Quotes of the Day (James Russell Lowell, on Edgar Allan Poe)

“Mr. Poe has that indescribable something which men have agreed to call genius.”—James Russell Lowell, “Edgar Allan Poe,” Graham’s Magazine, February 1845

“There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.”—James Russell Lowell, “A Fable for Critics,” 1848

In celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe today, so much of his career seems curious yet peculiarly fitting. There is, to start with, his birth itself, in Boston—a city that provoked his annoyance in adulthood, for reasons we’ll get to in a minute—to parents who were actors—in keeping with an artist whose life was theatrical and slightly disreputable, and whose work has given employment to countless thespians and allied professions over the years.

Here’s what else is curious about Poe: the set of opposing quotes by Lowell. What had happened to lead the Massachusetts poet—a leading literary light of his time, though hardly of ours—to praise Poe so much, only to lampoon him so thoroughly two-and-a-half years later?

It all goes back, I’m afraid, to the streak of self-destruction that intrigues academics, fellow writers of our time, and—let’s face it—most readers. As the American counterpart to the French poet maudit (poet living outside the bounds of society), Charles Baudelaire, Poe’s dark side emerged not only in his prolific writing but also in his alcoholic binges. Most people who know a bit about his life are aware of that much, and a smaller percentage of these readers recall the murky Election Day circumstances that led to his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849.

But Poe could be self-destructive in other ways, engaging in what biographers have termed “the Longfellow Wars.” Actually, since he threw wild charges around against at least a few people, including Lowell, I’d call this “The Poe Plagiarism Wars.”

Poe’s stature today with the academic community far surpasses that of the men he criticized, but it’s not because of the genre in which he wanted to be remembered: his poetry. Read “Annabel Lee,” “The Raven,” and his other poems. They’re cloying and so intent on repeating sounds that they come off overwrought and sing-song. Instead, his reputation rests on his pioneering contributions in three fictional genres: science fiction-adventure (his only novel, The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym), the detective story (“The Purloined Letter”), and, of course, the horror tale (too many to mention, or even to choose one or two from as favorites).

Literary criticism, however, earned Poe his daily bread in the 1840s. Though his activity in this area contains many elements of his genius, it also reflects the mental instability that led to the confused train of events in the last months of his life.

As a literary critic, Poe wrote with unusual perception, such as in his observation that the short story should aim toward a single overwhelming effect. But from his editorial perch he also aimed brickbats at the Boston literary community, which really didn’t deserve it. He became oddly obsessed with the question of plagiarism, with much of this preoccupation stemming from the odd belief that he himself was a victim of this.

Initial admiration for Longfellow turned to dubious claims about him, even the charge that he was pilfering the work of others.

As you might surmise from one of my prior posts, Longfellow lived in nothing like Poe’s financially pinched circumstances. Still, whatever sympathy you might have for an underdog dissipates when you consider how unfair Poe’s attack was. Given that, Longfellow’s forbearance was extraordinary, extending even to providing financial assistance after Poe’s death to the latter’s mother-in-law.

Another Boston-area poet, Lowell, had been an admirer of Poe. But an invitation that Lowell arranged to lecture at the Boston Lyceum turned into a catastrophe when Poe read his poem “Al Aaraaf” in a drunken stupor. Before long, Poe was taking after Lowell, too, as a plagiarist.

By this time, Poe had achieved a reputation as something of a “Tomahawk” critic, which he promptly secured with a series of articles on the “The Literati of New York.” One of the men profiled, Thomas Dunn English, didn’t take kindly to Poe’s published claims. Now the shoe was on the other foot, with English charging Poe with forgery.

The enraged poet struck back with a libel suit. Did he win? Well, define “win.” If Poe looked around his apartment after the jury’s conclusion and counted the number of chairs he’d been able to purchase because of their favorable verdict, he might have believed he had won. But the trial also turned up entirely believable episodes of Poe’s drunkenness, making it increasingly unlikely that he’d be able to find another job in New York. That, in fact, is what happened.

There are people who, no matter how relentless their labors or how high their achievements, are doomed to fail because of their own personalities. Poe was one of these. Even as we acknowledge his achievements, our distance from the quarrels of his time should not make us overlook that he was, as Lowell put it, “two-fifths sheer fudge.”