Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter VI.II,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 546-592 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 546:]

“Metzengerstein” was the first story published by Poe.(5) It appeared in the Saturday Courier January 14, 1832, was thoroughly revised for its second publication in the Messenger, January, 1836, was included with almost no changes in the volume of 1840, and was again considerably revised for the version which Griswold published. Curiously enough, Poe did not chose it for reprinting in the Broadway Journal in 1845 in spite of the fact that almost all of his previously published stories appeared in that year.(6) Poe must have felt that “Germanism” was definitely out of date and that no revision which he might make could render [page 547:] his early story acceptable to the taste of 1845. In no other way can I account for his failure to issue “Metzengerstein” again.

The story is doubly interesting, first, from the point of view of its being Poe's earliest published tale, and, then, from the fact that it includes no much of what we have come to consider Poesque. The 1836 version shows no startling changes from the original state, but it gives evidence of a thorough working over. Apparently Poe emended it chiefly with a view to not over-doing his effect; he learned something of the virtue of moderation. He polished his phrases, corrected his French expressions, rearranges sentences, shortened paragraphs, combined others, added explanations, omitted passages that made for obviousness, and in general improved the story. Of significance, too, is the fact that the publicly acknowledged his debt to the German school of mysticism of horror by adding the note, “A Tale In Imitation of the German.” This addition was in all probability due to the note, “Whilst we confess we think there is too much German horror in his subject,” which had accompanied the editorial comment upon “Berenice” [page 548:] when it appeared originally in the Messenger.(7) Poe chose, I think, to show just what was his conception of this type of horror. The omission of this note in the final revision would also seem to indicate that the reference to Germanism had lost its meaning somewhat in the 1840's.

In the second version Poe omitted, as I have said, details which must have appeared to him trite or obvious. For example, from the sentence, “But there were some points in the Hungarian superstition (the Roman term was religio),” he left out in 1836 the explanation in parenthesis. “The ominous circumstances portended in the opinion of all people some awful and impending calamity,” a sentence originally preceding the paragraph beginning, “One tempestuous night,” must have seemed to Poe too much of an effort to point toward his conclusion or an overstatement of what was probably mild curiosity, for he omitted it in the next printing of the story. He made also [page 549:] obvious improvements in the sentence structure and phrasing: “There was a fiendish expression on the lip of the young Frederick” became “On Frederick's lip arose a fiendish expression”; “There are few in this social world, who are utterly companionless, yet so he seemed to be” was revised to read, “and in this wide and social world was utterly companionless.”

In one paragraph occurs an interesting rearrangement of sentences which indicates that Poe's feeling for order and logic was strong upon him at an early period. It may be seen in the judicious shifting of the position of the following sentences:

Without changing his sentences or connectives, Poe made the passage achieve a distinct minor climax by reading:

The Messenger version contained also obvious improvements in diction, changes of so slight a nature as hardly to seem worth noting except as they indicate the unpolished state of Poe's early equipment for writing: “Of their falseness or probability” became “of their falseness or of their probability”; “La Bruyère observes,” “La Bruyère says”; “differed essentially,” “differed very essentially”; “the words of the prophecy implied,” “the prophecy seemed to imply”; “majestic and shadowy,” “shadowy and majestic”; “yet he,” “but he”; “you appear to be mistaken,” “you are mistaken”; “returned into,” “turned into”; “were rivetted,” “became rivetted”; “silent and apathetic wonder,” “silent if not pathetic wonder”.

Some of the emendations made in the Messenger version are noteworthy, as indicating Poe's effort to increase the verisimilitude of his story and to make reasonable his unreasonable plot. The principle park of Baron Metzengerstein became fifty miles in circuit instead of the former one hundred and fifty. “Such estates were never before seen” was modified to read, “Such estates had seldom been seen.” The overstatement that Metzengerstein returned from his habitual mad ride evincing “no appearance of exhaustion” was [page 551:] deleted. After the description of the mysterious character of the horse and the statement that no one of the grooms could assert that he “had actually placed his hand upon the body of the beast” the original story went on with the tale of the misshapen little page. In the revised account, Poe attempted to show that the interest aroused by the horse was not unnatural, but probable, by adding:

In the next revision the passage underlined in the preceding sentence was omitted; one may guess that it seemed to Poe too much of an effort to render his explanation plausible.

By the time of the Messenger version Poe had learned also the value of strong, climactic conclusions. The original ending of the story read: [page 552:]

The Messenger and subsequent versions end much more forcefully with the following final paragraph:

The 1840 version of “Metzengerstein” contains but two verbal changes from the Messenger version: the “chateau” was made to read “palace” throughout the story, and the phrase, “the singular, intense, and overwhelming anxiety,” became the more effective “the overwhelming anxiety.” Other minor changes appear in the capitalization, hyphenation, spelling, and punctuation.

Griswold's version differs so much from the 1840 text that it is evident that Griswold had Poe's final revisions of the tale. The tag, “In Imitation of the [page 553:] German,” had been omitted, the Baron's age changed from fifteen to eighteen, double and triple adjective phrases were simplified, and four passages — one a paragraph of some length — were left out. One would not call these radical changes, but they are of such a nature as to show the progress of Poe in his concern for justness of phrase and, particularly, to reveal his understanding that he must not overstate his case.

