Text: Sidney P. Moss, “Introduction,” Poe's Literary Battles, 1963, pp. ix-xi (This material is protected by copyright)

[page ix, unnumbered:]

Poe's literary battles had a singleness of purpose: to prepare the ground for writers of genuine talent and, in consequence, for a respectable American literature. At a time when America had nothing that could be called a significant native criticism, Poe formulated the highest critical standards and provided models of criticism in his own essays and reviews. At a time when American authors imitated English writers, he had the boldness to denounce this “colonial sin” and charge that imitation was a certain sign of mediocrity. At a time when the divine afflatus represented an explanation of the creative process, he insisted upon conscious art, even exaggerating the consciousness of the process in “The Philosophy of Composition.” At a time when American critics, as well as American writers, confused a moralistic intent with literary value, Poe condemned didacticism both as a critical principle and as an aesthetic purpose, and insisted upon Beauty a cant term, it is true, but one that becomes clear in such contexts as “The Poetic Principle.” At a time when critics judged by provincial and ephemeral standards, Poe proclaimed that standards needed to be universal and eternal. And at a time when criticism was subjective at best and logrolling at worst, Poe insisted upon an analytic and impartial criticism. Moreover, and scarcely the least of his accomplishments, Poe concerned himself with exposing and censuring those conditions of publishing, reviewing, and merchandising that militated against talented writers in favor of mediocre ones — those forces whose position has since been usurped by book clubs, culled prepublication blurbs, large-scale advertising, and TV puffs, though the cliques and the claquers are still with us. [page x:]

One hears at times, even from the mouths of scholars, the wistful remark that Poe should have left the task of exposing the fool and lashing the knave to his betters — the same admonition given to Swift, which he properly satirized. Unfortunately, Poe's “betters” were above that sort of thing; and even assuming that they had the hardihood and intelligence for the task, they disqualified themselves by their squeamishness at becoming involved in journalistic give-and-take. To deplore Poe's splenetic critical temper, or the personalities he introduced into his articles, or his inability to maintain an indifference to abuse as weaknesses is as ridiculous under the circumstances as to deplore a general's aggressive tactics as weaknesses. Without these qualities, Poe would no more have entered the critical arena than a Longfellow, a Hawthorne, or a Lowell; nor, having entered it, could he have survived the cutthroat journalism of his time. These “weaknesses,” to speak the truth, constituted his strength — something that his contemporaries recognized, even if we do not.

What lies behind such wistful remarks is a refusal to recognize that Poe's criticism had a context, the context of journalism, and that he had causes at stake, victories for which could not be wrested in a study. His was not the ivory tower criticism that we find moldering in Lowell's Among My Books and My Study Windows or the disengaged criticism of the academic critics that lies buried in the North American Review. If his criticism had been of that order, a resurrection would be called for, not an analysis. Once this is understood, that Poe's criticism was a form of journalism, we can see why Poe, forced to compete with the “scholar critics,” feigned an erudition he did not always have; why, in cutthroat competition with rival magazinists — a rivalry upon which depended his livelihood and the maintenance of his principles — he became vitriolic on occasion, or defiantly contemptuous, or savagely ironic; and why, as a means of enlisting allies in his cause or of strengthening his personal position, he was occasionally inconsistent and favoritistic in his critical judgments. In saying this, however, [page xi:] let it also be said that Poe was widely and well read; that his prose was, by and large, elevated and brilliant; that his intellectual reach was great; that, for the most part, he was consistent and impartial in his judgments; that no one can read his critical works without recognizing in him a high seriousness and an essential integrity; and that, finally, as Edmund Wilson tells us in The Shock of Recognition, his “literary articles and lectures ... surely constitute the most remarkable body of criticism ever produced in the United States.”