Complete Essays, Literary Criticism, Cryptography, Autography, Translations & Letters. Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ Lamartine by the cubic foot, or Pollock by the pound — but what else are we to infer from their continual prating about “sustained effort”? If, by “sustained effort,” any little gentleman has accomplished an epic, let us frankly commend him for the effort — if this indeed be a thing commendable — but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort’s account. It is to be hoped that common sense, in the time to come, will prefer deciding upon a work of Art rather by the impression it makes — by the effect it produces — than by the time it took to impress the effect, or by the amount of “sustained effort” which had been found necessary in effecting the impression. The fact is, that perseverance is one thing and genius quite another — nor can all the Quarterlies in Christendom confound them. By and by, this proposition, with many which I have been just urging, will be received as self-evident. In the meantime, by being generally condemned as falsities, they will not be essentially damaged as truths.

      On the other hand, it is clear that a poem may be improperly brief. Undue brevity degenerates into mere epigrammatism. A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid, never produces a profound or enduring effect. There must be the steady pressing down of the stamp upon the wax. De Beranger has wrought innumerable things, pungent and spirit-stirring, but in general they have been too imponderous to stamp themselves deeply into the public attention, and thus, as so many feathers of fancy, have been blown aloft only to be whistled down the wind.

      A remarkable instance of the effect of undue brevity in depressing a poem, in keeping it out of the popular view, is afforded by the following exquisite little Serenade —

      I arise from dreams of thee

       In the first sweet sleep of night,

       When the winds are breathing low,

       And the stars are shining bright.

       I arise from dreams of thee,

       And a spirit in my feet

       Has led me- who knows how?-

       To thy chamber-window, sweet!

       The wandering airs they faint

       On the dark the silent stream-

       The champak odors fail

       Like sweet thoughts in a dream;

       The nightingale’s complaint,

       It dies upon her heart,

       As I must die on thine,

       O, beloved as thou art!

       O, lift me from the grass!

       I die, I faint, I fail!

       Let thy love in kisses rain

       On my lips and eyelids pale.

       My cheek is cold and white, alas!

       My heart beats loud and fast:

       O, press it close to thine again,

       Where it will break at last.

      Very few perhaps are familiar with these lines — yet no less a poet than Shelley is their author. Their warm, yet delicate and ethereal imagination will be appreciated by all, but by none so thoroughly as by him who has himself arisen from sweet dreams of one beloved to bathe in the aromatic air of a southern midsummer night.

      One of the finest poems by Willis — the very best in my opinion which he has ever written — has no doubt, through this same defect of undue brevity, been kept back from its proper position, not less in the critical than in the popular view:—

      The shadows lay along Broadway,

       ’Twas near the twilight-tide-

       And slowly there a lady fair

       Was walking in her pride.

       Alone walk’d she; but, viewlessly,

       Walk’d spirits at her side.

       Peace charm’d the street beneath her feet,

       And Honour charm’d the air,

       And all astir looked kind on her,

       And called her good as fair-

       For all God ever gave to her

       She kept with chary care.

       She kept with care her beauties rare

       From lovers warm and true-

       For heart was cold to all but gold,

       And the rich came not to woo-

       But honour’d well her charms to sell

       If priests the selling do.

       Now walking there was one more fair-

       A slight girl lily-pale;

       And she had unseen company

       To make the spirit quail-

       ‘Twixt Want and Scorn she walk’d forlorn,

       And nothing could avail.

       No mercy now can clear her brow

       From this world’s peace to pray,

       For as loves wild prayer dissolved in air,

       Her woman’s heart gave way!-

       But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven,

       By man is cursed alway!

      In this composition we find it difficult to recognise the Willis who has written so many mere “verses of society.” The lines are not only richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness, an evident sincerity of sentiment, for which we look in vain throughout all the other works of this author.

      While the epic mania, while the idea that to merit in poetry prolixity is indispensable, has for some years past been gradually dying out of the public mind, by mere dint of its own absurdity, we find it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresies of The Didactic. It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral, and by this moral is the poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans especially have patronized this happy idea, and we Bostonians very especially have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to write a poem simply for the poem’s sake, and to acknowledge such to have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting in the true poetic dignity and force:— but the simple fact is that would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls we should immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble, than this very poem, this poem per se, this poem which is a poem and nothing more, this poem written solely for the poem’s sake.

      With as deep a reverence for the СКАЧАТЬ