Sa Vie et Ses Oeuvres: 1856

. . . Quelque maître malheureux à qui l’inexorable Fatalité a donné une chasse acharnée, toujours plus acharnée, jusquà ce que ses chants n’aient plus quun unique refrain, jusqu’à ce que les chants funebres de son Espérance aient adopté ce mélancolique refrain: Jamais! Jamais plus!

Edgar Poe. Le Corbeau

            Sur son trône oVairain le Destin qui s’en raille Imbibe leur éponge avec du fiel amer, Et la Nécessité les tord dans sa tenaille.

Théophile Gautier. Ténèbres

I

Dans ces derniers temps, un malheureux fut amené devant nos tribunaux, dont le front était illustré d’un rare et singulier tatouage: PAS DE CHANCE! II portait ainsi au-dessus de ses yeux l’etiquette de sa vie, comme un livre son titre, et l’interrogatoire prouva que ce biz-[The French text ends here.]

                . . . Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster

                Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—

                Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore of ‘Never—nevermore.’

Edgar Poe. The Raven

                On his throne of brass mocking Destiny soaks their sponge in bitter gall, and Necessity twists them in its vise.

Théophile Gautier. Ténèbres

I

Recently there appeared in court an unfortunate man whose forehead was marked by a rare and strange tattoo: No luck! He bore thus above his eyes the inscription of his life, like the title of a book, and cross-examination showed that this bizarre label was cruelly true. In literary history there are similar destinies, real damnations,—men who bear the words bad luck written in mysterious characters in the sinuous creases of their foreheads. The blind Angel of expiation has seized upon them and whips them with all his might for the edification of others. In vain their lives show talents, virtues, graces; for them Society has a special curse, and accuses them of the weaknesses that its persecution has produced.—What did not Hoffmann do to disarm destiny and what did not Balzac undertake to charm fortune?—Is there then a diabolical Providence which prepares misfortune in the cradle,—which deliberately thrusts spiritual and angelic natures into hostile surroundings, like martyrs into the circus? Are there then consecrated souls, destined for the altar, condemned to march to death and glory through their own ruins? Will the nightmare of Darkness besiege these exceptional souls eternally?—In vain they struggle, in vain they adapt themselves to the calculations and tricks of the world; they may be perfect in prudence, they may stop up every opening, they may stuff the windows against the missiles of chance; but the Devil will come in through a keyhole; perfection will be the flaw in their armor, and superlative excellence the germ of their damnation.

The eagle from on high will drop a tortoise on their bare heads in order to shatter [their hopes], for they are inevitably destined to perish.¹

Their destiny is written in their whole being, it shines with a sinister brilliance in their eyes and in their gestures, it circulates in their arteries with each drop of blood.

A famous contemporary writer has written a book² to show that the poet cannot find a good place either in a democratic society or in an aristocratic one, no more in a republic than in an absolute or constitutional monarchy. Who has been able to give him a conclusive answer? Today I have a new story to support his thesis, I am adding a new saint to the martyrology; I have to write the history of an illustrious failure, too rich in poetry and passion, who came, after so many others in this base world, to serve the harsh apprenticeship of genius among inferior spirits.

What a grievous tragedy was the life of Edgar Poe! What a horrible ending was his death, the horror of which was increased by vulgar circumstances!—All the documents that I have read lead to the conviction that for Poe the United States was nothing more than a vast prison which he traversed with the feverish agitation of a being made to breathe a sweeter air,—nothing more than a great gas-lighted nightmare,—and that his inner, spiritual life, as a poet or even as a drunkard, was nothing but a perpetual effort to escape the influence of this unfriendly atmosphere. In democratic societies public opinion is a pitiless dictator; do not ask of it any charity, any indulgence, any elasticity whatever in the application of its laws to the manifold and complex cases of moral life. It could be said that from the impious love of liberty a new tyranny has been born, the tyranny of animals, or zoöcracy, which in its ferocious insensibility resembles the Juggernaut.—A biographer³ will tell us in all seriousness,—the good man means well,—that if Poe had been willing to normalize his genius and to apply his creative faculties in a way appropriate to the American soil, he could have become a money-making author; another,—⁴ this one a naïve cynic,—that however beautiful the genius of Poe may have been, it would have been better for him to have possessed only talent, since talent always pays off more readily than genius. Another,⁵ who was a newspaper and magazine editor, a friend of the poet, admits that it was difficult to employ him and that it was necessary to pay him less than others, because he wrote in a style too much above the ordinary level. What a commercial smell! as Joseph de Maistre would say.

Some have gone even further, and joining the dullest incomprehension of his genius to the ferocity of bourgeois hypocrisy, have outdone themselves in insults; and after his sudden death, they harshly lectured his corpse,—especially Mr. Rufus Griswold who, to recall the bitter remark of Mr. George Graham, then committed an imperishable infamy. Poe, perhaps feeling a sinister premonition of his sudden end, had asked Griswold and Willis to put his works in order, to write his biography and keep alive his memory. That pedagogical vampire defamed his friend at great length in a flat and hateful article published as the introduction of the posthumous edition of Poe’s works. Is there then no ordinance in America which forbids dogs to enter cemeteries? On the other hand, Willis has shown that kindness and decency always accompany true intelligence, and that charity towards our fellow men, which is a moral duty, is also one of the commandments of taste.

