Poets of the South | Page 9

the poetic principle to which he endeavored to conform his productions. It throws much light on his poetry by exhibiting the ideal at which he aimed. "A poem, in my opinion," he says, "is opposed to a work of science by having for its immediate object pleasure, not truth; to romance, by having for its object an indefinite instead of a definite pleasure, being a poem only so far as this object is attained; romance presenting perceptible images with definite, poetry with in definite sensations, to which end music is an essential, since the comprehension of sweet sound is our most indefinite conception. Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definiteness." Music embodied in a golden mist of thought and sentiment-- this is Poe's poetic ideal.
As illustrative of his musical rhythm, the following lines from _Al Aaraaf_ may be given:--
"Ligeia! Ligeia!?My beautiful one!?Whose harshest idea?Will to melody run,?O! 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 harmony there?"
Or take the last stanza of Israfel:--
"If I could dwell?Where Israfel?Hath dwelt, and he where I,?He might not sing so wildly well?A mortal melody,?While a bolder note than this might swell?From my lyre within the sky."
The two principal poems in the volume under consideration--_Al Aaraaf_ and Tamerlane--are obvious imitations of Moore and Byron. The beginning of Al Aaraaf, for example, might easily be mistaken for an extract from Lalla Rookh, so similar are the rhythm and rhyme:--
"O! nothing earthly save the ray?(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty's eye,?As in those gardens where the day?Springs from the gems of Circassy--?O! nothing earthly save the thrill?Of melody in woodland rill--?Or (music of the passion-hearted)?Joy's voice so peacefully departed?That, like the murmur in the shell,?Its echo dwelleth and will dwell--?Oh, nothing of the dross of ours--?Yet all the beauty--all the flowers?That list our Love, and deck our bowers--?Adorn yon world afar, afar--?The wandering star."
After his expulsion from West Point, Poe appears to have gone to Richmond; but the long-suffering of Mr. Allan, who had married again after the death of his first wife, was at length exhausted. He refused to extend any further recognition to one whom he had too much reason to regard as unappreciative and undeserving. Accordingly Poe was thrown upon his own resources for a livelihood. He settled in Baltimore, where he had a few acquaintances and friends, and entered upon that literary career which is without parallel in American literature for its achievements, its vicissitudes, and its sorrows. With no qualification for the struggle of life other than intellectual brilliancy, he bitterly atoned, through disappointment and suffering, for his defects of temper, lack of judgment, and habits of intemperance.
In 1833 the Baltimore Saturday Visitor offered a prize of one hundred dollars for the best prose story. This prize Poe won by his tale, A Ms. Found in a Bottle. This success may be regarded as the first step in his literary career. The ability displayed in this fantastic tale brought him to the notice of John P. Kennedy, Esq., who at once befriended him in his distress, and aided him in his literary projects. He gave Poe, whom he found in extreme poverty, free access to his home and, to use his own words, "brought him up from the very verge of despair."
After a year or more of hack work in Baltimore, Poe, through the influence of his kindly patron, obtained employment on the _Southern Literary Messenger_, and removed to Richmond in 1835. Here he made a brilliant start; life seemed to open before him full of promise. In a short time he was promoted to the editorship of the Messenger, and by his tales, poems, and especially his reviews, he made that periodical very popular. In a twelve-month he increased its subscription list from seven hundred to nearly five thousand, and made the magazine a rival of the Knickerbocker_ and the _New Englander. He was loudly?praised by the Southern press, and was generally regarded as one of the foremost writers of the day.
In the Messenger Poe began his work as a critic. It is hardly necessary to say that his criticism was of the slashing kind. He became little short of a terror. With a great deal of critical acumen and a fine artistic sense, he made relentless war on pretentious mediocrity, and rendered good service to American letters by enforcing higher literary standards. He was lavish in his charges of plagiarism; and he made use of cheap, second-hand learning in order to ridicule the pretended scholarship of others. He often affected an irritating and contemptuous superiority. But with all his humbug and superciliousness, his critical