History of American Literature Part 31

"Beyond the light that would not die Out of the scarlet-haunted sky, Beyond the evening star's white eye Of glittering chalcedony, Drained out of dusk the plaintive cry Of 'whippoorwill!' of 'whippoorwill!'"

[Footnote: Cawein, _Red Leaves and Roses_.]

In the work of her later writers of fiction, the South has presented, often in a realistic setting of natural scenes, a romantic picture of the life distinctive of the various sections,--of the Creoles of Louisiana, of the mountaineers of Tennessee, of the blue gra.s.s region of Kentucky, of Virginia in the golden days, and of the Georgia negro, whose folk lore and philosophy are voiced by Uncle Remus.

EDGAR ALLAN POE, 1809-1849

[Ill.u.s.tration: EDGAR ALLAN POE]

EARLY LIFE.--The most famous of all southern writers and one of the world's greatest literary artists happened to be born in Boston because his parents, who were strolling actors, had come there to fill an engagement.

His grandfather, Daniel Poe, a citizen of Baltimore, was a general in the Revolution. His service to his country was sufficiently noteworthy to cause Lafayette to kneel at the old general's grave and say, "Here reposes a n.o.ble heart."

An orphan before he was three years old, Poe was reared by Mr. and Mrs.

John Allan of Richmond, Virginia. In 1815, at the close of the War of 1812, his foster parents went to England and took him with them. He was given a school reader and two spelling books with which to amuse himself during the long sailing voyage across the ocean. He was placed for five years in the Manor School House, a boarding school, at Stoke Newington, a suburb of London. Here, he could walk by the very house in which Defoe wrote _Robinson Crusoe_. But nothing could make up to Poe the loss of a mother and home training during those five critical years. The head master said that Poe was clever, but spoiled by "an extravagant amount of pocket money." The contrast between his school days and adult life should be noted. We shall never hear of his having too much money after he became an author.

In 1820 the boy returned with the Allans to Richmond, where he prepared for college, and at the age of seventeen entered the University of Virginia.

"Here," his biographer says, "he divided his time, after the custom of undergraduates, between the recitation room, the punch bowl, the card-table, athletic sports, and pedestrianism." Although Poe does not seem to have been censured by the faculty, Mr. Allan was displeased with his record, removed him from college, and placed him in his counting house.

This act and other causes, which have never been fully ascertained, led Poe to leave Mr. Allan's home.

Poe then went to Boston, where, at the age of eighteen, he published a thin volume ent.i.tled _Tamerlane and Other Poems_. Disappointed at not being able to live by his pen, he served two years in the army as a common soldier, giving both an a.s.sumed name and age. He finally secured an appointment to West Point after he was slightly beyond the legal age of entrance. The cadets said in a joking way that Poe had secured the appointment for his son, but that the father subst.i.tuted himself after the boy died. Feeling an insatiable ambition to become an author, Poe neglected his duties at West Point, and he was, fortunately for literature, discharged at the age of twenty-two.

HIS GREAT STRUGGLE.--Soon after leaving West Point, Poe went to his kindred in Baltimore. In a garret in that southern city, he first discovered his power in writing prose tales. In 1833 his story, _MS. Found in a Bottle_, won a prize of one hundred dollars offered by a Baltimore paper. In 1834 Mr. Allan died without mentioning Poe in his will; and in spite of his utmost literary efforts, Poe had to borrow money to keep from starving.

After struggling for four years in Baltimore, he went to Richmond and became editor of the _Southern Literary Messenger_. He worked very hard in this position, sometimes contributing to a single number as much as forty pages of matter, mostly editorials and criticisms of books. In Baltimore he had tested his power of writing short stories, but in Richmond his work laid the foundation of his reputation as a literary critic. While here, he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm. Perhaps it was irregular habits that caused him to lose the profitable editorship of the _Messenger_ soon after he married. Let us remember, however, that his mother-in-law was charitable enough not to unveil his weakness. "At home," she said, "he was as simple and affectionate as a child."

