1956 - Poe's Theory of Beauty.pdf

Poe's Theory of BeautyAuthor(s): George KellySource: American Literature, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Jan., 1956), pp. 521-536Published by: Duke University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2922338 .Accessed: 23/03/2013 13:38

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Poe's Theory of Beauty

GEORGE KELLY University of Maryland

IN THE COURSE of his efforts to determine the relationship between beauty and literary art Poe developed a comprehensive theory

of beauty which pervades his critical thought, imparting to it a curious originality and a remarkable consistency. In fact, to analyze Poe's theory'-of beauty is to analyze at least partially his theory of poetry and his theory of literature; for despite the sharp distinctions that Poe liked to draw between poetry and prose fiction, he tended to regard all literature as subsumed in his generic concept of poetry-a concept which he drew directly from his theory of beauty.

As the basic principles of Poe's theory reveal themselves under semantic analysis, the several senses in which Poe used the term "beauty" become increasingly significant and logically interrelated. Poe sometimes meant one thing by the term "beauty" and sometimes another,' but in each different use the context guides us toward the proper sense. However, before a particular context can render clearly a particular meaning, it is first necessary to discover a cen- tral meaning for beauty in Poe's theory to which his other meanings for beauty can be related. Thus the first step in analyzing Poe's theory of beauty is to clarify his terminology by determining his basic substantive meaning for the word "beauty"; thereafter, the basic principles and semantic complexities of Poe's theory can be examined in detail.

The fundamental construct in Poe's theory is his hypostatization of beauty as a transempirical and ideal entity. Poe is not very clear about the precise metaphysical status of this entity but it would seem that he thought of it as a kind of universal with a being in- dependent of things in which it was manifested. This conception-

1 Two studies which complain about Poe's shifting meanings for the term "beauty" are C. C. Walcutt's "The Logic of Poe," College English, II, 438-444 (Feb., I94I), and Yvor Winters' "Edgar Allan Poe: A Crisis in the History of American Obscurantism," American Literature, VIII, 379-40I (Jan., I937).


522 American Literature

basically Platonic2-was most likely derived by Poe from his study of August Wilhelm Schlegel-in particular, from Schlegel's concept of the spirit of romantic poetry.3

In language very similar to that later used by Poe, Schlegel had attempted to locate the otherworldliness of the Northern or romantic world-view in its consciousness of the vast gulf between the station of humanity and the infinite perfection of the higher realm depicted in the Christian eschatology.4 What Poe may well have done was remove this concept of the supernal realm from its ethical and theological context. His own theory is concerned only with beauty; hence he posits a realm of pure beauty wherein beauty is a transcendental real whose essence is beyond the empirical knowledge of humanity. But retaining the metaphysical machinery of Schlegel, Poe infers as a consequence of man's immortal part, some sort of intuition which allows the true poet to strive toward a mystical vision of the supernal beauty. This instinctive groping for

2 Norman Foerster has employed the probably more accurate term "pseudoplatonic" to describe Poe's concept of supernal beauty. In the broader sense "Platonic" is used simply to indicate an ultimate source in the classification of ideas. "Pseudoplatonic" has the disadvantage of being a neohumanist epithet (cf. Irving Babbitt's use of the term), although in this particular case Foerster was quite properly pointing out the debt of Poe to Shelley's "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and using "pseudoplatonic" to describe Shelleyan emotional abandon (American Criticism, New York, 1928, p. 32).

'Early references to A. W. Schlegel's influence upon Poe's aesthetic and critical thought can be found in George E. Woodberry, The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (New York, I909), 2 vols.; Selections from the Critical Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. F. C. Prescott (New York, I909); Margaret Alterton, The Origins of Poe's Critical Theory (Iowa City, I925); Killis Campbell, The Mind of Poe and Other Studies (Cambridge, Mass., I933). For more recent and fuller documentation of Schlegel's influence on Poe, see Albert J. Lubell, "Poe and A. W. Schlegel," Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LII, 1-12 (Jan., 1953), and the same author's unpublished dissertation, "Edgar Allan Poe, Critic and Reviewer" (New York University, 195I); see also George Kelly, "The Aesthetic Theories of Edgar Allan Poe" (unpublished dissertation, University of Iowa, 1953). Besides directly borrowing scholarly and esoteric information from A. W. Schlegel's A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (trans. by John Black, London, i8I5, 2 vols.), Poe found three basic ideas there which he incorporated into his aesthetic theory: ideality, supernal beauty, and the unity of effect; however, in each case the idea altered progressively under the continued force of Poe's unique purpose (see Kelly, op. cit., p. I07). Poe's dependence upon Schlegel for elements of his theory of beauty was first suggested by F. C. Prescott (Critical Writings of Poe, p. xxxi); since then the evidence has increased considerably (cf. Lubell, loc. cit., pp. 7-8, and Kelly, op cit., pp. 98-103). Poe's debt extended well beyond the borrowing of a term or two. In- fluences can be seen in his notion of the origin, the supernal quality, and the melancholy tone of poetic beauty. For close similarity in thought and language, cf. A. W. Schlegel, Lectures, I, 3, and Poe, Works, XI, 73; Schlegel, I, 15-17, and Poe, XI, 71-72, 255-256; XIV, I98, 273-274. (All references to Poe are to the Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison, New York, 1902, 17 vols.)

