Text: Ruth Leigh Hudson, “Chapter VI.III,” Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story, dissertation, 1935, pp. 592-608 (This material is protected by copyright)

[page 592, continued:]

If it were possible to enlarge this paper into a study of the revisions which Poe made throughout all of his stories, such an expansion would add nothing essentially new, I believe, to the conclusions which may be drawn from a detailed examination of the seven stories already considered. Consequently, instead of attempting to extend this survey to include a minute [page 593:] analysis of other stories and a catalogue of the emendations made at various times, it seems profitable at this point to make some general observations on the types of revisions which Poe made. Little need be added, I think, to the preceding comments upon his improvements in phraseology, in sentence structure, and in mechanical matters. He continued with unremitting zeal his efforts toward correcting the form of his tales. At no time were his alterations in this respect unusual except in the degree of persistence which he lavished upon his creations. A growing sense of the artistic, of justness of phrase, and of pleasing sentence flow comes naturally to one who expends as much labor upon craftsmanship as did Poe. The surprising and extraordinary thing about him was the tirelessness with which he worked and the indication which one finds in every story of the progress he made steadily toward the ideal which he sought. It is perhaps, however, this very insistence upon accuracy of expression which has led come of Poe's critics to charge him with “artifice.” Miss Birkhead, for example, contrasts with the easy perfection of Hawthorne Poe's experiments with language in “painfully acquiring a conscious, studied form of expression.” [page 594:] She concludes that “Poe, with laborious art, fashions and instrument admirably adapted to his purposes.”(13) Poe, after all, would have wished to be judged, not by the extent of his efforts, but by the effectiveness of his finished product.

A general summary of Poe's revisions in the form of his stories will help to define more exactly the trend of the craftsmanship. His corrections involve chiefly the following matters: more logical and accurate paragraphing; after the Messenger period a lessening in the use of the dash; a more frequent use of the comma and the semi-colon; a more exact use of hyphens; a decided decrease in the use of italics; and a fluctuation in his habits of capitalization with a tendency toward a greater frequency of capital letters. In matters of grammar one may note that he corrected the plural form of nouns, changed singular verbs occasionally to agree with plural subjects, harmonized the tense of verbs, corrected the form of verbs, substituted “of which” for “whose” when it referred to inanimate objects, substituted prepositions and adverbs without s for those, with s, as toward and afterward, and corrected his foreign phrases. In others words, he gave indication that he was learning [page 595:] by practice and observation the fundamental things about his language which he had not known thoroughly before beginning his career as a writer. I think it must have been this very sense of learning, of discovery about the niceties of his mother tongue, that caused him to be, particularly during his Messenger days, so disdainful of what he termed the “school-boy English” of others.

In sentence structure he shortened and rearranged phrases for greater emphasis, substituted finite verbs for participles, changed voice or subject for the sake of parallelism or point of view, and in general made an effort to achieve greater euphony within the sentence. In matters of diction he emended earlier versions most frequently by cutting down groups of words to single words; by eliminating so-called “weasel” words, such as “it seemed,” “it appeared,” and “apparently,” “as it were”; by substituting a demonstrative pronoun for an article; by omitting; words that made for repetitions in the thought or in the sound or that overdid the effect, as “grotesque diablerie” and “horrible intensity”; by deleting the obvious, by substituting the more vivid [page 596:] for the less, the unusual for the commonplace; and by constantly tending to omit anything that savored of colloquialism.

