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Poe'S Romantic Irony: A Study Of The Gothic Tales In A Romantic Context

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Poe'S Romantic Irony: A Study Of The Gothic Tales In A Romantic Context

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Content Thla dlsM iUtion hm # b##m micro&lmad «xactly a# received '1 -j 68-1203 THOMPSON, Gary Biohard, 1937- POE*S ROMANTIC IRONY: A STUDY OF THE GOTHIC TALES IN A ROMANTIC CONTEXT. University of Southern. California, Ph.D., 1967 Language and Literature, modem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . Copyright © by GARY RICHARD THOMPSON 1968 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . POE'S ROMANTIC IRONY: A STUDY OF THE GOTHIC TALES IN A ROMANTIC CONTEXT by Gary Richard Thompson A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) September 1967 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . UNIVERSITY O F SO U TH ERN CALIFORNIA THK ORADUATK «CHOOL UNIVKRSITY PARK LOS ANOCLCS, CALIFORNIA S 0 0 0 7 This dissertation, written by ......... .GA.r.y.JBifiha.rdw.Thompsjoin......... under the direction of hxB.....Dissertation Com- mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O CTOR OF P H IL O S O P H Y Dta* Date Septemberji.. 1 .9 ^ 7 .. DISSERTATION COMMITTEE Chair R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: POE'S "FLAWED" GOTHIC TALE .... 1 II. THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: "TRANSCENDENTAL" IRONY ........................ 43 III. THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: "NIGHT-SIDE" PSYCHOLOGY ........................ 100 IV. THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: "GOTHIC," "GROTESQUE," "ARABESQUE" ........... 152 V. POE'S GOTHIC IRONY: THE USAGES OF "GROTESQUE" AND "ARABESQUE" .................... 211 VI. POE'S IRONIC VISION: THE PERVERSE UNIVERSE AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL LYNX-EYE ............... 279 APPENDICES..................................................324 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................. 330 11 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I CHAPTER I 1 INTRODUCTION: POE'S "FLAWED" GOTHIC TALE According to Poe's critics, there seem to be two major problems with his fiction. First, his Gothic tales seem never quite to work; there is always something out of keep ing even in the best of them. Allen Tate, for example, in an essay written for the centennial of Poe's death, clearly catches the curious effect that Poe has on many insightful {readers. He "confesses" that Poe's tales have "massive im- jpact," adding that Poe's voice is often "so near that I re coil a little lest he. Montressor, lead me into the cellar, address me as Fortunate, and wall me up alive." The use of the word confess throughout the essay betrays Tate's ambiv alence about Poe's "massive impact," and, I think, striking ly represents the reservations of many of Poe's most appre ciative readers. If we do feel Poe's impact, we likely also feel a little guilty about our response, or at least feel oddly disappointed with Poe's oddly flawed tales. "The Fall of the House of Usher," Tate writes, "was a little spoiled for me even at fourteen by the interjection R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 2 {of the 'Mad Tryst of Sir Launcelot Canning'."! The second major problem with Poe's fiction seems to I ibe that the whole body of it splits disturbingly into two 'groups, again rather odd in quality: flawed Gothic tales and flawed comic tales. Poe's critics, even his most ap preciative critics, have found this apparent schism dis turbing not only because the humor of his comic stories I seems unpleasantly morbid, really humorless, or finally i {pointless, but also because Poe is clearly a Goth, and only Ia Goth, even if flawed. His attempts at humor and satire, {according to the Gothic view of Poe, only show how alien humor was to his personality and how tragically split and | ' i dissociated that personality was. There is, of course, no reason why a writer should not write both serious and comic works, but in Poe's case the apparent dichotomy between the serious and the comic throughout his career is generally supposed to reflect some basic schism, an intellectual and emotional split, or at the least a lack of mature vision i land belief. Harry Levin, for example, characterizes Poe's sense of humor as "fierce" and suggests that comedy enters into Poe's Gothic vision "by way of hysteria;" and T. S. Eliot suggests that Poe, with his "pre-adolescent mentali ty, " is not a great writer because "there is just that lacking which gives dignity to the mature man: a l"Our Cousin, Mr. Poe," given as a speech in 1949, reprinted in Tate's Collected Essays (Denver, 1959); see pp. 470-471, 455. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 3 consistent view of life. What I propose to present in this study is a view of Poe in the Romantic literary context of his times that re solves these problems of flawed and split Gothic and comic tales and that shows Poe to be not a badly flawed but an exceptionally skillful writer, even in his "flaws." I sug- ! igest that the schism asserted by most critics between the comic and the serious in the whole body of Poe's fiction is only apparent and results from a misreading of Poe's inten tion , career, genre, and tradition. I suggest that Poe's vision was not basically Gothic, nor on the other hand comic, but basically skeptical and ironic. Poe's fiction, land many of his "Romantic" poems, are all of one ironic piece; the thrust of even the most horrible of his "Gothic" stories and the view of life and art informing them are those of a skeptical dissembler and hoaxer, who complexly, ambivalently, and ironically explored the Gothic craze of the Romantic age. Just as the humor of Poe's comic works ^Levin, The Power of Blackness (New York, 1958), p. 134; Eliot, "From Poe to Valéry," reprinted in To Criticize the Critic (New York, 1965) , see p. 35; Eliot seems to sense that Poe's "adolescent" playing with ideas ("enter taining" ideas rather than "believing" them) may represent a philosophical skepticism, and he is at pains to disavow a 'mature skepticism in Poe. Leon Howard, in another context ! (Poe's intense Romanticism in "The Raven" and his claim of I controlled craftsmanship in "The Philosophy of Composi tion" ) restrainedly adheres to the seemingly mandatory view of Poe as a man who is "almost schizophrenic"; see Litera ture and the American Tradition (Garden City, New York, |i9ïïïï)7 p. iTTs:---------------------- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 4 becomes pointed once we see the tales in their proper sa tiric context, so too Poe's Gothic irony in his "serious” tales becomes clearer if (while reading close, y, with our minds open at least to the possibility of comei.y, satire, jirony) we see the general literary context of his works. |Poe, on the one hand a Romantic idealist devoted to "indef inite" and "supernal" Beauty, and on the other hand a sa tirist and ironist, is the pre-eminent American inheritor jof the techniques and attitudes of the European "Romantic jlronists," especially the writers of grotesquerie, who jflourished at the beginning of the nineteenth century and jwhose influence, now all but forgotten in English-speaking Countries, was once felt around the world in the larger Romantic movement emanating out of Germany. Although Poe's affinities with the school of Romantic Irony have not been explored as such, the possibility of a conscious irony in all of Poe's prose fiction is not a rad ical suggestion. Poe's historical reception has, in fact, been characterized by a persistent ambivalence of response similar to that of Allen Tate. English-speaking critics have more frequently than not found themselves moved by the psychological horror and terror of Poe's tales, put off by his flawed style and Gothic melodrama, and puzzled by a {feeling of "duplicity" about his whole work.3 By 3see Appendix I for a brief bibliographical survey of Poe's reception. Ambivalence of response is strikingly R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . r ........ - z ' I iambivalence I do not mean simple qualification of one's es- jtimate of Poe's strengths and weaknesses. I mean instead Ian unresolved and puzzled double response wherein the reader does and does not like what he is reading— that response wherein the reader guiltily "confesses" that he is affected. So persistent is this puzzled ambivalence, and so character istic is it of the most suggestive and insightful essays on Poe, that one is almost forced to suspect that Poe has some how consciously insinuated the effect into his works. It is {as though Poe had carefully aimed at the ironic effect of touching the reader simultaneously on an archetypal irra tional level of fear and on an almost subliminal level of intellectual and philosophical perception of the absurd. The result in the Gothic tales is a kind of ambivalent mockery. We respond to Poe's scenes of horror at the same time that we are aware of their caricatural quality. In the twentieth century, the best critical writing on Poe has, like Tate's, been clearly ambivalent. Tate's es say, in fact, is well worth pausing over here, for he co gently lays out the primary issues of Poe's literary worth. The enigma of Poe's effect, Tate suggests, is his ability represented in the comments of James Russell Lowell in 1848, of Walt Whitman in 1880, of William Dean Howells and Henry James at the end of the century, and of D. H. Law rence in 1922. See the Shock of Recognition, ed. Edmund Wilson, 2nd ed. (New Yorkl 1955), pp. 65, 422-424, 970 ff.; Edward Wagenknecht, Edgar Allan Poe : The Man Behind the Legend (New York, 1963), p. 5; Patrick F. Quinn, The French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbondale, 111., 1957) , pp. 169-171. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 6 to move us (at least some of the time) at a deep and primi tive level, despite or through clumsiness. What is valua- jble in Poe, according to Tate, is the reflection in a {"wilderness of mirrors" of some kind of "subliminal self jendlessly repeated or, turning, a new posture of the same {figure," a figure that Tate calls a "forlorn demon in the glass. "4 Tate suggests that what we respond to in Poe's I ^writings is the "self-knowledge" we find through a subcon- jsciously felt recognition of kinship with Poe's forlorn 1 jheroes. Tate emphasizes the archetypal, however. Madeline I Usher, "back from the tomb, neither dead nor alive," is like a vampire even to her heavy and horrible heartbeats. Tate writes : There is no evidence that Poe knew any anthropology; yet in some legends of vampirism the undead has a sluggish pulse, or none at all. In falling prone upon her brother she takes the position of . a vampire suffocating its victim in.a sexual embrace. . . . I do not suggest that Poe was conscious of what he was doing; had he been, he might have done it even worse. . . . [But] an imagination of any power at all will often project its deepest assump tions about life in symbols that duplicate, without the artist's knowledge, certain meanings, the origins of which are sometimes as old as the race. (p. 464) But Tate has some praise for Poe's conscious artistry as well. The "self-knowledge" that we find in Poe also in volves the conscious recognition of the human situation in the universe. The forlorn demon is the recurrent subject of Poe's tales, but its direct and conscious confrontation ^Collected Essays, pp. 457-458. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 1 7 j jwith Its own "inevitable annihilation” is Poe's recurrent, I obsessive, and even religious theme (pp. 465, 467). The iphrase "inevitable annihilation” is from the general propo sition of Eureka (1848), Poe's astrophilosophical poetic essay on the universe, in which he formulated a unifying theorem for the seemingly disparate experience of mankind and the seemingly unrelated phenomena of the nineteenth- century world: In the original unity of the first thing lies the secondary cause of all things, with the germ of their inevitable annihilation.5 Because of his view of the forlorn self in a hostile or indifferent universe, Poe holds a special place in the moral imagination of the nineteenth I century, according to Tate, for no other writer in England, j the United States, or France (he omits Germany) "went so i far in his vision of dehumanized man" (p. 465). Poe is thus impressive in the whole body of his ^Quoted by Tate, pp. 465, 456. In Eureka, this propo- i sition is not only italicized but also has the first letters of the nouns and adjectives capitalized. See The Complete I Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison (New York, 1902), XVI, 185-186. Harrison's edition (17 vols.), here after cited as Works, is as close to a definitive edition as we yet have, though it is not truly complete. For ref erence to the tales and poems. The Complete Poems and Sto ries of Edgar Allan Poe with Seîêctions from His Critical Writings, ed. A. H. Quinn and E. H. O'Neill, 2 vols. (New York, 1946), cited hereafter as the Borzoi Poe, is more | readily available. Occasionally, I refer to Poe's Margins- i lia and other series of "notations" by the numbers given by ; iRichard Henry Stoddard in his edition of The Works of Edgar | Allan Poe, 6 vols. (New York, 1895). Reference to three ; editions was necessitated, in part, by the limited accessi- { bility of the Complete Works during the writing of this study. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 8 writings, for he has a "dignity" of theme that the French have seen much more clearly than English-speaking readers. Perhaps, Tate suggests, Poe's narrow "context of insights" and limited "moral perspective" are not so noticeable in the prose of Baudelaire; but when the English-speaking critic reads Poe, he finds that not one of Poe's works is unblemished, that the "decor" of Poe's Gothic world is often "ludicrous," that the "trappings" of his nightmare vision are "tawdry," Tate writes: I confess that Poe's serious style at its typical worst makes the reading of more than one tale at a sitting an almost insuperable task. The Gothic glooms, the Venetian interiors, the ancient winecellars (from which nobody ever enjoys a vintage but always drinks "deep")— all this, I done up in a glutinous prose, so fatigues one's attention I that the best will in the world gives up, unless one gets a clue to the power underlying the flummery. (pp. 467- 468) Tate also confesses that he is puzzled by this bad writing because Poe is often capable of direct, simple, unpreten- :tious prose, as in his criticism and in a few of his tales. i 'Tate thus delineates the opposition between Poe's important but narrow themes and horrible but affecting style. The primal fact of death, the perverse fascination of death, I the horror of the inhuman and of dehumanized, and the ; dramatization and symbolization of subconscious feelings I are all done up in a glutinous prose and with ludicrous 1 I Stage-Gothic decor. These apparent contradictions in Poe are given partial integration and coherence by another insightful, and ambiv- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 9 aient, twentieth-century critic, Harry Levin. Levin goes so far toward suggesting a view of Poe which does not split him schizophrenically into the Clown and the Goth that his final failure to see Poe completely whole provides a re markable example of the hold the myth of Poe the Goth has on the critical mind. And since Levin stops just short of seeing Poe as an ironist, his view is worth reviewing briefly. Levin synthesizes Poe's seemingly antithetical comic and Gothic interests in terms of an "American" mate rialism. ^ Like Tate, Levin reminds us that in Eureka Poe posited a monism of matter: the material universe includes the ultimate annihilation of the individual by reintegra tion into unparticled matter. Thus the forlorn figure fac ing complete extinction (physical and spiritual) gives way to demoniac and hysterical laughter. "The premise of knowl edge ," Levin writes is that all men are mortal, and the insights of tragedy cul minate in the posture of dying. More than once . . . [Poe] reminds us that Tertullian's credo, "I believe be cause it is cüssurd," was inspired by the doctrine of resurrection. And though Poe's resurrections prove inef- I fectual or woefully incomplete, we are reminded by the Existentialists that the basis of man's plight is absurd ity. (p. 163) Gpoe, despite his yearnings after an ideal Beauty echo- Iing the spiritual world "beyond," has long been considered I a confused and inconsistent materialist who feigned a tran- scendental idealism even to himself. See George E. Wood- ; berry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary !(Boston, 1909), II, 237-257. Woodberry called Poe ^his own dupe" (248) and Eureka "the self-delusion of an arrogant mind" (251). But the very paradox of a materialistic ide alism equally suggests the possibility of a hoaxing irony. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 10 jThus, if Poe's philosophical views are similar to twentieth- jcentury existentialism and are based on a concept of absurd- I ity, the flaws of his Gothic tales (especially incongruities like that of "The Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning) and his mad and half-mad Gothic figures would seem to be clearly related to the absurdity in his satiric and comic works. But Levin does not make this point; with his rather associative and summary style, he lets the perception slip jaway into something else that splits Poe severely. Levin {links Poe's humor and satire not to Poe's philosophical I iattitudes, nor even to Poe's "underground" psychology, but i jto Poe's magazine career, to Poe's "method" as a selling journalist. Levin notes especially the "extremism" of i Poe's "method:" His method, as enunciated in a well-known letter, was to intensify . . . differences of degree: "the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque, the fearful colored into the horrible, the witty exaggerated into the burlesque, the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical." The common denominator is Poe's extremism, which not in frequently sets up its tensions between the sublime and the ridiculous.7 But Levin's contention that Poe did not, as a journalist under the pressures of deadlines, take the time to revise and consider his words carefully is not borne out by the facts ; Poe was an inveterate reviser, as a glance at R. A. 7gee p. 134. The letter was to Thomas W. White, editoij and owner of the Southern Literary Messenger, dated April 30, 1835, reprinted in The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. , John Ward Ostrom (Cambridge, Mass., ld48), Ï1 57-59, letter 42. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 11 Stewart's textual notes to the Complete Works will readily confirm. On the other hand, Levin's feeling that Poe was a writer with a clear awareness of the publishing conditions of his time is quite true; but the "tensions between the sublime and the ridiculous" and Poe's "extremism" are also part of a coherent philosophical stance— what I shall show to be Poe's brand of Romantic Irony. The only connection Levin makes with Poe's philosophical attitudes, however, he states vaguely and negatively. Poe's "fierce sense of humor" is "not unconnected" with the "violence of his world view and the intellectuality of his reaction against it . . . ." In Poe's writings "comedy enters by way of hyste ria; his cultivation of strangeness in the proportion leads him now to beauty, again to caricature."® The implications of Levin's critical assessment result finally in the old view of Poe the mad Goth, which proceeds from a biographical and moral basis. This, then, is the "schizophrenic" Poe; a man with a terrifying worldview and yet with a cool rationality mitigating some of the horror; a man with a great tragic theme and yet unêüsle to treat it with proper seriousness; a man devoted to the sublime and yet led into the ridiculous; a man devoted to reason and Sgee p. 134. The phrase "strangeness in the propor tion," which Poe attributes to Bacon, is one of Poe's favor ite expressions. The ironic ambivalence behind it is con firmed by the fact that Poe applied it both to the mysteri ous Ligeia and to the comic, artificially reconstructed general in "The Man That Was Used Up." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I ' 12 |yet subject to hysteria; a man devoted to perfection and ^et unable to perfect any work in detail. I The cunbivalently appreciative critics, like Lowell, jwhitman, James, Howells, Lawrence, Eliot, Tate, and Levin, jdo not seem to value Poe's humor. But if we go to the I other extreme, from Poe the Goth to Poe the Clown, we find I jthat those critics who have written seriously and approv- j jingly of Poe's "comedy" have not really seen a clear and coherent pattern in the whole body of his work either, nor 'even a very clear or consistent development in his career I (though they come closer than the Goth critics) . I must make some exception for those who have viewed Poe's whole fictional work as a somber "comedy" of dehumanized man set in a nineteenth-century American wasteland; but like many of the most interesting ideas about Poe, it has not yet been set forth with conclusive, detailed evidence.^ The schism between the comic Poe and the Gothic Poe remains a nagging 9The idea that Poe's fiction constitutes a sardonic wasteland "comedy" is, 1 think, essentially correct. My own view, however, is not that Poe is always comic, but I that he is always ironic, skeptical to the point of being near comic, as will become clearer later. The most recent comic wasteland view of Poe's works develops from some of ; the ideas of Tate and Levin. See Vincent Buranelli in Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1961), Chapter IV, pp. 64 ff. ; ana especially Stephen Mooney, "Poe's Gothic Wasteland," Sewanee Review, 70:261-283, Spring 1962, and "The Comic in iPoe's Fiction," American Literature, 33:433-441, January 1962; Mooney has also written another article on "Comic Intent in Poe's Tales; Five Criteria," Modern Language Notes, 76:432-434, May 1961. See Appendix II for a brief bibliographical account of the study of Poe's humor and satire. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . i problem, not only for adherents to either extreme, but also I for those who would claim simple diversity for Poe. How do we read the works of a Gothic humorist— or of a humorous Gothicist? If it were possible to see in Poe's career any devel opmental pattern, if it were possible to group his tales clearly in a chronological scheme by major themes or sub- ! jects or types, the whole body of his work, in such a con- ' - I text, would not seem so problematic. If, for example, Poe | early in his career had been a serious (even though florid) | Gothicist and later began to burlesque the genre (while al- , so becoming more restrained in his "serious” style), we could enjoy the comfortable feeling that Poe had matured. Or if Poe had begun as a satirist and then realized the Gothic or psychological possibilities of his material, this too we could see as a clear development giving Poe's work an over-all coherence. But neither is quite the pattern of Poe's career, or rather both are the pattern of his career. Poe always seems to be the virtuoso; and even if there were, clearly, as Edward H. Davidson has claimed, a "steady" decline in Poe's satiric tales after 1838, there would still be the blemishes of the serious tales to puzzle and disappoint us.10 lOpoe: A Critical Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 149. Davidson's view of Poe's development away from early satire and toward the Gothic and psychological, though partly based on a queer distortion of chronology, is the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 14 I One of the most ingenious and coherent views of Poe's jseemingly patternless diversity is the suggestion that Poe borrowed not only the literary symbols of English Romanti cism but also the personalities of the Romantic poets.H Poe played Byron in his earliest poems, then Shelley, then Coleridge in his later poems. But Poe's materialistic en- jvironment would not let him be the Romantic; Poe's satire I ! and parody shows that he depended on imitation for literary inspiration and derived the "empirical" habit of mind from his culture. The empirical strain took over from the Ro mantic about 1841, when he wrote his first ratiocinative tales. His 1842 review of Hawthorne shows Poe systematiz ing a formula for the short story, and "The Philosophy of I Composition" (1846) shows Poe claiming Dupin's mind as his own. The scheme falters a little at this point, however. characteristic one of present Poe studies, and is echoed in most of the new writings on Poe that take into account his humor and satire, as in William Bittner's Poe; A Biography (Boston, 1962). Of the forty-eight tales written after 1838, at least twenty-one (just under half of the total) are comic and satiric— a decline, perhaps, but not very "steady"— and this count does not include any burlesque Gothic tales as comic. l^Leon Howard, Literature yid the American Tradition pp. 100-107. Poe as a player of roles was earlier the : thesis of a book by N. Bryllion Fagin, The Histrionic Mr. Poe (Baltimore, 1949); but despite some real insights into Poe's detachment and his studied effects, Fagin somewhat mechanically extends a metaphor that could apply to anyone, as has often been noted. See also Killis Campbell in The Mind of Poe (first published 1933, reprinted New York, 1962); Campbell was one of the first to suggest that Poe was essentially a "player." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I " {for at the same time that Poe was playing the Romantic hero of "The Raven" (1845) he was also playing the "coldly cal culating emotional engineer of the essay." Thus, in the words of Leon Howard, the "personal implications" of the two works are "almost schizophrenic" (p. 105). Poe's, how- I jever, was not truly a psychological case, since even before |1846, in his Dupin stories (1841-1845), he was seeking a middle ground of intellectuality that is seen most clearly I jin Eureka (1848). Dupin, Howard points out, is the man of {reason and intuition, poet and mathematician, whose imagi- jnation provides a hypothesis, whose reason controls its {application, whose observation verifies it. This, Poe j {proposes in Eureka, is the true way to knowledge: instead lof the creeping and crawling methods of deduction and in duction— leaps of intuition "corrected" by reason (pp. 105- 107) . But this view of Poe's career, attractive as it may be, does not adequately account for the satiric and comic works that appear throughout the nearly twenty years that ipoe wrote fiction. Poe's first published story, "Metzen- gerstein," is ostensibly a Gothic tale; but it was one of a group of five that Poe sent to the Philadelphia Saturday Courier in 1831, four of which ("The Due de L'Omelette," "A Tale of Jerusalem" "Loss of Breath," and "Bon-Bon") are comic and satiric. These comic tales, published after "Metzengerstein" early in 1832, were followed in the next R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 16 three years by four ostensibly Gothic stories ("Ms. Found in a Bottle," "The Assignation," "Berenice," and "Morelia"). Then came three comic and satiric tales ("Lionizing," "Hans Phaal," and "King Pest") in the middle of 1835, followed by the ostensibly Gothic tale "Shadow." Then two more comic and satiric tales ("Four Beasts in One" in 1836 and "Mysti fication" in 1837) were followed by two more Gothic tales ("Silence" in 1837 and "Ligeia" in 1838). From the winter of 1838-39 to the winter of 1839-40, we find four satiric tales ("How to Write a Blackwood Article," "A Predicament," "The Devil in the Belfry," and "The Man That Was Used Up") followed by three Gothic tales ("The Fall of the House of Usher," "William Wilson," "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion"), followed in turn by the comic "Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling. This loose pattern of alternation continues to the end of Poe's career, even suggesting conscious self-parody; the Dupin stories (1841- ^^The publication dates, of course, provide only a rough approximation of the chronology of composition, fur ther complicated by Poe's frequently extensive revisions. Poe also changed the titles of some of these stories, al tered spellings, and revised subtitles, sometimes changing everything back to its original form. To avoid confusion, it is well to note the following title changes : "Bon-Bon" was first called "The Bargain Lost"; "Loss of Breath" was first "A Decided Loss"; "The Assignation" was first "The Visionary”; "Four Beasts" was first "Epimanes"; "Mystifica tion" was first "Von Jung, the Mystic"; "Blackwood Article" was first "Psyche Zenobia"; "A Predicament" was first "The Scythe of Time." Some of these changes, along with revi sions of the basic story, are striking when given the possibility of an ironic context and will be detailed later R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 17 45) are burlesqued in the comic detective story "'Thou Art the Man'" (1844); the suspended animation of "M. Valdemar" (1845) is made comic in Count Allamistakeo*s resurrection in "Some Words with a Mummy" in the same year; the living burials of Madeline Usher and of Berenice are travestied in "The Premature Burial" (1844); the Gothic decor of "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842) and the revenge theme in "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846) become part of an absurd fairy tale in "Hop-Prog" (1849). When, at almost exactly the mid-point of his career, Poe first collected his stories as Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), the comic and satiric works out numbered the ostensibly serious works by fourteen to eleven. After 1840, the serious tales out-numbered the comic and satiric, by about twenty-four to nineteen— though what is serious and what is comic in these later tales is somewhat arguable, since about a half-dozen of what I call comic tales are not very light-hearted and about seven of the serious tales are not as somber on the surface as the earlier "Gothic" stories. Of Poe's sixty-eight short tales, thirty-five are ostensibly serious and thirty-three are ostensibly comic and satiric. If we add the two longer narratives Arthur Gordon Pym (1837-38) and Julius Rodman (1840), the list of ostensibly serious tales grows longer by two, but complicated by Poe's well-known intention of hoaxing his readers as to the "facts" involved. Of the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 18 tales that I count as obviously comic, "Morning on the Wis- sahiccon" (1844) may be objected to as merely being a piece of scenery description; but the central incident is the hero's discovery of his own gullibility, and the opening and closing contain satiric thrusts at tourism. "The Balloon- Hoauc" (1844) may seem at first to be merely an exercise in verisimilitude, but it contains satiric phrases aimed at the concept of progress, and given its publication as a hoax it becomes an obvious satire on Anglo-American inven tion. "The Premature Burial" seems Gothic for three- quarters or more of its length, but the final incident and commentary contrast ludicrously. "Hop-Frog" may seem sav age, but as I have already suggested, it is incongruously rendered in a fairy-tale setting and in fairy-tale style. Again, "Von Kempelen" (1849) may seem to be merely an exer cise in verisimilar reportage, but it contains satiric thrusts at money-grubbing and, by Poe's own word, was in- Itended as a hoax to check the gold-fever. In any case, ! the result is the same— about half of Poe's fiction is comic and satiric in an obvious sort of way, and these bur lesque tales occur with consistent frequency throughout Poe's career. If we are to believe only in Poe the Goth, then, we ^^See Letters, II, 433, letter 308 (March 8, 1849), to Evert A. Duyckinck. Poe comments on the hoaxing qualities of other tales also, such as "M. Valdemar" in this same letter; his remarks will be cited when appropriate. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 19 must somehow account for the large bulk of the comic and the satiric in the Poe canon; moreover, we must account for the self-parody. Then, if we are to admire Poe the Goth, we must account for and show compensations for the flaws of the Gothic works. But I confess that I do not see how it is to be done, for it requires either that we read Poe schizophrenically ourselves, and ignore the satire, or that we confine ourselves to the level of an "imaginative young person before puberty," as T. S. Eliot says, and ignore the blemishes.14 We should begin, instead, by shifting our bias at least toward the comic Poe, though we should not, probably, see "humor" everywhere. Moreover, we should also initially grant at least the possibility of craftsmanship even in Poe's clumsiest tales. Even Poe's most hostile critics oc casionally admit that his best works are highly unified thematically and that he sometimes achieves remarkable subtlety; and since the history of Poe's reception is so blurred by a variety of violent attacks, it is merely cor rective to begin a study of his work, especially the fic tion, by assuming until shown otherwise that all of his I Ieffects— jarring and clumsy as they may appear— probably have a valid artistic point. The usual procedure with Poe seems to be the reverse; his actual writing arouses doubts 14to Criticize the Critic, p. 35. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 20 about his craftsmanship. But the very contrasts between his subtleties and the grossness of his flaws ought also to I arouse suspicion about his real purpose in his Gothic tales. I The concern of critics with the "flaws” of Poe's serious I I fiction, especially the sudden incongruities of incident and character, and shifts in style from the simple and I lucid to the pedantic, the imprecise, the vague, and the iturgid, is, I suggest, principally the result of reading i I Poe as basically a Gothic writer instead of an ironic and serio-comic writer. My focus in this study is indeed on Poe's Gothic tale, I j but it is in the context of Romantic Irony, in terms of the I relationship of the Gothic to the comic and satiric works, i ! and in terms of the categories grotesque and arabesque. I Scholars have generally supposed Poe's two kinds of tales to be the serious arabesques and the comic and satiric grotesques. But Poe used the two terms grotesque and arabesque to mean much the same thing, though some differ- ^^For the conventional view that Poe means by gro tesque tales that have "a burlesque or satirical quality" and by arabesque tales that are "the product of powerful imagination," see A. H, Quinn, Edgar Allan Poe; A Critical Biography (New York, 1941), p. 2É9. E. H. Davidson, whose Poe; A Critical Study is probably the best over-all criti- cal book on Poe, titles his chapter on Poe's humor and satire, "The Short story as Grotesque" (pp. 136-155). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 21 entiatlon Is discernible.^^ Poe associated the terms with a psychological displacement characterized by a sense of deceptiveness, discrepancy, incongruity, estrangement, al- jienation, absurdity, mockery, irony. In his Gothic tales, jpoe fashioned a pattern of contrasts which fuses the weird ! land the humorous, the sinister and the satiric, into one ambivalent psychological effect that may be termed sardonic horror. In the comic and satiric tales, the humor of ab surd situations is emphasized and the caricatural technique is clear; but in the Gothic tales, the absurdities are masked and the blatancy of the caricature is reduced in such a way as to produce a weird ambivalence of response. In the Gothic tales, Poe indulges in ambivalent mockery of man's ability to perceive the world, mockery especially of the rational powers, mockery that includes the ironically and even satirically manipulated responses of the reader. When placed in the context of Romantic literary theory and in the context of the Gothic and grotesque fiction of his times, it becomes quite clear that Poe's serious tales con tain comic, satiric, and ironic elements; and seen in the pattern of his "patternless" career, Poe's serious tales l&Note the ambiguity of Poe's statement in the preface | to Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque: "The epithets 'Grotesque' and 'Arabesque^ will be round to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published" (Works, I, 150-151). See Chapters IV and V of this study for discussion of the meanings of the terms. I ReprocJucecJ with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reprocJuction prohibitecJ w ithout p erm issio n . 22 are increasingly ironic in technique and substance. Poe's tales, as Levin comes close to suggesting, developed toward an ironic vision of man and the universe very much like the twentieth-century existential view of limited and flawed man confronting the absurd. As I have said, my view of Poe is not wholly new, and if it were, my seeing what no one else has ever seen would be suspect. But in addition to the andsivalent suspicions ;Of many of Poe's readers, a small number of critics has valued Poe's humor, satire, and irony; nearly each year sees a new discovery or a new insight added to the comic or ironic reading of P o e .17 But the problem involves seeing Poe whole as well as in detail, for most of the work on Poe's satire and irony is either quite limited in scope, concentrated usually on a single piece, or else highly gen eral and variously suggestive rather than detailed. By claiming conscious irony for Poe's Gothic tales, I do not intend a denial of the Gothic in Poe, for by Gothic we nor mally mean works that seek to create an atmosphere of mys tery and terror through the supernatural, or through the apparently supernatural, or through pronounced mental ITsee Appendix II R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 23 horror, as, surely, Poe's serious tales do.18 Indeed, the ambivalent reception of Poe's works is evidence itself of the serious impact of this Gothicism, whether ultimately ironic, satiric, or straightforward, just as it is also evidence that there is something odd about Poe's special kind of Gothic style. But the problem with irony as a gen eral concept synthesizing all of Poe's work is that in the twentieth century the term itself is a critical cliche. Irony is an important term because it seems to describe the over-all effect, technique, and informing attitude of much complex and well-liked literature, but it is a suspect term because it has been so variously defined and over-used. Carefully used, however, irony, like the terms Romantic and Gothic, can be useful and i n c i s i v e .^8 The first instances of the word irony in English re- 18This definition of Gothic is modified from that of ioral Sumner Goad in "The GothicElement in American Litera ture before 1835," Journal of English and Germanic Philolo gy, 24:72, January 1925, though in the interest of clarity Inave reduced a rather nice ambiguity in the phrasing. I examine some important conventions and types of Gothic fic tion in Chapter IV. 18Arthur O. Lovejoy's criticisms of the terms Romantic and Romanticism in Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 194Ô, reprinted 1^60), pp. 183-253, are scrutinized and rebutted by Rene Wellek, whose essays on Romanticism are collected in Concepts of Criticism, ed. Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. (New Haven, 1963), as well as elsewhere. Wellek shows Romanticism to be a useful period term in volving loose but coherent ideas revolving around three primary concepts: imagination, symbol, and nature. These ideas, as they are most relevant to Poe, are discussed in Chapter II. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 24 fleeted its earliest classical meaning; irony conveyed only a sense of a criticism that blauned through apparent praise, a technique that requires of the writer little more than a sense of the incongruous and an ability to exaggerate or understate.But gradually the term was applied to more diverse effects involving some kind of discrepancy, and came to be associated with reverses of circumstance and with certain characters and attitudes in tragedy, but espe cially with the personality of Socrates, with a habit of mind skeptical, dissimulating, and more than a little amused. Eironeia and eiron were initially terms of abuse for the Greeks, eiron suggesting something like deceiver or sly-fox; but Aristotle, and subsequently Cicero and Quin tilian, expanded the meanings of irony so that it came to mean a mode of behavior that makes use of pretended modesty or ignorance in order to expose falsehood or to get at some truth possibly concealed under the surface of a situation or statement. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle used eiron to mean one who understates as opposed to the alazon, a pretender who exaggerates, with the ideal lying between the two— though, with Greek hatred of excess, Aristotle 20jjorman 0. Knox in The Word IRONY and Its Context, 1500-1750 (Durham, N. C., 1961) gives detailed history of the term and a long dictionary of early usages in English. Poe shows knowledge of the varieties of indirection possi ble in connection with this earliest meaning of irony in No. 30 of "Fifty Suggestions" (Stoddard, I, 493-494). "A common trick is that of decrying, impliedly, the higher, by insisting on the lower merits of an author." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 25 guardedly praised the eirons. Cicero, however, conceived of irony, especially "Socratic" irony, as urbane pretence and humane grace; and since then, Socratic irony has meant detached dissimulation in order to get at truth.21 Critical, skeptical detachment is the basis of the theories of irony that flourished in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, especially in Germany, and which constitute, as I have said, a major part of the his torical context of Poe's literary and philosophical vision. In this connection, we may note the meaning of another word. The term mystic in the sense of an idealist, of a striver after higher truth (even though through deceptive means), was associated with Socrates' name during his life t i m e . 22 The conjoining of deceptive sly-foxery with ideal ism, as in Socratic irony, seems to have been associated with English and German uses of the word mystic up to Poe's Itime. Poe, in fact, comments on the German literary usage of mystical in a review of Thomas Moore's "Alciphron" in 1840. Mystical is employed, Poe says, by A. W. Schlegel and "most other German critics" to mean the kind of writing "in which there lies beneath the transparent upper meaning 21por the history of the term, see, besides Knox, G. G. Sedgwick, Of Irony: Especially in Drama (Toronto, 1948) , pp. 3-13, amd J. A. K. 'i'hbiAAoh, irony: An Historical Introduction (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), pp. i-3« in pamcu- ! T s r ,--- I 22Thom8on, p. 185, R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 26 an under or suggestive o n e . "23 poe goes on to discuss the "soul-exalting echo" in some writings of a "more ethereal beauty beyond”f but the important point is that Poe links Romantic "ideality" with a suggestive doubleness of meaning and cites Schlegel, a populariser of the German school of Romantic Irony as his authority for the concept and the jterm. By itself, Poe's discussion of mystical is not par ticularly conclusive regarding his familiarity with the theories of Romantic Irony; but such framents scattered throughout his critical reviews. Marginalia notes, essays, i and letters, when seen in the literary context of the time, provide sometimes startling insights that explain how one can be a skeptical ironist at the same time that he is a Romantic, an idealist, and even a mystic. Poe's relationship to the concepts of Romantic Irony as defined and practiced by the German critics and writers of his time, such as A. W. Schlegel, Friedrich Schlegel, i and Ludwig Tieck, is the principal substance of Chapter II jof this study. Poe was not a mere imitator of the Romantic I Ironists, however, and by calling Poe an ironist I do not j intend to use the word in a special sense; at the same time that I am concerned with the nineteenth-century context of Poe's irony, I sun also concerned with characterizing the spirit of Poe's writings in a way that will make his puzz- review appeared in the January issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine; see Works, X, 65. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 27 ling qualities understandable to a twentieth-century reader in twentieth-century terms. In general, the core meaning of irony, historically and at present, involves some basic discrepancy between what is expected or apparent and what is the actual case. Used as literary term, irony should imply some deception, a discrepancy between the immediately apparent intention, or meaning, or circumstance, or stated belief and a true half-hidden meaning or reality, often di rectly opposite, but not always. Literary irony, as some what separate from irony of circumstance, is a writer's verbal and structural mode of purporting to take seriously what he does not take seriously; or rather, the ironist purports to take with complete seriousness what he merely entertains as a possibility— probably an unlikely possibil ity, for in the implied contrast the ironist sets up there is almost always a sense of one term in some way mocking the other. As a serious, non-satiric, non-comic attitude, however, irony may mean simply that an expressed attitude is somehow qualified, usually by its opposite possibility. Thus, although there are different ironic tones, irony is philosophically characterized by precisely what T. S. Eliot is careful to disavow in Poe, a complex skepticism.24 This sort of complexity, especially as represented in the ambiva lent attitudes and paradoxical expressions of the poetry of 24to Criticize the Critic, p. 35. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 28 the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, is what is meant by irony in the criticism of I. A. Richards, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren.25 Irony has come to be used by them, and others, as a term of high praise; and it is in this sense of meaningful, complex, ambivalent, and often deceptive skepticism that I use irony to describe Poe's characteristic mode of writing, his habit of mind, and his Romantic idealism. The relationship of irony to satire, however, is com plicated by the problem of emphasis, since either can be the weapon of the other, since either can provide the basic thrust of a work, and since both make use of distortion. 25gee Chapters I, IV, XI of Brooks' The Well Wrought Urn (New York, 1947) and the discussion of modern criticism by Brooks and William K. Wimsatt, Jr., in Literary Criti cism: A Short History (New York, 1957/1964), pp. 620-622, 646-648. M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp; Roman tic Theory emd the Critical Tradition (first publication 1953, reprinted New YorK, 1958), p. z22,suggests that Brooks' theory of irony in part parallels Romantic Irony. "Brooks's . . . first order criteria for poetry . . . as Brooks himself points out, may be regarded as involved in Coleridge's standard of the reconciliation of heterogeneous elements. These criteria, however, have been cut loose from their roots in Coleridge's metaphysical principles and from their context in a highly developed organic theory of art, and also narrowed, somewhat after the fashion of the concept of 'romantic irony' put forward by Coleridge's Ger man contemporaries, Friedrich Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck." I But Brooks' criterion of complex qualification in a great poem is not, as far as I can see, much of a narrowing of Coleridge's principle; both Brooks and Coleridge have a philosophical (if not metaphysical) concern for truth; in addition, the constant element of the varieties of Romantic Irony ^ reconciliation of heterogeneous elements in an ef fort to arrive at truth (and freedom from earthly flaws). See Chapter II of this study. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 29 Although Poe's tales contain almost without exception satir ic touches, I should not like therefore to claim satiric point for all of them. But nearly all Poe's tales can be called ironic. In Poe's body of fiction as a whole, the ironic modes and attitudes stand out clearly, first inform ing the satire of the earlier tales and then overshadowing the satire of the later tales. Satire, in general, makes I fuller use of comic distortion than irony and is always im mediately clearer, since the incongruities show more plain- lly. Satire distorts the characteristic features of an in- ! dividual or of a society or of an artistic work in order to ridicule that which the satirist dislikes— usually (or avowedly) the vices and follies of mankind, the lamentable falling away from traditional ideals.26 when the satirist makes use of irony, he pretends to take his opponents seri ously, accepting their premises, and values, and methods of reasoning in order eventually to expose their absurdity. We, as readers, are made conscious of conventions and iprejudices that we have unguestioningly accepted in our 26See Arthur Koestler, The Action of Creation (New York, 1964), pp. 27-97; and Robert C. Elliott, The Power of Satire: Magic, Ritual, Art (Princeton, 1960), especially pp. ^57-275. Koestler^s book, a reworking of his earlier Insight and Outlook (1949), is a fine synthesis of philo- sophical psychological, and physiological ideas on artis tic creation and scientific discovery. The common denomi nator of creation and discovery, Koestler says, is the al most simultaneous perception of two or more normally incompatible contexts. My basic conceptions of irony, sat ire, and humor follow Koestler's synthesis. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 30 society; this awareness is usually produced by the comic effect of the simultaneous presence in our minds of a familiar social reality and its reflection in the distort ing glass of the satirist. The problem of context, then, is crucial, though more so for irony than for satire. I In this study, however, I am less concerned with the general social context that gives satiric point to Poe's comic works than with the Romantic literary context that gives ironic point to Poe's sometimes odd techniques in his Gothic works. Whereas satire makes use of comic surprise and contrasts a faumiliar social reality with the distortions given by the satirist for the purpose of ridicule (and re form) , irony is usually subtler, and the essential decep tion involved in literary irony may be so subtle that the work becomes a hoax. A hoax is usually thought of as an attempt to deceive others about the truth or reality of an event. But a literary hoax attempts to persuade the reader not merely of the reality of false events but of the real ity of false literary intentions or circumstances— that a work is by a certain writer or of a certain age when it is not, or that one is writing a serious Gothic story when one is not. The laugh of the hoaxer is rather private, intended at best for a limited coterie of followers. Just as the satirist limits his circle of understanding readers to those who can perceive the flaws of society, so the ironist limits his circle of. understanding readers to those who can R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 31 discriminate with more subtlety the complexities of life. At the extreme, the hoax can limit the circle of under standing readers to an audience of one. The hoax can in such a case be seen as a kind of supreme irony in which the writer mocks even perceptive eirons like himself, and even, therefore, himself; and the German ironists of the early nineteenth century constructed theories of transcendence of one's self through almost this very means— what Friedrich Schlegel called selbstparodie and "transcendental buffoon ery," which involves a mystical sense of an "ideal" state beyond our limited earthly one. Poe in his serious, "Gothic" tales became increasingly devoted not only to irony but also to the hoax, as is often strikingly clear in his revisions.27 27poe's revisions will be discussed individually when appropriate; but, in general, he reduced obvious exaggera- !tions of plot and character, preferring subtler incongrui- ities of style. Many of his first stories are parodies. I Alan Reynolds Thompson in The Dry Mock (Berkeley and Los jAngeles, 1948) maintains that literary parody is not irony Ibecause it does not stress contradictions but exaggerations. IParody keeps a recognizable resemblance to its original and jaccentuates certain features. The technique of parody is I the constant comparison between the butt of the satire and I its caricature. The contrast is between an object and its exaggeration rather than its opposite. (See p. 62.) But this is a somewhat rigid and historically distorted concep- I tion of irony. As I have already indicated, irony involves I discrepancy rather than oppositeness (though that is its : usual form); the satire or irony of parody depends in part I on the degree of the subtlety and humor of the clues and on the clarity of context; and a parody obviously does purport on the surface to be something it is not. (It may easily I slip into hoax if overly subtle, and the hoax involves ridi-| cule of the unperceptive reader.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 32 Poe's penchant for hoaxing his readers with half-seri ous tales is "comically" clear in the ambivalent, satiric self-parody of such tales as "The Premature Burial" (1844) and "'Thou Art the Man'" (1844), the latter a clear parody of the detective story, the former a parody of the Gothic tale. Poe's flawed Gothic tale, I suggest, is consciously flawed. The flawed Gothic tale is quite often a satirized Gothic tale; the imperfectly rendered terror is often mocked terror; the hysterical or super-rational hero is often a burlesque hero— or, in Poe's more complex tales, the Gothic terror and the mad or super-rational hero may be both serious and comic at the same time. Although not really one of Poe's complex tales, and although at the end ostensibly comic, "The Premature Buri al" (1846) is probably the clearest example of Poe's double effect, of what might be called his Gothic irony. The hero is an avid reader of Gothic books on burial alive, and he gives us for three-quarters of the tale horrifying "factual" histories. Terrified of being buried alive himself, espe cially since he is subject to cataleptic fits, the prota gonist arranges for a special sepulchre, easily opened from i within, and a special coffin, with a spring-lid and a hole through which a bell-pull is to be tied to the hand of his corpse. When he awakes in a cramped, dark, earthy-smelling place, he is convinced that he has fallen into a trance while among strangers and that he has been: R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 33 . . . thrust deep, deep, and for ever. Into some solitary and nameless grave .... this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers of my soul . . . I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell, of agony, resounded through the realms of the subterranean Night, "Hillol Hillo, thereI" said a gruff voice in reply. The Gothic terror is comically undercut by the reply, and it turns out that the hero has fallen asleep in the narrow berth of a ship, where he has sought refuge for the night, and he is rousted out of his bunk by the sailors he has awakened with his horrible cry. Once we see that this is by no means a straightforward Gothic tale, we can see also the comic exaggeration of the overwrought Gothic style, that is, of what conventionally are "flaws" for twentieth- century readers. The emphasized "deep, deep, and for ever," the italicized "grave," the punning meaning of "in nermost chambers of my soul," the redundancy of "shriek, or yell," and the capitalized letter of "subterranean Night" are typical of the exaggerations elsewhere in the tale. There can be no doubt that these stylistic exaggerations are part of Poe's burlesque technique once we read the con clusion, for the incident just described strikes the narrat or as so ludicrous that he is shocked into sanity: My soul acquired tone— acquired temper. I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise .... I thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books. "Buchan" I burned. I read no "Night Thoughts"— no fus tian about churchyards— no bugaboo tales— such as this. The hero then tells us that "from that memorable night" his R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 34 "charnel apprehensions" were "dismissed forever" ("forever" this time one word rather than the overly emphatic "for ev er" of the preceding passage); and with them "vanished the cataleptic disorder, of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause. The satiric irony of the tale is multiple. The nar rator almost terrifies us with his chilling "factual" cases I in the first three-quarters of the tale; and then ^ loses his charnel apprehensions quite suddenly, whereas we are ; still left entertaining the ghastly possibilities he has i suggested.29 Moreover, the earnestness of his conversion suggests parody of didactic magazine fiction ("out of Evil proceeded Good . . . very excess wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion"), especially when we remember Poe's formulation of "the heresy of the Didactic" in "The Poetic Principle" and elsewhere.Finally, in the last para- 28Quotations are from the Borzoi Poe, I, 541-542. ^®It is easy to overstate the "effect" or "impact" of a work, especially of a tale of horror; my own reaction to most Gothic works tends to be one of mild boredom; but the first part of "The Premature Burial" is oddly scary, in a very real sense, partly from the "verisimilar" manner. Poe comments on the effect of such "verisimilitude" in "The Case of M. Valdemar" in the letter to Duyckinck cited earlier. ^®See Borzoi Poe, II, 1025. "The Poetic Principle" was Poe's last essay, first published in 1850; in his first essay, "Letter to B ," published in the 1831 volume of his Poems, and in his review of Longfellow's Ballads (1842), Poe is even more emphatic about the place of truth and morals in a poem. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 35 graph, just as we are perhaps adjusting to the comic con clusion, the narrator reaffirms ("Alas!") that "sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful." The "imagination of man" cannot "explore with impunity its ev ery cavern;" our "Demons" must be allowed to "sleep, or they will devour us" (I, 542). Thus, the final lines sug gest with nice ambiguity both the psychological and the supernatural, and leave us entertaining the serious possi bilities of the absurd situation. Poe almost uniquely in American literature seems to possess the dark power to touch the unseen, unconscious life, to render forcefully certain private and prohibited psychological states, to suggest the demoniac in mankind and in nature— and yet bring a cool rationality, an ironic skepticism, and even mockery to bear on all that he exam ines. He both explores the serious possibilities of the Gothic mania of his times and attacks the society that be lieves in such things.I doubt that Poe ever took him self or his culture with such complete seriousness as have ^^See Davidson, Poe, Chapter IV, "Death, Eros, and Horror," pp. 105-135, for a discussion of the popularity of Gothicism and its psychological undercurrents in America during Poe's day. Davidson also discusses the socially forbidden undercurrents of sex common to these Gothic works and to some of Poe's. See also in this connection David Brion Davis, Homicide in American Fiction, 1798-1860; A Study in Social Values (Ithaca, New York, 1957), especially Chapters III-VI on the concept of the abnormal heart, the disordered mind, the morally perverse, and the role of sex in American fiction. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 36 his romantically inclined admirers or even his euonbivalently appreciative critics. Poe began his career as a satirist, and he remained a satirist to the end of his career. The only real shift was his increased philosophical and artis tic irony, which, as I have suggested before, not only in- I forms all his satire but also came to overshadow the satir- ! |ic impulse. The ironic mode and the ironic vision of the ! later tales, however, are implicit in the early satires. ! IThe history of Poe's career is the history of his simul- jtaneous exploration of the fearful and the ridiculous. Poe exploited the terrors of the absurd as a detached Master Creator, exploring perverse human psychology in a perverse, I inhuman universe. And Poe knew, consciously, from the first, what he was doing. In view of the large bulk of derogatory criticism re garding Poe's conscious artistry and intellectual percep- I Ition, and in view of the doubts of Poe's most perceptive Icritics, the issue of his conscious craftsmanship becomes crucial for the kind of irony that I should like to claim I for Poe. Many a critic has objected even to seeing psycho- 'logical undercurrents of meaning below the surface of Poe's stories. I do not refer to the Freudian interpreters of Poe's own personality, nor the mythic and archetypal crit ics, but instead to those critics who will grant Poe a uni fied complexity of symbolism supporting the madness of an obviously mad character, like Roderick Usher, but who balk R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 37 at seeing an ironic complexity governing the whole tale in the suggested madness of the narrators of spooky tales like "Usher” and "Ligeia." Edward Wagenknecht, for example, has written that the "absurd notion" that "Ligeia" is "not a story of the supernatural but a study in morbid psychology" requires that we "ignore the text except where it can be perverted" and that we substitute "the fashionable notions of a later period" for those of Poe's own time. "Neither aesthetically nor psychologically" does this twentieth- icentury "Freudian" reading allow us to read the tale "as a i nineteenth-century story." Abnormal as he is, the narrator is a fairly conventional type of Poe hero; if we are to assume that we see the whole story in a distorted mind in this instance, why should not the other stories be interpreted on the same basis? Indeed, once we have decided to ignore the au thor's intentions and the milieu out of which the story comes, there is no reason why we should confine ourselves to ig^srepresenting Poe; an unlimited field is opened IWagenknecht's point is well taken, but his conclusion about IPoe is in error, for if we investigate the psychological I theories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and if i Iwe examine the techniques of nineteenth-century Romantic j fiction, especially in Germany and America, we find that the psychological reading of "Ligeia" is, for the proper audience, indeed a nineteenth-century reading. The effect of the tale is double, for the perceptive. Its rationale ^^Ed^ar Allan Poe; The Man Behind the Legend, pp. I 235, 248 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 38 is psychological (and who would deny that Poe was inter ested in abnormal psychology?), but its primary impact is spooky and weird. Yet this double impact is but one part of Foe's irony; "Ligeia" also contains his characteristic satiric innuendo, his ambivalent mockery. Clark Griffith has written an insightful essay on the possibility that "Ligeia" is a satire on Transcendentalism and the two kinds of horror materials to be found in the German and English brands of Gothicism.Wagenknecht and others have found Griffith's claims "unconvincing" and "dubious"; but these doubts f again, seem to be based on the desire to believe in Poe the Goth, for I have seen no detailed or convincing re buttal. As to Poe's "intentions," Wagenknecht has failed to consider very carefully three important and revealing documents in which Poe discusses his plans for a book- length series of burlesque tales, to be read at the monthly meeting of the "Folio Club." The Folio Club tales included the ostensibly serious "Metzengerstein," "Ms. Found in a Bottle," "The Assignation," "Berenice," "Morelia," "Shad ow," "Silence," and very possibly "Ligeia."34 33”Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics," Univer sity of Toronto Quarterly, 24:8-!25, October 1954. See I Chapter V for fuller discussion. ' 34The first seventeen tales Poe published include these stories; seventeen is the number of burlesques Poe mentions in a letter to Harrison Hall on September 2, 1836. "At different times there has appeared in the Messenger a series of Tales, by myself— in all seventeen. They are of a bizarre and generally whimsical character .... I have R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 39 But even if we grant for the sake of argument that ''Ligeia” is not a Folio Club tale, we still have a remarka ble pattern: all of Poe's tales up to "Ligeia" were Folio tales or else clearly comic and satiric. The next four tales published after "Ligeia" ("Blackwood Article," "A Predicament," "The Devil in the Belfry," and "The Man That I Was Used Up") were also clearly comic and satiric. Thus, of Poe's first twenty-one tales, only one, "Ligeia," is not either clearly comic or a Folio Club burlesque— and Poe's Itwenty-second tale, after the four burlesque tales, was I "Usher." From 1831 to the end of 1839, of twenty-two prepared them for republication, in book form, in the fol lowing manner. I imagine a company of 17 persons who call themselves the Folio Club . . . ." (Letters, I, 103, letter 74). The chronology of Poe's tales is ambiguous ; we do not know the order of composition except by rough inference, and only fourteen tales had actually appeared in the Messen-i ger at the time of Poe's letter. The first fourteen pub- lished tales, however, are all included. Tales 15, 16, and 17, published elsewhere, are in order of publication "Mys tification," "Silence," and "Ligeia." "Silence" is part of the first Folio manuscript (1833 or before). "Mystifica tion" is a comic and satiric tale and thus probably should be included. The seventeenth tale, however, is open to question. On the testimony of one of the Baltimore Satur day Visiter contest judges (1833), "A Descent into tHi Maelstrom" must be considered, even though it was not pub lished until 1841. Another later tale, "Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling" (1840), since it is Poe's only clearly "Irish" story, has been suggested for the Folio Club host, Mr. Rouge-et-Noir, who admired "Lady Morgan." On the other hand, another vacancy in the list of seventeen is opened up by Poe's statement in a letter to Thomas W. White on July 20, 1835 that "Hans Phaal" (tale 11) was written "especially for the Messenger" (Letters, I, 66, letter 46), and therefore may not be a Folio tale (noted by A. H. Quinn, p. 746). See Chapter IV of this study for fuller discussion of the Folio Club scheme. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 40 stories, only two, excepting the longer Pym, are hot defi nitely burlesque in some way. Poe's serious tales, then, are only apparently serious in the manner that they purport to be; their real serious ness, their real intent, lies elsewhere, and most of these stories are subtly satiric. These subtler, apparently i ! straightforward tales are often more than ironic in mode; they are ironic in substance. The dramatic world of Poe's I fiction is "perverse" and absurd. For Poe, I suggest, I irony became almost the whole of the Gothic tale, both its form and its substance. Nothing quite works out for his heroes, even though they sometimes make superhuman efforts, and even though they are occasionally rescued from their predicaments. They undergo extended series of ironic re verses in fictional structures so ironically twisted that the form itself, even the very plot, approaches an absurd I hoax perpetrated on the characters— just as, Poe insinuates I in Eureka, existence may be God's hoax on man, the ultimate qrotesquerie, absurd, laughable, sinister, and pitiable.