4A. W. Schlegel, Lectures, I, 3, 15-17.


Poe's Theory of Beauty 523

supernal beauty Poe designates as the poetic principle, but the realm of beauty itself remains undefined and unexplained. Perhaps Poe saw an absurdity in explaining a concept which he initially depicted as ineffable. At any rate it is referred to consistently, though vague- ly, as a realm of beauty and nothing more. In "The Poetic Prin- ciple" Poe all but quotes the conception of supernal beauty which he first voiced in his review of Longfellow's Ballads (XI, 64-85). He begins by asserting the secondary quality of the poet who merely describes empirical beauty. There is still something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us-but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. (XIV, 273-274)

This same beauty above and beyond which Poe referred to in his review of Longfellow's Ballads as "supernal Beauty-a beauty which is not afforded the soul by any existing collocation of earth's forms" (XI, 73)-is the basic substantive sense in which Poe employs the term "beauty." This construct provides Poe with the several attributive meanings of beauty which he uses in relation to man's sense of the beautiful, to the beautiful in art, and to the beautiful as an effect of art.

The importance of this basic sense of the term "beauty" to an understanding of Poe's entire theory of beauty can hardly be stressed too much; for this construct of the transcendent realm of pure beauty serves as the foundation for the superstructure of theory and principle which relates beauty to literary art.

The poetic principle becomes at once the poet's apprehension of the transcendental immanence of beauty and his means for com- municating it in poetry. The poetic sentiment, which results from the poetic principle, becomes a generic term for all efgorts to depict beauty through art. Since the ideal substantive beauty is purely beauty and nothing more, the proper end of art becomes, through



the force of the poetic sentiment, the depiction of beauty. Beauty depicted and beauty felt imply a mechanism for exacmining and judging beauty in its visible forms; Poe's concept of mind supplies the necessary mechanism with its faculty of taste. And further, the absolute purity of ideal beauty denies to its representations any infusions from the reason, the moral sense, or the passions. Finally, because the ideal beauty is beyond man's empirical knowledge yet tantalizingly immanent as a result of his dual nature, its representations evoke melancholy; and because the ideal realm is transcendent and indefinitive, its proper representations will evince a certain indefinitiveness.

These abstracted principles were not, of course, in any sense deduced by Poe from his primary concept of beauty. However, as abstractions of a body of theory, they derive their coherence and respective attributive meanings from the hypostatized realm of pure beauty, and they are obviously related to each other. Moreover, in so far as Poe's theory of beauty is systematic, the abstracted parts of that system depict the relationships of the primary concept to the particular problem of beauty in literature.

II

In examining both the poetic principle and the poetic sentiment, two considerations must be kept in mind: first, that all mankind has an instinctive urge or dynamis toward the supernal, and second, that the supernal realm is, by definition, unknowable except in fragmentary "brief and indeterminate glimpses." The poetic principle, as Poe defines it, is "strictly and simply, the Human Aspira- tion for Supernal Beauty" (XIV, 290). This then is the dynamis toward the supernal realm. The poetic sentiment, as defined by Poe, is the "pleasurable elevation or excitement of the soul" which "is derived . . . from the contemplation of the beautiful" (XIV, 275). But Poe had already ruled out "contemplation" of supernal beauty in any true sense of the word. Thus we must conclude that Poe meant "contemplation" in a special sense, because before he says that the poetic sentiment is derived from contemplating the beautiful, he says it is the result of the poetic principle.

The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness-this struggle on the part of souls fittingly constituted-has given to the world all that



which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic. (XIV, 274) In the light of this statement "contemplation" must be equivalent to the "brief and indeterminate glimpses" gained in the struggle to apprehend. Thus, despite Poe's careless diction we may conclude that the poetic sentiment is an emotional reaction brought about by dynamistic apprehension of the beautiful.

The poetic sentiment, qua response, is the concept that Poe employs in connecting poetry to the beautiful. Poetry is thus not conceived of by Poe as an attempt to imitate supernal beauty, which by definition is inimitable; instead poetry derives from the poetic sentiment. In "The Philosophy of Composition" he makes clear this distinction.

