Page images
PDF
EPUB

of mind threw them out of sympathy with the view of art which Poe held, and which has been illustrated in much of the most enchanting poetry in the literature of the world. The masters of pure song, with whom Poe belongs, could hardly have drawn breath in the rarefied air of the New England of the first four decades. It was an atmosphere in which Emerson breathed freely, and the purity and insight of his work, like that of Hawthorne's, will remain an enduring evidence that intense moral conviction and deep moral feeling are consistent with a true and beautiful art. But Keats could not have lived in the air which Emerson found so full of inspiration; and Keats is one of the poets of the century. This is only saying that if you have one quality in a very high stage of development, you are likely to be defective in other qualities equally important.

A national literature must have many notes, and Poe struck some which in pure melodic quality had not been heard before. As literary interests broaden in this country, and the provincial point of view gives place to the national, the American estimate of Poe will approach more nearly the foreign estimate. That estimate was based mainly on a recognition of Poe's artistic quality and of the marked individuality of his work. Lowell and Longfellow continued the old literary traditions; Poe seemed to make a new tradition. The dæmonic element in him, the pure individual force, brought with it that sense of freshness and originality which men are always eager to feel, and to which they often respond with exaggerated cordiality. It is not surprising that those who are full of the passion to create, and rarely endowed with the power, sometimes go too far in rewarding the man who does what they long to do, but cannot. The artist always pushes back the boundaries a little, and opens a window here and there through which the imagination looks out upon the world of which it dreams so gloriously, but which it sees so rarely; and we are not prone to mete out with mathematical exactness our praise of those who set us free. If we lose our heads for a time when Kipling comes with his vital touch, his passionate interest in living things, the harm is not great. Poe may have been overvalued by some of his eager French and German disciples, but, after all deductions are made, their judgment was

nearer the mark than ours has been; and it was nearer the mark because their conception of literature was more inclusive and adequate.

The nature of Poe's material has had something to do not only with foreign appreciation of his genius, but with the impression of distinct individuality which his work produces. Sprung from a people of naturally optimistic temper, with unbounded confidence in their ability to deal with the problems of life, Poe stands solitary among men of his class in fastening, as by instinct, upon the sombre and tragical aspects of experience. In the high light which rests upon the New World, the mysterious gloom which enshrouds "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Lady Ligeia," and "Ulalume" is thrown into more impressive relief. Against the wide content and peaceful domesticity of this fruitful continent, the story of “Berenice," "The Assignation," and "The Masque of the Red Death" are projected with telling effectiveness. The very limitations of Poe's interests and insight contribute to the definiteness and striking individuality of his work. One finds in it no trace of that vague generalizing tendency which an English critic has recently called the "Alexandrine note" in American literature; on the contrary, every touch contributes to the sharp distinctness of the whole.

The severance between the writer and his surroundings, already noted, is constantly brought home to the reader by the subjects, the persons, and the landscapes which appear in Poe's work. Tragedy in Shakespeare's historical plays is felt to be unusual and exceptional; it belongs to a few periods, it is wrought out in the careers of small groups of persons; but it is in no sense abnormal; it readily relates itself to English character and society. The tragic element in Scott and Dickens has the same natural setting, the same normal relationship to obvious social or political conditions. The tragic element in Poe's work, on the other hand, lies deep in the recesses of individual temperament, and seems remote, unreal, and fantastic, unless we approach it sympathetically. Some of it is unreal and phantasmal; but the potentialities of Poe's tragedy are in most men. They are, however, essentially subjective; for the action in Poe's stories is really sym

bolical; that which is significant and appalling lies behind it. At this point Poe and Hawthorne approach each other, and it is the pure subjectivity of the tragedy which gives its working out at the hands of both writers a touch of remoteness, and in some cases an element of unreality. Poe, like Hawthorne, gives expression to the ideality of the American mind: an ideality disclosed in very different ways by Emerson and Lowell and Whittier; an ideality which has made our literature pure and high, but has robbed it so far of a certain robustness and power shared by all the great writers of our language beyond the sea. American literature, as contrasted with other literature, is touched throughout with aspiration, but lacks solidity and passion. These defects in Poe's works, which are often regarded as peculiar to it, are found in the work of his contemporaries. It would seem as if, so far, the imagination of the country had not been adequate to the task of penetrating and illuminating its immense practical energies; or as if its activities were too vast and varied to admit of imaginative coördination at this early day in our history. Poe reacted so radically from the practical ideals and work of his time that he took refuge in pure ideality.

