The Raven; with literary and historical commentary/History
HISTORY.
N the autumn of 1844 Poe removed from Philadelphia to New York. Doubtless, he bore with him the rough draft of The Raven. If the account furnished by The South for November 1875 be correct—and there would not appear to be any reason to doubt its accuracy—the original poem had been offered to and rejected by several editors ere it was accepted, through the intervention of the late David W. Holley, by The American Review. Mr. Holley, it is stated, was a near relative of the editor of that review, and being "a gentleman of education, literary tastes, and safe and fearless in judgment, was a trusted attaché of the" publishing establishment. One day, so runs the narration, Poe, being in pecuniary difficulty, presented himself, with his manuscript poem, to Mr. Holley, and related his perplexities. Mr. Holley, says The South, "with characteristic indifference to the adverse opinion of others, after having an equal chance to form an opinion for himself, expressed his decided admiration of the poem. And after listening to the poet's need, and the story of his endeavours to dispose of his weird pet, expressing his regret and even chagrin that he could do no better, he said to Poe, in a most unpoetically business way, the better to conceal his real sensibility in the matter, 'If five dollars be of any use to you, I will give you that for your poem and take the chances of its publication '; for his own judgment might yet be overruled." And so, according to the account given by The South, Poe's poem of The Raven became the property of Mr. Holley, and through his intervention found its way into print.
The Raven was published in the second number of The American Review, which was issued in February 1845, but its first appearance in print was in the New York Evening Mirror for the 29th of January of that year. It was thus editorially introduced by N. P. Willis:—
"We are permitted to copy [in advance of publication] from the second No. of The American Review, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and 'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book,' which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it."
It has been surmised, with much probability, that Poe had intended to publish The Raven anonymously, and retain the secret of its authorship until he had had time to note its effect upon the public. It was, doubtless, due to the persuasion of Willis that he allowed the poem to appear in the Evening Mirror, with the author's name affixed to it; nevertheless it was published in The American Review as by "Quarles," and with the following note, evidently written or inspired by Poe himself, prefixed:
"[The following lines from a correspondent, besides the deep quaint strain of the sentiment, and the curious introduction of some ludicrous touches amidst the serious and impressive, as was doubtless intended by the author—appear to us one of the most felicitous specimens of unique rhyming which has for some time met our eye. The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, have been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the language. While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of 'The Raven' arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. In regard to its measure, it may be noted that, if all the verses were like the second, they might properly be placed merely in short lines, producing a not uncommon form; but the presence in all the others of one line—mostly the second in the verse—which flows continuously, with only an aspirate pause in the middle, like that before the short line in the Sapphic Adonic, while the fifth has at the middle pause no similarity of sound with any part beside, gives the versification an entirely different effect. We could wish the capacities of our noble language, in prosody, were better understood.]—Ed. Am. Rev."
Had Poe really thought to conceal the authorship of The Raven, the publication of it with his name attached, and the immediate reproduction of the poem in the journals of nearly every town in the United States, rendered any attempt at concealment impossible. No single "fugitive" poem ever aroused such immediate and extensive excitement; in the course of a few weeks it was known all over the United States; it called into existence parodies and imitations innumerable; afforded occasion for multitudinous paragraphs, and, in fact, created quite a literature of its own.
The Raven's reputation rapidly spread into other countries; it carried its author's name and fame from shore to shore, inducing again and again the poets of various peoples to attempt to transmute its magical music into their own tongues. Among his fellow literati it made Poe the lion of the season, and drew admiring testimony from some of the finest spirits of the age. His society was sought by the élite of literary circles, and the best houses of New York were ready to open their doors to the poor, desperately poor, poet.
"Although he had been connected with some of the leading magazines of the day," remarks Mrs. Whitman, "and had edited for a time with great ability several successful periodicals, his literary reputation at the North had been comparatively limited until his removal to New York, when he became personally known to a large circle of authors and literary people, whose interest in his writings was manifestly enhanced by the perplexing anomalies of his character, and by the singular magnetism of his presence." But it was not until the publication of his famous poem that he became a society lion. When The Raven appeared, as this same lady records, Poe one evening electrified the company assembled at the house of an accomplished poetess in Waverley Place—where a weekly meeting of artists and men of letters was held—by the recitation, at the request of his hostess, of the wonderful poem.