Talk to an American about Poe and he will perhaps admit his genius; perhaps he will even show himself proud of it. But, with a superior, sardonic tone, which smacks of practicality, he will speak to you of the irregular life of the poet, of his alcoholic breath that could have been set on fire with a candle, of his vagabond habits; he will tell you that Poe was an erratic and eccentric person, a stray planet, that he moved constantly from Baltimore to New York, from New York to Philadelphia, from Philadelphia to Boston, from Boston to Baltimore, from Baltimore to Richmond. And if, moved by these preludes of a disheartening story, you suggest that he was perhaps not the only guilty party, and that it must be difficult to think and write readily in a country which has millions of rulers, a country without a great capital and without an aristocracy,— then you will see his eyes open and flash lightning, the slaver of outraged patriotism rising to his lips, and you will hear America, through his mouth, hurl insults at Europe, its old mother, and at the philisophy of former times.

I repeat my conviction that Edgar Poe and his country were not on the same level. The United States is a young and gigantic country, naturally jealous of the old continent. Proud of its material development, abnormal and almost monstrous, this newcomer in history has a naïve faith in the omnipotence of industry; it is convinced, like some unfortunate persons among us, that it will succeed in devouring the Devil. Time and money have such a great value there! Material activity, disproportionately emphasized to the point of being a national mania, leaves little room in their minds for things which are not of this world. Poe, who was of good stock and who moreover maintained that the great misfortune of his country was the lack of an aristocracy of birth, since, as he said, among a people without an aristocracy the cult of the Beautiful could only become corrupt, diminish and disappear,—who charged his fellow citizens, in their costly and pretentious luxury, with all the symptons of bad taste characteristic of upstarts,—who considered Progress, the great modern idea, as the fatuous dream of simpletons, and who called the alleged improvements in houses eyesores and rectangular abominations,—Poe was an exceptionally solitary mind. He believed only in the immutable, the eternal, the self-same, and he possessed—cruel privilege in a society enamored of itself,—that great Machiavellian good sense which moves in front of a wise man, like a pillar of fire, across the desert of history.—What would he have thought, what would he have written, unhappy man, if he had heard a sentimental theologian⁶ abolish Hell through love for the human race, a philosopher of figures propose a system of insurance (a penny per person) to stop war,—and the abolition of capital punishment and spelling, those two related follies!—and how many other sick people who write, with their ear to the wind, gyrating fantasies as flatulent as the air that inspires them?—If you add to this impeccable vision of the true, which can be a real weakness in certain circumstances, an exquisite sensitiveness that was distressed by any false note, delicacy of taste that was revolted by anything except exact proportions, an insatiable love of the Beautiful which had become a morbid passion, you will not be surprised that for such a man life should have become hell, and that he should have come to a bad end. You will be astonished that he was able to endure such a long time.

II

Poe’s family was one of the most respectable in Baltimore. His maternal grandfather had served as quartermastergeneral in the Revolutionary War and had won the esteem and friendship of Lafayette. The latter, during his last visit to the United States wished to call upon the widow of the general and to express his gratitude for the services which her husband had rendered. His great-grandfather had married the daughter of the English admiral McBride, who was connected with the most aristocratic families in England. David Poe, the father of Edgar and the son of the general, fell violently in love with an English actress, Elisabeth Arnold, who was famous for her beauty; they eloped. In order to join his destiny more closely to hers, he became an actor and appeared with his wife in various theaters in the principal cities of the United States. They both died at Richmond, almost at the same time, leaving three young children in the utmost destitution. One of them was Edgar.

Edgar Poe was born in Baltimore in 1813.—I give this date, which is in accordance with his own statement, in contradiction of Griswold who puts his birth in 1811.—If ever the spirit of romance, to use one of his own expressions, presided over a birth,—sinister and stormy spirit!—certainly it presided over his. Poe was truly a child of passion and adventure. A rich merchant of the town, Mr. Allan, took a fancy to the pretty orphaned child whom nature had endowed with a charming manner and, since he had no children, he adopted him.⁷ Henceforth his name was Edgar Allan Poe. Thus he was brought up in easy circumstances and with the legitimate hope of one of those fortunes that give character a superb certitude. His foster parents took him on a trip to England, Scotland and Ireland, and, before returning home, they left him with Dr. Bransby, who was the director of an important school at Stoke Newington, near London.—Poe himself, in William Wilson, has described that strange place, built in the old Elizabethan style, as well as the impressions of his school days.