The refuge of the artist is always to be found in his art; and to a nature so sensitive as Poe's, a mind so delicately adjusted to its tools and its task, and so easily thrown out of relation to them, there was perhaps no other resource. Between the art of the author of "Israfel" and the life about him there was a deep abyss, which the poet never attempted to cross. The material with which he constantly dealt becomes significant alike of the extraordinary susceptibility of his genius, and of the lack of the forms of life about him to satisfy and inspire him. He expresses the dissonance which has so far existed between the essentially ideal quality of the American mind and the intensely practical character of the task which has fallen to Americans. If he had been born a century later his verse and prose might have come closer to the heart of his people, without losing that exquisite fineness which reveals the rare and beautiful quality of his genius. It is hardly possible to miss the significance of the fact that two men of such temper and gifts as Hawthorne and Poe were driven

by inward necessity to deal with the life of an earlier time, with life in an older and riper society, or with the life of the spirit in its most disturbed and abnormal experiences. Such a fact throws a penetrating light on the delicacy of the adjustments between a genius of great sensitiveness and its environment, and sets at naught the judgment, so often and so hastily reached, that the American mind is essentially materialistic. That judgment is impeached by the whole body of our literature, but Poe and Hawthorne made it absolutely untenable.

Poe's dæmonic force, his passion for perfection of form, his ideality, and the sensitiveness of his temperament are all subtly combined in the quality of distinction which characterizes his best work in prose and verse. His individuality is not only strongly marked, but it is expressed with the utmost refinement of feeling and of touch. In his prose and verse, Poe was preeminently a man who not only brought artistic integrity and capacity to his work, but suffused it with purity, dignity, and grace. In the disconnected product of his broken life there is not a line to be blotted out on the score of vulgarity, lack of reticence, or even commonplaceness. In his most careless imaginative writing the high quality of his mind is always apparent. So ingrained is this distinction of tone that, however he may waste his moral fortunes, his genius is never cheapened nor stained. In his worst estate the great traditions of art were safe in his hands.

The quality of distinction was of immense importance in a literature like our own, which is still in its formative stages. Poe's exquisite craftsmanship has made the acceptance of cheap and careless work impossible. Such work may secure an easy popularity from time to time, but it can find no lodgment in the memory of the race on this continent. To go so far as Poe went toward perfection of form is to exclude from the contest all save the fleetest and the strongest. It is to do more, for the service of the artist really begins when his work is completely finished, and separated from his own personality: it is to keep before a people tempted to take lower views of life the reality of individual superiority. In a society which holds all the doors open, and affirms in institution and structure that a man shall go where he can, there is

always the danger of confusing opportunity with gift. The final justification of democracy lies in its ability to clear the way for superiority; but it is often interpreted as signifying equality of endowment and skill. If, in the long run, democracy lowers instead of advancing the standards of character and achievement, it will be the most disastrous of political failures. Equality of opportunity for the sake of preparing the way for the highest and finest individualities will bring us, perhaps, as near a perfect social order as we can hope to attain. Poe was such a personality; a man whose gifts were of the most individual kind, whose tastes were fastidious, whose genius was full of a distinction which involved and expressed remoteness from average standards, detachment from the rush and turmoil of practical tasks. A nation at work with grimed hands is a noble spectacle; but if such a people is to get anything out of life after it has secured comfortable conditions, it must not only make room for poets and scholars and thinkers, but it must reserve for them its highest rewards.

Without the presence of the superior man, the “ paradise of the average man," as this country has been called, would become a purgatory to all those who care chiefly, not for success, but for freedom and power and beauty. One of the greatest privileges of the average man is to recognize and honor the superior man, because the superior man makes it worth while to belong to the race by giving life a dignity and splendor which constitute a common capital for all who live. The respect paid to men like Washington and Lincoln, Marshall and Lee, Poe and Hawthorne, affords a true measure of civilization in a community. Such men invest life for the average man with romance and beauty. Failure to recognize and honor superiority of character, gift, and achievement is the peculiar peril of democracies, which often confuse the aristocracy of the divine order in the world with the aristocracy of arbitrary and artificial origin. So long as the saints shine in their righteousness it will be idle to attempt to conceal their superiority; in the order of the spiritual life the best survive. Of these best was Poe; a man whose faults are sufficiently obvious, because they bore their fruit in his career, but the quality of whose genius and art was

« PreviousContinue »