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Part III: His Critical Utterances on the Methods of Gaining Effect
In his mature statement of the purpose and possibilities of the tale, Poe included, as we have seen, some suggestions of the manner by which the perfect product might be attained. A more complete idea of his appreciation of the instruments employed by the artist in achieving a satisfactory result can be gained from an examination of other reviews from his pen. Through the years he wrote fully of those things which he had come to understand, in connection [page 510:] with his own work, as part of the author's equipment. It is of especial interest in estimating Poe's attitude toward his tales to observe that these reviews say little of the subject-matter of stories, but much of the manner and style. True, he frequently criticized lack of plot, absurd situations, and lack of verisimilitude. But of themes there was practically nothing. Indeed, he himself had learned that a writer may borrow freely from another's themes and subject-matter and make that material his own by discovering new means of handling it — by original combinations. He had very early given expression to his opinion in this matter, an opinion from which he apparently never deviated. He wrote in a letter to Judge Beverley Tucker in 1835:
But is there not a more lofty species of originality than originality of individual thoughts or individual passages? I doubt very much whether a composition may not even be full of original things, and still be pure imitation as a whole. On the other hand, I have seen writings, devoid of any thought, and frequently destitute of any new expression — writings which I could not help considering as full of creative power.(33)
It would of course be impossible, within the limited scope of this discussion, to examine everything that Poe wrote in his reviews bearing upon the [page 511:] technique of fiction. The trend of his ideas may he followed, however, in comments which he made through the years. He was interesting in comparing the art the fictionist with that of the painter. He gave minute attention to the more mechanical matters or punctuation, sentence structure, and diction. He objected consistently to grossness in details and to profanity in language. He had little to say or setting and characterization, but a great deal about the verisimilitude, or convincing power, of productions and about plot and its relation to the tale or the novel.
An early as February, 1836, Poe was bringing to his discussion of the technique of writing the language of art criticism.(34) He compared what he called the “modus operandi” or Lieutenant Slidell's style in The American in England with skillful painting. Less artistic writers had insisted in putting upon the canvas “all the actual lines which they [page 512:] might have discovered in their subject”; Slidell had appreciated that the “apparent, not the real, is the province of that painter,” that “the utter neglect of certain portions of that object is absolutely necessary to the proper brining out of other portions.”(35) He praised Dickens's sketch, “The Pawnbroker's Shop,” because of the artistry with which “the gradually perfecting picture” had been wrought all of “the groupings and fillings in” had been rendered subservient to the one impression, and one remembered afterwards not mere details and personages, but the arrangement and effectiveness of the whole picture.(36) Just two months later Poe was criticizing unfavorably Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf because its author had not observed some of the simplest principles of the painter's craft; he found it so descriptive, so crowded with details, that the mere outlines were lost in the mass. “Every little figure in the picture is invested with all the dignities of 1ight and shadow, and chiaroscuro. ... Not a dog yelps unsung.”(37) And again within two months Poe was [page 513:] voicing a more elaborate, a more assured comparison of the close relationship existing between, the technique and the finished product of the brush and of the pen. As was often the case with his criticism, he worked with this idea, turned it over in his mind, applied it variously, and cane finally to a full appreciation of its implication; after that, he used it with nonchalant assurance. He called “Peter Snook” a “Flemish home-piece,” entitled to the same praise accorded paintings in a similar vein, and he made a sweeping statement of the application of artistic law to the process of composition.
Such things, however insignificant in themselves or their subjects, satisfy the mind or the literary critic precisely as we have known a few rude, and apparently unmeaning touches of the brush, fill with unalloyed pleasure the eye of the artist. But no — in the latter case effect is produced chiefly by arrangement, and a proper preponderance of objects. ... We will venture to assert that no painter, who deserved to be called so, will read “Peter Snook” without assenting to what we say, and without a perfect consciousness that the principal rules of the plastic arts, founded as they are in a true perception of the beautiful, will apply in their fullest force to every species of literary composition.(38) [page 514:]
Sometimes Poe appeared in his reviews a too carping a critic of little things. If, however, we view these irritable utterances as revealing some of his early ideals of workmanship, they give us perhaps a better appreciation of his attitude. If he was not already putting into practice all his theories concerning workmanship, he was undoubtedly thinking his way, through his impatience with the faults and his delight in the excellencies of others, toward a standard for his future writing.
In one of his earliest review, that of Kennedy's Horseshoe Robinson, which appeared in May, 1835,(39) Poe went into detail in deploring the overuse of the dash upon all occasions.
A too frequent use of the dash is the besetting sin of the volumes now before us. It is lugged in upon all occasions, and invariably introduced where it has no business whatever. ... Now there is no portion, of a printer's fount, which can, if properly disposed, give more of strength and energy to a sentence than this same dash; and for this very reason, there is none which on more effectually, if improperly arranged, disturb and distort the meaning of everything with which it comes in contact.