He returned to Richmond in 1822 and continued his studies in America under the best available masters. At the University of Virginia, which he entered in 1825, he distinguished himself not only by a nearly miraculous intelligence, but also by an almost sinister abundance of passions,—a truly American form of precocity, —which finally led to his expulsion. It is worth noting in passing that already at Charlottesville, Poe had shown a most remarkable aptitude for physical science and mathematics. Later he will make frequent use of it in his strange stories, and will draw from it very unexpected technical resources. But I have reason to be-lieve that he did not attach the greatest importance to compositions of this type, and that,—perhaps even be-cause of his precocious aptitude,—he was inclined to consider them facile tricks compared to works of pure imagination. — Some unfortunate gambling debts brought about a momentary quarrel between him and his foster father, and Edgar,—a most curious fact, and one which proves, whatever one may say, that there was a rather considerable amount of chivalry in his impressionable mind,—conceived the idea of taking part in the Greek Revolution and of going away to fight the Turks. He left for Greece.—What became of him in the Orient, what did he do there,—did he study the classic shores of the Mediterranean,—why do we find him in Saint Petersburg, without a passport,—compromised, and in what sort of affair,—obliged to call upon the American ambassador, Henry Middleton, in order to escape a Russian sentence and return home?—we do not know; there is a lacuna that only he could fill in. The life of Edgar Poe, his youth, his adventures in Russia and his correspondence have been promised by American magazines for a long time and have never appeared.

Once more in America, in 1829, he expressed the desire to enter West Point; he was admitted, and there as elsewhere showed the signs of an admirably well endowed but undisciplinable intelligence, and after a few months he was dropped.—In this adoptive family there was taking place at the sarŕie time an event which was to have the most serious effects on his whole life. Mrs. Allan, for whom he seems to have felt a truly filial affection, died, and Mr. Allan married a very young woman. A domestic quarrel took place,—a vague and bizarre story which I cannot tell, because it has not been clearly explained by any biographer. Thus there is no reason to be surprised that he should have broken completely with Mr. Allan, and that the latter, who had children by his second marriage, should have cut him off from his inheritance.

Shortly after leaving Richmond, Poe published a small volume of poems; it was indeed a remarkable be-ginning. Whoever has a feeling for English poetry will find there already the unearthly accent, the calm melancholy, the delightful solemnity, the precocious experience,—I believe I was about to say innate experience,⁸—which characterizes the great poets.

For a time poverty forced him to become a soldier, and presumably he used the wearisome garrison hours to prepare the material of his future compositions,— strange compositions which seem to have been created in order to show us that strangeness is one of the integral parts of the beautiful. Having returned to literary life, the only element in which certain classless beings can breathe, Poe was wasting away in utter destitution, when a happy chance put him on his feet again. The owner of a review had just offered two prizes, one for the best short story, the other for the best poem. An exception-ally beautiful handwriting attracted the eyes of Mr. Kennedy, who was chairman of the committee, and stimulated him to read the manuscripts himself. It turned out that Poe had won both prizes; but he was given only one.⁹ The chairman of the jury was curious to meet the unknown writer. The editor of the magazine introduced him to a strikingly handsome young man, in rags, his coat buttoned up to his chin, who had the air of a gentleman as proud as he was hungry. Kennedy acted well. He introduced Poe to Mr. Thomas White, who was establishing the Southern Literary Messenger at Richmond. Mr. White was a bold man, but without any literary talent; he needed an assistant. Quite young then, —at the age of twenty-two,—Poe found himself the director of a magazine whose destiny depended entirely on him. He created the prosperity which it enjoyed. Since then the Southern Literary Messenger has recognized that it was to this wretched eccentric, to this incorrigible drunkard that it owed its circulation and its fruitful notoriety. It was in this magazine that there first appeared The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall and several other stories which our readers will see. For nearly two years, Edgar Poe, with a marvelous ardor, astonished his public by a series of compositions of a new type and by critical articles whose liveliness, clearness and reasoned severity were well calculated to attract attention. These articles had to do with books of all sorts, and the excellent education which the young man had had served him well. It is well to remember that this considerable task was done for five hundred dollars, that is to say 2,700 francs a year. Immediately, —writes Griswold, by which he means to say: Poe thought himself sufficiently well off, the imbecile!—he married a beautiful and charming young girl, amiable and heroic, but without a cent,—adds this same Griswold, with a tone of contempt. She was a Miss Virginia Clemm, his cousin.

In spite of the services which he had performed for the magazine, Mr. White quarreled with Poe after about two years. The poeťs attacks of hypochondria and drunkenness were apparently the cause of the separation,—characteristic occurrences which darkened his spiritual sky, like those ominous clouds which suddenly give the most romantic landscape a seemingly irreparable air of melancholy.—From that time on, we shall see the ill-fated man move his tent, like a nomad of the desert, and carry his portable household gods to the principal cities of the Union. Everywhere he will edit reviews or contribute to them in a brilliant manner. With a dazzling rapidity he will pour out critical and philosophical articles, and stories full of magic which were later published under the title: Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque,—a carefully chosen title, for grotesque and arabesque ornaments reject the human figure, and it will be seen that in many respects Poe’s writing is outside or above the human. Scandalous and offensive notices appearing in newspapers inform us that Poe and his wife were dangerously ill at Fordham and in absolute poverty. Soon after the death of Mrs. Poe, the poet experienced the first attacks of delirium tremens. Suddenly a new assault appeared in a paper, —this one more than cruel,—which assailed his scorn and his disgust for the world, and put him on trial, a real public inquisition, such as he always had to face,— one of the most sterile and fatiguing struggles that I know.