That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect-they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul.... (XIV, I97)

Poe's characteristic shift to effect here is very significant because effect serves to connect beauty and the poem. Consequently, the purpose of poetry becomes twofold: to express the poetic sentiment and to arouse the poetic sentiment in the reader of the poem. The sentiment is thus derived from beauty as an effect, and in turn derives its own beauty in an effort to create the effect. Poe is quite clear on this matter. Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring from direct causes-that objects should be attained through means best adapted for their attainment.... (XIV, IQ8. Cf. 275)5

'Poe, however, is not so clear in his expression "province of the poem." I do not think it is accurate to suggest that "province" means "subject" as one critic has done (see C. C. Walcutt, "The Logic of Poe," College English, II, 440, Feb., I941), for the implication is clearly not that all poems should be about beauty. More likely Poe meant by "province" order or sphere, and thus was saying that the poem properly belonged to the order of beauty. His subsequent statement seems to substantiate this view. "It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve, incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work:-but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the real essence of the poem." (Works, XIV, 275-276. The text is "The Poetic Principle" and Poe said substantially the same thing in "The Philosophy of Composition" [cf. XIV, I98], but with greater prolixity.)



By saying that beauty is "the province of the poem," Poe implies that poetry should evince those attributes which constitute the quality of the beautiful as it is perceived. To account for the perception of the attributes of the beautiful-the fitting, the propor- tionate, the harmonious-Poe employs his psychology of taste, which, as we shall see, establishes the power of the mind to dis- tinguish the qualities of beauty manifested in poetry.

III Before examining Poe's psychological rationale for the suprem-

acy of beauty in poetry, it seems desirable to determine to what extent Poe connected his principles of beauty with literary art other than poetry in the limited sense. In "The Poetic Principle" Poe wrote really about two kinds of poetry. The one is poetry in the generic sense; the other is the poem as the highest order of poetic art.

The poetic sentiment is not restricted to the poem alone. Poe contends that the sentiment inspires all varieties of human artistry: sculpture, the dance, even the composition of the landscape garden (XIV, 274). Poetry as the result of the poetic sentiment is thus the most generic of terms. In fact, Poe asserts that the highest reaches of generic poetry are to be found not in the poem itself, but in music, where the "soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles . . ." (XIV, 274). Poe's object, however, is to examine the manifestations of the poetic sentiment "in words." But first he determines by an additive twist of reason that the likeliest range of art lies in the union of poetry and music: ". . . there can be little doubt that in the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the widest field for the Poetic development" (XIV, 275).

Rhythm is the quality of music which is most obviously shared by the poetry of words; therefore rhythm became Poe's chief delimitation in defining poetry as "the rhythmical creation of beauty" (XIV, 275). And on the basis of this connection between the poem and music, or more specifically the song, Poe placed the poem exclusively within the province of beauty. But curiously the condi- tion upon which Poe did this was a negative one. He denied to the poem the province of truth, because the rhythmical creation of beauty was foreign to the concentrated seriousness which truth demanded.


Poe's 7heorv of Beaty 527 The demands of Truth are severe. She has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song, is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox, to wreathe her in gems and flowers. (XIV, 272)

By excluding poetry from the realm of truth because of its songlike quality, specifically its rhythm, Poe had defined what he considered the highest poetic form-the lyric poem. He had not, however, defined the poetic, because this he had already done and by a positive rather than a negative principle. This positive concept of the poetic can be observed in Poe's remarks about other forms than the poem. For example, though his analysis of the tale maintains the negative delimitation for the poem, it does not ex- clude the poetic. Poe contends only "that the author who aims; at the purely beautiful in a prose tale is laboring under a great disadvantage. For beauty can be better treated in the poem." No aesthetic principle bars the tale from the sphere of generic poetry. Quite to the contrary, again the "artificialities" of rhythm, the mark of poetry specific, would for Poe act as an "inseparable bar" to developing ideas based in truth (XI, I08-IO9, passim). Poe thought of even longer prose forms than the tale in terms of their poetic quality. There is for example his attitude toward De la Motte Fouque's Undine. At one time Poe referred to it as "that superb poem" (XI, 247) and on two other occasions he asked, "What can be more purely beautiful than the whole book?" (X, 39; XVI, 51). Then too, there is Poe's own plea that his Eureka be judged as a poem to be reckoned with.

It would seem that Poe's basic conception of the relationship between the beautiful and poetry applies first to poetry in the generic sense, then to the lyric as the highest form of poetry. This is further evident in his psychology of taste wherein taste is given the important function of apprehending the attributive qualities of beauty manifested in poetry.

