforded by the wide domains of mere prose” — nothing less than superlatives would express the strength of his convictions. He readily admitted that a poem, not too long or too short for the proper creation of unity of impression, might afford greater opportunity for the display of the highest talent; but next to such a poem, he would unhesitatingly choose the prose tale as the medium which should “best fulfil the demands of high genius — should offer it the most advantageous field of exertion.” He limited the length of this prose medium to that which might be read in “from a half-hour to one or two hours,” and excluded the ordinary novel because its length prevented its being read at one sitting” and thus deprived it of [page 507:] the requisite totality of impression. The creator of short tales came to the aid of the mere critic and enabled him, to explain with a voice of authority just how the skillful literary constructed such a tale. He approached his composition from the point of view of the unique effect which he wished to create; he worked patiently toward this design in every detail and in every word until he had left in the mind of the reader a sense of fullest satisfaction with the completeness of his picture. No novel would ever be able to achieve this unbelieved satisfaction because “simple cessation of reading, wou1d, of itself, be sufficient to destroy the true unity.”

The emphasis in this final pronouncement upon the construction of a tale had shifted somewhat from a consideration of brevity, which had by that time become in Poe's opinion very nearly self-evident, to the necessity for a preconceived design before beginning the actual writing of the story. Having derived from Schlegel, perhaps, the idea of unique effect, Poe may have followed in his phrasing of his famous statement the wording of Bulwer. Poe wrote of conceiving an effect; and “of establishing this preconceived effect,” and declared that “In the whole [page 508:] composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design.” In 1838 Bulwer wrote some critical articles for The Monthly Chronicle, one of which appeared in two installments as “The Critic,” later entitled “On Art in Fiction.” As Poe described the writing of the tale in the language of one who knew whereof he spoke, so Bulwer wrote with the voice of authority on the construction of the novel. He wrote that a novelist must form a “premeditative conception of the story to be told.” Then, “Having decided what it is he designs to work out, he will mould his story accordingly; but before he begins to execute he will have c1early informed his mind of the conception that induces the work itself.” Bulwer explained that the conception might be based upon portrayal of character or upon incident or perhaps upon a philosophical idea, but whatever the motif, the “Mechanism and Conduct of the story ought to depend upon the nature of the preconceived design.” Bulwer's articles in the Chronicle were unsigned, and it may not have been generally known that he was their author. But if Poe knew the articles as the work of Bulwer, then he would undoubtedly have been impressed [page 509:] both by by their language and their thought.(32)

Poe's subsequent utterances, in his later comments upon Hawthorne and especially in his “Philosophy of Composition,” on the meaning of effect and the merits of the brief composition, were but re-statements and elaborations of his pronouncement of 1842. He had arrived at it thoughtfully and gradually; he might have said of his developed theory of the tale what he wrote of his Tales in 1840; it is the result of “matured purpose and very careful elaboration.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 488:]

14.  Margaret Alterton, “Origins of Poe's Critical Theory,” chapter I.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 490:]

15.  F. C. Prescott, Introduction to Selections from the Critical Writings of Edgar Allan Poe. New York, Henry Holt & Co., 1909. It has seemed unnecessary in this connection to re-examine all the evidence in support of the belief that Poe read Schlegel at first hand, in spite of recent implications that he might have derived Schlegelian ideas from other sources. (See Miss Alterton's discussion and Professor Floyd Stovall's “Poe's Debt to Coleridge,” University of Texas Studies in English, no. 10 (July 8, 1930), 70ff.) See also E. L. Griggs, “Five Sources of Poe's Pinakidia,” Amer. Lit., I (May, 1929), 196ff. and D. K. Jackson, “Poe Notes: Pinakidia and Some Ancient Greek Authors,” Amer. Lit., V (Nov., 1933), 258ff.

16.  Review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales, Works, XI, 109.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 492:]

17.  XX (Dec., 1826), 344ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 493:]

18.  Fraser's, I (March, 1830), 318ff.

19.  Section IV of chapter II.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 494:]

20.  IV (Nov. 1831), 446ff.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 495:]

21.  Works, VIII, 74f.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 496:]

22.  Schlegel, I, 333.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 497:]

23.  “The American Drama,” American Whig Review, August, 1845. Works, XIII, 43.

24.  I, 337.

25.  Works, VIII, 125-126.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 499:]

26.  I, 329ff.

27.  North American Review, CCXXIII (Dec., 1936), 683.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 501:]

28.  II (Jan., 1836), 96. This passage with the original German appended, occurred in a footnote, Schlegel, II, 82.

29.  Works, IX, 45f f.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 503:]

30.  Works, X, 114ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 505:]

31.  Works, XI, 104ff.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 509:]

32.  Edward Bulwer, “On Art in Fiction,” Pamphlets and Sketches, London, George Routledge and Sons, New York, 1875. 319ff. ‘The quotations above are on pages 334, 338, and 347. The sketches in the London Chronicle were for the first time identified and published as the work of Bulwer in the volume of 1875.