Some of his most interesting final changes in diction are improvements: “instanteously added” became “added”; “became unwittingly rivetted,” “turned unwittingly”; “kind of compulsory and desperate exertion,” “compulsory exertion; “unnatural and convulsive,” “convulsive”; “tone of voice,” “tone”; “miraculous and sudden,” “sudden”; “certain chamber,” “the apartment in question”; “huge and mysterious,” “huge”; “redoubled and supernatural,” “redoubled”; “smile of peculiar and unintelligible meaning,” “smile”; “the spirit of his own,” “his own spirit”; “heavy and oppressive,” “heavy.” This list is in itself sufficient proof that Poe had learned the value of condensation. But certain passages which he omitted evidence this more graphically. For example, with a striking tribute to the power of horror, Poe left his multitude silent when they saw Metzengerstein out-stripping [page 554:] the demon of the Tempest as he rode in to his burning palace, whereas the earlier versions had variously recorded that they “cried out ‘Azrail’ ” or “ejaculated ‘Horrible’.”

The most important omission, however, is of a long paragraph concerning the death of the beautiful Lady Mary, so youthful in its phrasing and so obviously out of place that one wonders how Poe allowed it to survive three printings, it is full of exclamations on the beauty of death by the “gentle diseased ,” consumption, of burial among gorgeous autumnal leaves, and of a portrayal of the young Frederick, without a relative, by his mother's coffin, flinty-bosomed, heartless, self-willed, wanton, dissipated, “dead to all holy thoughts.”

The second of Poe's stories in order of appearance in “The Duc De L’Omelette.” It was printed in the Saturday Courier on March 3, 1832, in Messenger in February, 1836, and in the Broadway Journal on October 11, 1845. Relatively slight changes were made in the form of the tale for its second publication. Throughout the story the “Duke” of the original version became “Duc,” the French was corrected, and the paragraphs considerably modified, a few passages

[page 555:] were omitted, certain phrases that made for smoothness in connection were inserted, and detailed were altered to harmonize with the character of the duke. For example, “the sweetest pantaloons ever made by Stultz, the daintiest robe de chambre ever put together by Rombert — not to mention the taking of my hair out of paper — and all to gratify your bloodthirsty propensities” was harmonized with the character of the debonaire duke in the following: “the sweetest pantaloons ever made by Bourdon, the daintiest robe-de-chambre ever put together by Rombêrt — to say nothing of the taking of my hair out of paper — not to mention the trouble I should have in drawing off my gloves?” The second version, however, appears to contain one of Poe's lapses in consistency, as it is unlikely that the duke would be wearing his hair in papers and be dressed in a robe-de-chambre and at the same time, even in a burlesque appearance, have on gloves.

Another change worth noting has to do with the passage which first read, “There was a chain of an unknown, blood-red metal — its upper end lost, like Col — e, parmi les nues.” It is possible that Poe originally meant this to be light thrust at Coleridge in spite of his avowedly great admiration for the [page 556:] English poet. The Messenger and 1840 versions read “like C——,” and in the Broadway Journal the phrase was changed to “lost like the city of Boston.” The substitution of “the city of Boston” may throw an interesting light upon Poe's attitude toward Boston even before his lecture there. He had of course been carrying on his Longfellow war in the spring of 1845, had visited Boston in the summer of 1845, and had received an invitation to lecture there on October 16. The allusion to Boston appeared, therefore, five days before his unfortunate reading of “Al Aaraaf” took place. It is perhaps indicative of the fact that Poe had already made up his mind as to the alibi be would offer for his choice of the youthful poem.

Poe omitted, as out of keeping with the lightness of the story, the details of the appearance of the lower regions. He changed, for the sake of consistency in point of view, from “Have you dipped into the ‘Diable’ of the Abbè Gaultier” to “He had dipped into the ‘Diable’ of the Abbè Gaultier.” “Père La Chaise” became “Père Le Brun,” and “a member of the Academy” became “a member of the Club Vingt -un.” The meaningless statement, “Had the drunkard not been Alexander, he would have been Diogenes — and the duke [page 557:] assured his antagonist,” etc., was clarified by being changed to “Had Alexander not been Alexander, he would have been Diogenes; and the Duc,” etc.

The version of 1840 showed no changes of importance. For the Broadway Journal there were a half-dozen verbal substitutions; the translation of the French note was omitted, and the description of the devil's apartment was further condensed. There were also numerous improvements in the punctuation, particularly in the substitution of commas and semicolon for dashes, and in capitalization. Perhaps the slightness of this tale forbade Poe's giving it further attention in revision, or it may have been that he considered it executed as well as he could hope to do a thing in that style.

“A Tale of Jerusalem,” the third of Poe's stories in the Saturday Courier, appeared June 9, 1832. It was reprinted in the Messenger in April, 1836, the last of Poe's tales except the two chapters of Pym to be published in that magazine during his editorship. It was included in the volume of 1840 and was printed in the Broadway Journal, September 20, 1845. Of all the early stories it shows fewer changes in its form from time to time than any other. The fact that [page 558:] it was probably reserved for republication in the Messenger until Poe had exhausted his supply of tales on hand may indicate that he regarded it as of inferior quality; this feeling on his part may also have been responsible for his failure to revise it thoroughly. At any rate, its second form had only the following changes: two brief explanatory passages, of fourteen and five words each, were omitted; two passages of fifteen and ten words each were added; the capitalization was emended throughout; the arrangement of two sentences was changed slightly, and fourteen verbal emendations were made. For its 1840 appearance it underwent even slighter changes; there were half a dozen emendations in capitalization, one verbal change, and a substitution in the name of one of the characters. The text of the Broadway Journal differed from the two preceding ones chiefly in the substitution of commas and semi-colons for dashes and in the omission of the short paragraph of thirty-six words at the very end of the tale. Again Poe's feeling for the absolute conclusion had induced him to end his tale with a climactic sentence or phrase — in this case with, “El Emanu! God be with us! it is the unutterable flesh!” [page 559:]