Doubtless he was making money, and his literary work almost provided him with a living. But I have proof that he had to overcome humiliating difficulties constantly. Like so many other writers, he dreamed of a journal of his own, he wanted to be at home, and he had certainly suffered enough to wish ardently for that definite shelter for his thought. In order to obtain enough money for that purpose, he resorted to giving lectures. You know what they are like,—a kind of speculation, the university put at the disposal of literary persons, the author publishing his lecture only after having drawn from it all the revenue that he can. In New York Poe had already given Eureka, his cosmogonic poem, as a lecture, and it had even aroused considerable discussion. Now he had the idea of lecturing in his own region, in Virginia. He intended, as he wrote to Willis, to make a tour in the West and South, and he hoped for-assistance from his literary friends and from his old college and West Point acquaintances. Accordingly, he visited the principal cities of Virginia, and Richmond saw once again the man whom it had known when he was young, poor and shabby. All those who had not seen Poe since the days of his obscurity came in crowds to see their distinguished fellow citizen. He appeared handsome, elegant, absolutely correct. I even believe that for some time he had gone so far as to join a temperance society. He chose a theme as broad as it was lofty: The Poetic Principle, and he developed it with that lucidity which was one of his gifts. He believed, like the true poet that he was, that the purpose of poetry is of the same nature as its principle, and that it should have no object in view other than itself.

The wonderful reception that he received filled his poor heart with pride and joy; he was so delighted that he spoke of settling down in Richmond and ending his days among the places that his childhood had made dear to him. However, he had some business in New York, and he left on the 4th of October, complaining of weakness and chills. On the evening of the 6th, continuing to feel ill on his arrival in Baltimore, he had his baggage sent to the dock from which he was to leave for Philadelphia, and went into a tavern to get a stimulant. There, unfortunately, he met some old acquaintances and stayed late. The next morning, in the pale shadows of dawn, a corpse was found on the street—should it be put that way?—no, a body still living, but already marked by the royal stamp of Death. On the body, whose name was not known, no papers or money were found, and he was taken to a hospital. It was there that Poe died, Sunday evening October 7, 1849, at the age of 37, defeated by delirium tremens, that terrible visitor which had already attacked his mind once or twice. Thus disappeared from the world one of the greatest literary heroes, the man of genius who had written in The Black Cat these fateful words: What disease is like Alcohol!

This death was almost a suicide,—a suicide prepared for a long time. At least, it caused that kind of scandal. There was a great uproar, and virtue gave free rein to its pretentious cant, openly and voluptuously. The kindest funeral orations could not avoid the inevitable bourgeois moralizing and were quick to seize such an admirable occasion. Mr. Griswold slandered him; Mr. Willis, sincerely grieved, was more than decent. Alas! the man who had scaled the most arduous heights of esthetics and plunged into the least explored abysses of the human intellect, he who, through a life which resembled an unrelieved tempest, had found new means, unknown techniques to astonish the imagination, to charm minds thirsty for the Beautiful, had just died within a period of a few hours in a hospital bed,—what a fate! So much greatness and so much misfortune, to raise a storm of bourgeois phrases, to become the food and theme of virtuous journalists!

Ut declamatio fias!

Spectacles of this sort are not new; it is rare for the newly buried great not to be subjects of scandal. Moreover, Society does not like these mad wretches, and, whether they disturb its festivities or whether it naively regards them as scourges, it is undoubtedly right. Who does not recall the declamations in Paris at the time of Balzac’s death, in spite of his perfectly natural end?— And still more recently,—just a year ago today,—when a writer,¹⁰ admirably honest, highly intelligent, and who was always lucid, discreetly, without bothering anyone,—so discreetly that his discretion looked like scorn, —went away to free his soul in the darkest street that he could find,—what disgusting homilies!—what refined assassination! A famous journalist, who will never learn generosity from Jesus, thought the event amusing enough to commemorate in a coarse pun.—In the long list of the rights of man which the wisdom of the 19th century keeps increasing so often and so complacently, two rather important ones have been forgotten, the right to contradict oneself and the right to take one’s leave. But Society considers anyone who kills himself as insolent; it would gladly punish the earthly remains, like the unfortunate soldier, stricken with vampirism, who was exasperated to the point of fury by a cadaver.— And nevertheless, it may be said that, in certain circumstances, after a grave consideration of certain incompatibilities, with a firm belief in certain dogmas and transmigrations,—it may be said, without exaggeration and in all seriousness, that suicide is sometimes the most rational act of life.—And thus is formed an already numerous company of phantoms, which haunts us familiarly, and of which each member comes to praise his present repose and to pour out his persuasions.¹¹