In changing his titles Poe tended to choose the more euphonious wording and the more suggestive. He made fourteen outright changes in title and nine partial emendations in either titles or sub-titles. Five of the alterations were made from the names of characters to phrases suggesting the point of the story, and five were for the purpose of embodying in the title a phrasing that would better represent the chief situation of the tale; thus, “A Decided Loss” became “Loss of Breath”; “The Visionary,” “The Assignation”; “Siope,” “Silence,” “Bon-Bon” is distinctive in that its title was changed from a phrase suggesting the dénouement of the story to that of its chief character. As I have previously pointed out, there are indications that Poe may have frequently considered and rejected other changes in title. It will be remembered that he at one time substituted. “A Pig Tale” for “A Tale of Jerusalem,” “The Teeth” for “Berenice,” and “The Horse Shade” for “Metzengerstein,” although [page 597:] he never allowed there emendations in title to reach printed form.(14)

Only rarely did he re-name a character in one of the tales. Perhaps the explanation of this lies in the fact that when one endows a character with life and gives him a certain name, it is almost as difficult to change that name as it is to alter the name of an actual person. With the exception of Pedro's becoming Bon-Bon, none of Poe's major characters was re-christened, and Pedro's transformation may be said to have been practically a change in identity also. The Marchesa Bianca of “The Visionary” in the Godey's version was re-named Aphrodite in the Messenger. Peter Pendulum, the original “Business Man,” became Peter Proffit — an obvious improvement for the purposes of the story. Thomas Smith of “Lionizing” was, for no apparent reason, changed to Robert Jones. The unnamed narrator of “A Decided Loss” became Lack O’Breath, and the central fire of ‘17,1eonora,” called Pyrros in the first version, was left nameless in subsequent printings to heighten the dreamy, [page 598:] poetic vagueness of the atmosphere.

Of changes in setting I have noted but one: the Venetian background of “Pedro” gave way of necessity to a French background for “Bon-Bon”; thus, the scene of the story was transferred to Rouen. A minor change in setting was Poe's renaming the street scene of the murders in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from “Trianon” to “Morgue,” perhaps because of the greater suggestiveness of the latter.

From his use of mottoes to introduce his stories, it is difficult to judge whether Poe had positive opinions as to their value. Some light on his attitude may be deduced, however, from his early pronouncements upon the subject in his critiques. Why he continued to use them when he apparently thought so little of their value is another of the paradoxical problems that arise in connection with his work. In his review of the poetry of Mrs. Sigourney and Mrs. Hemans he wrote:

At about the same time he made the following statement in a discussion of Simm's The Partisan:

In spite of what may be taken as his real views on the use of mottoes, Poe appended them to all of his early stories. With the exception of “Shadow” and “Hans Pfaall,” all the stories published before and during his connection with the Messenger had mottoes, as did all except Pym before the publication of “The Man that was Used Up,” the first of his tales to appear in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine. This was [page 600:] in August, 1839. After that dote came an interval during which he flouted, “the good old fashion”; “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion,” “Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling,” and “The Journal of Julius Rodman” appeared without mottoes. Through 1842, however, most of the tales bore mottoes. After that time Poe's practice varied until 1844. Of the twenty-five new stories published in 1844 and in the years following, only three originally had mottoes.(17) But to ten that had originally appeared without them he added mottoes in the 1845 publications.(18) At various times he changed the mottoes of eight stories, emended two, and dropped two — from “The Oval ‘Portrait” and from “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The lines in Italian first appended to “The Oval Portrait,” were dropped from the original title, “Life in Death” and were dropped probably because of the change in title. The omission of the line, from Longfellow which had earlier [page 601:] been attached to “The Tell-Tale Heart” was made in 1845 while was carrying on his “Longfellow war,” and his feeling toward the New England poet at that time was, one would judge, responsible for this change. As the tales stand in their final form, forty have mottoes, thirty-one, including the fragment, ‘The Light-house,” do not. The matter of his use of mottoes is of little importance except as it shows either his tendency to conform to current literary custom in spite of his own convictions or his slowness in putting into practice a judgment in which he believed.

The most interesting alterations made by Poe are naturally those involving subject-matter. If it were possible to examine his stories minutely without having read a word of his critical dicta, one would be bound, I think, to reach the conclusion that he sought always, consciously or unconsciously, to attain by means of his emendations no less than “totality of effect.” Indeed, it is almost impossible to discuss Poe as writer of short stories without speaking recurringly of this quality which he called “effect.” Whatever additions or omissions he made in the details of his stories at one time or another [page 602:] were inspired largely, it appears, by his aim of pointing his story to a single impression.

