Poe, Edgar Allen - The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe

by Volume 01-05 (lit)

  poem," is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

  I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch

  as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the

  ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a

  psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would

  entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a

  composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the

  very utmost, it flags -- fails -- a revulsion ensues -- and then the poem

  is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such.

  There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the

  critical dictum that the "Paradise Lost" is to be devoutly admired

  throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during

  perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.

  This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing

  sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it

  merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity -- its

  totality of effect or impression -- we read it (as would be necessary) at

  a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement

  and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there

  follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment

  can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the work, we read it

  again, omitting the first book -- that is to say, commencing with the

  second -- we shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we

  before condemned -- that damnable which we had previously so much admired.

  It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect

  of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity: -- and this is

  precisely the fact.

  In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very

  good reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting

  the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect

  sense of art. The modem epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but

  an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic

  anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem _were _popular in

  reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will

  ever be popular again.

  That the extent of a poetical work is, _ceteris paribus, _the measure

  of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition

  sufficiently absurd -- yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly

  Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere _size, _abstractly considered

  -- there can be nothing in mere _bulk, so _far as a volume is concerned,

  which has so continuously elicited admiration from these saturnine

  pamphlets! A mountain, to be sure, by the mere sentiment of physical

  magnitude which it conveys, _does _impress us with a sense of the sublime

  -- but no man is impressed after _this _fashion by the material grandeur

  of even "The Columbiad." Even the Quarterlies have not instructed us to be

  so impressed by it. As _yet, _they have not _insisted _on our estimating

  Lamar" tine by the cubic foot, or Pollock by the pound -- but what else

  are we to _infer _from their continual plating about "sustained effort"?

  If, by "sustained effort," any little gentleman has accomplished an epic,

  1* us frankly commend him for the effort -- if this indeed be a thing conk

  mendable--but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort's account. It

  is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer

  deciding upon a work of Art rather by the impression it makes -- by the

  effect it produces -- than by the time it took to impress the effect, or

  by the amount of "sustained effort" which had been found necessary in

  effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and

  genius quite another -- nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom

  confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been

  just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being

  generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as

  truths.

  On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief.

  Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem,

  while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a

  profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the

  stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent

  and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to

  stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many

  feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the

  wind.

  A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a

  poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the following

  exquisite little Serenade--

  I arise from dreams of thee

  In the first sweet sleep of night,

  When the winds are breathing low,

  And the stars are shining bright.

  I arise from dreams of thee,

  And a spirit in my feet

  Has led me -- who knows how? --

  To thy chamber-window, sweet!

  The wandering airs they faint

  On the dark the silent stream --

  The champak odors fail

  Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

  The nightingale's complaint,

  It dies upon her heart,

  As I must die on shine,

  O, beloved as thou art!

  O, lift me from the grass!

  I die, I faint, I fail!

  Let thy love in kisses rain

  On my lips and eyelids pale.

  My cheek is cold and white, alas!

  My heart beats loud and fast:

  O, press it close to shine again,

  Where it will break at last.

  Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines--yet no less a poet

  than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal

  imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by

  him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in

  the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

  One of the finest poems by Willis -- the very best in my opinion which

  he has ever written--has no doubt, through this same defect of undue

  brevity, been kept back from its proper position. not less in the

  The shadows lay along Broadway,

  'Twas near the twilight-tide--

  And slowly there a lady fair

  Was walking in her pride.

  Alone walk'd she; but, viewlessly,

  Walk'd spirits at her side.

  Peace charm'd the street beneath her feet,

  And Honor charm'd the air;

  And all astir looked kind on her,

  And called her good as fair--

  For all God ever gave to her

  She kept with chary care.

  She kept with care her beauties rare

  From lovers warm and true--

  For heart was cold to all but gold,

  And the rich came not to won,

  But honor'd well her charms to sell. />
  If priests the selling do.

  Now walking there was one more fair --

  A slight girl, lily-pale;

  And she had unseen company

  To make the spirit quail--

  'Twixt Want and Scorn she walk'd forlorn,

  And nothing could avail.

  No mercy now can clear her brow

  From this world's peace to pray

  For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air,

  Her woman's heart gave way!--

  But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven

  By man is cursed alway!

  In this composition we find it difficult to recognize the Willis who

  has written so many mere "verses of society." The lines are not only

  richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an

  evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all

  the other works of this author.

  While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity

  is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the

  public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a

  heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the

  brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more

  in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies

  combined. I allude to the heresy of _The Didactic. _It has been assumed,

  tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of

  all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a morals and

  by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We

  Americans especially have patronized this happy idea, and we Bostonians

  very especially have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads

  that to write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such

  to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting

  in the true poetic dignity and force:--but the simple fact is that would

  we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately

  there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor _can _exist any

  work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem,

  this poem _per se, _this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem

  written solely for the poem's sake.

  With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of

  man, I would nevertheless limit, in some measure, its modes of

  inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them by

  dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the

  myrtles. All _that _which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all

  _that _with which _she _has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a

  flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth

  we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple,

  precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must

  be in that mood which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the

  poetical. _He _must be blind indeed who does not perceive the radical and

  chasmal difference between the truthful and the poetical modes of

  inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of

  these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the

  obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

  Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious

  distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I

  place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which in the

  mind it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but

  from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle

  has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues

  themselves. Nevertheless we find the _offices _of the trio marked with a

  sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth,

  so Taste informs us of the Beautiful, while the Moral Sense is regardful

  of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and

  Reason the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms:

  -- waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity -- her

  disproportion -- her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the

  harmonious -- in a word, to Beauty.

  An immortal instinct deep within the spirit of man is thus plainly a

  sense of the Beautiful. This it is which administers to his delight in the

  manifold forms, and sounds, and odors and sentiments amid which he exists.

  And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in

  the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms, and

  sounds, and colors, and odors, and sentiments a duplicate source of de"

  light. But this mere repetition is not poetry. He who shall simply sing,

  with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of

  description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and

  sentiments which greet _him _in common with all mankind -- he, I say, has

  yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the

  distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst

  unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This

  thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and

  an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for

  the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild

  effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of

  the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among

  the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness

  whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by

  Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find

  ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina

  supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant,

  impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at

  once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which _through' _the

  poem, or _through _the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate

  glimpses.

  The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness -- this struggle, on

  the part of souls fittingly constituted -- has given to the world all

  _that _which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand

  and _to feel _as poetic.

  The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes

  --in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance -- very

  especially in Music -- and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in the

  com position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has

  regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly

  on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music,

  in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment

  in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected -- is so vitally important an

  adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not

  now
pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps

  that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired

  by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles -- the creation of supernal Beauty.

  It _may _be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained

  in _fact. _We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from

  an earthly harp are stricken notes which _cannot _have been unfamiliar to

  the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry

  with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the

  Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers had advantages which we

  do not possess -- and Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the

  most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.

  To recapitulate then: -- I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words

  as _The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. _Its sole arbiter is Taste. With

  the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations.

  Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with

  Truth.

  A few words, however, in explanation. _That _pleasure which is at once

  the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I

  maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of

  Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or

  excitement _of the soul, _which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and

  which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of

  the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. I make

  Beauty, therefore--using the word as inclusive of the sublime -- I make

  Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of

  Art that effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from

  their causes: -- no one as yet having been weak enough to deny that the

  peculiar elevation in question is at least _most readily _attainable in

  the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of

  Passion' or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be