We must admit, nevertheless, that the lugubrious end of the author of Eureka aroused some consoling exceptions, lacking which we would have to despair, and the situation would be unbearable. Mr. Willis, as I have said, spoke honestly and even with emotion of the good relations that he had always had with Poe. John Neal and George Graham recall Mr. Griswold to shame. Longfellow,—who is all the more commendable since Poe had cruelly maltreated him,—praised his great power as a poet and as a prose writer in a manner worthy of a poet. Someone wrote anonymously that literary America had lost its strongest mind. But it was Mrs. Clemm whose heart was broken, torn, and pierced by the seven swords. Edgar was both her son and her daughter. It was a hard destiny, Willis says (from whom I borrow these details almost word for word), a hard destiny that she watched over and protected. For Edgar Poe was a disconcerting man; in addition to the fact that he wrote with painstaking care, and in a style too much above the average intellectual level to be well paid, he was always deep in financial trouble, and often he and his ill wife lacked the necessities of life. One day an old, sweet, serious woman came into Willis’ office. It was Mrs. Clemm. She was looking for work for her dear Edgar. The biographer says that he was singularly struck, not only by her perfect appreciation, her just appraisal of her son-in-law’s talents, but also by her whole outer being,—by her sweet and sad voice, by her fine, slightly old-fashioned manners. He adds that for several years he saw this indefatigable servant of genius, poorly and insufficiently dressed, going from office to office in order to sell now a poem, now an article, sometimes saying that he was ill,—the sole explanation, the sole reason, the invariable excuse that she gave when her son-in-law was momentarily stricken by one of those periods of sterility that nervous writers know,—never letting a word fall from her lips which could be interpreted as a doubt, as a lessening of confidence in the genius and will of her beloved. When her daughter died, she attached herself to the survivor of the disastrous battle with increased maternal ardor, she lived with him, took care of him, watching over him, defending him against life and against himself. Assuredly, Willis concludes with lofty and just reasoning, if the devotion of a woman, born of a first love and maintained by human passion, glorifies and consecrates its object, what could one not say in support of a man who inspired a devotion like this, pure, disinterested and as holy as a divine sentinel? The detractors of Poe ought to have realized that there are fascinations so powerful that they can only be virtues.

One can guess how terrible the news was for the unhappy woman. Here are some lines from a letter which she wrote to Willis:

“I have this morning heard of the death of my darling Eddie. *** Can you give me any circumstances or particulars? *** Oh! do not desert your poor friend in this bitter affliction. *** Ask Mr. — to come, as I must deliver a message to him from my poor Eddie. *** I need not ask you to notice his death and to speak well of him. I know you will. But say what an affectionate son he was to me, his poor desolate mother. ***”

It seems to me that this woman has more than ancient greatness. Struck by an irreparable blow, she thinks only of the reputation of the person who was everything to her, and she is not content to have it said that he was a genius, it must be known that he was a dutiful and affectionate man. It is clear that his mother,—a torch and hearth illuminated by a ray from heaven,—has been sent as an example to races who are too careless of devotion, of heroism, and of everything that is beyond duty. Was it not just to inscribe above the works of the poet the name of the woman who was the moral sun of his life? He will preserve in his glory the name of the woman whose love was able to care for his wounds, and whose image will ceaselessly hover over the martyrology of literature.

III

The life of Poe, his manners and morals, his physical being, everything that constituted the whole of his personality, appear to us as something at once dark and brilliant. His person was singular, fascinating, and like his works, marked by an indefinable stamp of melancholy. Moreover, he was remarkably gifted in every way. As a young man he had shown an exceptional skill in every kind of physical exercise, and although he was small, with the feet and hands of a woman, although his whole being had a delicate, feminine character, he was more than robust and capable of wonderful feats of strength. When he was a boy he won a bet for an extraordinary demonstration of swimming. One would say that Nature grants an energetic temperament to those from whom it expects great things, just as it gives a powerful vitality to those trees which symbolize grief and sorrow. Such men, sometimes puny in appearance, are cut in an athletic mold, fit for orgies and for work, inclined to excess and capable of extraordinary sobriety.

There are some things about Edgar Poe concerning which agreement is unanimous, as for example, his great natural distinction, his eloquence and his handsome appearance, of which it is said he was a little vain. His manners, a strange mixture of aloofness and exquisite gentleness, were full of assurance. His face, bearing, gestures, the carriage of his head, all marked him, especially in his best years, as an exceptional person. His whole being breathed an air of intense solemnity. He was really singled out by nature, like those passersby who catch the eye of the spectator and remain in his memory. Even the pedantic and bitter Griswold admits that, when he went to visit Poe, whom he found still pale and ill after the sickness and death of his wife, he was very much struck, not only by the perfection of his manners, but also by the aristocratic appearance, the perfumed atmosphere of his apartment, even though it was modestly furnished. Griswold does not realize that, more than anyone else, the poet has the wonderful gift, attributed to Parisian and Spanish women, of being able to adorn himself with nothing, and that Poe, attached to everything that was beautiful, would have found a way to transform a cottage into a new kind of palace. Did he not write, in the most curious and original way, about new conceptions of furniture, about planning country houses, about gardens and reforms in landscape architecture?