Of Poe's stories republished in the Messenger, none shows more intensive revision than “Loss of Breath.” It appeared as “A Decided Loss” in the Courier for November 10, 1832, and re-appeared as “Loss of Breath” in the Messenger in September, 1835, in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840, and in the Broadway Journal, January 3, 1846. Possibly Poe has purposed, even in the original version of the tale, to write a burlesque upon the current fashion of stories in Blackwood's. It seems to me more probable, though, that he was simply travestying in the extravagancies of newspapers reports and of current stories in general. Mr. Varner has pointed out an interesting connection between Poe's tale and contemporary accounts of the trial and execution of some Philadelphia mail robbers in 1830,(8) and has indicated other evidences in the original version of Poe's familiarity with current events. If he did not intend the tale at first as a direct hit at the Scottish magazine, then the elaborate changes made for the Messenger form may be accounted for if we conceive that he revised it with this definite purpose in mind. [page 560:] He gave it the tag, “A Tale a la Blackwood,” expanded the allusion to the neighbor into the character of Windenough, thought by some critics to be a caricature of Christopher North, and added some long passages detailing sensations in the manner of the foreign magazine. In its final form, Poe deleted most of the material added in the Messenger, except for the episode with Windenough in the tomb, and again changed the tag to conform: “A Tale neither in nor out of Blackwood.”

In its original state the story is a little under three thousand words in length. The Messenger version comprises about sixty-seven hundred words, and the final version approximates forty-five hundred words. In the Courier “A Decided Loss” begins directly with the paragraph “Thou wretch! — thou vixen! — thou shrew!,” carries the chief character, who is given no name, through the opening scene with his wife shuts him in his “boudoir” for reflection, shows him searching for his breath, and reveals his plan of feigning stage-madness. He leaves for a journey, is thrown out of the stage-coach as dead at the “Three Crows” inn, and is prepared for burial by the landlord. Through a window he effects his escape, is mistaken for the mail-robber, is hanged, and in turned over to [page 561:] a surgeon. The original version ends with his decease under the applications of a galvanic battery by an apothecary summoned to assist the surgeon in the work of dissection. It will be noted that no reference is made to the name “Lack O’ Breath” or to Windenough, no allusion to the victim's sensations while being hanged, and no mention of the burial episode.

As the story appeared in the Messenger, the greatest change was in the insertion of about twenty-two hundred words describing the experiences of Lack o’ Breath while on the gallows and while being prepared for burial and of about fifteen hundred words detailing his conversation with Windenough in the tomb and their subsequent rescue. In the Messenger and later versions the story opened with a passage which had introduced the concluding paragraph of “A Decided Loss.” This passage is transferred to serve as a prologue, or text, to prove that ill-fortune must eventually end. Nor did Poe leave unchanged the other material of the original story; he rearranged. and exchanged sentences within the paragraphs, improved and shortened his sentences and paragraphs, left out details which he perhaps thought too obvious, shortened [page 562:] reflective passages, eliminated trite phraseology, heightened the verisimilitude, and polished the diction throughout.

The changes in diction seem designed, for the most part, to eliminate commonplace phraseology; in many cases Poe made his language almost absurdly stilted, though in general there is an improvement. The following list of changes will indicate the nature of his verbal revision: “utter” became “ejaculate”; “accident occurs,” “accident happens”; “ungovernable fury,” “ungovernable moods”; “unhesitatingly determined to conceal,” “determined to conceal”; “expression of the most arch and coquettish benignity,” “expression of arch and coquettish benignity”; “safely shut up in my own boudoir,” “safely ensconced in my private boudoir”; “evil consequences,” “ill consequences”; “sullied the polish upon the surface of a mirror,” “sullied the delicacy of a mirror”; at the interest crisis aforesaid,” “at that interesting crisis”; “buried in thought,” “absorbed in meditation”; “consolatory description,” “consolatory kind”; “possession of my spirit,” “possession of my soul”; “phantom suicide,” “idea of suicide”; “across my imagination,” “across my brain”; “with one foot in the grave I [page 563:] shuddered,” “Thus I shuddered”; “flagrant of enormities,” “decided of atrocities”; ‘hideous strength of lungs,” “strength of lungs”; “my wife's step,” “footsteps of my wife”; “object of my desires,” “object of my inquires”’ “wife's sagacity,” “wife's penetration”; “unhappy bereavement,” “unhappy calamity”; “suddenly seized,” “smitten”; “I repaired,” “I returned”; “they talked of,” “they spoke of”; “business in Europe of the last importance,” “business of the last importance”; “rendered indispensable,” “required”; “would put the roarings to the blush, thou bell-metal bull of Phalaris,” “would have put to blush the roarings of the Phalarian bull”; “assertion,” “suggestion”; “justice to acknowledge,” “justice to state”; “vituperative disposition,” “vituperative turn”; “countenance,” “visage”; “unseemly and indecorous controversy,” “indecorous contention”; “resigned [to my fate] with mingled feelings of astonishment and tranquillity,” “with a feeling half stupid, half acrimonious.”

