Edgar Poe and His Critics — Sarah Helen Whitman, 1860 — reading text

the summer of the same year, described it as half Edgar Poe and his Critics. 31 buried in fruit trees, and- as having a thick grove of pines in its immediate neighbourhood. The proximity of the raih-oad, and the increasing population of the little village, have since wrought great changes in the place. Kound an old cherry-tree, near the door, was a broad bank of greenest turf. The neighbouring beds of mignonette and heliotrope, and the pleasant shade above, made this a favourite seat. Rising at four o'clock in the morning, for a walk to the magnificent Aqueduct bridge over Harlem river, our informant found the poet, with his mother, standing on the turf beneath the cherry-tree, eagerly watching the movements of two beautiful birds that seemed contemplating a settlement in its branches. He had some rare tropical birds in cages, which he cherished and petted with assiduous care. Our English friend described him as giving to his birds and his flowers a delighted attention that seemed quite inconsistent with the gloomy and grotesque character of his writings. A favourite cat, too, enjoyed his friendly patronage, and often when he was engaged 32 Edgar Poe and his Critics. in composition it seated itself on his shoulder, purring as in complacent approval of the work proceeding under its supervision. During Mr. Poe's residence at Fordham a walk to High Bridge was one of his favourite and habitual recreations. The water of the Aqueduct is conveyed across the river on a range of lofty granite arches, which rise to the height of a hundred and forty-five feet above high-water level. On the top a turfed and grassy road, used only by foot-passengers, and flanked on either side by a low parapet of granite, makes one of the finest promenades imaginable. The winding river and the high rocky shores at the western extremity of the bridge are seen to great advantage from this lofty avenue. In the last melan- choly years of his life — "the lonesome latter years" — Poe was accustomed to walk there at all times of the day and night; often pacing the then solitary path- way for hours without meeting a human being. A lit- tle to the east of the cottage rises a ledge of rocky Edgar Poe and his Critics. 33 ground, partly covered with pines and cedars, command- ing a fine view of the surrounding country and of the picturesque college of St. John's, which had at that time in its neighbourhood an avenue of venerable old trees. This rocky ledge was also one of the poet's favourite resorts. Here through long summer days and through solitary, star-lit nights he loved to sit, dreaming his gor- geous waking dreams, or pondering the deep problems of "The Universe," — that grand "prose-poem" to which he devoted the last and maturest energies of his won- derful intellect. The abstracted enthusiasm with which he pursued his great quest into the cosmogony of the universe is an earnest of the passionate intellectual sin- cerity which we shall presently take occasion to illus- trate. Wanting in that supreme central force or faculty of the mind, whose function is a God-conscious and God- adoring faith, Edgar Poe sought earnestly and conscien- tiously for such solution of the great problems of thought as were alone attainable to an intellect hurled 34 Edgar Poe and his Critics. from its balance by the abnormal preponderance of tlie analytical and imaginative faculties. It was to this very disproportion that we are indebted for some of those marvellous intellectual creations, which, as we shall hope to prove, had an important significance and an especial adaptation to the time. A very intolerant article on Mr. Poe has recently been republished in this country from the Edinburgh Review for April 1858, in which the most injurious anecdotes of Dr. Griswold's memoir have been patiently copied and italicised, and their enormities enhanced by the gratuitous suppositions and assumptions of the writer. As an instance of the inconsequent reasoning in whicb the reviewer sometimes indulges, we quote a single passage from the article in question. "It is," says the Edinburgh critic, "a curious example of Poe's superficial acquaintance with the literature of other lands, that in recapitulating the titles of a mysterious library of books in 'the House of Usher' he quotes Edgar Poe and his Critics. 