There is a charming letter written by Mrs. Frances Osgood, who was one of Poe’s friends, and who gives us most interesting details about his manners, his per-on and his domestic life. This woman, who was herself a distinguished literary person, courageously denies all the vices and faults attributed to the poet. “With men,” she tells Griswold, “perhaps he was as you picture him, and as a man you may be right. I think no one could know him—certainly no woman—without feeling the same interest... I have never seen him otherwise than gentle, generous, well bred, and fastidiously refined.

“My first meeting with the poet was at the Astor House. A few days previous Mr. Willis had handed me, at the table d’hote, that strange and thrilling poem entitled ‘The Raven,’ saying that the author wanted my opinion of it. Its effect upon me was so singular, so like that of ‘wierd, unearthly music,’ that it was with a feeling almost of dread I heard he desired an introduction .... With his proud and beautiful head erect, his dark eyes flashing with the elective light of feeling and of thought, a peculiar, and inimitable blending of sweet-ness and hauteur in his expression and manner, he greeted me, calmly, gravely, almost coldly; yet with so marked an earnestness that I could not help being deeply impressed by it. From that moment until his death we were friends .... And in his last words, ere reason had forever left her imperial throne in that overtasked brain, I have a touching memento of his undying faith and friendship.

“It was in his own simple yet poetical home that to me, the character of Edgar Poe appeared in its most beautiful light. Playful, affectionate, witty, alternately docile and wayward as a petted child—for his young, gentle, and idolized wife, and for all who came, he had, even in the midst of his most harassing literary duties, a kind word, a pleasant smile, a graceful and courteous attention. At his desk, beneath the romantic picture of his loved and lost Lenore, he would sit, hour after hour, patient, assiduous, and uncomplaining, tracing, in an exquisitely clear chirography, and with almost superhuman swiftness, the lightning thoughts—the ‘rare and radiant’ fancies as they flashed through his wonderful and ever-wakeful brain. I recollect one morning, toward the close of his residence in this city, when he seemed unusually gay and light-hearted. Virginia, his sweet wife, had written me a pressing invitation to come to them; and I, who could never resist her affectionate summons . . . found him just completing his series of papers, entitled ‘The Literati of New York.’ ‘See,’ said he, displaying in triumph several little rolls of narrow papers (he always wrote thus for the press), ‘I am going to show you, by the difference of length in these, the different degrees of estimation in which I hold all you literary people. In each of these one of you is rolled up and fully discussd. Come, Virginia, help me.’ And one by one they unfolded them. At last they came to one which seemed interminable. Virginia laughingly ran to one corner of the room with one end, and her husband to the opposite with the other. ‘And whose lengthened sweetness long drawn out is that?’ said I. ‘Hear her!’ he cried, ‘just as if her little vain heart didn’t tell her it’s herself.’ “

“During that year, while travelling for my health, I maintained a correspondence with Mr. Poe, in accordance with the earnest entreaties of his wife, who imagined that my influence over him had a restraining and beneficial effect ... of the charming love and confidence that existed between his wife and himself, always delightfully apparent to me, in spite of the many little poetical episodes, in which the impassioned romance of his temperament impelled him to indulge; of this I cannot speak too earnestly—too warmly. I believe she was the only woman whom he ever truly loved . . . .”¹²

Love never figures in Poe’s stories. At least, Ligeia, and Eleonora, are not love stories, properly speaking, since the central idea on which the work pivots is something quite different. Perhaps he believed that prose was not a language equal to that strange and almost un-translatable sentiment; for his poems, in contrast, are strongly saturated with it. In them the divine passion appears with all its magnificence, like the starry sky, yet always veiled by an irremediable melancholy. Sometimes he speaks of love in his essays, and even as if it were something whose name makes his pen tremble.

In The Domain of Arnheim, he declares that the four fundamental conditions of happiness are: life in the open air, the love of a woman, detachment from all ambition and the creation of a new Beauty.—What corroborates the idea of Mrs. Frances Osgood about Poe’s chivalric respect for women is the fact that, in spite of his prodigious talent for the grotesque and the horrible, there is not a single passage in all his work which has to do with lust or even with sensual pleasures. His portraits of women are, so to speak, aureoled; they shine in the midst of a supernatural atmosphere and are painted with the emphatic touch of a worshiper.—As for the minor romantic episodes, is it at all surprising that such a high-strung person, whose chief trait was perhaps a thirst for the Beautiful, should sometimes have passionately cultivated gallantry, that volcanic and musk-scented flower for which the seething minds of poets is the natural soil?

I believe that it is possible to get some idea of his strange personal beauty, mentioned in several biographies, by calling up all the vague but nevertheless characteristic notions contained in the word romantic, a word which is generally used to represent the kinds of beauty in which expression is of paramount importance. Poe had a broad, dominating forehead in which certain protuberances revealed the abundant faculties which they are supposed to represent,¹³ —construction, comparison, causality,—and where was enthroned in calm pride the sense of the ideal, the esthetic sense par ex-cellence. Nevertheless, in spite of these gifts, or even because of these disproportionate favors, his head, seen in profile, did not have perhaps an agreeable appearance. As with all things that are excessive in one direction, deficiency can result from abundance, poverty can spring from encroachment. He had large eyes, at once somber and full of light, dark and uncertain in color, tending toward violet, a solid and noble nose, a fine, sad mouth, though slightly smiling, a dark complexion, a pale face, in appearance a little absent-minded and imperceptibly suffused by habitual melancholy.