[Ill.u.s.tration: POE'S COTTAGE, FORDHAM, NEW YORK]

The princ.i.p.al part of the rest of his life was pa.s.sed in Philadelphia and New York, where he served as editor of various periodicals and wrote stories and poems. In the former city, he wrote most of the tales for which he is to-day famous. With the publication of his poem, _The Raven_, in New York in 1845, he reached the summit of his fame. In that year he wrote to a friend, "_The Raven_ has had a great 'run'--but I wrote it for the express purpose of running--just as I did _The Gold Bug_, you know. The bird beat the bug, though, all hollow." And yet, in spite of his fame, he said in the same year, "I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life."

The truth was that it would then have been difficult for the most successful author to live even in the North without a salaried position, and conditions were worse in the South. Like Hawthorne, Poe tried to get a position in a customhouse, but failed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: VIRGINIA CLEMM]

He moved to an inexpensive cottage in Fordham, a short distance from New York City, where he, his wife, and mother-in-law found themselves in 1846 in absolute want of food and warmth. The saddest scene in which any great American author figured was witnessed in that cottage in "the bleak December," when his wife, Virginia, lay dying in the bitter cold. Because there was insufficient bed clothing to keep her warm, Poe gave her his coat and placed the family cat upon her to add its warmth.

Her death made him almost completely irresponsible. The stunning effect of the blow may be seen in the wandering lines of _Ulalume_ (1847). The end came to him in Baltimore in 1849, the same year in which he wrote the beautiful dirge of _Annabel Lee_ for his dead wife. He was only forty when he died. This greatest literary genius of the South was buried in Baltimore in a grave that remained unmarked for twenty-six years.

In antic.i.p.ation of his end, he had written the lines:--

"And oh! of all tortures,-- _That_ torture the worst Has abated--the terrible Torture of thirst For the napthaline river Of Pa.s.sion accurst:-- I have drank of a water That quenches all thirst."

HIS TALES.--He wrote more than sixty tales, some of which rank among the world's greatest short stories. The most important of these productions may be cla.s.sified as tales (1) of the supernatural, like _The Fall of the House of Usher_ and _Ligeia_, (2) of conscience, like _William Wilson_, that remarkable forerunner of _Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde_, (3) of pseudo-science, like _A Descent into the Maelstrom_, (4) of a.n.a.lysis or ratiocination, like _The Gold Bug_ and that wonderful a.n.a.lytical detective story, the first of its kind, _The Murders in the Rue Morgue_, the predecessor of later detective stories, like _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_, and (5) of natural beauty, like _The Domain of Arnheim_.

This cla.s.sification does not include all of his types, for his powerful story, _The Pit and the Pendulum_, does not belong to any of these cla.s.ses.

He shows remarkable versatility in pa.s.sing from one type of story to another. He could turn from a tale of the supernatural to write a model for future authors of realistic detective stories. He could solve difficult riddles with masterly a.n.a.lysis, and in his next story place a conscience-stricken wretch on the rack and then turn away calmly to write a tale of natural beauty. He specially liked to invest an impossible story with scientific reality, and he employed Defoe's specific concrete method of mingling fact with fiction. With all the seriousness of a teacher of physics, Poe describes the lunar trip of one Hans Pfaall with his balloon, air-condenser, and cat. He tells how the old cat had difficulty in breathing at a vast alt.i.tude, while the kittens, born on the upward journey, and never used to a dense atmosphere, suffered little inconvenience from the rarefaction. He relates in detail the accident which led to the detachment from the balloon of the basket containing the cat and kittens, and we find it impossible not to be interested in their fate. He had the skill of a wizard in presenting in remarkably brief compa.s.s suggestion after suggestion to invest his tales with the proper atmosphere and to hypnotize the reader into an unresisting acceptance of the march of events. Even a hostile critic calls him "a conjuror who does not need to have the lights turned down."

In one respect his tales are alike, for they are all romantic (p. 88) and deal with the unusual, the terrible, or the supernatural. Some of these materials suggest Charles Brockden Brown (p. 89), but Poe, working with the genius of a master artist, easily surpa.s.sed him.

HIS DEVELOPMENT OF THE MODERN SHORT STORY.--Poe has an almost world-wide reputation for the part which he played in developing the modern short story. The ancient Greeks had short stories, and Irving had written delightful ones while Poe was still a child; but Poe gave this type of literature its modern form. He banished the little essays, the moralizing, and the philosophizing, which his predecessors, and even his great contemporary, Hawthorne, had scattered through their short stories. Poe's aim in writing a short story was to secure by the shortest air-line pa.s.sage the precise effect which he desired. He was a great literary critic, and his essays, _The Philosophy of Composition_ and _The Poetic Principle_, with all their aberrations, have become cla.s.sic; but his most famous piece of criticism--almost epoch-making, so far as the short story is concerned--is the following:--

"A skillful literary artist has constructed a tale. If wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single _effect_ to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents,--he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tend not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design."