For the sake of plausibility, a word out of place when one speaks of such a story, Poe changed several details. In the Courier version, as the hero [page 564:] meditated suicide, “through a single broken pane of glass, the four winds of the Heaven all poured into the apartment — and like the Mulciberian billows, roared loudly the huge sea — coal fire.” This sentence is omitted in the later versions, perhaps because the broken pane is inconsistent with the setting or because the details appear overdrawn. In the original the hero of the story put his affairs in order by making a will and leaving to his wife his fine quarto copy of “Calbrinachus in Dianae”; this allusion was omitted in later versions. He left by night instead of early in the morning. There were fifteen passengers in the coach instead of the nine of later forms; his legs were broken by his fall under the wheels of the coach in “A Decided Loss,” but as this must have appeared an impossibility in the face of the man's subsequent activities, Poe amended the passage to read, “the breaking of both my arms.” Instead of the earlier “astonishment and tranquillity,” the hero faced hanging “with a feeling of half stupid and half acrimonious.” And in the original account he became motionless on the gallows “only after an hour's performance (as long as I thought necessary)”; in the later, he simply “afforded sufficient amusement.[[”]] [page 565:]

Certain omissions in the Messenger of a few details of the original draft may have been induced by a desire to avoid overstatement or to eliminate allusions which had lost some of their original force. The two plays which the hero committed to memory were left unnamed in the first appearance of the story as “Loss of Breath,” possibly because the interest excited in them by Edwin Forrest in 1830 had waned.(9) Poe deleted such extraneous passages as “I deliberately shuffled myself out of the room, leaving her as much in love with my fund of good humor (O blasphemy) as in admiration of my exquisite drollery, and fine theatrical talent”; “I had heard of Peter Schlemil, but I did not believe in him till now; I had heard of compacts with the devil, and would gladly have accepted his assistance, but knew not in what manner to proceed, having studied very little of diablerie.”

One or two of Poe's omissions seem ill-advised. For example, his allusion in the original story to his practicing guttural tones of voice by a large and well-frequented marsh is explained by the sentence, [page 566:] “I found myself, in a few hours, as well qualified to quiz the aborigines as their original representative himself,” and by a reference earlier in the story to the pitch of his voice depending on “a certain spasmodic action of the muscles of the throat — thus the race of frogs, etc.; see Hippocrates in his dissertation.” True, this is not very clear, but one gathers from these hints the meaning of the phrase, “well-frequented marsh” and of the reference to “my most frog-like and sepulchral tones.” Also the allusion to the newspaper accounts of his execution seems to me more truly humorous than the substituted matter: “and ... it was reported in the newspapers of the following day that I died in my obstinacy like a wicked, and bloody-minded cut-throat as I was, stubbornly refusing to make any confession — a monster of mankind — an awful warning to all little children, and (so ran the Gazette) a duodecimo compendium of all horrible atrocities. The editors were wrong — at least in the most important particular — I did not die.”

More illuminating, however, than Poe's omissions are his additions to the story. These display his propensity in the 1835 period to include, whenever [page 567:] occasion offered, detailed analyses of sensations. In “Loss of Breath” he was deliberately following the Blackwood's method. His description of the hanging was an explicit detailing of the beating of Lack o’ Breath's heart, the rushing of blood to his hands and wrists, the eyes starting from their sockets, the tolling of bells in his ears. The victim could determine, he said, his sensations minutely and took a delight in analyzing his conceptions. His memory quadrupled in power, and he was able to recollect everything; a dreamy delight stole over him, followed by the ability to reason rapidly and profoundly upon law, dogmas, and philosophy. The temporary loss of identity, coupled with the agony he suffered from “the simple conception or abstract magnitude — of infinity” in a small room, was with him through a night of horror, succeeded by a day triply terrible because he faced the actual terrors of entombment. Illustrative of the care with which Poe thought through each detail of the sensations is this passage describing the trip to the cemetery:

Apparent Poe became so absorbed in the recording of sensory experiences that he forgot, for the time being, the general tone of his tale; certainly the gruesomeness and the suggestion of real terror in the passage of more than two thousand words which he added to the Messenger story are not in keeping with the was pas de zephyr debonaireness of Mr. Lack o’ Breath. Accordingly, Poe was wise to delete it in 1845, not only because it was overdone and in exceedingly poor taste, but because it distinctly jarred with the atmosphere of burlesque in which the story was written.

The revisions of the 1840 version consist of four minor verbal changes, spelling corrections, a bit of reparagraphing and emendations in capitalization, punctuation, and hyphenation. For the 1845 appearance, the story was trimmed down to forty-five hundred [page 569:] words by the omission, as I have pointed out, of the long passage detailing sensations. The verbal change were of less importance, consisting principally of the substitution in a few cases of obviously more exact words and phrases for the less exact. No one of Poe's tales shows better the path of Poe as a craftsman: from a stage when he revised by elaborating his ideas in order to heighten his effect and omitting details that might be labelled as obvious, to a time when he had acquired the more skillful art of achieving his effect by a process of trimming down rather than of expanding.