His conversation was quite remarkable and essentially learned. He was not what is called a glib speaker, —a horrible thing,—and besides his speech, like his pen, had a horror of the conventional; but vast knowledge, powerful language, serious studies, impressions gathered in several countries made his talk instructive. His eloquence, essentially poetic, full of method, and yet operating outside of all known methods, an arsenal of images drawn from a world little frequented by average minds, a prodigious art of deriving from an evident and absolutely acceptable proposition new and secret perceptions, of opening astonishing perspectives, and in a word, the art of delighting, of stimulating thoughts and dreams, of snatching souls out of the mire of routine, such were the dazzling faculties which many persons remember. But sometimes it happened,—so it is said,—that the poet, enjoying a destructive caprice, brusquely brought his friends back to earth with a painful cynicism and brutally demolished the spiritual work which he had just constructed. Something else to note, moreover, is the fact that he was not at all particular about his auditors, and I believe that the reader will have no difficulty in finding other great and orig-inal intelligences in history who were at home in any company. Certain minds, solitary in the midst of crowds, and nourishing themselves on monologues, cannot be particular about their audience. In short, it is a kind of fraternity based on scorn.

As for his drunkenness,—publicized and censured with an insistence which could make it appear that all the writers of the United States, except Poe, are angels of sobriety,—something should be said. Several explanations are plausible, and none excludes the others. Above all it must be noted that Willis and Mrs. Osgood emphasize how much his whole constitution was upset by a very small amount of alcohol. Moreover, it is easy to understand why such a truly solitary man, profoundly unhappy, who must often have regarded the whole social system as a paradox and a fraud, a man who, harassed by a pitiless destiny, often said that society was nothing but a mob of wretches (Griswold reports this, scandalized as a man who may think the same thing, but who will never say it),—it is natural, I say, to understand why this poet, cast into the hazards of an undisciplined life while still a child, his mind circumscribed by hard and continuous work, should sometimes have sought the pleasure of forgetfulness in intoxication. Literary rancors, the intoxication of the infinite, domestic problems, the indignities of poverty, all of these Poe fled in the blackness of drunkenness as if in a preparatory tomb. But however good this explanation may seem, I do not consider it sufficiently broad, and I am suspicious of it because of its deplorable simplicity.

I am informed that he did not drink as an epicure, but barbarously, with a speed and dispatch altogether American, as if he were performing a homicidal function, as if he had to kill something inside of him, a worm that would not die. It is said, further, that one day, when he was about to remarry (the banns had been published, and as he was being congratulated on a marriage which opened the prospect of the greatest happiness and well-being, he had said: you may have seen the banns, but you may be sure I shall not marry), he went about, frightfully drunk, scandalizing the neighbors of his future wife, thus having recourse to his vice in order to shake off a broken promise made to his poor dead wife whose image was always with him, and about whom he had written so well in his Annabel Lee. I believe, then, that in many cases the important fact of premeditation has been clearly established.

Furthermore, in a long article in the Southern Literary Messenger,—the magazine whose fortune he had started,—I read that this terrible vice never affected the purity or the finish of his style, the lucidity of his thought or his habit of hard work; that the composition of most of his excellent pieces preceded or followed one of his crises; that after the publication of Eureka he let himself go very badly, and that in New York, on the very morning that The Raven appeared, while everyone was still talking about him, he staggered conspicuously down Broadway. Notice that the words preceded or followed imply that drunkenness could be a stimulant as well as a relaxation.

Now there can be no doubt that—like those fleeting and striking impressions, the more striking in their recurrences as they are more fleeting, which sometimes follow an exterior stimulus, a kind of signal such as the sound of a bell, a musical note, or a forgotten perfume, and which themselves are followed by an event similar to an event already known, which occupied the same place in a previously revealed chain,—like those strange periodic dreams which frequent our sleep,— there exist in drunkeness not only chains of dreams, but sequences of reasonings which, to be reproduced, require the setting in which they were born.¹⁴ If the reader has not been horrified, he has already guessed my conclusion: I believe that often, though certainly not always, Poe’s drunkenness was a mnemonic means, a method of work, drastic and fatal, but adapted to his passionate nature. The poet had learned to drink, just as a careful writer takes pains to keep notes. He could not resist the desire to recapture the marvelous or frightening visions, the subtle conceptions which he had experienced in a previous exaltation; they were old acquaintances which attracted him imperiously, and in order to renew contact with them, he took the shortest, but the most dangerous road. What killed him is a part of that which gives us enjoyment today.

