the intelligence, and directing it, according to its capacities, Conscience is the parent of whatever is absolutely and unquestionably beautiful in art as well as in conduct. It touches the creations of the mind and they have life; without it they have never, in the range of its just action, the truth and naturalness which are approved by universal taste or in enduring reputation. In Poe's works there is constantly displayed the most touching melancholy, the most extreme and terrible despair, but never reverence or remorse.
His genius was peculiar, and not, as he himself thought, various. He remarks in one of his letters:
"There is one particular in which I have had wrong done me, and it may not be indecorous in me to call your attention to it. The last selection of my tales was made from about seventy by one of our great little cliquists and claquers, Wiley Putnam's reader, Duyckinck. He has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly made up the book mostly of analytic stories. But this is not representing my mind in its various phases—it is not giving me fair play. In writing these tales one by one, at long intervals. I have kept the book unity always in mind—that is, each has been composed with reference to its effect as part of a whole. In this view, one of my chief aims has been the widest diversity of subject, thought, and especially tone and manner of handling. Were all my tales now before me in a large volume, and as the composition of another, the merit which would principally arrest my attention would be their wide diversity and variety. You will be surprised to hear me say that, (omitting one or two of my first efforts,) I do not consider any one of my stories better than another. There is a vast variety of kinds, and, in degree of value, these kinds vary-but each tale is equally good of its kind. The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination—and for this reason only 'Ligeia' may be called my best tale."
But it seems to me that this selection of his tales was altogether judicious. Had it been submitted to me I might indeed have changed it in one or two instances, but I should not have replaced any tale by one of a different tone. One of the qualities upon which Poe prides himself was his humor, and he has left us a large number of compositions in this department, but except a few paragraphs in his "Marginalia," scarcely anything which it would not have been injurious to his reputation to republish. His realm was on the shadowy confines of human experience, among the abodes of crime, gloom, and horror, and there he delighted to surround himself with images of beauty and of terror, to raise his solemn palaces and towers and spires in a night upon which should rise no sun. His minuteness of detail, refinement of reasoning, and propriety and power of language—the perfect keeping (to borrow a phrase from another domain of art) and apparent good faith with which he managed the evocation and exhibition of his strange and spectral and revolting creations—gave him an astonishing mastery over his readers, so that his books were closed as one would lay aside the nightmare or the spells of opium. The analytical subtlety evinced in his works has frequently been overestimated, as I have before observed, because it has not been sufficiently considered that his mysteries were composed with the express design of being dissolved. When Poe attempted the illustration of the profounder operations of the mind, as displayed in written reason or in real action, he frequently failed entirely.
In poetry, as in prose, he was eminently successful in the metaphysical treatment of the passions. Hia poems are constructed with wonderful ingenuity, and finished with consummate art. They display a somber and weird imagination, and a taste almost faultless in the apprehension of that sort of beauty which was most agreeable to his temper. But they evince little genuine feeling, and less of that spontaneous ecstasy which gives its freedom, smoothness and naturalness to immortal verse. His own account of the composition of "The Raven," discloses his methods—the absence of all impulse, and the absolute control of calculation and mechanism. That curious analysis of the processes by which he wrought would be incredible if from another hand.
He was not remarkably original in invention. Indeed some of his plagiarisms are scarcely paralleled for their audacity in all literary history: For instance, in his tale of "The Pit and the Pendulum," the complicate machinery upon which the interest depends is borrowed from a story entitled "Vivenzio, or Italian Vengeance," by the author of "The First and Last Dinner," in "Blackwood's Magazine." And I remember having been shown by Mr. Longfellow, several years ago, a series of papers which constitute a demonstration that Mr. Poe was indebted to him for the idea of "The Haunted Palace," one of the most admirable of his poems, which he so pertinaciously asserted had been used by Mr. Longfellow in the production of his "Beleaguered City." Mr. Longfellow's poem was written two or three years before the first publication of that by Poe, and it was during a portion of this time in Poe's possession; but it was not printed, I believe, until a few weeks after the appearance of "The Haunted Palace." "It would be absurd," as Poe himself said many times, "to believe the similarity of these pieces entirely accidental." This was the first cause of all that malignant criticism which for so many years he carried on against Mr. Longfellow. In his "Marginalia" he borrowed largely, especially from Coleridge, and I have omitted in the republication of these papers, numerous paragraphs which were rather compiled than borrowed from one of the profoundest and wisest of our own scholars.8
In criticism, as Mr. Lowell justly remarks, Mr. Poe had "a scientific precision and coherence of logic;" he had remarkable dexterity in the dissection of sentences; but he rarely ascended from the particular to the general, from subjects to principles; he was familiar with the microscope but never looked through the telescope. His criticisms are of value to the degree in which they are demonstrative, but his unsupported assertions and opinions were so apt to be influenced by friendship or enmity, by the desire to please or the fear to offend, or by his constant ambition to surprise, or produce a sensation, that they should be received in all cases with distrust of their fairness. A volume might be filled with literary judgments by him as antagonistical and inconsistent as the sharpest antitheses. For example, when Mr. Laughton Osborn's romance, "The Confessions of a Poet," came out, he reviewed it in "The Southern Literary Messenger," saying:
"There is nothing of the vates about the author. He is no poet-and most positively he is no prophet. He avers upon his word of honor that in commencing this work he loads a pistol and places it upon the table. He further states that, upon coming to a conclusion, it is his intention to blow out what he supposes to be his brains. Now this is excellent. But, even with so rapid a writer as the poet must undoubtedly be, there would be some little difficulty in completing the book under thirty days or thereabouts. The best of powder is apt to sustain injury by lying so long 'in the load.' We sincerely hope the gentleman took the precaution to examine his priming before attempting the rash act. A flash in the pan—and in such a case—were a thing to be lamented. Indeed there would be no answering for the consequences. We might even have a second series of the 'Confessions.'"—Southern Literary Messenger, i. 459.
This review was attacked, particularly in the Richmond "Compiler," and Mr. Poe felt himself called upon to vindicate it to the proprietor of the magazine, to whom he wrote:
"There is no necessity of giving the 'Compiler' a reply. The book is silly enough of itself, without the aid of any controversy concerning it. I have read it, from beginning to end, and was very much amused at it. My opinion of it is pretty nearly the opinion of the press at large. I have heard no person offer one serious word in its defense."—Letter to T.W. White
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета
I have neither space, time, nor inclination for a continuation of this subject, and I add but one other instance, in the words of the Philadelphia "Saturday Evening Post," published while Mr. Poe was living:
"One of the most remarkable plagiarisms was perpetrated by Mr. Poe, late of the Broadway Journal, whose harshness as a critic and assumption of peculiar originality make the fault in his case more glaring. This gentleman, a few years ago, in Philadelphia, published a work on Conchology as original, when in reality it was a copy, near verbatim, of 'The Text-book of Conchology, by Captain Thomas Brown,' printed in Glasgow in 1833, a duplicate of which we have in our library, Mr. Poe actually took out a copyright for the American edition of Captain Brown's work, and, omitting all mention of the English original pretended, in the preface, to have been under great obligations to several scientific gentlemen of this city. It is but justice to add, that in the second edition of this book, published lately in Philadelphia, the name of Mr. Poe is withdrawn from the titlepage, and his initials only affixed to the preface. But the affair is one of the most curious on record."