Equally clear are the inferences to be drawn from Poe's important changes in the original form of “Bon-Bon” for its republication in the Messenger. Published in the Courier, December l, 1832, it was reprinted in the Messenger in August, 1835, appeared in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, and was the third of Poe's tales republished in the Broadway Journal, April 19, 1845. Its preferential place among the reprints of 1845, coupled with its reprinting in the Philadelphia Spirit of the Times, July 22 and 23, 1845, indicates that tales of diablerie, at least of a humorous variety, had not lost their popularity along with the more horrible brand of Germanism. [page 570:] The greatest variations in the form of the tale occur, as in the ones previously discussed, in its change from the Courier to the Messenger version. No mere catalogue of words would suffice to convey a full realization of the work of revision which Poe lavished upon it before he allowed it to be printed a second time. On its first appearance it had been called “The Bargain Lost” and bore as its motto, “The heathen philosopher, when he had a mind to eat a grape, would open his lips when it put it into his mouth, meaning thereby that grapes were made to eat and lips to open — As You Like It.”(10) As the motto in the Messenger Poe substituted “‘Notre Gulliver’ — dit le Lord Bolinbroke — ‘a de teller fables’ — Volaire.” The Courier version of the story is about [page 571:] three thousand words in length, the second version is almost twice as long, being approximately fifty six hundred words. The story continues in later versions to retain this longer form. The emendations made for the second appearance of the tale are more than a mere matter of expansion. Poe changed, in my opinion, the whole implication of the story, though not the incidents, and I am not at all certain that, except for matters of phrasing, the simpler, more pointed narrative of the earliest form is not the best of all.

In its original state the tale has its setting in Venice and concerns one Pedro Garcia, a metaphysician, who is not a restaurateur. It opens thus di-

Then follow three brief paragraphs discussing Pedro's philosophy, and the story proper begins, “When the great bell of St. Mark's had already sounded midnight,” etc. It is interesting to contrast this introduction with the long preamble, or prologue, preceding the story in its 1ater form. The main incident of the story is unchanged, but the whole atmosphere is grotesquely colored to fit the character of a burlesque [page 572:] French “restaurateur” who poses as a philosopher. This is done by a heavy sprinkling of French phrases, allusions to French dishes, change of setting to Rouen, and a general effort to heighten the absurdities of characterization and plot. In discussing Poe's characterizations of the devil in chapter IV, I pointed out the chances which Poe made in the appearance of the Satanic visitor who presented himself to Bon-Bon. I suggested that Poe had perhaps become familiar with more of the tales in which the devil played a part, and was conforming to the fashion in this respect. I suggested, also, that an effort on Poe's part to point his satire more directly at certain literary forms may have been responsible for his attempt to create a French atmosphere. But whatever his reasons may have been, some of his changes are to be regretted.

In its original form the story is in a hurried, vigorous style. It gives us a fair notion of the colloquial Poe — a very hard person indeed to find except in occasional early reviews. So strong was his sense of elegant phrasing that he seldom allowed himself to lapse into spontaneity even in his light [page 573:] farcical tales. In “The Bargain Lost,” however, he was a young man in his early twenties, fairly bubbling with clever things to say, and saying them with the frankness of intolerant youth. In its next state the tale is florid, fulsome, wordy. For example, the passage, “In all mental qualifications our hero was gigantic. Moreover, in bodily circumference, he had no cause of complaint; but in right ascension, four feet five was the philosopher's ne plus ultra,” was expanded to read:

Poe deleted also the passage, “It was with little concern that in certain boilings of the pot revolutionary (during which, saith Machiavelli, the scum always comes uppermost) he beheld his large estates [page 574:] silently slipping through his fingers.” He changed “his sky-blue cloak, or wrapper, resembling in form, the anomaly, ycleped a morning gown” to “his sky-blue cloak, resembling in form dressing-wrapper.” “The paroquet upon a certain cathedral resembled nothing so much as Pedro, the metaphysician” became the less vivid “it was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise, or the rather a very Paradise of perfection.’

Certain other colloquial expressions which Poe eliminated one could wish he had left in his story, since they gave it a certain boyishly human flavor: “his slippers ... might have been made in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes and the fact that Baptista, the Spanish cobler [sic] on the Rialto, opined to the contrary.” The books in Pedro's room were in “c1assical disorder”; “the stormy sea foamed and bellowed for admittance”; Pedro's “voluminous M S S.” had the title, “complete exposition of things not to be exposed” and its motto a line from Pulci:

Pedro had an air of being ‘up to snuff’ while he entertained his satanic visitor; he owned a commonplace book and wrote in it a memorandum of the devil's sneeze: “N.B. Divorum inferorum cachinnatic sternutamentis mortalium versisimillima est.” Pedro was not frightened of his august and Satanic Majesty “although under certain dispensations of Providence (such as the visitation of a spider, rat, or a physician) Pedro did not evince the philosopher.”