It is evident that this was a matter of form which began to irritate Poe when he saw it used excessively in the writing of some one else, although he himself [page 515:] might be said to have “lugged it in on all occasions.” in his mechanical revisions after his Southern Literary Messenger connections, no one change is more frequent, however, than omission of the dash. Poe continued to think, during his career as a reviewer, that punctuation was a topic of sufficient importance to justify his discussing it. An interesting note in his “Marginalia,” Graham's Magazine, February, 1848, was devoted to the subject of punctuation as a source of strength and force in composition, with emphasis again placed upon the importance of the proper use of the dash.(40)
His irritation at awkward sentence structure and faulty grammar was also a pronounced feature of his early reviews. There is no doubt that he felt genuinely this impatience with slovenly writing, even though he may have caught from the British critics the trick of exposing it. In his review of The American in England, he remarked upon a too frequent introduction of the monosyllable, “how,” wrote disdainfully of Slidell's mechanical style, and complained of his faulty sentence structure. He was especially annoyed by vague pronoun references and by the verbiage, [page 516:] which he exposed by reducing a sentence of fifty-four words to a much better one in eighteen. His findings in this respect he summed up by observing that Slidell's book displayed “the most ludicrous and altogether ungainly pieces of composition which it has ever been our ill-fortune to encounter.”(41) With another book by Slidell, Spain Revisited, Poe was equally severe in a review of May, 1836. Again he wrote of “simple errors of grammar and ambiguities of construction.” In order to expose its excessively defective composition, he quoted and analyzed an entire page. In detail he commented upon the length and lack of unity in the sentences, criticized the choice of words to the point of reducing them to the absurd, and cited examples of obscurity resulting from ambiguous participles and pronouns. And again his summary was pointed: “Altogether, it may be safely asserted, that an entire page containing as many grammatical errors and inaccuracies of arrangement ... will with difficulty be discovered. In any English or American writer of even moderate reputation.”(42) Lafitte: The Pirate of the Gulf, Bird's Infidel, Simm's The [page 517:] Partisan, and Fay's Norman Leslie received their share of the young reviewer's severity for faulty sentences and grammar “unworthy of a school-boy.”
It must not be inferred, however, that Poe believed style, which he carefully distinguished from manner, to be made up wholly of mechanical matters. Every one will remember the good time he had exposing poor Fay's diction and that final triumphant sentence, “if ever we saw as silly a thing, may we be — b1istered.”(43) “Inelegancies” of expression and “unmerciful” repetitions of favorite words he frequently deplored. Of the Journal of Frances Anne Butler he wrote:
The style and language is often coarse, we might say vulgar; and her more impassioned exclamations are often characterized by a vehemence which is very like profanity, an offence that would not be tolerated in a writer of the other sex. We cite ... specimens of undignified, unfeminine, and unscholarlike phraseo1ogy.(44)
Among his citations he included such harmless expressions as “dawdled,” “gulped,” “more or less ‘how came’d you so indeed,’ ” “as if the devil had tied a string to their legs,” “devilish red slashes,” “away [page 518:] walloped the four horses,” “conglomerated amalgamation of fools,” “thickish philosophy,” “sentimental patter,” and “grumpily arose.”
His censure of lapses in propriety, displayed in certain details with which some authors felt at liberty to sprinkle their books, was particularly strong in his early reviews. In reviewing The Partisan he discussed minutely instances of “villainously bad taste” which “occur frequently in the book.” He objected especially to Simm's employment of “the mere physique of the horrible” for its own sake.(45) In his review of The Damsel of Darien in 1839, he again commented disapprovingly upon Simm's deplorable grossness of thought and expression.(46) He explained that, by “grossness,” he meant “the expression of images which repel and disgust” and the dwelling upon “horrible barbarities.”
Repeatedly Poe voiced his strong disapproval of the profanity found in certain books which he reviewed. Of Porgy, a character in The Partisan, he wrote, “The rude and unqualified oaths with which he seasons his language deserve to be seriously reprehended. There [page 519:] is positively neither wit nor humor in an oath of any kind — but the oaths of Porgy are abominable.”(47)
He appreciated, too, some of the more subtle points of style that must be considered by the writer. On Godwin's style he commented as follows:
He never uses a hurried expression, or hazards either an ambiguous phrase, or a premature opinion. His style, therefore, is highly artificial; but the extreme finish and proportion always observable about it render this artificiality, which in less able hands would be wearisome, in him a grace inestimable.
