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

we think we shall pre- sently show. His genius would follow no _l£a4ings but those ^ his own ijnperial intellect. With all his vast mental resources he could never write an occasional poem, or adapt himself to the taste of a popular audi- ence. His graver narratives and fantasies are often reTated with an earnest simplicity, solemnity, and appa- rent fidelity, attributable, not so much to a deliberate Edgar Poe and his Critics. 41 artistic purpose, as to that power of vivid and intense conception that made his dreams realities, and his life a dream. The strange fascination — the unmatched charm of his conversation — consisted in its genuineness. Even Dr. Grisvvold, who has studiously represented him as cold, passionless, and perfidious, admits that his conversation was at times almost "supra-mortal in its eloquence;" that "his large and variably expressive eyes looked repose or shot fiery tumult into theirs who listened, while his own face glowed, or was changeless in pallor, as his imagination quickened his blood or drew it back frozen to his heart." These traits are not the possible accompaniments of attributes which Dr. Griswold has elsewhere ascribed to him. As a conversationist we do not remember his equal. We have heard the veteran Landor (called by high authority the best talker in England) discuss with scathing sarcasm the popular writers of the day, convey his political animosities by fierce invectives on the "pre- 4* 42 Edgar Poe and his Critics. ten tioiis coxcomb, Albert," and "the cunning knave, Na- poleon," or describe, in words of strange depth and ten- derness, the peerless charm of goodness and the naive social graces in the beautiful mistress of Gore House, " the most gorgeous Lady Blessington." We have heard the Howadji talk of the gardens of Damascus till the air seemed purpled and perfumed with its roses. We have listened to the trenchant and vivid talk of the Autocrat ; to the brilliant and exhaustless colloquial resources of John Neal, and Margaret Fuller. We have heard the racy talk of Orestes Brownson in the old days of his freedom and power, have listened to the serene wis- dom of Alcott, and treasured up memorable sentences from the golden lips of Emerson. Unlike the conversa- tional power evinced by any of these was the earnest, opulent, unj)remed_itated^speech of Edgar Poe. Like his writings it presented a combination of quali- ties rarely met with in the same person ; a cool, deci- sive judgment, a wholly unconventional courtesy and sincere grace of manner, and an imperious enthusia'sm Edgar Poe and his Critics. 43 wliicb brought all hearers within the circle of its influ- ence. J. M. Daniel, Esq., United States Minister at Turin, who knew Poe well during the last years of his life, says of him, " His conversation was the very best we have ever listened to. We have never heard any so suggestive of thought, or any from which one gained so much. On literary subjects it was the essence of correct and profound criticism divested of all formal pedantries and introductory ideas — the kernel clear of the shell. He was not a brilliant talker in the common, after-dinner sense C)f the word ; he was not a maker of fine points, or a frequent sayer of fanny things. "What he said was prompted entirely by the moment, and seemed uttered for the pleasure of uttering it. In his animated moods he talked with an abstracted earnestness as if he were dictating to an amanuensis, and, if he spoke of individu- als, his ideas ran upon their moral and intellectual quali- ties rather than upon the idiosyncrasies of their active visible phenomena, or the peculiarities of their manner." 44 Edgar Poe and his Critics. We have said that the charm of his conversation consisted in its genuineness — its wonderful directness and sincerity. We believe, too, that in the artistic utterance of poetic emotion he was at all times passion- ately genuine.- His proud reserve, his profound melan- choly, his unworldliness — may we not say his unearth- llness of nature — made his character one very difficult of comprehension to the casual observer. . The complex- ity of his intellect, its incalculable resources, and his masterly control of those resources when brought into requisition for the illustration of some favorite theme, or cherished creation,' led to the current belief that its action was purely arbitrary — that he could write with- out emotion or earnestness at the deliberate dictation of the will. ^ certain class of his writings undeniably exhibits the faculties of ingenuity and invention in a prominent and distinctive light. But it must not be forgotten that there was another phase of his mind — one not less distinctive and characteristic of his genius — which manifested itself in creations of a totally different Edgar Poe and his Critics. 