Review of the Collected Works of Edgar Poe (2)

The fact that Poe lived in the first half of the nineteenth century is no less amazing than that the Spanish artist Goya lived at the end of the eighteenth century. It almost seems that Poe’s works originated in our own time; presently the influence of his creation is so great that it is hardly appropriate to consider him only as the forefather of so-called “Symbolism.” Having influenced the poetry of Baudelaire, Mallarme, Rossetti, Edgar Poe is connected, besides this, with several broad channels of nineteenth-century literature. Kindred to him are Jules Verne, Wells, and other English humorists, and such refined stylists as Aubrey Beardsley with his drawings and novellas, and finally, our own Dostoevsky. Naturally the “Symbolists” are the most indebted to Poe. It should be noted that from Poe’s poetic creations there have emerged not one but several successive moments in the development of “Art Nouveau.” The former followers of the principle of “art for art’s sake” cannot disavow Poe, passing on to the next stage, becoming “Symbolists,” in a stricter sense, in contrast to narrow “Decadence.” Among the Russian public, despite their long-standing acquaintance with Poe (one of his stories was printed in Sovremennik in the year 1838, during the author’s life (3)), the strong opinion is still held that Poe was only an “aesthete,” or speaking more crudely, only entertained and frightened, in general “amused the public.”

To go further into the untruth of this opinion is beside the point (as we have seen this opinion is contradicted by the chain of followers or writers who in one way or another are connected to Poe); we are inclined to show one superficial cause furthering the development of such an opinion: this — the imperfections in the translations. Edgar Poe demands a translator in harmony with his soul; certainly he must be a poet, very sensitive to the music of words and to style. Balmont’s translation satisfies all of these requirements, for the first time it seems. In addition, until this time the cheap edition (two books of one hundred and forty-four volumes published by Panteleev (4)) was widely read. In it a smooth — at times even beautiful — translation (Michael Engelhardt’s) did not approach Poe’s basic tone, did not capture the “depths” of this writer, did not preserve the fascinating “melodiousness” which Balmont succeeds completely in translating. To that which has already been said it should be added that poems occurring in the stories are translated into poetry by Balmont (Engelhardt uses prose, for example, in the tale “The Assignation”) and that the “Skorpion” edition promises to be the first complete edition, although the period for the publication of the volumes has been drawn out. In the present volume, in addition to ten stories, there are three articles, interesting as independent aesthetic research.

Aleksandr Blok, 1906.