We are never tired of his terse, nervous and sonorous periods — for their terseness, their energy, and even their melody, are made in all cases subservient to the sense with which they are invariably fraught. No English writer ... with the single exception of Coleridge, has a fuller appreciation of the value of words; and none is more nicely discriminating between closely approximating meanings.(48)
Lambert Wilmer's Emilia Harrington, he wrote in February, 1835, gave evidence of its author's genius in the “simple verisimilitude of the narrative.”(49) In regard to this question of verisimilitude, he wrote one of his most interesting critical comments in reviewing Sheppard Lee.(50) This critique is of more than [page 520:] ordinary value in connection with Poe's tales because in it he sketched with simplicity and clarity his own method of managing bizarreries. He pointed out that the usual method of dealing with such a theme as metempsychosis was that of assuming a jocular manner throughout or of solving the various absurdities by mans of a dream. This method, he declared, almost invariably led to incongruities and annoying questioning in the mind of the reader. He himself preferred a different method, that of giving to his incredibilities “the character and luminousness of truth.” Of the management of this particular method he wrote:
It consists in a variety of points — principally in avoiding, as may easily be done, that directness of expression which have noticed in Sheppard Lee, and thus leaving much to the imagination — in writing as if the author were firmly impressed with the truth, yet astonished at the immensity, of the wonders he relates, and for which, professedly he neither claims nor anticipates credence — in minuteness of detail, especially upon points which have no immediate bearing upon the general story — this minuteness not being at variance indirectness of expression — in short, by making use of the infinity of arts which give verisimilitude to a narration — and by leaving the result as a wonder not to be accounted for.
It can be readily seen that Poe described perfectly in this connection his manner of relating “Morella” and “Ligeia,” his own tales of metempsychosis, and the method he employed in rendering credible the strange atmosphere of “MS. Found in a Bottle.” [page 521:]
In short, Poe was writing of the narrative force to be gained by the author's revealing his own point of view. He believed strongly in the value of the author's making apparent his attitude toward his own story. He later called this “commenting force” and “autorial comment.” Marryat, he thought, gave too much attention to mere incident and too little to the comment in the author's own person. He lost, therefore, the “binding power” which often served to unify an otherwise loose narrative. “It is far better,” Poe asserted, “to have a dearth of incident, with skilful observation upon it, than the utmost variety of event, without.” It as for the special purpose of affording this comment that the chorus came into existence in connection with Greek drama.(51) Ainsworth's Guy Fawkes suffered from the same deficiency, Poe wrote a few months later. A comparison of such a novel with the novels of Richardson, and Bulwer, and especially with Godwin's Caleb Williams, would reveal, he thought, that a great deal of the superior artistry of the earlier writers might be attributed to the fact that they discussed, events instead of merely having them happen.(52) [page 522:] It was of course inevitable that Poe should find it necessary as a reviewer to estimate again and again the effectiveness and the intrinsic value of plot in fiction. He was always fairly consistent in his insistence upon a few ideas in regard to plot. These points he brought together in his fine discussion of Bulwer's Night and Morning in 1841:(53) Plot is not simply complexity or intrigue; rather it is a structure “in which no part can be displaced without ruin to the whole.” Good books may be, and have been, written without plot, as Gil Blas, Pilgrim's Progress, and Robinson Crusoe. It is at best a thing which appeals chiefly to those with a taste already cultivated for the sculptural, and is therefore, but “a secondary and rigidly artistical merit.” No writer, of course, should attempt the writing of a story involving even the simplest of plots without first working out carefully every detail of the structure. It is clear that Poe's attitude toward plot was thoroughly in keeping with his faith in the superior artistry of, effect; he made plot, therefore, subservient to the purposes of effect. It is interesting that, although he considered plot a secondary merit, he believed that a [page 523:] perfect plot could never be created. In his “Marginalia” he wrote, “perfection of plot is unattainable in fact, — because Man is the constructor. The plots of God are perfect. The Universe is a plot of God.”(54)
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 510:]
33. J. S. Wilson, “Unpublished Letters of Edgar Allan Poe,” loc. cit., 653.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 511:]
34. A reading of Schlegal's Lectures probably inspired Poe to use the language of art criticism in his examination of literary works. The whole basis of Schlegel's attitude toward the drama, rests upon his comparison of it with art. Near the beginning of discussion (I, 9) he explained his precise as founded upon the contrast between the plastic spirit of ancient art and poetry and the picturesque spirit of the moderns.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 512:]
35. Works, VIII, 214ff.
36. Review of Watkins Tottle and Other Sketches by Boz, June, 1836, Works, IX, 45ff.
37. August, 1836, Works, IX, 114.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 513:]
38. Southern Literary Messenger, II (Oct., 1836), 727ff. In his phrase “true perception of the beautiful,” Poe echoed Schlegel's language again. See note 13 of this chapter.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 514:]
39. Works, VIII, 10.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 515:]
40. Works, XVI, 130f.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 516:]
41. Ibid., VIII, 218.
42. Ibid., IX, 12.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 517:]
43. Ibid., VIII, 62. December, 1835.
44. Ibid., VIII, 24. May, 1835.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 518:]
45. Ibid., VIII, 157. January, 1836.
46. Ibid., X, 53. Gentleman's Magazine, November, 1839.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 519:]
47. Ibid., VIII, 151.
48. Review of The Lives of the Necromancers, Dec., 1835. Ibid., VIII, 92.
49. Ibid., VIII, 235.
50. Ibid., IX, 138f. September, 1836.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 521:]
51. Review of Joseph Rusbrook [[Rushbrook]], Graham's Magazine, Sept., 1841. Works, X, 200f.
52. Works, X, 218f. Nov., 1841.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 522:]
53. Ibid., X, 114ff.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 523:]
54. Ibid., XVI, 10. Democratic Review, Nov., 1844.
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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)