Poe's reading of The Raven is stated by many who heard him to have been a wonderful elocutionary triumph: after his notorious recitation of Al Aaraaf at the Boston Lyceum, he complied with a request to recite his most popular poem, and repeated it, says one who was present, with thrilling effect. "It was something well worth treasuring in memory," is the testimony of this authority, corroborated by the evidence of many others.
A copy of the poem was sent to Mrs. Browning (then Miss Barrett), apparently by R. H. Horne, for writing to him soon after its appearance, the poetess says:
"As to The Raven, tell me what you shall say about it! There is certainly a power—but it does not appear to me the natural expression of a sane intellect in whatever mood; and I think that this should be specified in the title of the poem. There is a fantasticalness about the 'Sir or Madam,' and things of the sort which is ludicrous, unless there is a specified insanity to justify the straws. Probably he—the author—intended it to be read in the poem, and he ought to have intended it. The rhythm acts excellently upon the imagination, and the 'nevermore' has a solemn chime with it. Don't get me into a scrape. The 'pokerishness'[1] (just gods! what Mohawk English!) might be found fatal, peradventure. Besides—just because I have been criticised, I would not criticise.[2] And I am of opinion that there is an uncommon force and effect in the poem."
With regard to one item in Mrs. Browning's critique, it may be pointed out that Poe, in his Philosophy of Composition—perhaps after having read a copy of the lady's remarks expressly states that "about the middle" of The Raven, with a view of deepening, by force of contrast, the ultimate impression of intense melancholy, he had given "an air of the fantastic, approaching as nearly to the ludicrous as was admissible"—to his poem. Guided by the opinions of others, or by her own more matured judgment, Mrs. Browning thought fit, at a later period, to speak in terms of stronger admiration of Poe's poem. Writing to an American correspondent she said: "The Raven has produced a sensation—a 'fit horror,' here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the Nevermore, and one acquaintance of mine, who has the misfortune of possessing 'a bust of Pallas,' never can bear to look at it in the twilight. Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of Paracelsus, &c., is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm."
As with nearly all Poe's literary workmanship, both prose and verse, The Raven underwent several alterations and revisions after publication. The more minute of these changes do not call for notice here, as they are shown in the variorum readings at the end of the poem itself;[3] but the improvement made in the latter portion of the eleventh stanza, from the original version of—
"So, when Hope he would adjure,
Stern Despair returned, instead of the sweet Hope he dared adjure,
That sad answer, 'Nevermore'"—
to its present masterly roll of melancholy music, is too radical to be passed by in silence.
Although his pride could not but be deeply gratified by the profound impression The Raven had made on the public, Poe himself far preferred many of his less generally appreciated poems, and, as all true poets at heart must feel, with justice. Some of his juvenile pieces appeared to him to manifest more faithfully the true poetic intuition; they, he could not but feel, were the legitimate offspring of inspiration, whilst The Raven was, to a great extent, the product of art—although, it is true, of art controlling and controlled by genius. Writing to a correspondent upon this subject, Poe remarked,—
"What you say about the blundering criticism of 'the Hartford Review' man ' is just. For the purposes of poetry it is quite sufficient that a thing is possible, or at least that the improbability be not offensively glaring. It is true that in several ways, as you say, the lamp might have thrown the bird's shadow on the floor. My conception was that of the bracket candelabrum affixed against the wall, high up above the door and bust, as is often seen in the English palaces, and even in some of the better houses of New York.
"Your objection to the tinkling of the footfalls is far more pointed, and in the course of composition occurred so forcibly to myself that I hesitated to use the term. I finally used it, because I saw that it had, in its first conception, been suggested to my mind by the sense of the supernatural with which it was, at the moment, filled. No human or physical foot could tinkle on a soft carpet, therefore the tinkling of feet would vividly convey the supernatural impression. This was the idea, and it is good within itself; but if it fails [as I fear it does] to make itself immediately and generally felt, according to my intention, then in so much is it badly conveyed or expressed.
"Your appreciation of The Sleeper delights me. In the higher qualities of poetry it is better than The Raven; but there is not one man in a million who could be brought to agree with me in this opinion. The Raven, of course, is far the better as a work of art; but in the true basis of all art, The Sleeper is the superior. I wrote the latter when quite a boy."