Policy probably prevailed with the young editor in causing him to expunge from the original story his thrusts at novelists, for much of his work on the Messenger consisted in reviews of novels. The earlier version ran thus:

Not only did Poe change likable Pedro into an unreal Bon-Bon, but his Satanic Majesty became a different personage; the room in which he was received, vastly different; a cat came to keep the water-dog company; and the method by which Pedro unwittingly [page 576:] brought upon himself the startling visitor was unaccounted for. Pedro's roots, described with some minuteness, became, with Bon-Bon as the occupant, merely a long low-pitched, heavily curtained room, of antique construction, with a bed in the corner, a fireplace, an army of bottles, and a hodge-podge of kitchen effects — a grotesque place for grotesque figure. Originally it had been luxurious:

The minor furniture of this room convicted of a profusion of elegantly bound and illustrated books scattered here and there on the tables, on the floor, and on two or three richly covered settees, “having every appearance of the ottomans of Mahomet.” [page 577:]

This setting is a forestudy of the strangely beautiful rooms which become familiar to us in later stories by Poe — in “The Visionary” first, then in “Ligeia” and other tales. There is a groping for that “singular beauty” which the young writer had not is yet perfectly visualized. His room must have gorgeous hanging's, a lofty, shadowy, fretted ceiling, a colorful carpet, a curious door and a huge window, ottomans, books, alabaster stands, and arabesque lamps or censers. Despite the fact that it suited neither the burlesque tone of his story nor the character of his hero, Poe could not shut the door of his room until he had made it real in other tales and in “The Philosophy of Furniture.”(11)

Certain details connected with the supernatural powers of a mysterious sable-bound volume were in eluded in “The Bargain Lost” to account for the appearance of the devil to Pedro. “For Pedro, totally absorbed in his occupation (reading his manuscript), could not perceive that, while his left palm rested upon a volume in sable binding, the blue lightning [page 578:] fluttered among its leaves with most portentous velocity.” But when his majesty seated himself for conversation, Pedro recognized the significant power of the book by placing “the sable-bound volume, together with a flask of the delightful wine of Sauterne, upon an alabaster stand before the visitor.” And Poe added, “Here if the reader should wish to know why our hero troubled himself to place upon the stand anything so ominous at that book in sable binding, reply that Pedro Garcia was by no means a fool. ... He flattered himself with spending an agreeable hour and it was with an air of being ‘up to snuff’ that he accommodated his visitor with a volume best suited to his acquirements and literary taste.” Then, when the devil involuntarily placed his hand upon the volume, he sneezed so violently that Pedro recorded a note about it in his commonplace book. No such explanation renders Bon-Bon's visitor so easily accounted for, indeed, there is no allusion to the mysterious volume.

One detail in the earlier version not repeated in later ones should be mentioned because of its oddity and because of the question it arouses as to Poe's possible meaning. When Satan detailed purchases of live souls, he said, “There were Cain, and [page 579:] Nimrod, and Nero, and Ca1igula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and — and the Jew — and — and a thousand others, all very good men in their way.” One wonders, of course, whom Poe meant by “the Jew” and whether his allusion seemed later too bold to permit of its remaining in the story. Later versions preserve the list of names intact except for “the Jew.” The omission of the allusion seems to me of as much significance in interpreting its meaning as its original inclusion.

Except for minor changes the 1849 state of’ “Bon-Bon” preserved the Messenger form. Three new paragraphs were indicated, the punctuation and spelling were corrected, Greek phrases were changed, and a ha1f-dozen verbal shifts were effected. For the 1845 publication approximately forty-five verbal revisions were made, most of them showing Poe's increasing realization of the value of brevity. One passage of one length giving a list of wines was omitted. The motto heading the tale was again changed by the substitution of a long quotation in French from ‘French Vaudeville” for the quotation from Voltaire. [page 580:]

The most important emendations, however, for the Broadway Journal appearance are those that have to with Poe's effort to reduce the wordiness of his phrases. Again it strikes one with surprise that he should have allowed some of the changes to remain unmade through three publications: “their entire self-evidency” became “their self-evidency”; “was not indeed a Platonist,” “was indeed not a Platonist”; “in which branch of his profession,” “in ... of his profession”; “powers of the mind,” “powers of the intellect ”; “and, however singular it may seem, appeared,” “and appeared”; “tinctured with grotesque diablerie,” “with diablerie”; “direct and friendly communion,” “direct family communion”; “gigantic fireplace”, “large fireplace”; “locked the door with a sacré Dieu,” “locked ... with an oath”; “such unqualified respect,” “the most unqualified respect”; “suspicions, or rather — I should say — his certainty,” “suspicions”; “some bottles of the powerful Vin de Mousseaux,” “some bottles of Mousseaux”; “found himself entirely nonplussed,” “found himself nonplussed”; “might not probably have otherwise been observed,” “probably might not otherwise have been observed”; “increased to an intolerable degree,” “much increased”; [page 581:] “dead level of cadaverous flesh,” “dead level of flesh”; “ideas ... are engendering,” “are being engendered”; “I do not feel myself justifiable,” “I ... justified”; “your present situation,” “your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”

In his latest revision of the story Poe added occasional phrases by way of explanation or of increasing the humor. “In his opinion the powers of the mind held intimate connection with the capabilities of the stomach. By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of gluttony” is expanded to read, “In his opinion ... stomach. I am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the Chinese, who hold that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all events were right, he thought, who employed the same word for the mind and diaphragm.” The devil is made to appear “much flattered” by Bon-Bon's giving him the lie; and then he suggests that the cat “is thinking we admire the length of her tail and the profundity of her mind” instead of merely “the profundity of her mind,” as the earlier versions read. The allusion to novelists expunged from the Courier version of the tale for the Messenger republication was partially restored for the Broadway Journal by the [page 582:] sentence, “I might, I say, expatiate upon all these points if I pleased; but I forbear; merely personal details may be left to historical novelists; — they are beneath the moral dignity of the matter-of-fact.” Probably in order to increase the ludicrous appearance of the devi1, and certainly order to give an additional suggestion of his diabolical nature, Poe inserted parenthetically the clause,” he maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall hat.” Again we have evidence that Poe's revisions sometimes led him to forget his original visualization of the physica1 person: he added, in this case, the hat to a figure which he had already described as bareheaded and bald.