35 among a list of cabalistical volumes Gresset's ' Vertvert,' evidently in complete ignorance of what he is talking about. Gresset'^s ' Vertvert'' is the antipodes of Foe's '■ Raven,^ thougli the comic interest of the former and the tragic interest of the latter turn alike on the reiteration of bird-language." The process of reasoning by which Mr. Poe's " super- ficial acquaintance with the literature of other lands" is deducible from the 'fact that "Gresset's 'Vertvert' is the antipodes of Poe's * Raven,' " may be very apparent to the learned reviewer, but is certainly not quite clear to the common reader. We are not aware that any of the works cited in this catalogue bear a resemblance to the E-aven. Mr. Poe *^2^ must certainly be acquitted of intending to suggest such J^ a resemblance, sjnce the Ray e^ was at the time unwrit- ten. The Edinburgh critic, after admitting that Poe's Raven belongs to "that rare and remarkable c'ass of productions that suffice, singly, to make a reputation," assumes, oddly enough, that "the originality apparent 36 Edgar Poe and his Critics. in Mr. Poe's writings is due rather to the deformity of his moral character than to the vigor or freshness of his intellect," and, finding himself "profoundly im- pressed by Poe's wonderful solutions of the most diffi- cult problems," suspects that "it is after all, an easy thing for man to solve the riddles which he himself hae fabricated." There is a prevalent impression among critics anc readers who have never felt the magnetism of Poe' wierd imagination, nor come into full rapport with hi| genius._that bis intellectual creations were always th^ result of deliberate effort and artistic skill j" that tIKey all ' ' .' were not genuine outgrowths of the inward life but arbitrary creations of the will and the intellect. This opinion, founded in part upon the subtlety and refinement of his analytical faculty, has been seemingly guaranteed by some of his own statements in regard to his methods of composition. A writer in the " North American " characterizes his poetry as " word-maneu- vering," and one of his critics, sitting at the time in Edgar Poe and his Critics. 37 Harper's "Easy-chair," says, " Sucli curious and beautiful performances as Poe's ' Raven ' and ' Sleigh-bells ' are not poems ; they are, simply, ingenious experiments upon the sound of .words." Were this grand lyric of "The Bells" simply a lyric of "Sleigh-bells" as the " Easy-chair" pleasantly calls it, when were Sleigh-bells ever heard to ring so merrily before ? Listen ! *' How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle In the icy air of night I "While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight ; Keeping time, time, time. In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells — From the jingling and tbe tinkling of the bells." It cannot indeed be denied that the mere artistic treat- ment of this poem is truly marvellous. The metallic 4 38 Edgar Poe and his Critics. ring and resonance — the vibration and reverberation of the rhythm — is such that one of its admirers says, "We can never read it without pausing after every verse to let the peals of sound die away on the 'bosom of the palpitating air,' that we may commence the succeeding stanza in silence." Another, who appreciates its ideal truth of conception not less than its high rhythmical art, says, " I was astonished one night in watching a con- flagration, and repeating, amid the clash and clang of the alarm-bells, the third stanza of the poem, to find how marvellously the movement of the verse timed with the peals of sound, and how truly the poem reproduced the •sense of danger which the sound of the bells, and the glare and mad ascension of the flames, and the pallor of the moonlight conveyed. All the poetry of a confla- gration is in that stanza, both in sound and sense, and Dante himself could not have rendered it more truly." So many faculties were brought into play in the expression of Poe's poetical compositions that readers in whom the critical intellect prevails over the imaginative Edgar Poe and his Critics. 39 often acknowledge tbe refined art, the tact, tlie subtlety, tlie faultless method, while the potent magnetism of his genius utterly escapes them. There are persons whom nature has made non-conductors to this sort of elec- tricity. The critic of the "North American" to whose strictures we have alluded, charges him with overlooking moral and spiritual ideas, and calls his works " rich and elaborate pieces of art," wanting in " the vis vitea which alone can make of words living things." Bayne, on the other hand, in his fine essay on "Tennyson and his Teachers," alludes to the "Haunted Palace" of "the great American poet," and contrasts its wonderfully spiritual, subjective, and ideal character with the rich and accurate detail of Tennyson's "Palace of Art." He classes the American poet Avith those who have scattered imaginative spells ratlier than finished elabo- rate imaginative pictures. A greater mistake in literary criticism could not well be made than that which is evinced in the frequent application of the word "sensu- 40 Edgar Poe and his Critics. ous" to the singularly ideal and subjective character of Poe's imaginative creations. We do not of course intend to include among these, his stories of a purely inventive or grotesque character. [t is not to be questioned that Poe Avas a consummate master of language — that he had sounded all the secrets of I'hythm — that he understood and availed himself of all its resources ; the balance and poise of syllables — the alternations of emphasis and cadence — of vowel- sounds and consonants — and all the metrical sweetness of "phrase and metaphrase." Yet this consummate art was in hira united with a rare simplicity. He was the lost genuine of enthusiasts, as