^5 The ironist is a deceptive writer, and readers in the twentieth century, unfamiliar with the philosophical and 35gee the end of Eureka ; despite the affirmation of purpose in the universe^ and Poe's emphatic rhetoric, the conclusion of Eureka is one of the most melancholy Romantic utterances I know of. See Works, XVI, 292, 306, for refer ences to the universe as "the plot of God" and as "an im perfect plot in a romance;" see the final chapter of this study for a discussion of Poe's philosophical vision and the irony of Eureka. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 41 literary context of Poe's times, often meet such ironic possibilities as I have just suggested with more than skep ticism, while the myth of Poe the Goth lives on. The next three chapters of this study are, therefore, concerned with the Romantic context of Poe's times: with the relationship of Romantic theories of irony and psychology to Poe's Goth- ! ic fiction; and with the Romantic theories of the gro- ! tesgue-and-arabesgue, Poe's stated genre. The subject of Chapter II is the Romantic milieu out of which Poe's irony comes: German philosophical and psychological and critical theories concerning the imaginative transcendence of Self, derived from Kant and Fichte, and especially the function of "self-parody" and "higher irony" in the writings of the Schlegels and Ludwig Tieck, whom Poe read. The subjects of Chapter III are the psychological and occult sciences (asso ciated not only with Romantic idealism but also with Roman tic Irony at the beginning of the nineteenth century) and Poe's ironic handling of these so-called "night-side" mate rials in his Gothic tales of metempsychosis and mesmerism. 1 In Chapter IV, I will move from "night-side" psychology to Romantic fictional techniques and themes, especially those of E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Gothicists in England and America. I will show the close relationship of the terms grotesque and arabesque both to Romantic Irony and to the Gothic tale. I maintain that Poe's apparent Gothicism is not supernatural or occult, but a matter of psychological R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 42 delusion, with "ratiocinative" clues carefully but decep tively insinuated into the dominant atmosphere of the super natural for ironic double effect. The subject of Chapter V is Poe's conception of the grotesque-and-arabesque. Poe's use of these two terms in his reviews, in his letters, in his plans for the burlesque Tales of the Folio Club, and in several well-known Gothic stories, including "Ligeia" and "Usher," suggests that he conceived of the grotesque and 'arabesque as sub-categories of one larger psychological and I philosophical category of eunbivalent irony. In a conclud- ;ing chapter, I will survey the development of Poe's irony from a satiric mode into a philosophical concern with the "perverse" universe. I will indicate not only the ironic readings of all of Poe's Gothic tales but also the ironic ;qrotesquerie of Poe's "philosophical" works. In technique and in substance, Arthur Gordon Pym, the "philosophical" I tale "Monos and Una," and the astrophilosophical poetic I ! essay Eureka confirm absolutely Poe's consistent develop- i I ment of an ironic, ambivalent, but basically sardonic phi- jlosophy of the "perversity" of existence. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . CHAPTER II THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: "TRANSCENDENTAL" IRONY Poe's conscious tradition has been the subject of a I good deal of research, speculation, and puzzlement. T. S. Eliot, for example, though he considers Poe a minor fol lower of the English Romantic poets Byron and Shelley in his verse and of the Gothic novelists in his fiction, writes that Poe's "tradition" was actually neither English nor American but instead a kind of "displaced" European- ism.^ The critical assumption of historical scholarship is that we see the real writer when we see him in his context, in his milieu; but often, once a tradition has been estab lished, the writer tends to be fitted forcibly into precon ceived categories. One of the results of the historical I approach to Poe has been to reinforce what I have called I the schizophrenic reading of his total work, for the con- 'ception of Poe underlying and therefore directing the investigations of most of this kind of scholarship is that of Poe the Dreamy Romantic, if not Poe the Goth. We read l"From Poe to Valery," p. 29. 43 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 44 primarily of the influence of Coleridge, Byron, and Moore, emd of Hood, Cowper, Keats, Shelley, Wordsworth, De Quin- cey. We read of the impact of the occult and the pseudo sciences, of mesmerism, spiritualism, metempsychosis, cos mic revelation, and phrenology; we read of the Gothicism of Walpole, Radcliffe, Lewis, Maturin, Godwin, Beckford, Brown, t and even of Scott, Bulwer-Lytton, Dickens, and Disraeli. ,We read also of Poe's "Germanism," of his version of the "idealism" that began with Kant and ran through Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, and others to manifest itself in Eng land in Coleridge and Carlyle; and we read in general of his debt to gloony German novelists like E. T. A. Hoffman.2 The question of Poe's Germanism, a major subject of this chapter, is a curious one. Critics have connected Poe with German Romanticism from the very first. As early as 1833, Thomas W. White, editor of the Southern Literary I ^For a general survey see the bibliographies, notes, jand discussions in Vincent Buranelli, Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1961), Chapters II-III; Edward Wagenknecht, Edgar jAllem Poe. The Man behind the Legend (New York, 1963), I Chapters III-IV; Haldeen Braddy, Glorious Incense; The I Fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe (Washington, D.C., 1953), I Chapters I-II, pp. 3Ô ff.; Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe I(1933; New York, 1962), pp. 99-125, 147-186. I have in ! mind the historical studies of Darrel Abel, Margaret Alter- i ton, Roy P. Easier, Boyd Carter, Palmer Cobb, Clark Grif- Ifith, Gustav Gruener, Ruth L. Hudson, Edward Hungerford, I Hoover H. Jordan, Lucille King, George Kummer, Marvin I Laser, Ernest E. Leisy, Sidney E. Lind, Albert J. Lubell, IT. 0. Mabbott, Percy Matenko, R. L. Rhea, James Routh, Floyd Stovall, and Celia Whitt— which will be found cited variously in the books listed first above, and in this study when appropriate. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 45 Messenger» thought it wise to introduce Poe's "Berenice" with a mild apology: "Whilst we confess [1] we think there is too much German horror in his subject» there can be but one opinion as to his force and style.Poe» on the other hand» sought to minimize his debt to the Germans in his preface to the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque » claim ing that he could not be so easily categorized: "... Germanism is 'the vein' for the time being. Tomorrow I may be anything but German » as yesterday I was everything I else."4 Poe makes this remark in response to the charge by 1 i I his "critics" that his serious tales are pervaded by "Ger- j I manism and gloom." But» Poe says» the charge has not been "sufficiently considered»" for his particular kind of "ter ror" is not (as Levin a hundred years later calls it) "horripilation for horripilation's sake »" but is instead concerned with the spirit and mind of man» with the inner man and not with something merely ghostly or grisly. Let us admit» for the moment » that the phantasy pieces now given are Germanic» or what not. . . . But the truth is that» with a single exception » there is no one of the stories in which the scholar should recognize the dis tinctive features of that species of pseudo-horror which we are taught to call Germanic» for no better reason than that some of the secondary names of German literature have become identified with its folly. If in many of my ! ^ ^Quoted by Palmer Cobb in his study» sixty years ago» I of Poe's Germanism: The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on I the Tales of Edgar Allan Poe» published as the whole ot I Studies in Philology» III » at Chapel Hill» N.C.» 1908; see ! p . 4 . I ^Works» I» 150. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 46 productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul— that I have de duced this terror only from the legitimate sources, and urged it only to its legitimate results. (I, 150-151) Contrary to what critics who deny German influence on Poe try to make of it, the preface actually suggests Poe's familiarity with German literature; and Poe's reviews. Mar ginalia notes, critical essays, and, of course, his tales, are well larded with references to German writers, German philosophy, and German critical terms and ideas. Palmer Cobb points out that Poe's preface does not contain a deni al of the "motives and technique of the German romanti cists" but in fact an admission of a general German influ ence; and Cobb also suggests that Poe indirectly acknowl edges a kinship between his tales and those of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Phantasiestflcke (1814-15) when he refers to his stories as "phantasy pieces" in quotation marks.^ ^We might also keep in mind Ludwig Tieck's Phantasus (1812-16). See Cobb's third chapter, "Poe's Knowledge of the German Language and Literature," pp. 20-30, where he lists some of the less known German literary figures that Poe refers to from time to time, including Schelling, Fich te, Wieland, Tieck, Novalis, Fouque, Musaeus, Chamisso, Kdrner, Uhland, the Schlegels, Wincklemann, and others (though it is a somewhat relative matter as to who are "secondary names" rather than primary ones). Cobb also considers Poe's cdsility to read German, which he thinks likely, but he points out the rather amazing number of translations from German literature and criticism in Poe's day, as does Albert J. Lubell in "Poe and A. W. Schlegel," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 52:1-12, January 1953. German culture, they both conclude, was at its high est point in America during and just after Poe's lifetime. The matter of translation is important since Poe's ability to read German, despite his frequent quotations, has been seriously questioned. Poe elsewhere spells fantasy with an ^ rather than with ph; see his discussion of Fantasy in Works, XII, 39-40. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 47 There is an aspect of German Romanticism, however, that is almost never mentioned in connection with Poe, but which provides a context that shows Poe's work not to be a schizophrenic schism between flawed comic pieces and flawed Gothic pieces, but to be a harmonious whole— for it answers I the question of how Poe could have been both a Romantic idealist and a skeptical ironist at the same time. One of I the distinctive features of German Romanticism was the de- Ivelopment of a rationale of the comic, eventually reflected I in Coleridge, Carlyle, and Hazlitt, whom Poe read, along with the latest translations of German works. This ration ale of the comic, the ironic, and the absurd in an other wise melancholy and even sinister world has come to be called, rather loosely (and often derogatorily) Romantic Irony.^ In the discussion that follows, I do not mean to ®See Chapter VII of Irving Babbitt's Rousseau and Ro- imanticism (1st published 1919; reprinted New York, 1955) ! for an unsympathetic (and not particularly helpful) ac- Icount. On Romantic Irony my principal sources are: M. H. I Abrams, The Mirror and the Latmp (New York, 1958); G. G. Sedgwick, Of Irony (Toronto, 1348); A. R. Thompson, The Dry Mock (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948); Oskar Walzel, German i Romanticism, trans. Alma Elise Lussky (New York, 1932); I Rene Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950 (New Haven, 1955), II, "The Romantic Age"; Robert M. Wernaer, Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany (New York and London, 1910}; William K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Cleanth Brooks, Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York, 1957/1964); and several studies of Ludwig Tieck, in whom, by stages, almost all the ideas of German Romanticism are reflected— A. E. Lussky, Tieck's Romantic Irony (Chapel Hill, 1932); Percy Matenko, Tieck and Solaer: The Complete Correspondence (New York and Berlin, 1933) and Ludwig Tieck and America (chapel Hill, 1954); E. H. Zeydel, Ludwig Tieck R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 48 claim that Poe was a Romantic Ironist in quite the way the Germans were. Indeed, Poe makes several sneering remarks about the lack of clarity in their critical and philosophi cal writings. German criticism, he says in Marginalia 20. "abounds in brilliant bubbles of suggestion" that "rise and sink and jostle each other, until the whole vortex of thought in which they originate is one indistinguishad)le chaos of froth. "7 But the remark is at least half compli mentary , ëuid, as I have indicated, his recurrent references to German literature, criticism, and philosophy are more than occasional. In fact, the concept of the Marginalia series itself, Poe writes in its preface, originated with "what the Germans call the brain-scattering humor of the moment." As a kind of ironic gesture of self-defense, Poe goes on to suggest that the very "helter-skelteriness of commentary" may be amusing, and that "just as the goodness of your true pun is in the direct ratio of its intolerabil ity, so is nonsense the essential sense of th^ Marginal Note" (V, 177-179). I Poe's strong sense of the comic was given Romantic- I Ironic impetus and philosophical direction by German liter- 'ature. But his final ironic vision is his own. I wish and England (Princeton, 1931) and Ludwig Tieck, The German Romanticist: A Critical Study (Princeton, 1935). ^Stoddard's numbering, V, 198; but see at the same time the praise Poe bestows here and in "Exordium to Criti cal Notices" (Borzoi Poe, II, 932). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 49 merely to emphasize the context (or perhaps the "vortex”) of ironic and subjective philosophy that Poe found so bril liantly suggestive, to emphasize the importance of two kinds of irony as critical concepts current from about 1780 to 1850, and to re-emphasize the importance of German lit- ! erature for Poe, the influence of which was once thought to be pervasive but which in recent years has probably been : overly minimized.8 I What is striking about German Romanticism in relation to Poe, then, is not so much Gothic gloom and horror, but i the theories of the Romantic Ironists about the subcon scious mind, about harmony and "objective subjectivity," cüDout the ultimate "annihilation" of contradictions through an ironic Art, and about the idealistic "transcendence" of t earthly limitations through the Godlike immanence and de tachment of the Artistic mind. These ideas can be found in jtwo of Poe's favorite German writers, the critic August iWilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) and the dramatist and novelist I I Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853), who are the two figures most clearly associated (outside of Germany) with the theories and practices of Romantic Irony.^ 8gee Lubell's account of scholarly estimates of Poe's Germanism in "Poe and A. W. Schlegel." 9In fact, to judge by the number of translations, Tieck seems to have been the most popular German writer in England and America (see Percy Matenko, Ludwig Tieck aaid America, pp. 38-47; and E. H. Zeydel, Ludwig Tieck and Eng land, pp. 182-220). A. W. Schlegel, though less known as a R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 50 The simplest meaning of Romantic Irony is almost as a period term: the technique of mocking or destroying illu sion in the fiction and dreuna of certain German writers at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The technique is allied to satire and parody, and Ludwig Tieck's youthful plays, in which the main inter est is satire aimed at eighteenth-century rationalism and Isentiment, are among the clearest examples of simple mocked i I illusion; and yet they also reveal a development toward an Iobjective philosophy of irony through an increasingly sub jective treatment of reality.10 In Puss in Boots (1797), for example, Tieck begins the deliberate breaking of dra matic illusion immediately with a prolog in which members of a make-believe "audience" express fears that the play they have come to see may lack "good taste." The "author" then appears on stage to reassure them. When Puss begins to jspeak, the "audience" objects that a talking cat destroys dramatic illusion; and throughout the play the "audience" I I thus interrupts the action, so destroying illusion. At the I I same time, a normal sort of irony operates in the play. ! Romantic Ironist in Germany, was the major purveyor of Ger man Romanticism to the non-German world, including the the ories of irony, though he was less a theorist on the matter than his brother Friedrich Schlegel. 10a . R. Thompson, The Dry Mock, pp. 51 ff., uses Tieck's plays to illustrate simple Romantic Irony, and I follow him, for the most part, in this brief discussion of the plays. Translated passages from Tieck's plays, unless otherwise cited, are his. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 51 The "audience” expresses views the opposite of Tieck's (which the real audience must infer); the "good taste" the "audience" wants in the play is for Tieck bad taste: the moralizing sentimentalities of dréunatists like A. F. von Kotzebue (1761-1819). A number of minor ironic contrasts joccur. For exanmple, the cat talks with a burlesque gran- jdiloquence that causes his master to call him "sublime I I friend"; yet in a moment he climbs up to the roof to stalk !pigeons. But the Romantic Irony of mocked illusion is fur- jther extended by having the characters within the play as well as its "audience” discuss its merits. "As in a series of mirrors, there is endless romantic-ironic reflection and i re-reflection."H Like Puss, Tieck's Prince Zerbino (1798) is an alle- j :gorical satire on popular literature, but with further de velopment of a philosophy of the ironic and absurd. An old king abdicates in order to play with lead soldiers, observ ing that the gêune we play in life is "really a child's game, and what indeed do we do seriously?" Free from the tribulations of actual rule, he finds true happiness with his lead soldiers. But the central action of the play forms a sequel to Puss. Zerbino, seriously ill from read ing best-sellers, sets out on a journey to find good taste. lloskar Walzel, German Romanticism, p. 226; an inter esting metaphor that parallels Tate's ''forlorn demon" end lessly repeated in a series of mirrors. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 52 but fails. At one point, however, by sheer force of will, the hero tries to reverse the play: the scenes already presented are staged once more in reverse order, but the author steps in and forces the play to go on. The World Turned Topsy-Turvy (1799) is also an allegorical burlesque. but with a number of more serious ironies. The play is in deed topsy-turvy: an epilog opens it; a prolog closes it; i ia spectator becomes an actor and yet remains a spectator; I and the stage represents a stage. I In all this, we find a development toward the psycho logical , or what the Romantics called the "night-side" of inature because of its eerie and frightening aspects— a ; development seen more clearly in Tieck's fairy-tales which, I like "The Fair Eckbert" (1796), suggest gloomy subconscious delusion.In Topsy-Turvy, which is still principally satire, we find the speculation: . . . we sit here as spectators and see a play; in that play spectators are also sitting and seeing a play, and in that third play another play is going to be played by ^2see Oskar Walzel, German Romanticism, Part II, Chap ter V, "The Psychological Aspects of Nature," pp. 245-254; and M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp, Chapter VIII, "The Psychology of Literary Invention: Unconscious Genius and Organic Growth," pp. 211 ff. esp., for discussion of the sinister aspects of nature and the human mind; I dis cuss "night-side" psychology and the occult later in this dissertation. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . .. ’ 53 those third actors. . . . People often dream that sort of thing and it is terrible . . . many thoughts spin like that into the inwardness.13 The increased interest in the human mind, both con scious and subconscious, and the problem of subjectivity and reality soon led to a concept of "objectivity" as ironic detachment. The mode of such ironic works as iTieck's early plays, however, was actually the logical de velopment of eighteenth-century German admiration for Cer- vemtes, Swift, Fielding, and Sterne, in whom.the Germans I found "sportiveness" and an over-all sense of harmonious synthesis of contrasts and contradictions. Don Quixote was the special favorite of Tieck and his followers, who in their fiction continued the German emulation of Cervantes' I techniques of addressing the reader, of making mocking ref erences to one's own work, and of generally fashioning a constant interplay of contradictions and i r o n i e s . 14 in the mid-eighteenth century, Christoph Martin Wieland (1733- I1813), one of Poe's favorite German writers, had in his ro- jmance Don Sylvio of Rosalva (1764) imitated Cervantes in I laughing at his own ideals and in organizing his work ^ l^Translated by Thompson (pp. 58-59); Puss and "Eck bert" are translated complete in The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, ed. Kuno Francke and W. G. Howard (Albany, New York, 1^13), IV, 194-251, 252- 271. These works were also translated during Poe's life time. l^see The Dry Mock, pp. 62-63, and Lussky, "The Sources of Tieck's Romantic Irony," Chapter IV of Tieck's Romantic Irony, pp. 118-158. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 54 around contrasts; and in his novel Aqathon (1767) Wieland used the structural principle of contrast in presenting true contentment as lying between two extremes of pious as ceticism and worldly sensualism (the two extremes of Wie land 's own life).Goethe in The Sorrows of Werther (1773) and more clearly at the end of the century in Wil helm Meister's Apprenticeship (1796) exemplifies the German Quixotic tradition. Like Cervantes, Goethe often referred directly to his reader, even mocking him openly. Goethe frequently gibed at his own novel, mentioning or suggesting the novel in the novel itself, and like Cervantes, he often mocked the earnestness of his hero, calling attention to his self-conceit, pretended knowledge, selfishness, and confused thinking. Yet Wilhelm Meister to a large extent remains a sympathetic figure. Although Goethe may not have considered himself a follower of the school of Romantic I Irony, his practice in Wilhelm Meister is a form of it. I Indeed, in Poetry and Truth (1811-1814), Goethe described I the objective presentation of the clash of reason and habit I as an "irony" within ourselves and with ourselves whereby ! we treat our faults in a playful spirit. ^^One of Poe's favorite phrases, concerning the limi tations and proper nature of man, is from, Poe says, Wie land 's "Peregrinus Proteus." See, as but one instance of Poe's use of Wieland, Marginalia 219 (Stoddard, V, 334). IGgee Lussky, pp. 99-108, and Sedgwick, of Irony, p. 16. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 55 In German Romantic fiction, multiplicity of points of view, such as in this double effect of creating a sympa thetic but absurd hero, merged with philosophical theories of detachment and objectivity wherein, as I have mentioned, the superior mind transcends its human flaws. We have al ready seen that Poe sometimes creates a strong illusion, especially of horror, and then breaks it with a shock, ab surdly though only half comically, as in "The Premature Burial." But it is this other more philosophical develop ment of Romantic Irony, less crudely or openly mocking, that is Poe's "tradition" in his Gothic tales. As the Ro- i mantic concept of irony developed from a philosophical stance of "objective subjectivity" to the subtly ambivalent presentation of the weird in the distinctively German genre of the grotesque, with its slyly insinuated double and triple perspectives, the subjects of drama and fiction be- ! Igan to be closely associated with Gothic horror. When we I note how the ironic literary tradition gradually merged I with the subjective idealism of Kant and his followers, Ro- Imantic Irony clearly takes on those qualities of brilliant I suggestion and confusing chaos that Poe saw in German crit- i Iical theory. Romantic Irony became intricately involved with metaphysical speculation on the objective and the sub- I Ijective, on imagination, delusion, and reality, and on a transcendental mastery of the world and oneself through a : clearsighted, ambivalent detachment. Perhaps the real R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 56 irony is that Poe, the satirizer of the American transcen dental movement, was also (in a very different way) an American transcendentalist.^7 The philosophical concerns in Germany with an ideal synthesis of all elements in the universe, especially of all apparent contradictions, into one unified whole, and i the speculation that the subconscious mind can reveal the secrets of another world stretching away beyond the range Iof human intelligibility, a world both ideal and superna- Itural, both terrifying and sublime, probably began with the metaphysics of Leibnitz (1646-1716). Leibnitz postulated a community of "monads," the ultimate indivisible psychical entities, possessed of various degrees of "perception," ranging from the human soul down through the vegetable to ; the apparently inorganic realm— a philosophy of universal sentience that makes its appearance in Poe's "Landor," "Arnheim," "Mesmeric Revelation," "Monos and Una," and, ! ambiguously, with contemporaneous allusions, in "Usher." i I According to Leibnitz, man is distinguished from the lower l?Hawthorne comes to mind in this connection, for though he several times expressed a distaste for the tran- scendentalists he yet participated in the Brook Farm exper iment. For Poe's satires involving the transcendentalists, see "Never Bet the Devil Your Head," "Blackwood Article," "A Predicament," "Silence," and the earlier version of "Loss of Breath." In a letter to T. H. Chivers (July 10, 1844) , Poe writes that "You mistake me in supposing I dis like the Transcendentalists— it is only the pretenders and Sophists among them. [But] my own faith is indeed my own" (Letters, I, 259, letter 180). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 57 orders of being because, through a "pre-established harmo ny" with external physical phenomena, some of the existing monads generate awareness. But the great mass of petites perceptions remains below the level of awareness in a mys terious subconscious realm; thus no ideas are new but are instead latent in the mind, ready to be discovered. In the mind of man they are evolved "into a state of greater distinctiveness and articulation" according to Divine plan, a concept strikingly similar to that at the end of Poe's Eureka, where man's consciousness finally evolves him into complete unification with the "Spirit Divine."^® The importance of the artist's subconscious mind was given currency in 1759 by Edward Young's Conjectures on Original Composition, which, translated into German twice within two years, became a primary document of the Storm and Stress movement. Young suggested that the great work of literature grows out of the depths of the mind of a "na tural" genius, an idea that, along with Leibnitz's psychol ogy, suggested to German writers of the latter eighteenth 18gee Works, XVI, 313-315, especially; indeed, Poe's idea of infinite material particles is the reverse (ironi cally?) of Leibnitz's psychical monads. Quotations on Leibnitz are from Abrams, p. 202. See Poe's humorous use of Leibnitz's Law of Continuity in Marginalia 100 (Stod dard, V, 247). Poe's material conception of thought may owe something to David Hartley's Associational Psychology in Observations on Man (1749). Hartley explained mental phenomena as the result of "sensations" arising from "vi brations" in the nervous system and brain. But Poe sati rizes the "sensationist" fiction appearing in Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine in his day. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 58 I i century that certain conceptions develop independently of | the intention of the artist.Poe disputes this idea j I vigorously in "The Philosophy of Composition" and else- j w h e r e ,20 but out of the concept came also, to some extent, I the age's general fascination with the mysteriousness of ! the subconscious mind, and with madness, crime, and psycho-| physical disorders like epilepsy, catalepsy, and general catatonia, disorders that Poe makes much use of in his ; Gothic tales. ' Recurring metaphors in German criticism of the myste- ; rious growth of seed-ideas into the awareness of artistic creation suggested to J. G. Herder (1744-1803) and others ! an organic conception of art wherein the tightly unified I wholeness of every part is one of the primary qualities of | a great work— practically Poe's principal critical die- | turn.21 In 1778 Herder expanded the ideas of organic 19in reference to the mind of man, nature (as opposed to art) meant inborn, spontaneous, unpremeditated attri butes, free from the bondage of social convention. In ref erence to the external world, nature meant those parts of the universe that came into being independently of human effort. Abreuns, pp. 198-202. 20por example, in Marginalia 95 (Stoddard, V, 243- 245), with reference to Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801). But elsewhere, as in Marginalia 16, he enter tains the possibilities of unconscious and half-conscious perceptions. ZlNote the emphasis given this idea as "unity of to tality of effect," the phrasing of A. W. Schlegel, in Poe's 1842 review of Hawthorne (see Borzoi Poe, II, 949-951). This phrase appears frequently in Poe *s reviews and essays. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 59 artistic unity and natural unconscious growth to include a comprehension of the universe almost Godlike in its pene trating unification of all elements. He wrote that Shake speare's Lear "even in the first scene of the play carries within him all the seeds of his fate toward the harvest of the darkest future." All characters and all actions "are in motion, continuously developing into a single whole," in which no component can be altered, and which like the uni verse is filled with "one interpenetrating, all-animating soul"— the Godlike soul of the Artist.22 These developments owed much to three works published toward the end of the eighteenth century, works that gave 22guotation translated in Abrams, p. 205. The concern for the synthesis of contradictions in the world through the Godlike mind of the artist is also clear in Goethe's theoretical statements in the last quarter of the century. In 1772 he described Gothic architecture (in contrast to buildings constructed by the "rules") as the organic prod uct of the mind of genius; in the Gothic cathedral we see the growth of an idea into a final intuitively unified whole. In 1787 he wrote that the works of antiquity were "like the highest works of nature," produced, by men, ac cording to "true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary, fanciful falls together; here is necessity, here is God." In 1798 he wrote that "nature is separated from art by a monstrous chasm" but that the chasm can be bridged if the artist can penetrate "into the depths of his own spirit," thus "giving his work such a content and such a form that it will seem at once natural and above nature." (See Abrams, p. 206). This penetration into both the object of the work of literature and into the writer's own Self as he creates the work became a major idea of the Romantic Iron ists, leading, as we shall see, to a transcendent self detachment; but we might note that this self-division is somewhat like the division of points of view in the plays of Tieck in the scune decade. Goethe's statement also re flects his own serio-comic practice in Werther and Wilhelm Meister, as mentioned above. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 60 great Impetus to Romanticism in general and Romantic Irony in particular. Immanuel Kant's "Critiques" of Pure Reason (1781), Practical Reason (1788), and Judgment (1790) imme diately exerted a strong influence on the already strong German motif of synthesis through contrast and through the serio-comic, and increased the general interest in the per plexities of human perception and in the workings of the subconscious mind. According to Kant, all human knowledge is subjective, and objects are known only by qualities not inherent in the things themselves but given us by our sen sory "intuition." The function of human imagination and intellect is to organize sense impressions into meaningful patterns; thus man's mind, to an extent, imposes order on the universe. But Kant postulated another human faculty, the Will, which perceives spiritual and moral truths, un related to sense experience and unknowable by the intel lect. The Will, reaching out toward an external reality of universal moral law, operates within an individual as the Categorical Imperative in a realm of free moral choice which yet determines rightness and directs action without reference to reason, at times even directing action in op position to reason. Esthetic values, as in Poe's theory, are mediational; in the presence of the beautiful we feel a "unification, a harmonious interplay of sense and mind, a perfect freedom from scientific and utilitarian necessity." This harmony is not merely psychological but philosophical R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 61 and even moral, for the beautiful is "the symbol of the morally good." This beauty may be combined with natural forms or with purposive human creations, though neither is "pure" beauty. As Wimsatt and Brooks note, Kant's idea of beauty was severe; it related (so far as human making was concerned) almost exclusively to the formal, decorative, and eüastract: to Greek designs, foli ation on wallpaper, arad)esgues (things which "mean noth ing in themselves"), music without words.^^ Kant also developed the ideas of biological and uncon scious artistic creation that we have seen taking seed in I Herder and Goethe. Kant's analysis of the organic consti tution of a tree (with its own moving and formative power I and natural purpose) as opposed to the mechanical function ing of a watch seemed to the German "aesthetic organolo- gists," as Abrams calls them, to prove that there is a "purely internal teleology" as a "constitutive element in living nature" (p. 208); and the Romantic Thinkers proceed ed to take Kant's philosophy much further than he had ever intended. As Kant's concepts of human subjectivity. 3gee p. 372. Kant's use of arabesque here to mean pure design complicates our understanding of Poe's use of the word, for in the preface to the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque Poe connects the term with that which has suggested to his critics an excessive "Germanism and gloom. " Elsewhere, as in "Ligeia," he uses the term to mean the subjective, the deceptive, and the monstrous (Borzoi Poe, I, 229). And in "The Philosophy of Furniture' Poe uses arabesque to mean pure design, reproducing no na tural forms. Theterms arabesque and grotesque have a com plicated history and have a close and intricate relation ship to the concepts of Romantic Irony. The implications of the normal uses of grotesque and arabesque and of Poe's l in e d i n Cl multiple uses are exam: "Chapter V of this study. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 62 necessity, and biological purpose were re-worked by Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, Novalis, Solger, Tieck, and Jean Paul, the emphasis shifted to an absolute idealism wherein all reality is arbitrated, if not indeed created, solely by the individual, who is almost a G o d - i n - h i m s e l f.24 i shall try to be brief, but the theories of the Schlegels, who along with Tieck are the most direct link between Poe and Roman tic Irony, will be clearer if we first trace the develop ment of transcending irony from Kant through Fichte, Schil ler, and Schelling, writers whom Poe seems to have read, or read about, for he mentions them frequently, quotes them, criticizes them, and burlesques them. The first important reinterpretation of Kant was that of J. G. Fichte (1762-1814) in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Fichte developed a dialectical ideal ism to unify the theoretical and practical aspects of cog nition set apart by Kant. He postulated an active individ ual ego as the source of the structure of experience, though it ultimately derives from an absolute ego or uni versal moral principle (God). Although each man creates his own world and rules it, he is yet restricted by it; but 24Again, note the conclusion of Eureka. Poe says that it is impossible for one to believe, really, that "anything exists greater than his own soul. . . . each soul is, in part, its own God— its own creator. . . . Man . . . ceasing imperceptibly to feel himself Man, will at length . . . recognize his existence as that of Jehovah." See Works, XVI, 312-315. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 63 the more "objective" he can be toward the world he projects out of himself, the greater freedom of spirit he attains. Moreover, Fichte linked this unfettered freedom resulting from objectivity toward one's subjectivity with psychologi cal mastery over the irrational. To govern the irrational part of man "freely according to its own laws is the ulti mate purpose of humanity," though it is an unattainable goal since we are not divine; but we must at least strive ; to attain it.25 These concepts begin, I think, to make I clear the linkage between the characteristic Romantic yearning after the infinite or the ideal or the lost world of perfect harmony and the excessively melancholy and even sinister "night-side" qualities of nature, as reflected in the restrictions imposed by man's irrational, subconscious I mind. About the same time, Schiller and Schelling began to : write on the necessary harmony of art, a harmony that ei- jther eventually reflects morality, or spiritual good in I Nature. Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) argued that beauty I and morality are i n s e p a r a b l e .26 Literature has both the I beauty of the "architectonic" and the beauty of the human 25oskar Walzel, German Romanticism, p. 41. 25a view that Poe disputes vociferously most of the time but which he ambiguously seems to half-agree with un der certain conditions— i.e., so long as the moral is the "under-current of a poetical theme;" see his review "Long fellow's Ballads" (1842), Borzoi Poe, II, 943. See also R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 64 personality, the latter of which includes both "grace" and "dignity," grace being beauty of soul and dignity being loftiness of intellect. All art, he wrote in his Letters on Esthetic Education (1795) arises out of two impulses and balances them variously— a finite material impulse and the "Idea." The reconciliation of these is the "free play" of the whole person. In his essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry (1795-96), Schiller said that modern romantic art strives toward an ideal synthesis of intellect and feeling, and "ideal" that is actually "higher" than the ideal state of ancient naive art, in which there was unsophisticated communion with Nature. With reference to this higher "ide ality," Schiller divided modern "sentimental" poetry into three types according to modes of feeling, coming to a def inition of satire that elevates it as a genre, for it iron ically seeks after or affirms the ideal; the idyll imagines a past or future ideal as real; the elegy mourns the loss of the ideal; and satire looks down on reality from the his review "Thomas Moore's 'Alciphron'" (1840), Works, X, 65, where the term mystical is associated with a suggested under-current of ideal morality or spirituality. On the other heuid, see Foe's comment on the error of the "German" concept of art and morality in the Longfellow review, just after the passage on the legitimate undercurrent of didac ticism (II, 943-944). Poe identifies "harmony" as the basic element of Beauty, created by the Imaginative-facul- m . - gini in his 1845 review of N. P. Willis (Works, XII, 37- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 65 height of the ideal. Friedrich Schelling (1775-1854) in several works pub- jlished or circulated about 1800-1803, dwelt on the harmony I Ibetween man and Nature and the probable conscious intelli- I gence manifest and evolving in Nature (Naturphilosophie). History, he wrote, was a series of stages tending toward harmony with God after the mythic Fall, and he postulated ia series of correspondences between Nature and Art, involv- jing an antithesis between Subject and Object, alternatively Icalled Intelligence and Nature, the Conscious and the Un conscious , Freedom (of human volition) and Necessity (im posed by Nature). The esthetic act can unite all ideas; it is the highest act of reason. Poetry penetrates the es sence of the universe. To penetrate the meaning of the universe through poetry is precisely what Poe tries to do in Eureka, "A Prose Poem," in the preface to which Poe writes that the book is "true" because it has the "beauty" of poetry: . . . to the dreamers . . . I offer this book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that cüaounds in its Truth; constituting it true. To these I present the composition as an Art-Product alone : — let us say as a Romance; or if I be not urging too lofty a claim, as a Poem. . . . What I here propound is true . . . Nevertheless it is as a Poem only that I wish 27gQQ wimsatt and Brooks, Literary Criticism, pp. 368- 370. The section on satirical poetry Is translated in The ories of Comedy, ed. Paul Lauter (Garden City, New York, iI9iS4) , % . 307:313. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 66 this work to be judged after I am dead. According to Schelling, a work of art produces a "feeling of infinite harmony" resulting ultimately from the "volun- jtary grace" of one's nature. The poet is faced with con- I 'tradiction between the Conscious and the Unconscious, for in the Unconscious he finds internally within himself a reflection of external, contradictory nature.By the es- ; thetic act of the imagination, the artist is able to free I I ! I himself, to "think," and to "reconcile contradictions" in a! ' I liberating transcendence of his limiting self-identity.^^ | 2®Works, XVI, 183. For Poe's comments on the methods of thought, on induction, deduction, and poetic intuition, see in Eureka the following pages: 187-198 (complicated by humor and satire; the section was rewritten as "MelIonta Tauta" in 1849), 205-207, 214, 221-222, 260-261, 275-276, 293, 304, 306, 312-315, all of which pages are also compli cated by possible ironies. ^^See Wimsatt and Brooks, Literary Criticism, p. 368; Rene Wellek, History of Modern Criticism, II, 74-76; and Abrams, The Mirror and the Lcunp, pp~ ÎÏÏ9-210. Schelling's ideas on tragedy and comedy help clarify his basic views; in tragedy the subjective and free choice of a human being clashes with necessity, or the objective order of the uni verse; in comedy human choice and character is fixed and fated but the world is treated subjectively, freely, ironi cally (Wellek, 81). Schelling also investigated occult sciences in pursuit (in part) or the secrets of the Uncon scious, discussed later in this thesis with reference to the sinister "night-side" of nature made use of increasing ly by the Romanticist fiction writers. ^®Abrams calls Schelling's Transcendental Idealism (1800) the "characteristic document of romantic philosophy in Germany"; "the extraordinary importance attributed to esthetic invention may be regarded as the climax of a gen eral tendency of the time to exalt art over all human pursuits" (p. 209). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . l" " ' " I Despite his ostensible views in Eureka, however, Poe i jhad in an early version of an early tale, "Loss of Breath," undertaken (as would befit an ironic believer in irony and the reconciliation of contradictions) a spirited spoof of "Transcendentalism," "Pantheism," and "loss of self-identi ty" in connection with Coleridge, Kant, Fichte, and Schel ling. It is hard to be sure how seriously Poe took the ideas of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, especially as re- j i I fleeted in Coleridge, but his burlesques assuredly do not Iprove that he thought the German philosophers totally ridic-l 1 : I ulous; his satire shows instead the complexity, the ambiva- lence, of the philosophical ironist, as is externally borne i Iout by his critical statements regarding at least Cole ridge. In "Letter to B " Poe wrote that "of Coleridge, I cannot speak but with reverence. His towering intellect1 | his gigantic power1" And yet in the same paragraph he j earnestly lamented Coleridge's burying his mind in meta physics . Earlier in the essay he remarked that Coleridge ' sometimes "goes wrong by reason of his very profundity"; but again, toward the end of the essay, he said that read ing Coleridge's poems is like looking into a volcano, "con scious from the very darkness bursting from the crater, of i ^^Works, II, 359-362, and briefly discussed in Chapter V of this study. See also the satirical sallies at Kant, Leibnitz, and others in "Bon-Bon," and the interesting ref erences to "the wild Pantheism of Fichte" and "the doc trines of Identity as urged by Schelling" to be found in "Morelia" (Borzoi Poe, I, 116-117, 153). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 68 the fire and the light that are weltering below." This was in 1831; in 1836 Poe wrote that "the most trivial memorial of Coleridge is a treasure of inestimable price. He was indeed a 'nyriad-minded man,' and ah, how little understood . . . ." Then in 1845, Poe used what he called the "pre posterously anomalous metaphysicianism of Coleridge" as an I jexample of the kind of extreme to which the "poetic incon sistency" of Tennyson had gone; but although this remark sounds at first like a purely derogatory one aimed at both {writers, Poe went on to say that "the greatest error and the greatest truth are scarcely two points in a circle," and remarked that Tennyson, following "the law of all ex- tremes," came back upon himself to winnow the "truest and purest of all poetical s t y l e s ."32 From these remarks, can I---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 32gee "Letter to B— — " in the Borzoi Poe, II, 860, 858, 860 (my italics); the 1836 review of Coleridge's Let ters , Conversations and Recollections in Works, IX, 51; the j1845 review of Elizabeth Barrett [Browning's)Drama of !Exile in Works, XII, 33-34. In this last review, we find Poe indicating a kind of Coleridgean "myriad-mindedness" as the basic character of the greatest artist: a "fortuitous" "combination of antagonisms" (XII, 34), a point Poe devel ops further in his discussion of Fantasy in a review of N. P. Willis a week later (Broadway Journal, January 18, 1845, Works, XII, 36-40). A. J. Lubell, in pointing out Poe's "equivocal" attitude toward Coleridge ("Poe and A. W. Schlegel," p. 12), notes another "inconsistency," Poe's attitudes toward Platonism. In 1845, reviewing a transla tion of Plato, Poe remarks that "the value the Platonian philosophy" is "exactly nothing at all" (Works, XII, 164); yet only a few years before in the philosophical dialog "Monos and Una" (1841) Poe had written about the "pure con templative Spirit and majestic intuition of Plato1" and continued even more floridly. Lubell thinks the two state ments are in "an entirely different vein"; but Poe's rheto ric is suspect, and his "philosophical dialog" is also a R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 69 we say for sure what Poe's attitude toward Coleridge was? For just as Poe ambiguously praised and ridiculed Cole ridge, so he also praised and ridiculed the Romantic Iron ists, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. The most direct link between Poe and philosophical Ro mantic Irony is to be found in the theoretical writings of Friedrich Schlegel and in the practical criticism of A. W. Schlegel. Although the evidence that Poe read Friedrich Schlegel very closely is scanty, the evidence that he read August Wilhelm is conclusive. Poe was clearly aware of Friedrich's independent works, however, as well as with (so he would have us believe) German criticism in general. In "Exordium to Critical Notices" (Graham's, January, 1842), Poe wrote in praise of German criticism, remarking that the "magnificent critiques raisonees of Winckelmann, of Noval is, of Schelling, of Goethe, of Augustus William, and of Frederick Schlegel" are in principle one with the criticism of Kames, Johnson, and [Hugh] Blair; but he added that the Germans differ "in their more careful elaboration, their greater thoroughness, their more profound analysis and fictional structure. (See Borzoi Poe, I, 360.) Poe is supposed to have worshipped Coleridge when young and turned against him, repudiating any real influence, in later life - — but the first versions of "Loss of Breath" and "The Due de L'Omelette," in which Coleridge receives some satiric punctures, date from 1831-32, when Poe was twenty-two. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 70 application of the principles themselves.From A. W. Schlegel alone, however, Poe could have gotten a sense of Friedrich Schlegel*s more extreme concepts of "higher" iirony, "self-parody," and "transcendental buffoonery," tem- I ipered by August Wilhelm's wistful melancholy and more prac- ] jtical turn of mind. But, as we shall see, the supposedly dreamy-minded adolescent who wrote Tamerlane (1827) had a I satiric and ironic bent that would have been quite recep- itive to the ideas of even the more extreme of the Schlegels. I Fichte, Schelling, and Goethe concerned themselves j iwith the double problem of an "objective" detachment of the Iwriter both from his art-products and from the world even j Iwhile being subjectively involved in each. Maintaining ob- t {jactivity, while yet subjectively creating a work from the ! depths of one's own spirit or mind, seemed to them to imply a suprahuman capacity in the artist and suggested ideas of "liberation" and "freedom" from the rather depressing limi tations imposed upon the human spirit by the physical world i of the senses and of mere appearances. Around 1800 or a little earlier, Friedrich Schlegel applied the term irony 33Borzoi Poe, II, 932. Poe's dependence on both the principles and the practical criticism of A. W. Schlegel will be detailed later; see Lubell, who is careful not to overplay his material but concludes that Poe's extensive ! indebtedness to and thieving from Schlegel is obvious I(p. 11). The most direct links with "literary" Romantic Irony, in the sense of actual technique, are Tieck and to some degree Novalis, discussed later in this chapter; writers like Hoffmann are more clearly allied with the genre of the grotesque, discussed in Chapters IV and V. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 71 to thé whole process of transcending the illusory world and one's own limitations, adding an element of wryly philo sophical "sportiveness" and humor— reflected, as we have seen, in Goethe's use of the word irony in Poetry and Truth a decade later to mean an objectivity that lets us treat jour own faults with " p l a y f u l n e s s ."34 Most simply, Schlegel argued that intellectual mastery of life depends on the variety of experience and on a recognition of the elusive- I ness of truth. This premise is clear enough, but Schlegel Ideveloped it into something rather mystical; indeed, to him irony was both intellectual and mystical; it suggested a faith in the powers of the mind to penetrate the secrets of the universe while at the same time observing the near fu tility of the mind's efforts. "Transcendence" of the visi- ible world and of the Self, which is limited by the illuso riness of reality was, for Schlegel, achieved through a sense of the comic in the serious, and of the absurd aspect of ostensible chaos. By comparing the successive phases of our own stupidity and shrewdness, Schlegel suggested, we 34sefore Fichte, primarily because of Kant, transcen dental had meant the limitations of man's powers in compre- ;hending the supernatural world behind visible reality; the spiritual realm transcended the powers of man's mind. After Fichte's development of the concept of the creative ego, transcendental generally connoted the power of man's mind, as a lesser version of God's mind, to create and even "annihilate" visible reality; though still limited, man's mind through an evolutionary process will eventually be < able to transcend the illusions of the world. See R. M. Wernaer, Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany 1(New York/London, 1910), pp. 135-137. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 72 evolve successively superior versions of the Self (as Fich te wanted); a true sense of irony is the perception or cre ation of a succession of contrasts between the ideal and the real, the serious and the comic, the sinister and the absurd, through which the "transcendental ego" can (from the height of the ideal) ambivalently mock its own convic tions and productions.35 This kind of "higher" and more "objective" skepticism I can be seen, according to Friedrich Schlegel, in the works I of Cervantes and Shakespeare, which are "full of artfully ! arranged confusion, charming symmetry of contrasts, marvel ous alternation of enthusiasm and irony."36 to this ironic ; interplay of contradictions in Don Quixote, Schlegel gave the neune arabesque. Schlegel's use of arabesque to mean, I in this instance, symmetrical interplay of contrasts and confusions, of earnestness alternating with irony, is I strikingly different from the usual twentieth-century in- Iterpretation of Poe's use of the word to categorize his I tales as Gothic or as products of powerful imagination. ! I Instead, we come directly to the kinds of irony and ambiva- !lence discussed in twentieth-century terms in Chapter I, to ; that suspiciously flawed effect characteristic of Poe's 35gee Wimsatt and Brooks, p. 379; Wellek, II, 16 ff. 36Quoted in Wellek, II, 17. In his novel Lucinde (1799), Schlegel aimed principally at the interplay of ima gination, illusion, moral responsibility, and subjectivity. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 73 Gothic tales.37 Schlegel equated the term irony with an esthetic act of reason that penetrates the essence of the universe, and he developed further the ideas of Goethe, Herder, and Schiller (though apparently independent of J { I Fichte and Schelling) that the creative powers of the art- Iist are miniature powers paralleling those exercised in di- jvine creation. Just as God's "objective" universe is an i"ironical" reminder of the "subjective" Creator pervading I all things, so also is the artist's objective literary cre ation an ironical reminder of his subjective Self pervading and enlivening his whole work. God's creatures appear to live and move independently of any other force than them- I selves, and yet God is somehow obviously manifest in their I existence. Accordingly, even the most objective artist re- ! sides subjectively within his work. To combine extreme objectivity and immanence in a state of self-division and 37If we give the term qrotesq •aliy di ue its usual meaning of the humorously or caricaturally distorted and sinister, and arabesque its Schlegelian meaning, Poe's first collection I of stories turns out to be titled something like "Half- humorous Tales of Caricature and Irony." But the terms were not used with absolute consistency either by the age or by Poe; see Chapters IV and V. Schlegel apparently de rived arabesque from its use by Kant to mean, as we have seen, intricate design, beauty with reference only to it self, and from its use by Goethe in Von Arabesken (1789), wherein he linked the term with Gothic architecture and scroll ornament and characterized it as fantastic and j primitive and yet intuitively meaningful and unified in it self. See Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Liter ature , translated Ulrich Weisstein (first published 1957, translated 1963, reissued New York, 1966), pp. 48-52. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I........ ' 74 I self-consciousness is to resemble God. Echoes of these ideas (in a modified form perhaps at- ; i jtributable to the influence of A. W. Schlegel) are found in | i ! some of Poe's reviews, in his tales "The Island of the Fay" I ! I (1841), "Monos and Una" (1841), "The Landscape Garden" (1842) and its expanded version "The Domain of Arnheim" i (1847) , "The Power of Words" (1845) , and in Eurelca (1848) . i ! In his "Drake and Halleck" review (1836), Poe noted that ' ! j "Imagination is, possibly in man, a lesser degree of the Icreative power in God," adding that God creates what was j not before, whereas man's artistic imitation of God's crea tive power is the reorganization of what has already been materially created. In his review of N. P. Willis (1845), Poe defined Imagination as the artistic combining of ele ments in such a way as to create something truly original; and therein man's creative power resembles God's.^9 in "Monos and Una" disembodied Platonic spirits discourse on the "poetic intellect" and the transcendental truths reached by artistic analogy. In "The Power of Words" Poe dramatized (with some satiric innuendo about drunkenness) ^®See Lussky, Tieck's Romantic Irony, p. 94, and Thompson, Dry Mock, pp. 63-64. ®®Borzoi Poe, II, 866n; Works, XII, 36-40. Allen Tate, Collected Essays, p. 444, suggests that these ideas derive primarily from Coleridge, though ultimately from the Germans; Margaret Alterton and Quinn and O'Neill suggest that A. W. Schlegel's influence is evident. See Borzoi Poe, II, 1085; and Alterton's Origins of Poe's Critical Theory (Iowa City, 1925), pp. 68-79. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 75 the Romantic Imagination weeping over a flowered, green, volcanoed "star” it has "spoken" into actual material ex istence. 40 In Eureka, Poe's analysis of conventional, un inspired thought-processes is integral to his concluding remarks that in order to understand the universe (the pur pose of Eureka), "we should have to be God ourselves," that "each soul is, in part, its own God— its own creator," that man, through the division, diffusion, and self-conscious ness of the God-principle ordering the universe, will eventually evolve into God.41 in "Island of the Fay" and "Arnheim," which are ostensibly about beauty, especially the pleasures of contemplating God's beautiful natural garden (the world), Poe is actually concerned with the transitoriness of beauty and with the ironic reminders of deep melancholy import to be found in this beautiful "gar den" : shadows, rocky outcroppings, geological upheavals, and the like, which are "prognostic of death."42 Given Schlegel's insistence that the world is, to the human mind, a dark, even chaotic paradox, it is understand able that he should have applied the term irony to both the mode and essence of a literary work of genius and to the 40aorzoi Poe, I, 359; II, 634-637. 41works, XIV, 205, 313-315. But these apparent affirm ations of the glorious destiny of man have a chilling irony to them. See Chapter VI. 42Borzoi Poe, II, 676. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 76 Godlike state of being of the creator of the work. Only an ambivalent attitude can come close to comprehending the world's dark, contradictory totality; ainbivalence is the human being's clear and conscious reaction to his vision of horrible chaos and to his simultaneous detachment from it. As Wimsatt and Brooks explain, the "transcendental ego" re mains "aloof from fixation or satisfaction at any level of insight," and their examples of "dark" irony are perhaps more accurate than they may have realized: I . . . this irony might be very dark, sardonic, misan- I thropic; the hero stood with cloak pulled round his shoulder thrust out into the cold blast— a Byronic and Poesque figure.*3 In the Athenaeum journal for 1800, Schlegel conceived of the ironic-ambivalent attitude not only as one involving :"transcendence" of the opaque facts of the world but also as one having the quality of "Socratic irony," the "free play" of the mind upon everything presented to it. Socratic irony is a unique form of conscious dissimula tion . . .. In it is to be included all jest, all ear nest, everything transparently open and everything deeply concealed. It embodies and arouses a sense of the insol uble conflict between the finite and the absolute . . . through it one is enabled to rise above himself .... It is a very good sign if smug commonplace people do not know how they are to regard this constant self-parody of taking jest for earnest and earnest for j e s t . 44 Such then is Friedrich Schlegel's transcendental irony. 43Literarv Criticism, p. 380. 44Translated by Sedgwick, Of Irony, pp. 14-15; see also Wellek, II, 14 ff. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 77 which makes fun even of itself— a complex, eunnbivalent, dark- toned skepticism that yet involves a mystical faith in the Ideal, a deceptive personal aloofness from any final com mitment , and a "superior" pleasure in the hoaxlike limita tion of one's compeers to a select coterie of the percep tive . I have said that this temper of mind is not alien even to Poe the Dreamy Adolescent, and much less to Poe the Goth. The last passage quoted from Schlegel, in fact, has a striking echo in Poe's earliest known work. The poem "O, Temporal O, Mores!" (1826), written a year before the emo tional and supposedly self-indulgent volume of Tamerlane (when Poe was seventeen) is a satire in forty-six heroic couplets, aimed at a drygoods clerk named Pitts, an unsuc cessful suitor of a Richmond girl. After an opening lament for the deterioration of the manners of the times, the speaker of the poem wonders whether his philosophical stance should be that of Heraclitus or of Democritus. I've been a thinking— isn't that a phrase?— I like your Yankee words and Yankee ways— I've been a thinking, whether it were best To take things seriously, or all in jest .... He then characterizes the philosophers as "grim Heraclitus of yore" who weeped "till his eyes were sore," and the laughing "queer philosopher" Democritus of Thrace, who used to toss over ! The pages of life and grin at the dog-ears, As though he'd say, "Why who the devil cares?" R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 78 Poe concludes that every question has not merely "two sides" but "nearly eight,/ Each fit to furnish forth four hours debate." And, in the megmtime, to prevent all bother. I'll neither laugh with one, nor cry with t'other. Nor deal in flatt'ry or aspersions foul. But, taking one by each hand, merely g r o w l . ^5 The ambiguous antecedent to one (laugh, cry, flatt'ry, as persion) in the last line quoted here produces a rather inice turn of wit, and the entire poem is in the satirical imode of the eighteenth century. This satirical sally shows I in the seventeen-year-old Romantic Poet a turn of mind that would not find the German cogitations on irony uncongenial, and, in view of the publication of the clearly "romantic" ; Tamerlane poems the next year, suggests a complexity of mind that might even consider parodying the Germans while "entertaining" their very ideas on irony, satire, and parody.46 45see Edward H. Davidson, Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe (Boston, 1956), pp. 51-5j, for the complete poem; I and see his note, p. 498. Jay B. Hubbell, "'O, Temporal O, ! Mores 1' A Juvenile Poem by Edgar Allan Poe," University of Colorado Studies. Series B, 2:314-321, October 1945, gives the editorial information. 46Especially in his early fiction, mentioned before, written during the next four to five years. The Romantic Ironists in Germany began as satirists and parodists before they focused on irony and humor as fundamental literary and philosophical principles, and in general remained satirists even while developing a "serious" irony. I have already mentioned the influence of the irony and parody of Don Quixote on the fiction of Goethe and Wieland. Parody be- cgune a prominent feature of the second volume of the Athe naeum (1799), and A. W. Schlegel became famous for his R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 79 For Poe the principal German critic was A. W. Schle gel, the most influential of the German critics outside of Germany. As I have said, the evidence that Poe read Fried rich Schlegel is scanty, but the evidence that he read } I I A. W. Schlegel is conclusive. In September 1835, reviewing I the "Classical Family Library" translation of Euripides for I the Southern Literary Messenger, Poe took nearly everything ; he had to say about Greek drama from A. W. Schlegel, his I I phrasing often running closely parallel to John Black's 11815 translation of Schlegel's Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Moreover, he seems to have tried very hard to conceal his indebtedness, for he carefully avoided mention ing Schlegel directly until the end of the review, so that the reference seems to be locally brought in for another critic's reinforcing view rather than to acknowledge the derived ideas of the whole essay.But elsewhere, Poe admitted his indebtedness, often with praise, but sometimes parodies of the peculiarities of language in contemporane ous writers. (See Walzel, German Romanticism, p. 196; Part II, Chapter III, pp. 185-223, has a long discussion of Ro mantic satire.) ^^See A. J. Lubell, "Poe and A. w. Schlegel," p. 11. I Lubell, careful at first about charging Poe with plagiar ism, is not quite as clear as he might be. He writes that Poe must have known Schlegel's work because he praises R. H. Horne's introduction to a translation published in I 1840 (Works, XI, 249 ff.). But Lubell finally concludes, | after presenting parallel passages, that "it is quite obvi-| ous" that Poe stole from Schlegel (probably from the Brit ish translation of 1815 or the American edition printed in 1833). The review of Euripides is in Works, VIII, 43-47; I reference to Schlegel, 47. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 80 in the form of ambivalent and ambiguous criticisms similar to his comments on Coleridge. He remarked, for example, that the "cant" of modern drama criticism is the result of the "somewhat over-profound criticisms of Augustus William Schlegel."