A survey of the changes made by Poe in the story of Bon-Bon” indicates, first, that he had for his chief purpose in the re-working for the Messenger the rendering of his effect more pointed, the heightening of the ludicrous, and the sharpening of his second, that these purposes led to “wordy” expansions in the phrasing of the story; third, that he eliminated colloquialisms that lent a certain charm to the original version; and, fourth, that his fear of obviousness caused him to omit references to the sable-bound [page 583:] volume with which Pedro unwittingly summoned the devil for a visit. In the final revision he was concerned chiefly with the form of the story and trimmed, refined, polished, heightened his humorous effect by the addition of brief passages or phrases. In “Bon-Bon” one may see more clearly than in any other tale, I think, an illustration of the type of thing which interested Poe at various stages in his development as a craftsman.

The “MS. Found in a Bottle” interesting among Poe's early stories for the fact that from the first of its five appearances to its last, it showed practically no changes of importance except verbal emendations. Each time the punctuation and capitalization changed somewhat, probably because of the whims of different printers; a few phrases were omitted, and from time to time a number of minor changes in wording were made. But it underwent upon no occasion any elaborate expansion or condensation or alteration. It appeared originally in the Baltimore Saturday Visitor [[Visiter]] for October 19, 1833 (volume III, no. 38). It was this tale sold by Carey and Lea to Miss Leslie for her annual, The Gift, and came out in the fall of 1835 with the date as 1836. It was printed in the [page 584:] Messenger in December, 1835, was included in the volume of 1840, and was reprinted in the Broadway Journal, October 11, 1845.

With the exception of some alterations in punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, and spelling, Miss Leslie's text followed that of the Visiter. The Messenger printing showed a half dozen verbal emendations, and an elaboration of the punctuation; it omitted the name of Cunningham from the motto, “A wet sheet and a flowing sea,” and in keeping with Poe's tendency at that period to reduce over-statements, emended to ‘hundred” the word “million in the phrase, “a wave more than a million times her own altitude.” From the 1840 version Poe dropped the over-worked comparison, “strikes upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery, altered the motto from Cunningham's line to the ones it nor bears from Quinault, and made a few changes in wording. In 1845 he omitted a few phrases, made again a number of verbal alterations, and introduced the scientific comparison, “as if all her rays were polarized,” for the former “unaccompanied by any ray.” The immediate acceptance of the tale in its Visiter form for republication in The Gift was probably responsible for the lack of revision at that time; its reprinting in the [page 585:] Messenger as “from the ‘Gift’” would also account for Poe's failure to alter it extensively for its third appearance. Perhaps its numerous early printings induced Poe to believe it had had too wide a circulation to permit of many changes for the final publication. He may, of course, simply have been satisfied with its power and its effect in its original form. For my part, I am glad that he did not choose to alter it greatly, particularly at the period when his tendency was usually toward elaboration.

The final story in the early group which I have chosen for a detailed examination o the revisions is “The Assignation” (“The Visionary”). It is the last and, in my opinion, the best, of the seven stories which Poe had published before his association with the Messenger. In spite of its original excellence, however, it was revised, during the year that elapsed between its first and second publications, with more skill and more thoroughness than any of the stories considered. There were no striking changes, no especially noteworthy additions, but it showed unmistakably that its creator liked it very much indeed since he revised it so thoughtfully. Under the title, “The Visionary,” it had appeared anonymously in Godey's, January, 1834; it reappeared under the [page 586:] same title in the Messenger, July, 1835, and in the 1840 volume, and was re-named “The Assignation” for the text pub1ished in the Broadway Journal, June 7, 1845. The most extensive alteration for the Messenger was the omission of two paragraphs which preceded the present introduction of the story and which had furnished a somewhat elaborate prologue in the extravagant tone popular in magazine stories. They ran thus:

In Godey's the tale bore a double motto made up of quotations from Schiller's Wallenstein, (“I habe gelebt, and geliebet:” I have lived, and I have loved), and from Goethe (“und sterbich denn, so sterbich doch — Durch sie — durch sie:” [sic] And if I die, at least [page 587:] I die — with her — with her.) This was changed in the Messenger to the passage from the Bishop of Chilchester's Exequy on the death of his wife, “Stay for me there! I will not fail to meet thee in that hollow vale.” There were also many changes in the phraseology, several minor omissions, extensive reparagraphing, and, in general, a distinct improvement in the tone of the story.

