Edgar Allan Poe

EDGAR ALLAN POE I BY HANNS HEINZ EWERS Traawlated Irom the German by ADLE LEWISOHN NEW YORK B. V. HUEBSCH ICICJISVTI EDGAR ALLAN POE COPYRIGHT, lglB, BY B. TV. HUEESCR PESTE 1Y TRE FXITEb DTATEB OF AYEPICA TRANSLATORS IKTRODUCTION One of the rcasons for Hnnns Hcinz Ewers in- fluence upon German verse and prosc is his wonder- ful sense of the value of words, of their colors and sounds, which he shares with the masters of all times. His instinct leads him toward the strange, the unexpected. The actions in his books take place in the human soul-that land of dreams which unites our soul to thc world-soul. The conception of the Alrrtune or hlan- dragora, his most famous book, antedates Pytha- goras. It is a fablc of the plant that shrieks when plucked. Ewers combines this dory with the science of our times and creates a talc of a strange passion, with no intcnt to intoxicate but rather to explain. This book has affected not only the literature of Germany, but the Iiteraturc of France, where Ewers lived for years and wberc hc collaborated with Mart Henry, a French modernist, in bringing out some French fairy tales, Le Joli Tambour and the dramatic poem, Les Yeux Riorts, now set to music by d9AIber. v I N T R O D U C T I O N I cannot quote from any of his poems for they are as yet untranslated. In the series called The Soul of Flowers, in a manner so simple as to bc almost ingenuous, he has declared in exquisite lan- guage that if the rosc is the flower of love in all the , universe it is bccausc this tllought caused it to become what it is. His Sorcerers Apprentice, or, tlle Devil Hunters is a powcrful pcrformancc. A commun- ity of peasants in an Italian mountain village re- peat among themselves the vlole of the passion 6 of Christ until the final crucifixion. A sinlplc peasant girl is hypnotized into believing herself a savior and taking thc sins of the world upon her shoulders. Of this work we can truly say that nothing that is human is alien to it. Ewcrs was born at Diisseldorf in 1871. His father was a painter of no mean ability. Ilis mother is a. woman of great forcc of character who translated sevcraI English books into Gcrrnan and who has alwajts deeply influenced her son. Ewers has lived in almost all the countries of the world, His CIndia and I is a record of his life in India and that lznd herself is presented to us. Her holy temples, her brown-faced dancers with their swaying limbs and open arms, her incense, her idols and her fakirs. All these are given new expression as seen through the doubting yet loving and always personal eycs of Hanns Beinz Ewers. His conclusion is that the occult is so deeply rooted in our spiritual natures that the mind is our actual body, and the inagirration our reaI mind-that as a phenomenon of nature there cnists nothing mnre hoIy or more spiritual than the carnal. At a time when Poe was comparatively little understood Ewers was his most sympathetic Ger- man interpreter. Hc is abIe to mirror the soul of Pot because they are intcltectual kinsmcn. Both are at home in CLtlie misty mid-region of Treir, both dweI1 out of Space, out of Time. Both have explored the realm of Horror, In fact, Elvers has gone beyond Poe bccause to him was revealed the mystery of sex to Poc sex always was a sealcd book. However, his attitude toward Pap, as shown in this little essay, is aIrnost that of a worshippcr. ADLE LEWISOHN New York December, 1916. EDGAR ALLAN POE IN THE fiHA31BR.A L 6GHTLY my feet tread over the grey stairs of the old path that I had so often follorved ta the Alhanlbras saccrd groves. Tlie Gate of the Pomegranates, behind which I flee to escape from time, opens wide to my ardent desires so gently does one wander into the land of dreams,-where the elm trees murmur, where the fountilins babble, where from out of the laurel bushes hundreds of nightingales sing, there I can best think of my poet. One ought not to do it. Really not...