^8 But even if Poe had read nothing else of 48works, XIII, 43. In his subtly ironic review re- istrainedly praising the poetesses Mrs. Sigourney, Miss Gould, and Mrs. Ellet (Southern Literary Messenger, January 1836), Poe attributed the concept of "unity or totality of iinterest" to Schlegel (Works, VIII, 126). He did so again in his two reviews of Longfellow's Ballads (Graham's, March and April 1842). In these reviews, Poe also wrote that a I"moral" is objectioncüsle when it "obtrudes" into the legit- ;imate dramatic province of a poem, which is not to say that a "didactic moral may not be well made the undercurrent of a poetical thesis" (Works, XI, 68; see 79 for Schlegel; al so in Borzoi Poe, II, 93^, 943). This is Schlegel's con ception of the mystic. In his review of Thomas Moore's "Alciphron" (mentioned earlier), Poe connected the Germans in general and Schlegel in particular with the idea of beauty and "ideality" as the source of poetic inspiration (Works, X, 61 ff.); Poe also in this review attacked Cole- ridge's distinction between fancy (which combines) and imag ination (which creates) as "one without a difference" for they both merely combine from what has already been created by God (61-62); if there is some difference of degree, it is that we ascribe the term imaginative to works that "ap parently" spring from the mind of the poet enveloped in the moral sentiments that we call "ideal." ^Poe cited, among others, Cervantes and De La Motte Fougue as writers in whose works there is "a ghostly, and not always a distinct, but an august and soul-exalting echo. In every glimpse of beauty presented, we catch, through long and wild vistas, dim bewildering visions of a far more ethereal beauty "be yond" (66). But in poems we call merely fanciful we feel only the uppercurrent of brilliance without such resonance. It is difficult at first to reconcile these statements with Poe's more famous reviews of Hawthorne (1842, 1847), in the second of which he criticized Hawthorne's allegorizing tendency, a criticism sometimes used by Poe-the-Goth crit ics to discount any complex suggestivity (especially satir ic and ironic) in Poe's tales. But Poe's objection to al legory is its intrusiveness into the dramatic world of the tale; it spoils the unity of effect; an allegorized meaning may be present "where the suggested meaning runs through R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 81 German criticism, A. W. Schlegel's Lectures would have in troduced him to the concept of transcendent irony. A gen eral survey of the contents of the Lectures reveals discus sion in Lecture III of the essence of the comic, in X of satirical drama, in XI of mixed comedy and parody, the ide ality of the comic, mirthful caprice, and the perception of the absurd in the serious, in XIII of the varieties of com edy, self-consciousness and arbitrariness in comedy, and the obvious one in a very profound undercurrent so as never to interfere with the upper one without our own voli tion, so as never to show itself unless called to the sur face . . ." (Works, XIII, 148), Poe's critical importance I in this, his radicalism even, is indirectly indicated in I the caution of Bishop Connop Thirwall in his preface to his itranslation of Tieck's The Pictures and the Betrothing i(London, 1825) about laying before English readers tales that have no clear moral. Thirwall commented on the "strange notions" of the Germans that "a tale may have high lvalue, though its moral essence cannot be extracted in a precept or aphorism; they even think it better for having no didactic object, and Gôthe goes the length of saying that a good tale can have none" (p. xxxviii). In a famous essay (first published in the British periodical the Philo logical Museum in 1833), "On the Irony of Sophocles" (ap parently derived from his reading of Tieck and Schlegel), Thirwall coined the English phrase (or at least gave real currency to it) "irony of fate"— using it to mean a "mock ing" discrepancy between appearance and reality; he associ ated Sophoclean irony with both irony of fate and with two- edged language, with "dramatic irony" involving the author and the spectator. And Poe, in a review of a performance of Antigone, criticized the "elocution" that the Germans in general and "Augustus William Schlegel" in particular had "contrived to make" of Sophocles (Works, XII, 131). As noted before, Poe mentioned Schlegel in connection with the rhetorical trick of blaming through praise, the earliest of the English usages of the term irony ("Fifty Suggestions," No. 30). Poe thus seems to have been clearly aware of the ironic concepts in the English air of the third decade of the nineteenth century. (These are not Poe's only refer ences to Schlegel.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 82 the morality of comedy, in XXIII of far-fetched metaphor, puns, word-play, objective irony, and mixtures of the trag ic and the comic, and in XXVIII a discussion of English comic writers, as well as briefer commentary on the comic and ironic throughout.49 But perhaps the most striking quality of Schlegel's Lectures is his penchant for Romantic melancholy yoked to gether with admiration for ironic and comic objectivity. Writing of the intimate (even metaphysical) connection be tween the tragic and the comic, Schlegel suggested that mem's "reason" and "consciousness" are the bases of both the tragic and the comic sense of life. Whereas animals have no self-consciousness, man's reason forces him to try to account for things, especially his own actions. But a "longing for the infinite which is inherent in our being is baffled by the limits of finite existence." As though he were Tate or Levin summarizing Poe's view of existence, Schlegel added, "All that we do, all that we effect, is vain and perishable; death stands everywhere in the back ground ..." (Ill, 45). When we think of our dependence on a "chain of causes and effects, stretching beyond our ken," of our helplessness against the power of nature, of our conflicting appetites, we see that "we are cast on the 49a Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, "by Augustus william Schlegel," translated John Black, revised A. J. W. Morrison (London, 1846). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 83 shores of an unknown world, as it were, shipwrecked at our very birth . . . we are subject to all kinds of errors and deceptions, any one of which may be our ruin.” When we think of how all that we have worked for may be taken from us in a moment, of how we are exposed to the malice of hostile fortune: when we think of all this, every heart which is not dead to feeling must be overpowered by an inexpressable melancholy, for which there is no other counterpoise than the conscious ness of a vocation [such as that of the poet] transcend ing the limits of earthly life. This is the tragic tone of mind. (Ill, 45) For Schlegel, tragic poetry had thus a foundation in the natural state of things, and thus, he argued, we are fond of "mournful representations," even finding "something con soling and elevating in them;" and though "poetry cannot remove these internal dissonances, she must [he continued] at least endeavour to effect an ideal reconciliation of them" (III, 46).50 The comic tone of mind, on the other hand, said ^®In the first lecture, Schlegel speculated on the melancholy breach between man and God, man and nature, writing that "life has become shadow and darkness, and the first day of our real existence dawns in the world beyond the grave. Such a religion must waken the vague foreboding . . . into a distinct consciousness that the happiness af ter which we are here striving is unattainable . . . that all earthly enjoyment is but a fleeting and momentary illu sion. When the soul, resting as it were under the willows of exile, breathes out its longing for its distant home, what else but melancholy can be the key note of its songs? Hence the poetry of the ancients was the poetry of enjoy ment, and ours is that of desire . . ." (I, 26). Schlegel thus may have been the immediate source of Poe's famous statement in "The Philosophy of Composition” that sorrow is the most poetic of all subjects. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . " ISchlegel, is merely a "disposition" to forget "all gloomy I considerations in the pleasant feeling of present happi- i Iness." The "imperfections and the irregularities of men I. . . serve, by their strange inconsistencies, to entertain : the understanding . . . ." But the mind that truly tran- Iscends the contradictions of life is one like that of the 'old ironist, Socrates. To illustrate the quality of mind ! that understands the "inmost essence of things," Schlegel I used an incident from the Symposium, one of Poe's favorite I Iworks. Having drunk all but Aristophanes and Agathon under ithe table, Socrates claimed that (in Schlegel's words) "it is the business of one and the same man to be equally the i ! master of tragic and comic composition, and that the tragic poet is, in virtue of his art, comic poet also" (XI, 146). Since, according to Schlegel, no Greek tragic poet had ever attempted to "shine in comedy," Socrates' remark, therefore, can only have meant to apply to the inmost essence of things. Thus at another time, the Platonic Socrates says, on the subject of comic imita tion: "All opposites can be fully understood only by and through each other; consequently we can only know what is serious by knowing also what is laughable and ludicrous." Schlegel then suggested that the comic poet forms "an ideal I of human nature the direct opposite of that of the tragedi- I euis" but that this "converse ideality" is not an aggrega tion of "moral enormities" but instead is a representation R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 85 of "the animal part of human nature,"51 which consists of "that want of freedom and independence, that want of coher ence, those inconsistencies of the inward man, in which all folly and infatuation originate" (XI, 148). The comic poet, as well as the tragic, transports his character into an ideal element . . . where the caprice of inventive wit rules .... He is at liberty, there fore, to invent an action as arbitrary and fantastic as possible; it may even be unconnected and unreal, if only it can be calculated to place a circle of comic incidents and characters in the most glaring light. In this last respect, the work should, nay, miist, have a leading aim, or it will otherwise be in wauit of keeping .... But then, to preserve the comic inspiration, this aim must be a matter of diversion, and be concealed .... (XI, 149- 150) Schlegel then took up the matter of interruptions and "in termixtures" in comic and tragic writing. In tragedy, he said, they destroy the effect; but "to the comic tone these intentional interruptions or intermezzos are welcome, even though they be in themselves serious" (XI, 151). The mix ture of the two genres, as in classical "New Comedy" (as opposed to "Old Comedy”), results in a merging of "earnest ness and mirth" in which "the ridiculous must no longer come forward as the pure creation of his [the poet's] own fancy, but must be verisimilar, that is, seem to be real" ' (XIII, 176-177). New Comedy, said Schlegel, was "a mixed species, formed out of comic and tragic, poetic and prosaic SlThe Romanticists came to associate Gothic scroll work in which human and animal figures are absurdly yet ominously fused with the terms grotesque and arabesque. See Chapter IV. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 86 elements" that aimed at the illusion of reality and there fore sought sources of comic amusement not in arbitrary exaggeration but in the "province of earnestness”; and these sources "it found in a more accurate and thorough delineation of character" (XIII, 183). Comparing the an cient writers and the modern, Schlegel concluded that the modern Romantic mind "delights in indissoluable mixtures; jail contrarieties": I . . . nature and art, poetry and prose, seriousness and mirth, recollection and anticipation, spirituality and I sensuality, terrestial and celestial, life and death, are by it [Romantic art] blended together in the most inti mate combination. (XXII, 342) IThis combination of contrasts, this continual crossing of jopposites, argued Schlegel, is modern man's attempt to re gain the immediacy of perception that ancient man once pos sessed. Thus metaphor can never be too fantastic; word play, puns, contradictions in the works of a poet show a sensitivity to distant relationships that may mirror the whole universe.52 The "feeling of the moderns is, upon the whole, more inward . . . incorporeal, and . . . contempla tive," he said. Regarding the Greek ideal of "natural" 52see Wellek, History, II, 36-42. Besides more of this section of Schlegel"s Lectures (342 ff.), see Lecture XXIII, 366-367. Poe, a devotee o£ the atrocious pun and often given to weird metaphor ("the water-lilies shrieked within their beds," from "Silence," Borzoi Poe, I, 221), interestingly enough criticized Hawthorne's ^spirit of 'metaphor run-mad' . . . imbibed from the phalanx and pha lanstery atmosphere" of the occult mysticism of American transcendentalism (Works, XII, 141 ff.). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . j 87 j jharmony, he wrote: . . . the moderns, on the contrary, have arrived at the consciousness of an internal discord, which renders such an ideal impossible; and hence the endeavour of their poetry is to reconcile these two worlds between which we find ourselves divided .... (I, 27) In the natural genius of the modern age, we find, according to Schlegel, a union of apparently antagonistical elements held together by a cool indifference best characterized as : irony. Shakespeare, for example, "unites in his-soul the utmost elevation and the utmost depth; and the most oppo- I site and even apparently irreconcilable subsist in him i peaceably together" (XXIII, 368), [He] makes each of his principal characters the glass in which the others are reflected, and by like means en ables us to discover what could not be immediately re vealed .... Ambiguity of design with much propriety he makes to overflow with the most praiseworthy principles; sage maxims are not infrequently put in the mouth of stu pidity, to show how easily such common-place truisms may be acquired. Nobody ever painted so truthfully as he has the facility of self-deception, the half self-conscious hypocrisy towards ourselves, with which even noble minds attempt to disguise the most inevitable influence of selfish motives in human nature. (XXIII, 369) Shakespeare's technique of multiple perspectives or points- of-view Schlegel called a "secret irony of characteriza tion" commanding high admiration; it involved for Schlegel "the profound edayss of acuteness and sagacity; but it is the grave of enthusiasm." We arrive at this ironic detach ment, he said, only after we have had the misfortune to see human nature through and through; emd when no choice remains but to adopt the melancholy truth .... Here we may perceive . . . notwithstanding his power to excite the most R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 88 fervent emotions, a certain cool indifference, but still the indifference of a superior mind, which has run through the whole sphere of human existence and survived feeling. I Most writers, he argued, take a point-of-view and "exact from their readers a blind approbation or condemnation of whatever side they choose to support or oppose." The irony ! of Shakespeare's writing, however, "has not merely a refer-i ence to the separate characters, but frequently to the I whole of the action." Shakespeare, said Schlegel, makes a sort of secret understanding with the select circle of ! the more intelligent of his readers or spectators; he shows them that he had previously seen and admitted the | validity of their tacit objections; that he himself is j not tied down to the represented object, but soars freely i above it; and that, if he chose, he could unrelentingly I annihilate the beautiful and irresistably attractive scenes which his magic pen has produced. (XXIII, 370) | Thus the ironist, in Schlegel's terms, is much like the great artist in Poe's review of Elizabeth Barrett in 1845; he follows extremes, comes back upon himself, and holds within himself a "fortuitous . . . combination of antagon isms. "^3 In this one book then— by a critic from whom Poe bor rowed theoretical principles of beauty, melancholy ideal ity, "mystical" indirection, and unity or totality of in terest or effect, and from whom Poe stole practical criti cism— is a rationale of the comic and ironic blended with Romantic idealism that quite clearly fits Poe into that "vortex" of ideas at which he ambivalently gibed in Margi- 53works, XII, 34. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 89 ! ! nalia. In A. W. Schlegel's Lectures alone, Poe found Ro- I imantlc-lronlc principles of melancholy idealism, and a i Iyearning for sublime beauty even in discord and deformity; I a fascination with death as the ultimate fact of existence; I a belief in the illusiveness of truth, in human alienation ! from actuality, and in the one-sidedness of serious state- I jments; a doctrine of unrestrained fancy in the genre of pure comedy and of "verisimilitude" in the mixed genre of the serio-comic; emphasis on a literary technique of indi- irection involving a deceptive and even "secret" irony clear i only to the reader of superior perceptions ; concern for character portrayal within a meaningful plot and with em phasis on "internal discord," "self-deception," and multi ple reflections and perspectives; belief in the explora tions of novelty through contrasts of incident, through fanciful and even fantastic metaphor, symbol, punning, and general word-play; and a concept of a superior mind tran scending the gloomy chaos of the world through artistic ironic detachment. Poe was not dependent on but one book, however; he was well acquainted with the avant garde ideas of his time. We have seen that Poe knew of the works of Kant, Fichte, Goe the, Schelling, and "Frederick" and "Augustus William" Schlegel; yet one would like some evidence that Poe approved of the techniques of the German transcendental ironists. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 90 In part, such evidence is to be found in his remarks about Ludwig Tieck, whom Poe read with clear approval. Tieck has been characterized as an eclectic whose career reflected almost all the esthetic theories of his contempo raries.54 In his early works, Tieck reflected the eight eenth-century German admiration for "Quixotic" irony and I I the increasing interest of his time in "subjective" philos ophy and the subconscious mind. About 1800 the Romantic IIrony of Friedrich Schlegel was prominent in Tieck's think- I jing, but gradually this influence gave way to that of the iesthetician K. F. W. Solger (1780-1819), whose importance in linking Poe to Romantic Irony lies primarily in his I criticism of the Schlegels and his concept of transitory I perception of earthly "nothingness" as the highest artistic and rational act. As if the Schlegels' "objective subjec tivity" were not confusing enough, Solger criticized Schle gelian irony as "subjective" rather than "objective" since it permits indulgence of idiosyncratic whimsy. Since the i I absolute or Divine can be known only through the phenomenal, we have to approach the Divine through the "destruction" of I mere appearance in the phenomenal world, which should bring the simultaneous perception of the truly real. This per ception is an inner act of imagination, characterized at first by a feeling of division between somethingness and 54wellek, History, II, 93. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 91 nothingness which then resolves into a final realization of our worldly nothingness, an awareness of transitoriness. Irony is the state of transcendence we feel with this mo mentary unity of universal and particular, of essential and phenomenal reality; irony is the highest sort of "objectiv ity," the reconciliation of opposites, of contradictions, of the conscious with the unconscious. By losing himself as an empirical reality, and as individual consciousness, man perceives in himself the presence of God; this moment is "real" nothingness except insofar as it operates as a fixing moment of man's awareness of God. Art, said Solger, in fusing the spiritual idea of beauty with the contra dictions of finite reality symbolizes the permeation of I 1 ! finite reality by the ideal. In great art, there exists a I {"Centre wherein essence and actuality coalesce as an immedi ate present— namely. Irony, the consummate fruit of the ! artistic mind. I The relevance of these ideas to Poe, aside from j ! j - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S^Translated G. G. Sedgwick, Of Irony, p. 17, from Solger's Ewin (Berlin, 18l5), II, 286-28/. My synopsis of Solger on irony is based on Sedgwick; Wellek, History, II, 300 ff.; and especially Percy Matenko's edition of tne Com plete Correspondence between Tieck and Solger; see Maten- Ko's introduction, pp. 43-61 especially, 60-61 on "nothing ness." Hegel also thought that the Schlegels' irony was mere "frivolity;" Solger's irony, on the other hand, Hegel called "mystic." See Poe on Hegel's mysticism. Marginalia 92, Stoddard, V, 243. Kierkegaard in his dissertation on irony in 1841 called Solger's irony a "kind of contempla tive prayer." See Wellek, II, 301. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 92 Solger's influence on T i e c k ,56 lies primarily in a brief Marginalia reference, admittedly vague, but one which sug gests that Poe was following the German theories on irony: "This 'species of nothingness'," wrote Poe, "is quite as reasonable, at all events, as any 'kind of something-ness' . . . ."57 Tieck, however, mis interpreted Solger's "mystic" iro ny, focused in the moment of nothingness in which the art ist himself perceives the transitoriness of all earthly things, and construed Solger's irony to be much like that of the Schlegels. Tieck's theoretical concept of transcenden tal irony is like that of A. W. Schlegel in his dramatic lectures. Of Solger's irony he wrote: It is extremely difficult to give definite formal expres sion to the concept of irony, Solger, too, at the conclu sion of the Erwin . . . merely hints concerning it that it is the highest element. It is the divinely human in poetry .... In most definitions irony is taken too one-sidedly .... The irony of which I speak is by no means mockery, scorn, persiflage, or whatever else of the sort is usually understood by it, it is rather the deep est earnestness, which is connected at the same time with jest and true cheerfulness. It is not merely negative but something absolutely positive. It is the power which preserves for the poet his command over his subject 56solger commented in a series of letters to Tieck on the Phantasus collection (3 vols., 1812-16); Tieck took many of his suggestions for revision and inclusion (see Matenko, pp. 6-16). Tieck was popular in England and Amer ica; Poe probably read him in translation; Poe through Tieck alone would have felt the influence not only of Sol ger but of the Schlegels and of eighteenth-century German irony (see the earlier discussion of Tieck in this chap ter) . I .. 57Marginalia 40, Stoddard, V, 214. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 93 matter; he Is not to lose himself in it but to stand above it. This irony preserves him from one-sided tend encies and empty idealization.58 It is a rather striking corroboration, I feel, of Poe's interest in German theories of irony that he should have several times referred to Tieck with direct or implied approbation. Poe has often been praised for his recogni tion of Hawthorne's pre-eminence as a writer of tales (al though Poe did not like the "monotone" of Hawthorne's writ ings or his tendency to overdo allegory). But Poe seems to have thought Tieck an even better writer than Hawthorne. In his second, cooler, but still commendatory review of Hawthorne in 1847, Poe argued that Hawthorne's "originality" is more apparent than actual since he does what has already been done by "the German Tieck." Those [wrote Poe] who speak of him [Hawthorne] as origin al, mean nothing more than that he differs in his manner of tone, and in his choice of subjects, from any author of their acquaintance— their acquaintance not extending to the German Tieck, whose manner, in some of his works, is absolutely identical with that habitual to Haw thorne. 59 Poe's italics here reflect his belief in variety of effect; ; he considers Tieck not only the more original of the two even in Hawthorne's own special province, but also capeible i of greater variety. Ten years earlier, in the tale "Von Jung, the Mystic" 58Matenko, p. 60. 59works, XIII, 144. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 94 i I(1837), a tale that begins more or less seriously and ends I comically, Poe had made the hero a cousin of Tieck's, com- jmenting (in the person of the narrator) that Tieck has given us "vivid exemplifications" in the genre of "grotes- querie."GO But one of the most interesting of Poe's refer ences to Tieck is in Marginalia 49, wherein Poe reveals an admiration for a comic and ironic stylistic technique of Tieck's, that, taken seriously in Poe's own style, has I i seemed to such critics as Allen Tate and Harry Levin one of IPoe's worst flaws. Levin, for example, particularly dis likes Poe's excess of capitals, italics, dashes . . . exclamation points . . . superlatives . . . intensitives and ineffa- I bles . . . gallicisms . . . sham erudition, scientific pretensions, quotations from occult authorities, and mis quotations from foreign languages. "The misapplication of quotations," Poe writes in Margina lia 49, can be "clever, and has a capital effect when well done . . . ." One of the best hits in this way is made by Tieck, and I have lately seen it appropriated, with interesting com- 6ÛBorzoi Poe, I, 213. The tale was later titled "Mys tification" for Its publication in the Broadway Journal, December 27, 1845. As with other of Poe's tales, the revi- sions reduce the obviously comic, at least at first; see the notes to the tale in Works, IV, 278-283. Poe's narra tor also says that Tieck's works are not quite the "most vivid" exemplifications of the grotesque; "Von Jung" was the fifteenth of Poe's published tales; I do not think that there is much mystification about who Poe thought may have been more vivid in grotesquerie than Tieck. Glpower of Blackness. p. 133, 135. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 95 placehcy, in an English magazine. The author of the "Journey into the Blue Distance," is giving an account of some young ladies, not very beautiful, whom he caught in I mediis rebus, at their toilet. "They were curling their monstrous heads," says he, "as Shakespeare says of the waves in a storm."52 That Poe's style— whenever quotations, foreign phrases, footnotes, mottoes, typographical devices, and the Ilike are exaggerated or rendered slightly askew— is ironic land satiric is borne out to some extent by his reviews of 'the novels of John P. Kennedy and William Gilmore Simms, land by his burlesque article-tale "How to Write a Blackwood I ! Article." In his review of Kennedy's Horse-Shoe Robinson I(Southern Literary Messenger, May 1835), Poe noted that; A too frequent use of the dash is the besetting sin of the volumes now before us. It is lugged in upon all oc casions, and invariably introduced where it has no busi ness whatever . . . there is no portion of a printer's fount, which can, if properly disposed, give more of strength and energy to a sentence than this seune dash; and, for this very reason, there is none which can more effectually, if improperly arranged, disturb and distort the meeming of every thing with which it comes in contact! Poe went on to say that everything a writer does, even with his punctuation, must have "an object or an end"; and he 52gtoddard, V, 219. These are not the only references to Tieck that Poe makes; he refers to Tieck's Old Man of the Mountain, for example, without giving the author's name in Marginalia 158 (Stoddard, y, 283) for satiric comparison to John Wilson (or "Christopher North" as he called him self) , an editor of Blackwood's who could "make or mar any American reputation.'" Lashing out against American sub servience to British opinion, Poe calls Wilson a "rhapso- dist" unworthy the name of "critic," an "ignorant" and "egotistical" "school-boy" blunderer, who has "ridden us to death like The Old Man of the Mountain ..." (283). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . i _ 96 I then reduced seven dashes from one of Kennedy's paragraphs ;to one subtly climactic d a s h .63 in a review of Simms' The Partisan (Southern Literary Messenger, January 1836), Poe {remarked that Simms had been "wiser" than other writers in the matter of the "initial motto": While others have been at the trouble of extracting, from I popular works, quotations adapted to the subject-matter of their chapters, he has manufactured his own headings. We find no fault with him for so doing. The manufactured mottoes of Mr. Simms are, perhaps, quite as convenient as the extracted mottoes of his contemporaries. All, we think, are abominable.64 I This is a rather remarkable comment in view of the fact that almost all Poe's tales are beset with mottoes, some of which (like that to "Ligeia") have never been identified despite diligent efforts of scholars— remarkable, that is, unless Poe had some satiric, deceptive, ironic object or end. In "How to Write a Blackwood Article" (1838), Poe had Mr. Blackwood advise Miss Psyche Zenobia on some details of style for a "sensation-paper." She must consider her tone and her manner of narration, Blackwood says: There is the tone didactic, the tone enthusiastic, the tone natural— all commonplace enough. But then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has lately come much in to use. It consists of short sentences. Somehow thus: 63works, VIII, 10; my italics except for dash. See al so Marginalia 5 (Stoddard, V, 184-196) on the under-use of the dash for second thoughts. See Marginalia 28 (Stoddard, V, 202) for Poe's remark on an "inexcusable Gallicism." 64works, VIII, 157, my italics. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 97 Can't be too brief. Can't be too snappish. Always a full stop. And never a paragraph. Then there is the tone elevated, diffusive, and inter- jectional .... The words must all be in a whirl, like a humming-top, and make a noise very similar, which an swers very well instead of meaning .... The tone metaphysical is also a good one. If you know any big words this is your chance for them. Talk of the Ionic and Eleatic schools— of Archytas, Gorgias, and Alcmaeon. Say something about objectivity and subjectiv ity. . . . and when you let slip any thing a little too absurd, you need not be at the trouble of scratching it out, but just add a footnote and say that you are in debted for the above profound observation to the "Kritik der reinem Vernunft," or to the "Metaphysithe Anfongs- grunde der Notu^issenschaft. " This would look erudite and— and— and -frank.oa Blackwood also discusses "the tone transcendental and the tone heterogeneous," and goes on to give Miss Zenobia some advice regarding the very important "air of erudition" or of "extensive general reading" required for a saleable article. Pulling down three or four volumes and opening them at random, Blackwood says : By casting your eye down almost any page of any book in the world, you will be able to perceive at once a host of little scraps of either learning or bel-espritism .... You might as well note down a few whileI read them to you. I shall make two divisions: first. Piquant Facts for the Manufacture of Similes; and, second. Piquant Ex pressions to be introduced as occasion may require. ÎÏ, Blackwood then gives her facts such as these: "there were originally but three Muses" (which if introduced with a "downright improviso air" looks "recherche"); "the river Alpheus passed beneath the sea without injury to the purity GSsorzoi Poe, I, 237. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I I of its waters"; "the Persian Iris appears to some persons to possess a sweet and very powerful perfume, while to iothers it is perfectly scentless" (I, 238-239). Then Black wood gives her, in the original languages, several "pi quant expressions" from Voltaire ("aussi tendre que Zaire"), Cervantes, Ariosto, Schiller, Lucan, and Demosthe nes, for in a Blackwood's article "there is no passing muster . . . without Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, and ! Greek." The quotation from the Greek must be typographi cally "pretty." i In a Blackwood article nothing makes so fine a show as your Greek. The very letters have an air of profundity about them. Only observe, madam, the astute look of that Epsilon1 That Phi ought certainly to be a bishop1 Was there ever a smarter fellow than that Omicron? Just twig that Taul In short, there is nothing like Greek for a genuine sensation-paper. (I, 240) Blackwood urges Miss Zenobia to apply these quotations to her sensations while being choked to death by a chicken- bone; the chicken she had been eating, could, for example, have been "not altogether aussi tendre que Zaire." Psyche, accordingly (in the companion tale "A Predicament"), pro ceeds to misquote and misapply the "piquant facts" and "pi quant expressions" to her sensations while her head is caught in a large steeple clock. Poe's "Blackwood Article" and Psyche's "Predicament" are obviously comic and satiric. But a slightly less exag gerated version of the Blackwood styles, surrounded by a Gothic atmosphere at least partially effective, could be R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 99 used for "ironic" purposes. What makes Poe's reference to jTieck's ironic technique of misapplying quotations in The Journey into the Blue Distance particularly important is 'that in the melancholy library of the House of Usher, the I two protagonists of the tale open a copy of this very vol u m e . The half-comic and absurd Schlegelian "intermezzo" jof the "Mad Trist" of Sir Launcelot Canning is, when given i Ithe literary context I have attempted to sketch in, inte- I gral to the serio-comic tone of grotesquerie permeating not jonly this tale, but also Poe's other "Gothic" tales. I 66Borzoi Poe, I, 271. In annotated reprintings of "Usher," there is sometimes a footnote pointing out that I all the books in Usher's library are real except for the Vigils of the Dead and The Journey. The difficulty in i- dentiÈying the Tieck volume has been that Poe omits the first half of the title; the whole title is The Old Book and the Journey into the Blue Distance. See T. O. Mabbott's notes in Selected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1951), p. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . CHAPTER III THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: "NIGHT-SIDE" PSYCHOLOGY There is yet another aspect of German Romanticism, closely related to the organic theories of art, to the doc trines of harmonious contradiction and transcendent irony, and to the literary practice of Tieck and his followers, that helps clarify what Poe was about in his fiction. As the nineteenth century wore on. Romantic writers tended to grow increasingly pessimistic. Romantic Irony, as a recog nition of the contrast between the inexplicable flux of life and vain efforts to impose pattern, became a psycho logical way of avoiding spiritual self-destruction by laughing at the sources of one's own despair.1 In Tieck's works, for example, experience constantly defeats romantic dreams, disillusion follows illusion, with sudden transi tions from sentiment to self-mockery. But Tieck has also commented, regarding his fiction, that he was strangely frightened by the weird, subconscious region he found he 3 - Pry Mock, pp. 78-79, 100 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 101 {could tap.2 The literary explorations of Tieck and others, like Novalis, into the "night-side" of nature, along with Schelling's theories of the step by step development of in- I animate nature toward animateness and conscious intelli- Igence, led to investigations of neurology as the intermedi- lary stage between organic nature and rational existence.3 I 'Although new discoveries caune rapidly in the last years of I the eighteenth century and the early years of the nine teenth, Romantic enthusiasts sought to hasten discovery of khe nature of the universe and man's place in it through {magic and mysticism and occult science. The theory of gravity had led Kant in 1775 and La Place in 1798 (both of i jwhom Poe read) to speculate on the origin of the solar sys tem. Chladni demonstrated in 1787 the vibratory condition lof acoustic discs. The experiments of Galvani (whom Poe often mentions) with frogs gave apparent proof in 1789 of ! animal electricity. A different kind of electricity was thought to have been discovered in the Voltaic pile (which ifigures in more than one of Poe's stories) until Volta proved both forms of electricity to be the same. Chemistry jwas transformed by Lavoisier and by Priestly with the dis covery of oxygen. Around 1790 there loomed large in the field of natural 2see Wellek, History, II, 298-230. 3oskar Walzel, German Romanticism, p. 245. The survey of these investigations that I give here is based on Walzel. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 102 i I sciences another movement which had had its inception ap proximately a generation earlier: the supplanting of the mechanistic conception of nature by the vitalistic-organ- I ic conception. . . . Mesmerism grew out of vitalism. In good faith and in accordance with his best judgment, Mesmer (1733-1815), by drawing false conclusions from perfectly correct observations, developed the doctrine of animal mesmerism. . . . The wealth of new discoveries in magnetism, electricity, and galvanism, which had as yet by no means achieved summary order, opened wide the doors for false hypotheses and arbitrary analogies. (Walzel, pp. 60-61) Goethe and Fichte sought prototypes of life in scientific discoveries, as well as evidence in support of the psycho- ; logical evolution of spiritual processes. Schelling ap- iplied scientific discoveries to show the gradual assumption of consciousness in the universe, and wove a human element into nature. Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel transferred spiritual qualities to nature and tried to explain spiritual I processes in terms of chemical reactions and electrical af finity. Johann Wilhelm Ritter sought the mystical bonds between nature and the human soul which were thought to exist in hypnotic sleep. Ritter and Novalis thought they had discovered a state of "involuntariness" in which the soul beholds the absolute; the consciousness of a human be ing in this state of involuntariness became a key to knowl- Iedge. As Walzel suggests: Here the line drawn from Fichte converges with the line which proceeds from the mysticism of the vitalists and from Mesmer. The marvelous results . . . expected from Novalis' "magic idealism," [and] the intensification of Fichte's "intellectual perception" to a magic power of self-enchantment and to occult control of nature . . . had their physical basis and their natural-philosophic probability . . . in animal magnetism, in hypnotic sleep R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 103 . . . [and] in the involuntary "clairvoyance" of somnam bulism .... (pp. 64-65) From 1806 to 1830 G. H. Schubert undertook to investigate the subconscious seat of psychic disturbances and the mys terious phenomena of sonambulism as defining the place of man (with his "curious concatenation of conscious and sub conscious activity") on the "unstable fringe of the world of nature and reason" (Walzel, p. 245). In his Symbolism of Dreams (1814), Schubert attempted to show that phenomena unaccessable to the waking consciousness are revealed in sleep, in dreams, in dreamlike states— an idea taken even further by Justinus Kerner (whom Poe seems to have read), in an effort to find new sources of knowledge in epilepsy and insanity. The typical German concern with deriving harmony out of contradiction and with ambivalent double vision can be seen in a psychical novel by Goethe. In The Elective Affinities (1809), based on Schelling's natural- philosophy, Goethe applied the chemical theory of elective affinities symbolically to the spiritual realm and dealt I exhaustively with "psychological" phenomena (especially i magnetism and somneunbulism as conceived by Mesmer, Ritter, and Schubert). In the spiritual realm, Goethe wrote, there is one harmonious law, and all nature is homogeneous; thus, even in the "free realm of reason," there are always traces R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 104 jof a "vehement, depressing necessity"— the "night-side" of nature.4 Poe used this interest in the subconscious extensively j(and symbolically) in his tales. Although he was attuned jto nineteenth-century Romantic pessimism, he yet treated these "night-side" matters of the unconscious visionary, I I the "sleep-waker," mesmerism, and other occult and pseudo scientific matters ambiguously and ironically in his tales. jBut because he seems to be serious, on the surface at I least, in tales like "Eleonora," "Mesmeric Revelation," i I "The Case of M. Valdemar," "A Tale of the Ragged Moun- Itains," "Monos and Una," and others, extending the ideas of Idreeums or half-sleep states to a state between life and death, and often suggesting the more occult idea of metem psychosis, Poe has been considered by most critics as a serious believer in Romantic "night-side" materials. But Poe treated pseudo-science in a blatantly comic fashion too, as in "Some Words with a Mummy," in which the Egyptian nobleman. Count Allamistakeo, is resurrected (by means of the Voltaic pile) in nineteenth-century America and confronted with modern invention, science, government, and culture. As the nineteenth-century gentlemen who have brought him to consciousness question him about Egyptian 4gee Walzel, pp. 246-247. Goethe was followed in this use of psychical-psychological phenomena by Arnim, Bran- teuio, Hoffmann, and Kleist. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 105 I life, they find themselves rather hard put to find matters I in which their own culture is superior; increasingly they Iignore the implications of Allamistakeo's words, preferring jto think him a bit addled. Finding him not quite well in formed, after his long sleep, on modern advances, Mr. Silk Buckingham, "glancing slightly at the occiput and then at ithe sinciput of Allaumistakeo," says: "I presume . . . that we are to attribute the marked in feriority of the old Egyptieuis in all particulars of science, when compared with the moderns, and more espe- ! cially with the Yankees, altogether to the superior so- ! lidity of the Egyptian skull." "I confess again," replied the Count, with much suavity, "that I am somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray to what particulars of science do you allude?" Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism. Having heard us to the end, the Count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes, which rendered it evident that the pro totypes of Gall and Spurzheim had flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been nearly forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contempti ble tricks when put in collation with the positive mira cles of the Theban Savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things.5 The Americans question Allamistakeo on astronomy, optics, architecture, transportation, mechanics, steam power, meta- ^Borzoi Poe, II, 631. Gall and Spurzheim were the founders, more or less, of phrenology. Poe reviews an American edition of Phrenology, and the Moral Influence of Phrenology . . . from the First Published Works of dall and Spurzheim, to the Latest Discoveries of the Present Period in the March 1836 Southern Literary Messenger. He seems on the surface to be serious— but it Is hard to tell: "Phre nology is no longer to be laughed at. . . . It has assumed the majesty of a science . . ." (Works, VIII, 252). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 106 physics (from the Dial, a "chapter or two aibout something that is not very clear, but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement of Progress") , and democracy (some Egyptian provinces had tried it but consolidated into "the most odi ous and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the earth"— the tyrant Mob). Finally, having I failed on every count to demonstrate the superiority of nineteenth-century life, even in dress, the Americans con front Allamistakeo with "Ponnonner's lozenges" and "Brand- Ireth's pills." At this: I I The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was a triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace. Indeed, I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy's mortification. . . . Upon getting home I found it past four o'clock. . . . It is now ten A.M. I have been up since seven, penning these memoranda for the benefit of my family and of man kind. The former I shall behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that everything is going wrong. (II, 633-634) Surely the somewhat Swift-like satire of this tale (espe cially with the characteristic outrageous pun on the mum my's mortification) should make the "sincerity" of Poe's use of the occult sciences in his "serious" tales question able. One of Poe's most beautiful and poetic tales, accord ing to Poe-the-Goth critics, is "Eleonora" (1841), but it is also a remarkable example of Poe's purposely ambiguous use of Romantic interest in pseudo-science, the psychology of ! I R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 107 madness, the occult, and the sinister underside to things, jand illustrates very well Poe's ironic turn of mind. The I tale seems quite serious in its opening gambit: I I I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the lofti est intelligence— whether much that is glorious— whether all that is profound— does not spring from disease of thought— from moods of mind exalted at the expense of general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In I snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi. To be sure, this passage has a pretty surface; but it also is a passage likely to be quoted by Eliot, Tate, or Levin as an example of Poe's overdone Romanticism, with its dashes, its "ineffable," its climactic repetition, its pi quant Latin phrase. The tale even has a Latin motto pre ceding this paragraph: Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima. In the first two-thirds of the tale, the narrator re calls the idyllic days with his beloved Eleonora in the ^Borzoi Poe, I, 372. R. A. Stewart's notes to "Eleonora" in Works, IV, 312, say that adventures is a "bad error" of Griswold's edition (1857-58); the word should be adventurers; but Quinn and O'Neill claim to have checked the originals for their edition. See Marginalia 83 (Stod dard, V, 239-240) for Poe on misinterpreted genius as "mad ness. " R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 108 fantastically strange yet beautiful "Valley of the Many- Colored Grass." Eleonora sickens, however, and the narra- i tor binds himself to a promise not to remarry. The second ipart of his life he remembers as a period of mourning, un til beguiled by the beautiful Ermengarde he eJaruptly for gets Eleonora, remembering her only when whispers out of ithe night tell him, as he sleeps (or "sleep-wakes"), that for "reasons which shall be made known" to him "in Heaven" he is absolved of the "vows made unto Eleonora" (I, 376). ! The usual view of the tale (when it is not read as a 'dramatization of Poe's love for Virginia, grief for her I I death, and decision to live on) is that Eleonora, with a dual personality, one melancholy, one cheerful, returns as Ermengarde; and the husband, sensing her return, has a dream-vision of his release from his former melancholy vows.7 The tale is rather more chilling and double than this, however. In the opening paragraph, Poe is careful to suggest the duality of the sublime and the terrible possi ble for the sleep-explorer's thrilling glimpse of the great ^See Hardin Craig, "Introduction," Edgar Allan Poe; I Representative Selections, ed. Margaret Alrerton and Hardin Craig (New York, 1962), pp. cii-ciii. Quinn and O'Neill (II, 1079) comment that Poe's relations with Virginia are obviously the basis of the tale. It is true that Eleonora is the narrator's cousin and that her mother figures sha- dowily in the story. But then we are faced with the curi ous implications that Virginia was two-soulled and that Poe came to love one part of her better. Autobiographical allegory seems rather doubtful to me. But see p. 146 of this study. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 109 secret of eternity. Poe then applies this double possibil ity, with some emphasis on the sinister, to the veracity of the story, and begins to develop an increasing ironic dis tance between the narrator and the reader. The narrator in the first paragraph tells us that he has a tendency to vigorous fancy and that he has been regarded as mad; and I indeed the rhythms and the subject matter of the paragraph are likely to suggest the rhapsody of a madman. The narra- i itor then says that (whether he is mad or not) there are I"at least two distinct conditions of my mental existence— Ithe condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed," which belongs to the first epoch of his life, and "a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the irecollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being" (I, 372). Obviously, a condition of shadow and doubt appertaining to his present state casts some doubt on that past "not to be disputed" and the lucidity of his mind at that time. Moreover, the narrator is suspiciously em phatic on the actuality of the earlier events. He says : . . . what I shall tell of the earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due; or doubt it altogether; or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus. (I, 372-373) Poe thus sets up doubt and evokes some mystery about what has actually happened, recommending Romantically and mys teriously that the reader doubt, ambivalently, the end of the tale. In a conventionally Romantic tale, this caution R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 110 would serve to intensify the general indefiniteness and the i actual (Romanticy Transcendental, Occult) truth of the I ! metempsychosis of Eleonora into Ermengarde; but since it is put so oddly, with such emphasis on believing one part of the tale rather than the other, and with such emphasis on ithe uncertainty of good and evil, truth and actuality, the tale takes on a sinister and ambiguous tone— opposite of what is the final ostensibly "happy" resolution. We are Iforced to consider the possibility that the narrator, half- Imad, may have invented the first fantastic part about the Valley of Many-Colored Grass (with its great Syrian ser- pent-plants undulantly bowing to the sun) as a Romantic escape from some dull reality; or the possibility that he may have invented the forgiving voice out of the night in order to forgive himself for his lack of fidelity (or even to rationalize perhaps some deeper guilt regarding the dead Eleonora). Poe's revisions tend to support an ambiguously ironic reading of the tale. In the earlier version, the narrator says of Eleonora that "I could not but dream as I gazed, enrapt, upon her alternate moods of melancholy and mirth, that two separate souls were enshrined within her." Look ing at Ermegarde, who has the same "auburn tresses" and "fantastic step" as Eleonora, the narrator says "... there was a wild delirium in the love I bore her when I started to see upon her countenance the identical transitier R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . ! Ill I I from tears to smiles that I had wondered at in the long- jlost Eleonora.Hardin Craig speculates that Poe took {both these passages out in order to reduce obviousness and Ito experiment with "the indefinite/' which Poe considered a major quality of Romantic poetry. But by reducing the nar rator's identification of Ermengarde with Eleonora, Poe jmakes more reasonable the separate identities of the two Iwomen and strengthens his presentation of the real point of the tale: the narrator, fanciful and half-mad, has imposed his vigorous fancy on the flux of his idiosyncratic "real ity." The clinching point is Poe's Latin motto: "The safety of the soul lies in the preservation of the specific form." If Eleonora is now Ermengarde, the specific form has been violated.9 The sense of the motto, along with the narrator's remarks on his madness, confirms the delusive ness of the entire experience as he renders it. Moreover, Poe twice remarks with approval in a review and in a Margi nalia note, upon De La Motte Fouque's conviction in Undine that "the mere death of a beloved wife does not imply a final separation so complete as to justify an union with ^Works, IV, 314-315, from The Gift, 1842. ^Even if Eleonora did have two separate souls, and in the metempsychosis they become separate, the narrator has still shifted his love from the one to the other. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . j 112 janother!"10 Given this conception of fidelity, and the am- jbiguities I have pointed out, "Eleonora" must be seen as an ironic story. The tale is ostensibly in the Romantic mode jand seems to suggest a weird, supernatural, but ideal love I I that endures beyond apparent earthly death. But the story lis instead a dramatic presentation of the Romantic mind shifting the object of its passion and rationalizing its guilt— unless we are prepared to claim that Poe was a sin- jCere believer in metempsychosis and sleep-waking revela- jtions, and that the ambiguities of the tale are merely Poe's characteristic flaws. That Poe did entertain the general Romantic yearnings of his times is obvious; but his attitudes are always pre sented as ambivalent, skeptical, detached; he uses such I ideas as "night-side" revelations as a maker of illusions, as a writer of fiction, as a "literary histrio," as he more than once characterized his kind.H Yet, with reference to "sleep-waking," human magnetism, mesmerism, phrenology, and the like, Poe's "serious" comments in his reviews and mar- I ginal critiques, and his frequent use of mesmerism and ■ I ‘ metempsychosis in his tales (like "Ligeia," "Metzenger- ; stein," "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains," "The Facts in the lOReview of Undine (Burton's, September 1939), Works, X, 36; Marginalia, Works, XVI, 49, quotation from the lattex (Democratic Review, December 1844). llSee "Exordium to Critical Notices" (Graham's, Janu ary 1842) , Borzoi Poe, II, 930. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 113 Case of M. Valdemar," "Mesmeric Revelation"), have, as I I have said, posed difficulties in the ironic reading of his I"Gothic" works. Thus a few of these remarks are worth a ! I brief look, for they are at best ambivalent, and often they are clearly satiric. Marginalia 16, for example, would seem to pose a major obstacle to my claim for Poe's ironic I I detachment concerning sleep-waking revelation. He writes I that there is a "certain class of fancies, of exquisite I delicacy, which are not thoughts, and to which, as yet, I I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt language." i ! These perceptions are "mere points of time where the con- I fines of the waking world blend with those of the world of idreeuns"; they come "only when I am upon the very brink of sleep, with the consciousness that I eun so." These "psy- chal impressions" are "of a character supernal to human nature,” a "glimpse of the spirit's outer world." Poe claims that he has increased his awareness of such visions and has cultivated an ability to "startle myself . . . into wakefulness; and thus transfer the point itself into the realm of Memory . . . ."12 Such remarks sound quite seri ous and would tend to support the non-ironic Romanticist ireading of "Eleonora," except that the over-all point of the marginal note has to do with the legitimacy of trying to think during the very process of writing. Poe quotes 12stoddard, V, 192-196. R ep r o d u ced w ith p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 114 Montaigne to the effect that he never thought until he sat down to write, a practice, Poe says, that must be the "cause of so much indifferent composition." But Poe says that Montaigne's remark has at least partial validity, for what words do is "logicalize" previous thought. Through writing, Poe says, thoughts attain greater distinctiveness than when first conceived. The Romantic, supernal dream fcuicies or visions are something else, unlogical thought, perhaps; but in the process of waking into awareness and transferring the dreams into "Memory," Poe is concerned to "survey them with the eye of analysis" (V, 195). This then is Poe the ambivalently skeptical Romantic, interested in visions, ecstasies, emotions, subconscious perceptions, but also interested in rational analysis: Poe, in fact, sug gests that what gives sleep impressions their impact is that they seem so novel, so supremely original, that the sleep-waker himself regards them with "an awe," with a "conviction . . . that this ecstasy, in itself" is super nal and spiritual, and is thus a "portion of the ecstasy itself"— that is to say, the feeling of their supernatural quality is self-generated by the dreamer (V, 196, 194). This marginal note presents in a nice balance both the at titudes of the rationalist and the Romantic, although the over-all tone is one of worthy of the vates, the writer- seer— no doubt for the benefit of his Romantic readers, who will be "compelled to acknowledge" that he has "done an R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 115 original t h i n g . "^3 The same ambivalent skepticism is to be found in Poe's I Marginalia comment on a book on human magnetism by Williaun jNewnhcun, wherein Poe argues against Newnhaun's circular I logic and points out the subjectivity of human belief. IThat "the belief in ghosts, or in a Deity, or in a future I state, or in anything else credible or incredible . . . is I universal, demonstrates nothing more than . . • the iden- i tity of construction in the human brain . . . ."14 But Poe's final attitude toward mesmerism, magnetism, t I and the like is, like his initial one, sarcastically skep tical. In Eureka he wrote that although men have felt that there is some principle ordering the universe, something be- jyond the Law of Gravity, no one has really pointed out the ; particulars of such a principle— if we except, perhaps, occasional fantastic efforts at referring it to Magnetism, or Mesmerism, or Swedenborgi- anism, or Transcendentalism, or some other equally deli cious ism of the same species, and invarieüaly patronized by one and the same species of people.15 15y, 196. Poe's interest in the subjective depths of the mind logicalized and wrought into order is clearly the objective-subjectivity of the Romantic ironists. i I 14Marginalia 201 (Stoddard, V, 322-324). The human I mind is susceptible to suggestion, and to "epigrammatism." IA man can "feign himself a sphynx or a griffin, but it would never do to regard as thus demonstrated the actual ! existence of either griffins or sphynxes." Poe does, how ever, claim to agree with some of the (illogically at tained) general conclusions, but he does not specify them. ISworks, XVI, 223. R ep r o d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 116 A further link between Poe and the German Romantic I Ironists and "night-side" materials is to be found in the idream-theories of "Novalis" (Friedrick von Hardenburg, I 11772-1801). Novalis at the same time that he thought poet ry should be the musical rendering of subconscious dreams, I also called for a conscious irony. Poetry according to iNovalis, is the "truly, absolutely real"; it is thought, play, truth, aspiration— in short, all of man's volitional, I I "free" activity. Novalis thought language to be a system I of hieroglyphics wherewith we are able to read the natural 1 world. True poetry, then, is symbolic, and as such, partly conscious thought and partly subconscious (reflecting the real). Poetry, according to Novalis, is, or should be, dreamlike, making use of free association and wordplay; there might even be a poetry "without connection, but with association, like dreams— poems merely euphonious and full of beautiful words, but without sense or connection." The supremity of poetry, the insistence on symbol and dreamy, associative verbal music are all obviously relevant to Poe's concepts of poetry. Regarding fiction, however, and regarding conscious craftsmanship in general, Poe's : evaluation of Novalis' ideas is ambivalent. Novalis ! claimed that the greatest freedom for the literary artist lies in fiction, and especially in the fairy-tale since it 16see Wellek, History, II, 84. R ep ro d u ced w ith p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithou t p erm issio n . 117 I Ideals with the world before and beyond time and history. IThe novel should be but a variant of the fairy-tale, making use of an irony that aims at the "annihilation” of apparent I contradictions and the attainment of a harmonious concept Iof wholeness. irony, Novalis wrote, involves the union in Ithe humem being of both the conscious and the subconscious i jfacets of the mind. Irony records an illumination through I a double-vision; it reveals a true presence of mind at- jtained through the ego's having passed through the subcon- jscious realm. As we have seen, Poe was interested in the I fictional uses of "perception" through the subconscious, Ithrough half-conscious sleep-states, through mesmeric 'trances, and the like. But Poe the craftsman could not ac cept Novalis* ideas about the artist's reliance on the sub- iconscious mind. Poe quoted in Marginalia 95 Novalis' aphorism that "the artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist," and commented that: . . . in nine cases out of ten it is pure waste of time to attempt extorting sense from a German apothegm;— or rather, any sense and every sense may be extorted from all of them.17 Poe then said that ^ the meaning of the aphorism is that 1 I the artist is a slave to his materials, to his theme, •Novalis is wrong; for the true artist selects his materials according to the impression he wants to convey, although he must conform to whatever inner logic the materials selected 17gtoddard, V, 243-245. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . , 118 Imay possess. Poe characteristically, and shrewdly, has it i both ways. He calls for both conscious craftsmanship and I intuitive recognition of the essence of the object, and he ! . I also both attacks another writer and yet partially accepts his ideas.18 The use Poe made of Novalis' ideas about dream-states and of other occult materials in "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844) to a large extent epitomizes his detached attitudes toward the mystic, transcendental, occult, pseudo scientific concerns of his age. The ostensible story in- t I volves metempsychosis and supernatural revelation in a half-conscious sleep-state, though (as we should expect) Poe climaxed the tale with a disturbingly unsatisfactory gimmick involving the backward spelling of a name, as "proof" of the supernatural occurrences. But the tale has a major irony insinuated into it that is typical of Poe's ambiguous and deceptive technique. By placing the tale in its nineteenth-century context and reading it carefully, Sidney E. Lind in an article on "Poe and Mesmerism" has shown that "Ragged Mountains" is Inot a realistically handled tale of the supernatural, but I is instead a psychological tale based on the possibilities with Montaigne in Marginalia 16, just discussed. See the ironic application o^ a passage from Novalis' Moral Opinions (about coincidence and the imperfection of real events as modified from the ideal realm) in the motto to "Marie Roget" (1842), Borzoi Poe, 1, 518-519, briefly dis cussed in Chapter IV of this study. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 119 I lof occult science— "a case study in mesmerism."^® There i Iare three characters in the tale: an observing narrator; IBedloe, who suffers from a general degenerative neuralgic icondition and is seeking help through mesmerism; and Dr. ITempleton, a practiced hypnotist. Bedloe one day goes out I for a long walk; returning late, he tells Templeton and the narrator of having fallen into a realistic dreamlike state in which he felt himself transported to a distant place Iwhere he was surrounded by enemies. Pausing in his story Ito assure the narrator and Templeton that his experience had "nothing of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream" but was "rigorously self-consistent,"20 Bedloe is antici- ! pated in his next sentence by Templeton. Bedloe is aston- :ished but continues telling the tale up to the point where he is killed by a poisoned arrow which strikes him in the right temple. The narrator suggests then that the "death" proves the experience to have been a dream, for here Bedloe is, alive. Templeton, however, is horrified and insists on hearing more. Bedloe tells him how he viewed his own corpse and then with unearthly lightness had "flitted" back 19pMLA, 62:1078-1085, December 1947. 20Borzoi Poe, I, 518. Bedloe says that "Novalis errs not in saying that 'we are near waking when we dream that we dream. ' Had the vision occurred to me as I describe it, without my suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it might absolutely have been, but, occurring as it did, and sus pected and tested as it was, I am forced to class it among other phenomena" (519). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 120 I to the Virginia mountains where he had been walking. Tern- i jpleton then produces a miniature of his friend Oldeb, {points out the resemblance to Bedloe, and tells the tale of I jOldeb's death nearly fifty years before; Oldeb had been killed in India by a poisoned arrow under the circumstances experienced by Bedloe; moreover, Templeton had been writing jof these events this very afternoon. A week later, at the height of a fever brought on by his walk in the Ragged jMountains, Bedloe dies from the doctor's accidental appli cation of a poisonous leech to his temple. At the end of ithe story, when the narrator complains that an e has been dropped from Bedloe's name in an obituary notice, it strikes him that this is Oldeb reversedI As Lind says, the tale on the surface seems to in volve a combination of hypnosis and metempsychosis. But Poe actually uses only the "science" of mesmerism while, deceptively, suggesting more supernatural events so forci bly that we tend at first to accept them and to mistake the real nature of the story. Poe clearly emphasizes mesmerism in the opening portion of the tale; Templeton can put Bed loe into a hypnotic trance quite easily, "by mere volition" and over a distance, standard mesmeric procedure, according to Lind (p. 1081). Then Poe carefully makes clear that Templeton first became interested in Bedloe when he noticed a "miraculous similarity" to his friend Oldeb; subsequently, Templeton developed an "uneasy and not altogether horror- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 121 I less curiosity" about Bedloe (I, 521). When Bedloe ex pressed his doubt that his experience in the mountains had jbeen only a dream, Templeton agreed, "with an air of deep I solemnity," and hinted mysteriously that "the soul of the jmsm. of to-day is upon the verge of some stupendous psychal discoveries" (I, 520). Templeton, therefore is a believer Iin ghostly experiences, specifically in metempsychosis, and he has been preoccupied during his relationship with Bedloe 'with the idea that behind the likenesses of Bedloe and lOldeb there lurks some deep and perhaps terrible signifi cance (Lind, p. 1081); and as he listens to Bedloe's story jhe sits "erect and rigid in his chair," his teeth chatter ing and his eyes "starting from their sockets" (I, 520). But although Bedloe often walked in the mountains, his ex- i 1 perience occurred only on the day that Templeton was writ ing his recollections of Oldeb; this coincidence and Poe's early emphasizing of mesmerism clearly imply that the sym pathetic and subdued will of Bedloe received the strongly emotional thoughts of Templeton through involuntary mesmer ic transference and that he experienced them as dreamlike iactuality. But to Templeton, as Lind says (p. 1084), the experience is "a sudden and shocking revelation and con- 'firmation of that in which he has hitherto half-believed— the actuality of metempsychosis"; Oldeb's soul lives in Bedloe. Lind leaves the matter here, essentially, reading the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 122 tale as a kind of ambiguous hoax, in which all the charac ters are duped, first Templeton, then Bedloe, and then the narrator, into believing in the apparent metempsychosis. The reader, too, is duped or hoaxed if he misses the clues and takes the "psychological" tale as a supernatural one. But there are, along with the absurd shattering of effect when the narrator is convinced by the typographical error, a number of other insinuated ironies. Lind argues that the tale would have been better if it had been the credulous Templeton rather than the narrator who muttered to himself at the end that Oldeb is but Bedloe conversed; but I think that Poe had a slightly different point in mind. Templeton's "not altogether horrorless" fascination i {with Bedloe's resemblance to Oldeb, his uneasy "sentiment jof horror" that causes him to keep it a secret, his teeth- Ichattering horror as he listens to Bedloe's tale, and his claim that he had tried to prevent the death of Oldeb are i I all ambiguous enough to provide one more psychological turn to the screw; horrified by Oldeb's "return," Templeton may have psychotically rekilled him in the person of Bedloe. An absurd corroboration, though less absurd than the typo graphical error and the backward spelling of Bedloe's name, is to be found in Templeton's name, for Oldeb is struck in ^iThere is also an ambiguous financial arrangement be tween Bedloe and Templeton, enabling Templeton to give up his practice. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 123 the temple by a poison arrow, and Bedloe is poisoned by a leech attached to his temple by Templeton. The submerged pun (which Lind notes also) links both the supernatural dream and Bedloe's death to the hypnotist. Further corrob oration of the "murder" of Bedloe is provided by the news paper account: . . . it appeared that in the jar containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of the venemous vermicular sangsues which are now and then found in the neighboring ponds. This creature fastened itself upon a small artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the medicinal leech caused the mistake to be over looked until too late. N. B. The poisonous sangsue of Charlottesville may always be distinguished from the medicinal leech by its blackness, and especially by its writhing or vermicular motions, which very nearly resemble those of a snake. (I, 521) In the ostensible Romantic and supernatural atmosphere of the tale, the serpentlike motions and blackness of the poi son leech mysteriously correspond with the "writhing" Indian^ arrow, made in imitation of a creeping serpent, long and black and tipped with a poison barb, that struck Oldeb in the temple. But the account also contains a sign in capi tal letters asking the reader to "mark well" the fact that the poisonous leech may "always" be distinguished from the medicinal, a distinction we might well expect the doctor to have been aware of. Thus, Poe has carefully planned the conclusion for an ironic double effect— for absurd Romantic corroboration of the supernatural and for absurd ironic corroboration of murder. If Templeton has murdered Bedloe, R ep ro d u ced w ith p erm issio n of th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ith out p erm issio n . 124 it is better that the narrator conclude the tale as he does rather than Templeton; for the narrator, at first the only I skeptic, is duped horribly and absurdly— as we are if we have not caught the ironic distance Pee has interposed be tween his observing narrator and us. Two other tales written eibout the same time also re flect Poe's ironic and ambiguous entertaining of the fic tional possibilities of mesmerism and the occult— "Mesmeric Revelation" (1844) and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valde- jmar" (1845). I do not wish to become tedious on this point, but Poe's seemingly serious use of mesmeric phenome na and the rationale of mesmerism is, as I have said, one of the principal obstacles to the ironic reading of his i total work. The metaphysics of "Mesmeric Revelation," in fact, seems to be Poe's first formal presentation of the philosophy of Eureka, while at the same time the stylized rhapsody and logical gaps of the tale clearly show why serious critics like Woodberry call the philosophic Poe "his own dupe," and why Eliot, Tate, and Levin so dislike Poe's "Romantic" style. But Poe is not quite completely serious.22 22in two letters written in July, 1844, just before the publication of "Mesmeric Revelation," Poe wrote James Russell Lowell and Thomas Holley Chivers brief summaries of his alternative to believing in "spirituality" that are parallel in phrasing to the tale (Letters, I, 256-260, let ters 179, 180). But, as always, it is hard to tell how serious Poe was. At this time Poe was trying, without luck, to get Lowell to join in a magazine venture, and one R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 125 I I The fictional frame for the philosophical dialog that I forms the main part of the tale involves two characters, a jhypnotist ("P.") who puts Mr. Vankirk, a dying man in the jlast stages of consumption, into a mesmeric sleep in order i to discuss the immortality of the soul. The rationale for I this experiment is that deep mesmeric sleep closely resem- ! jbles the "phenomena" of death, and the sleep-waker "per I iceives, with keenly refined perception . . . matters beyond i the scope of the physical organs . . . moreover, his intel- llectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigor ated. "23 In this deep sleep Vankirk tells "P." about the real nature of the universe until "with a bright smile ir radiating all his features" he falls back upon his pillow" and expires. His corpse "had all the stern rigidity of stonej^" "his brow was of the coldness of ice," suggesting phenomena of death that appear only after one has been dead for some time. The tale ends with the ostensibly unambigu- year afterward in a note on Lowell's latest "farce" of a Ibook Poe called him "the Anacharsis Clootz of American Let ters" (Works, XVI, 69-70). In "A Chapter on Autography" Poe called Chivers "at the same time one of the best and one of the worst poets in America" for "even his worst non sense (and some of it is horrible) has an indefinite charm of sentiment and melody," but "we can never be sure that there is any meaning in his words ..." (Works, XV, 241- 242). That Poe was hoaxing them seems to me to be a little borne out by his telling Chivers that "Mesmeric Revelation" was a philosophical "article" and then exuberantly proclaim ing the article to be "pure fiction" (Works, XVI, 71), though such usage is not everywhere consistent in Poe. 23Borzoi Poe, II, 583. (The name Vankirk suggests "of the church" and a Dutchman— Swedenborg?! R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 126 jous question (which if answered positively would "prove" the supernatural metaphysics of the tale): "Had the sleep- I jwaker, indeed, during the latter portion of his discourse, jbeen addressing me from out the regions of the shadows?" I (II, 550). Vankirk's revelations sound, on the surface, raptur ously profound, but if we look at what he says very closely, and note some of the exchanges between him and "P.", Vankirk's unexplained assumptions, circular logic, metaphysical jargon, and mystic-poetic epigrams, paradoxes, and oxymorons begin to look suspiciously like a parody of occult m e t a p h y s i c s .24 Typical of Vankirk's answers to "P.”'s questions is his paradox, "Your objection is an swered with an ease which is nearly in the ratio of its apparent unanswered^ility," which is immediately followed by a dismissal of a difficulty by putting another paradox: "As regards the progress of a star [through the ether of space], it can make no difference whether the star passes through the ether or the ether through it" (II, 547). Vankirk's revelation begins with what would have been a conventionally topsy-turvy contention that the essence of the universe is matter. Matter extends in gradations in creasing in "rarity or fineness until we arrive at a matter 24pagin suggests that the tale is rather like a "dead pan cartoon" of a sententious pedant (Histrionic Mr. Poe, p. 73). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 127 unparticled— without particles— indivisible— one .... This matter is God" (II, 545). "P." wonders if "in this identification of mere matter with God" there is "nothing of irreverence." Vankirk replies that there is no reason why "matter should be less reverenced than mind." God, it seems, is the "perfection of matter"; thought is "matter in jmotion"; motion is thought; thought in the "universal mind" jof God creates material things; God's thoughts create "new j individualities"— for which "matter is necessary" (II, 547). "P.", a bit confused, objects that Vankirk now speaks of "mind" and "matter" "as do the metaphysicians." "To avoid confusion," Vankirk replies. "Mind, existing incorporate" I is "merely" [1] God. God created "individual, thinking be ings " and thus had to "incarnate portions" of his mind. "Thus man is individualized. Divested of corporate inves titure, he were God." "P."; to make sure he has heard right, asks if Vankirk has said "that divested of the body man will be God." Vankirk> "after much hesitation," re- i plies "I could not have said this; it is an absurdity." I I But "P." refers to his notes. Vankirk then suggests that: I . . . man thus divested would be God— would be unindivid- ! ualized. But he can never be thus divested— at least never will be— else we must imagine an action of God returning upon itself— a purposeless and futile action. (II, 547-548) "P." is again confused. Vankirk explains that man has: . . . two bodies— the rudimental and the complete, cor- j R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 128 responding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call "death," is but the painful metamorphosis. . . . The ultimate life is the full design. IWe are not normally aware that this is the cycle of human i existence, argues Vankirk, because: . . . our rudimental organs are adapted to the matter of which is formed the rudimental body; but not to that of which the ultimate is composed. [We] perceive only the j shell which falls, in decaying, from the inner form . . . j but the inner form as well as the shell, is appreciable by those who have already acguirecl the ultimate life. I (lï,-? 4 8 1 ----------------------------- ----------------------------------------- I This last statement (my italics) is especially impor tant since, as Vankirk's explanations get more rapturous and wild, he contradicts himself on this very point, which is supposed to provide a rationale for man's earthly exist ence. Vankirk explains that throughout the universe there t is an "infinity" of "rudimental thinking beings" other than man, and that the "multitudinous conglomeration" of "rare matter" into "nebulae, planets, suns, and others" which are "neither nebulae, suns, nor planets" is merely to supply "pabulum" for "an infinity of rudimental beings." Thus, the stars that earthly man looks at with interest are not I at all important; instead what is truly important is the "substantive" space that "swallows up" the "star-shadows," "blotting them out as non-entities from the perception of angels" (II, 549, my italics). Vankirk seems not to notice that if the rudimental material of the stars is, as he says, blotted out from the perception of the angels, then R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 129 I the "full design" of the two-body system of existence is violated, since both the "inner form" and "the shell" are supposed to be apprecieüsle by the angelic beings now in their ultimate bodies. Vankirk*s dialog ends here in the earlier version of the tale, and he dies ecstatically. Apparently thinking that the tale was too ambiguous in this form, however, Poe jin the later version inserted a long paragraph in which he I has Vankirk repeat his self-contradiction and add a further jrationale for earthly existence that becomes perhaps the major irony of the tale.25 "p." does not ask Vankirk about ihis contradictory statement (perhaps he does not yet per- iceive it, for "P." is the involved narrator-mesmerist of i the tale). Instead, he wonders what the "necessity" of all this complex "rudimental" evolution into the "ultimate" could possibly be. Vankirk answers that "organic life and matter" were "contrived" with the "view of producing imped iment." "P.", naturally enough, wonders why "impediment" was needed. Vankirk's answer is roundabout: the "result of law inviolate is perfection— right— negative happiness"; but the "result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, pos itive pain”; through the "impediments afforded" by the "number, complexity, and substantiality" of matter, the "violation of law" is rendered "practicable" and thus pain 25see the notes in Works, V, 326. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 130 lis possible (II, 549). "P." points out that Vankirk has I not told him what the point of all this complexity, impedi- I Iment, and pain is. Vankirk answers that "all things are {either good or bad by comparison," that pleasure "is but {the contrast of pain. Positive pleasure is a mere idea." I !We must suffer in order to know bliss; and since in the in organic , ultimate life we do not suffer, we have first to I suffer the pain of organic life (Vankirk is dying from con- I sumption) so that we shall know that we are experiencing {"the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven"; pain is "the sole basis" of bliss (II, 550). After this melancholy explanation of earthly life, which is painfully relevant to Vankirk*s own condition, "P." returns to the point on which Vankirk has contradicted himself, the "substantive vastness" of space and the unim portance (imperceptibleness) of the stars to the angelic beings. Vankirk's second rhapsody on the immaterial materi ality of space begins with another blatant paradox. Infin ity is substantive, Vankirk says, because substance is a "sentiment" (II, 550). He has an explanation for this par adox, however: substance is the "perception, in thinking I beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization." 'To "inorganic beings— to the angels— the whole of unparti cled matter is substance . . . the whole of what we term 'space,' is to them truest substantiality." Just as we do not see the apparently immaterial material of the universe. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . ......131 angels do not see such material as the stars; it escapes "the angelic sense." Having thus unconsciously confirmed the purposeless creation of sentient beings and having characterized all human feeling as only "negative pleasure" and "positive pain," the mystic sleep-waker dies— the per ception of the "full design" of the universe "irradiating his features" in a "bright smile." A chilling irony, indeed. Poe's revision a year later, in which he inserted Van kirk' s long, melancholy recontradiction just before his beatific death, subtly emphasizes the irony and parody basic to this "philosophical" dialog. But there is also a good deal of external evidence for Poe's irony. One of Poe's favorite critical pastimes was the debunking of at tempts at rhetorical persuasion through mere "epigrammat- ism," equivocation-on words, and circular logic, as we have seen in his comments on William Newnham's Human Magnetism. "Mesmeric Revelation" begins with just such logic, and with an ironic clue. Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mes- ' merism, its startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession— an unprofitable and disrepu-j table tribe. (II, 543) j The "facts" of the tale are, of course, that Vankirk | attained a state between life and death through mesmerism 1 and thus proved the rationale of mesmerism and the mystic- met aphy sics therein revealed. But in Marginalia 1 Poe ! R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . ^ 132 |glee£ully complains about English commentaries and reprint- I * lings of "Mesmeric Revelation" and "Valdemar." The Popular ! Record of Modern Science had claimed that the revelations Iin these tales bore "internal evidence of authenticity!" ipoe's comment on the circular logic of this internal "evi dence ," especially in "Valdemar," to be discussed momen tarily, is sarcastic: . . . all this rigmarole is what people call testing a thing by "internal evidence." The Record insists upon the truth of the story because of certain facts .... i To be sure! The story is proved by these facts .... I And now all we have to do is to prove the facts. Ah!— they are proved by the s t o r y . 26 We have seen also that in Eureka the rationale of mes merism is, for Poe, but a "delicious ism" of a certain "species" of people. In the middle of 1844 Poe is supposed to have attended lectures on "mesmerism, transcendental theories, and psychic phenomena" given in New York by Andrew Jackson Davis, "a noted spiritualist and clairvoyant of that d a y . "27 Davis, in The Magic Staff (1857), wrote of a visit from Poe during which they discussed "Mesmeric Revelation :" Davis had assured Poe that although Poe . . . had poetically imagined the whole of his published article upon the answers of a clairvoyant, the main ideas conveyed by it concerning "ultimates" were strictly and philosophically true. At the close of this interview he 26stoddard, V, 179-182. 27"Poe and Mesmerism," pp. 1086-1087; following quota tion from Davis given by Lind. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 133 departed, and never came again. (Davis, p. 317) But Poe in No. 11 of "Fifty Suggestions" wrote of the "Poughkeepsie Clairvoyant:" "There surely cannot be 'more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of" (oh, Andrew Jackson Davis 1) "in your philosophy.'"28 Moreover, to "Mellonta Tauta," (1849) a satire on logic, on culture, and on American concepts of progress (in great part adapted from a section of Eureka), Poe added a notation to the editors of Godey's Lady's Book (in which the tale appeared). He wrote that the article, which "I hope you will be able to comprehend rather more distinctly than I do myself," was: . . . a translation, by my friend Martin Van Buren Mavis, (sometimes called the "Toughkeepsie Seer") of an odd- looking MS. which I found, about a year ago, tightly corked up in a jug floating in the Mare Tenebrarwn— a sea well described by the Nubian geographer, but seldom vis ited now-a-days, except for the transcendentalists and divers for crotchets.^^ Perhaps the most direct external corroboration of Poe's ironic skepticism regarding the whole business of "Mesmeric Revelation" is provided by his gleefully sarcastic response to being taken seriously by the occult mystics in general. In Marginalia 205 he wrote: ! The Swedenborgians inform me that they have discovered 2®Stoddard, I, 489. ^^Borzoi Poe, II, 683. The Nubian geographer's Mare Tenebrarum. we should recall, is the piquant allusion that opens one of Poe's occult tales considered earlier, Eleonora." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 134 all that I said in a magazine article, entitled "Mesmeric Revelation," to be absolutely true, although at first they were very strongly inclined to doubt my veracity— a thing which, in that particular instance, I never dreamed of not doubting nyself. The story is a pure fiction from beginning to end.30 In "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," Poe ex plored, in a sense, the "opposite" possibilities of mesmer- jism and death-sleep, carrying the "night-side" writings of I Justinus Kerner to an extremity of horror that yet suggest I a comic grotesquerie, a weird combination of harmoniously blended contradictions.31 m. Valdemar, like Vankirk, dying of consumption, agrees to summon the narrator when he knows that he is near death; but in this instance the narrator is I supposed to arrest the "encroachments of Death" through i m e s m e r i s m .32 The experiment is ambiguously successful, and I Valdemar is suspended in a state of life-in-death sleep. When the narrator tries to communicate with him at the end of a seven-month period, Valdemar cries out in anguish, asking either to be put back into a deeper trance or to be 30stoddard, V, 328. 3lKerner, as I have already pointed out, sought the j"truth" about human existence and the nature of the uni verse in epilepsy, madness, and the like, as well as in mesmeric sleepr His Seeress of Prevorst was translated from German to English in 1045, the year "Valdemar" was published. The death of Mrs. H , the seeress, is simi lar to Valdemar's, although she dies joyfully. The simi larity was first pointed out by the anonymous writer of Rambles and Reveries of an Art Student in Europe (1855); see Lind, pp. 1091-10^2. 32sorzoi Poe, II, 656. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 135 |"awaücened" into final death. The narrator brings him out ! jof the trance emd watches with horror as Valdemar's body I {immediately crumbles and rots away into "a nearly liquid {mass of loathsome— of detestable putridity" (II, 663). I Thus, even if "Mesmeric Revelation" is not read as a parody on the beatitudes of the psychal mystics, we are still {faced with an apparent about-face on Poe's part the very next year in the horror of "Valdemar." Such a twist of ap- jparent intent and belief, however, is characteristic of the IRomantic Ironists, and of Poe. One of the prominent features of "Valdemar" is its Iapparent verisimilitude, which caused the tale to be taken i I for a time as fact in both England and America. Poe de scribes the arrested death of Valdemar in grisly detail. As he slips into a deep trance, Valdemar's eyes roll upward to leave only the staring whites, his cadaverous skin takes ! on the hue of thin white paper, his upper lip writhes away from his teeth, his lower jaw falls with an audible jerk and locks, leaving the mouth widely extended and exhibiting a swollen and blackened tongue; from these gaping, motion less jaws comes (with a faint quiver of the swollen tongue) the harsh, broken, distantly hollow (as from a cavern deep in the earth), somehow gelatinous yet still distinct voice of Valdemar, claiming that he has died (II, 660-661). Later, when Valdemar awakes, his rapid disintegration into a liquid mass on the bed is signaled by a yellow, pungent R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 136 fluid issuing from his eyes (11, 662). Yet such horror has, nevertheless, touches of the com ic, illustrative of what Poe meant by the "ludicrous height ened into the grotesque." At the beginning of the tale, we are told that Valdemar is: . . . particularly noticeable for the extreme spareness of his person— his lower limbs much resembling those of John Randolph; and also for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to the blackness of his hair— the latter in consequence, being very generally mistaken for a wig. (II, 656) Moreover, Valdemar is described as the "well-known compiler of the 'Biblioteca Forensica,' and author (under the nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of 'Wallen stein' and 'Gargantua'" (II, 656). The exact point of the apparently satiric references to Randolph, Schiller, and Rabelais, I find a big ambiguous. But to have labored like the ass Issachar, bowed down between two burdens (Genesis, 49), in translating on the one hand Schiller's heroic play and on the other Rabelais' burlesque prose epic, and to have startling white whiskers in violent contrast to black hair, certainly suggests some kind of not completely serious sym bolic doubleness.33 Again, Poe is indulging in the hoaxer's ^^The languages may be important too, for Poe once found a translation of the Book of Jonah into German hexam eters comic, though he said he did not know why (Marginalia 120, Stoddard, V, 262). See T. 0. Mabbott's notes to "Val- demar" in Selected Poetry and Prose, p. 424, for a comment on Issachar, Schiller, and Reibelais; Mabbott thinks Poe did not care for Schiller or Rabelais, but I think the thrust is at Valdemar rather than at them, or is an intended comic clue to the qualities of the hoax, satire, or parody in the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 137 jest, combining the comic with effective and apparently re alistic grisly details— details which, if examined, are ab surd. Medical jargon, especially, servies Poe's double pur pose of suggesting the real while actually writing adssurd- ity. "The left-lung had been for eighteen months in a semi- osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality" (II, 657). All but the lower half of the "right lobe" also exhibits this ossi fied state; and the small portion left is full of "extensive perforations" and has undergone "permanent adhesion to the ribs"; in fact, the whole of the functioning region of the right lung "was merely a mass of purulent tubercles running one into another" (II, 657). In addition to these difficul ties, Valdemar apparently has "aneurism of the aorta," al though the "osseous symptoms rendered an exact diagnosis im possible" (II, 658). Not only has Poe's narrator given us an impossibly exact diagnosis of internal tissues in a still-living being, he has also made an impossible condition sound almost plausible: three-quarters of Valdemar's lungs has turned to bone, the other quarter (on which Valdemar re lies for purposes of vitality) is a mass of puss, adhesions, and holes, and he has a fatal aneurism. Despite this rathez or parody in the tale. A. H. Quinn (p. 330) seems so puz zled by the humor-horror of the story that he calls "Valde mar" a "lapse from artistic sanity." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 138 extreme condition, despite the fact that he has been given twenty-four hours to live, despite his ghastly appearance (his face "leaden" hued, his eyes "lustreless," the paperish skin of his face "broken through by the cheek-bones," his "emaciation extreme," his expectoration excessive," his "pulse barely perceptible"), Valdemar, when the narrator ar rives, is sitting up in bed writing and conversing (II, 657). Later (after Mr. L— — 1, a medical student, has swooned upon hearing the vibrating tongue quivering in the gaping jaws of Valdemar, and is revived by several nurses), the narrator allows a grotesque pun to escape him as he shifts Valdemar's position on the bed in an attempt to "re compose" his patient, who momentarily begins to decompose. Aside from the contrast between the horrors of "Valde- I mar" and the "radiant" joy of almost the same situation in I "Mesmeric Revelation," Poe's several comments about the two jtales also put "Valdemar" into ironic perspective. We have lalready seen Poe's gleeful repudiation in Marginalia 1 of the claim of the Popular Record of Modern Science that the two tales bore "internal evidence of authenticity!" In the same note, Poe also commented on the disbelief of the Morn ing Post. In insisting that the details of Valdemar's con- umption are incredible and reveal the writer's ignorance, he Post, Poe said, missed the point of his verisimilitude, nd displayed their own ignorance of pathology. Such symp- oms, Poe continued, are plausible in the story and are ased on actual diseases. Poe then pointed out that he had jto "put an extreme case" lest the reader suspect that the R ep r o d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 139 victim survived without the help of the mesmerist (Stod dard, V, 183). Although by itself Poe's last comment is inconclusive, it does suggest Poe's awareness of multiple and deceptive meaning. In two letters, however, the point is clearer. Writing to Evert Duyckinck (March 8, 1849), Poe said that he thought the reason so many people believed in the reality of "Valdemar" was indeed the apparent "ver- similitude of the tale; and in a letter replying to a query from one Arch Ramsay (December 30, 1846), Poe wrote: "Hoax" ^ precisely the word suited to ny "Valdemar's" Case .... The article was generally copied in England and is now circulating in France. Some few persons be lieve it— but 1 do not— and don't y o u . 34 Human magnetism, mesmerism, metempsychosis, sleep-wak ing, electrical phenomena, spontaneous combustion, and the like figured prominently in the supernatural and horrifying tales of German, English, and American fiction writers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and were staple elements in the pages of the influential Black- I wood's Edinburgh Magazine. The German Romantic Ironists, however, in contrast to regular Romanticists and Gothi- cists, used these materials, as did Poe, for double effect, I I half-mocking and half-serious, to develop the theme of the 34Letters, II, 433, letter 308; 337, letter 245. In the letter to Duyckinck, primarily about the pure verisi militude of a new "hoax" that he had written ("Van Kempe- len"), Poe mentioned Defoe's verisimilitude, behind which "we are permitted, now & then, to perceive a tone of banter," a comment reminiscent of A. W. Schlegel on "veri- similitude" in the "mixed" genre of the serio-comic. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 140 deceptlveness of appearances. Writers like Tieck, Heinrich von Kleist, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Clemens Brentano, and "Jean Paul" Richter took from Kantian philosophy the central idea 1 |of the limitations of human sense perceptions and used the ^eird and terrifying aspects of "nature" and mental aberra tion ambiguously to suggest both a transcendental world be- jyond human ken and the invariable deceptiveness of any ^uman perception or thought, especially since the human mind is readily subject to emotional s t r e s s . 35 Kleist's technique, for example, was to contrast the {delusive and the actual for double impact, first developing |a state of emotional confusion, and then resolving apparent ly weird conditions realistically, misperception and misun derstanding often taking ambivalently comic turns as dif ferent "truths" about a situation become evident through presentation in an indefinitely extended series. Poe, I suggest, did much the seune thing, developing the sense of weirdness from the "real" and from emotional stress, though Poe's "realistic" resolutions, given as he was to the hoax, to the half-mock, are only occasionally immediately clear. Hoffmann, the German writer usually considered to have had i the most pervasive and direct influence on Poe (though Poe nowhere mentions his name), made frequent use of "realistic" ! scientific and pseudo-scientific instruments and inventions 35The brief survey that follows is based principally bn Oskar Walzel's German Romanticism, pp. 231-254 ff. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I 141 I I for their weird qualities, such as the chemical mixtures, 'the telescope lenses, and the automaton of his well-known jtale "The S a n d m a n ,"36 Hoffmann also frequently made natu- I Irai sounds, familiar surroundings, and the merely eccentric iseem marvelous, or weird, or terrifying to his emotionally Idistraught characters, and frequently he used the motif of Ithe double, or seeming double, for a suggested confronta- ! ition of the mind with itself— which are, of course, promi- jnent features of many of Poe's tales. At the same time, Ithe comic and the absurd were major elements in Hoffmann's works. In "Kater Murr," the protagonist writes his life- ;thoughts on some wastepaper on which another man's biogra- I phy has been written. The printer accidently mixes up the pages, with the result that Murr's writing repeatedly ends in the middle of sentences and alternates with pages from the other man's life, producing an indirect comic-ironic I confrontation with a double. Brentano carried such comic, illusion-destroying techniques to an extreme. In one of his works, the "author" confronts his own characters with a cry of surprise, describes scenes he has already written about by referring the reader to volume and page, and 36"The Sandman" was extensively reviewed by Sir Walter Scott in the first issue of the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1827, a periodical that Poe followed. The fact that Poe never mentioned Hoffmann has been taken by some Hoffmann- Poe critics (like Palmer Cobb) as nearly conclusive evi dence in itself that Poe was indebted to him. (Given Poe's other liftings, the idea is not perhaps unreasonable.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 142 I finally dies from the boredom of writing the second part of I I the novel. I Similar tactics were used by "Jean Paul" Richter, who I intruded songs and dreaunlike or absurd narrative intermez zos into his fiction (as, I suggest, Poe does, for similar reasons, in tales like "Usher") in an attempt to produce a harmonious double effect of following "steam baths of emo tion" with "cold showers of s a t i r e . "37 insisting on a phi losophical awareness of the doubleness of existence (espe- i cially the two extremes of the mind, conscious reflection and mysterious subconscious impulses), Jean Paul made weirdly humorous use of the doppelgftnger to suggest a split, dissociated ego, one part usually acting, the other part observing, again a typical situation in Poe's fiction. Jean Paul's characters become terrified of their images in mirrors, or they meet their doubles on the street, or they compulsively make their own wax likenesses. Looking at his body, one of his characters remarks, "Somebody is sitting there and I am in him. Who is t h a t ? " 3 8 The artist himself also should have a sense of doubleness. "In my conscious- ;ness," Jean Paul wrote, "It is always as if I were doubled; I as if there were two I's in me. Within I hear myself 3?or as Irving Babbitt in Chapter VII of Rousseau and Romanticism translates this statement: "hot baths o£ sen timent" followed by "cold douches of irony." But see Walzel, pp. 231-232. 38see Wellek, II, 102. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . { 143 ! Italking."39 This sense of doubleness, of acting and ob- I serving or being observed, is like Tieck*s "irony" in his I iearly plays; and, as in Tieck, there is also a further {doubleness: on the one hand there is something sinister and destructive about the feeling, and on the other hand it is absurd and laughed>le, and may be productive of "free dom. " I M. H. Abrams in The Mirror and the Lamp uses Jean Paul to illustrate one extreme of German night-side "depth-psy- I jchology," especially for the development of the Romantic I idea of myth into a conception of the subconscious arche type . Abreuns writes: Richter, building on earlier suggestions of the chaos, I the darkness, and the mysterious depths in the creative mind, develops the night-side of the unconscious . . . in his writings we find ourselves half way from Leibniz to that later inheritor of the depth-psychology of German romanticism, Carl Jung. (p. 211) Jean Paul, according to Abrams, clearly foreshadowed Jung's theories about man's collective unconscious and archetypal experience when he wrote of the unconscious realm of the mind as an "abyss" of which "we can hope to fix the exist ence, not the depth," and which "has a presentiment of . . . objects . . . beyond the reaches of time." This well of unconscious activity contains, says Abrams, "the common origins of dreams, the sense of terror and guilt, demonol- ogy, and myth." Although this realm of the unconscious and 39see Thompson, Dry Mock, p. 51, R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . ; 144 I archetypal has mamy forms and names, its essential quali- i ties are double, the terrifying and the sublime. Jean Paul 'wrote : I At one time it shows itself to men deeply involved in guilt . . . as a being before whose presence . . . we are terrified; this feeling we call the fear of ghosts .... Again the spirit shows itself as The Infinite, and man prays. (p. 212) I Allen Tate feels that Poe, projecting from his own subconscious mind the archetypal terrors of the race, prob- i ably did not have full conscious artistic awareness of what I Ihe had done in his writings, and that the ludicrous ele- I 'ments of Poe's tawdry Gothic style are proof of his incom- iplete awareness and control. But it is clear, I think, that Tate underestimates Poe's awareness of the literary ideas of his times, and also misconstrues the principal aim of Poe's kind of "serious" Romeuxtic fiction, which is to explore, ambivalently, the irrational sources of man's ter ror and despair in order to master them (as Fichte sug gested) through a doubled vision, through "humor" and "irony." Jean Paul's word was humor, "annihilating" and "Satan ic, " rather than irony. Humor, according to Jean Paul, is the "Romantic comic," the "sublime in reverse"; and rational statements alone, without the ambivalent comic sense of the irrational, are one-sided. The comic is in effect both ob jective and subjective. On a grand scale, the comic is "intuited infinite Unreason." More narrowly, the subjec- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 145 tlve element of comedy lies in the contrast between the stupidity of the comic action and the good sense of the spectator who lends or projects upon a comic character his own sense of incongruity. The objective element in the comic is our freedom of choice between our own insight, and that of the comic figure, and that aspect of insight that we lend to the comic figure in his situation. The mind toys, says Jean Paul, with various possibilities, plays, and dances in "freedom."^® Echoing Friedrich Schlegel's concept of selbstparodie, Jean Paul's definitions of the artist's role in the produc tion of "annihilating humor" provide a further context for what has seemed to the Gothicist critics of Poe a particu larly problematic idiosyncrasy. Poe is often criticized 40And genius is the ability to harmonize contradic tions and even to "annihilate"them. Jean Paul's theory of comic contrasts in Chapter IV of his Introduction to Es- thetics (1804, revised 1813) influenced Haziitt (whom Poe read) in his essay on "Wit and Humour" in the Lectures on the Comic Writers (1819) and is perhaps indirectly the source of Poe^s definitions of Fancy, Imagination, Humor, and Fantasy (mentioned earlier and to be discussed later in Chapter IV). According to Wimsatt and Brooks (Literary Criticism, pp. 378 ff.) Jean Paul's concept of humor evolved from the English concept of "humours" associated with character types and especially with exaggerations and oddities, and developed into a philosophy of toleration, of sweeping insight into the contradictions of the world. For a fair sample, in translation, of Jean Paul's theory of humor in the Esthetics, see Theories of Comedy, ed. Paul Lauter (New York, 1964), pp. 314-323. (See also Wellek, II, 106: Jean Paul considered the subconscious capable of guid ing the artist as though by divine wisdom, as well as frightening him.) Haziitt'a first lecture is also re printed in Lauter, pp. 262-294. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 146 for his sometimes startling intrusions of apparently auto- jbiographical elements into a number of his wilder tales I(like the date of William Wilson's birth and his name and Ithe place of his education; or like the cousin-wife and her I [mother in "Eleonora"t or like the supposed similarity of the portrait of Usher to Poe's own face; not to mention the iever-present "I" of the tales). But the Romantic-Ironic point of such a technique is made clear in Article 34 of Jeeui Paul's Esthetics ; . . . I divide my ego into two factors, the finite and the infinite, and 1 make the latter confront the former. ' People laugh at that, for they say, "Impossible! That is much too absurd!" To be sure! Hence in the humorist the ego plays the lead; wherever possible he brings upon his I comic stage his personal conditions, but only to annihi- I late them poetically. For he is himself his own fool and the comic quartet of Italian masks, himself the manager I and director . . . .*1 Thus, through "self-parody," "annihilating humor," and "doubleness," one can achieve freedom from the depressing conditions of earthly existence, especially Schelling's "limited self-identity" and Goethe's "vehement necessity." Through humor man can look tolerantly at the whimsy and the horror, the eccentricity and the madness of the world with I a self-preserving laughter "wherein is sorrow and great- jness."42 Jean Paul's humor is almost the same as Schle- gel's Romantic Irony t the largest and freest view of the 4lTranslated in Thompson, pp. 66-67. 42see Wimsatt and Brooks, p. 379. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . i {paradoxical and rather sinister world. Indeed, applying a different term, Friedrich Schlegel wrote that Jean Paul's I "grotesques" were "the only romantic products of this un romantic age."43 i Thus, the thrust of the philosophy, the criticism, and the literature of German Romanticism was, for a while, to- jward an ultimate harmony involving a unification of oppo- jsites, an annihilation of apparent contradictions and I earthly limitations, and a merging of the subjective human personality and objective rational understanding into a I penetrating view of existence from the height of the Ideal ; — but always with an eye to the terrors of an ultimately incomprehensible, disconnected, absurd, probably decaying, and possibly malevolent universe. The spirit of Romanti cism, Oskar Walzel suggests, centered on penetrating through sensory perception to ultimate secrets behind appearance, secrets that were increasingly felt to lie within the mind i t s e l f . 44 The only attainable harmony out of all this de ceptiveness and chaos was a double vision, a double aware ness, a double emotion, culminating in an eunbivalent joy of stoical self-possession— in irony, an êunbivalent pessimism I and skepticism engendered by the self-awareness of the sub- <jective human mind reaching out toward an illusive 43Rayser, The Grotesque, p. 54. 44çerman Romanticism, p. 243. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 148 i certainty. : Summarizing the German literature at the end of the eighteenth century, Walzel remarks that the common trait to I the flood of Gothic tales of chivalry, robber knights, ghosts, and general horror is the entanglement of defense less characters with an incomprehensible supernatural {power. This is how Poe-the-Goth critics like Edward Wagen- iknecht, who insist that a nineteenth-century tale, because jit is weird, must be a supernatural tale and nothing else, {would have us read Poe. But to read a Romantic Ironist ( this way is usually to miss half the point, and nearly all the fun. Although regular Gothic tales frequently made use of misperception, the grotesque tales of the Romantic Iron- i ists normally were concerned with a weirder sensory decep- I tion, with some deeper psychological subjectivity that would perhaps touch the reader simultaneously on an arche typal irrational level of fear and on an almost subliminal level of philosophical perception. Tieck especially, whose "vivid exemplifications" of "grotesquerie" Poe praised, showed the supernatural to be subjective inner experience- irrational fear welling up from a subconscious, timeless abyss of guilt and superstition. Such writing could be ambiguous and humorless indeed, though not without irony, as Ludwig Tieck's "Fair Eckbert" R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 149 I Illustrates.After a fairy-tale beginning, the tale icenters on the knight Eckbert*s increasing, though eunbigu- jous, awareness that he is the victim of some incredible I I supernatural hoax— though whether it all is the making of {his own compulsive and guilt-ridden mind or something more I "actual," we cannot tell, as no man can in this life. Eck- I jbert, the master of a lonely manor house on the edge of a I forest, has only two friends, his wife and neighboring Ihermit. One night at dinner he asks his wife to reveal the {"secret" of her early life to his only other friend in i order to join the three of them together more closely. Re luctantly, she tells the old hermit of her strange child- ! hood, spent in a beautiful but depressing forest with an old crone, from whom she eventually fled, stealing a parrot and some jewels. But after his wife reveals this confi dence, Eckbert, with a perverse compulsion, begins to sus pect that his friend has not only cooled but is contempla ting some hideous betrayal. One day in the forest, with sudden impulse, Eckbert murders his friend. Fleeing to a far city, Eckbert makes a new friend, who eventually turns I out to be another embodiment of the old hermit, and also of t the old woman of the forest. She tells Eckbert, once he I begins to suspect, that his now dead wife was actually his 45The summary that follows is based on the English translation of "Eckbert" in Francke and Howard, The German Classics, IV, 252-271. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 150 sister— that is, if Eckbert actually had a wife, that is, if any part of his life actually happened as he thought it had. As the old woman's cackle merges with the sounds of the forest, Eckbert's final dazed and horrified thought is of how incredibly alone he has lived. And we, as readers, are left wondering, like Eckbert, what indeed has happened; I appearance and reality, illusion and delusion, the beauti- jful and the terrible are merged in a multiply reflective I subjectivity. Although it has little of the comic, "The I Fair Eckbert" is the kind of weird psychological tale, pro duced by the Romantic Ironists at the turn of the century, I that Poe apparently had in mind when he called his own I weird psychological tales grotesque and arabesque instead I 'of Gothic. Harry Levin says that comedy enters into Poe's writings I by way of "hysteria." But— as I have tried to show by sur veying the philosophy, criticism, and literature of German Romanticism— comedy, humor, mockery, and irony were ration ally planned elements in much of the best-known fiction of the time, and Poe knew the work of the Germans rather well. The comic rationale had as its aim "transcendence” of self I ! through intellectual mastery of self— through mastery of the limitations of the subjective human mind, especially mastery of the irrational, mastery of fear. Comedy enters R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . i 1 5 1 jlnto Poe's "Gothic" writings not by way of hysteria but by way of a controlled, and therefore ambivalent and often {skeptical, philosophical despair. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . I CHAPTER IV I THE ROMANTIC CONTEXT OF POE'S IRONY: i "GOTHIC," "GROTESQUE," "ARABESQUE" I Allen Tate has said that he doubts Poe could have used 1 {so much "Gothic" if he had not meant serious business. jThat Poe did work within a general Gothic tradition in his I serious tales is obvious; yet, as we have seen, he seems j inever to have considered his tales simply Gothic. Ambigu- ■ i ious as the terms grotesque and arabesque may be, they pro vide more clues to the "point" and method of Poe's writings 1 itheui do his tentative titles for subsequent collections, which included "Phantasy-Pieces," "Prose Romances," and I : simply "Tales," but not "Gothic Tales." Yet it is the Gothic context that has shaped the reading of Poe.1 As previously suggested, the Romantic Ironists, during ^"Phantasy-Pieces," spelled with gh, recalls forcibly j the German writers Hoffmann and Tieck ^th their Phantasie- Istûcke (1814-15) and Phantasus (1812-16). The never pub- Ilished "Phantasy-Pieces" was a rearranging of the Tales of ithe Grotesque and Arabesque, published two years before, I with the addition of eleven new tales. Particularly inter- Iesting is Poe's deletion from the proposed table of con tents of "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "Marie Roget," which A. H. Quinn suggests was because of publication en tanglements (see his Poe, pp. 336-340). 152 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 153 I the last decade of the eighteenth centuryr shifted from a jrather obvious burlesque playfulness to an aumbivalent ex ploration of the "night-side" of nature, especially of the sinister qualities of the subconscious mind, even though maintaining, as a constant, a degree of mockery. Roughly parallel with the development of "irony" in the latter Ieighteenth century were seemingly separate developments of 'the Gothic and the grotesque, both of which involved the ! psychology of fear. Romantic Irony, the Gothic, and the I I grotesque were three related literary extremes of a gene ralized experimentation among writers suspicious of Neo classic regularity and stimulated by the subjective philos ophies of Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. These terms, and the attendant arabesque, have an intertwined history of conno- !tation and reference that put Poe's sometimes odd literary techniques into even clearer ironic perspective than that already suggested. In literature, the word Gothic normally refers to the kind of work that seeks to create an atmosphere of mystery and terror through the supernatural or through the appa rently supernatural or through pronounced mental horror. Applied to fiction in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen turies, the primary and constant element of the term is terror or horror— terror suggesting frenzy, and horror sug gesting perception of something incredibly evil or repel lent. The secondary element of the Gothic is the super R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n of th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ith out p erm issio n . 154 natural, whether real or fearfully imagined. The term does not appear in English dictionaries until the late eight eenth and early nineteenth centuries, but its actual use dates from the early seventeenth century.2 By the begin ning of the eighteenth century. Gothic had already come to have three distinct denotative meanings, each associated with different kinds of disapproval. Arthur O. Lovejoy de lineates these meanings clearly. One meaning— "any [archi tectural] structure not in the classical style"— appears at least as early as 1693 in Dryden. A second meaning— "the Romanesque (in England the Saxon or Norman) style"— was supposed by many, says Lovejoy, "to have been actually in troduced by the Goths or other northern barbarian invaders of the Roman empire." The third meaning also involved the idea of Gothic invaders. John Evelyn in his Account of Architects and Architecture (1697) wrote that "Goths, Van dals and other barbarous Nations" destroyed Roman works and introduced: . . . in their stead, a certain fantastical and licenti ous Manner of Building, which we have called Modern (or Gothic rather), Congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and Monkish Piles, without any just Proportion, Use or Beauty . 7 ^ full of fret and lamentable Imagery . . . [so that] a judicious Spectator is distracted and quite confounded .... 2The word is found in the translator's preface to the | Authorized Version of the Bible in 1611, used to indicate | the peoples of Eastern Europe (the "Gothicke tongue"). See : Sister Mary Mauritia Redden, "The Meaning of Gothic," in Thai Gothic Fiction in the American Magazines (176^-1800) (a dis-j sertation published at Washington, D. C., 1939), p. 11. i R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 155 But, Evelyn continued, after the Goths "from the North" came the "Moors and Arabs from the South and East, over-run ning the Civlized World" and destroying true art while re placing it with "busy Work and other Incongruities," with unreasonably thick walls, clumsy buttresses, towers, sharp- pointed arches, doors and apertures without proportion, marbles "impertinently placed," and "turrets and Pinnacles thick set with Monkies and Chymaeras"— all of which "rather gluts the Eye than gratifies and pleases it with any rea sonable Satisfaction" and which confounds the sight so "that one cannot consider it with any Steadiness, where to begin or end."3 This architectural and historical hypothesis was widely jaccepted, and in 1713 Christopher Wren wrote that what "we jnow call the Gothick manner of architecture . . . should with more reason be called the Saracen style."4 At other times the terms Arabic or Arabesque were used as synonyms for Gothic, though by the middle eighteenth century regular {Gothic and arabesque Gothic were distinguished. The later arabesque style was supposed to have been a reaction to the earlier style of Gothic, both, of course, being periods within the Middle Ages. The earlier Gothic was thought of, {according to Lovejoy, as "rude, ponderous, stiff, sombre, i I ■ - j 3See "The First Gothic Revival," in Essays in the His- j JSee "The First Gothic Revival," in Essays in tne His- j tory of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948/New York, I960}, pp. 137-139.| 4parentalia, published 1750; see Lovejoy, p. 139. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 156 depressing: 'Gothic gloom' was one of the conventional de scriptive phrases for characterizing its effect upon the mind." The later arabesque Gothic was condemned as "want ing in solidity," as too "light" and "soaring," as "frivo lous" and "fanciful" and "over-refined" and "overladen with jornament," "confusing the eye with an excessive multipli- jcity of separate parts and obtrusive details" (p. 141). j The indictments against the modern araJaesque Gothic of jthe thirteenth through fifteenth centuries made by such men ! |as Berkeley, Montesquieu, and Addison listed its want of simplicity (in its use of non-structural ornament); its jfailure to conform to Nature (because not simple); its lack bf symmetry (unnaturally militating against "unity of ef- jfect"); and its irregularity (lack of exact mathematical proportion). This "unnatural" lack of simplicity and pro portion led Joseph Addison to liken certain poets to Gothic | i I designers. Poets who seek to display their "wit" through | ' I jconceits, clever turns of phrase, epigrams, and other in- { igenuities and complexities instead of making the "thought j I ! shine in its own natural beauties," writers who cannot "let | j ! any piece of Wit of what kind soever escape them . . . I j look upon," he said, "as Goths in Poetry.Addison obvi- | : i ously had the later Gothic style in mind; thus, the earliest! ^Spectator, No. 62; see Lovejoy, p. 144, and Redden, jp. 11. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 157 literary usage of Gothic Involved disapproval of what was considered unrestrained fancy. One would like Immediately to apply the terms Gothic and arabesque to Poe; but their meanings were to undergo some radical shifts between 1750 and 1830, and the apparent antithesis between the two styles was to blur Into a paradoxical fusion. This paradox jof meaning Is underscored by the usual twentieth-century jappllcatlon of arabesque to Poe's serious "Gothic" tales, jrather than to frivolous, light, scaring, fanciful, wittily Ornamented comic and satiric tales. According to Lovejoy, a Gothic revival was In full swing by the late 1740's, and paradoxically enough the ex cited Interest In medieval architectural styles and effects jtook the form of the "classical" concepts of "naturalness." Gothic Interiors, with their profuse scrollwork (sometimes called grotesque work) around windows and on ceilings, sug gesting branches and groves and animals, began to symbolize to Imaginative minds a "natural" landscape. Moreover, the Impact of the Romanticism of the German Storm and Stress movement and of the new Naturphllosophle began to be felt In England and elsewhere. By the turn of the century, Schelllng In his Philosophy of Art (1802-1803) had rejected the Idea that the Saracens brought the Gothic style from the Orient, and he claimed (or reasserted) a Germanic ori gin. The Gothic Imagination, he said, was primitive and natural, closer to the spirit of God than was the classical R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 158 imagination. A Gothic building, Schelling said, was essen tially a metaphor (or symbol or hieroglyph) for a huge row of trees, or the natural, primitive habitat of man.^ But more important in the revival of the Gothic, according to Lovejoy, was the intrusion of an esthetic principle of ir- [reqularity into what was considered natural. Edmund Burke jin The Sublime and the Beautiful (1757) remarked that the Idea of exact proportion had not been drawn from a study of Rature, but was an artificial intrusion of man into Nature. Subsequently, the characteristic "deformities" of Gothic art beccuae virtues in garden design; the effect sought was beauty without perfect regularity and without immediately apparent design, as in Oriental gardens, which were full of jrichness and intricacy.7 i These feelings regarding what was presumed to be truly natural shifted to a preference for wildness, seen in the taste for landscapes that suggested the "sublime" through 6Poe commented on the qualities of Gothic in a way that clearly links him with the German Romanticists : "In omitting to envelop our Gothic architecture in foliage, we omit, in fact, an essential point in the Gothic architec- ture itself. Of a Gothic church, especially trees are as much a portion as the pointed arch. 'Ubi tres, ecclesia,' says Tertullian;— but no doubt he meant that 'Ubi ecclesia, tres'" (Works, XVI, 169). I ^This development is given more detail in Lovejoy, pp. 153-156. See also W. D. Robson-Scott, The Literary Back- ? round of the Gothic Revival in Germany (Oxford, 1965),pp. 5-153, on the German idealist view ofGothicism. The de ceptiveness of design in certain Gothic productions became Ian important part of Poe's concept of the Gothic, as I shall show. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 159 their evocation of a sense of the mystery of the superna tural » hinting at grand secrets of another world that stretches away beyond the range of human intelligence. In the middle of the eighteenth century, Horace Walpole, whose novel The Castle of Otranto, a Gothic Story (1765) gave real currency to the term Gothic in literature, emphasized the vaults, tombs, stained windows, gloom, and perspective of medieval buildings; in the Gothic cathedral such orna mentation was supposed to generate sensations of Romantic devotion, though of a superstitious kind. Gothic churches and old castles thus became, after Walpole, inextricably associated with the "thrill of mystery and wonder."® The Castle of Otranto is generally regarded as the prototype of the Gothic romance, though the tale of terror in English has been traced rather directly to Renaissance drama.® In the "Preface" to Otranto, Walpole (as the "translator" William Marshall, Gent.) pretended that his "work was found in the library of an ancient Catholic fam ily in the north of England" and that he had translated the manuscript from the Italian of a Monk living at the time of the Crusades (1095-1253). He apologized for the "miracles. ®W. P. Ker, quoted by Lovejoy, p. 164. ®Oral S. Coad, "The Gothic Element," JEGP, 24:72, cites C. F. McIntyre's study in PMLA for December 1921. In I Ithe novel, the elements of mystery and terror first appear I lin Smollett's Ferdinand Count Fathom (1753); see Lionel I Istevenson, The English Novel: A Panorama (Boston, 1960), ; IP. 150. I R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 160 visions, necromancy, dreams, and other preternatural events" no longer believed in by an enlightened age. But when "our author wrote," said Walpole, "belief in every kind of prodigy was so established . . . that an author would not be faithful to the manners of the times" if he did not represent supernatural occurrences.10 Walpole thus used the term Gothic without disapprobation, yet with an awareness of earlier objections to the Gothic. The essen tial qualities of the Gothic for Walpole were the medieval and the supernatural; he appealed directly to whatever in terest the historical setting might have for his readers, but he hedged a bit (perhaps disingenuously) about the su pernatural, reluctant to admit directly any submission to the irrationality of the emotions. Moreover, he seems to have been concerned with the possibility of censure on the grounds of irregularity, lack of simple design, excessive multiplicity of parts, and distraction (caused by fret and lamentable imagery) that had been associated with the Goth ic in the first half of the century. He wrote : I If this air of the miraculous is excused . . . [and we] i allow the possibility of the facts . . . (we find] all the actors comport themselves as persons would do in their situation. There is no bombast, no similes, flow ers, digressions, or unnecessary descriptions. Every thing tends directly to the catastrophe. Never is the reader's attention relaxed. The rules of the drama are almost observed throughout the conduct of the piece . . . IPThe Castle of Otranto, The Mysteries of Udolpho, Northanqer Abbey, ed. Andrew Wright (New York, 1963) , pp. 3-4. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 161 Terrorf the author's principal engine, prevents the story from ever languishing .... (p. 4) This kind of unity of effect towards which all seeming di gression or contrast must work is, of course, an important principle in Poe. The more important point, however, is that the term Gothic in literature was at this time associ ated with multiple innuendoes, wit, and even with ironic contrasts; in both the first and second prefaces to Otranto, Walpole exhibited concern for the overly simple behavior of the "domestics" in the tale, but justified it on the basis of over-all unity. He pointed out that such contrast of character set into stronger relief the qualities of the sublime and the pathetic in the protagonists, citing the example of Shakespeare's irony (pp. 10-11). Thus, while giving literary currency to the term Gothic, Walpole shifted its meaning somewhat from unnatural confusion of details to a legitimately medieval and mysterious composi tion, artfully put together. Then Walpole wrote a second preface for the second edition, in which he said that he had tried to: blend the two kinds of Romance, the ancient and the mod ern. In the former, all was imagination and improbabil ity: in the latter, nature is always intended to be, and sometimes has been, copied with success. (p. 9) He intended to give the "fancy" free play and yet write of real people in extraordinary situations (p. 10). Thus, unity of effect, a principle of contrast, and some psycho logical verisimilitude are among the qualities, theoretic- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 162 ally, of the earliest English Gothic novel. The connotation in Gothic of the supernatural and the fantastic, however, was heightened into the principal meaning of the term by the extraordinary success of Otranto and especially of Walpole's immediate imitators. The medi eval atmosphere was a major element, but it served primarily as the backdrop for weird and terrifying events. The usage of arcJaesque meanwhile began to be more clearly associated with the term grotesque, metaphorically applied to litera ture from ancient scrollwork styles that conjoined animal, i land human, and plant figures in a bizarre manner which was I jsometimes playful and sometimes ominous. The three terms, jthen, were likely in the third quarter of the eighteenth century (and lingering well into the nineteenth century) to jmean about the seune thing; the arabesque was a term used to jsuggest later Gothic styles, and the grotesque was a term I lassociated with the intricate designs ornamenting Gothic buildings early and late. It was the German Romanticists who began in the last quarter of the century to separate the terms somewhat and to use them as important literary categories. Before turning to the usages of the terms grotesque land arabesque, however, a number of points about the tech- I iniques of the Gothic romance after Walpole should be made— ifor the Gothic novel became so stereotyped that it fostered ia large catalog of often ludicrous conventions, which Poe R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 163 burlesqued, and also a large sub-genre of Gothic satire popular even before Poe's time. Moreover, writers of Gothic tales developed the tale of terror into the psycho logical tale of "sensation," in which the protagonists got themselves into fantastic predicaments (such as being baked in an oven) and the proceeded to analyze their sensations; these sensation tales were the mainstay of the fiction of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in the early nineteenth cen tury, which Poe lampoons in "The Premature Burial," "How to Write a Blackwood's Article," "A Predicament," and "Loss of Breath." The Gothic writers rapidly developed a number of "stock-in-trade" devices that with a little exaggeration could be made into clever parody; and, if the exaggerations were subtle enough and combined with any effective scenes of horror at all, they could easily become, as in Poe, satiric hoaxes. The "stock-in-trade" devices of Gothic fiction from 1765 to 1810 have been neatly cataloged by Sister Mary Mauritia R e d d e n . First of all is the medieval castle (or lonely manor house) and its accessories: an isolated wing, a winding staircase, heavily curtained bedchambers, loose l^See Edith Birkhead's seventh chapter (pp. 128-144) Iin The Tale of Terror (London, 1928), and George Kitchin, A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in English (Edinburgh and jLondon, l331), pp. 176-246. l^The Gothic Fiction in the American Magazines, pp. 19-67. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 164 floorboardsr mouldering stone walls fringed with long grass, a courtyard, trapdoors, underground passages, secret closets, and pemels, and locks, and stairways, doors that bolt on the outside, rusty bolts and creaking hinges, musty vapors, decayed furniture dropping to pieces, clanking armor. Through the castle move the virtuous heroine (more than likely to faint) and the hero of apparently humble origin (also likely to swoon), who must deal with tyrants or villains of various kinds, represented by obstinate par ents, a spinster aunt, a guardian, spying servants, or a vague aristocrat. Of the generalized castle accessories, the dungeon and the subterranean passage are of special im- porteuice, with their associated vaults and doors with iron ! rings, often exiting into ruined and roofless chapels, into the darkness of which a ray of moonlight pierces, while jhollow echoes or dismal groans break the awful silence. Also especially important are various natural phenomena that somehow are eerie or portentous: forked lightning, thunder, howling wind, "sulphureous" clouds, driving rain, and hail, the cries of wild animals piercing the night and the bark of a dog or the screech of an owl or bat, awful darkness, horrible gaspings of water, the roar of the sea, | the rocking of the earth, and the crumbling of walls. An- , other stock device is the use of pictures, animated, ances- i I ! jtral, and veiled portraits in particular. Another device ! is the prophecy or prophetic dream. Another, the use of j R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 165 clerical and conventual milieu# especially a tyrannical Lady Abbess, an escaped nun, a criminal friar, a sinister monk, and, of course, the monastery or convent. The super natural element takes various ghastly half-human or vaguely human forms, giaours, old hags, fiery orbs, and regular ghosts. Often identification devices figure prominently: miniatures, scars, weapons with family coats of arms and iottoes. Redden lists tombs as a separate category from the dungeon or vault or subterranean passage, for the em phasis is upon disintegrating corpses, coffins, bones, and Ifictitious funerals. She also lists sound devices as a jseparate stock-in-trade item, especially mysterious voices jfrom nowhere and shrieks of terror. Finally, she suggests I pestilential diseases, replete with uncoffined dead, open burial pits, the rumbling of the dead carts, with live vic tims among the dead, all punctuated by the groans of the |stricken.l3 ! Such devices were the stock-in-trade of the Gothic ro- l^These devices correspond very well with discussions in other studies of the Gothic tradition, though Redden does not give enough emphasis to the device of the proph ecy, the motif of the sins of the fathers, the sexual motif (including seduction, rape, and incest), "scientific" ex planation of the supernatural, and the technique of indefi niteness. See Edith Birkhead, The Tale of Terror (London, 1921); Alexander Cowie, The Rise of the American Novel (New York, 1951); Eino Railo,~"The Haunted Castle (London, 1927); Montague Summers, The Gothic Quest (London, 1938); J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800 (London, 1932/Lincoln, Neb., 1961); D. P. varma, the Gothic Flame (London, 1957). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 166 nance up to 1810, so that twenty years later when Poe began to write fiction, they had long since become cliches. But the Gothic tale also developed into subtypes, as Nathan Drake observed at least as early as 1804. He distinguished aetween the regular Gothic (the mythology of Scandinavian origin) and the vulgar Gothic, which, he said, had in turn two types : the terrible (which involves the awful ministra tions of the spectre) and the sportive (which involves fcuicy, humor, and the innocent gambols of the fairy). Terrible or supernatural Gothic, developed along two lines especially important for the understanding of Poe's treat ment of Gothic materials: the truly supernatural; and the apparently supernatural, or preternatural, which is finally explained away in realistic terms. Discussing the development of the terrible mode of Gothic fiction, J. M. S. Tompkins writes that there were two stages which resulted in the two basic types of The English Gothic romance.15 in the first stage, the charac teristic writer was Mrs. Radcliffe, who worked from English models and produced a type of romance in which the heroines never get their feet dusty, in which there is little or no real violence, and in which supernatural phenomena are ra tionally and scientifically explained. In the second "On Gothic Superstitions," republished in Literary Hours (London, 1804). IS^he Popular Novel, p. 263. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 167 stage, the Gothic novel was greatly affected by the trans lation of German (Gothic) stories, and the characteristic English figure was Matthew Gregory Lewis with The Monk (1795). Whereas Radcliffe displayed dignity, delicacy, and moral scrupulousness, the Germanic kind of Gothic terror was * * frequently hideous,” detailing shocking and "pro tracted butcheries" (p. 245). The English or Radcliffian method was to darken the scene slowly, but the German meth od had no twilight and insinuated mystery.IG Radcliffe's elements were beautiful and awesome landscapes. Gothic buildings, and "the sensitive mind of a girl, attuned to all the intimations, sublime or dreadful, that she can re ceive from her surroundings" (p. 253). Her books were "full of the half-revealed;" "deliberate recourse to sug gestive obscurity" was her most noticeable technique. "Her theme is not the dreadful happening . . . but the interval during which the menace takes shape and the mind of the victim is reluctantly shaken ..." (pp. 257-258). The es sence of her fiction, then, was human psychology. The Gothic terror of the Germans, however, worked by sudden shocks and usually with the "real" supernatural, wrenching the mind suddenly from skepticism to "horror- struck belief" (p. 245). As the genre developed, certain l^Tompkins apparently does not include the later gro tesque works of the Romantic Ironists as part of the German Gothic tradition. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 168 themes became dominant, especially those of conventual degradation involving imprisonment, isolation, entrapment, torture, and sexual aberration and violence. The Inquisi tion became a natural subject, along with secret societies, magic, occult science, and sinister conspiracies, with hid den political and religious allegory recurrent. Tompkins writes that the taste of the readers was for the colossal, the impassioned, the dark, the sublime. They wanted to see great forces let loose and the stature of man once more distended to its full height .... They wanted to see him ablaze with destructive fire or tempered by his will to an icy ruthlessness; they wanted I vehemence and tumult, and measureless audacity and meas ureless egoism. (p. 287) But the whole sense of the enlightenment was against such unchecked force and against the propagation of supersti tion. Thus, not only did the English Gothic novel become moral and doctrinal, but also the supernatural became a matter of misperception on the part of the characters. The iweird events were perfectly explicable in realistic terms. Mrs. Radcliffe secured a weird effect by the lighting of blue flames on the points of the soldiers' lances before the Castle of Udolpho, but she was careful to add in a footnote: "See the Abbé BertheIon on Electricity." Eager "to serve two gods," writes Arthur Ransoms, she "gave us our thrill and our electricity together" and her fiction is thus "a little laughable on that account," whereas Poe later, with a clearer understanding of the effect of the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 169 weird, avoided such absurdity.17 But Ransome's assessment of Poe's method is not quite accurate. The technique of explaining the supernatural, according to Tompkins, though disturbing to later genera tions , was one of the most popular features of the Gothic tale at the end of the eighteenth century, since the explan ations preserved "probaJaility." Even a Romantic like Cole ridge wrote in a review of The Mysteries of Udolpho in 1794 that the "reader experiences in perfection the strange lux ury of artificial terror" and yet is not "obliged for a moment to hoodwink his reason, or to yield to the weakness of superstitious credulity. Moreover, the most success ful Gothicist in America before Poe, Charles Brockden iBrown, was a proponent of the explained rather than the i jsupernatural Gothic, amd the interest of his novels resides 'in both a spooky thrill and a reasonaüale psychological and scientific accounting. William B. Cairns in a monograph on American literature from 1815 to 1833— the formative period for the young Poe— considers the effect of Brown's Gothic fiction (despite the explanations involving madness, ven triloquism, and spontaneous combustion) to be "purely hor rible." Trying to distinguish between the effects of l^Edqar Allan Poe, A Critical Study (London, 1910), pp. 109=1111 ISMonthly Review, November 1794, quoted by Tompkins, p. 291. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 170 writers like Poe and Hawthorne and Richard Henry Dana, Sr., and the effects of Brown, Cairns writes that Dana's horrors in his novel Paul Felton (1821) are: . . . real no matter how they are accounted for. The facts are stated, and the reader is left to choose be tween demoniacal possession and insanity, or— if he would get the strongest effect,— to think one theory, and feel the other. Oral Sumner Coad in "The Gothic Element in American Litera ture before 1835" writes that American poets treated their Gothic mysteries as beyond human ken, but he adds that the dramatists and fiction writers usually explained every thing: "the preponderance of these rationalized phenomena is proof that the dominant influence on the whole body of American Gothic literature was Mrs. Radcliffe. Thus, both the English and American developments of the Gothic tale up to Poe's time inclined toward the ex plained Gothic, and especially in America toward the psy chologically explained which preserved some ambiguity as to the real nature of events. This, I suggest, is also Poe's ^^On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833, with Especial Reference to Periodicals (Madison, Wis., 1898), p. 64. ^^See pp. 91-92. Coad also comments that Americans did not contribute much to the methods and devices of Goth ic literature until Poe, though Brown's psychological and scientific explanations are important; and although the sportive style of Gothic was more frequent in American works than in English works, Coad speculates that the sportive style probably descended from "Tam O'Shanter." Two new sources of terror, Indian and New England witch craft, Coad adds, were never fully developed by American writers before 1835. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 171 Gothic genre, insofar as his genre is Gothic.21 The weird events of such stories as "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia" are psychological delusions on the part of the narrators, delusions so subtly insinuated that the reader tends to see only from the narrator's point of view even though as in "Eleonora," he announces his madness, or nerv ousness, or terror, or some oddity or another that should cause the reader to pause for a moment to consider his dis torted or eccentric view of the events he narrates. In itheir intricacy of design, Poe's Gothic tales contain tell tale evidences for rational psychological explanation, yet rarely so obtrusive as to destroy the weird supernatural effect, though often the events are so bizarre and incongru ous that we cannot fully enjoy the "luxury" of the Gothic terror. It is as if Poe thought to blend two kinds of Goth ic romance: the shocking, supernatural, Germanic tale; and the insinuated, explained, English tale— though as I have indicated, the Romantic Ironists among the Germans sought also to create their own special ambiguous blend. Poe's deceptive doubleness (or perhaps tripleness: supernatural 21one of Poe's most interesting references to Gothic occurs in his first critical essay, "Letter to B ^ (1831). He writes that judgment can be "too correct," an idea "the old Goths of Germany would have understood," for | they "used to debate matters of importance to their state j 'twice, once when drunk, and once when sober— sober that they Imight not be deficient in formality— drunk lest they should j ibe destitute of vigour" (Borzoi Poe, II, 858). This pas- I {sage suggests at least that Gothic had a double connotation i for Poe, the serious and the ludicrous. I R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 172 on one level, psychological on another, satiric and ironic on another) is one of his major achievements, and of course one of his major ironic ploys. If the unwary reader is deceived by the apparent "verisimilitude" of an apparently supernatural tale (a verisimilitude which in Defoe, Poe said, often half-conceàled a "banter"), so much the better. If the unwary reader is deceived by a satiric and mocking Gothic tale, he is properly served, especially if he is just perceptive enough not to be taken quite all the way into the "subterranean Night." Direct statement from Poe•that his mode is the psycho logically explained Gothic is, as to be expected from an ironist, scanty. But there are a half-dozen documents that, given the kind of literary contexts I have tried to provide, are highly suggestive. In a letter to Philip P. Cooke on September 21, 1839, Poe wrote that Cooke was "right" about the flawed technique of "Ligeia^: The gradual perception of the fact that Ligeia lives again in the person of Rowena is a far loftier and more thrilling idea than the one I have embodied. It offers in my opinion, the widest possible scope to the imagina tion— it might even be rendered sublime. And this idea was mine . . . but then there is "Morelia." Do you re member there the gradual conviction on the part of the parent that the spirit of the first Morelia tenants the person of the second? It was necessary, since "Morelia" was written, to modify "Ligeia." I was forced to be con tent with a sudden half-consciousness, on the part of the narrator, that Ligeia stood before him .... Your word that it is "intelligible" suffices— and your commentary sustains your word. As for the mob— let them talk on. I R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 173 should be grieved if I thought they comprehended me here.22 This letter and Cooke's original have been used by the be lievers in Poe the Supernatural Goth to disprove the psy chological reading of "Ligeia" first given detailed expres sion by Roy P. Easier.23 James Schroeter, for example, Inotes that Cooke in his letter of September 16, 1839, iden- jtified the narrator with Poe; Cooke wrote that the story would have been improved if "you had only become aware gradually that the blue Saxon eye of the 'Lady Rowena of Tremaine' grew daily darker . . . if you had brooded and meditated upon the change . . . ."24 "surely," writes Schroeter, "if Poe had intended his narrator to be regarded as a madman, a murderer, and a psychopath . . . he could scarcely have failed to be deeply offended by Cooke's let ter ..." (p. 406). But Schroeter omits the part of Poe's letter in which Poe wrote with emphatic pauses, that he was forced to be content with "a sudden half-consciousness, on 22Letters, I, 118, letter 82. ^^Basler's "The Interpretation of 'Ligeia'" appeared in College English, 5:363-372, April 1944. The particular textural evidenceI give in Chapter V with particular ref erence to the term arabesque. 2^Cooke's letter is given complete in George E. Wood- berry. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary (Boston and New York, 1909), I, 208-212, and in Poe's Works, XVII, 49-51. Schroeter's "A Misreading of Poe's 'Ligeia'" appeared in PMLA 76:397-406, September 1961. Schroeter is vigorously seconded by Wagenknecht, Poe, Ipp. 248-249, as I have indicated in Chapter I. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 174 the part of the narrator, that Ligeia stood before him" (my italics). The possibility that Poe was offended by such identi fication of himself with the mad murderer of the tale, how ever, provides a fine motive for irony in his reply to Cooke. In this connection, a second major point made by Schroeter for the non-psychological reading reveals a startling double revision by Poe. Schroeter calls atten tion to Cooke's criticism that Ligeia as a "wandering es sence" too suddenly takes over Rowena and becomes the "vis ible, bodily Ligeia," and that this violates "the ghostly proprieties." Schroeter then reports that Poe "did make a change after his correspondence with Cooke," which is "de tailed clearly in [A. H.] Quinn's book," the standard bi ography of Poe. This change, Schroeter adds, the psycho- Ilogical critic Bas1er "did not bother to check." Schroeter j(who checked with Quinn's biography, at least) then mis- I quotes Quinn, and writes that Poe inserted a long passage in which Rowena's now gradual struggles with death are characterized by relapses into "sterner" and "more irre deemable death," accompanied by "agony" that "wore the aspect of struggle with some invisible foe," and "suc ceeded" by "wild change in the personal appearance of the corpse." Actually, only the last phrase about the changes in the appearance of the corpse was added, and that was in 1845 (usually considered the standard reading, from the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 175 Broadway Journal). Even this much of an addition, however, would suggest that Poe took seriously Cooke's judgment about the ad)rupt- ness of the conclusion; and Quinn writes that "this clause prepares the way for the final assumption by Ligeia of the body of her rival, without appearing to do so" (Poe, p. 749). The problem with this "corroboration" of Poe's su pernatural intent is that the original version in the American Museum in 1838 includes all of the paragraph about the "hideous drama of revivification" taking place in Rowena down to and including the "struggle with some invis ible foe"— so that Poe already had laid a foundation for the gradual possession of Rowena by Ligeia before Cooke, a year later, wrote his unperceptive letter.25 The next publication of "Ligeia" was in the Tales of the Grotesque and Aredaesgue, dated 1840. On September 29, 1839, eight days after Poe's reply to Cooke, the publishers Lea and Blanchard wrote Poe that they would print his Tales (without paying him). Quinn guesses November, 1839, to be the month of publication. Thus, Poe had a month or two to make minor revisions. He did: he took out the passage about Rowena's seeming to struggle with an invisible foe, so that Ligeia's final appearance was made more abrupt than in the version Cooke read. Given this context, the under- I 2Ssee "Notes," Works, II, 388, 390, for the variant I readings. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 176 tone of Poe's letter to Cooke Is Ironic and sarcastic: I have an inveterate habit of speaking the truth— and had I not valued your opinion more highly than that of any man in America I should not have written you as I did. I say that I read your letter with delight. In fact I am aware of no delight greater than that of feeling one's self appreciated (in such wild matters as "Ligeia") by those in whose judgment one has faith. Poe then went on to list a few others, who, like Cooke, had "read my inmost spirit, 'like a book,'" including Benjeunin Disraeli and N. P. Willis, two of Poe's favorite satiric butts in his early t a l e s . 26 Poe also cited Washington Irving's praise of "Usher," but said to Cooke: . . . I assure you, I regard his best word as but dust in the balance when weighed with those discriminating opini ons of your own .... Touching "Ligeia" you are right— all right— throughout. I Poe then wrote that Cooke's way of doing it would have i jrendered the story "sublime," and he slyly assured Cooke that the ghost of Ligeia did not live but was "entombed as j Rowena. " I But . . . your word that it is "intelligible" suffices— and your commentary sustains your word. As for the mob— 26willis is the butt of the "Due de L'Omelette" and Disraeli figures in "Loss of Breath" and "King Pest." (Poe seems also to have liked Willis a little at the saune time that he satirized him; and the end of Poe's letter to Cooke seems still friendly," as are his other letters to Cooke, one of which, on Dupin, I come to momentarily.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 177 let them talk on. I should be grieved if I thought they comprehended me here.2? This last statement surely not only clearly illustrates Poe's attitude toward the majority of his readers but also displays his fine and subtle irony, with P. P. Cooke, in this case, its unsuspecting victim. Poe's comments on the ghostly emd monstrous "construc tions" of the human mind and on the mind's susceptibility to the force of suggestion and mere "epigrammatism" in his review of Newnham's Human Magnetism have already been cited. In an earlier review in the Southern Literary Mes senger (December, 1835), Poe complained that Willieun Godwin in the Lives of the Necromancers had dealt with "the great range and wild extravagancy of the imagination of man" jrather than with what is more important— "the manner in jwhich delusion acts upon mankind."28 Later, in 1842, Poe ! jbegan his "Mystery of Marie Roget," a murder story based on a real murder in New York, with a comment on the "superna tural" impact of sheer coincidence. There are few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coinci dences of so seemingly marvellous a character that, as 27Letters, I, 117-118, my italics. Poe did consider works dealing with death, the supernatural, the apparently supernatural, immortality and so on to have a powerful quality of imaginativeness, of suggestion, of sublimity, and even of ideality. But see the discussion of the super natural suggestions of "The Raven" which follows. 28works, VIII, 93-94. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 178 mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive t h e m .29 Poe went on to suggest that by reference to a "doctrine of chance," a "Calculus of Probabilities," we can apply mathe matics, "the most rigidly exact in science," to "the shadow and spirituality of the most intangible in speculation.^^ A few years later, Poe wrote another letter to P. P. Cooke expressing his appreciation of Cooke's recent praise for his latest work, even though "others have praised me more lavishly." Poe suggested that Cooke re-read an "improved version of 'Ligeia'," and Poe sarcastically commented on the general response to his ratiocinative tales: You are right about the hair-splitting of my French friend:— that is all done for effect. These tales of ratiocincation owe most of their popularity to being something in a new key. I do not mean to say that they are not ingenious— but people think them more ingenious than they are— on account of their method and air of method. Poe then patiently explained to Cooke some of the I [ 29gorzoi Poe, I, 396. Poe prefaces the tale with a motto from Novalis about divine and earthly correspondences we call coincidence. But the point of the tale is the rational euialysis of cause and effect, connection and probability. 30l, 396-397. See also Poe to George Roberts and Jo seph Evans Snodgrass (both June 4, 1842), Letters, I, 199- 202, letters 136 and 137, where he intimates that he is aware of the "manner" in which his readers will receive the jcorrespondence between the case of Marie Roget in Paris and that of Mary Rogers in New York: at the same time that he is applying a calculus of probabilities, his readers will be taken with the almost supernatural coincidences— an ef fect clearly related to the "double" impact of ambiguously explained Gothicism discussed by Cairns. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 179 intentional hoaxing involved in the Dupin tales: In the "Murders in the Rue Morgue," for instance, where is the ingenuity of unravelling a web which you yourself have woven for the purpose of unravelling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story. (Letters, II, 328) This half-mocking detachment is found also in Poe's comments on his apparent use of the supernatural in "The Raven" (1845). Four months after his letter about Dupin, Poe wrote in a letter to George W. Eveleth (December 15, 1846) that he had taken great care both with his words and with the studied effect of a sense of the supernatural in "The Raven." Your objection to the tinkling of the footfalls . . . 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 hunum or physical foot could tinkle on a soft carpet— therefore the tinkling of feet would vividly convey the supernatural impression. (Letters, II, 331) Poe here defended himself from the same kind of charge of stylistic flaw that T. S. Eliot a hundred years later claimed resulted from Poe's never paying attention to the actual meanings of words, though Poe admitted that, although he had carefully considered and planned the effect, he may have failed to make the momentary supernatural effect "felt." In this seune letter, Poe also mentioned other gen eral improbabilities in the poem, especially the position of the lamp that throws the shadow of the raven on the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 180 floor, which had been objected to by a "blundering” critic in the Hartford Review. Poe wrote Eveleth that he had in deed conceived a clear position for the candelabrum, "af fixed 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 in New-York.” But to object to the un usualness of this arrangement, Poe wrote, was to miss the point: "For the purpose of poetry it is quite sufficient that a thing is possible— or at least that the improb«d)il- ity be not offensively glaring" (Letters, II, 331). Poe wanted the supernatural effect generated by his Gothic decor to be felt by a reader vicariously experiencing the protagonist's situation. But Poe made it abundantly clear in "The Philosophy of Composition" (1846) that the superna tural effect was not to be taken by the perceptive reader as the true dramatic action of his Gothic works.31 I In this essay, Poe described the action of "The Raven" Ias psychological and repeatedly suggested that there is in the poem a clear separation between the narrator's vision and the reader's. Poe points out that the dramatic center of "The Raven" is the emotional state of the bereaved 3lAlthough to a large extent merely an exaggeration of Poe's ideal of intellectual control (of even the intuitive), the essay may be something of a hoax itself, aiming at causing the reader, as hé said, to "confound" Dupin (1841, 1842, 1845) and the author of "The Raven" (1845). Again, one of Poe's major aims seems to be mockery of his audi ence, satire of his reader. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 181 lover. But this center was arrived at only after his hav ing considered the problem of over-all intention, length, specific effect desired (melancholy loss of a spiritualized beauty being most universal), and the unifying devices appropriate. Having decided to give the poem a surface stylistic and emotional unity through the device of a one- word refrain, Poe said, he then considered the difficulties of monotony and decided further upon a non-reasoned re sponse from a non-human creature (a parrot or a raven) that should have, above all, "variation of application." The one-word non-reasoned refrain would be subject to different interpretations by a distraught human being, the "replies" at first seeming commonplace, but less so with each repe tition, as a bereaved lover began to apply personal and sinister meanings to the raven and his one word. Poe wrote that: . . . the lover, startled from his original nonchalance [bemused apathy] by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its frequent repetition, and by a considera tion of the ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and wildly pro pounds queries of a far different character— queries whose solution he has passionately at heart— propounds them half in superstition and half in that species of despair which delights in self-torture . I . . One of the major stratagems of the poem would be to deepen the "ultimate impression" by "force of contrast" through the creation of "an air of the fantastic" which should 32Borzoi Poe, II, 983, my italics. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . (II, 985), such as when the raven enters the window flirt ing and fluttering— almost the very thing the "grotesque** writers in Germany had aimed at a generation before. At first, the lover banters with the bird. But grad ually, as his emotions begin to well up and color his rational state, the lover, wrote Poe: . . . no longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanour . . . . This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the reader .... (II, 985- 986) But, Poe continued, "everything is within the limits of the accountable— of the real." I So concerned was Poe about this point that he next ! paused to recapitulate the dreunatic situation of the poem Ito show the perfectly real, though perhaps unlikely, qual- I ity of all the circumstances and how this reality is insin uated into the poem. The lover even . . . guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for self- torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of a luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated an swer, "Nevermore." (II, 986) There is in all this, Poe repeated, "no overstepping of the limits of the real," although in great literature there are suggestions of something beyond, behind, or under mere appearances. There may be an "under-current, however in definite, of meaning" that may impart a "richness" to the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 183 writing. But richness, Poe wrote, "we are too fond of con founding with the ideal," one of the glaring faults of the didactic writings of the American transcendentalists. It is the excess of the suggested meaning— it is the rendering this upper instead of the under-current of the theme— which turns to prose (and that of the very flat test kind), the so-called poetry of the so-called tran scendentalists. (II, 986) instead, suggested Poe, the writer should try, as he him self had done in the last two stanzas of "The Raven," to convey a symbolic meaning, to "dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been previously narrated," to cause "the reader . . . now to regard the Raven as emblematical . . ." (II, 987, my italics). Thus, by Poe's own account of his method and intent in "The Raven," it is clear that his major concern was to make real circumstances seem strange or supernatural through unusual decor, through careful consideration of the conno tations and dramatic suggestiveness of words, through ludi crous -grotesque contrasts, through careful psychological rendering of an emotionally self-indulgent, distraught, or mad protagonist. The effect of ambiguously real psycholog ical supernaturalism that Poe said he sought in "The Raven" is the same kind of ambivalent effect noted by Cairns in the writings of Poe's immediate predecessors, Charles iBrockden Brown and Richard Henry Dana, Sr. The reader is ! I left to choose between the supernatural and the psycholog- ;ical, or for strongest effect, ambivalently to think one R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 184 theory and feel the other. Such double effect is, I sug gest, also that of "Usher," "Ligeia," and Poe's other "su pernatural" tales. As Poe wrote of the "German" terror of the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque; If in mamy of my productions terror has been the thesis, I maintain that terror is not of Germany, but of the soul — that I have deduced this terror only from its legiti mate results, Another especially revealing document on this matter is Poe's first review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales. Here Poe remarked that the obvious, allegorical "moral" of "The Minister's Black Veil" will be taken by the "rabble" as its "true" meaning, whereas actually the story is a de ceptive psychological tale: . . . to the reJable its exquisite, skill will be caviare. The obvious meaning of this article will be found to smother its insinuated one. The moral put into the mouth of the dying minister will be supposed to convey the true import of the narrative; and that a crime of dark dye, (having reference to the "young lady") has been com mitted, is a point which only minds congenial with that of the author will p e r c e i v e .34 Poe is wrong about Hawthorne's intent, as Hawthorne's foot note denying any specific cause of Hooper's estrangement from the world bears out. But the very difference between the two writers on this point, their very oppositeness, emphasizes Poe's realistic though deceptive technique, as well as his focus on psychological aberration. The refer ence to the "young lady" occurs early in Hawthorne's tale 33works, I, 151. 34Borzoi Poe, II, 952. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 185 euid is quite brief. Her funeral is the second occasion of Mr. Hooper's wearing the black veil. As Hooper leans over her body, the veil hangs forward so that, if she had been awake, she might have gazed into his face; and an old lady in Hooper's congregation is almost certain that at this moment the girl's body shuddered. Although the incident increases the uneasiness the villagers feel in the presence of the black veil, it is only a minor introductory event. That Poe took this one reference as the clue to the true meaning of the tale supports what I have said is his char acteristic technique: deceptive, ironic psychological realism. And Poe's comment that the true "insinuated" meeming will be "caviare" to the mob corroborates what I have said is central to his characteristic irony: his hoaxlike mockery. One further item is worth mentioning in connection with Poe's ironical use of the psychological mode of ambig uous Gothic. In a review in 1836 Poe commented on an anonymous book called The Doctor, which was currently mak ing a great stir as "an imitation of Sterne— an august and most profound exemplification, under the garb of eccentric ity, of some all-important moral law . . . ."35 But Poe claimed, after a close reading, that the book was nothing more than a hoax. 35works, IX, 67. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 186 That any serious truth is meant to be inculcated by a tissue of bizarre and disjointed rhapsodies, whose gen eral meaning no person can fathom, is a notion alto- gether untenable, unless we suppose the author a madman. But there are none of the proper evidences of madness in the book--while of mere banter there are instances in- numereüole. (IX, 67) Poe thus indicates that madness is a proper literary theme even for moral or philosophical books, and that such mad ness may be dramatically represented as the bizarre and disjointed rhapsody of a madman if the proper clues are given.36 Particularly relevant to Poe's sense of irony, howev er, is the close association here of banter with madness, though of course he distinguished between the two— or rather, between two kinds of banter, that of madness and that of pure humor. Disappointed in its lack of reason in madness, what he really liked about the book was that it is "a hoax." He particularly relished the mysteriousness of a monogram on the back cover of the book, the meaning of which he wordily and wittily solved. This monogram is a triangular pyramid; and as, in geome try, the solidity of every polyhedral body may be com puted by dividing the body into pyramids, the pyramid is thus considered as the base or essence of every polyhe dron. The author then, after his own fashion, may mean to imply that his book is the basis of all solidity or wisdom— or perhaps, since the polyhedron is not only a solid, but a solid terminated by plane faces, that the 36poe may, of course, have reference to some psycho- jlogical manifestation of madness by the author (uncon- jsciously), since he uses the word author; but the context {suggests that he is thinking of a literary structure, simi- jlar to that of Tristram Shandy. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 187 Doctor is the very essence of all that spurious wisdom which will terminate in just nothing at all— in a hoax, and in a consequent multiplicity of blank visages. The wit and humor of the Doctor have seldom been equaled. (IX, 69) By punning on the meaning of "plane faces" Poe has again connected the "mad" wit and humor of the book with the hoax. In this connection, we should recall that the term arabesque was used in the first three quarters of the eighteenth century primarily to indicate the later Gothic style of ornament in which there was much fret, lamentsd>le imagery, and busy work that so confounded the sight that one could not consider where to begin or end— but which was yet conjoined with congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy, cUid monkish piles. Moreover, we have seen that one of the earliest literary applications of Gothic indicated inordi nate wit and complexity.37 The historical and psycholog ical association of inordinately complex wit, distraction, and more sinister elements receives yet a further turn with the information that the eighteenth century also used the term arabesque to mean rhapsody. The ambivalence of this congeries is striking; yet a clear basis for the relation ship is visible. It is human subjectivity: the extreme reaches of the mind in wit and madness, humor and fear, perception and confusion, the real and the unreal. These I 37Evelyn, On Architecture; and Addison in Spectator iNo. 62. Î 38see Wellek, History of Modern Criticism, II. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 188 are thé stock-in-trade of Romantic Irony and of the genre of the grotesque. In 1853 John Ruskin defined the grotesque as the art of a disturbed imagination and declared it to be em essen tial part of the G o t h i c . 39 The meaning of the word in the twentieth century is likely to be, loosely, something ugly, distorted, unnatural, with the connotations, in some con texts, of either the ludicrous or the malevolent. Since this ambivalent connotation was in Poe's time the literary denotation of the term, there should be little difficulty in understanding Poe's meaning in labeling his tales gro tesque and arabesque. Yet it is characteristic of Poe studies that Poe's terms should have been rather greatly misinterpreted, grotesque being defined as merely satiric and comic, arabesque as emotive and imaginative, and Gothic — thus producing a bifurcation to corroborate the apparent split between the comic and the Gothic in Poe's whole body of work. But, as I have repeatedly insisted, Poe did not mean to split apart the comic and the tragic, or the comic and the serious; instead he conceived of "effect" as a con tinuum of emotional involvement with the grotesque and the arabesque as terms indicating closely proximate areas of feeling or impact, as that point between laughter and tears, calmness and frenzy, seriousness and mockery. Ara- 39"The Nature of Gothic," Chapter IV of The Stones of Venice. vol. II. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 189 besque seems In fact to be an off-shoot or sub-genre or alternative term for grotesque, differing primarily in connotation, and subsumed by the larger serio-comic or serio-ironic Romantic fictional genre of qrotesquerie. If arabesque has any clearcut distinction from grotesque in the normal Romantic usage of the terms, it is only in its stronger suggestion of a deceptive over-all pattern, which is yet intricate and symmetrical. Its psychological mean ing is nearly the same as for grotesque. And both terms have as a constant element a tension between opposites that somehow gives one insight, a transcendental vision result ing from the paradoxical fusion of opposing forces. Grotesque as both noun and adjective derives from the Italian words la grottesca and grottesco, which were coined in the latter fifteenth century to designate an ancient Roman ornamental style of sculpture and painting which was discovered through excavations in Rome and other parts of Italy. It was almost immediately realized that this lost style of grotto-paintings had been described by Vitruvius, a contemporary of Augustus, who had complained that contem porary Roman artists had rejected "reality" and "verisimil itude"— a passage that Vasari was careful to include, in the mid-sixteenth century in The Lives of the Artists (1550): . . . our contemporary artists decorate the walls with monstrous forms rather than producing clear images of the familiar world. Instead of columns they paint fluted R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 190 stems with oddly shaped leaves and volutes, and instead of pediments arabesques, the same with candelabra and painted edicules, on the pediments of which grow dainty flowers unrolling out of the roots and topped, without rhyme or reason, by figurines. The little stems, final ly, support half-figures crowned by human or animal heads. Such things, however, never existed, do not now exist, and shall never come into being. For how can the stem of a flower support a roof, or a candelabrum pedi- mental sculpture? How can a tender shoot carry a human figure, and how can bastard forms composed of flowers and human bodies grow out of roots and tendrils?^0 Renaissance art critics objected to the rediscovered gro tesque style on similar grounds, but artists and their patrons took up the "new" style, one of the most famous ex amples being Raphael's grotesques on the pillars of the Papal loggias (c. 1515), in which animal forms emerge from curled and involuted shoots and blur the difference between the êmimal and vegetable. Wolfgang Kayser characterizes Raphael's grotesque work as "playfully fantastic" and even "innocuous" and "friendly," and in the eighteenth century Goethe, in Von Arabesken (1789), praised their "frivolity," "gaiety," and "wealth of imagination." But in the work of other Renaissance artists, according to Kayser, a sinister quality intrudes quite clearly into this playful world: in the engravings of Agostino Veneziano, size and symmetry are greatly distorted and the human and non-human are fused weirdly; and in Luca Signorelli's grotesques in the 4ÛTranslated in Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, p. 20. Kayser's book is my primary source for the discussion here and following for the general his tory and qualities of the grotesque and arabesque. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 191 Cathedral at Orvieto, clear design gives way to a "turbu lent entanglement of tools, tendrils, and bastard creatures" which form a sinister background of disorganization to a rationally organized foreground (p. 21). The Renaissance used the term grotesque first to designate the specific scroll style and gradually came to associate the word with both the "carelessly fantastic" and the ominous, with a world almost totally different from the familiar one of reality, "a world in which the realm of inanimate things is no longer separate from those of plants, animals, and human beings, and where the laws of statics, symmetry, and propor tion are no longer valid" (p. 21). Kayser speculates that the sinister meaning in part ensued from a phrase so often associated with grotesque in the sixteenth century that it became almost a synonym— sogni dei pittori (dreams of the I jpainters), suggesting a fantastic realm of imagination and Ifancy welling up from the subconscious (pp. 21-22). I As an ornamental style, the grotesque spread in the sixteenth centui^ from Italy to Northern Europe, and from painting and sculpture to drawing and engraving, to book illustrations, and tools, and jewelry, first appearing as more or less linear patterns but becoming gradually mixed with a new style that gave it the general designation of scrollwork. It also became mixed with two other ornamental styles, which, though similar, were conceptually somewhat different— the moresque and the arabesque. Moresque desig- j R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 192 nated a kind of two-dimensional ornament exclusively com posed of stylized leaves amd tendrils over a uniform back ground of black and white. Arabesque, however, involved perspective, distinguishing between above and below; its design was more profuse, often almost blotting any back ground; its patterns of leaves, shoots, blossoms tended to be more realistic or verisimilitudinous than the Moresque or earlier grotesque, though animal forms were conjoined with plant forms.But between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, according to Kayser, the three terms were "perennially confused" (p. 23). Sixteenth-century German usage of the term grotesque referred to the mon strous fusion of human and non-human elements as the most typical feature of the style and connected this with the "infernal," with devils, tortures, and monstrosities from Ovid, Dante, Giotto, and so on. Seventeenth-century French usage, however, emphasized the "pleasantly ridiculous," equally applicable to a person, a manner, a face, or an action; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century (and 4lThe application of grotesque, arabesque, and moresque to the dance seems to have been a later development from the artwork: arabesque meaning a popular final figure of a solo dance (horizontal position, standing on one leg); mo resque meaning Morris dancers and their eccentric movements (often also called grotesque); and the more modern grotesque dance being a Morris dance with only a slightly curved line. Kayser thinks that the use of these terms in the dance sug gests that people have conceived of the dance (until modern times) as "essentially a dynamic use of ornaments within a given space" (p. 191). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 193 lingering into the twentieth) the French dictionaries de fined grotesque as "silly," "bizarre," "fantastic," "capri cious," "ridiculous," "comic," and "burlesque"— usages which are in accord with the usual interpretation of Poe's meaning.42 But in the eighteenth century, the two usages, the weirdly monstrous and the weirdly comic, developed side by side until the last quarter of the century the term gro tesque was used eunbivalently to mean both simultaneously, and became part of the theories of irony developed by the Germans. In the latter half of the century, writers had begun to determine the qualities of the grotesque as an esthetic category related to caricature, especially the kind of ironic caricature to be found in Hogarth's engrav ings, Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Swift's Gulliver's Trav els, and Cervantes' Don Quixote (p. 25). In the 1760's ! Justus Mdser defended the grotesque against the attacks of the classicists, who had used grotesque and Gothic as terms indicating a lack of clear order and proportion. In his Harlequin, or the Defense of the Grotesquely Comic (1761), Mdser called the coromedia dell'arte a grotesque world with "its own perfections," focusing on the value of the 42see Kayser, pp. 24-27, who points out that, despite this tendency to emphasize the comic from the seventeenth century on (in French usage), Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel of 1872 mentioned a deeper and more sinister meaming prominent in the age of Romanticism. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 194 ridiculous and the comically distorted for man's true un derstanding of the "chimeric world.One of Poe's favor ite German writers, Wieland, wrote on "grotesque caricature" in his Conversations with the Parson of *** (1775), dis tinguishing altogether three major types of caricature: "ture" caricature reproduces natural distortions; "exag gerated" caricature enhances natural monstrosity; and "gro tesque" caricature produces "laughter, disgust, or sur prise" by "unnatural or absurd" imaginings. With the German Storm and Stress movement and the be ginning of a clear Romantic movement, the concept of the grotesque became quite important. Of his play Confusion, j or Storm and Stress (1776), F. M. von Klinger (1752-1831) i Iwrote, "I have assembled the craziest characters, and the I Imost profoundly tragic feelings frequently alternate with 43see Kayser, p. 38, The two most striking features of the Commedia dell'arte in this connection are its actors' odd style of movement (frozen attitudes giving way suddenly to eccentric movements) and the use of masks. The masks and attitudes, as etched by Jacques Callot (1592-1635), are caricatural distortions of human figures, the masks espe cially, with their long beaklike noses and pointed chins, adding animal qualities to the human. 44gee Kayser, pp. 30-32. Wieland seemed to be dis turbed by the possibility that the grotesque had a hidden meaning of some kind, and frequently returned to the strange impact of the works of the elder Breugel. The two Breugels (1525-1569, 1564-1638) and Bosh (1450-1516) painted weird, infernal, flying and creeping creatures, abstracted animate objects, and monsters with both human and animal parts, who seem indifferently to inflict torments on their victims. The elder Breugel, especially, made the sinister invade an otherwise normal world. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 195 laughing and roaring'*; and of the reaction of his first au dience he wrote, "There they sat and did not comprehend."45 What the audience did not comprehend, according to Kayser, was that Klinger's play was neither comedy nor tragedy but a third genre, not a "confusion," as they thought, but a "fusion"— the grotesque, which went beyond mere literary satire and caricature (p. 44). Another writer, J. M. R. Lenz (1751-1792), reviewing his own play. The New Menoza (1775), wrote that German writers of comedy needed to real ize that since comedy dealt with serious problems they ought to aim at writing comically and tragically at the seune time, as he had. The New Menoza is comic-satiric caricature, with characters such as Mr. Worthy, Count Chcuneleon, Mr. Pedant, Mr. Deuidy, and an Oriental Prince who turns out to be Worthy's son. But Kayser observes that the characters seem to move like puppets guided by an alien force through I jweird situations involving striking contrasts. Three days i after the hero and heroine (the Prince and Wilhelmine) have married, a well-meaning acquaintance who does not know of their marriage tries to please them by telling them they are brother and sister. The Prince flees the wedding ball and turns up later at another ball arranged for the cripples and beggars of Leipzig. A cripple toasts the Prince's "princely sweetheart," and the toast is mechanically re- 45Quoted by Kayser, p. 44. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 196 peated by the others, who then throw their glasses out of the windows as the dazed Prince again flees. This is but one scene of a series that, Kayser writes, piles image upon image of dissolution and estrangement from a familiar world (p. 44). Yet the play has an epilog that clearly connects it with the beginning of the school of Romantic Irony. A new character is introduced, an old man who wants to relax from the day's work by watching a puppet show. His son, however, tries to show him that marionette shows are not truly art, since they do not imitate beauty and do not obey the "rules." The father disappears from the stage for a while to reappear in a final scene, his pleasure in marionettes spoiled. The epilog is a kind of play around a play in it self and also a frame for the whole larger play— as if the old man had gone to see The New Menoza between his two scenes, for Menoza is itself a play with puppetlike charac ters and constant destruction of the three unities. This multiplicity of points-of-view, of ironic perspectives, is clearly like the Romantic Irony of Tieck's plays a few years later, while its mixture of the horrible and the comic is clearly the grotesque. Indeed, the principal literary philosopher of ironic mysticism, Friedrich Schlegel, between 1798 and 1800, linked the terms comedy, tragedy, irony, and grotesque and arabesque together under the banner of the new Romantic R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 197 Irony. We have already seen that in his Ledtnres on Poetry (1800) Schlegel praised the works of Shakespeare and Cer vantes for their "artfully regulated confusion, that charming symmetry of contradictions, that strange and con stant alternation between irony and enthusiasm present even in the smallest parts of the whole," a structure he called arabesque, the "oldest and most primitive form of the imag ination. "46 In Fragment 418 of the first Athenaeum volume (1798) Schlegel characterized Tieck's works as "poetic ara besques," composed with a sense of irony and endowed with fantasy and gaiety. In Fragments 75, 305, and 389 Schlegel associated the grotesque with a contrast between form and content, with the explosiveness of the paradoxical antithe sis and fusion of the ridiculous and the terrifying, and with sophisticated caricature (see Kayser, pp. 50-53). Thus, although both terms are associated with irony (con trasts, discrepancies, mockery) in Schlegel's view, again there is a curious inversion of the meanings of grotesque and aradaesque as they are usually interpreted with reference to Poe: the arabesque suggesting deceptive points-of-view and general gaiety; the grotesque suggesting a powerfully emotive fusion of the ridiculous and the terrifying. Yet Friedrich's brother, August Wilhelm, had at the same time associated the grotesque with charm, humor, tenderness. 46Quoted by Kayser, p. 50. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 198 wantonness, and sublimity, a connection apparently derived from Goethe's essay On Arabesques (1789) in which Goethe defended the grotesque-arabesque style (making no distinc tion) from the strictures of the classicists. The close similarity of the meanings of the two terms is further borne out by Friedrich Schlegel*s comments on the French Revolution in Fragment 424. Schlegel wrote that the revol ution was the "focal and climactic point of the French national character, in which all its paradoxical features are united; as the most awe-inspiring grotesque of the age," resulting in "terrible chaos, a bizarre mixture, a colossal tragicomedy of all mankind" (Kayser, p. 53). The constant element in the usage of grotesque and arabesque, then, as mentioned before, is a union of oppo sites giving rise to a greater transcending vision of the true state of things. The grotesque suggests more strongly a yoking of the chaotic, the fearful, and the comic; the arabesque suggests more strongly a sense of ironic perspec tives in the midst of confusion and ominousness; both sug gest the struggle to understand the incomprehensible, neither term meaning anything absolutely exclusive of the other, both focused on the tension between conscious con trol and subconscious fear and delusion. Friedrich Schle gel called Jean Paul's "grotesques" the "only romantic products of our unromantic age;" and Jean Paul in his In troduction to Esthetics characterized the genre of the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 199 terrifying and the ridiculous, the tragic and the comic, the serious and the satiric as humor. Humor, Jean Paul wrote, is that "skepticism" which is "born when the mind's eye surveys the terrible mass of martial opinions which surround it," and which leads downward to "the abyss" and upward toward the "idea of infinity" (p. 55). Only four years before Poe sent his first tales to a publisher, Vic tor Hugo in the preface to Cromwell (1827) used the word grotesque to indicate an ambivalent comic genre, creating what is on the one hand "deformed and horrible," and on the other what is "comic and facical" (p. 57). Moreover, Hugo's grotesque exhibits precisely that concern for a union of opposites, a harmony for contrarieties, that is characteristic of philosophical Romantic Irony. In art, said Hugo, "an ugly, horrible, hideous thing," transformed by "truth and poetry," becomes "beautiful, admirable, sub lime, without losing anything of its monstrosity." For Hugo, the grotesque involved a structural principle of ironic contrasts leading to "a vision of the great infernal laughter.There is little doubt, then, that in calling his tales grotesque and arabesque, Poe did not mean to ^^Wellek, II, 255; Kayser, pp. 58-59. The year 1827 seems to mark a special interest in the grotesque. R. L. Hudson in "Poe and Disraeli," American Literature, 8:406, January 1937, notes an anonymous English review defining the grotesque in the New Monthly Magazine for 1827, the same year that Scott anonymously commented on the grotesque and arabesque in the Foreign Quarterly Review, and, as indicated, the year of Hugo's Cromwell. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 200 split them into the comic and the serious but instead to indicate the fusion of the comic and serious into that vision the German Romanticists called melancholy and tran scendental irony, the consummate fruit of the artistic and philosophical mind. Poe, I have suggested, is a Romantic Ironist who am bivalently used "Gothic" horror materials to produce an am biguous double or triple effect: simultaneously, the "lux ury" of a "supernatural" thrill within the weird "reality" of the psychological, along with the hoaxing mockery of slyly insinuated burlesque. Further external evidence that these were Poe's conscious designs in even his earlier fic tion is provided by a review of E. T. A. Hoffmann by Sir Walter Scott in the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1827, an essay which it is clear Poe read and from which he appro priated Gothic m a t e r i a l s . 48 in this essay, Scott 48The summary of Hoffmann's "Entail" that Scott gave seems to have been the source for some of the Gothicism of Poe's "Metzengerstein" and "Usher," and the parallels pro vide some striking evidence for Poe's careful perusal of Scott's article, titled "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Composition: and particularly on the Works of Ernest The odore William Hoffmann" (Hoffmann changed Wilhelm to Amade us) . The background of the "Entail" involves an eccentric prince named Roderick, who had in the past (as in "Metzen gerstein") given wild parties in a frenzied attempt to achieve good spirits, but who remained essentially alone in a castle surrounded by ghastly vegetation growing blackly up to the very walls. At the time of the story, part of the castle is in ruins, split by a deep fissure "which ex tended from the highest turret to the dungeon of the cas tle" (Foreign Quarterly Review, 1:84, July 1827), rather obviously the source ior Roderick Usher's house with the zigzag fissure extending from the roof down into the tarn. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 201 extensively discussed Hoffmann's techniques and compared them to the normal use of the supernatural in Gothic tales, A magistrate visits the castle with his nephew (the narra tor) , who, Scott said, is a vain, "romantic," "enthusias tic" "coxcomb," "trained . . . in the school of Werther" (85), a suggestive judgment if applied to the "nervous" narrator of "Usher." This young man spends the night in a lonely hall of the castle, and at one point (as in "Usher") the storm outside suddenly stops, and the moon streams through the windows to illuminate strangely lifesize por traits of ancestral knights and fantastic carvings upon the walls and the ceiling, which project weirdly and in the "uncertain light of the moon and the fire, gave a grisly de gree of reality" (87). The narrator (as in "Usher") com ments on the influence of environment over the human imagi nation, and also (unlike the narrator of "Usher") reveals that he has drunk too much. He then decides to indulge his half-pleasant apprehensiveness with a ghost story, the "Ghost-Seer" of Schiller (which, however, is a rationally explained tale). He reads to the wedding feast of Count von B ("Count von Berlifitzing" figures in "Metzenger stein"), to that point where the ghost appears. At this moment the door to the hall bursts open, and the narrator drops his book; but he explains to himself that it is the wind or something else equally natural, and continues read ing, to be interrupted by the sound of footsteps. This timing of the incidents in the tale to the events in the book is like the "Mad Trist" in "Usher," though Poe makes it more extended, dream-like, and psychologically delusive. Other evidence of Poe's reading of Scott's review (though Hoffmann was available in translation) is primarily addi tive after these parallels. In Pinakidia (Stoddard, I, 456) writing on the derivation of the term assassin, Poe mentions Von Hammer, whose work the History of the Assas sins (1818) was extensively reviewed in the same volume of the Foreign Quarterly Review (1:449-472). There is also in this volume a review of Manzoni's Betrothed (498-515), in which is given an extract, concerning death-carts used in the plague in Milan in the seventeenth century, which Poe also used in his 1835 review of Featherstonhaugh's transla tion of the Betrothed (Works, VIII, 12-19). Scott made particular reference in hisessay to the burlesque tales of Count Anthony Hamilton and to Pulci's comi-heroic poetry (65-66), both of whom Poe mentions briefly (Stoddard, I, 464, 498). Scott also referred to the horror tales of the "secondary names" of German literature, the very phrase that Poe uses in the preface to the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 202 concluding by commenting on Hoffmann's propensity to in dulge in the sickly fantasies of the grotesque or arabesque, which Scott disapproved of, preferring a more regularly Gothic weirdness. According to Scott, Hoffmann's "Entail" has a legitimate human interest, whereas his "The Sandman" belongs to that unsatisfactory genre of "half horror and half whim," and is merely "ingenuity thrown away" (93-94). Wolfgang Kayser has written that the development of Hoffmann's career involved a shift from a kind of allegor ical explanation of odd happenings in which inexplicable and vaguely demonic figures turn out to be the traditional devil, and which thus tends to undercut the sinister impact of the true grotesque, to an art that permits doubt about unnatural and improbable behavior, encouraging the reader I to seek an explanation, within the limits of verisimili- Itude, but which normally cannot be forthcoming. The result jof this double effect is the estranged world of the true grotesque.49 A major part of this effect lies with the narrative point-of-view, wherein a narrator begins with 49gee pp. 75-76, 69-70. Kayser offers a clear example of what he means by ineffective allegorized fairy-tale in the figure of the polite stranger in Hoffmann's "Life of a Well-Known Man." The Stranger, when offered help in cross ing a street, jumps six feet high and twelve feet wide across it. At night, dressed in white, he knocks at vari ous doors, his purpose never quite clear, his explanations never quite satisfactory. The weird, estranged world con jured up by these bizarre incidents tends to evaporate, however, when we learn that the stranger is simply the devil. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 203 some rationality and separation from the events and charac ters and gradually moves closer to the events, adopting the perspective of other characters or becoming a deeply af fected eyewitness— a technique typical of many of Poe's stories, especially "Usher." Kayser uses as his principal example of this kind of weird psychological verisimilitude Hoffmann's "Sandman" which so puzzled Scott. Kayser char acterizes Hoffmann's "Sandman" as a tale with the double effect of the weird and the real, realistically understand able as a psychological study of trauma and obsession. Moreover, the shifting and contrasting points-of-view, of terror, apprehension, commonsense, clear perception, will ful delusion, madness, have in their total ambiguous inter action the quality of Romantic Irony. Indeed, in the pref ace to his Phantasy-pieces (1814-15), Hoffmann praised Jacques Callot's etchings of the commedia dell'arte, the quality of which he proposed to imitate in his writings, not only for their dreamlike vision but also for their "irony." Wrote Hoffmann: His [Callot's] drawings are mere reflexes of the odd fan tastic visions produced by the magic of his overly active fantasy .... [But he has also] the irony which, by contrasting human with animal elements, mocks man and all his trifling activities, [and] dwells only in profound spirits .... (Kayser, pp. 39-40) But Scott's article is important for more than sug gesting a similarity of Poe's Gothic materials to Hoff mann's, or even for introducing Poe to the grotesque in the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 204 form of Hoffmann's "Sandman." Scott also in this essay tried to account for the psychology of the supernatural in literature, in the process commenting on the "grotesque" and "arabesque" styles and effects, and discussing the comic possibilities of the Gothic, thus further linking Poe's "Gothicism" with the German concepts of ironic horror and whimsy. After some initial remarks on the propensity of even the most incredulous and rational of men to be affected, though eunbivalently, by suggestions of the supernatural, Scott discussed the "fanciful" in Oriental tales (which ap peal to the adolescent mind but not to the critical adult mind) and the comic, satiric, and caricatural usages of an overworn style, technique, and genre: When the public [wrote Scott] had been inundated, ad nauseam, with Aréü^ian tales, Persian tales, Turkish tales,Mogul tales, and legends of every nation east of the Bosphorus, and were equally annoyed by the increasing publication of all sorts of fairy tales,— Count Anthony Hamilton, like a second Cervantes, caune forth with his satirical tales, destined to overturn the empire of Dives, of Genii, of Peris, et hoc genus omne. (65) The "wit" of Hamilton, said Scott, was like "manure applied to an exhausted field" and "rendered the eastern tale more piqucuit, if not more edifying than it was before," espe cially since Voltaire, imitating Hamilton's style, made the supernatural romance an excellent vehicle for satire. But the "comic side of the supernatural," Scott con tinued, may either entirely travesty and hold up to laugh- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 205 ter the Gothic or generate a sort of "imperfect excitement" (66). This latter species of the supernatural romance is well executed by French and German writers, like the German Wieland? and there is also a large area of "comi-heroic" poetry that belongs to this class, Scott noted, including the works of Luigi Pulci, Francesco Berni, and Ariosto. Ariosto, naturally, Scott found only ambivalently humorous; but "in some passages at least," said Scott, Ariosto "lifts his knightly vizor so far as to give a momentary glimpse of the smile which mantles upon his countenance" (66). Surely, these remarks must have been seminal for a young man like Poe, interested in the Gothic tale and yet possessed of a sardonic turn of mind. Scott next considered the collections of fairy-tales, like those of the brothers Grimm, which, he said, glut the appetite with too much of the supernatural, remarking, in addition, that there is yet another species of supernatural romance, allied to the satiric, to the comic, to the comi- heroic, to the eccentric, and to the fairytale-like, but specifically resulting from the "attachment of the Germans to the mysterious" (72). This [said Scott] may be called the FANTASTIC mode of writing,— in which the most wild and unbounded license is given to an irregular fancy, and all species of combina tion, however ludicrous, or however shocking, are at tempted and executed without scruple. (72) This "stile" bears the same relationship to regular romance which "Farce" or "Pantomine" bear to "Tragedy" and R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 206 "Comedy," Scott wrote; it reminded him of nothing so much as the commedia de 11 * arte ; Sudden transformations are introduced of the most extra ordinary kind, and wrought by most inadequate means; no attempt is made to soften their absurdity, or to recon cile their inconsistencies; the reader must be contented to look upon the gambols of the author as he would behold the flying leaps and incongruous transmutations of Harle quin, without seeking to discover either meaning or end further than the surprize of the moment. (72) Commenting on recent translations of Chamisso and Hoffmann, Scott described Hoffmann's works in general as "grotesque" pieces of "diablerie" (77) , which do not have quite the quality of the true supernatural: . . . the grotesque in his compositions partly resembles the arabesque in painting, in which is introduced the most strange and complicated monsters, resembling cen taurs, griffins, sphinxes, chimeras, rocs, and all other creatures of romantic imagination, dazzling the beholder as it were by the unbounded fertility of the author's imagination, and sating it by the rich contrast of all thé varieties of shape and colouring, while there is in reality, nothing to satisfy the understanding or inform the judgment .... [His] sickly and disturbed train of thought . . . led him to confound the supernatural with the eüasurd .... (81-82) Scott's notion of grotesque, then, is much like the eight eenth-century usage of Gothic arabesque, as he himself sug gested; and applying rather classicistic standards, Scott found Hoffmann * s qrotesquerie unsatisfactory.50 in part SOgcott especially found Hoffmann's admission of a sense of kinship with Callot puzzling, and contrasted the engravings of Hogarth with Callot's etchings; in exaunining the diablerie of Callot we find instances of "ingenuity thrown away,^ whereas Hogarth has a sense of the human and of the social world in which human beings move (93-94). This comment rather strikingly bears out what Kayser feels is the essential characteristic of the grotesque, an es- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 207 this was the result of his having misconstrued the aims of the genre, especially its concern for ambivalent irony (which Hoffmann tried to make clear in the preface to his Phantasy-Sketches) and of having associated such works with a sick mind. Yet Scott admitted that it could sometimes be "pleasing to look at the wildness of an Arabesque painting executed by a man of rich fancy" (93). But he complained that the grotesque writers ask us not only to be tolerant of "startling emd extravagant caprice," but also of "horri ble" and even "disgusting" "import." The underlying ele ment of this mixture of whimsy and horror, according to Scott, is "overstrained feelings," which always tend ulti mately toward pain and even madness. We possess in a much greater degree [he said] the power of exciting in our minds what is fearful, melancholy, or horrible, than of commanding thoughts of a lively and pleasing character. The grotesque . . . has a natural alliance with the horrible; for that which is out of nature can be with difficulty reconciled to the beauti ful. (93) In Scott's essay, then, Poe found not only useful Gothic decor for "Metzengerstein" and "Usher," but also discussion of the insinuated supernatural, of the psychology of the supernatural, of eccentric and nervous (and drunken) Gothic heroes and narrators, of satiric and sportive Gothic, and, most importantly, of a special Gothic blend of the serious tranged world. Scott's attempt to define_____ by reference to arabesque painting tends to confirm the probability that Poe used the two terms as near synonyms qrotesq :o confi ue writing R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 208 and the comic, based on overstrained emotions, that Scott called alternatively fantasy, grotesque, and arabesque. Scott tended to dislike grotesque fantasy because he thought it was depressing and had little affinity with beauty. On this latter point at least, Poe thought other wise. In an essay on N. P. Willis in the Broadway Journal (January 18, 1845), Poe defined Imagination, Fauicy, Fantasy, and Humor in a way that confirms his commitment to that Germanic Fantasy which Scott identified with the grotesque. All four faculties have in common "the elements Combination amd Novelty." The Imagination, Poe says, is "the artist of the four." From novel arrangements of old forms which present them selves to it, it selects only such as are harmonious;— the result, of course, is beauty itself— using the term in its most extended sense, euid as inclusive of the sub lime . 