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China (China) (search for this): chapter 3
aw him but once; and it was on that celebrated occasion, in 1845, when he startled Boston by substituting his boyish production, Al Aaraaf, for the more serious poem which he was to have delivered before the Lyceum. There was much curiosity to see him; for his prose-writings had been eagerly read, at least among college-students, and his poems were just beginning to excite still greater attention. After a rather solid and very partisan address by Caleb Cushing, then just returned from his Chinese embassy, the poet was introduced. I distinctly recall his face, with its ample forehead, brilliant eyes, and narrowness of nose and chin; an essentially ideal face, not noble, yet any thing but coarse; with the look of over-sensitiveness which when uncontrolled may prove more debasing than coarseness. It was a face to rivet one's attention in any crowd, yet a face that no one would feel safe in loving. It is not perhaps strange that I find or fancy in the portrait of Charles Baudelaire,
Eureka, Humboldt County, California (California, United States) (search for this): chapter 3
are among our American classics, and have made The glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome, a permanent phrase in our language. Poe's place in purely imaginative prose-writing is as unquestionable as Hawthorne's. He even succeeded, which Hawthorne did not, in penetrating the artistic indifference of the French mind; and it was a substantial triumph, when we consider that Baudelaire put himself or his friends to the trouble of translating even the prolonged platitudes of Eureka, and the wearisome narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Neither Poe nor Hawthorne has ever been fully recognized in England; and yet no Englishman of our time, not even De Quincey, has done any prose imaginative work to be named with theirs. But in comparing Poe with Hawthorne, we see that the genius of the latter has hands and feet as well as wings, so that all his work is solid as masonry, while Poe's is broken and disfigured by all sorts of inequalities and imitations; he not disdaining, for
Griswold (search for this): chapter 3
ile Poe's is broken and disfigured by all sorts of inequalities and imitations; he not disdaining, for want of true integrity, to disguise and falsify, to claim knowledge that he did not possess, to invent quotations and references, and even, as Griswold showed, to manipulate and exaggerate puffs of himself. I remember the chagrin with which I looked through Tieck, in my student-days, to find the Journey into the Blue distance to which Poe refers in the House of Usher; and how one of the poet'sard of critical judgment, though it is true that there was very little anywhere in America during those acrimonious days, when the most honorable head might be covered with insult or neglect, while any young poetess who smiled sweetly on Poe or Griswold or Willis might find herself placed among the Muses. Poe complimented and rather patronized Hawthorne, but found him only peculiar and not original; Works, ed. 1853, III., 202. saying of him, He has not half the material for the exclusivene
Collins (search for this): chapter 3
he chagrin with which I looked through Tieck, in my student-days, to find the Journey into the Blue distance to which Poe refers in the House of Usher; and how one of the poet's intimates laughed me to scorn for being deceived by any of Poe's citations, saying that he hardly knew a word of German. But, making all possible deductions, how wonderful remains the power of Poe's imaginative tales, and how immense is the ingenuity of his puzzles and disentanglements! The conundrums of Wilkie Collins never renew their interest after the answer is known; but Poe's can be read again and again. It is where spiritual depths are to be touched, that he shows his weakness; where he attempts it, as in William Wilson, it seems exceptional; where there is the greatest display of philosophic form, he is often most trivial, whereas Hawthorne is often profoundest when he has disarmed you by his simplicity. The truth is, that Poe lavished on things comparatively superficial those great intellectual
Amelia B. Welby (search for this): chapter 3
denouncing the trivial resemblance between his Midnight Mass for the Dying year and Tennyson's Death of the Old year, as belonging to the most barbarous class of literary piracy. Works, ed. 1853, III., 325. To make this attack was, as he boasted, to throttle the guilty; Works, ed. 1853, III., 300. and while dealing thus ferociously with Longfellow, thus condescendingly with Hawthorne, he was claiming a foremost rank among American authors for obscurities now forgotten, such as Mrs. Amelia B. Welby and Estelle Anne Lewis. No one ever did more than Poe to lower the tone of literary criticism in this country; and the greater his talent, the greater the mischief. As a poet he held for a time the place earlier occupied by Byron, and later by Swinburne, as the patron saint of all wilful boys suspected of genius, and convicted at least of its infirmities. He belonged to the melancholy class of wasted men, like the German Hoffman, whom perhaps of all men of genius he most resembl
Swinburne (search for this): chapter 3
e guilty; Works, ed. 1853, III., 300. and while dealing thus ferociously with Longfellow, thus condescendingly with Hawthorne, he was claiming a foremost rank among American authors for obscurities now forgotten, such as Mrs. Amelia B. Welby and Estelle Anne Lewis. No one ever did more than Poe to lower the tone of literary criticism in this country; and the greater his talent, the greater the mischief. As a poet he held for a time the place earlier occupied by Byron, and later by Swinburne, as the patron saint of all wilful boys suspected of genius, and convicted at least of its infirmities. He belonged to the melancholy class of wasted men, like the German Hoffman, whom perhaps of all men of genius he most resembled. No doubt, if we are to apply any standard of moral weight or sanity to authors,--a proposal which Poe would doubtless have ridiculed,--it can only be in a very large and generous way. If a career has only a manly ring to it, we can forgive many errors — as in
Burns (search for this): chapter 3
oor Bohemian, besotted when he has money, angry and vindictive when the money is spent, this is a dismal tragedy, for which genius only makes the footlights burn with more lustre. There is a passage in Keats's letters, written from the haunts of Burns, in which he expresses himself as filled with pity for the poet's life: he drank with blackguards, he was miserable; we can see horribly clear in the works of such a man his life, as if we were God's spies. Yet Burns's sins and miseries left hisBurns's sins and miseries left his heart unspoiled, and this cannot be said of Poe. After all, the austere virtues — the virtues of Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier — are the best soil for genius. I like best to think of Poe as associated with his betrothed, Sarah Helen Whitman, whom I saw sometimes in her later years. That gifted woman had outlived her early friends and loves and hopes, and perhaps her literary fame, such as it was: she had certainly outlived her recognized ties with Poe, and all but his memory. There she dwe
Charles Baudelaire (search for this): chapter 3
om his Chinese embassy, the poet was introduced. I distinctly recall his face, with its ample forehead, brilliant eyes, and narrowness of nose and chin; an essentially ideal face, not noble, yet any thing but coarse; with the look of over-sensitiveness which when uncontrolled may prove more debasing than coarseness. It was a face to rivet one's attention in any crowd, yet a face that no one would feel safe in loving. It is not perhaps strange that I find or fancy in the portrait of Charles Baudelaire, Poe's French admirer and translator, some of the traits that are indelibly associated with that one glimpse of Poe. I remember that when introduced he stood with a sort of shrinking before the audience, and then began in a thin, tremulous, hardly musical voice, an apology for his poem, and a deprecation of the expected criticism of the Boston public; reiterating this in a sort of persistent, querulous way, which did not seem like satire, but impressed me at the time as nauseous fla
Putnam (search for this): chapter 3
ly known, nor was it established for a long time after, -even when he had himself asserted it,--that the poet was himself born in Boston; and no one can now tell, perhaps, what was the real feeling behind the apparently sycophantic attitude. When, at the end, he abruptly began the recitation of his rather perplexing poem, everybody looked thoroughly mystified. The verses had long since been printed in his youthful volume, and had re-appeared within a few days, if I mistake not, in Wiley & Putnam's edition of his poems; and they produced no very distinct impression on the audience until Poe began to read the maiden's song in the second part. Already his tones had been softening to a finer melody than at first, and when he came to the verse,-- Ligeia! Ligeia, My beautiful one! Whose harshest idea Will to melody run, Oh! is it thy will On the breezes to toss? Or capriciously still Like the lone albatross Incumbent on night (As she on the air) To keep watch with delight On the harm
Sarah Helen Whitman (search for this): chapter 3
the haunts of Burns, in which he expresses himself as filled with pity for the poet's life: he drank with blackguards, he was miserable; we can see horribly clear in the works of such a man his life, as if we were God's spies. Yet Burns's sins and miseries left his heart unspoiled, and this cannot be said of Poe. After all, the austere virtues — the virtues of Emerson, Hawthorne, Whittier — are the best soil for genius. I like best to think of Poe as associated with his betrothed, Sarah Helen Whitman, whom I saw sometimes in her later years. That gifted woman had outlived her early friends and loves and hopes, and perhaps her literary fame, such as it was: she had certainly outlived her recognized ties with Poe, and all but his memory. There she dwelt in her little suite of rooms, bearing youth still in her heart and in her voice, and on her hair also, and in her dress. Her dimly-lighted parlor was always decked, here and there, with scarlet; and she sat, robed in white, with h
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