Mr. E. C. Stedman who, as a poet even more than as a critic, has been better enabled to gauge Poe's poetic powers than so many who have ventured to adjudicate upon them, appropriately remarks,—
"Poe could not have written The Raven in youth. It exhibits a method so positive as almost to compel us to accept, against the denial of his associates, his own account of its building. The maker does keep a firm hand on it throughout, and for once seems to set his purpose above his passion. This appears in the gravely quaint diction, and in the contrast between the reality of everyday manners and the profounder reality of a spiritual shadow upon the human heart. The grimness of fate is suggested by phrases which it requires a masterly hand to subdue to the meaning of the poem. '"Sir," said I, or "Madam,"' 'this ungainly fowl,' and the like, sustain the air of grotesqueness, and become a foil to the pathos, an approach to the tragical climax, of this unique production. Only genius can deal so closely with the grotesque, and make it add to the solemn beauty of structure an effect like that of the gargoyles seen by moonlight on the façade of Notre Dame.
"In no other lyric is Poe so self-possessed. No other is so determinate in its repetends and alliterations. Hence I am far from deeming it his most poetical poem. Its artificial qualities are those which catch the fancy of the general reader; and it is of all his ballads, if not the most imaginative, the most peculiar. His more ethereal productions seem to me those in which there is the appearance, at least, of spontaneity,—in which he yields to his feelings, while dying falls and cadences most musical, most melancholy, come from him unawares. Literal criticisms of The Raven are of small account. If the shadow of the bird could not fall upon the mourner, the shadows of its evil presence could brood upon his soul . . . . . Poe's Raven is the very genius of the Night's Plutonian shore, different from other ravens, entirely his own, and none other can take its place. It is an emblem of the Irreparable, the guardian of pitiless memories, whose burden ever recalls to us the days that are no more."
Baudelaire, who has made Poe a popular French author, in his Essay—the most famed if not the most discriminative critique on Poe's genius—would almost appear to have accepted the Philosophy of Composition as a veritable exposition of the poet's method of workmanship. "Bien des gens" he remarks, "de ceux surtout qui ont lu le singulier poème intitulé le Corbeau, seraient scandalisés si j'analysais l'article où notre poète a ingénument en apparence, mais avec une légère impertinence que je ne puis blâmer, minutieusement expliqué le mode de construction qu'il a employé, l'adaptation du rythme, le choix d'un refrain,—le plus bref possible et le plus susceptible d 'application variées, et en même temps le plus représentatif de mélancolie et de désespoir, orné d'une rime la plus sonore de toutes (Nevermore),—le choix dun oiseau capable d'imiter la voix humaine, mats d'un oiseau—le corbeau—marqué dans l'imagination populaire d'un caractère funeste et fatal,—le choix d'un ton le plus poétique de tous, le ton mélancolique,—du sentiment le plus poétique, l'amour pour une morte. …
"J'ai dit que cet article," continues Baudelaire, in further reference to The Philosophy of Composition, "me paraissait entaché d'une légère impertinence. Les partisans de l'inspiration quand même ne manqueraient pas d'y trouver un blasphème et une profanation; mais je crois que c'est pour eux que l'article a été spécialement écrit. Autant certains écrivains affectent l'abandon, visant au chef-d'œuvre les yeux fermés, pleins de confiance dans le disordre, et attendant que les caractères jetés au plafond retombent en poème sur le parquet, autant Edgar Poe—l'un des hommes les plus inspires que je connaisse—a mis d'affectation à cacher la spontanéité, a simuler le sangfroid et la délibération. 'Je croix pouvoir me vanter'— dit-il avec un orgiieil amusant et que je ne trouve pas de mauvais gout—'Qu'aucun point de ma composition n'a été abandonné au hasard, et que l'œuvrc entière a marché pas à pas vers son but avec la précision et la logique rigoureuse d'un problème mathématique! Il n'y a, dis-je, que les amateurs de hasard, les fatalistes de l'inspiration et les fanatiques du vers blanc qui puissent trouver bizarres ces minuties. Il n'y a pas des mimities en matière d'art."