51 But this ultimate artistic beauty of "harmony," Poe says, like a Romantic Ironist, can be the result of the Imagina tion transmuting the elements of "either beauty or deform- i^." The range of the Imagination is . . . unlimited. Its materials extend throughout the Universe. Even out of 51works, XII, 38. Poe, we have seen before, consid ered the imagination as almost a divine power of man, a lesser power of Gocl. The most perfect work of Imagination would be God's universe (which just may be imperfect), a perfection the human artist obviously cannot hope to ap proach. Insofar as the Imagination combines items in a truly novel form, it can be "said" to create, which the other faculties may do too, though not so well. True crea tion , however, is not within man's province. (XII, 37-38) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 209 deformities it fabricates that Beauty which is at once its sole object and its inevitaOale test. (XII, 39) The thoroughly or most purely imaginative work, argued Poe, has such a "thorough harmony" that it is often "under val ued by the undiscriminating," since its combinations have a quality of the expected, the smooth, the obviously appro priate. But when in a work "there is introduced the sub element of unexpectedness" (matters never before combined "brought into [a] combination" that "strikes us as a diffi culty happily overcome"), the result is a work of Fancy. A work of Fantasy carries these "enticing" imperfections of difficulty-overcome to excess and may result in painful in coherence instead of pleasurable harmony if the writer, delighting in "novelty and unexpectedness of combination," avoids "proportion" (XII, 39-40). But there is, added Poe, another, more harmonious, beautiful, and ultimately more truthful kind of Fantasy; When, proceeding a step farther . . . Fantasy seeks not merely disproportionate but incongruous or antagonistical elements, the effect is rendered more pleasurable from its greater positiveness .... (XII, 40) Into this kind of Fantasy, which seeks the incongruous and the antagonistical, "Truth" makes a "merry effort" to enter, and we recognize true "Humor" (XII, 40). Poe's identification of Fantasy with, on the one hand, unexpectedness and avoidance of proportion, and, on the other hand, with a work of imagination that combines the beautiful and the deformed, the antagonistical and the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 210 Incongruous, into a harmonious, truthful, beautiful work of Humor, not only links Poe with Scott's ambivalently dubious review of Hoffmann's grotesques, but also places him deep within the "vortex" of German irony from Tieck and the Schlegels to Jean Paul. It is clear that Poe's genre, in his fiction, is just what he said it was in his first col lection of tales— grotesgue-and-arabesque. That by these terms Poe did not mean to split his work in two but instead to emphasize its unity is further underscored by his pro posed title for an expanded collection two years later— the Germanic sounding "Phantasy-Pieces," grotesque tales of fearful humor and of ultimately harmonious irony. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . CHAPTER V POE'S GOTHIC IRONY: THE USAGES OF "GROTESQUE" AND "ARABESQUE" Although Poe's own usage of the terms grotesque and arabesque is often cunbiguous, an examination of several passages, in context, will confirm Poe's conception of the irony involved in both terms. The usual interpretation of Poe's use of grotesque links it with those of his works that are satiric and playful, with their elements less carefully blended than in the serious, strange, and power fully imaginative arabesques. But we have seen that in ^Poe's time the two terms were used rather indiscriminately, : their connotations suggesting a single region of weirdly I humorous imagination that gives rise to a transcendent i I ironic vision of absurdities, contrarieties, ambivalences. ; Poe's usage is consistent with that of his age; grotesque i j and arabesque frequently occur together in such a way as to isuggest, predominantly, that they refer to a single psycho logical effect or response having to do with ambivalence, tension between opposites, auid a sense of the transcendent ironic vision. Poe's "distinction" in the preface to his 211 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 212 1840 collection of tales is probably purposefully aunbigu- ous; one senses a smile behind the phrasing of the state ment that the "epithets 'Grotesque' and 'Arabesque' will be found to indicate with sufficient precision the prevalent tenor of the tales here published."1 Poe does, however, hint at the association of arabesque with Germanism and gloom, phantasy and horror— but he refuses to be pinned down emd in the next breath paradoxically denies Germanic horror in what he has just admitted are indeed Germanic horror tales. He writes in a subtle contradiction that "Germanism is 'the vein' for the time being. Tomorrow I may be anything but German, as yesterday I was everything else" (I, 150). Elsewhere, as I shall show, Poe associates the word arabesque not only with the Gothic but also with ! satire in a manner that emphasizes the mockery implicit in his arabesque Gothic tales. The term grotesque, however, I is the more conventional, the more literary, and the more I • ' * ' — . I inclusive of the two; Poe's use of arabesque will be I clearer if we see first his typical usages of grotesque. j Certainly, as a first point, it should be noted that ! I Poe's actual usage of grotesque does not have a simple I comic or satiric quality. In the "Murders in the Rue I Morgue," for exeunple, Poe suggests in connection with the I term grotesque a psychological sense of the weird. The ^Works, I, 150. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 213 unnamed narrator of the tale says that the common temper of Dupin and himself partakes of a "fantastic gloom," which is reflected in their inversion of night and day and in their choice of a "time-eaten and grotesque mansion" which had been "long deserted through superstitions into which we did not inquire. . . . When the term grotesque comes up again toward the conclusion of the tale, Poe again links it with superstitious fear, but indirectly and with a number of ironic perspectives working on it. When the analytical Dupin reviews the circumstances of the murders (one woman's head is almost completely severed from her body, the other woman's corpse is "thrust up a chimney head downward," the locked chamber is in an "odd disorder"), he remarks almost comically that the extremity of the horror seems "exces sively outré."3 The whole situation seems, Dupin says, like a "qrotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from human ity." Moreover, the weird quality of the murders is inten sified by the reports of the murderer's voice, which was "devoid of all distinct or intelligible syllcJaification." "What impression," Dupin asks the narrator, does the total pattern of these weird details make "upon your fancy?" The narrator, with "a creeping of flesh," replies that some "madmcui . . . some raving maniac" must have committed the ^Borzoi Poe, I, 318. ^Quotations are from the Borzoi Poe, I, 334-335. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 214 murders. But Dupin points out that madmen, "even in their wildest paroxysms" and "however incoherent" in their words, speak a human language; thus, their ravings have the "co herence of syllabification," which the overheard voice of the murderer did not. Dupin then shows the narrator a bit of hair "disentangled" from the "rigidly clutched fingers" of one of the murdered women. The narrator, "completely unnerved," remarks that "this is no human hair." His hor rified statement is the high point, emotively, of the tale, for the non-human quality of the hair suddenly, if briefly, brings the odd circumstances of the murders to a point of mystery and supernaturalism beyond the conventionally Goth ic and into the realm of the inexplicably weird and alien. Poe has here brought his tale to the point of the "es tranged" world of the true grotesque, as Kayser defines it.4 That such a weird estrangement is Poe's intention in this passage is confirmed by the emphasis on reactions of the narrator. Significantly, however, there are two reac tions to the weird circumstances of the murder— Poe con- I jtrasts the "creeping flesh" of the narrator with the cold rationality of Dupin. Some critics have thought that Dupin is a symbolic projection of Poe's self-assumed superiority 4see, in addition to previous references, Kayser's last chapter, "An Attempt to Define the Nature of the Gro tesque," pp. 179-189. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 215 to thé rest of mankind. Dupin'a ”superiorityhowever, contains at least two major ironies. First, regarding the relationship of the reader to the writer, we have seen that Poe commented in a letter to P. P. Cooke in 1846 that part of the "effect" of ratiocinative tales like "The Rue Morgue" consists in a hoax, in making the reader "confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story."5 Second, Dupin functions in the tale almost like a Romantic Ironist himself. After having "un nerved" the narrator by pointing out the grotesque details of the murders, Dupin calmly provides a realistic explana tion which he has deduced from a number of small clues in tricately related to the over-all outre pattern of the situation. Through "deduction" and a leap of imagination, he sees through a chaos of weird appearances to the more pedestrian reality behind the deceptive "facts." The nar rator's comment that "this is no human hair" epitomizes in its way Poe's ironic-grotesque technique, since at the very instant that the narrator is duped into fancying some un name able horror, the rational explanation begins. A non human but human-like animal, an escaped ourang-outang, has killed the two women, a rather disappointingly commonplace and un-grotesque fusing of two different realms of exist- 5And regarding Poe's "superiority," Poe himself asks "where is the ingenuity of unravelling a web which you yourself have woven for the purpose of unravelling?" (Let ters, II, 328, letter 240.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 216 ence, though doubtless satisfying on a detective-story level. Dupin's phrase, "a qrotesquerie in horror," suggests that the very extremity of the violence and of the unusual circumstances impresses him as some sort of "mocking" cari cature of "ordinary" (Dupin uses the word) horror. Yet the sense of grotesque horror is momentarily increased by Dupin's matter-of-fact tone and then dissolved abruptly by the rational explanation. Moreover, the weird in-between emotional state of the grotesque is itself mocked through the absurdly sinqple explanation Dupin gives. In a sense, a "grotesque ratiocination," in which the clues to the "solu tion" of a weird tale are ingeniously combined with Roman tic-Ironic destruction of illusion, can be seen as the basic ironic technique of all of Poe's fiction. In the ratiocinative story proper, the reader is encouraged to try his wits against those of the writer in a search for clues cUid pattern; the reader is encouraged to look for a realis tic explanation from the very beginning. When in the "Rue Morgue," however, Poe's Dupin, for all his rationality, finally brings the reader to a flesh-creeping sense of the weird, and then brings him up short again with the ration al, the over-all technique is much like the Romantic Irony at the conclusion of "The Premature Burial."6 Similarly, ^The comically concluded "Premature Burial," analyzed in Chapter I, epitomizes the difference between Mrs. Rad- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 217 in Gothic tales like "Ligeia" and "Usher," Poe constantly suggests the supernatural while carefully insinuating rati ocinative clues. He brings the reader to the edge of the supernatural, as it were, and then leaves him confronting, through an "unnerved" narrator, the luminous eyes of Lige- ia, or the pale figure of Madeline Usher returned from the grave. From the beginning, the reader is encouraged to doubt, although ambivalently, any rational explanation and instead to enjoy the luxury of a supernatural thrill, de spite the psychological clues. But Poe also insinuates into his weird tales an absurd and mocking destruction of the spooky effect— such as the narrator's elaborate prepa ration in "Ligeia" of the bridal-funeral chamber, with its wind-machine to animate the draperies, or the Gothic tale of "The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning" that the narra tor of "Usher" finds in the library along with works by Swedenborg, Machiavelli, and Ludwig Tieck. This kind of multiple mocking irony, I suggest, is the basis of the "rare" and "glowing" "humor" that Poe saw in cliffe's emphasized and serious explanations and Poe's de ceptive and "ironic" technique. As Levin points out, Poe tries to make the reader "feel the inherent mystery of things .... But the relationship has another side, which is mystification, the aspect of Poe that manifests itself in hoaxes, histrionics, masquerades, practical jokes, and other impositions upon our will to believe. In a jocular article on 'The science of mystification,' he illuminates his own psychology by describing 'the habitual mystifie,' who is 'ever upon the lookout for the grotesque.'" See The Power of Blackness, p. 136. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 218 the qrotesquerie of some of the writings of Tieck and Thomas Hood. Yet, though Poe uses "qrotesquerie" in his Marginalia comment on Hood to indicate an area of extreme imaginativeness and wit, involving puns and an "ideal" but wild comic sense, the association of the grotesque with the weird psychological effect of superstition and terror on the fancy hovers over the surface. Of Hood, Poe writes: . . . his true province was a very rare and ethereal humor, in which the mere pun was left out of sight, or took the character of the richest qrotesquerie; impress ing the imaginative reader with remarkable force, as if by a new phase of the ideal. It is in this species of brilliant, or, rather, glowing qrotesquerie, uttered with a rushing abandon vastly heightening its effect, that Hood's marked originality mainly consisted.' Again, the "rushing abandon" suggests the "overstrained" emotions of a madman, forcibly recalling Poe's comment on the wit and humor" of The Doctor, that seeming madman's "rhapsody" which yet did not have "the proper evidences of madness." The statement also is consistent with Walter Scott's association of the grotesque and arabesque with "overstrained" feelings tending toward pain and madness, i which, to his disfavor, the German subjective ironists favored. The psychological import of the term grotesque, I then, should be clear; moreover, Poe uses the term gro- I tesque in just that ambivalent way that the Romantic IIronists in Germany did to fuse ironically the sinister and ! the comic, the weird and the absurd. I________________________________ _________________________________________ ^Marginalia 178, Stoddard, V, 302. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 219 Thé association of thé qrotesqne with the odd, bizarre, weird, and disturbing "impression" of things on the human mind Poe links with the term arabesque in "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842). The two terms are used together in such a way as to suggest a fusion of psychological meaning clearly connected with both sheer irony of events and with insinuated, mocking irony of tone and point-of-view. In an effort to escape the plague. Prince Prospère takes refuge with his guests in his country castle. He orders seven halls to be built according to a design which reflects his "love of the bizarre."® The apartments are irregularly laid out with sharp turns so that one's vision is focused and limited. Each room is decorated with different colors and lighted naturally from Gothic windows of the same color as the room; otherwise there are no lights, except from the flickering braziers in the connecting passageways that pro ject glaring light through the windows, and produce "a mul titude of gaudy and fantastic appearances." In the black chamber, which has a red window, the effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark hang ings through the blood-tinted panes was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the counte- nances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all. (I, 385) The prince orders a ball to lighten the pervasive sense of death that oppressively hangs over everything. But a gigan- ®Borzoi Poe, I, 385. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 220 tic ebony clock with its pendulum swinging monotonously, upon each hour utters from its "brazen lungs" a clear, loud, deep musical sound so peculiar that the musicians and dancers suddenly pause in their motions (like the perform ers of the commedia dell'arte) and listen: *the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hand over their brows as if in confused revery or meditation" (I, 386). the echoes of the chiming clock die away a light laughter follows and the musicians look at each other and smile as if at their own nervousness and folly. Al though this scene is repeated with each hour, the ball is gay and magnificent. The guests are all masked (as in the commedia dell'arte) in accordance with the instructions of their host. Poe writes that the guests' masks were "gro tesque" and immediately proceeds to the "arabesque" decor : There were much glitter and piquancy and phantasm— much of what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fash ions. There were much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited dis gust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. . . . And, anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of vel vet. And then for a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The dreeuns are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away . . . and a light, half-subdued laughter floats after them as they depart. (I, 386) This grotesque-arabesque scene is strikingly akin to the qrotesquerie of Hoffmann and Callot. But the important R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . . 121 point is that Poe uses the grotesque and arabesque together. He associates grotesque explicitly with glare and glitter, piquancy and phantasm, and adds a half-satiric reference to Hugo's play, all in all a kind of confusion of surface gai ety interrupted by a weird sense of the ominous. The ara besque in the passage Poe associates more directly with Gothic figures, either disproportionate or disarrayed. Both terms together Poe connects with the delirious dreams of madmen, in which are mixed the terrible, the disgusting, the beautiful, the wanton, and the bizarre. But before de ciding that the grotesque as Poe uses the term in "The Masque of the Red Death" is clearly aligned with confusing glitter and glare and with the weird postures and movements i Iof Harlequin, and that the arabesque is aligned with Gothic Igloom and subconscious dreeuns, we should note the conclu- i Ision of the tale. A strange figure, dressed as Death, appears, and the insulting "mockery" (I, 388) of his cos tume further defines the sinister "humor" of the true gro tesque in its generic sense: Even with the utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. (I, 387) The mocking irony, regarding the jest of life and death basic to the dramatic situation of the tale, is obvious and R ep r o d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 222 conventional.^ Poe also insinuates a serious, almost Sa tanic mockery into the story by using the motif of the seven chambers, reminiscent of the castle of the rhapsodic nystic St. Theresa, and by echoing (as Harry Levin sug gests) The Dunciad in the last paragraph of the tale: And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all. (I, 388) The mocking undertone to this ghastliness is, I suggest, true qrotesquerie. The narrative point-of-view is that of the sardonically superior Romantic Ironist. The close similarity of meaning of the two terms gro tesque emd arabesque as Poe uses them is further revealed in the wordplay of his satiric essay on interior design, "The Philosophy of Furniture" (1840), in which he ironical ly recommends an arabesque modification of the rather gro tesque tastes of American "decorists." He ostensibly ad vises "Median laws" in the patterns of carpeting, uphol stery, curtains, and wallpaper. A carpet must have "dis tinct grounds;" the figures should be "vivid or cycloid" 9That is, the costume was "no joke," but the further point is that the "joke" has become sinister, the "humor" ominous, the "mockery" horrible. lOpor almost reverent comment on the purely Gothic technique of "The Masque of the Red Death," see Walter I Blair, "Poe's Conception of incident and Tone in the Tale," IModern Philology, 41:228-240, May 1944. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 223 and "of no weaning." The abomination of flowers, or representations of well- known objects of any kind, should not be endured within the limits of Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or ottoman coverings, all up holstery of this nature should be rigidly Arabesque. This usage of the term arabesque would seem to be a kind of Kantian conception, suggesting beauty of pure design, in volving perspective against a distinct background, recall ing the seventeenth-century distinction of perspective in scrollwork— except that Poe has here insinuated a punning contradiction that produces, at the least, doubt about the complete sincerity of his advice in the rest of the essay. Although the passage seems reasonable enough on the sur face, Poe has turned the prejudices of two cultures topsy turvy: Americans of taste will prefer Arab-esque patterns, 'reproducing no natural forms, and will not endure natural forms within the limits of Christendom, especially on such items as ottomans. Poe then goes on to describe perver sions of taste that emphasize mere glare and glitter, glass and gas-light, "sprawling and radiating devices," "stripe interspersed and glorious with all hues, eunong which no ground is intelligible" (XIV, 104-105). This perversion of quiet order into sprawling lines, glitter, and confusion is similar to the grotesque confusion of Prince Prosperous halls in "The Masque of the Red Death." llworks, XIV, 103-104. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 224 A look at the opening of "The Philosophy of Furniture" clarifies the satiric irony of Poe's arabesque recommenda tions. Poe begins with vituperative comments on Romantic taste, accusing Americans of mere display. The well-fur nished apartment in America, he writes, is distinguished by lack of restraint, by general "want of keeping," and there fore he will recommend his own conception of the "ideal" room.12 But he gradually adds more and more glitter and "picture" until he ironically produces his own perversion of quiet tastefulness. He suggests as "ideal" an oblong room, with crimson-paned windows (as in "The Masque of the Red Death"), curtained with airy silver curtains within the recess and with crimson silk curtains without. The curtains are drawn with ropes of thick gold; a rich giltwork orna- iments the juncture of ceiling and walls; the walls them- i ; selves are "prepared with a glossy paper of a silver gray I tint, spotted with small Arabesque devices of a fainter hue jof the prevalent crimson.” Relieving the expanse of the paper are imaginative landscape paintings, such as Chap man's "Lake of the Dismal Swamp." The furniture is of crimson emd rosewood; central in the room is an octagonal 12see Works, XIV, 101-103, for the opening remarks. This pretentiously titled essay is always taken seriously, but its satire, as I shall show, is clear. Published in the same year as the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), the essay is contemporaneous with Poe's clearest formulation of his genre. His satiric presentation of "decorist" theory in "The Assignation" I come to momentari ly. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 225 table formed of rich "goId-threaded marble" and a few "ap purtenances" such as a candelabrum and a lamp with perfumed oil. If this room is not exactly the bridal cheunber in "Ligeia," certainly a general similarity can be seen, espe cially when Poe adds the final touch: all this quiet tastefulness surrounds a sleeping body (XIV, 106-108). Surely such a grotesque touch makes "The Philosophy of Furniture" suspect as a seriously meant work on interior design. Certainly, in the context of Poe's career, suspi cion of burlesque intent in this essay is confirmed by com parison of its "ideal" room with the room in the idyllic "Landor's Cottage" (1849), with the chambers of Prince Prospère, with the ghastly bridal cheunber of Lady Rowena Trevanion (of Tremaine), and with the apartment of his Satcuiic Majesty the Devil in Poe's early satire, "The Due de L'Omelette" (1832). Landor's room is similar in some respects to the "ideal" room of "The Philosophy of Furni ture," but simpler, more realistic, less lurid in color; the design of the carpet, for example, consists merely of small circular green figures against a simple white back ground. ^3 In the "Due de L'Omelette" the lighting arrange ment of the Devil's apartment is almost precisely that recommended as "ideal" in "The Philosophy of Furniture." The last detail of the "ideal" room is "an Argand lamp. ISBorzoi Poe, II, 720-721. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 226 with a plain crimson-tinted ground-glass shade, which de pends from the lofty vaulted ceiling by a single slender gold chain ..." (XIV, 109). In the earlier satiric tale, the Devil's ruby lamp is suspended by a slender red-gold chain, the end of which is lost in the clouds like C— — (Coleridge, Carlyle, or the City of Boston, depending on the date of the version). Thus Poe's earliest use of this setting and its fiery lamplight is blatantly comic and satiric, and when he uses this setting in "The Philosophy of Furniture" he associates it with the "ideal" of the arabesque. But we have seen that the term is double-edged, employed as both design of no apparent natural meaning against the perspective of clear background and also as an ironic pun carrying one of the first clues to the hoaxing satire of the essay. The "pure beauty" of the aredaesque pattern ostensibly connotes the opposite of the chaotic designs popular in America, but Poe's arabesque room reads like a qrotesquerie of the "ideal." We have seen also that in "The Masque of the Red Death," Poe associates arabesque clearly with gloomy Gothic figures in chaotic disarray emd disproportion, suggesting the early eighteenth-century conception of the "Saracen" style of the Gothic. The word arabesque in "Red Death" l^Borzoi Poe, I, 102. See variant readings in the notes to the tale in Works, II, 374. Similar "censers" in other tales are called Saracenic and arabesque, which I come to in a moment. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 227 suggests, in addition, an extreme psychological state as well as the merely weird, for the term is juxtaposed to the "delirious" "fancies" of a "madman." Moreover, we have seen in this tale an insinuated current of mockery at least as closely associated with arabesque as with grotesque. The arabesque then seems to be as equally ambivalent as the grotesque in its serious or ironic, sinister or satiric suggestions. I suggest then that Poe uses what is basically a satiric decor, and a satiric lighting arrangement, ironical ly in Gothic tales like "The Assignation," "The Oval Por trait," "Ligeia," and "Usher." And he does so in connec tion with the word arabesque in such a way as to confirm absolutely the deceptive ambivalence of both his term and his "flawed" Gothic technique. The usual view of Poe's Gothic lighting and interior decor, when they are not con sidered merely melodramatic and tawdry, is that they are Gothic stage properties which suggest rather well the demonic and supernatural. Oliver Evans, for exemple, writes that Poe often carefully arranges his lighting so that it seems to well up from below, frequently connecting such light with the word sulphurous. But on a level beyond the merely weird, though simul taneously with the weird, Poe's infernal lighting suggests i . . . . . . . . . . . . I— ■ , i.i.. ... ..-I „ I I I .1 ................. 15"Infernal Illumination in Poe," Modern Language iNotes, 75:295-297, April 1960. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 228 a tormented mind; the light it sees by wells up from the subconscious. Poe's characters often take a fiery ara besque "censer" as a symbol of their own state, as does the stranger in "The Assignation." The stranger characterizes his spirit as writhing, as though damned, in the fire of his lamp. As I have bluntly put it here the metaphor is a bit comic, rather like some imp in a b o t t l e .16 The metaphor is comic in a less obvious way in Poe's tale itself, for Poe in "The Assignation" gives the surface story a surface reasonableness and effectiveness. But the tale is actually a satiric hoax, a pretended Romantic tale of passion which actually lampoons the type as well as the prototypes of its unnamed hero and unnamed narrator. In a recent article, Richard P. Benton shows convincingly that the situation of "The Assignation" is based on Byron's affair with the Countess Guiccioli. The tale is a kind of allegorical parody, Benton writes, in which Poe played a joke on . . . [his] readers by presenting not only Byron, the Countess Guiccioli, and her old husband in the guises of his hero, heroine, and villain but also by presenting Byron's friend and confidant, the Irish poet Thomas Moore, in the guise of the narrator of the story. And behind the mask of Tom Moore, of course, gleam the sparkling brown eyes of Poe himself.1? 16poe's metaphor of "The Imp of the Perverse," I sug gest, clearly catches the tone of his characteristic serio comic attitudes. 17"Is Poe's 'The Assignation' a Hoax?" Nineteenth Cen tury Fiction, 18:193-194, September 1963. Benton is my principal source for the specific butts of the satire, though anyone reading "The Assignation" (first published in R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 229 The story is worth looking at in detail, for not only have its satiric butts been clearly identified, but Poe's tech nique of giving deceptive clues to the true insinuated meaning of the tale can also be clearly exemplified. The dramatic action of the tale is ostensibly serious and Gothic. An unnamed narrator, returning home at sunset in a gondola by way of the Grand Canal in Venice, hears a 1834 as "The Visionary") could hardly escape the general satiric and comic thrusts, despite its ostensibly serious framework. Edward H. Davidson in a note in Selected Writ ings (p. 500) says that this "lampooning" is itself a pro- totype for the kind of story that Poe afterward took with complete seriousness. T. O. Mabbott first suggested that the tale was a "twisting of Byron's love affair with the Countess Guiccioli" (Selected Poetry and Prose, p. 415) in stead of a reworking of Hoffmann's ^Doge and Dogaressa," as maintained by Palmer Cobb (pp. 90 ff.); but there is no reason not to suppose that Poe has blended several sources and contexts. Alfred G. Engstrom in "Chateaubriand's Itinéraire de Paris à Jerusalem and Poe's 'The Assigna- tion',^ Modern Language Notes, 69:506-507, November 1954, attributes the altar to laughter in Poe's tale to a similar passage in Chateaubriand. Roy P. Easier in "Byronism in Poe's 'To One in Paradise'," American Literature, 9:232- 233, May 1937, suggests that Poe in "The Assignation" is analyzing the effect on Byron of his relationship with Mary Chaworth, but the parallels are not very convincing. On the other hand, Celia Whitt in "Poe and The Mysteries of Udolpho," University of Texas Studies in English, 7:125, 128-130, 1937, more convincingly shows that Poe carefully envelops the tale with the decor and atmosphere of the Rad- cliffe romance (to be seen especially in Poe's "Mentoni" and Radcliffe's "Montoni"). The Radcliffean details in no way conflict with the Byron-Moore details given by Benton. Mabbott also suggests (p. 415) that the rescue of the child resembles a scene in Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. These multiple resemblances tend to confirm Poe's general satire on the sentimental and Gothic romance, and in turn further the more specific innuendo concerning the "Byronic" pose. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 230 "wild, hysterical, and long-continued shriek."18 Looking up, he sees a beautiful woman standing statue-like at an upper-story window, but in frozen horror, for her child has fallen into the black water of the canal. "Stupified and aghast," the narrator sees also the "satyr-like figure" of "old Mentoni," "thrumming a guitar" while desultorily giv ing "directions for the recovery of his child" (I, 138), Suddenly a muffled figure steps out of a dark niche in the architecture of the building opposite and plunges into the water after the child. This strange figure "in an instant afterward" is standing "upon the marble flagstones" by the side of the Marchesa di Mentoni with "the still living and breathing child within his grasp." His cloak, drenched with water, falls eJaout his feet and discovers "to the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing" (I, 138). (The narrator does not give the stranger's naune, but later reveals that he is an English poet.) The beautiful Marchesa Aphrodite, like a statue that has started into life," then gratefully whis pers to the handsome stranger that he has "conquered" and that "one hour after sunrise— we shall meet— so let it bel" I j (I, 139). The narrator offers to take the dripping ! l^Borzoi Poe, I, 137. One of the many exaggerated 'shrieks in Poe's fiction that resemble in phrasing the bur- 'lesque "long, wild, continuous shriek, or yell" in "The I Premature Burial." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 231 stranger home in his gondola, and the stranger (who has the mouth and chin of a deity, wild and full dark eyes, and a profusion of curling black hair over a broad ivory forehead) invites the narrator to come to his palace at sunrise. Early the next morning, the narrator is overwhelmed at the rich decor, especially the statuary, of the stranger's apartment, as well as with the stranger's somewhat mad be havior . About an hour after sunrise, the stranger shows the narrator a portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite and calls the narrator to join him in drink. He then makes some re marks eibout life, death, and art, recites the lines "Stay for me there! I will not fail,/To meet thee in that hollow vale," and seems to fall asleep. At this moment, a messen ger brings news that the Marchesa has taken poison. The narrator tries to "arouse the sleeper," but the stranger's limbs are rigid and his eyes are riveted in death. As the narrator staggers back, he finds a "cracked and broken gob let," and then "a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth" flashes over his "soul" (I, 144-145). The melodramatic quality of the action and the lan guage is given a quality of satiric exaggeration by the semi-comic motif of statuary in the tale, including a ref erence to the survival of eui altar to laughter, some banter about the Apollo Belvedere, as well as the statue-like ap pearances of the two major characters. The Marchesa is first seen in the niche of her window (looking like a R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 232 statue of either Aphrodite or a Madonna) and the stranger seems to step from a dark architectural niche in the next building; in a moment they pose marble-like on the marble steps. The stranger's features are like those of the Apollo; his bearing recalls to the narrator's mind some words from Bussy D'Arobois: "... like a Roman statue1 He will Stand/Till Death hath made him marble!" And when he dies his limbs become immediately rigid. It is as if Poe is suggesting, under the surface seriousness, that the characters of such tales are rigid and artificial, a sa tiric possibility that becomes more likely when the statue motif is seen in the context of Poe's use of Childe Harold I and Thomas Moore's edition of the Letters and Journals of i ! Lord Byron (1830). I Writing of his visit to the principal art galleries of Florence, Byron had mentioned, among other items, "the venus de Medici," "Canova's Venus," "the Antinous," and a work of "Michael Angelo.Poe's unnamed stranger also I alludes to these four figures: "Hal" said he, thoughtfully, "the Venus?— the beautiful Venus of the Medici? . . . Give ine the Canova. The Apol lo too, is a copy— there can be no doubt of it— blind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help it— pity me!— I cannot help preferring the Antinous. . . . (I, 141-142) i ’ Then the stranger adds that Socrates had long ago said that the statue was the block of marble, and thus Michael ^^Benton, 194. The letter is dated April 26, 1817. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 233 Angelo was by no means original when he said the same thing. T. O. Mabbott, taking the tale rather seriously, comments that reference to the Antinous is "subtle," for Antinous, a favorite of the Emperor Hadrian, killed himself "to fulfill a prophecy" that Hadrian would suffer a misfor tune, "thus dying for l o v e ."20 But Benton notes that the Byronic stranger's preference here is at the expense of the Apollo Belvedere. This preference, he says, is an ironic j oke, for Byron's . . . personal appearance often reminded people of the Vatican Apollo. When Thomas Moore visited Byron in Ven ice in 1819, he remarked that the English poet's "resem blance" to "the Belvedere Apollo had become still more striking." For Poe to have his hero, who is apparently a persona for Byron, reject what is actually his own image IS a fine stroke of wit .... (195) Benton then mentions further parallels in Poe's tale with Byron's affair with the countess. Not only was Venice the actual setting, but Poe begins his tale at the Bridge of Sighs, near a palace and a prison. Benton admits that Childe Harold may have been the general or initial inspira tion for Poe's story; but he shows through two other refer ences in "The Assignation" that Thomas Moore's edition of Byron's letters was not only the immediate inspiration but also that Poe's narrator represents Moore himself. Moore's description of his 1819 visit to Byron's 20selected Poetry and Prose, p. 415. Mabbott also notes that Byron's opinions on the Venus de Medici and the work of Canova are expressed in Childe Harold. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 234 "palazzo on the Grand Canal," near the Rialto Bridge, is similar to the visit of Poe's narrator to the stranger's apartment. Moore was met by Byron who took him, in his gondola, to the palazzo. Then Byron led Moore "up the staircase" to his "spacious and elegant" rooms, where he expressed his unorthodox opinions on sculpture and painting. Poe's narrator says : "I found myself . . . at his Palazzo . . . [on] the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto," euid was "shown up a broad winding staircase" into an apart ment of "unparalleled splendor." Inside, the narrator is subjected to the stranger's unorthodox opinions on painting and sculpture."21 But the conclusive proof of the satiric "identity" of the narrator, is a pun. Benton explains: "To die laughing," the stranger remarks to the narrator, "must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths 1 Sir Thomas More— a very fine man was Sir Thomas More— Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember." There is no other reason for mentioning More in the story except to pun on the name Moore. Sir Thomas More did not die laughing; he was decapitated.22 21gee Benton, 196, who cites an 1830 New York publica tion of Moore's book, II, 172-173, 175. See Borzoi Poe, I, 140. 22senton, 197. See Borzoi Poe, I, 141. Mabbott notes, however, that More's last words are supposed to have been a mild jest (p. 415). The reference then is doubly appropriate, and the real clue to the satiric suggestion of Tom Moore lies in the repetition. Benton, however, may be suggesting that Poe is doing some decapitating of his own. Benton's concluding remarks regarding Poe's hoaxing irony are interesting: "In sum, Poe's 'The Assignation' was in tended to be a hoax. Just as the joke perpetrated on the Parisian police in 'The Purloined Letter' is based on the fact that the obvious is often overlooked, so Poe's hoax in 'The Assignation' is based on the same fact. This time. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 235 More important, perhaps, as far as clarifying Poe's conception of the ambivalent mockery of the grotesque and arabesque is what immediately precedes this passage. The narrator is overwhelmed by the dazzling decor of the stran ger's apartment, which is distinguished by its want of "keeping" equally as much as by the magnificence of its treasures. "The eye wandered," the narrator says, "from object to object and rested upon none— neither the gro tesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt." Somewhat as in "Ligeia," rich draperies tremble to a "low, melancholy music" and the "senses" are "oppressed by mingled and conflicting" perfumes from "strange convo lute censers" which burn with "multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and violet fire"— censers that momentarily are called arabesque. The rays from the newly risen sun pour in through "windows formed each of a single pane of crimson-tinted glass," and the natural and artificial lights mingle and glance "to and fro, in a thousand reflections" (I, 140) , much as in the grotesque velvet chamber of "The Masque of the Red Death" and the "ideal" arabesque room of "The Philosophy of Furniture" (where such glitter and want of keeping are faults). however, Poe's joke . . . is on the vast majority of the readers of his own day, for no doubt only his more esoteric fans were in an intellectual position to appreciate his hoax" (197). R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 236 Laughing at the narrator's astonishment at the apartment and its art objects, the Byronic stranger comments that "some things are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die" (I, 141). He then makes the remark cibout Sir Thomas More gmd follows it with the intriguing comment that at Sparta there survives "among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins" an altar to laughter: Mow at Sparta were a thousand different temples and shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceed ingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have sur vived all the others I (I, 141) That this passage is em emblematic clue to the comic under tone amd satiric point of the tale is corroborated by the stranger's exhibition of his art treasures. The stranger shows the narrator the "Madonna della Pieta" of Guido Reni, of which Maüsbott says "its presence even in a palace is amusing for it is over ten by twenty feet" (p. 416). Then the stranger expresses that preference for the Antinous over the Apollo that Benton suggests is a rejection of the stranger's own image. During and following this exhibi tion, the narrator observes that the Byronic stranger some how seems "essentially apart from all other human beings." The narrator attributes the stranger's abstraction to a kind of habit of intense and continued thought, pervading even his most trivial actions . . . and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment— like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis. TT, 142, my italics) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 237 This striking fusion of the sinister and the comic an nounces an important psychological motif. The stranger's "mingled tone of levity and solemnity," his "nervous unc tion ," his "excitability," and his frequent pauses in the middle of a sentence to listen to "sounds which must have had existence in his imagination alone" suggest madness. But this mingled tone of levity and solemnity, along with the excess of exclamation points, ineffables, tear-stained pages, huge art works, and submerged satiric puns, also be comes emblematic of the qrotesquerie of the tale itself, culminating in a doctrine of "incongruity" associated with weird dreams, with death, and with arabesque censers. At the conclusion of the tale, the now drunken Byronic stran ger says, ". . .to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams" (I, 144-145). Commenting on the disorder, the want of keeping, in the decor of his "bower of dreams," he says: "Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Pro prieties of place, and especially of time, are bugbears which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the mag nificent." (I, 145) jOnce, he continues, he had been a "decorist," but now the I incongruous mixture of his rooms is "the fitter" for him. i"Like these arabesque censers," he adds, "my spirit is jwriting in fire . . . ." Moreover, he suggests that the j"delirium" produced by the decor of his apartment is the I more valuable since it provides him with "the wilder R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 238 visions" of that "land of real dreams," death. The osten sible seriousness, the hoaxing satire, the altar of laugh ter, the doctrine of incongruity, the melodramatic death, the death jest and pun, the mingled tone of levity and seriousness which is like adders writing from out the eyes of grinning masks, and the delirious dream of a spirit writhing in fire make "The Assignation" a neat synecdoche of the serio-comic, ironic ambivalence of Poe's "arabesque" tale. The dream-like delirium connected directly with the "writhing" light of the arabesque censer in "The Assigna tion" is consistent with Poe's association of the word with the dreams of the guilty and the insane in "The Masque of the Red Death." Grotesque and arabesque, moreover, seem always in Poe's writings to be firmly connected with the confusing and delirious influence of setting, of environ ment. As we have seen, the terms are usually linked with irregular, niched, multiform architecture, Gothic armorial trophies, flickering fiery light, the weird transformation of natural light through Gothic windows, and the like. But I Poe does apply the word arabesque to a predominantly pleas ant dream-like vision of a natural paradise beyond or out of nature in "The Domain of Arnheim" (1847), though the vision has also an "oppressive" and overly "dazzling" quality that "bewilders" his characters. In this tale- essay, Poe indirectly connects the "arabesque devices in R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 239 vivid scarlet" inscribed on an ivory canoe with the general form of an "irregular crescent," the shape of the high- pointed canoe itself as it floats in a crystal river; para doxically, the river has etched a channel through hard granite so clearly that the "sharpness of outline . . . de lighted while it bewildered the e y e ."23 As the canoe ap proaches the paradise of Arnheim, the "visitor" is almost overwhelmed with a "gush" of "entrancing melody" and with a "stramge sweet odor" that is yet "oppressive," as though of drugs. The vision of the visitor is then further bewil dered by a . . . dream-like intermingling to the eye of tall slender Eastern trees— bosky shrubberies— flocks of golden and crimson birds— lily-fringed lakes— meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses— long inter tangled lines of silver streeunlets— and upspringing con fusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi- Saracenic architecture, sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles ; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii, and of the Gnomes. (II, 681-683) Again, overstrained feelings, confusion, and delirium are the constant qualities even in this basically pleasant 23Borzoi Poe, II, 681. "Arnheim" is an extension of "The Landscape Garden" (1842), in which, as I have noted be fore, Poe uses rocky outcroppings and geological upheavals as symbolic, melancholy intimations of death amidst the ideal beauties of the natural world. "Arnheim" deals with the attempts of the wealthy Ellison to improve the land scaping concepts of the "grovelling herd" of men by con structing a fantastic, irregular, and unnatural paradise in the midst of a natural paradise, and in so paralleling God's creation becoming Godlike himself. But he dies. (See II, 675-680.) R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 240 description of an arabesque paradise. In the tale as a whole, however, death ironically makes a sinister intru sion. The semi-Saracenic Gothic beauty and delirium of ara besque dreams provides a major clue to the irony of "The Oval Portrait" (1842). The apparent metempsychosis of a young woman into a figure in a portrait is undercut by sug gestions that the narrator is in the throes of a delirious dream, thus providing a deceptive, subtle, realistic, and psychological reading of the ostensibly supernatural events. Poe associates the sinister dream-like quality of the word arabesque with "manifold" and "multiform" armorial trophies, with tattered tapestries, and with rich "fili- j Igreed" picture frames in a "chateau" in the Appenines, one Isuch as found in the "fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.The pic- I itures, in their "rich golden arabesque" frames, are hung not only from the "main surfaces" of the walls, but also "in the very many nooks" of the "bizarre architecture." i IThese pictures immediately capture the attention and "fancy" of the narrator-hero (an intruder in the untenanted chateau): perhaps, as he says, because of his "incipient delirium." Finding a "small volume" which describes the paintings, he has his servant close the shutters and light "the tongues of a tall candelabrum" so that he may study 24Borzoi Poe, I, 382. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 241 the pictures more closely. After gazing at and reading aüDout the pictures for some time, he moves the candelabrum, carefully, so as not to wake his "slumbering” servant, to throw more light on the book. But the "rays of the numer ous candles . . . now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed posts" to reveal a startlingly life-like portrait of "a young girl just ripening into womanhood." The narrator shuts his eyes: "to make sure that my vision had not de ceived me" and "to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and certain gaze" (I, 382). Again looking at the picture, he can no longer "doubt" that he "now saw aright." Indeed, the "first flashing of the candles upon that can vas" seems to have dissipated "the dreamy stupor . . . stealing over my senses" (I, 383). Moreover, the filigreed arabesque frame around the picture seems to provide evi dence that he is not dreaming, for he sees that the picture is a picture. Given Poe's normal usage of arabesque, however, the I pointed use of the term here as evidence of "reality" is an I ironic confirmation that the narrator is indeed dreaming the rest of the story, including the tale in the "small volume" which details the metempsychosis of the girl's soul into the life-like painting. Dream images dominate the I introductory paragraphs. The narrator is delirious and j drowsy, and the servant is slumbering. When the narrator R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 242 shifts the candelabrum, the shadow of the "bedpost" shifts to reveal the recessed portrait submerged in the shadows. Moreover, the small volume explaining the pictures is dis covered on the narrator's "pillow." Poe also emphasizes Ithe deceptiveness of appearances through the play of light I I from the numerous flickering candles over the multiform and ! Imanifold surfaces of the Gothic armor, the irregularities of the walls, and the filigree of the portrait frames, as well as through the reflected flashings of the oiled can vasses . Such a reading is likely to be considered dubious by j jpoe-the-Goth critics, who, like the ambivalent critics, do jnot believe Poe was this careful with the details of his jwritings. But Poe's revisions provide corroboration of the I hallucinatory dream-experience. In the version I have re- Icounted, Poe omits a long passage in which the narrator I explains that he has lost so much blood in the "affray with the banditti" that he cannot be bled and must therefore I 25 , rely upon opium for relief of pain. Moreover, the pain i i has kept him from sleeping for at least a week and has caused in him a state of "dull delirium" (IV, 317). Poe then emphasizes the deceptive quality of things as the i ! narrator sees them, devoting the bulk of the omitted pas- ^^Works, IV, 316. The phrasing and the details of the omitted portion suggest a mild parody of sorts, perhaps of Mrs. Radcliffe. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 243 sage to the deliberations of the narrator in judging the amount of opium he will swallow. The narrator is appre hensive because he has always smoked opium before, and he has "no preconceived standard of comparison" nor the "faintest idea [then] that what I conceived to be an ex ceedingly small dose of opium might, in fact be an exceed ingly large one." In his "folly," he judges the smallness of the dose to be swallowed in terms of the whole "piece which I held in my hand" (IV, 317). Thus, in the first version of the tale, Poe clearly sets up the delusiveness and deceptiveness of the experience as the narrator renders it. In the second version (1845), Poe characteristically reduces the realistic touches of the psychological, but without, as I have shown, removing them altogether— thus producing another Gothic hoax.26 26seymour L. Gross, "Poe's Revision of 'The Oval Por trait," Modern Language Notes, 74:16-20, January 1959, sug gests that Poe dispensed with "those macabre elements which threatened the thematic coherence and totality of impres sion in his story" (16). In the first version. Gross says, we have a passage that, "as do the opening paragraphs of several other of Poe's stories, sets out to delineate the neurotic imbalance of the narrator's mind" (17). But "in the revised version . . . the narrator's mind is irrele vant, for once the story of the painter and his wife begins to emerge, the narrator is forgotten" (17). Gross goes on to discuss the conclusion. In the final version, when the painter finishes the portrait, he exclaims: This is indeed life itselfI" only to turn to a dead wife. "The tale ends, therefore, on thematic dead center," the moral blindness of the painter. In the original version, the painter adds : "But is this indeed death?" This queer remark vitiates the effect. Gross says, "for it takes it out of the realm of the moral and puts it into the realm of the psychological" (19). But as I have tried to show, Poe merely reduces the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 244 The saune kind of "arabesque" details are carefully in sinuated into "Ligeia" (1838). Indeed, the usage of ara besque in "Ligeia" seems almost as an allegorical explana tion of Poe's deceptively psychological Gothicism. Poe's narrator describes his second wife's bridal chamber in a way that clearly shows the close association in Poe's mind of the terms Gothic, grotesque, and arabesque: "The ceil ing, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elcdaorately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-Druidical d e v i c e ."27 From the "most central recess" of the ceiling there is, as in the "ideal" apartment of "The Philosophy of Furniture" and in the Devil's apartment in "The Due de L'Omelette" a huge gold censer "depended, by a single chain of gold . . ." (I, 228). The censer is, as in "The Assignation," "Saracenic in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that I there writhed in and out of them as if endued with a ser pent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires" (I, 229). In the first publication of "Ligeia" psychological realism; the tale remains psychological (in deed two-thirds of the tale deals with the narrator). Poe is subtly playing with the reader in his surface superna turalism. But that the tale does have moral blindness as one of its themes is quite true. The tale has even been interpreted as almost an allegory of Poe's conception of the simultaneous creation and destruction that often in heres in the same process, even in the "creative" process of art. See Patrick F. Quinn, The French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbondale, 111., 1957), pp. 2ë^-2V6. 27Borzoi Poe, I, 228. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 245 (1838) and in Tales of the Gro'tesqtae and Arabes'q'ue (1840), the word saracenic was A r a b e s q u e . 28 The rest of the bridal-chamber exhibits those overdone qualities that Tate and Levin call tawdry and that the "Gothic" critics in general take as simply part of the Ro mantic mode of the supernatural. The bridal bed is "of an Indian model . . . sculptured of solid ebony, with a pall like canopy aüoove." In each of "the angles of the chamber" stands "on end a gigantic sarcophagus of black granite" (I, 229). But in "the draping of the apartment lay, alas 1 the chief phantasy of all." The "unproportioncibly" high walls are covered with "vast folds" of "a heavy and massive-look ing tapestry" of rich gold cloth. This cloth also is used for the carpet, for the upholstery, for the canopy of the bed, and for "the gorgeous volutes" of the curtains around I the window. The material, however, has a peculiar black ! design. The cloth is: I . . . spotted all over, at irregular intervals, with ara- I besque figures, about a foot in di auneter, and wrought up- I on the cloth in patterns of the most jetty black. But I these figures partook of the true character of the ara besque only when regarded from a single point of view. By a contrivance now common, and indeed traceable to a very remote period of antiquity, they were made changea ble in aspect. To one entering the room, they bore the appearance of simple monstrosities; but upon a farther advance, this appearance gradually departed; and step by step, as the visitor moved his station in the chamber, he saw himself surrounded by an endless succession of the ghastly forms which belong to the superstition of the Norman, or arise in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The 28see notes to "Ligeia," Works, II, 387. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 246 phantasmagoric effect was vastly heightened by the arti ficial introduction of a strong continual current of wind behind the draperies— giving à hideous and uneasy anima tion to the whole. (I, 22&) This passage suggests that the araüaesque as Poe uses it in volves, as 1 have repeatedly suggested, not merely the mon strousness of supernatural things but is a matter of ap pearance, of deceptiveness, of perspective and point of view in an over-all design. As a kind of allegorical state ment about "tales of the grotesque and arabesque," as well as about the single tale itself, the passage suggests that the real subject of such tales is subconscious and obses sive delusion. Moreover, the passages suggest a typical effect of the grotesque "phantasy" of the Germans : what seems simply monstrous or Gothic on the surface becomes "realistically" psychological, a matter of dreaun and delu sion, as one shifts his perspective. For the attentive, Poe develops an ironic distance between the reader and nar rator as it becomes clear that the narrator is closely in volved in the weird events of the story. The "bridal" {chamber that the narrator prepares for his second wife, Rowena, should surely alienate the reader at least a lit tle, for the Gothic, grotesque, and arabesque decor of the room suggests a funeral chamber. Poe plants the first clue to this kind of psychologi cal irony in the first paragraph of the tale. The mind of the narrator is somewhat clouded, much like the mind of the R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 247 narrator-hüsband of "Eleonora." His memory is especially tricky; he cannot at the moment remember where or when he met Ligeia, nor does he know if he ever knew her last name. On one "topic," however, "memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia" (I, 222). She was tall, slender, beauti ful; her voice was low, sweet and musical; her footstep light euid elastic; her face had "the radiance of an opium- dream" (I, 223). The opium-dream is but a metaphor at this point in the tale, but half-way through, just before and just after the "arabesque" description of Rowena's "bridal" chamber, Poe emphasizes his narrator's drug addiction and "incipient madness" and even provides him with a motive for murder. Having moved from Germany, where his first wife, Ligeia, has died, the narrator purchases a ruined abbey— with the money left him by Ligeia (I, 228). His next move is to take as his wife a titled Englishwoman. Sneering at her parents, who have accepted a large sum of money from him in return for their daughter's hand in marriage, he be gins to indulge his taste for the Gothic in the decoration of his new wife's bridal chamber. He explains that he has always been drawn to the Gothic and the bizarre in archi tecture and interior design, and he attributes his now wilder Gothic fancies to the influence of the opium he is taking in large quantity. But the reader used to Poe's "ratiocinative" method and to Poe's focus on the disinte grating mind knows what to expect from this death-decorated R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 248 chamber, especially when the narrator mentions his memories of the ideal Ligeia and his growing "hatred" and "loathing" of Rowena (I, 229). Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her [Ligeia*s] own. In the excite ment of my opium dreams (for I was habitually fettered in the shackles of the drug), I would call upon her name, during the silence of the night .... (I, 229) Soon after, Rowena is taken with a "sudden illness," which the narrator describes with a weird vagueness, punctu ated by weird dream-like memories of the lost Ligeia. Near the end of October, he administers a glass of wine to Rowe na, and fancies that "three or four large drops of a brilli ant and ruby colored fluid," forming invisibly in the air, fall into the goblet, after which Rowena takes "a rapid change for the worse" (I, 231). Wild visions, opium-engendered, flitted, shadow-like, before me. I gazed with unquiet eye upon the sarcophagi in the angles of the room, upon the varying figures of the drapery, and upon the writhing and parti-colored fires in the [arabesque] censer overhead. (I, 231) Next there follows his watch over the changes in the ap pearance of Rowena's corpse, a death-watch that the narra tor describes as "an agony of superstitious terror" (I, 231 ff.). The clues undercutting the ostensible superna turalism could hardly be clearer. Poe's real subject is the delusive madness of his narrator, the subconscious welling up of the extremities of emotion— of extreme love, hate, and fearful superstition in a spirit writhing in fire. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 249 On a second level of irony, "Ligeia” contains some specific satiric mockery. Clark Griffith, noting that "Ligeia" was published about the same time as "Siope" and "How to Write a Blackwood Article" suggests that Poe's underlying satiric point in "Ligeia" is similar to that of the other two tales, a double-edged comment about transcen dentalism and Gothicism. Griffith suggests that the over done style suid the symbolic contrasts of light and shadow, of gold and black in the furnishings of the settings, and of the fair and dark women are carefully patterned to make an almost allegorical point. Griffith points out that Li geia *s unearthly transcendentalism contrasts with Rowena's dull worldliness; the dark German lady is infinitely more intriguing than the English woman. Moreover, Griffith notes a series of similarities between Poe's Rowena and Scott's Rowena in Ivanhoe as well as some parallels of set ting, such as the disproportionately high walls and the odd draperies. Griffith further notes some startling parallels with Confessions of an Opium-Eater, which Poe then thought to be a brilliant hoax by Coleridge, and which Poe parodies among other works in "Siope." Griffith's conclusion, given such parallels and echoes, seems quite plausible: Poe's satiric innuendo suggests the triumph of German idealism and Gothicism over its pale imitations in the English- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 250 speaking world,29 Other corroborative details, not otherwise noted, so far as I know, for Poe's mocking attitude are to be found in the narrator’s description of Ligeia's beauty: In beauty of face no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium-dream— an airy and spirit-lift ing vision more wildly divine than the phantasies which hovered about the slimbering souls of the daughters of Delos, Yet her features were not of that regular mold which we have been falsely taught to worship in the clas sical labors of the heathen, "There is no exquisite beauty," says Bacon, Lord Verulum, speaking truly of all forms and genera of beauty, "without some strangeness in the proportion," (I, 223) Bacon's comment Poe uses several times in his writings; but in "The Man That Was Used Up, A Tale of the Late Bugaboo and Kickapoo Campaign," which appeared less than a year after the publication of "Ligeia," Poe applies Bacon's com ment comically to a completely artificial man, with recon structed body, limbs, face, and so on, Poe here, of course, may be simply indulging in the about-face self parody typical of the Romantic Ironists, But the details of Ligeia's "strange" and somehow "irregular" beauty of face suggest further ironic innuendo about the Gothic tale itself. Not only may Ligeia be the construct of the narra tor's Gothic mind, but she is also quite clearly his "demon," a device of his own "self-torture" (as Poe says of the student's conception of the raven), 29g@e Poe's "'Ligeia' and the English Romantics," Uni versity of Toronto Quarterly, 24:8-25, October 1954, R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 251 Thé narrator digresses with singular intensity aüsout Ligeia's "strangeness" of face. He speaks especially of her eyes and of a "gentle prominence above the region of the temples." Poe's emphasis on these features of Ligeia's face is so pronounced that Edward Hungerford suggests that Poe was trying to emphasize for his readers a proper "phrenological" basis for Ligeia*s character.30 one of the first things we learn about Ligeia, Hungerford says, is the "eloquence of her low musical language”; language, Hunger ford notes, is one of the "organs" of phrenology, external ly indicated by the eyes. "We have not very long to wait. The description leaves us peering into the large eyes of Ligeia. And very large eyes they were" (228). Soon after we learn of Ligeia's great learning in various tongues. Hungerford, however, can find in Poe's "phrenological" em phasis on Ligeia's eüaility with languages no direct rele vance to the themes of the tale; he suggests instead that Poe is trying to show his readers that Ligeia is "scientif ically true according to phrenology," that Poe is setting up through phrenological details a subtle clue to Ligeia's major trait— "love of life." But there is an obvious sa tiric point to this emphasis on language if we accept Griffith's suggestion that Poe's innuendo in the tale has to do with the relationship of German and English litera- 30"Poe and Phrenology," American Literature, 2:209- 231, November 1930. | R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 252 tures (though Ligeia's primary accomplishments are in clas sical tongues). Ligeia's major trait, however, is to be discovered in that "gentle prominence above the regions of the temples," a significant point for the reader of Poe's time, says Hungerford, for "anyone who knew phrenology" would guess that this prominence above the temples suggested construc tiveness , acquisitiveness, secretiveness, destructiveness, alimentiveness (a taste for heavy feeding), or one other, love Of life. Only the last, Hungerford says, could possi bly apply to Ligeia. But I suggest that all of them apply. Construetiveness may be double-edged, referring to her in genuity and to her ambiguous existence in the delirious mind of the narrator. But Ligeia is without doubt destruc tive, secretive, and acquisitive. In the supernatural interpretation of the tale, she kills Rowena, secretly, and acquires her body. At one point, the narrator remarks on her "gigantic intellectual acquisitions," especially of secret, occult knowledge; moreover, she had acquired a for tune large enough to allow her husband to buy an süabey amd a titled bride. As to alimentiveness, Ligeia's relation ship with her husband and her "acquisition" of Rowena's body has something of a vampire-like quality; she feeds on other life to preserve her own. Poe, I suggest, is pur posefully ambiguous and ironic about that prominent region "above the temples." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 253 That love of life Is the dominant idea of the "phreno logical" description of Ligeia*s head, however, is quite clear. Poe specifically underscores this characteristic in the narrator's account of her struggle with death. "It is this wild longing— it is this eager vehemence of desire for life— but for life— that I have no power to portray ..." (I, 226). But this idea, too, has its ironies. Ligeia seems to love life itself without any concern for the ulti mate principles of philosophy and ethics which her studies of transcendentalism would suggest were prominent traits in her. Poe is again quite clear: "I would have soothed," the narrator says, "I would have reasoned but, in the in tensity of her wild desire for life,— for life— but for life— solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly" (I, 226, my italics). We have seen before Poe's ironic attitude toward American transcendentalism and toward phrenology, the pseudo-scientific, and the occult (even Hungerford admits some difficulty in accounting for Poe's satiric remarks eüsout and satiric use of phrenology else where) . Poe's mockery here becomes clearer when we note that the concepts of phrenology were closely related to Coleridge's metaphysics, Swedenborg's mysticism, and New England transcendentalism, all of which Poe satirizes in other works. In fact, so closely related were these four mystic-metaphysical-psychological "theories" that F. H. Hedge, late in the nineteenth century, claimed to have been R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 254 the real founder of the Transcendental Club, for he had published a series of articles on Coleridge, Swedenborg, and phrenology in 1833 and 1834.31 This relationship fur ther strengthens Clark Griffith's claims for Poe's insinu ated mockery of transcendentalism and mysticism in "Ligeia" by linking the tale quite clearly to the satiric subjects of "Siope" and "How to Write a Blackwood Article" in just the way he suggests. A further ironic twist can be seen in the description of Ligeia's head. The over-all picture of her face— loom ing out of the darkness of her hair, with that gentle prom inence above the temples, with an ivory complexion in which are set the large, staring, black, almost pupilless eyes, and with a broad chin above which are "the teeth glancing back with a brilliance almost startling"— is that of a death's-head (I, 223). Ligeia, the narrator's obsession, is thus first described in a way that, ambiguously, sug gests a grinning skull; her head is for the narrator the symbol of death itself. Later, in decorating Rowena's death chamber with pall-like canopies and Egyptian sarco phagi, the narrator reveals his half-conscious love of death, an ironic inversion of Ligeia's apparent love of life that further confirms the murderous realism of the tale. Moreover, the narrator's memory of the strange face 31see John B. Wilson, "Phrenology and the Transcenden- talists," American Literature, 28:220-225, May 1956. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . of Ligeia, coupled with his blurred memory of her as a real person and his calling upon her name as he wakes from opium-dreams in the dead of night, again suggests a demonic and delusive construct in his mind. But real or not, Lige ia is certainly his vampire, his succubus; his blurred memory of her skull-like (or possibly horned) head is, at the least, a symbol of his obsession with death, just as the zigzag fissure and general decay of the "face" of Roderick Usher's house is a symbol of his crumbling and decaying m i n d . ^ 2 In view of the uses Poe makes of the terms grotesque and arabesque in "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Assig nation," "Ligeia," and the other works discussed so far, it should come as no surprise to find Usher's crumbling and decayed face characterized as "Arabesque."33 That Usher's mind disintegrates as the tale progresses is obvious. Both Usher and the narrator comment variously on the matter. 32James W. Gargano in "Poe's 'Ligeia': Dream and De struction" College English, 23:337-342, February 1962, sug gests that the main pointof "Ligeia" is the psychological "destruction" of the narrator who clings tenaciously to his Romantic "dream." "At the critical point where [Poe's] . . . character fiercely possesses his dream, Poe displays a completely realistic grasp of the situation. He [Poe] knows only too well that ways of protracted romantic self- indulgence are self-deception and ultimate madness" (342). The bibliography of studies of "Ligeia," like that of "Ush er" and "The Cask of Amontillado," is incredibly extensive. I have cited only those discussions most relevant to my own. ^^Borzoi Poe, I, 266. R ep r o d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 256 The inciting incident, in fact, is Usher's written appeal to the narrator to preserve him from the final collapse of his mind. But Usher's arabesque face, with its parallels in the appearance of the "haunted palace" in a wild poem Usher writes and in the appearance of the family manor house itself, provides a clue to a major irony insinuated under the Gothic surface of the story. Usher's face is in a sense the image of the narrator's own, whose mind, if not disintegrating also, is capable of slipping in an instant into the same kind of madness or hysterical fear to which Usher is subject. The tale as a whole can be read as the progressive hallucination of the two protagonists. Usher and his clos est and only friend, the unnamed narrator. In the superna tural ly charged atmosphere of the surface story, the narra tor seems to serve as a corroborating witness to the actual return of Madeline, and to the weird, simultaneous "deaths" of the Ushers and of their house. But Poe meticulously, from the opening paragraph through to the last, details the development of the narrator's initial uneasiness into a 3*The bibliography on "Usher" runs to over two dozen items. I consider the following most insightful: Darrel Abel, "A Key to the House of Usher," University of Toronto Quarterly, 18:176-185, January 1949; Edward H. Davidson, Poe, pp. 192-205 (on Poe's "allegorical" methods in gene- ral); E. Arthur Robinson, "Order and Sentience in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," PMLA, 76:68-81, March 1961; Leo Spitzer, "A Reinterpretation of 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," Comparative Literature, 4:351-363, Fall 1952. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 257 frenzy of terror, engendered by and parallel to Usher's terrors. The tale opens with the narrator's account of his lonely autumn journey through a "singularly dreary tract of country" in response to a "wildly importunate" summons from Usher (I, 262-263). At nightfall, as the "melancholy" house of Usher comes into view, the narrator feels a sense of "insufferable gloom" pervading his spirit. He pauses to look at the "mere house," trying to account rationally for its total weird effect. But the scene still produces in him an utter depression of soul . . . an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart— an unredeemed dreariness of thought . . . . it was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. (I, 263) The primary effect of the opening paragraphs, of course, is to suggest something horrible and supernatural about the House of Usher. But, as in Poe's other tales, there is no overstepping of the real; the strange impression of the scene is relegated to the "fancies" of the narrator. But because the narrator tries to account for the effect ra tionally, we are led, for the time being, to attribute the weirdness of the scene not to his subjective impressions I but to the scene itself. ! Yet Poe uses this apparent rationality to heighten the irrational, a technique somewhat similar to the grotesque scene of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The narrator re flects on the possibility that "there are combinations of R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 258 very simple natural objects," that have the power to affect the mind, but "the analysis of this power lies among con siderations" beyond our "depth"; and at this moment, he looks down into "a black and lurid tarn," to see the re flected, remodelled, and inverted images of "the gray sedge, auid the ghostly tree stems, and the vacant and eye like windows" (I, 263). The effect of this vision is to produce in him "a shudder even more thrilling than before" and to "deepen the first singular impression": There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid increase of my superstition— for why should I not so term it?— served mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. (I, 264, my italics) As he again lifts his eyes "to the house itself, from its I image in the pool," he is aware of a "strange fancy" grow ling in his mind: I I had so worked upon my imagination as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung . I T { a pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly I discernible, and leaden-hued. (I, 264, my italics) But Poe then reasserts the narrator's rationality: "Shak ing off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building" (I, 264). The paragraph is organized, however, so as to bring the teal" description back again to the "impression" the scene makes upon the narrator's "fancy"; although the nar rator begins his "analysis" of the house at the roof, with its fine tangled web-work of fungi, his eye travels down R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 259 along a zigzag fissure to become again "lost in the sullen waters of the tarn" (I, 265). The apprehensive, fanciful, superstitious, but "ration al" narrator then goes into the house to meet Usher, where, during the course of the next several days, he comes in creasingly under the influence of Usher's own wild super stitions. "In the manner of my friend," the narrator says, "I was at once struck with an incoherence— an inconsistency It * # * # To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. 'I shall perish,' said he, ". . . in this deplor able folly .... I have, indeed no abhorrence of dan ger, except in its absolute effect— in terror. In this unnerved, in this pitiable, condition I feel that the period will sooner or latter arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR. (I, 266-267) Usher's statement of his own condition applies also to the 'narrator, who struggles with the same phantasm, heightened Iby Usher's own phantasms. Usher suggests, for example, I that the house is alive and has exerted a malignant influ ence on his mind. Later the narrator, looking for some thing to read, finds that the only books in Usher's library are accounts of strange journeys, weird meetings, and death- watches (some of which, like Tieck's Blue Distance are par tially satiric). Then Usher reads a weird poem he has com posed about the decay of reason (I, 269), the single ex tended metaphor of which suggests the "face" of the "House" of Usher itself. Soon after, Madeline dies, and Usher and R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 260 the narrator bury her in a crypt in the cellar. She has the "mockery of a faint blush of life" upon her skin and a terrible "lingering smile" upon her lips, phenomena that the "rational" narrator attributes to the peculiar ravages of her cataleptic disorder but which Usher intimates is something less natural (I, 172). Then, as Usher's behavior becomes even more distracted (a continual "tremulous qua ver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his utterance"), the narrator confesses to himself his own in creasing apprehensiveness. Slowly, although he tries to see in Usher's behavior "the mere vagaries of madness," the narrator feels growing in himself a vague fear that Usher has some horrible "oppressive secret" to divulge (I, 172). "Rationally," however, the narrator acknowledges that Usher's "condition terrified . . . it infected me. I felt Icreeping upon me, by slow yet uncertain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive supersti tions" (I, 272). Symmetrically, the psychological themes of the first part of the tale, are exactly repeated in the second, but with the fears of both Usher and the narrator at a higher pitch. One night, shortly after Madeline's burial, the narrator is unable to sleep, especially since, as with the reflected image of the house in the tarn, he is aware of his increased terror: "an irrepressible tremor gradually {pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 261 heart an incubus'* of "utterly causeless alarm" (I, 273). "Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror," the narra tor begins pacing nervously; suddenly he is startled by a light footstep outside his door. But it is only Usher. Usher's intensely agitated condition, however, is the more unnerving, especially when he suggests that a supernatural and luminous vapor has surrounded the house in spite of the rising wind without. Perhaps the clearest of clues to the theme of doubled (and redoubled) fear comes next. The narrator, in an at tempt to calm Usher, reads from a volume called "The Mad Trist." The title suggests a pun calling attention to the basic situation in which the narrator finds himself. Usher is about to keep a mad trist with Madeline, even as the narrator has kept his mad trist with Usher. The tale, "Mad Trist" is an absurd parody of a medieval romance about the delusive meeting of the knight Ethelred with a hermit who disappears and changes his form into that of a fearful dragon. The narrator's reading of "The Mad Trist" to Usher is interrupted by strange sounds of creaking wood, of shrieking, and of grating metal. These sounds, beginning at the bottom of the house and moving upward toward them, eerily (and ludicrously) correspond with the sounds of the chivalric romance. The sounds, of course, are supposed to be the results of the cataleptic Madeline's efforts to free herself from her tomb. Usher, at least, tells the narrator R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 262 that this is so and that she is, in fact, now standing out side the door. And, in the end, the narrator sees her too: bloody, frail, emaciated, trembling, and reeling to and fro, falling upon Usher in her "now final death agonies" and bearing Usher "to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated" (I, 276, my italics). As a last emphatic psychological detail, Poe has the narrator tell us that "from that chamber and from that mansion, I fled aghast."35 If the stated terrors of the narrator are not convinc ing enough for a complete psychological interpretation of the supernaturally charged events, the recurrent dream imagery and the very order of the opening paragraphs regard ing the images of the house in the pool should confirm such a reading. The dream images culminate in the return of Madeline and in the "Mad Trist." Madeline is not supposed to be exactly a ghost— but if she is not, in her frail and emaciated condition, she would have had rather a hard time breaking open the coffin, the lid of which the narrator specifically tells us they screwed down, and pushing open the door, "of massive iron" and of such "immense weight" that its movement "caused an unusually sharp, grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges" (I, 272). These 35iie also sees the mansion split down its zigzag fis sure and sink into the tarn. As Abel suggests, the crumr bling of the house can be attributed to the force of the storm against its decayed structure— if, of course, it R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 263 details of Madeline's entombment, given us at the mid-point of the tale, underscore the dream motif, for Poe also makes a point of having the narrator tell us that Madeline's tomb is at great depth, immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was "my own sleeping compartment" (I, 272). The images of sleep, mist, water, and descent, re curring throughout the tale, surely in combination suggest that the subconscious mind is, at the least, involved. The night of Madeline's return, just before the reading of the "Mad Trist," the narrator cannot sleep, and a detailed description of his troubled drowsiness is given. Neither can Usher sleep, for he is troubled by the dreamy mist en shrouding the house. Finally, the events, the disappear ances, transformations, and the correspondence of sounds in the tale of the "Mad Trist" which follows, all have the order of a dream, and, moreover, move from the depths of the house upward toward Usher and the narrator. Yet the "Mad Trist" is made purposefully ludicrous; it reads like a parody, and even the narrator comments on its absurdity. The correspondence of sounds, especially, heightens the ludicrous effect— perhaps into the grotesque. But the intruded tale of the "Mad Trist" also has a clear Romantic-Ironic effect; it destroys the Gothic illusion; it intrudes an ironic distance clearly and rather suddenly be tween the narrator and the reader, calling attention to the real psychological situation of the two protagonists R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 264 engaged in their own mad trist. Connected with the dream images and reinforcing the suggestion of subconscious action is the dream-like reflec tion of the House of Usher in the pool and its parallel in Usher's arabesque face. The narrator, as he becomes ab sorbed in his "superstitious" reflections, says that he had to shake off from his fancy "what must have been a dreaum." The narrator's first impression of the house is that it is like a human face, especially with its two vacant eye-like windows. Then he looks down into the pool, but sees only the reflection of the "face" of the house. Then he remem bers Usher's hysterical letter and mentions, along with Usher's "mental disorder," that he had been Usher's close and only friend. Next he remembers that the peasants refer to both the House and the family as the House of Usher and immediately returns to the image of the "face" in the pool (I, 264). When he looks up at the house again, he tries to "analyze" its weird effect, and describes once more its Iprominent details, especially the overspreading fungi I"hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves" (I, i 264). He then goes into the house to meet Usher, and de scribes the weird appeareuice of his face. Usher's face has a generally decayed aspect, like the house itself, but es pecially noticeable are his large and luminous eyes and his hair "of more than web-like softness and tenuity." The tangled "silken hair," of a "wild gossomer texture . . . R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 265 floated rather than fell about the face," the "Arabesque expression" of which the narrator cannot "connect with any idea of simple humanity" (I, 265-266). As we have seen, the narrator grows "terrified" and "infected" with Usher's hysteria. He becomes like Usher. Usher's arabesque face and the face of the house are the same, and when the narra tor gazes into the pool, the reflected areüaesque face is, symbolically, his own. The image of the face is then re emphasized in Usher's slightly medieval poem about the "attack" of madness on the "haunted" castle.Any ghosts in the tale of Usher, then, are those of the mind. I have suggested that "The Mad Trist" is an illusion- breaking pun and parody that abruptly calls attention to the real psychological situation of the narrator of "Usher." It occurs about three-quarters of the way through the tale; symmetrically, there is also another, briefer, illusion- destroying effect earlier, about one-quarter of the way in to the tale. Poe insinuates into the Gothic atmosphere a thematic pun so blatant that those unaware of Poe's con stant use of the grotesque pun throughout his writings will probably find my claim that it is a conscious effect strained. But it occurs just before the nervous narrator. ^^Usher's poem in the middle of the tale uses a single extended metaphor of a castle with a face-like appearance, the pale hair of yellow banners at the top, two "red-litten windows," and a single door from which issue "echoes" that "laugh but smile no more." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 266 conscious of his own vague terror and therefore the more apprehensive, is about to meet his double. Just before his first trist with Usher, and his arabesque face, the narra tor goes through a "Gothic” archway, into a dark, black- floored hall with carved, niched, vaulted, and fretted ceilings and walls, decorated with armorial trophies and decaying tapestries. The hall is lit by narrow, pointed windows through which "feeble gleams" of "encrimsoned" light "made their way" through "the trellised panes." Sym bolically, the narrator has stepped into a different world from the real one, into the subjective Gothic world of ter ror and horror. The narrator, as we have seen, reflects Usher's superstitious terrors increasingly as the tale pro gresses, eventually in the final scene succumbing complete ly to Usher's Gothic vision. Inside the hallway of the house he is led by a servant to Usher's quarters; then the servant "threw open the door and ushered me into the pres ence of his master" (I, 265, my italics). It is, of course, nothing new for a writer to make the titles of his works and the names of his characters symbolic or suggestive. But the comic blatancy of the illusion-destroying pun in a weird and supernatural tale by Poe is hard for Poe-the-Goth critics to take; so the pun is ignored; but it is just the kind of trick a Romantic Ironist would play. I have tried to show that Poe's supernatural Gothic is actually deceptive, planned for ironic double effect that is R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 267 both chilling and absurd, both weird and comic: the gro tesque "arabesque tale of the German ironists. The mockery inherent in this kind of weird tale will perhaps be clearer with two final examples of Poe's use of the term arabesque. These uses suggest again that by the terms grotesque and arabesque Poe meant one psychological concept involving the extremities of subjectivity in terror and madness and the extremity of objectivity and rationality in irony— the ob jective subjectivity of the Romantic Ironists. We have seen in his Marginalia comment on Thomas Hood, that by grotesquerie Poe meant a rare humor characterized by a wild abandon of metaphor and wordplay. In his Autog raphy comment on Thomas Holley Chivers, Poe applies these meanings of grotesque to the semi-Gothic, monstrous, delu sive incongruities of arabesque. Chivers' works, he writes, "affect one as a wild dream— strange, incongruous, full of images of more than areüsesque monstrosity . . . ." Yet Chivers' "nonsense," often lacking "any meaning" and char acterized by "metaphor run mad," has an "indefinite charm of sentiment and melody.This association of arabesque monstrosity with nonsense, metaphor run mad, and indefinite charm is the more significant when seen in conjunction with Poe's use of arabesque to mean satire or burlesque. In a letter to the publishers of the New England 3?Stoddard, V, 410-411. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . Maq'azine on May 4, 1833, Poe offered Joseph and Edwin Buck- 268 Ingham his tale "Epimanes" (later called "Four Beasts in One— the Homocameleopard") as one of a series of eleven sequential burlesque stories, tentatively titled "Eleven Tales of the Arabesque." They are supposed to be read at table by the eleven mem bers of a literary club, and are followed by the remarks of the company upon each. These remarks are intended as a burlesque upon criticism. In the whole, originality more than euiything else has been attempted .... If you like the specimen I have sent I will forward the rest at your suggestion— but if you decided upon publishing all the talés, it would not be proper to print the one I now send until it can be printed in its place with the oth ers. It is however optional with you either to accept them all, or publish "Epimanes" and reject the rest— if indeed you do not reject them altogether.38 Poe's usage of arabesque here to mean burlesque not only strikingly confirms Poe's conscious ambiguity in his use of jthe two terms, but also suggests that grotesque and ara besque together are meant to communicate a sense of over all irony. Indeed, the plan for a sequential series of burlesque- arabesque-grotesque tales and satiric criticisms provides probcKbly the clearest and most conclusive external evidence 38Letters, I, 53-54, letter 37. A. H. Quinn gives a facsimile of the letter and the succeeding first paragraphs of Poe's neat copying out of "Epimanes" (p. 200). "Epi- memes" is the story of a Syrian tyrant who runs wildly through the streets of Antioch disguised as an animal until the beasts become indignant at the imposture and break out of their cages and lead a kind of protest march through the city--a clearly comic story with many satiric thrusts at American democracy and nineteenth-century concepts of prog ress. The New England Magazine did indeed reject Poe's collection altogether. Insufficiently impressed by "Epi manes" to require the rest of the manuscript. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 269 for Poe's conscious ironic control over his "Gothic” mate rials. The eleven "Tales of the Arabesque" were with lit tle doubt the five tales published in the Philadelphia Sat urday Courier in 1832 to which Poe added the six tales sub mitted to the Baltimore Saturday Visitor sometime before October, 1833, as the Tales of the Folio Club. These elev en stories included the ostensibly serious Gothic works "Metzengerstein," "Ms. Found in a Bottle," "The Assigna tion," "Silence," and apparently "A Descent into the Mael strom. "39 The Folio Club scheme thus was clearly in Poe's mind sometime prior to the spring of 1833 and may have been worked out even as early as 1831. Between 1831 and 1835, at any rate, Poe wrote a preface for the Folio Club tales, I the manuscript of which survives on two leaves, written on I both sides in Poe's small hand. The first two pages give the preface essentially complete, though the style of the document suggests notes to be more fully developed later. The other two pages contain part of what has often been called a beautiful Gothic tone-poem, the tale "Siope" I(later titled "Silence"). The latter two pages are num bered 61 and 62; there had obviously been a good deal of material between the preface and the story, and the surviv ing fragment may be part of a manuscript that Poe unsuc- 39The comic tales, besides "Epimanes," would have been "The Due de L'Omelette," "A Tale of Jerusalem,” "Loss of Breath," and "Bon-Bon" from the Courier, and "Lionizing," unpublished. See Quinn, p. 202. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 270 cessfully sent around to various publishers in 1835 and 1836.40 The Folio Club is a "Junto of Dunderheadism," which meets once a month at dinner for a reading by each member of "a short tale of his own composition." The author of the best tale becomes president for the month; the author jof the worst tale provides dinner and wine for the next I meeting. The writer of the preface represents himself as making an exposd of the Club after attending his first meeting. Under the title "The Folio Club" appears a motto from Scunuel Butler: "There is a Machiavelian plot/Though every hare olfact it not." The implication seems clear: although some of the members' tales may at first seem no more ridiculous than the Gothic and sensational fiction popular at the time, the stories are actually parodies and satires. In fact, the intention of the Club, the narrator says, is "to abolish Literature, subvert the press, and overturn the Government of Nouns and Pronouns." The mem bership of the Club is limited to eleven (because on April 40t . o . Mabbott, "On Poe's 'Tales of the Folio Club'," Sewanee Review, 36:171-176, April 1928, focused critical attention on this "introduction" and printed a newly found letter to the Philadelphia publisher Harrison Hall in which Poe further explains and expamds his scheme. Jaumes Sou thall Wilson, "The Devil Was in It," Americam Mercury, 24: 215-220, October 1931, uses the Folio~Ü'lub scheme to sup- port his textural claims that some of theearly serious tales not only have satiric thrusts but also are literary parodies; Wilson convincingly identifies the satiric butts of a number of the tales and suggests probable Folio Club "authors." The "introduction" is printed in Works, II, xxxvi-xxxix. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 271 first, in thé year three hundred and fifty before thé Del uge, there were eleven spots on the sun). The mendaership includes, besides the newly elected author of the preface, ten "most remarkable men": There was, first of all, Mr. Snap, the President, who is a very lank man with a hawk nose, and was formerly in the service of the Down-East Review. Then there was Mr. Convolvulus Gondola, a young gen tleman who had travelled a good deal. Then there was De Rerum Nature, Esgr., who wore a very singular pair of green spectacles. Then there was a very little man in a black coat with very black eyes. Then there was Mr. Solomom Seadrift who had every ap pearance of a fish. Then there was Mr. Horribile Dictu, with white eye lashes, who had graduated at Gôttingen. Then there was Mr. Blackwood Blackwood who had written certain articles for foreign magazines. Then there was the host, Mr. Rouge-et-Noir, who ad mired Lady Morgan. Then there was a stout gentleman who admired Sir Wal ter Scott. Then there was Chronologos Chronology who admired Horace Smith, and had a very big nose which had been in Asia Minor. (II, xxxviii-xxxix) Poe expanded the number of tales and members to seven teen in a letter to the Philadelphia publisher, Harrison Hall, on September 2, 1836, stating that all the tales re cently printed in the Southern Literary Messenger were part of the Folio Club series. At different times there has appeared in the Messenger a series of tales, by myself— in all seventeen. They are of a bizarre and generally whimsical character .... I imagine a company of 17 persons who call themselves the Folio Club .... The seventeen tales which appeared in the Messr are supposed to be narrated by the seventeen members at one of these monthly meetings. As soon as each tale is read— the other 16 members criticise it in turn--and these criticisms are intended as a burlesque upon criticism generally. The author of the tale ad R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 272 judged to be the worst demurs from the general judgment, seizes the seventeen M.SS. upon the table, and, rushing from the house, determines to appeal, by printing the whole, from the decision of the Club, to that of the pub lic . The critical remarks . . . have never been pub lished.*1 Ht this time, Poe had actually published only fourteen tales in the Southern Literary Messenger, the five Courier stories of 1832, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" from the 1833 Vis itor, "The Visionary" (later "The Assignation") from the 1834 Godey's Lady's Book and seven previously unpublished tales, "Berenice," "Morelia," "Lionizing," "Hans Phaall," "King Pest," "Shadow," and "Epimanes." In order of publica tion, the tales immediately following the fourteen in the Messenger were the comic "Mystification," the seemingly serious "Silence" (which was part of the original Folio Club manuscript), the Gothic "Ligeia," the four comic and satiric stories "How to Write a Blackwood Article," "A Pre dicament," "The Devil in the Belfry," "The Man That Was Used Up," and the Gothic "Fall of the House of Usher." Thus, as I have noted before, of Poe's first twenty-two tales, from 1832 to 1839, only two ("Ligeia" and "Usher") are not either clearly comic and satiric or deceptively ironic burlesques for the Folio Club— a remarkaüale corroboration of Poe's ironic intent in even his most Gothic tales. The next year. ^^Letters, I, 103-104, letter 74. Anyone reading through the whole of "The Rationale of Verse" (1843), with its several clearly satiric passages and its vituperative ! conclusion, may well wonder if Poe did not incorporate some I of the Folio Club criticism into it. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 273 having added to the series two "serious” tales ("William Wilson" and "Eiros and Charmion") and one comic tale ("Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling") to make a total of twenty-five, Poe finally was able to get a book- length collection of his stories published: Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), Poe's over-all ironic and satiric intent was only vaguely understood by his contemporaries, however, as is clear from several letters from 1835 and 1836, regarding the Tales of the Folio Club. Poe began the Messenger se ries of tales with "Berenice" in March, 1835, and White added by way of introduction the complaint that the story had too much "German" horror. The next month (April 30, 1 1835) , Poe explained to White his ironic attitude toward "German" horror, though without reference to the Folio Club. He defends "Berenice" on the grounds that it is typ ical of the kind of absurd Gothic tale that sells magazines, ! and he remarks that "Berenice" had "originated in a bet I that I could produce nothing effective on a subject so singular," provided it was treated with an ostensible seri- lousness. The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those I which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in nature— to Berenice .... I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful colored into the horrible: the witty exag gerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 274 into the strange and nystical. This statement is often taken by critics, like Levin, to indicate a series of different effects, but Poe's order and especially his punctuation suggests a continuum; the terms of the last sentence quoted here are linked by colons, not semi-colons, nor the commas Levin uses when he quotes from the letter.The colon signifies a further development, a second thought, a subsidiary class: and the alternations of fearful, witty, and singular, of horrible, burlesque, and strange and mystical all derive from the ambivalence of the larger category: the grotesque, a genre allied prima rily with the ludicrous and the ironic, but, as we have seen, curiously fusing these comic qualities with the sinister. Poe's full grotesque intent was not understood even by his good friend, John P. Kennedy, who had seen the Folio Club manuscript. In February, 1836, Kennedy wrote that he doubted that Poe had really "intended" all the satiric thrusts one could find in reading his tales. But Poe re plied that Kennedy was "not altogether right" regarding the ^^Letters, I, 57-58, letter 42, Poe mentions "M.S Found in a Mad-house" and "Monos and Daimonos" in the Lon don New Monthly, "Confessions of an Opium-Eater" and "Man in the Bell" in Blackwood's as examples of "this species" of literature, that is, ofsemi-grotesquerie. He adds further that "some very high names valued themselves prin cipally" upon this genre. 43 Power of Blackness, p. 134. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 275 satire of some of his stories; they had indeed been planned and "intended for half banter, half satire." Poe added, however, that this "intention" may not have been "fully" conscious when he wrote those tales that were not "satires properly speaking."44 But this curious admission, if we do not take it as Poe's characteristic mode of ironically "agreeing" with his critics, when seen in the context of Romantic literary thought, is precisely that ambivalence of mind known to the Germans as Romantic Irony. Poe found his ironic satire received only very coolly amd dubiously by even those who could appreciate its eso teric thrusts. In the same year, 1836, a short time after Kennedy's letter, the New York novelist, James K. Paulding, wrote to Thomas W. White that Poe's Eolio Club tales were characterized by a "fine humor" but that Poe ought to apply it to the foibles of "our own people" and to the affecta tions of "English" literature. Paulding felt that there was a "degree of obscurity" in Poe's tales that would "pre vent ordinary readers from comprehending their drift." Poe's satire needed to be more obvious; the butts of his 44The phrase suggests the ironic grotesgue-ar^esque Gothic tales, instead of obvious satires. Kennedy's letter (February 9, 1836) is given in part by Quinn, pp. 240-241. Poe's letter (February 11) is to be found in Letters, I, 84, letter 57. See also Poe's letter to J. E. Snodgrass (September 19, 1841), in which Poe says that his "transcen dental" satire is not so much aimed at specific figures (or magazines) as it is merely a "hitting right & left at things in general" (Letters, I, 183, letter 126). j R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 276 satire needed to be "something with which readers are familiar."45 Paulding was explaining why the publishing house of Harpers had declined to print the Folio Club tales. The Harpers themselves explained also: the stories "would be understood and relished only by a very few," for the "num ber of readers in this country capable of appreciating and enjoying" the insinuated satire of "such writings" was "very small indeed."46 Thus frustrated in his initial sa tiric impulse, Poe, 1 suggest, began after 1836 to empha size the Gothic in his writings, reducing (but not elimi nating) in the revised versions of "Metzengerstein," "Ms. Found in a Bottle," and other of his early Gothic tales, the more obviously playful exaggerations. His irony became more extreme, his parody and satire even subtler, as he gave himself more and more to the hoax. Poe's Gothic hoaxes reach a high point in the decep tive grotesquerie of such "Gothic" tales as "Ligeia" and "Usher," and we may well note again Poe's attitude in his letter to P. P. Cooke in 1838 regarding the technique and the reception of "Ligeia." "As for the mob," Poe writes, "let them talk on. I should be grieved if I thought they ! 4Ssee Quinn, p. 250, and James Southall Wilson, "The Devil Was In It," American Mercury, 24:217-218, October 1931. 46June, 1836; given in full by Quinn, pp. 250-251, R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 277 comprehended me here.The Folio Club, and the pub lisher's rejection of it, has seemed to most critics im portant only for establishing some "point" to Poe's early satiric tales. But, as I have tried to show, the burlesque or ambivalently burlesque intent is constant in Poe's fic tion. The terms grotesque and arabesque recur again and again in his tales, and the basis of the later stories, equally as much as in the earlier stories is some kind of ironic twist. Moreover, Poe's defense of the "Germanism" of his stories in the preface to the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), emphasizes the unity of the grotesque- arabesque-burlesque point-of-view. He writes that he has written with "an eye to republication in volume form" and therefore desired "to preserve . . . a certain unity of design .... These many pieces are yet one book.As late as 1846, three years before the end of his career, after writing about two dozen more "Gothic" tales and four teen more comic tales, Poe notes : In writing these Tales one by one, at long intervals, I have kept the book-unity always in mind— that is, each has been composed with reference to its effect as part of a whole. It is true that Poe goes on to say that one of his chief aims "has been the widest diversity." But this diversity ^"^Letters, I, 118, letter 82. ^^Works, I, 150. ^^Letters, II, 328, letter 240, August 9, 1846, to P. P. Cooke. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 278 is, as we have seen, within the limits of his chosen genre as he explained it in 1835: the ludicrous, grotesque, fearful, horrible, witty, burlesque, singular, and strange: "No two of these tales . . . have the slightest resemblance one to the other either in matter or manner— still however preserving the character which I speak of."50 This "char acter," I have tried to show, is that of ironic grotes querie . SPLetters, I, 57-58. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . CHAPTER VI POE'S IRONIC VISION: THE PERVERSE UNIVERSE AND THE PHILOSOPHICAL LYNX-EYE The whole of Poe's Gothic fiction can be read not only as an ambivalent parody of the world of Gothic horror fic tion, but also as an extended ironic cfrotesquerie of the human condition. The universe created in Poe's fiction is that of the German Romantic Ironists, a universe in which the human mind tries vainly to perceive order and meaning. The universe is deceptive; its basic mode seems almost to be a constant shifting of appearances; reality is a flux variously interpreted, or even created, by the individual human mind. In its deceptiveness, the universe of Poe's Gothic fiction seems not so much malevolent as mocking or "perverse"; the universe is much like a gigantic hoax that God has played on man. Thus, the hoaxlike irony of Poe's technique has its parallel in the dramatic world in which his characters move. The ultimate irony of this universe, however, is the "perversity" of man's own mind. The mind, and the mind only, seems to sustain Poe's heroes in their most desperate predicaments ; yet the mind is capable of slipping in an _ ........................... .-2.79 ________ ________________________________________________________________ _____________ R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 280 Instant into confusion, hysteria, madness— even while the mind seems most rational. From a more "Gothic" point-of- view, Edward H. Davidson, without using the term irony, and without reading Poe's Gothic tales ironically or satirical ly, comes to much the same conclusion regarding the Poesgue universe. "Poe's nightmare universe," Davidson writes, "is one in which . . . people . . . are condemned to live as if they are in some long after-time of belief and morality": They are forced to believe and exist for reasons that have long ceased to have any meaning. No one understands or can interpret, in this moral region of Poe's lost souls, why he must be punished; yet the penalty for any moral infraction is frightful and all the more terrifying because no one had enforced it and no one knows why it must be administered. The punishment comes not from a church, a law, or even from society: it comes from some inner compulsion of the evil-doer himself who suffers from what Poe otherwise terms "perversity": he must do evil, and yet he wants to be punished and to suffer. Thus he has willed his crime, and he wills his retribu tion.! Poe's characters, Davidson points out, become "god-players" who assume the functions of "maker and slayer both" (p. 190). But the ultimate reason why man persistently chooses evil (traditionally conceived) is beyond anyone's knowing; the evil-doer is driven by "some maggot in the brain" that leaves him a kind of "moral freak" in a universe that also has some fantastic defect in it. In Poe's universe, David son suggests, evil and suffering are "the capacity and measure of man to feel and to know"; pain is the basis of !poe: A Critical Study, p. 189. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 281 life, and death is the only release from his "grotesque condition of 'perversity*" (pp. 192-194). Davidson's view of Poe's perverse universe is, I think, essentially correct. Poe's fiction developed from a basically satiric mode into an ironic mode in which a tra gic response to the perversities of fortune and to the treacheries of one's own mind is contrasted by a near comic perception of the absurdity of man's condition in the uni verse. Such a double perception, according to the German Ironists, leads, through art, to a momentary transcendence of the dark chaos of the universe. If the artist (and through him the reader) can mock man's cibsurd condition at the same time that he feels it deeply, he transcends earth ly or finite limits in an artistic paralleling of God's infinite perception. In Poe, however, such transcendence is always at the expense of the less perceptive mind. Poe plays a constant intellectual game with his readers; he tries to draw the reader into the "Gothic" world of the mind, but he is ready at any moment to mock the simplistic Gothic vision (of man's real estrangement and isolation) that contemporary readers insisted on in the popular maga zines. Under the Gothic surface of supernaturalism, Poe's major ironic themes of the perverse deceptiveness of expe rience, the propensity of the mind to abandon reason, the perverse impulse to act against oneself, and the absurdity R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 282 of existence in a universe that does not provide for indi vidual survival, appear with a remarkable consistency from his first "Gothic" tale in 1832 to his last in 1849. "Metzengerstein" (1832), for example, which Poe intended as a satiric parody of the tale of supernatural horror, became his first Gothic hoax when his readers took the tale seri ously .2 But its extended series of plot ironies, its cari catured fifteen-year-old Gothic villain, its "dunderheaded" Gothic narrator (who at one point rhapsodically praises death by consumption), and its "flawed" melodreunatic style interweave to form a clear satiric pattern that mocks the few scenes of effective horror that Poe intrudes, as it were, into the satire. Moreover, the working out of an ominous prophecy is comically parodied by a confused curse, which also works out, ironically, in every detail, so that the plot as a whole becomes a kind of cosmic hoax, aug mented by man's perverse propensity to act against his own best interests. The series of plot ironies culminates in the climax of the Gothic plot as the fiendish boy-villain rides to a fiery death at the very moment of his apparent triumph over what he considers his deadly enemy— a horse. Poe's second Gothic tale, "Ms. Found in a Bottle" (1833), 2poe revised the tale several times, each time reduc ing (but not eliminating) the exaggerations of style and the absurdities of plot and characterization. Compare the first version, given in the Borzoi Poe, I, 93-100, with the variations given in Works, II, 185-l9d, 370-373. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 283 ostensibly a supernatural adventure story, not only paro dies its literary type through blatant absurdities (such as the narrator's dabbing desultorily at a sail with a tar brush only to discover that he has spelled out destruction and discovery) but also through a carefully insinuated ironic distance between the narrator and reader that mocks the narrator's supercilious conception of his unshakeable rationality. At the beginning of the tale, the narrator, in a crisp and fact-filled style, insists on his unemotion al and rational character. On a simple Gothic level, this insistence seems to confirm the reality of the supernatural events to follow. But Poe immediately subjects his narra tor to a terrifying storm; and in contrast to the stoicism of an old sailor whom he contemptuously calls "supersti tious," the narrator himself becomes increasingly frenzied and superstitious, and the style of narration becomes highly cadenced and emotional. The machinations of fortune iron ically preserve him from death at the very moment of appar ent destruction by throwing him high into the air and into the rigging of a gigantic phantom ship, which we subse quently learn has been growing in the South Seas water like a living thing. The rest of the tale, in which the phantom ship with its silent statue-like crew sails into gm opening 1 ! at the pole amd goes "down," is rendered with an atmosphere of dreaminess that, combined with the narrator's proven un- I trustworthiness, suggests that the incredible events are R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 284 the delusion of a man driven mad. Seen as a voyage of "dis covery," the ludicrous supernatural events act as a grotes querie of the discovery of what lies beyond the normal world or beyond death, for the tale abruptly ends at the very verge of revelation in apparent final destruction and silence.3 In "The Assignation" (1834), with its satiric innuendo regarding Moore and Byron, with its altar to laughter, and with its adders writhing out from the eyes of grinning masks, we have seen that it is the perverse fortune of the laughing and crying Byronic stranger to become united with 3The French motto of the tale even insinuates that the story is that of a liar. Killis Cêunpbell in The Mind of Poe (p. 163) suggests that Bulwer's "Manuscript Found in a Madhouse" (which appeared in an early edition published at Boston by Phillips, San^son, and Company) may have suggested the title of "Ms. Found in a Bottle." J. S. Wilson in "The Devil Was In It," p. 219, suggests that the tale is told by the Folio Club author Solomon Seadrift and that the literary butt of the satire is Jane Porter's Narrative of Sir Edward Seaward (1831). The emphasis on "discovery" and the use of polar openings into the interior of the earth also suggests John Cleves Symmes' Symzonia: A Voyage of Discovery (1820) as a satiric butt. Other sources have been suggested, but these are not our concern here. Clark Griffith in "Caves emd Cave Dwellers: The Study of a Romantic Image," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 62:560-563, 1963, not only clearly details the change In style from crisp and analytical to cadenced and emotional but also suggests that the "discovery" is about the self: the narrator discovers that the world can drive one mad and that after death there is only "silence." But I do not think that the narrator ever discovers anything about himself; he is merely the victim of the tale, of the hoax that perverse fortune (and Poe) plays on him. "Discovery" is, however, extended some what in "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "A Descent into the Malestrom," though each has its ironic reversals. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 285 his beloved only in death. In "Berenice" (1835), an osten sibly serious tale of compulsive murder which actually lam poons its literary type, it is the absurd obsession of the narrator with Berenice's teeth which leads to his grief, an obsession resulting from a temper of mind engendered by his grotesque brith and rearing. It has been his perverse mis fortune to have been born in and brought up in his mother's library.* The major insinuated irony of the ostensibly supernatural "Morelia" (1835) again lies in the suggested madness of the narrator, who, in a moment of perversity, names his daughter after her hated mother. Although the narrator tells us that through this error he had made it possible for the first Morelia's spirit to take over the body of the second, Poe provides motive enough and ambigu ity enough to suggest that the narrator may have murdered *The Latin motto to the tale is comic: My friends said that my troubles would be in some measure relieved if ' I would visit the tomb of my sweetheart. Craig suggests that "Berenice" is the story of "ardent imagination in which a logical element is perceived as coming into the control of pure fancy. The hero is a monomaniac conscious of the decay of his reason. The thought takes possession of him that the teeth of Berenice will restore him" (Repre sentative Selections, p. 512). Darrel Abel, "Coleridge^s 'Life-in-Death*, and Poe's 'Death-in-Life'," Notes and Que ries 2:218-220, May 1955, argues unconvincingly for a su- pernatural interpretation, even though Berenice may have the cataleptic disorder of Madeline Usher, and tries to ex pand all apparent psychological devices in Poe into the supernatural, the reverse of the thesis I have presented (and the reverse of the thesis of his article on "Usher" cited in Chapter III). R ep r o d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 286 them both.S "Shadow" (1835) and "Silence" (1837) under their mystic and poetic (and flawed) surfaces, in substance and style seem to be parodies of pseudo-poetic transcenden tal fictions, especially those of Bulwer-Lytton, De Quincey, and the "psychological autobiographists" indicated in Poe's subtitle to "Silence."® "Shadow," after developing a sense of the finality of death concludes with an ironic turn in which the chilling immortality of the "shadows" of the narrator's friends is revealed to him, though, since he and his companions are dead drunk, it is hard to tell how truly revealing the "sleep-waking" revelation is. "Silence" ®T. O. Mabbott in "The Source of the Title of Poe's 'Morelia'," Notes & Queries, 172:26-27, January 1937, writes that Poe probably got the name from some such cur rent account as "Women Celebrated in Spain for the Extra ordinary Powers of Mind," which appeared in Godey's Lady's Book in September 1834, a year before Poe's tale. Poe, he suggests, must have read of the great learning of Juliana Morelia (b. 1595). Morelia is obviously the prototype of Ligeia. But the important point, I think, is the corrobo ration of the psychological reading given by the fact that Juliana Morelia's father left Spain because he was charged with homicide. Walter G. Neale, Jr., in "The Source of Poe's Morelia'," ^erican Literature, 9:237-239, May 1939, points out parallels to Henry Glassford Bell's "The Dead Daughter" in the Edinburgh Literary Journal (January 1, 1831). Neale takes "Morelia" as a serious tale; but "The Dead Daughter" provides a clear butt for the literary bur lesque of the Folio Club. See Killis Campbell, Mind of Poe, pp. 14 ff., on Poe*s reading of Schelling and Locke; and Palmer C. Holt, "Poe and H. N. Coleridge's Greek Clas sical Poets : 'Pinakida,' 'Politian,' and 'Morelia' Sources," American Literature, 34:8-10, March 1962, for Poe's use of Coleridge on the Platonic Theory of love and unity— which, of course, is inverted in the tale. ®See Campbell, Mind of Poe, p. 162; J. S. Wilson, "The Devil Was In It," p. 215; dark Griffith, "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics," p. 14. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . îffT develops the theme of a deceptive and illusory world, with shrieking water-lillies, lowing hippopotami, graven rocks whose letters change. At the end, a Demon laughs hysteri cally at a confused human being, while a lynx stares stead ily at the Demon's face. That the lynx is a symbol of the ironic vision peering unflinchingly into the face of per versity is suggested by Poe's lynx-metaphor in Marginalia, though the meaning of the lynx is only vaguely felt in the satiric "confusion" of the tale. Poe writes in Marginalia that "It is only the philosophical lynx-eye that, through the indignity-mist of Man's life, can still discern the dignity of Man."^ These, then, are the Gothic tales, pub lished in the Southern Literary Messenger from 1835 to 1837, that Poe intended to include in the burlesque Folio Club series, tales of a "bizarre and generally whimsical character." Between 1838 and 1840 Poe wrote, along with the Narra tive of Arthur Gordon Pym, three of his most famous "Goth ic" tales, as well as several clearly comic ones. "Ligeia" (1838) , as we have seen, is only ostensibly a serious su pernatural tale of metempsychosis; it is actually the story of the ambiguous delusions of a guilt-ridden madman who has probably murdered two wives and has hallucinated a weird ^Works, XVI, 161. The lynx is traditionally the com- panion of Bacchus; and wine and drunkenness figure promi nently in both the comic and the Gothic tales of Poe. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 288 rationalization of his crimes. "The Fall of the House of Usher" (1839), we have seen, is, despite the supernatural atmosphere, actually the tale of the frenzied fantasies of both the narrator and Usher, fantasies engendered by a vague fear that something ominous may happen and by the disconnected, weird environment. "William Wilson" (1839), though lacking the complexity of "Ligeia" and "Usher," ex hibits Poe's continuing use of double perspective; although apparently a straight Romantic tale of a man's confronta tion, more or less supernaturally, with his own soul, the tale is actually the delusive but perversely persistent confrontation of a guilt-ridden mind with itself.® These three Gothic tales, along with those of the Folio Club, are the "serious" complement to the more obviously burlesque stories in the Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840). Of Poe's remaining fiction, nineteen short tales out of forty-two are clearly comic; the twenty-three ostensibly Gothic and "philosophical" works, along with Pym, further extend the central theme of the subjective deceptiveness of the world in terms of the "perverse." "The Man of the Crowd" (1840), ostensibly a tale about a lonely city wander er, who is weirdly suggestive of what Hawthorne called the I ®see Davidson, Poe, pp. 198-201, for an interesting j interpretation of "wTTson" as a "Romantic individualist for I whom the world is nothing but the externalization of the self: "at any instant what the self wills the world must I become" until the world and the self annihilates itself. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 289 Outcast of the Universe, may be read also as the deluded romanticizing of the tipsy narrator, who perversely attrib utes a Romantic significance to an old drunk, who wanders from bistro to bistro.^ We have seen that "Eleonora" (1841), ostensibly a story of metempsychosis, also suggests the Romantic imagination shifting the object of its passion or perhaps rationalizing a deep guilt; we have seen that "The Oval Portrait" (1842), ostensibly a supernatural tale about the actual transfer of life from a living person to a painting, is but the delirious dream of a drug addict; and we have seen that "The Masque of the Red Death" (1842), os tensibly about the supernatural visitation of death, is actually a tone poem about hysteria, engendered by mood and setting, with a sarcastic echo from The Dunciad. "The Pit and the Pendulum" (1842) is one of Poe's clearest dramatizations of the futile efforts of man's will to survive the malevolent perversity of the world and to make order out of chaos. The tale has been read by Clark Griffith as the escape from madness through a descent into 9gee especially the clues in the opening paragraphs and the misapplication of a quotation at thé conclusion. The young man, after an entire night of following the old man from one crowded place to another, says that the old man is like the old German book which mysteriously would not "allow" itself to be read. Mabbott points out (p. 420) that it could not be read because it was so badly printed; thus, the allusion is a comic clue to the mocking irony under the Gothic surface. Mabbott also suggests parallels with two of Dickens' sketches by Boz, "Drunkard's Death" and "Gin Shops." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 290 madness. Although the hero is tortured and confused by the deceptiveness of his prison and the constant imminence of destruction until confessing to himself that "all is mad ness" and that his mind has been "nearly annihilated," he learns to rely on primal cunning, an instinctive sense of danger. Eventually, under the razor-edge of the pendulum, he recovers his ratiocinative power: "for the first time during many hours— or perhaps days— I thought. "10 But the narrator thinks of his avoidance of the pit as: "the mer est of accidents, and I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the gro tesquerie of these dungeon deaths" (I, 440, my italics) Under the pendulum he becomes "frantically mad" and strains to force himself against the slowly descending blade. The irony, the grotesquerie of human dignity and rationality, here lies in the narrator's ultimately futile efforts to change his basic condition. He cannot hurry destruction and thus avoid the torment allotted to him by the grotesque god-players of the Inquisition. His mind suffers another radical shock and, ironically, his mind hysterically shifts 10"Caves and Cave Dwellers," 563-564. See Borzoi Poe, I, 441-442. The same kind of mental regression and pro gression is the structure of "A Descent into the Mael strom," in which the terrifying violence and mystery of God's natural world (see the motto from Glanvill) become objects of contemplation. At the point of destruction, a revelation of "pattern" reverses the narrator's mode of thought from the emotional to the rational; but he is placed afterward by the "mystery" of the whirlpool, and his hair turns white. - ------------------------ ----- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 29T to an opposite mode, moving toward the rational only be cause of his helplessness in either madness or sanity. Then, escaping from the pendulum, he is, ironically, again I faced with the pit. The walls become heated, and for "a j I wild moment" the narrator's mind "refuse[s] to comprehend," although at length "it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason." Thinking of the cooling waters of the pit he rushes to its edge, only to stop short, again in horror of such a death. Then as the walls begin to close in, he "re alizes" that he had been destined by his tormentors for the pit in the first place (I, 444), and that all his luck, all his cunning, and all his regained rationality have, ironic ally, trapped him into self-torment and increased his agony. The final irony comes with the sudden cessation of the movement of the walls, a rescue from outside that comes unexpectedly, independently, unconnected with his own per sonal fate at the last moment of his despair and defeat. "The Tell-Tale Heart" (1843), a study in obsessive paranoia, is yet another story of the mind watching itself disintegrate under the stresses of delusion in an alienated world. It is the perverse fortune of the narrator to be come fearful of the grotesque eye of a kindly old man, whom he says he loves. With a double perversity, he gives him self away to the police at the moment of success. Yet the narrator is caught in a weird world in which he loves the old man yet displays no real emotion toward him, in which R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 292 he cannot let the "beloved" old man live and yet cannot kill him without remorse, in which he cannot expose his crime and yet must. "The Black Cat" (1843) carries the same themes further and details more clearly the irrational desire, almost the ultimate irony, to act against oneself, with an ambiguous conclusion suggesting the agency of malev olent fortune at the same time that it suggests subconscious self-punishment. The major irony, perhaps, is that the murder the narrator commits is the result of subconscious remorse over his cat.We have seen that "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" (1844), ostensibly a story of metempsy chosis, is more probably a murder story in which all the characters (and possibly the murderer) are duped regarding the reality of events. "The Premature Burial," as we have seen, though comically concluded, leaves us seriously en tertaining the ghastly possibilities of an absurd situation. "The Oblong Box" (1844), after a series of weird cir cumstances, concludes grotesquely with a commonplace ex planation that is both absurd and upsetting. An artist brings aboard a ship a large, odd-shaped box that contains, apparently, his paintings, but he is so vague and gloomy in his replies to queries from the other passengers about the contents of the box that he and his wife become the ^^See James W. Gargano, "'The Black Cat': Perverseness Reconsidered," Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 2: 172-178, 1960, for an insightful analysis. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 293 center of quizzical and mildly malevolent gossip. His wife becomes the object of ridicule, because of her excessive "chattiness,” which strikingly contrasts with the excessive gloominess of the artist. The narrator conceives the idea that the artist is playing a pleasant joke on the passen gers and begins to insinuate that he knows what is in the box. But the artist reacts to his "witticisms" like a mad man, laughing hysterically until he collapses. When the passengers are forced to abandon the ship in a storm, the artist insists that the oblong box be taken with them in the longboat. When the captain refuses, the artist lashes himself to the box and sinks with it into the sea. The captain gloomily comments that they will recover the box when the "salt" melts, thus mystifying everyone the more. Later the captain explains that the artist's wife had died; and, knowing the "superstitions" of the passengers, he and the artist had conveyed her corpse, packed in salt, cüaoard as merchandise. The woman's maid then acted the part of the artist's wife in order to forstall any suspicions about her absence and the presence of the box. But the deception ironically produced the unfortunate harassment of the artist. The grotesque effect of the whole tale is summed up in the final paragraph. The narrator concludes by saying: My own mistake arose, naturally enough, through too care less, too inquisitive, and too impulsive a temperament. But of late, it is a rare thing that I sleep soundly at R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 294 night. There is an hysterical laugh which will forever ring within my e a r s . "The Imp of the Perverse" (1845), more an essay than a tale, clearly spells out Poe's conception that it is the ironic fortune of man to act against his best interests. Perversity is not strictly a phrenological term, as some critics assume, but is merely linked with the phrenological category of "combativeness" in "The Imp." Poe specifically says that the phrenologists are limited in their under standing of the human personality. At the beginning of "The Imp," Poe is vigorously sarcastic about the "systems" that psychologists and phrenologists have tried "to dic tate" to God the Creator, whom Poe yet seems to hold re sponsible for man * s grotesque c o n d i t i o n .^3 we have seen that "Valdemar" (1845), ostensibly a serious Gothic tale of the horror of prolonging life beyond the proper point of death, not only was a "verisimilitudinous" hoax, but also contains absurd and comic details suggesting satiric parody and mocking irony, and ending with grisly details I l^Borzoi Poe, II, 637-638. o . Mabbott suggests in his anthology of the Se lected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1951), p. 424, that the immediate source of "The Imp of the Perverse" is the "perverse" behavior of the heroine of Lady Georgianna Fullerton's Ellen Middleton, which Poe reviewed in December, 1844, six months before the publication of "The Imp." See Works, XXI, 34. But perverseness is also the major theme of Poe's first published tale, "Metzen gerstein," in which Poe uses the word. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 295 suggesting the grim finality of death. "The Sphinx" (1846), comes quickly to a comic conclusion after a fright ening and weird (but absurdly deceptive) vision of a mon ster that turns out to be a bug dangling only a fraction of an inch from the eye. "The Cask of Amontillado" (1846), ostensibly a tale of successful and remorseless revenge, is actually Montresor's death-bed confession to an implied listener, of a crime that has tortured him for fifty years. At the conclusion of the tale, the apparently remorseless Montresor recounts the sudden sickening of heart he felt at the end "— on ac count of the dampness of the catacombsIronically his "revenge," as Montresor defines it, failed on every count. "A wrong is unredressed," Montresor says at the beginning of the tale, "when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong" (II, 666). But Fortunato, dressed as a clown, never understands why he is being walled up. "A wrong is unredressed," says Montresor," when retribution overtakes its redresser." And just prior to this, he utters a brief phrase that, like the brief double-edged replies he gives Fortunato in the catacombs, is double-edged: "At length, I would be avenged" (II, 666). And so he has been, for half a century. The cunbiguous phrasing and especially the emphasis are unmistakable as 14 Borzoi Poe, II, 671. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 296 irony on a second reading of the tale, though deceptive on a first reading. Perhaps the clearest corroboration of the ironically unsuccessful revenge is the emblem of the Montre- sors, which occurs, as with other "allegorical" clues in Poe's works, at a point of symmetrical balance, here in the middle of the tale as Montresor and Fortunate reach the depths of the catacombs. Montresor explains that his em blem is "a huge humem foot d'or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent rampant whose fangs are embedded in the heel" (II, 669). Again the phrasing is cunbiguous; we do not know at this point who is the crushing foot nor who is the fanged serpent, nor which is the avenger and which the aggressor, just as we cannot be absolutely certain who is or is not properly avenged. Moreover, the descent into the catacombs suggests, on Montresor's part, a perversely con scious descent into the bestiality of the subconscious mind, with the result that Montresor is doomed to re-enact I the event in his conscience for fifty tormented years. I Poe's six ratiocinative tales of the 1840's represent ! I the few successes of the acute mind in overcoming the be- Iwildering deceptiveness of the perverse world. Five of the tales are ostensibly serious ("Murders in the Rue Morgue," I"Marie Roget," "Purloined Letter," "Goldbug," "Descent into I the Maelstrom") and one is comic and suggests self-parody :("'Thou Art the Man'"). The Dupin kind of mentality as- i sûmes a godlike role, the "I" and the reader, the role of R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 297 dull-witted dupes. The major Ironies of these tales are consistent with Poe's more clearly Gothic tales: their basis is the discrepancy between appearance and actuality; and the ease of Dupin's solutions contrasts with our mysti fication. In a sense, as I have suggested before, since we have to read Poe's Gothic tales carefully in order not to be taken in, ratiocination (or the lack of it) and irony can be said to be the two essential qualities of all of Poe's weird fiction. The same concern with illusion, transitoriness, and death, and with absurd purpose and purposelessness, is to be found in the remainder of Poe's fiction. The four po etic "landscapes" "Island of the Pay" (1844), "Landscape Garden" (1842), "Arnheim" (1847), and "Landor's Cottage" (1849) , ostensibly deal with the natural beauty God has created in the world but actually insinuate the melancholy facts of death, imperfection, purposelessness in contrast to man's futile imagining of an ideal state of harmony and beauty. Four philosophical dialogs, with and among bodi less spirits, "Monos and Una" (1841), "Mesmeric Revelation" (1844), "The Power of Words" (1845), and "Eiros and Charmi- on" (1839), deal with the philosophic problem of the artis tic creation, projection, or imagining of the universe, which Eureka shows to be incomprehensible, death-ridden, and absurd in the limited perception of man. "Mesmeric Revelation," we have seen, is even a parody of occult R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 298 metaphysics. Poe's concept of the "perverse" functioning as both a worldview and a psychology Is then perhaps the ultimate grotesquerle to be found In his Gothic fiction. Poe's characters live In a perverse universe In which there are few certainties beyond that of Individual annihilation. Indeed, In Eureka, Poe takes as his basic axiom the Idea that the germ of "Inevitable annihilation" Is Implicit In the original cause of existence. In a deceptive universe that does not provide for Individual Immortality, Poe's heroes and heroines struggle vainly to find order and to preserve their lives. Yet they are at the same time per versely fascinated with death as the ultimate fact of existence, and they yearn for knowledge of the secret that lies beyond death. But In Poe's universe, there Is nothing I beyond death. I In a sense, the true horror, the true Gothic quality, i jof Poe's tales lies In their substantive Irony, for Poe's {tales are more than Ironic In mode, more than supercilious ! I hoaxes perpetrated on the unsuspecting devotees of the I Gothic romance, though such mockery certainly looms large In Poe's particular kind of Romantic Irony. Thé Insinuated burlesque, the Ironic modes of language, and the Ironic themes merge with Ironies of plot and characterization In the creation of an absurd universe. Poe's characters move In a world In which events are often disconnected and In R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 299 which meaning is opaque. Although clear possibilities for "opposite" meanings are indicated to the perceptive reader, they are, for the most part, denied to the characters. Poe's characters experience extended series of ironic re verses in fictional structures so ironically twisted that the form itself, even the very plot, approaches an absurd hoax perpetrated on them, just as, Poe insinuates in Pym and Eureka, existence itself may be God's hoax on man. If the reader is perceptive enough not to be taken quite all the way into the "subterranean Night," he can achieve the same kind of sweeping and detached insight as that possessed by the "creator" of this fictional universe. The perceptive reader can, through a "subjective" involve ment with the difficulties of the perverse creatures inhab iting the flawed and perverse universe, achieve an "objec tivity" toward the perverse condition of man. This kind of ambivalent self-division and even self-parody is the philo sophical irony of the German Romanticists--a sweeping, transcendental sense of the perverse duplicity of all things. Poe's ironic rendering of the existential hoax that the perverse universe presents can be conclusively illustrated through three final works. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1837-38), "The Colloquy of Monos and Una” (1841), and Eureka (1848), each of which critics have often placed at the "center" of Poe's philosophical vision. Certainly Pym is a clear example of the worldview of R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 300 the Romantic Ironist. The unifying theme of what seems to be a merely episodic narrative is the experience of the inner mind, the Romantic-Ironic theme of man's futile at tempts to see through the deceptive illusoriness of the world cuid to discover the primal facts of existence and of ithe self. A perverse fate, augmented by man's own treach ery and perverseness, repeatedly overtakes the characters Iin a series of plot ironies which progressively reveals that the assumed consistency and reality of the world are capable at any time of immediate disintegration.15 More over, Pym is filled with comic exaggerations in the midst of a superabundance of prosaic "facts" about sailing, geog raphy, and marine life. As always, Poe calculates his ef fects so as to deceive the reader at first and then to insinuate that he has been duped regarding the "reality" of events, and, indeed, regarding the true "action" of the story. This technique of destroying "Gothic" illusion while yet maintaining it is perhaps Poe's most obvious link with the German Ironists. Despite the hoaxlike verisimili tude of the details, Poe ironically emphasizes the fiction- ality of Pym while seeming to claim an "actuality," a "fac tual" truth for it. Harry Levin notes, for example, that I ISgee Davidson's Poe, pp. 156-180, and P. F. Quinn's The French Face of Edgar Poe, pp. 169-215, for especially fine interpretations of PvmT my own discussion, as will be apparent, is based primarily on what they have said, in different contexts. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 301 the world of Pÿin is, in the largest sense, a symbolic pro jection of the artist's mind subjected to self-scrutiny, a theme signalled by Poe's introduction of his hero as a man from Edgar-town116 Moreover, the narrative is prefaced by Arthur Gordon Pym's expose of Edgar Allan Poe's fictional izing of what were Pym's "true-life" adventures. Pym says in the preface that he now offers the true narrative of what really happened, though he professes to be content with Poe's rendering of the first part of the adventure. Pym is, moreover, quite certain that the reader will have no difficulty in perceiving, through the differences be tween "Poe's" style and his own, where fiction leaves off and actuality begins (II, 724-725). In addition to these ironic frames, the narrative is concluded with an appendix (apparently the "publisher's") in which we are informed that Pym's death at the South Pole prevented Pym from tell ing the final truth about what happened and that "Poe," the original editor, has failed to see the true significance of the narrative (II, 852). In the narrative itself, the plot, augmented and cor roborated by deception and perversity in the characters, moves through a symmetrical series of repeated ironies so extended that the perversity of ironical fortune, as vari ously misperceived by man, becomes integral to the central IGgee the Borzoi Poe, II, 725; Pym is from "Edgarton." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 302 themes of man's futile quests for stable order and of his discovery of the ultimate secret of existence. The easiest way to see the extent of the deceptive quality of the per verse universe in Pym is to note the sequence of ironical turns in fortune and the counterpoint, in the characters, of deception, treachery, and mutiny against order. In the first of the three principal episodes, two boyhood friends, Pym and Augustus Barnard, slip out for a forbidden night time sail; but the "harmless" sail on the calm sea ironical ly turns into a nightmare : the boys drink too much, lose control of their boat, and are almost capsized in a sudden storm. Then a ship bears down on them, seemingly deter mined to cut them in two, but at the last instant turns to miss them. It sails away from them for a time, apparently abandoning them to the hostile elements. But at the moment of their greatest despair, the ship unexpectedly turns again and sends out a rescue party. Pym learns, however, that the mate had to threaten the captain with mutiny be fore he would put about. This first, very short, episode contains in small the themes and the types of the events that appear in the second episode; deceptions, drunkenly erratic behavior, a sudden storm, a shipwreck, passing ships that promise rescue but bring only increased despair, and mutinies recur in the second part with a more intense sense of the perverse treacheries of man and the ironic twistings of an almost malevolent fortune. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 303 In thé second episode, Pym and Augustus decide to seek adventure on a real sailing ship, but to do so they must again deceive their families. Ironically, however, at the moment of apparently triumphant escape from parental con trol, they meet Pym's grandfather as they are about to board a ship called, ironically enough, the Granqpus. Pym manages to deceive his grandfather by impersonating a drunken sailor, and the old man goes away convinced that appearances are indeed deceiving. Augustus is a member of the crew of the Grampus, but Pym must practice a further deception. He stows away in an iron box in the hold to await the new freedom that will be his when Augustus can jrelease him. But the perverse twistings of fortune trans form Pym's hiding place into a prison, for the crew of the ; Grampus mutinies and imprisons Augustus. Trapped in the hold, Pym becomes delirious under the influence of the foul i jair, the darkness, the lack of food and water, and the I sense of confinement. He becomes increasingly subject to j Iweird and terrifying dreams of death and burial alive. Un accountably, his faithful dog. Tiger, appears in the dark i 'hold; but the good dog, as though sensing the hungry Pym's I treacherous thoughts, attacks him savagely. Pym manages to i I fight him off, however, and later the dog disappears as I mysteriously as he appeared. During this period of hallu- i Icinatory imprisonment, Pym sinks into ever deeper despair I ; as his rational mind fails again and again to conceive of a R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . ~ ' ----- -- 304 way of escape. Ironically, however, Pym for a long time never suspects that his apparent rationality has been dis torted and decayed by the extremity of his predicament. The clearest exeunple of Pym's mental state is his discovery of a note that he is sure is from Augustus. Because of the darkness he cannot read it; ironically, he seems to hold the means of his escape in his hand, but cannot make use of it. Then his mind ingeniously devises a method of produc ing light; he rubs between his fingers some phosphoric dust that he has found in the hold. The feeble glow is enough to enable him to see the note. But there is nothing writ- jten on it. At this point the perverse fates of the uni verse seem to have mocked not only his predicament but also Ihis almost super-rational efforts to escape from it. But a I further irony is to come. Much later, it occurs to Pym that there are two sides to a piece of paper and that he has looked at only one; at this point Pym realizes to what state of "idiocy" (II, 743) he has been reduced by his situation. Then at the deepest point of his despair, res cue ironically is made imminent through a series of muti nies above decks that shifts the newly estcü^lished order of command. Augustus' imprisonment by the original mutineers seems to make Pym's predicament hopeless; but, ironically, througl^ Augustus' imprisonment the secretly imprisoned Pym escapes violent death; and eventually Pym's original deception. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 305 since he is not known to be aboard y leads to his escape through yet another overthrow of "established" order. The original mutineers find themselves in the ironic position of fending off a second "mutiny." But just as the second group of mutineers, under the leadership of Dirk Peters, seems cdaout to wrest control of the ship from the "loyal" members of the first group, Peters is deserted by his fol lowers in another perverse shift of loyalties. Peters then recruits Augustus to his side, and through him, Pym. Pym immediately decides to try another deception; he plans to work upon the "superstitions" of the leader of the original mutineers, the mate of the original crew. Pym's sudden emergence from the hold in the guise of the ghost of a man the mate has killed throws the mutineers into confusion; 1 1 land Peters, Pym, and Augustus kill all but one of them, a i man neoned Parker. But another perverse turn of fortune I jfollows. I Although they now have human control of the ship, the I actual control of the ship belongs to the elements. Dam- I I aged in the fighting and flooded in a storm, the ship is Inothing more than a floating hulk. In the midst of a calm I sea, Pym and his friends find themselves threatened with I the perils of capsizing, of thirst, and of hunger. Method- jically, the rational Pym explores the flooded hold in a I series of dives that nets a bottle of wine. Pym continues i his search but finds little; then when he asks for a drink R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 306 from the wine bottle, he discovers to his outrage that his thirsty friends have treacherously drained it. But, ironi cally, Pym is thus spared the agonizing increase of thirst that the alcohol engenders. The half-drunken state of Pym's "friends" is then echoed in the appearance of another ship. Rescue seems im minent, but the ship continually veers first away from them and then toward them again, as if the helmsman were drunk. As the ship comes closer, they see the passengers and crew standing at the rail; one of the figures nods at them and displays a brilliant smile. But the figures at the railing turn out to be a mockery of life. The men have died of some mysterious disease that has left them frozen in life like postures. The smiling figure is a qrotesguerie of hope: "The eyes were gone," Pym says after a bitter remark on the deceptiveness of appearances, "and the whole flesh around the mouth, leaving the teeth utterly naked. This then was the smile which had cheered us to hopeI" (II, 783). From this figure, a seagull takes a piece of human I flesh and drops it at Parker's feet, which causes the hys- iterical Parker to conceive of a perverse way to escape in- I I dividual death through the deaths of one another, through I cannibalism. But another ship is sighted a few miles away, : and again rescue seems imminent. After watching it for a I I time, however, the four men realize it is sailing away in I the opposite direction. Parker then suggests casting lots R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 307 for the cannibalistic feast, and of course it is his per verse fortune to become the first victim. When Augustus dies shortly after, Pym and Peters are overwhelmed with the realization of the hopel'^ssness of their condition; only the uncontrollable hulk of their ship separates them from death. With an almost perverse precision of timing, the ballast then shifts and the ship overturns. Pym and Peters manage to climb up on to the hull, however, and in utter despair sit weeping; Pym remarks at this point that their "intellects were so entirely disordered by the long course of privation and terror" that they "could not justly be considered . . . in the light of rational beings." Pym further remarks that afterward their subsequent adversi ties, though more dangerous, were not to reduce them so thoroughly to a state of "supineness" and "imbecility," for "mental condition" makes "the difference" (II, 800). But, again with absurd precision of timing, Pym discovers that the overturning of the ship is, ironically, "a benefit rather than an injury" (II, 800), for they see that the hull is covered with barnacles enough to supply them with food for am inexhaustible period of time. But having seen this new possibility of survival, they are, of course, soon rescued by another ship, an "hermaphroditic brig," paradox ically named the Jane Guy. P. F. Quinn writes, about the symmetrically repeated twistings of the first two episodes, that Pym, "which is so R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 308 strongly marked by conflicts of a very evident sort . . . between man and man, and between man and nature" is also: . . . charged by an incessant struggle between reality and appearance. Pym is caught up in a life in which nothing is stable, in which nothing is ever really known; expectation and surmise can anticipate only false conclu sions. (p. 181) Certainly, the deceptiveness of appearances and the inability of the mind to know, or even to surmise accurate ly, are points made abundantly clear in the third major episode, which repeats the thematic action of the first two, but with an ever-increasing intensity of the sense of ultimate discovery of a great secret. The captain of the Jane Guy sails farther and farther to the south, and Pym becomes progressively agitated. In fact, when the captain eventually decides to abandon his proposed polar explora- jtions, Pym conducts a minor intellectual mutiny and per suades him to continue. In the white polar waters, teeming Iwith pale white animals, the Jane Guy discovers, paradoxi- jcally, the black island of Tsalal, inhabited by black men, {who, ironically (or perversely), have a morbid fear of the I Iwhiteness that surrounds them. They are terrified of the Iwhite sailors, but, deceptively, they act the role of I simple-minded savages until they succeed in luring the crew I ! to the land, where (in a kind of mutiny) they bury the I hated white men in a landslide. Pym and Peters, however, j have strayed from the main party and have become desperate ly lost in a gorge— a "misfortune" through which, ironi R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 309 cally, they escape burial alive. Yet in another way, they are still threatened with burial alive, for they wander deep into a labyrinth of caves and crevasses. Eventually, however, Pym and Peters emerge from the earth and set off to the south in a native canoe. At the end, they disappear into a cataract of whiteness falling on a warm and milky sea— but they see ahead of them a gigantic, shrouded, human form "of the perfect whiteness of snow" (II, 852). And the narrative abruptly ends, without detailing the final "dis covery" that Pym had anticipated with such excitement. The "perversity" of Pym's excitement is not only con firmed by the eventual deaths of all the characters, but also by the remarks Pym makes at the beginning of the third episode. The memories of shipwreck and mutiny aboard the Grampus seem to Pym and Peters to be only a "frightful dream," from which they have awakened, rather "than as events which had taken place in sober and naked reality." I have since found [Pym says] that this species of par tial oblivion is usually brought about by sudden tran sition, whether from joy to sorrow or from sorrow to joy — the degree of forgetfulness being proportioned to the degree of difference in the exchange. (II, 803) The perverse tendency of the human mind to misperceive, or to fail to learn from experience, or to be overcome with sudden irrational impulse is emphasized at two symmetri cally located points in the novel. In both instances, P. F. Quinn notes, the explicit statement of the theme of perversity is associated with burial alive. Early in the R ep ro d u ced w ith p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ith out p erm issio n . 310 tale, Pym, considering himself lost and buried alive in the hold of the Grampus, has only a gill of liqueur as food. Actuated by what Pym himself calls "one of those fits of perverseness which might be supposed to influence a spoiled child in similar circumstances," he drains the bottle at once and smashes it (II, 747). Toward the end of the tale, descending the face of a canyon wall with Peters, Pym is possessed by what he calls "a longing to fall" that becomes "a passion utterly uncontrollable" and, swooning, is only saved by Peters' quick action (II, 845). Quinn notes also that Pym's concept of adventure is focused on images of shipwreck, desolation, and death. Pym's whole life-pattern, Quinn writes, his flight from his family and an assured fortune, and his Romantic, adolescent desires for shipwreck and famine can be seen as a larger dramatization of the in stinct of perverseness (pp. 193-194). But Pym's death im pulse is also a Romantic desire to penetrate the ultimate ! I secret; and the shipwreck image, Quinn notes, occurs with I I similar meanings in "Eleonora" and "Ms. Found in a Bottle." I In "Eleonora," as we have seen, the narrator writes that Idream-explorers "penetrate however rudderless or compass- less into the vast ocean of the 'light ineffable' and again like the adventurers of the Nubian geographer" into the sea of darkness. In "Ms. Found in a Bottle," the narrator has a sense of "hurrying to some exciting knowledge— some never-to-be imparted secret whose attainment is R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 311 destruction" (Quinn, pp. 194-195). Discovery of the great secret of the condition of the self in the universe is what Davidson suggests is the cen tral subject of Pym's symbolic adventure back into time and timelessness. What Pym discovers at the pole as he moves through a world before time is a final deceptive perversity of fortune, the final grotesquerie in the journey toward "discovery" of the self. First, the journey from ignorance to knowledge involves an ijwersion of the usual concept of learning. Pym moves from "ignorance," away from his com plex and sophisticated social world, to a "primal" knowl edge that is increasingly simple. Pym learns that the mind is one with the body, with thirst and hunger. At the pole, the colors of the world become simplistically bifurcated I into white (the sea, the animals, the sky) and black (the i natives, the land). The constantly increasing whiteness of i ieverything begins to suggest an original unity to all I things, but it is a unity that Davidson calls the "negation I of fact and shape." Whiteness becomes a symbol of ultimate jillumination: the primal quality of the universe is a ichaotic fusion of oneness and of nothingness. At the end of Pym's journey stands death, a gigantic figure in a shroud of blinding whiteness— an ironic inversion of the conventional metaphor of the blackness of death. The blinding "illumination" is the perception of the nothing ness on the other side of death. "Nothing was all," writes R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 312 Davidson, "there was no other word for it but 'white'," followed by abrupt silence. The "search for the self's true center," Davidson continues, "ends in the death of the self"! . . . the hero finds himself only at the moment he loses himself; he dies the instant he is about to be born again; the blankness of eternal mystery engulfs him the moment he faces the white light of revelation. (pp. 174- 176) Pym's journey back into time also parallels an inversion of birth and maturation; as Pym sails the amniotic sea toward the warm and milky cataract of water at the pole, he is re- cüasorbed into the great womb of the world, buried alive as it were in eternal unbeing. The gigantic hoax thus played upon rational man is made quite clear in the curious and bitter appended explanation of the symbolic chasms and caves of Tsalal, seemingly written by a gigantic hand in the rock, in the most ancient of languages: darkness and whiteness, from nothing to nothing: "I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock" (II, 854). The tale "The Colloquy of Monos and Una" (1841), seems at first a radical modification of Poe's view of the grotesque vengeance of God upon his perverse creatures. Davidson, for example, sees the tale as Poe's development of the concept of the primal "nothingness" beyond death in Pym into a concept of harmonious and even "loving" primal order— a sense of God's beneficence that is supposedly R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 313 given further elaboration in "Mesmeric Revelation" and E u r e k a .17 "Monos and Una," Davidson describes as: . . . an account of the passage of human consciousness from life through death to the life-beyond-death on the other side where occurs a final "merging" into "Love" or the harmonious principle uniting all things in the mind of God or the One. (p. 133) Through submission to the natural laws of the universe, man may attain true contentment, the tale seems to say, but like "Mesmeric Revelation," "Monos and Una" and Eureka are deceptively ironic— and quite chilling. Instead of "affirm ing" meaningful order, and purpose, and love as basic prin ciples in the universe, Poe insinuates into these works a quiet ironic despair. On the other side of death, there jstill remains the perverse whiteness of nothingness. The Ionly real intimation in "Monos and Una" that there may be I something beyond death lies in the initial dramatic situa tion. Two spirits, lovers, discuss the great cycle of be ing which moves from an original "unity" in God, through matter, to a dispersion in individualized material crea tures and back to unity again in unparticled matter. But the rest of the tale progressively focuses on the horror of living-death. The likelihood that Poe's use of spiritual ist ideas in his occult tales of the 1840's is ironic we I have already seen. And like the beatific "revelations" of 17craig anthologizes "Monos and Una" as "philosophy," and juxtaposes it with Eureka in Representative Selections, pp. 427 ff. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 314 Van Kirk, the perception of the "unity" of Monos and Una with the "One" involves a number of ironies, some further clue to which the reader familiar with Poe's works first sees in the motto: "melionta tauta." "Mellonta Tauta" is the title of Poe's satiric tale about "progress," the epi graph to which punctures Andrew Jackson Davis, the "Pough keepsie Clairvoyant."18 As the tale begins, both "spirits" remark on the grim phantasm. Death, which in life seemed always to act as "a check to human bliss, saying unto it 'thus far and no fartherI'"1^ Monos, apparently the "male" spirit, is asked by Una to recount "the incidents" of his "own passage through the dark valley and shadow" (I, 358). But Monos replies, "One word first, my Una, in regard to man's gene ral condition at this epoch" (I, 359). The suspicion that Poe's awkwardness in thus introducing "a philosophical" view of human existence is consciously comic finds immedi ate corroboration in the sarcastic comments that Monos next makes (in an elevated "Romantic" language) about transcen dentalism, art, and Jacksonian democracy. In vain had men of "poetic intellect" like Monos himself warned mankind of the "misrule" of the "utilitarians" and of the falsity of I the progressive and optimistic transcendentalists. Al- I though the arts, or Art itself, "arose supreme," such men l^See Chapter III. 19 Borzoi Poe, I, 358. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e cop yright ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 315 managed to "cast chains upon the intellect" which had first elevated Art. Man failed to perceive that Nature was his true teacher, and that submission to the great design of Nature would save mankind from false philosophies. In stead, man: . . . grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God— in despite of the loud warning voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervad ing all things in Earth and Heaven— wild attempts at an omni-present Democracy were made. (I, 360) After a lengthy description of similar perversions of na ture, and some Van Kirkian observations on the materiality of mankind, which should eventually be "Death-purged," Monos finally gets around to Una's question: what his "sen sations" of death had been. After several days of "dreamy delirium," he says, "there came upon me . . . a breathless and motionless torpor" that "was termed Death by those who stood around me" (I, 361). But he retained "sentience"; his senses were still "active, although eccentrically so— assuming each other's functions at random." The rosewater I that Una applied to his lips, for example, affected him as I a vision of flowers, more beautiful than those on earth, I but whose "prototypes" now "bloom" around the two spirits. I After much detail about his rather grotesque synesthe- I jsia, and the gradual "wreck and chaos" of his senses, as 1 ! well as his awareness of the weeping and the grief-stricken I looks of Una, Monos comes to the matter of Time. Time R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 316 seemed to become a sixth sense, perfect and harmonious, a "mental pendulous pulsation" that seemed to be the very "moral embodiment of man's abstract idea of Time," attuned to the "cycles of the firmamental orbs themselves." Monos became aware as he lay dead upon the bed, of the "irregu lar" tickings of the clock on the mantel and of the watches of the attendants. They were "omni-prevalent" "deviations" from "the true proportion" of time and affected him just as "violations of abstract truth were wont, on earth, to af fect the moral sense." He then realized, he says, that this grotesque experience of irregular tickings was the first step of his timeless soul upon the time-structured universe of eternity. Monos then describes his sensations at midnight in the coffin. A dull electrical sensation numbingly pervaded his body, a vague sensation which became a sense of the "loss of the idea of contact" (I, 364). All that was left was the sense of "duration"; and Monos realized that his body had begun to decay : Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the conscious ness and sentiment remaining supplied some of its func tions by a lethargic intuition. I appreciated the dire ful change now in operation upon the flesh .... When noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped heavily the mould upon me, and which left me in blackness and corruption to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worms. (I, 364) Surely, Poe's technique here is obvious. Poe begins R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 317 the tale with Monos' denial of the ultimate grimness of Death, which merely seems to check all human bliss, espe cially that of true love. Then, after Monos' awkward railing against any abstract systems not conjoined with "natural" processes, there follows a reverent abstract sys tem based solely on the "natural" process of decay. The "sentience" of the dead body is the substance of over half the tale. Gradually, the sense of mystic unity with the great design of the universe is undercut by increasingly horrible details. The soul lying passive in its grave is aware only of decay and the gradual annihilation of itself in its only form, the material "sentience" of the body. The semi-nothingness after death is in this tale something more horrible than mere nothingness— burial "alive" in which an eternity passes before the "peace" of nothingness comes. The final four paragraphs of the story deepen the contrast between upper and insinuated meaning, as we are led to suspect that the spiritual region from which the two spirits speak is still that of the mouldering grave itself, the "prototypes" of flowers around them mere seed and roots, the voices of the spirits perhaps the abstracted voices of the elements. Monos mentions the passing of a year, during which time his "consciousness of being had grown hourly more indistinct, and that of locality had, in great measure, usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of place" (I, 364). This R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 318 abstract "philosophical" language is immediately followed by connotatively contrasting details : "The narrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body, was now growing to be the body itself." If Poe had wanted to empha size the true pleasure of unity with the material essence of the universe, he surely would not have chosen such de- itails or such words as blackness, corruption, sad, worm, darkling, damp, and mouldering. But, vaguely stirred by a disturbance above his grave. Monos had briefly a sense of "nebulous light" amid the darkness, that of "love." "Men toiled at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of Una." I But then the nebulous light faded, the "feeble thrill" of I recognition "vibrated itself into quiesence"; and all be came again "void." "The sense of being at length utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead . . . dominant and I ! perpetual— the autocrats Place and Time." Monos concludes I {with the observation that what he then was "was not," had I"no form," had "no thought," had "no sentience," and was I"soulless." "For all this nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates" (I, 364, my italics). To this Una does not reply. There is only silence. Thus ends Poe's tale of the "union" of true lovers, who need not have feared the grim finality and isolation of Death. This kind of nothing- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 319 ness is not quite that of Pÿm; but the tale of "Monos and Una" is, at best, but an ambivalent, about-face considera tion of the "perverse" possibilities of immortality. Poe's ambivalent, ironic "philosophy" is no where more poignant than in his "affirmation" of order and purpose in the universe in Eureka, a work in which he may have enter tained the mystical ideas in the air of the times somewhat more seriously than he did in his tales only a few years before. Despite the uppercurrent of hopefulness, however, the undercurrent of insinuated meaning is chilling. At one point, Poe argues that "the Universe is a plot of God" and that the "plots" of God must be perfect.20 imperfec- jtions must only be seeming. Man's "finite intelligence" I (though a reflection of the creative power of God) can con struct only imperfectly, and cannot, for example, construct I perfect theories of the universe. But limited man is faced with an ultimate fact, his "inevitable annihilation," and as Allen Tate reminds us, the basic proposition of Eureka is the inevitable annihilation of the universe itself. Poe's explanation in Eureka of the "point" of death lies in apparent "cycles" of creation and annihilation; "novel universes" swell into "objectless" existence and then subside into nothingness (XVI, 309, 311). Other than being part of this impersonal and beautiful "symmetry" 20works, XVI, 292. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 320 (XVI, 307), Individual man's existence seems to have ho point. If it were not for this cosmic beauty of symmet rically repeated cycles of novel universes, if the whole universe itself actually had a "conceivable end" (from which concept man's mind has always "rebelled"), then: We should have been forced to regard the Universe with some such sense of dissatisfaction as we experience in contemplating an unnecessarily complex work of human art. Creation would have affected us as an imperfect plot in a romance, were the ddnoûement is awkwardly brought aibout by interposed incidents external and foreign to the main subject .... (XVI, 307) Poe concludes Eureka with a rhapsodic "affirmation" of his belief that there must be some point to human existence. Poe writes that the individualized "creatures" of the uni verse, which are but infinite individualizations of God, are conscious, "by faint indeterminate glimpses," of "an identity with the Divine Being;" men as individuals will eventually "grow weaker," as God (as a Unity) grows strong er until mankind: . . . will attain that awfully triumphant epoch when he will recognize his existence as that of Jehovah .... All is Life— Life— Life within Life— the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine. (XVI, 314- 315) But this pantheistic, transcendental view of a great Over soul into which man will be absorbed, besides being a "material" inversion of conventional transcendental "spir it," is more pointedly Poe's answer to the real "problem" of individualized and egocentric man that he has propounded shortly before— the impossibility of "any one's soul feel R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 321 ing Itself inferior to another," the "intense, overwhelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the thought." The possi bility that the natural laws of gradation may apply (as Monos says) morally to mankind strikes the individual man as a perverse imperfection of plot, just as his own final anni hilation does. Poe gets around this unsatisfactory possibility, on the surface at least, by shifting the idea to the problem of human perception and belief. "No thinking being lives," Poe writes, "who . . . has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul." But the obvious answer, Poe continues, is that . . . no one soul is inferior to another . . . that each soul is, in part, its own God— its own Creator . . . that God— the material and spiritual God— now exists solely in the diffused Matter and Spirit of the Universe; and that the regathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the re-constitution of the purely Spiritual and Individual God. (XVI, 312-313) Thus, in the existence of some system (of creation-destruc- tion-re-creation of individuals— of unity-diffusion-recon- stituted unity) lies man's sole, melancholy hope of point, of purpose, of immortality. In this view, and in this view alone, we comprehend the riddles of Divine Injustice— of inexorable Fate. In this view alone the existence of Evil becomes intelligible; but in this view it becomes more— it becomes endurable. (XVI, 313, my italics) The quiet despair under the surface of Eureka thus mocks the poetic affirmations of the yearning imagination R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 322 at the same time that they are asserted most emphatically. Seen in the general Romantic context, Poe's point is clear; the "effect" aimed at in Eureka is an almost mystical, po etic perception of and simultaneous transcendence of the absurd hoax of individual existence. Such self-division and self-parody the German Romanticists would have applauded] as Irony, the consummate fruit of the artistic and philo sophical mind. In Poe's worldview, then, it is the perverse nature of things that man, as an individual, thinking creature, is subject to the "indignities" of ignorance and of ultimate annihilation of the self. But through a "lynx-eyed" vision of the demonic (of the "perversity" of the universe and of one's own mind), man may still retain some of the "dignity" he feels in himself as a rational and feeling entity buried alive in the vast impersonal system of the universe. This is the Romantic-Ironic vision. We have already noted the lynx image in the Folio Club tale, "Silence," and in the Marginalia. In "Silence" the Demon laughs hysterically at man's confusion in an absurd world of weird, shifting ap pearances. But the lynx comes out of the cave and stares steadily into the Demon's face. And in Marginalia, as we have seen, Poe calls what can only be the ironic vision of existence the "philosophical lynx-eye that, through the indignity*mist of Man's life, can still discern the dignity I I of man.” Thematically, Poe's Gothic and philosophical works R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 323 suggest that the deceptive "perversity" of the universe and of the mind can only be transcended by the Godlike imagi nation of the ironic Artist, who yokes together contrari eties and sees beyond hope and despair, beyond good and evil, by deceptively intruding the comic into the tragic, I the satiric into the demonic. Through such simultaneous ironic detachment and involvement, the German ironists thought, the Romantic Artist achieves a liberating "tran scendental" perception of the dark paradox of human existence. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . A P P E N D I C E S 324 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 325 Appendices These appendices are primarily bibliographical summaries of special points that would have overburdened the text with interruptive footnotes. I. Controversies and Schisms in Poe's Reception If we survey the views of Poe's admirers and detrac tors, of the psychological, the romantic, and the semantic critics, and of his French and his Anglo-American readers, the puzzling doubleness of Poe's "impact" becomes sharply delineated. On the one hand, Poe's admirers claim for him an insight into the subconscious mind and a horrifying vi sion of dehumanized man in a malevolent and decaying uni verse. Moreover, he is seen as an accomplished craftsman, who achieved in his tales remarkable unity and symmetry through careful construction of plot for theme, suspense, and emotive climax, and who also developed a forceful style notable for connotative sound and rhythm. On the other hand, Poe has seemed to a larger number of critical readers to have had no coherent or consistent purpose in the whole body of his works, no breadth of understanding, little in sight into living man, and incomplete artistic control over his materials. His career is supposed to show no coherent pattern; his morbid personality is said to intrude into his tales of terror and madness; his intellectual and verbal pyrotechnics have seemed to many to be a display to cover his basic shallowness. The epitome of these flaws is sup posed to be that schism in the whole corpus of Poe's writ ings detailed in the text— the division between the comic and the serious; the intellectual and emotional gap between his obscure poems and dialogs beyond death and supernatural tales on the one side, and his pointless satires and un funny comic exercises on the other. Two unpublished Ph.D. dissertations cover Poe criti cism from 1827-1960: D. R. Hutcherson, "One Hundred Years of Poe: A Study of Edgar Allan Poe in American and English Criticism, 1827-1927" (University of Virginia, 1936); J. L. Dameron, "Edgar Allan Poe in the Mid-Twentieth Century: His Literary Reputation in England and America, 1928-1960" (University of Tennessee, 1962). Published studies of Poe's general reputation and influence include: Hutcher son, "Poe's Reputation in England and America, 1850-1909," American Literature, 14:211-233, November 1942; A. P. Cooke, "The Popular Conception of Edgar Allan Poe from 1850-1890," University of Texas Studies in English, 22:145- 170, 1942; Killis Campbell, "Contemporary Opinion of Poe," The Mind of Poe (New York, 1933), pp. 34-62. Poe's foreign _j R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 326 reputation is studied in John Engelkirk, Edgar Allan Poe in Hispyiic Literature (New York, 1934); John i. French, ed., Poe In Foreign Lands and Tongues (Baltimore, 1941); william T. Bandy, The Influence and Reputation of Edgar Allan Poe in Europe (Baltimore, 1951); Haldeen Braddy,Glo rious Incense; The Fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe (Wash ington, D.C., 1&S7), pp. 98-144. For Poe's own part in promoting controversy about him self, see Sidney P. Moss, Poe's Literary Battles (Durham, N.C., 1963). The dislike generated by Poe's acerbity as a critic seems to have led to the first moral and psycholog ical attacks (such as the "Ludwig" obituary notice in the New York Tribune, October 9, 1849), which developed after the emergence of Freudian theory into full-scale psychoa nalytic studies of both Poe the man and his writing itself, integrating the two crazily. The two best-known psycholog ical studies of this sort are Joseph Wood Krutch's Edgar Allan Poe; A Study in Genius (New York, 1926) and Mane Bonaparte's The Life and Worgs of Edgar Allan Poe; A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation, trans. John Rodker (London, 1^49/originally Paris, 1933). The Romantic and Byronic Poe figure can be seen in Mary E. Phillips' Edgar Allan Poe, The Man, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1926) and more recently in Frances Winwar's The Haunted Palace (New York, 1959), Of recent books on the '"problems" of Poe the man and writer, the most balanced and lucid is Edward Wagenknecht's Edgar Allan Poe; The Man Behind the Legend (New York, 1963). iPerhaps the most famous attacks on Poe as a writer are those of Aldous Huxley and Yvor Winters. Huxley, in "Vul garity in Literature," Music at Night and Other Essays (London, 1930), likens Poe's Gothic manner to sporting dia mond rings on every finger. Winters, in "Edgar Allan Poe: A Crisis in the History of American Obscurantism," first printed in American Literature in 1937, reprinted In De fense of Reason (London, l94?), pp. 234-261, scores Poe for his incoherent literary theory, for his "creation of an emotion for its own sake" rather than for the "understand ing of an experience" (p. 254), and for his "crudity" of language which a simple familiarity with English should render "obvious" (p. 234). The most recent enthusiast seems to be Vincent Buranelli, who in his Edgar Allan Poe (New York, 1961) objects to criticism of Poe on the **sub- jective" basis of whether or not one likes Gothic materials and writes that Poe is "America's greatest writer" and "the writer of greatest significance in world literature" (pp. 130, 133). But Buranelli also considers Poe "a man divided against himself" to the point of being a psychopath (pp. 32-37). The dichotomy of the puzzled English-speaking readers and the enthusiastic French is presented in Patrick F. Quinn's The French Face of Edgar Poe (Carbon- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 327 dale. 111., 1957), 28-65. The most famous of Poe's French admirers are Baudelaire, MallarmeT, Valery, Verlaine, Rim baud, Huysmans, Claudel, and Gide. Baudelaire's essays on Poe have been translated and edited by Lois and Francis E. Hyslop, Jr., Baudelaire on Poe: Critical Papers (State College, Pa., 1962). In opposition to the studies of Poe in France and Europe already cited, Joseph Chiari de-empha sizes Poe's real importance in the symbolist tradition in Symbolisme from Poe to Mallarmé; The Growth of a Myth (London, 1956). II. Studies Relative to Poe's Humor and Satire The New York novelist James K. Paulding was one of the first to recognize the satiric point of Poe's early tales; in 1836 he wrote that Poe's "quiz on Willis" (apparently the "Due de L'Omelette") was "capital" but that Poe ought to apply his "fine humor" to "more familiar objects of satire," for there was a "degree of obscurity" in the tales that would "prevent ordinary readers from comprehending their drift ..." (Paulding to Thomas W. White, owner of the Southern Literary Messenger, given in A. H. Quinn, Poe: A Critical Biography (New York, 1941), p. 250). John P. Kennedy, the Baltimore novelist, also in 1836 wondered if Poe had really intended the satiric thrusts he found every where in the tales, to yrhich Poe replied that his tales had I indeed been "intended for half banter, half satire." Ken nedy's letter is given in part by Quinn, pp. 240-241; Poe's {letter, February 11, 1846, is given in full in The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. J. W. Ostrom (Cambridge, Mass., 11948), I, 84, letter 57. But the legend of Poe the Mad I Goth took over, especially after his premature death, when ! Rufus Wilmot Griswold, forging Poe's letters and distorting the history of his life, presented Poe as a dope addict, drunkard, madman, and atheist— to which view Quinn's care ful biography, nearly a hundred years later, clearly gives the lie. C. Alphonse Smith in Edgar Allan Poe: How to Know Him (Garden City, 1921), pp. 50-56, was probably the first twentieth-century critic to counter the idea that Poe had no sense of humor, but he wrote that Poe's laughter "is surely a falsetto cackle" (p. 51). F. L. Pattee in The Development of the American Short Story (New York/London, 1923), pp. 115-145, was, with Smith, one of the first in this century to deal seriously with Poe's humor, suggesting that the comic tales must have had some special point in their time; Pattee quoted from a letter to Thomas White, I editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, in which Poe de- ; scribes his method of exaggerating the extremes of contem- R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 328 porary fiction. Napier Wilt, "Poe's Attitude toward His Tales: A New Document," Modern Philology, 25:101-105, Au gust 1927, quoted more extensively from the same letter and elaborated on Pattee's suggestion that Poe was not deeply involved in the horror of his tales but was merely imitat ing the fashionable literature of the day. T. 0. Mabbott, "On Poe's 'Tales of the Folio. Club'," Sewanee Review, 36: 171-176, April 1928, focused on Poe's scheme for a bur- lesque series of tales enunciated in an "Introduction" to the Folio Club (Works, II, xxxvi-xxxix) and printed a newly found letter to Harrison Hall, a Philadelphia publisher, in which Poe further explains and expands his scheme. Mabbott also tried to assign the first seventeen tales (Poe's num ber in the new letter) to the eleven known members of the club (listed in Poe's "Introduction")— a game still in progress. James Southall Wilson, "The Devil Was in It," American Mercury, 24:215-220, October 1931, identified the butts of several of Poe's satires and showed that some of the Gothic tales may have satiric thrusts. Constance Rourke's well-known American Humor: A Study of the Nation al Character (New York, 1931/Garden City, 1$53) had a sec tion on Poe (pp. 145-149), but it is a series of general suppositions (concluding that Poe's laughter is "inhuman and hysterical," p. 148). Ernest Marchand, "Poe As a So cial Critic," American Literature, 6:28-43, March 1934, further countered the idea that Poe "moved over the earth thickly wrapped in a luminous cloud" (p. 28). W. F. Taylor, "Israfel in Motley: A Study of Poe's Humor," Sewanee Review, 42:330-340, July-September 1934, re-empha- sized what others had said but made some blunders of fact. Clark Griffith, "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics," University of Toronto Quarterly, 24:8-25, October 1954, suggested that Poe is a satirist of Transcendentalism and Gothicism. William Whipple in two articles, "Poe's Two- Edged Satiric Tale," Nineteenth Century Fiction, 9:121-133, September 1954, and "Poe's Political Satire," University of Texas Studies in English, 35:81-95, 1956, showed the satir ic point of several otherwise pointless comic exercises. Stephen L. Mooney, in three articles, "Comic Intent in Poe's Tales : Five Criteria," Modern Language Notes, 76: 432-434, May 1961, "The Comic in Poe's Fiction," Werican Literature, 33:433-441, January 1962, and "Poe's Gothic Wasteland," Sewanee Review, 70:261-283, Spring 1962, made highly suggestive but incompletely substantiated and some times obscure comments. Whipple and Mooney both wrote dis sertations on Poe, and in my opinion Mooney's is somewhat clearer than his articles; see "Poe's Grand Design: A Study of Theme and Unity in the Tales" (University of Ten nessee, 1960). E. F. Foster's dissertation, "A Study of Grim Humor in the Works of Poe, Melville, and Twain" (Van derbilt University, 1957), is not helpful for Poe but has a R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyright ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 329 good introduction on "grim humor." D. A. Petersen in his dissertation on "Poe's Grotesque Humor" (Duke University> 1962) has analyzed twenty-two comic tales. James W. Garganor "The Question of Poe's Narrator/S" College Eng lish, 25:177-181, December 1963, briefly surveyed Poe's use of mad or murderous narrators in about a half-dozen tales, pointing out that their testimony contains ambiguities that bear careful scrutiny. There are other studies that paren thetically touch on Poe's humor and satire, and others on the humor and satire and irony of individual works, which will be cited when appropriate. The best over-all study of Poe's humor, though I find it sometimes obscure, is David son's Chapter V in his Poe, pp. 136-155, "The Short Story as Grotesque." R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . B I B L I O G R A P H Y 330 R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . BIBLIOGRAPHY This bibliography gathers together in convenient form the works to which reference is made in this dissertation. It is in no way a survey of Poe studies. Abel, Darrel. "A Key to the House of Usher,” University of Toronto Quarterly, 18, January 1949, 176-185. Abrams, M. H. The Mirror and the Lamp; Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. New York, 1953, re printed 1958. Alterton, Margaret. Origins of Poe's Critical Theory. Iowa City, 192fe. Babbitt, Irving. Rousseau and Romanticism. New York, 1919, reprinted 1955. Bandy, William T. The Influence and Reputation of Edgar Allcui Poe in Europe. Baltimore, 1951. Basler, Roy P. "Byronism in Poe's 'To One in Paradise'," American Literature, 9, May 1937, 232-233. "The Interpretation of 'Ligeia'," College Eng- lish, 5, April 1944, 363-372. I Baudelaire on Poe; Critical Papers, ed. Lois and Francis E. I Hyslop, Jr. State College, Pa., 1952. I Benton, Richard P. "Is Poe's 'The Assignation' a Hoax?" i Nineteenth Century Fiction, 18, September 1963, I m - i d y . -------- — ---------- Birkhead, Edith. The Tale of Terror. London, 1928. Bittner, William. Poe; A Biography. Boston, 1962. Blair, Walter. "Poe's Conception of Incident and Tone in the Tale," Modern Philology, 41, May 1944, 228-240 Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: -............ - 331...-_____________________ R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 332 A Psycho-Analytic Interpretation, trans. John Rodker. London^ . Braddy, Haldeen. Glorious Incenset The Fulfillment of Edgar Allan Poe. Washington, D.C.r 1957. Brooks, Cleanth. The Well Wrought Urn. New York, 1947. Buranelli, Vincent. Edgar Allan Poe. New York, 1961. Cairns, W'.lliaun B. On the Peyelopwent of jWerioan Litera ture from 1815 to 1833, with Especial Reference"to Periodicals. Madison, Wisconsin, 10^8. Campbell, Killis. The Mind of Poe and Other Studies. New York, 1933, reprinted 16^2. The Castle of Otranto, The Masteries of Udolpho, Northanger Abbey, ed. Andrew Wright. New York, 1963. Chiari, Joseph. Symbolisme from Poe to Mallarmé; The Growth of a Myth. London, 1956. Coad, Oral Sumner. "The Gothic Element in American Litera ture before 1835," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 24, January 1925, 72-93. Cobb, Palmer. The Influence of E. T. A. Hoffmann on tne Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Chapel Hill, N. C., T^uw:-------- ------------- Cooke, A. P. "The Popular Conception of Edgar Allan Poe from 1850-1890," University of Texas Studies in I English, 22, 1942, 145-170. iCowie, Alexander. The Rise of the American Novel. New j York, 1951. iDameron, J. L. "Edgar Allan Poe in the Mid-Twentieth Cen- ! tury: His Literary Reputation in England and Amer ica, 1928-1960." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. I University of Tennessee, 1962. Davidson, Edward H. Poe; A Critical Study. Cambridge, Mass., 1957. Davis, David Brion. Homicide in American Fiction, 1798- 1860: A Study in Social Values. Ithaca, New York, lÏÏTT----------- ------------------ Eliot, T. S. To Criticize the Critic. New York, 1965. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 333 Elliott, Robert C. The Power of Satire; Magic# Ritual, Art. Princeton, 19ëô. Englekirk, John. Ed^ar Allan Poe in Hispanic Literature. New York, Engstrom, Alfred G. "Chateaubriand's Itinéraire de Paris a Jerusalem and Poe's 'The Assignation'Modern Lan guage Notes, 69, November 1954, 506-507. Evans, Oliver. "Infernal Illumination in Poe," Modern Lan guage Notes, 75, April 1960, 295-297. Fagin, N. Bryllion. The Histrionic Mr. Poe. Baltimore, 1949. Foster, E. F, "A Study of Grim Humor in the Works of Poe, Melville, and Twain." Unpublished Ph.D. disserta tion. Vanderbilt University, 1957. French, John C., ed. Poe in Foreign Lands and Tongues. Baltimore, 1941. Gargano, James W. "'The Black Cat': Perverseness Recon sidered," Texas Studies in Language and Literature, 2, 1960, 1^2-171.------------ ------ --------- I ________. "Poe's 'Ligeia': Dream and Destruction," Col lege English, 23, February 1962, 337-342. ________ . "The Question of Poe's Narrators," College Eng lish, 25, December 1963, 177-181. iThe German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu- I ries, ed. Kuno Francke and W. G. Howard. Albany, ! New York, 1913. IGriffith, Clark. "Caves and Cave Dwellers: The Study of a Romantic Image," Journal of English and Germanic j Philology, 62, 1963, 551-568. "Poe's 'Ligeia' and the English Romantics," Uni versity of Toronto Quarterly, 24, October 1954, 8- 25# Gross, Seymour L. "Poe's Revision of 'The Oval Portrait'," Modern Language Notes, 74, January 1959, 16-20. Holt, Palmer C. "Poe and H. N. Coleridge's Greek Classical Poets : 'Pinakidia,' 'Politian,' and 'Morelia* Sources," American Literature, 34, March 1962, 8-30. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow ner. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 334 Howard, Leon. Literature and the American Tradition. Gar den City, New York, 1960. Hubbell, Jay B. "'O, Temporal O Mores 1* A Juvenile Poem _________ Ja y E d q a r-A lrla n -P o e ^ r”— H n r i v e r e i - t y - o ^ e ^ - o r a d o — S t u d ------ ies, Series B, 2, October 1945, 314-É21. Hudson, R. L. "Poe and Disraeli," American Literature, 8, January 1937, 402-416. Hungerford, Edward. "Poe and Phrenology," American Litera ture, 2, November 1930, 209-231. Hutcherson, D. R. "One Hundred Years of Poe: A Study of Edgar Allan Poe in American and English Criticism, 1827-1927." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Uni versity of Virginia, 1936. ________ . "Poe's Reputation in England and America, 1850- 1909," American Literature, 14, November 1942, 211- 233. Huxley, Aldous. "Vulgarity in Literature," in Music at Night and Other Essays. London, 1930. Kayser, Wolfgang. The Grotesque in Art and Literature, trans. Ulrich Weisstein. New York, 1966. Kitchen, George. A Survey of Burlesque and Parody in Eng lish. Edinburgh and London, 1931. V Knox, Norman O. The Word IRONY and Its Context, 1500-1750. Durham, N. C., 1961. IKoestler, Arthur. The Act of Creation. New York, 1964. I IKrutch, Joseph Wood. Edgar Allan Poe: A Study in Genius. I New York, 1926. i ILevin, Harry. The Power of Blackness. New York, 1958. ILind, Sidney E. "Poe and Mesmerism," PMLA, 62, December I 1947, 1077-1094. Lovejoy, A. O. Essays in the History of Ideas, 1948, reprinted New York, 1960. Baltimore, Lubell, Albert J. "Poe and A. W. Schlegel," Journal of E r English and Germanic Philology, 52, January 1953, R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 335 Lussky, A. E. Tieck's Romantic Irony. Chapel Hill, N. C., 1932. Mabbott, T. 0. "On Poe's 'Tales of the Folio Club'," Sewanee Review, 36, April 1928, 171-176. Marchand, Ernest. "Poe As a Social Critic," American Lit erature , 6, March 1934, 28-43. Matenko, Percy. Tieck and Solger; The Complete Corre spondence" New York and Berlin, 1933. Ludwig Tieck and America. Chapel Hill, N. C., 1954. Mooney, Stephen L. "Comic Intent in Poe's Tales: Five Criteria," Modern Language Notes, 76, May 1961, 432-434. ________ , "The Comic in Poe's Fiction," American Litera ture, 33, January 1962, 433-441. ________. "Poe's Gothic Wasteland," Sewanee Review, 70, Spring 1962, 261-283. "Poe's Grand Design: A Study of Theme and Unity "in the Tales 1" Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of Tennessee, 1960. Moss, Sidney P. Poe's Literary Battles. 1963. Durham, N. C., INeale, Walter G., Jr. "The Source of Poe's 'Morelia'," j American Literature, 9, May 1939, 237-239. Pattee, F. L, The Development of the American Short Story. New York and London, 1923. Petersen, D. A. "Poe's Grotesque Humor." Unpublished I Ph.D. dissertation. Duke University, 1962. I Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe, The Man. 2 vols. ! Philadelphia, 1926. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, I ed. James A. Harrison. 17 vols. New York, 1902. _. The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allan ~Poe with Selections from His Critical Writings,ed. A. H. Quinn and E. H. O'Neill. 2 vols. New York, 1946. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 336 Poe, Edgar Allan. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Rich ard Henry Stoddard. 6 vols. New York, 1895. ________ . The Letters of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. John Ward Ostrom. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1948. Selected Poetry and Prose of Edgar Allan Poe, "ed. T. O. Mabbott. New York, 1951. Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Ed- "ward H. Davidson. Boston, 1956. Edgar Allan Poe; Representative Selections, ed. Margaret Alterton and Hardin Craig. Rev. ed. New York, 1962. Quinn, A. H. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. New York, r94l. Quinn, Patrick P. The French Face of Edgar Poe. Carbon- dale. 111., 1957. Railo, Eino. The Haunted Castle. London, 1927. Ransome, Arthur. Edgar Allan Poe, A Critical Study. Lon don, 1910. Redden, Sister Mary Mauritia. The Gothic Fiction in the ^erican Magazines (1765-lSÔO). Washington, D.C., 1939. I Robinson, E. Arthur. "Order and Sentience in 'The Fall of I the House of Usher'," PMLA, 76, March 1961, 68-81. I jRobson-ScGtt, W. D. The Literary Background of the Gothic I Revival in Germany. Oxford, 1965. Rourke, Constance. American Humor: A Study of the Nation- al Character! New York, 1&31, reprinted Garden city, N. Y., 1953. Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. 39 vols. London, 1904. Schlegel, A. W. A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black, rev. A. J. W. Morri- son. London, 1846. Schroeter, James. "A Misreading of Poe's 'Ligeia'," PMLA, 76, September 1961, 397-406. _ _ _ _ I R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 337 Scott, Sir Walter. "On the Supernatural in Fictitious Com position: and Particularly on the Works of Ernest Theodore Hoffmann," Foreign Quarterly Review, 1, July 1827, 61-93. Sedgwick, G. G. Of Irony: Especially in Drama. Toronto, 1948. Smith, C. Alphonso. Edgar Allan Poe: How to Know Him. Garden City, N. Y., 19il. ' Spitzer, Leo. "A Reinterpretation of 'The Fall of the House of Usher'," Comparative Literature, 4, Fall 1952, 351-363. Stevenson, Lionel. The English Novel: A Panorama. Bos ton, 1960. Summers, Montague. The Gothic Quest. London, 1938. Tate, Allen. Collected Essays. Denver, 1959. Taylor, W. F. "Israfel in Motley: A Study of Poe's Hu mor," Sewanee Review, 42, July-September 1934, 330- 340. Theories of Comedy, ed. Paul Lauter. Garden City, N. Y., ^ Thirwall, Bishop Connap. "Preface" to Ludwig Tieck's The Pictures and the Betrothing. London, 1825. Thomson, J. A. K, Irony; ^ Historical Introduction. Cambridge, Mass., 1927. Thompson, Alan Reynolds. The Dry Mock. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1948. Tompkins, J. M. S. The Popular Novel in England, 1770- 1800. London, 1932, reprinted Lincoln, Neb., 1961. Varma, D, P. The Gothic Flame. London, 1957. {wagenknecht, Edward. Edgar Allan Poe : The Man Behind the I Legend. New York, 1963. jwalzel, Oskar. German Romanticism, trans. Alma Louise I Lussky. New York, 1932. Iwellek, Renef. Concepts of Criticism, ed. Stephen G. Nichols, Jr. New Haven, 1963. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n . 338 Wellek, Rene. "The Romantic Age," A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950. 2 vols, ^ew Haven, 1955. Wernaer, Robert M. Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany. New York and London, 1910. Whipple, William. "Poe's Two-Edged Satiric Tale," Nine teenth Century Fiction, 9, September 1954, 121-133. ________ . "Poe's Political Satire," University of Texas Studies in English, 35, 1956, 81-95. Whitt, Celia. "Poe and The Mysteries of Udolpho," Univer sity of Texas Studies in English, 17, July 1937, 123-131.------- --------------- Wilson, Edmund, ed. The Shock of Recognition. 2nd ed. New York, 19531 Wilson, James Southall. "The Devil Was in It," American Mercury, 24, October 1931, 215-220. Wilson, John B. "Phrenology and the Transcendentalists," American Literature, 28, May 1956, 220-225. Wilt, Napier. "Poe's Attitude toward His Tales: A New Document," Modern Philology, 25, August 1927, 101- 105. Wimsatt, William K., Jr., and Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York, 1957, re- printed 1964. IWinters, Yvor. In Defense of Reason. London, 1947. ! ---------------------------------------------------------------- Winwar, Frances. The Haunted Palace. New York, 1959. jwoodberry, George E. The Life of Edgar Allan Poe, Personal and Literary. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1909. ! IZeydel, E. H. Ludwig Tieck and England. Princeton, 1931. j _______ . Ludwig Tieck, the German Romanticist: A Criti cal Study. Princeton, 1935. R ep ro d u ced with p erm issio n o f th e copyrigh t ow n er. Further reproduction prohibited w ithout p erm issio n .

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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

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Asset Metadata

Creator Thompson, Gary Richard (author)

Core Title Poe'S Romantic Irony: A Study Of The Gothic Tales In A Romantic Context

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Metzger, Charles R. (committee chair), Boskin, Joseph (committee member), Lecky, Eleazer (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-586083

Unique identifier UC11360234

Identifier 6801203.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-586083 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6801203.pdf

Dmrecord 586083

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Thompson, Gary Richard

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA