[autograph signature clipped from letter]
Be sure & take home the Messenger, [to Henry B. Hirst]. We hope to send for you very soon.
After six years in Philadelphia, Poe and Virginia had gone to New York to find suitable lodging while Poe explored publishing contacts. Mrs. Clemm here receives details of a boarding house that will enable her to rejoin her daughter and son-in-law upon arrival. Poe’s elaborate attention to food must be read in the context of recurrent family hardships, including hunger. Catterina is the family cat.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
New-York, July 2. 44.
My Dear Mr Lowell,
I can feel for the “constitutional indolence” of which you complain—for it is one of my own besetting sins. I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious—by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but solitary communion with the “mountains & the woods”—the “altars” of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures. This is also the temperament of P. P. Cooke, of Va. the author of “Florence Vane”, “Young Rosalie Lee”, & some other sweet poems—and I should not be surprised if it were your own. Cooke writes and thinks as you—and I have been told that you resemble him personally.
I am not ambitious—unless negatively. I, now and then feel stirred up to excel a fool, merely because I hate to let a fool imagine that he may excel me. Beyond this I feel nothing of ambition. I really perceive that vanity about which most men merely prate—the vanity of the human or temporal life. I live continually in a reverie of the future. I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary—and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain—that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future—that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves—nor are we with our posterity. I cannot agree to lose sight of man the individual, in man the mass.—I have no belief in spirituality. I think the word a mere word. No one has really a conception of spirit. We cannot imagine what is not. We deceive ourselves by the idea of infinitely rarefied matter. Matter escapes the senses by degrees—a stone—a metal—a liquid—the atmosphere—a gas—the luminiferous ether. Beyond this there are other modifications more rare. But to all we attach the notion of a constitution of particles—atomic composition. For this reason only, we think spirit different; for spirit, we say is unparticled, and therefore is not matter. But it is clear that if we proceed sufficiently far in our ideas of rarefaction, we shall arrive at a point where the particles coalesce; for, although the particles be infinite, the infinity of littleness in the spaces between them, is an absurdity.—The unparticled matter, permeating & impelling, all things, is God. Its activity is the thought of God—which creates. Man, and other thinking beings, are individualizations of the unparticled matter. Man exists as a “person”, by being clothed with matter (the particled matter) which individualizes him. Thus habited, his life is rudimental. What we call “death” is the painful metamorphosis. The stars are the habitations of rudimental beings. But for the necessity of the rudimental life, there would have been no worlds. At death, the worm is the butterfly—still material, but of a matter unrecognized by our organs—recognized, occasionally, perhaps, by the sleep-waker, directly—without organs—through the mesmeric medium. Thus a sleep-waker may see ghosts. Divested of the rudimental covering, the being inhabits space—what we suppose to be the immaterial universe—passing every where, and acting all things, by mere volition—cognizant of all secrets but that of the nature of God’s volition—the motion, or activity, of the unparticled matter.
You speak of “an estimate of my life”—and, from what I have already said, you will see that I have none to give. I have been too deeply conscious of the mutability and evanescence of temporal things, to give any continuous effort to anything—to be consistent in anything. My life has been whim—impulse—passion—a longing for solitude—a scorn of all things present, in an earnest desire for the future.
I am profoundly excited by music, and by some poems—those of Tennyson especially—whom, with Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (occasionally) and a few others of like thought and expression, I regard as the sole poets. Music is the perfection of the soul, or idea, of Poetry. The vagueness of exultation aroused by a sweet air (which should be strictly indefinite & never too strongly suggestive) is precisely what we should aim at in poetry. Affectation, within bounds, is thus no blemish.
I still adhere to Dickens as either author, or dictator, of the review. My reasons would convince you, could I give them to you—but I have left myself no space. I had two long interviews with Mr D. when here. Nearly every thing in the critique, I heard from him or suggested to him, personally. The poem of Emerson I read to him.
I have been so negligent as not to preserve copies of any of my volumes of poems—nor was either worthy preservation. The best passages were culled in Hirst’s article. I think my best poems, “The Sleeper”, “The Conqueror Worm”, “The Haunted Palace”, “Lenore”, “Dreamland” & “The Coliseum”—but all have been hurried & unconsidered. My best tales are “Ligeia”; The “Gold-Bug”; The “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, The “Tell-Tale Heart”, The “Black Cat”, “William Wilson”, & “The Descent into the Maelström.” “The Purloined Letter,” forthcoming in the “Gift”, is, perhaps, the best of my tales of ratiocination. I have lately written, for Godey, “The Oblong-Box”, and “Thou art the Man”—as yet unpublished. With this, I mail you “The Gold-Bug”, which is the only one of my tales I have on hand.
Graham has had, for 9 months, a review of mine on Longfellow’s “Spanish Student”, which I have “used up”, and in which I have exposed some of the grossest plagiarisms ever perpetrated. I can’t tell why he does not publish it.—I believe G. intends my Life for the September number, which will be made up by the 10th August. Your article shd be on hand as soon as convenient.
Believe me your true friend.
E A POE.
Poe’s allusion to the “mania of composition” that sometimes comes over him resonates with his manic productivity in 1844, when he composed and published more tales than in any other year. But the chief significance of this letter lies in Poe’s articulation of his ideas about human progress and spirituality. For Lowell, who was writing the requested biographical essay, Poe revealed certain personal traits and identified what he conceived to be his best writings.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO EVERT A. DUYCKINCK
Thursday Morning—13th. [November 13, 1845.] 85 Amity St.
My Dear Mr Duyckinck,
For the first time during two months I find myself entirely myself—dreadfully sick and depressed, but still myself. I seem to have just awakened from some horrible dream, in which all was confusion, and suffering—relieved only by the constant sense of your kindness, and that of one or two other considerate friends. I really believe that I have been mad—but indeed I have had abundant reason to be so. I have made up my mind to a step which will preserve me, for the future, from at least the greater portion of the troubles which have beset me. In the meantime, I have need of the most active exertion to extricate myself from the embarrassments into which I have already fallen—and my object in writing you this note is, (once again) to beg your aid. Of course I need not say to you that my most urgent trouble is the want of ready money. I find that what I said to you about the prospects of the B. J. is strictly correct. The most trifling immediate relief would put it on an excellent footing. All that I want is time in which to look about me; and I think that it is your power to afford me this. . . .
Please send your answer to 85 Amity St. and believe me—w
ith the most sincere friendship and ardent gratitude
Yours
EDGAR A POE.
As the Broadway Journal collapsed, Poe sought personal loans to meet his expenses. This letter bears witness to a period of profound exhaustion and discouragement.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO VIRGINIA POE
June. 12th—1846 [New York]
My Dear Heart, My dear Virginia! our Mother will explain to you why I stay away from you this night. I trust the interview I am promised, will result in some substantial good for me, for your dear sake, and hers—Keep up your heart in all hopefulness, and trust yet a little longer—In my last great disappointment, I should have lost my courage but for you—my little darling wife you are my greatest and only stimulus now, to battle with this uncongenial, unsatisfactory and ungrateful life—I shall be with you tomorrow P.M. and be assured until I see you, I will keep in loving remembrance your last words and your fervent prayer!
Sleep well and may God grant you a peaceful summer, with your devoted
EDGAR
The “great disappointment” Poe acknowledges is the failure of the Broadway Journal. No information exists about the “interview” he mentions. But as the only extant letter written solely to Virginia, it testifies to his devotion to her.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO PHILIP P. COOKE
New-York—August 9. 1846.
My Dear Sir,
Never think of excusing yourself (to me) for dilatoriness in answering letters—I know too well the unconquerable procrastination which besets the poet. I will place it all to the accounts of the turkeys. Were I to be seized by a rambling fit—one of my customary passions (nothing less) for vagabondizing through the woods for a week or a month together—I would not—in fact I could not be put out of my mood, were it even to answer a letter from the Grand Mogul, informing me that I had fallen heir to his possessions.
Thank you for the compliments. Were I in a serious humor just now, I would tell you, frankly, how your words of appreciation make my nerves thrill—not because you praise me (for others have praised me more lavishly) but because I feel that you comprehend and discriminate. You are right about the hair-splitting of my French friend:—that is all done for effect. These tales of ratiocination 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. In the “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” for instance, where is the ingenuity of unravelling a web which you yourself (the author) have woven for the express purpose of unravelling? The reader is made to confound the ingenuity of the supposititious Dupin with that of the writer of the story.
Not for the world would I have had any one else to continue Lowell’s Memoir until I had heard from you. I wish you to do it (if you will be so kind) and nobody else. By the time the book appears you will be famous, (or all my prophecy goes for nothing) and I shall have the éclat of your name to aid my sales. But, seriously, I do not think that any one so well enters into the poetical portion of my mind as yourself—and I deduce this idea from my intense appreciation of those points of your own poetry which seem lost upon others.
Should you undertake the work for me, there is one topic—there is one particular in which I have had wrong done me—and it may not be indecorous in me to call your attention to it. The last selection of my Tales was made from about 70, by Wiley & Putnam’s reader, Duyckinck. He has what he thinks a taste for ratiocination, and has accordingly made up the book mostly of analytic stories. But this is not representing my mind in its various phases—it is not giving me fair play. 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. In this view, one of my chief aims has been the widest diversity of subject, thought, & especially tone & manner of handling. Were all my tales now before me in a large volume and as the composition of another—the merit which would principally arrest my attention would be the wide diversity and variety. You will be surprised to hear me say that (omitting one or two of my first efforts) I do not consider any one of my stories better than another. There is a vast variety of kinds and, in degree of value, these kinds vary—but each tale is equally good of its kind. The loftiest kind is that of the highest imagination—and, for this reason only, “Ligeia” may be called my best tale. I have much improved this last since you saw it and I mail you a copy, as well as a copy of my best specimen of analysis—“The Philosophy of Composition.”
Do you ever see the British papers? Martin F. Tupper, author of “Proverbial Philosophy” has been paying me some high compliments—and indeed I have been treated more than well. There is one “British opinion”, however, which I value highly—Miss Barrett’s. She says:—“This vivid writing!—this power which is felt! The Raven has produced a sensation—‘a fit horror’ here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore’, and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a ‘bust of Pallas’ never can bear to look at it in the twilight. . . . Our great poet Mr Browning, author of Paracelsus etc is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm. Then there is a tale of his which I do not find in this volume, but which is going the rounds of the newspapers, about Mesmerism [The Valdemar Case] throwing us all into most admired disorder or dreadful doubts as to whether it can be true, as the children say of ghost stories. The certain thing in the tale in question is the power of the writer & the faculty he has of making horrible improbabilities seem near and familiar.” Would it be in bad taste to quote these words of Miss B. in your notice?
Forgive these egotisms (which are rendered in some measure necessary by the topic) and believe me that I will let slip no opportunity of reciprocating your kindness.
Griswold’s new edition I have not yet seen (is it out?) but I will manage to find “Rosalie Lee”. Do not forget to send me a few personal details of yourself—such as I give in “The N. Y. Literati”. When your book appears I propose to review it fully in Colton’s “American Review.” If you ever write to him, please suggest to him that I wish to do so. I hope to get your volume before mine goes to press—so that I may speak more fully.
I will forward the papers to which I refer, in a day or two—not by to-day’s mail.
Touching “The Stylus”:—this is the one great purpose of my literary life. Undoubtedly (unless I die) I will accomplish it—but I can afford to lose nothing by precipitancy. I cannot yet say when or how I shall get to work—but when the time comes I will write to you. I wish to establish a journal in which the men of genius may fight their battles; upon some terms of equality, with those dunces the men of talent. But, apart from this, I have magnificent objects in view—may I but live to accomplish them!
Most cordially Your friend
EDGAR A. POE.
Famous for its demystification of the detective story Poe had created a few years earlier, this letter also reflects Poe’s recruitment of Cooke as his biographer. Cooke extended James Russell Lowell’s biographical sketch of Poe (published in Graham’s in February 1845) in a piece published in the Southern Literary Messenger (January 1848), and he obliged Poe by inserting the flattering quote from Miss Barrett. After the Broadway Journal fiasco, Poe here expresses renewed determination to publish The Stylus.
EDGAR ALLAN POE TO N. P. WILLIS
[December 30, 1846.]
The Portable Edgar Allan Poe Page 56