Poe's greatest supernatural tale, _The Fall of the House of Usher_, should be read in connection with this criticism. His initial sentence thus indicates the atmosphere of the story:--

"During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been pa.s.sing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher."

Each following stroke of the master's brush adds to the desired effect. The black and lurid tarn, Roderick Usher with his mental disorder, his sister Madeline, subject to trances, buried prematurely in a vault directly underneath the guest's room, the midnight winds blowing from every direction toward the House of Usher, the chance reading of a sentence from an old and musty volume, telling of a mysterious noise, the hearing of a m.u.f.fled sound and the terrible suggestion of its cause,--all tend to indicate and heighten the gloom of the final catastrophe.

In one of his great stories, which is not supernatural, _The Pit and the Pendulum_, he desires to impress the reader with the horrors of medieval punishment. We may wonder why the underground dungeon is so large, why the ceiling is thirty feet high, why a pendulum appears from an opening in that ceiling. But we know when the dim light, purposely admitted from above, discloses the prisoner strapped immovably on his back, and reveals the giant pendulum, edged with the sharpest steel, slowly descending, its arc of vibration increasing as the terrible edge almost imperceptibly approaches the prisoner. We find ourselves bound with him, suffering from the slow torture. We would escape into the upper air if we could, but Poe's hypnotic power holds us as helpless as a child while that terrible edge descends.

A comparison of these stories and the most successful ones published since Poe's time, on the one hand, with those written by Irving or Hawthorne, on the other, will show the influence of Poe's technique in making almost a new creation of the modern short story.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOUSE WHERE POE WROTE "THE RAVEN"

(Near Eighty-fourth Street, New York)]

POETRY.--Poe wrote a comparatively small amount of verse. Of the forty-eight poems which he is known to have written, not more than nine are masterpieces, and all of these are short. It was a favorite article of his poetic creed that there could be no such creation as a long poem, that such a poem would in reality be a series of poems. He thought that each poem should cause only one definite emotional impression, and that a long poem would lack the necessary unity. He says that he determined in advance that _The Raven_ should contain about one hundred lines.

His poetic aim was solely "the creation of beauty." He says:--

"Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the _tone_ of its highest manifestation; and all experience has shown that this tone is one of _sadness_. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones."

[Footnote: _The Philosophy of Composition_.]

He then concludes that death is the most melancholy subject available for a poet, and that the death of a beautiful woman "is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world." From the popularity of _The Raven_ at home and abroad, in comparison with other American poems, it would seem as if the many agreed with Poe and felt the fascination of the burden of his song:--

"Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore-- Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FACSIMILE OF FIRST STANZA OF ANNABEL LEE]

His most beautiful poem, _Annabel Lee_, is the dirge written for his wife, and it is the one great poem in which he sounds this note of lasting triumph:--

"And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE."

A few of his great poems, like _Israfel_ and _The Bells_, do not sing of death, but most of them make us feel the presence of the great Shadow. The following lines show that it would be wrong to say, as some do, that his thoughts never pa.s.s beyond it:--

"And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams-- In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams."

[Footnote: _To One in Paradise_.]

It would be difficult to name a poet of any race or age who has surpa.s.sed Poe in exquisite melody. His liquid notes soften the harshness of death. No matter what his theme, his verse has something of the quality which he ascribes to the fair Ligeia:--

"Ligeia! Ligeia!

My beautiful one!

Whose harshest idea Will to melody run."

The fascination of his verse is not due to the depth of thought, to the spiritual penetration of his imagination, or to the poetic setting of n.o.ble ideals, for he lacked these qualities; but he was a master in securing emotional effects with his sad music. He wedded his songs of the death of beautiful women to the most wonderful melodies, which at times almost transcend the limits of language and pa.s.s into the realm of pure music. His verses are not all-sufficient for the hunger of the soul; but they supply an element in which Puritan literature was too often lacking, and they justify the transcendental doctrine that beauty is its own excuse for being.