This purpose is noticeable, as I have already said, even in the revisions which he made in his earlier stories. He changed and omitted details sometimes, but most often he expanded them in the tales which best reveal his careful workmanship while editor of the Messenger. In view of the emphasis usually placed upon Poe as a craftsman of word, it is worth noting that he was interested also in the idea. We have seen that his principal alterations in “Bon-Bon” were made with a view to expanding, and expounding, the general theme underlying his tale; he wished to create unmistakably a grotesque figure that should represent adequately a pseudo-metaphysician. And the fact that the idea was strong upon him caused him to violate, to some degree, the tenet of singleness of impression. His concern with the idea in “Loss of Breaths led him to add incidents, to overload his story with details, and to indulge in a too elaborate analysis of sensations. His feelings for appropriateness in characterization prompted minor changes in the dress of the Duc de L’Omelette and an elaboration of the conversation of the chief [page 603:] character in “The Visionary.” Among his early omissions of details for the sake of effect may be classed those dealing with the setting of “The Bargain Lost” (“Bon-Bon”), with the appearance of the satanic visitor, and with the allusions to the sable-bound volume. Also such omissions include the discarding of the two introductory paragraphs of “The Visionary” because they tended to exaggerate the atmosphere of mystery and were, after all, irrelevant to the story.

For the most part, the later revisions, particularly those made for the texts of 1845 republications, were directed by a desire to delete objectionable details, to discard the obvious or the oft-repeated, and to omit everything — such as unnecessary prologues and descriptions of characters, digressive or repetitious comments, and philosophical observations — which did not tend to heighten the single impression of the tale. In some cases, Poe had the good judgement to omit details which he had added in 1835 in response to his desire to make the idea of the story adequate. At other times he omitted passages he detected himself having used in other stories. At all times, he seems, in the final revisions, to have been actuated by the purpose, which had become almost [page 604:] unconscious with him, of cutting away any material that marred the clearness and definiteness of the design he had conceived.

His omissions of objectionable details reveal clearly that he was sincere in his criticisms of writers whom he believed to have stepped beyond the bounds of good taste. It cannot be said, of course, that Poe deleted everything that violated propriety. Had he done so, we should have a different story in “Berenice,” in “Pym,” in “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt,” in ‘The Black Cat,” in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” We may say, however, that wherever Poe could leave out objectionable details without destroying the point of his story, he practically always did so. From “Loss of Breath” he deleted a passage of twenty-two hundred words describing sensations. From “Berenice” he omitted a gruesome description of the affianced husband by the body of Berenice. From “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” he discarded the sentence, “Meantime the worm, with its convulsive motion, writhed untorturing and unheeded about me,” and from “Morella,” the passage “Therefore for me ... hath the charnel-house no terrors ... not even of the worm.” Alterations were made in “The Mystery of [page 605:] Marie Rogêt,” in its second form, so as to omit all references to the violation of the girl.

In discarding material because it tended to the obvious, Poe left out explanatory passages, such as in the introduction to “Berenice,” “I have a tale to tell in its own essence rife with horror — I would suppress it were it not a record more of feelings than of facts,” and Dupin's comment in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “I do not propose to follow the man in the circumstantial narrative which he nor detailed.” From “Mystification” he discarded a passage of similar nature: “My readers have thus the physical baron before them. What I shall add respecting those mental peculiarities to which I have as yet only partially adverted, will be told in my own words,” etc. And from “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” he omitted: “Such thoughts as those we may imagine to have passed through the mind of Marie, but the point is one upon which I consider it necessary now to insist. I have reasoned thus, merely to call attention, as I said a minute ago, to the culpable remissness of the police.” I have alluded already to the omission from “Metzengerstein” of the explanatory passage on the wonder and’ fear aroused by the strange steed and of a reference [page 606:] to frogs in the “well-frequented marsh” of “Loss of Breath.” Of a similar nature are the omissions of one of the two allusions to the strange likeness between brother and sister in “Usher” and of the final passage in to “The Oval Portrait,” “The painter then added — ‘But is this indeed. Death?’”

