DOE'S genius has never received the recognition in America that it has received abroad. His popularity in France, exceeding that of any other American poet, is due largely, of course, to the sympathetic criticism and loyalty of Charles Baudelaire; but the eager reception accorded by the French to the weird romances of Hoffmann had already paved the way for Baudelaire's translations of Poe. Gautier, the friend and survivor of Baudelaire, declared Poe's genius too rare and ethereal to be understood by his Philistine countrymen. "He did not adore the almighty dollar exclusively; he loved poetry for its own sake, and preferred beauty to utility: heresie enorme."
It is not surprising that Swinburne is found among Poe's foreign admirers. Dividing American poets into two classes, "corn-crakes" and "mocking-birds"—the one characterized by harsh, the other by borrowed, notes—Swinburne affirms that the melody and originality of Poe's verse save him from being included in either division.
Joseph Skipsey thinks that Poe was "the finest and most brilliant poetic genius that America has yet produced," that "in his very earliest literary efforts he had surpassed every other writer that America had produced," and that "in the specialty of melody, he excels Collins, and indeed all others except some two or three of the very greatest poets in the English tongue."
Edmund Gosse, the last to voice English sentiment in regard to Poe, writes as follows to The Critic (New York), July 29, 1893:
"The result of your ballot for 'The Best Ten American Books,' declared in your issue for June 3, 1893, contains one feature of great and grave public interest. It cannot, I think, be too strongly impressed on the notice of Americans of taste. It is a feature of omission. You give (on p. 357) a list of authors who received 'in all twenty votes or more.' These authors are thirty in number, and one of them received nearly seven hundred votes. But among these thirty does not occur the name of the most perfect, the most original, the most exquisite of the American poets. The name of Edgar Allan Poe does not occur.
"The omission is extraordinary and sinister. If I were an American, I should be inclined to call it disastrous. While every year sheds more lustre on the genius of Poe among the most weighty critical authorities of England, of France, of Germany, of Italy, in his own country prejudice is still so rampant that he fails to secure a paltry twenty votes, when Wallace (who on earth is, or was, Wallace?) secures two hundred and fifty-two, Mrs. Jackson fifty-seven, and Mitchell (who is, or was, Mitchell?) forty-two. You must look to your own house, but it makes one wonder what is the standard of American style."
The parenthetic queries do honor to Mr. Gosse's frankness, though they do not commend him as preeminently qualified to pass judgment on recent phases of American literature. It is to be regretted that foreign critics, while paying deserved tribute to Poe, should see fit, by way of intended antithesis, to indulge in belittling comments upon American literature as a whole. Does not the real antithesis lie in the contrast between foreign appreciation of Poe and foreign ignorance of American literature in general? However this may be, it is certain that Poe's fame has suffered from the indiscriminate eulogy of friends almost as much as from the coarse slander of enemies.
The limited amount of verse left by Poe makes the study of repetition as employed by him comparatively easy. He could produce, however, without resort to his favorite devices, poetry of a type that proves his genius to have been independent of any one peculiarity of style. Mr. Woodberry [Edgar Allan Poe (American Men of Letters Series). Boston, 1885. (p. 60.)] speaks ol Israfel as "the first pure song of the poet, the notes most liquid and clear and soaring of all he ever sang." "If I had any claim," says Mr. Stedman [Poets of America] "to make up a 'Parnassus,' not perhaps of the most famous English lyrics, but of those which appeal strongly to my own poetic sense, and could select but one of Poe's, I confess that I should choose Israfel, for pure music, for exaltation, and for its original, satisfying quality of rhythmic art." But in Israfel there is hardly a suggestion of Poe's characteristic use of repetition. Nor can the use of repetition in To One in Paradise, To Helen, The Conqueror Worm, or The Haunted Palace be considered at all characteristic.
The poems in which repetition enters as a controlling element of the style and versification are The Raven, Lenore, The Bells, Annabel Lee, Ulalume, To Helen, The City in the Sea, The Sleeper, Dream-Land, Eulalie, and For Annie.
It should be premised that the repetition of a word or words constituting a refrain cannot justly be said to individualize Poe's style or the style of any other poet. Such repetitions have, indeed, been used by many poets far more extensively than Poe has used them. It is not a simple but a compound repetend that Poe employs. He repeats not a mere word but a group of words, usually a whole clause. The repetition may be (1) complete, or (2) partial.
(1) The following selections exemplify the use of the unchanged repetend; i.e., complete repetition:
"I saw thee once—once only—years ago:
I must not say how many—but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturn'd faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe—
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death—
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee, and by the poetry of thy presence.