45 order and expression. It can hardly have escaped the notice of the most careless reader that • certain ideas exercised over him the power of fascination. They return, again and again, in his stories and poems and seem like the utterances of a mind possessed with thoughts, emotions, and images of which the will and the understanding take little cognizance. In the deline- ation of these, his language often acquires a power and pregnancy eluding all attempts at analysis. It is then that by a few miraculous words he evokes emotional states ^ ■ commands pictorial effects which live for ever in the memory and from a part of its eternal inheritance. No analysis can dissect — no criticism can disenchant them. As specimens of the class we have indicated read "Ligeia," "Morella," "Eleanora." Observe in them the prevailing and dominant thoughts of his inner life — ideas of "fate and metaphysical aid" — of psy- chal and spiritual agencies, energies and potences. See in them intimations of mysterious phenomena 46 Edgar Poe and his Critics. which, at the time when these fantasies were indited, were regarded as fables and dreams, but which have since (in their phenomenal aspect simply) been recog- nised as matters of popular experience and scientific research. In "Ligeia," the sad and stately symmetry of the sen- tences, their rhythmical cadence, the Moresque sumptu- ousness of imagery with which the story is invested, and the wierd metempsychosis which it records, produce an effect on the reader altogether peculiar in character and, as we think, quite inexplicable without a reference to the supernatural inspiration which seems to pervade them. In the moods of mind and phases of passion which this story represents we have no laboured artistic eJTects; we look into the haunted chambers of the poet's own mind and see, as through a veil, the strange experiences of his inner life ; while, in the dusk magnifi- cence of its imagery, we have the true heraldic blazonry of an imagination royally dowered and descended. In this, as in all that class of stories we have named, the Edgar Poe and his Critics. 47, author's mind seems strnggling desperately and vainly Avitli the awful mystery of Death. In " Morel) a," as in "Ligeia," the parties are occupied with the same mystic philosophies — engrossed in the same recondite questions of " life and death and spiritual unity," questions of " that identity which, at death, is, or is not, lost forever." Each commemorates a psychal attraction which transcends the dissolution of the mortal body and oversweeps the grave ; the passionate soul of the departed transfusing itself through the organism of another to manifest its deathless love. Who does not remember as a strain of Ionian melody the story of "Eleanora?" Who does not lapse into a dream as he remembers the "River of Silence" and "The Valley of the many-colored Grass?" In this story the purport, though less apparent to the general reader, and differently interpreted by a writer in the "North American Review," is still the same as in the preceding. Read the closing sentences, so eloquent with a tender and mysterious meaning, which record. 48 Edgar Poe and his Critics. after the death of the beloved Eleanora, the appearance "from a far, far distant and unknown land" of the Seraph Ermengarde. Observe, too, in these closing lines the indication, so often manifest in Poer's poems and stories, of a lino-ering pity and sorroAv for the dead ; — an ever-recurring pang of remorse in the fear of having grieved them by some involuntary wrong of desertion or forg;etfulness. This haunting remembrance — this sad, remorseful pity for the departed, is everywhere a distinguishing feature in his prose and poetiy. The existence of such a feeling as a prevalent mood of his mind, of which we have abundant evidence, is altogether incompatible with that cold sensualism with which he has been so ignorantly charged. So far from being selfish or heartless his devotional fidelity to the memory of those he loved would by the world be regarded as fanatical. • A characteristic incident of his boyhood will illustrate the passionate fidelity which we have ascribed to him. While at the academy in Edgar Poe and his Critics. 49 Richmond, which he entered in his twelfth year, he one day accompanied a schoohiiate to his home, where he saw for the first time Mrs. H- S , the mother of his young friend. This lady, on entering the room, took his hand and spoke some gentle and gracious words of welcome, which so penetrated the sensitive heart of the orphan boy as to deprive him of the power of speech, and, for a time, almost of consciousness itself. He returned home in a dream, with but one thought, one hope in life — to hear again the sweet and gracious words that had made the desolate world so beautiful to him, and filled his lonely heart witl' the oppression of a new joy. This lady afterwards became the confi- dant of all his boyish sorrows, and her's was the one redeeming influence that saved and guided him in the earlier days of his turbulent and passionate youth. After the visitation of strange and peculiar sorrows she died, and for months after her decease it was his habit to visit nightly the cemetery where the object of his boyish idolatry lay entombed. The thought of her — 50 Edgar Poe and his Critics. sleeping there in her loneliness — filled his heart with a