IV

I have little to say about the works of this singular genius; the public will show by its response what it thinks of them. It would be difficult for me perhaps, but not impossible, to disentangle his method, to explain his technique, especially in that portion of his work whose principal effect lies in a well handled analysis. I could introduce the reader to the mysteries of his workmanship, speak at length about that aspect of American genius which makes him delight in a difficulty overcome, an enigma explained, a successful tour de force,—which leads him to play, with a childish and almost perverse pleasure, in a world of probabilities and conjectures, and to create the hoaxes which his subtle art has made seem plausible. No one will deny that Poe is a marvelous jongleur, and yet I know that he attached the greatest importance to another aspect of his work. I have some more important, though brief, remarks to make.

It is not by these material miracles, which nevertheless have made his reputation, that he will win the admiration of thinking people, it is by his love of the beautiful, by his knowledge of the harmonic conditions of beauty, by his profound and plaintive poetry, carefully wrought, correct and as transparent as a crystal jewel,—by his admirable style, pure and bizarre,—as closely woven as the mesh of chain mail—flexible and painstaking,—whose slightest intention serves to lead the reader gently toward the desired effect,—finally and above all by his very special genius, by that unique temperament which allowed him to picture and to explain the exceptional case in the moral order in an impeccable, gripping and terrible manner.—Diderot, to take one example among a hundred, is a sanguine author; Poe is a writer who is all nerves, and even something more,—and the best one I know.

In his case every introductory passage has a quiet drawing power, like a whirlpool. His solemnity surprises the reader and keeps his mind on the alert. Immediately he feels that something serious is involved. And slowly, little by little, a story unfolds whose interest depends on an imperceptible intellectual deviation, on a bold hypothesis, on an unbalanced dose of Nature in the amalgam of faculties. The reader, seized by a kind of vertigo, is constrained to follow the author through his compelling deductions.

No one, I repeat, has told about the exceptions in human life and in nature with more magic,—the enthusiastic curiosities of convalescence; the dying seasons charged with enervating splendors, hot, humid and misty weather, when the south wind softens and relaxes one’s nerves like the strings of an instrument, when one’s eyes fill with tears which do not come from the heart;—hallucinations, first appearing doubtful, then convincing and as rational as a book; the absurd establishing itself in one’s mind and controlling it with a frightful logic; hysteria usurping the place of the will, contradiction set up between the nerves and the mind, and personality so out of joint that it expresses grief by a laugh. He analyzes whatever is most fugitive, he weighs the imponderable and describes, in a detailed and scientific manner the effects of which are terrible, all that imaginary world which floats around a high-strung man and leads him into evil.

The fervor with which he throws himself into the grotesque out of love for the grotesque and into the horrible out of love for the horrible serves to verify the sincerity of his work, and the harmony between the man and the poet.—I have already pointed out that, in certain men, this fervor was often the result of a vast, unemployed vital energy, sometimes the result of a stubborn chastity, and also of a profound dammed-up sensibility. The unnatural pleasure that a man may feel in watching the flow of his own blood, sudden violent, useless movements, cries uttered for no reason at all, are phenomena of the same kind.

In the midst of the rarefied air of this literature, the mind may feel the vague anguish, the fear close to tears and the uneasiness of heart which exist in vast and strange places. But admiration prevails, and the art is so great! The backgrounds and accessories are appropriate to the feelings of the persons involved. Solitude of nature or agitation of cities, everything is described energetically and fantastically. Like our own Eugene Delacroix,¹⁵ who has raised his art to the level of great poetry, Edgar Poe loves to represent agitated figures against violet or greenish backgrounds in which are revealed the phosphorescence of decay and the smell of storms. So-called inanimate Nature takes on the nature of living beings, and, like them, shudders with a supernatural and convulsive shudder. Opium deepens the feeling of space; opium gives a magical feeling to all tones, and makes all sounds vibrate with a more sonorous significance. Sometimes magnificent vistas, saturated with light and color, suddenly open up in his landscapes, and in the distance are seen oriental cities and buildings, etherealized by the distance, bathed in a golden sunlight.

The characters in Poe, or rather the character in Poe, the man with excessively acute faculties, the man with relaxed nerves, the man whose patient and ardent will hurls defiance at difficulties, he whose gaze is fixed as straight as a sword on objects which increase in importance under his gaze,—this man is Poe himself.—And his women, all luminous and sickly, dying of strange diseases, and speaking with a voice which is like music, they are also Poe; or at least, through their strange aspirations, through their knowledge, through their incurable melancholy, they strongly share the nature of their creator. As for his ideal woman, his Titanide, she is revealed in several portraits scattered through his sparse collection of poems, portraits, or rather ways of feeling beauty, which the temperament of the author joins and fuses in a vague but perceptible unity, and in which exists perhaps more delicately than elsewhere that insatiable love of the Beautiful, which is his great title of respect, that is the summation of his claims on the affection and admiration of poets.

Under the title: Histoires Extraordinaires we have gathered together various stories chosen from the whole of Poe’s work. His work comprises a considerable number of short stories, an equal quantity of critical and miscellaneous articles, a philosophical poem (Eureka), poems, and a purely realistic novel (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym).

If, as I hope, I should have occasion to speak further of this poet, I shall give an analysis of his philosophical and literary ideas, and in general of works whose complete translation would have little chance of success with a public which much prefers amusement and emotion to the most important philosophical truth.