Clad all in white, upon a violet bank
I saw thee half reclining; while the moon
Fell on the upturn'd faces of the roses,
And on thine own, upturn'd—alas, in sorrow!"
To Helen.
"And I lie so composedly,
Now, in my bed
(Knowing her love),
That you fancy me dead—
And I rest so contentedly,
Now, in my bed
(With her love at my breast),
That you fancy me dead."
For Annie.
The repetends here employed—"Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses," "Now in my bed," "That you fancy me dead" —are not frequent with Poe. His usual manner is, while preserving the last word of each repeated line, to vary one or more of the preceding words.
(2) Partial repetition is, thus, the more frequent in Poe's verse. When the repetend is a complete line, the changes are internal, the last word being usually left intact. This produces what is called perfect rime, which, says Gummere [Handbook of Poetics] "is now entirely foreign to English verse." But it has not been observed that Poe skilfully disguises the effect of his perfect rimes by lessening the emphasis of the repeated rime-word. This he does by throwing a sudden and superior emphasis on the newly introduced word or words that serve to differentiate the two forms of the repetend. A single example will make this clear. The following lines, in which I italicize the words that by their superior emphasis call attention away from the perfect rimes, constitute the first stanza of Ulalume:
"The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid-region of Weir,—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."
Here the two forms of the first repetend are:
"The leaves they were crisped and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;"
but the perfect rime ("sere," "sere") is not felt to be a blemish, because the second "sere" receives much less emphasis than the first. Attention is centred more upon "withering," which, as a substitute for "crisped," not only assumes the most prominent place in the line, but serves to differentiate the two forms of the repetend.
The two forms of the second repetend are:
"It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber;"
of the third:
"In the misty mid-region of Weir,—
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir,"
in which "woodland" receives the strongest emphasis as the
poet's chosen substitute for "mid-region."
Other examples of partial repetition are:
"But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,—
Of many far wiser than we;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea."
Annabel Lee.
"So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This it is, and nothing more.'"
The Raven.
"Come, let the burial rite be read,—the funeral song be sung!—
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,— ]
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young."
Lenore.
"In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire."
The Bells.
"I dwelt alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride,—
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride."
Eulalie.
"She tenderly kissed me,
She fondly caressed,
And then I fell gently
To sleep on her breast,—
Deeply to sleep
From the heaven of her breast.
"When the light was extinguished
She covered me warm,
And she prayed to the angels
To keep me from harm,—
To the queen of the angels
To shield me from harm."
For Annie.
"Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold,—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals,—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone,—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more."
The Sleeper.
"For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass;
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea;
No heavings hint that winds have been
On scenes less hideously serene."
The City in the Sea.
For Annie and The City in the Sea exemplify alternate repetition, while in Ulalume the repetends alternate at the close of the stanza, but elsewhere follow one another immediately.
A more interesting question relates to the source or sources of the repetend as used by Poe. The attempt to correlate his verse with preceding or contemporary verse is not to be construed as an attempt to understate his genius or his originality. Time has set its seal on these, and Poe has gone down to posterity with Hoffmann, Baudelaire, Coleridge, and Hawthorne. It is rather an attempt to estimate Poe's work at its true value by viewing it in the light of historical connection and literary precedent. To compare Poe with Longfellow, as is so often done, is to compare two men who had almost nothing in common, whose views of the poetic art were almost antipodal, and whose works, valuable and enduring as both are, will not bear comparison, being wholly unamenable to the same law or laws.
As a poet, Poe must be regarded as a writer of ballads, and of that class of ballads of which the mysterious forms the controlling and essential element. Goethe has emphasized the importance of the note of mystery in the ballad, and Professor Child, our highest American authority, speaks of the dropping or obscuring of marvellous incidents in the ballad as a mark of degeneracy. The Raven belongs with Goethe's Erlkonig (Erl King), Burger's Lenore, and Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Christabel. Viewed in this light, viewed as a continuation of the ballad revival signalized by the appearance of the Ancient Mariner, the spirit and structural peculiarities of Poe's most famous poems are at once understood. "In reading that man's poetry," says Poe of Coleridge, "I tremble like one who stands upon a volcano, conscious, from the very darkness bursting from the crater, of the fire and the light that are weltering below." And again, "Of Coleridge I cannot speak but with reverence. His towering intellect! his gigantic power!"
