“Letter About Edgar Poe” — Democrat and Sentinel

From the Home Journal. LETTER ABOUT EDGAR POE. Idlewild, October 17, 1858. DEAR MORRIS: — The splendid volume you sent me, (The Poems of EDGAR POE, published by our friend Redfield, with taste and costliness so suited to the rare gems of which it is the setting.) has vividly re-opened to me one of the long closed chambers of that Past so trying to both of us. In our harassing and exhausting days of “Daily” Editorship, POE, for a time, you remember, was our assistant — the constant and industrious occupant of a desk in our office. The light shining from this volume — genius, of a diamond-lustre, which I think wholly unsurpassed — justifies fully to me, now, the estimate I then formed from the presence of the man. Of the poems, it would be to me the delicious alchymy of love to write a criticism. They are among the few that I delight to read to a friend, for a feast in an hour of idleness. But it is of the once living man — as here pictured in the biography prefacing the book — that I wish to make a remark or two which shall stand for your voice and mine. Of the ably written, but (in its impression) erroneous biography, which is placed at the beginning of the volume, I will quote the opening paragraph: — “It would be well for all poets if nothing more were known of their lives than what they themselves infuse into their poetry. Too close a knowledge of the weaknesses and errors of the inspired children of Parnassus cannot but impair, in some degree, the delicate aroma of their songs. The inner life of the poet, the secrets of his inspiration, the mysterious processes by which his pearls of thought are produced, can never be made known and the accidents of his daily life have but little more interest than those which fall to common men. Under all circumstances the poet is a mystery, and the utterances of his fancy are but the drapery of the veiled statue of which still leaves the figure itself unknown. A dissection of the song-bird gives us no insight into the secret of his melodious notes. Some of the great modern poets have had their whole lives exposed, with minute accuracy; but in what are we the wiser for the knowledge we have obtained of them? We only know they lived and suffered like other men, and their inspirations are still a cause of wonder and delight. The subtle secret of their power is still hidden from our search; and though we know more of the daily habits of the men we know no more of the hidden power of the poet. But there is still a yearning to know how the men lived whose genius has charmed and instructed us, and a vague feeling exists, that in probing the lives of poets, we may learn something of the art by which they produced their works. * * * * “Of all the poets whose lives have been a puzzle and a mystery to the world, there is no one more difficult to be understood than EDGAR ALLAN POE. It is impossible to carry in the mind a double idea of a man, and to believe him to be both a saint and a fiend; but such is the embarrassment felt by those who have first read the poems of this strange being, and then read any of the biographies of him which pretend to anything like an accurate account of his life. Like his own ‘Raven,’ he is, to his readers, ‘bird or fiend,’ they know not which. But a close study of his works will reveal the fact — which may serve, in some degree, to remove this embarrassment — that there is nowhere discoverable in them a consciousness of moral responsibility. They are full of the subtleties of passion, of grief, despair, and longing; but they contain nothing that indicates a sense of moral rectitude. They are the productions of one whose religion was a worship of the Beautiful, and who knew no beauty but that which was purely sensuous. There were but two kinds of beauty for him, and they were Form and Color. He revelled in an ideal world of perfect shows, and was made wretched by any imperfections of art. The Lenore whose loss he deplored was a being fair to the eye, a beautiful