rejection of those that do not fit. More of this in the next chapter but let it be said here that the French pendulum has already begun to swing in the opposite direction. The latest French life of Poe, that by André Fontainas,[1] takes issue squarely with Lauvrière and pleads eloquently and justly for a fairer and more comprehensive judgment of all the facts.
Whatever may be the verdict of the future on the nature of genius in general and of Poe's genius in particular—and we confidently believe that literature as pathology has had its day—no one can question Poe's primacy in France. "His verse," says Teodor de Wyzéwa, "is the most magnificent which the English language possesses." When George Brandes was asked more than twenty years ago to name the foreign writers who had done most to mould French literature, he mentioned first Edgar Allan Poe, adding as secondary influences Tolstoi, Dostoyevsky, Heine, and Shelley. Summing up his centennial survey of Poe's position in France, Curtis Hidden Page[2] writes: "Poe is the one American writer who has been accepted and acclaimed by the majority of intelligent Frenchmen." The last word is from André Fontainas,[3] poet, essayist, historian, biographer, and translator: "No writer of the English language has penetrated so profoundly the consciousness of the writers of all lands as has Edgar Allan Poe. In France he is as truly alive today as the most living of French poets."