A study of the English, French, or German ballad shows that Poe has used materials already at hand. He has subjected the structural peculiarities of the ballad to the demands of rigid art, has added novel combinations here and there, but the effect is and was meant to be that of the ballad. Does not Poe's use of the term "quaintness" show that in the repetend he saw a means of reproducing the effects of the older verse? Other poets have recognized this function of repetition.
Among Tennyson's Juvenilia is found the Ballad of Oriana. The following stanza shows that Tennyson well knew the value of repetition as a means of imitating the "stretched metre of an antique song:"
"The bitter arrow went aside,
Oriana:
The false, false arrow went aside,
Oriana:
The damned arrow glanced aside,
And pierced thy heart, my love, my bride,
Oriana!
Thy heart, my life, my love, my bride,
Oriana!"
In his ballad entitled The Revenge, a Ballad of the Fleet, written in 1880, occur these lines:
"Ship after ship, the whole night long, their high-built galleons
came,
Ship after ship, the whole night long, with her battle-thunder and
flame;
Ship after ship, the whole night long, drew back with her dead and
her shame."
Tennyson has in these two selections borrowed from the structure of the older ballad the two-forms of repetition employed by Poe, partial and complete
The following selections from Coleridge exhibit the same devices:
"And I had done an hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah, wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow.
"Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist."
Ancient Mariner, Part the Second.
"A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware!
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I blessed them unaware."
Ib., Part the Fourth.
The following familiar stanzas composing Kingsley's The Sands of Dee, exemplify the same peculiarities of structure, peculiarities that may be found in almost all English ballads dealing with similar or related themes:
"'O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' De;'
The western wind was wild and dank wi' foam,
And all alone went she.
"The creeping tide came up along the sand,
And o'er and o'er, the. sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see;
The blinding mist camme dowh and hid the land—
And never home came she.
"'Oh, is it weed, or fish, or floating hair—
A tress o' golden hair,
O' drowned maiden's hair,
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair,
Among the stokes on Dee.'
"They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel, crawling foam,
The cruel, hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea;
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home,
Across the sands o' Dee."
Without making further quotations, it seems evident that all attempts to explain Poe's use of the repetend as due to the influence of any one poet are entirely futile. I cannot think, therefore, that Mr. Stedman has spoken with his usual insight and accuracy when he says that Poe derived his use of the repetend from Mrs. Browning. [Poets of America] There are suggestions of Poe's style here and there in Mrs. Browning's Romaunt of the Page (1839), but being a volume of ballads, the most important giving its name to the collection, a resemblance to Poe was to be expected.
Mr. Skipsey's remarks, properly interpreted, point the same way. "It has been supposed," he says, "that Poe caught the idea of utilizing for musical effects—as he has done in Lenore, Eulalie, and other pieces—the refrain derived from the repetition of some emphatically significant word or line of the poem, from the practice of Mangan, in whose Times of the Barmecides and Dark Rosaleen, such refrains are made to play a similar effective part. ... I speak of Mangan on the merit of some lyrics solely, which are to be found in two or three Irish ballad books published by Duffy of Dublin."
Poe and Mangan died the same year, 1849. There was no American edition of Mangan's poems until 1859, and not even a London edition until after 1849. Poe may have heard of Mangan, though I do not think it likely, but that he ever read a line of Mangan's poems seems highly improbable. Mr. Skipsey's allusion, however, to a ballad book is significant.
The charge made by a recent anonymous editor of Poe's poems, that their author "boldly plagiarized not only the general idea of The Raven, but even many of the peculiarities of rhythm and rhyme, from Albert Pike's poem Isidore," hardly merits attention. The repetend is used in The Raven precisely as it is used in the poems that Poe wrote many years before the appearance of Pike's Isidore.
The conflicting opinions held especially in this country in regard to Poe's genius and to the originality and permanence of his work are due, I am convinced, almost entirely to the failure to judge his work by the canons of criticism that alone are applicable. If put upon the same plane with Longfellow and Tennyson, Poe is insignificant beside them. His range is narrower than theirs, his voice thinner. But in the realm of the older ballad, in complete mastery of the sensuous effects that lurk in color, form, and sound, heightened by brooding and indefinable gloom, Poe takes easy and secure precedence. Room for him here must be made beside Burger, Goethe, and Coleridge. It is only in such a comparative estimate that Poe's genius will stand adequately outlimned. "The feelings to which he appeals," says Minto [Encyclopaedia Britannica] "are simple but universal, and he appeals to them with a force that has never been surpassed."
Visit my Amazon Author page here
No comments:
Post a Comment