Chapter VI: The Poet

Poe’s claim to mastership in verse rests on a handful of lyrics distinguished for exquisite melody and a haunting beauty of phrase. That part of the public which estimates a poet by such pieces as find their way into anthologies regards Poe primarily as the author of ‘The Bells’ and ‘The Raven.’ If popularity were the final test of merit, these strikingly original performances would indeed crown his work. After sixty years, neither has lost in appreciable degree the magical charm it exerted when first the weird melody fell upon the ear. Each is hackneyed beyond description; each has been parodied unmercifully, murdered by raw elocutionists, and worse than murdered by generations of school-children droning from their readers, about the ‘midnight dreary’ and the ‘Runic rhyme.’ But it is yet possible to restore in a measure the feeling of astonished delight with which lovers of poetry greeted the advent of these studies in the musical power of words.

The practical and earnest soul will find little to comfort him in the poetry of Poe. It teaches nothing, emphasizes no moral, never inspires to action. The strange unearthly melodies must be enjoyed for the reason that they are strange and unearthly and melodious. The genius of the poet has travelled

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,

and we can well believe that it comes

From an ultimate dim Thule,--
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of Space--out of Time.

Wholly out of space and time was he who wrote ‘Dreamland,’ ‘The City in the Sea,’ ‘The Haunted Palace,’ ‘Israfel,’ ‘The Sleeper,’ and ‘Ulalume.’ It is idle to ask of these poems something they do not pretend to give, and it can hardly be other than uncritical to describe them as ‘very superficial.’ They are strange exotic flowers blooming under conditions the most adverse, a fresh proof that genius is independent of place and time.

* * * * *

In Poe’s work as a whole there is unquestionably too much of brooding over death, the grave, mere physical horrors. Since his genius lay that way, he must be accepted as he was. But it is permitted to regret, if not the thing in itself (the domain of art being wide), at least the excess. Poe speaks of certain themes which are ‘too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.’ And having laid down this doctrine, Poe goes on to relate the story of ‘The Premature Burial.’ It turns out a vision. But the narrator affirms that he was cured by the experience, that he read no more ‘bugaboo tales--_such as this_. In short I became a new man and lived a man’s life.’ Without assuming that Poe spoke wholly from the autobiographical point of view, we may believe the passage to contain a measure of his actual thought.

We may claim for him a more important place in our literature than do his radical admirers whose fervent eulogy too often takes the form of the contention that Poe was greater than this or that American man of letters. His strong, sombre genius saved the literature from any danger of uniformity, relieved it at once and forever from the possible charge of colorlessness. That strangeness of flavor which a late distinguished critic notes as a mark of genius is imparted by Poe’s work to our literary product as a whole. Here indeed was ‘the blossoming of the aloe.’

FOOTNOTES:

[25] ‘... There is one thing I am anxious to caution you against,
& which has been a great enemy to our family, I hope,
however, in yr case, it may prove unnecessary, “A too free
use of the Bottle” ...’ William Poe to E. A. Poe, 15th June,
1843. Harrison’s _Poe_, vol. ii, p. 143.

[26] G. E. Woodberry.

[27] E. C. Stedman.

[28] ‘Reply to “Outis.”’

VIII

_Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_

REFERENCES:

=Samuel Longfellow=: _Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, second
edition, 1886, and _Final Memorials of ... Longfellow_, 1887.

=W. D. Howells=: _Literary Friends and Acquaintance_, 1900.

=G. R. Carpenter=: _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, ‘Beacon
Biographies,’ 1901.

=T. W. Higginson=: _Henry Wadsworth Longfellow_, ‘American Men of
Letters,’ 1902.