Occasionally, as was very nature, Poe allowed himself to incorporate in his tales favorite ideas merely for their own sake. His stories retain still a good many such passages, but others he deleted, apparently because of their irrelevancy. These omissions include: the passage in “Metzengerstein” describing the beauty of death in youth, as illustrated in the death of the Lady Mary; the list of wines in “Bon-Bon”; the prologue on the use of fictitious names in “The Assignation”; the hymn in “Morella,” which was not at all in keeping with the story; the “sensations” passage in “Loss of Breath”; the descriptions of Herman in “Mystification” of five hundred words in length, and of Eleonora and Ermengarde in “Eleonora,” of one hundred and seventy-five one hundred and twenty-five words respectively; the discussion of phrenology, of one hundred and sixty-five words, in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue’; the [page 607:] means of “grotesque” mystification practiced by Von Jung in “Mystification,” of two hundred and forty words; the derivation of “stereotomy” in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”; the discussion of the simplicity of truth and the descriptions of the “shadowed waters” and of the Mediterranean flowing over the horizon in “Hans Pfaall.”

Some of Poe's emendations were clearly prompted by his desire to bring his tales up-to-date. He dropped from “The Bargain Lost” the reference to the “starched shirt-collar of 1832”; emended the allusion in “A Decided Loss” to “Hewitt's ‘Seraphic, and highly-scented double extract of Heaven, or oil of Arch-Angels,’” to “Grandjean's Oil of Archangels” in 1845 when the reference to the Baltimore editor of Poe's youth had lost its significance;(19) changed “lost like [page 608:] Col — pami les nues” to “lost like the city of Boston parmi les nues” long after the death of Coleridge; substituted appropriate dates, 1836, 1839, and 1845, in a contemporary allusion in “Four-Beasts-in-One”; deleted the reference, “Race street, No. 79,” as the residence of the maker of cork-legs in “The Man that was Used Up,” after his removal from Philadelphia;(20) and at various times emended satirical allusions to authors and books to suit the place and period of publication, as in “Never Bet the Devil Your Head” and in The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.”

[[Footnotes]]

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 594:]

13.  Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror, 214.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 598:]

14.  See the discussion in chapter I of the proposed volume, Phantasy-Pieces, described by Dr. J. W. Robertson in A Commentary on the Bibliography of Poe, 182.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 599:]

15.  Southern Literary Messenger, Jan., 1836. Works, VIII, 125.

16.  Ibid., Jan., 1336. Works, 143.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 600:]

17.  For the five tales published in 1849 in The Flag of Our Union this opinion is based upon Griswold's text, as I have not seen the files of the periodical.

18.  The revisions responsible for the addition of mottoes to these earlier stories were probably made prior to 1845, since Poe appears, as I have previously pointed out, to have revised his stories thoroughly in 1843 and 1844.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 607:]

19.  Mr. Varner calls attention to this change in his “Introduction” to Edgar Allan Poe and the Philadelphia Saturday Courier, page vi. See also note 4, ibid., page vi. It must be remembered that Poe's mild thrust at Hewitt in 1832 appeared before the Baltimore Saturday Visiter prize was awarded to Hewitt's poem instead of Poe's “The Coliseum.” His feeling against Hewitt was probably inspired by the latter's satirical review of “Al Aaraaf,” in 1829, and not, as Professor Campbell has suggested (The Mind of Poe, 138, note 5), by the Visiter award.

[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 608:]

20.  Race Street is, of course, well known in Philadelphia. I have not located “No. 79” as having reference to a particular place or person. The allusion appeared in the versions of “The Man that was Used Up” printed in Graham's in 1839, in the volume of 1840, and in The Prose Romances of 1843, during which period Poe made his home in the “Friendly City.”