Such details as Poe added to the second version may be explained by his effort to round out his conception of the strangeness, or oddity, of the chief figure. He is a man with an eye for the unusual, the bizarre, in art, in philosophy, and in actions, has made for himself gorgeous retreat from the world. Only such a person as this would be capable of the extraordinary assignation which marks the climax of the story. Poe alters minor details of his conversation, therefore, to enhance the peculiarities in the character of this man. With perfect suavity he discourses on the statue of Apollo; “I cannot help — pity’ me — I cannot help preferring the Antinous” has just that ironical humor about it which Poe had conceived as characterizing the “Visionary.” Every trace of extreme emotion, except a degree of nervous intensity,” [page 588:] is omitted in order not to give warning of the conclusion. Consequently, the second version does not mention “a tincture of bitterness in the laugh,” “the pallor of death” which “overspread his countenance,” “a nervous inquietude of manner,” and “his turning to me with evident emotion.” On the other hand, certain additions and alterations in the conversation do point, but much more subtly, to the conclusion. In the original, the man said, “I must laugh or die — perhaps both.” In the altered form this idea is enlarged significantly:

Godey's version of “the date of the MS.” is awkwardly and confusedly put: [page 589:]

This is clarified in the Messenger:

Certain alterations in the arrangement of words render the second version noticeably more musical, or poetic, in phrasing: “Like some huge bird of sable plumage, we were drifting slowly down was changed to “Like some huge and sable-feathered Condor we were [page 590:] slowly drifting down”; “How many divinities had altars at Sparte, and how strange that that of Laughter should be found alone surviving!” to “Now at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the others!”; “Europe — the world, cannot rival this, my regal cabinet,” to “Europe cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet”; “It is a passage near the conclusion of the third act — a passage of heart-stirring pathos — a passage which divested of its impurity, no man could read without a thrill — no maiden without a sigh,” to “It was a passage towards the end of the third act — a passage of the most heart-stirring excitement — a passage which, though tainted with impurity, no man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion — no roman without a sigh”; and “there still lurked that incomprehensible strain of melancholy which is, I do believe, inseparable,” to “there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever he found inseparable.”

The phrasing of the second version is also more exact: “at the mercy of the current,” was changed to “at the guidance of the current”; “Her hair, partly loosened, for the night,” to “Her hair, not as yet [page 591:] more than half-loosened for the night”; “million far-off places,” to “innumerable far off places”; “from the dark niche,” to “from the interior of that dark niche”; “with whose name,” to “with the sound of whose name”; “rich lilies,” to “rich silver lilies”; “her feet in their tiny slippers,” to “her tiny feet in their slippers”; ‘The rays of the rising sun,” to “The rays of the newly risen sun”; “like streams of molten silver,” to “like cataracts of molten silver”; “weltering and subdued,” to we1tering in subdued masses”; “cloth of gold,” to “cloth of Chill gold”; “with one exception ... besides myself,” to “with one exception ... besides myself and my valet”; “Venus de Medici?” to “Venus of the Medicis?”; “an offering to that solemn sun which these lamps and censers are struggling to overpower,” to “an offering to the solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to subdue.”

There is occasionally a touch of pedantry in Poe's efforts to render his story more exact, as, for example, in his expansion of “a page of Politian's beautiful tragedy, the ‘Orfeo” to “a page of the poet and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy, ‘The Orfeo’ (the first native Italian tragedy).” [page 592:]

A complete list of the changes in the phrasing and arrangement of details in “The Visionary” would be overwhelming evidence of the thoroughness with which Poe frequently revised; scarcely a sentence remained exactly as in Godey's and the diction was altered, even in minutest details, when such an alteration promised a heightening of the effect.

For the 1840 text few changes were made in the story, there being not a single verbal alteration. Again, for the text of 1845, the former version was painstakingly revised in diction and sentence structure, and several important omissions were made. These passages will be discovered, however, in connection with the influence of “Ligeia.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 546:]

5.  Any designation of the priority or order of Poe's stories must still be based merely on “what is known.” We must always allow for the accidents of future discoveries of periodical.

6.  With the exception of “Hans Pfaall,” excluded no doubt because of its length, and “Julius Rodman,” also long and, in addition, never completed, every other one of Poe's known stories published before 1844 reappeared in 1845 either in the Journal or in the collection of that year. Of the eleven stories of 1845 all reappeared in 1845 except “The Elk,” “The Balloon Hoax,” “The Angel of the Odd,” and “Thou Art the Man.” With the exception of “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether,” which was not published until November of 1845, all of the 1845 tales had a second reprinting in the same year.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 548:]

7.  James E. Heath, acting as editor of the Messenger during the first months of 1835, was no doubt responsible for the insertion of this note. His disapproval of Germanism has already been commented upon in chapter II. White also expressed a distaste for German horrors, as indicated in the letter of Heath to Poe in regard to “Usher,” Sept. 12, 1830, and in Poe's answer to the charge of “bad taste” in his letter of April 30, 1835.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 559:]

8.  “Introduction,” Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, viii.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 565:]

9.  Mr. Varner calls attention to the fact that Edwin Forrest had made the two Indian plays, Metamora and Miantonimch, famous around 1830. Op. cit., vii.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 570:]

10.  Perhaps it is only an interesting coincidence that an article called “Fact and Fiction — (Here be truths),” which appeared in Blackwood's, XX (Nov., 1826), 586ff., opened thus: “When the Heathen philosopher had a mind to eat a grape, he would open his lips meaning, thereby, that grapes were made to eat, and lips to open.’ These are ‘facts’; as such are detailed by Monsieur Touchstone the clown, ‘a great lover of the same.’ ” The article itself deals with the subject of metaphysics, says that we all dabble in it, and that someday children may prefer setting afloat a metaphysical paradox to blowing an air bubble. “Pedro, the metaphysician of Venice,” in Poe's tale may owe his origin to this slight suggestion.

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 577:]

11.  Published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, May 1840. Further details of Poe's typical room will be noted in the discussion of revisions in “The Visionary” and “Ligeia.”

[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 588:]

12.  In the final revision Poe improved the awkward structure of the last sentence by placing “in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor” at the beginning after “Also.”