IV

In his review of Longfellow's Ballads and later in "The Poetic Principle" Poe presented a sketchy theory in which he distinguished the classical divisions of mind and sought to relate them to the problem of beauty in literary art. It was characteristic of Poe to seek some rationalistic theory on which to ground his metaphysics,



and such was the use that he made of rational psychology in his theory of beauty. Dividing the world of mind into its three most immediately obvious distinctions, we have the Pure Intellect, Taste, and the Moral Sense. I place Taste in the middle, because it is just this position which, in the mind, it occupies. It holds intimate relations with either extreme; but from the Moral Sense is separated by so faint a difference that Aristotle has not hesitated to place some of its operations among the virtues themselves. Nevertheless, we find the offices of the trio marked with a sufficient distinction. Just as the Intellect concerns itself with Truth, so Taste informs us of the Beautiful while the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty. Of this latter, while Conscience teaches the obligation, and Rea- son the expediency, Taste contents herself with displaying the charms;- waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity-her dis- proportion-her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious-in a word, to beauty. (XIV, 272-273)

Identifying taste with beauty in these passages was hardly orig- inal with Poe; nor is there anything unusual about his assertion that taste discriminates the degree of proportion, appropriateness, and harmony of a work of art. However, these are not the only meanings Poe employed for the term taste. He also tended to confuse it with his more idiosyncratic terms, ideality and the poetic sentiment.

We have seen that Poe ascribed the vision of his ideal realm of beauty to the transcendental intuitions of the poetic sentiment; thus, if taste is to be regarded as distinct from the poetic sentiment, it must, in Poe's theory, apprehend a different order of beauty. Poe's statement that "taste informs us of the Beautiful" would lead to such a conclusion; for his examples of the mental activity of taste refer to qualities of beauty first, then to beauty. Moreover, in defining the poetry of words as "the rhythmical creation of beauty" Poe added, "Its sole arbiter is taste." Hence it seems reasonable to conclude that, at least in this context, "taste" is that which per- ceives the attributes of beauty in art, and that the attributes themselves derive from the poet's efforts to create that part of beauty which he feels as an effect, so that others will also feel it as an effect. Taste would then be distinguished from the poetic sentiment, the "pleasurable elevation of the soul," by being, as it was traditionally, a faculty for judging the manifested qualities of the



beautiful, for the poetic sentiment is obviously not a faculty for judgment of but a response to the sense of beauty.

There is yet another sense in which the distinctions between taste and the intellect and the moral sense function in Poe's psychology of aesthetics. His consistent effort was to connect, in fact, to identify, beauty with pleasure. In his earliest critical effort, the "Letter to B ," he had announced (paraphrasing Coleridge) that the immediate object of poetry was pleasure, not truth. Later he explained the connection between pleasure and beauty quite simply: "That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful" (XIV, I97; cf. XIV, 275). Yet we have seen that after this statement, Poe shifted to speaking of beauty as an effect. In doing so he identified beauty and pleasure. Taste would then seem to be both that part of the mind which discriminates between responses of highly elevated pleasure and beauty itself as an effect or response. When we return to Poe's concept of the poem as an instrumentality for reproducing the highly elevating pleasure which is beauty as an effect, taste becomes the means of judging harmony, proportion, and appropriateness, which are the elements of the effect. Finally, by linking taste with the intellectual and moral sense and the soul with reason and passion, Poe suggests that in its exalted sense taste is closely akin to the soul-a fantastic notion which he had earlier suggested in still different terminology.

In previous efforts to determine the relationship between beauty and art, Poe employed the term "ideality" to describe the general function of mind which he later designated taste.6 Sometimes ideality is used simply as the ordinary concept of taste, i.e., the faculty for distinguishing the qualities of the beautiful.7 On other

'Poe's use of ideality was highly ambiguous: Initially he called it the sentiment of poetry; later, a quality of the representations of the imagination. (In the Drake- Halleck review, I836, Poe defined ideality as "the sentiment of Poesy, . . . the sense of the beautiful, of the sublime, and of the mystical," Works, VIII, 282; cf. review of Alciphron, I840, Works, X, 65.) This dual use of the term likely derived from its dual meaning in phrenology as both the poetic and the creative faculties-a distinction of which Poe was aware. In his "Marginalia" of November, I844, Poe commented on the dual nature of ideality: ". . . Mr. Dickens' head must puzzle the phrenologists. The organs of ideality are small; and the conclusion of the 'Curiosity Shop' is more truly ideal (in both phrenological senses) than any composition of equal length in the English language" (Works, XVI, iI).

'In evaluating the critical abilities of Christopher North, Poe used the term "ideality" clearly as a substitute for the more conventional term "taste." He found Wilson's critical 34 AL 27



occasions Poe wrote of an exalted concept of taste, using ideality to mean an exalted sense of the beautiful, sublime, and mystical. Thus ideality, as the sense of the beautiful, appears to be nothing more than another term for taste, either ordinary or exalted.8

Despite the several ambiguities in Poe's discussion of taste and beauty, the purpose of his effort remains clear. It was to establish a distinct area of mind devoted solely to converting perceptions of the beautiful into responses of pleasure. It was for this purpose that Poe spoke of beauty as an effect; and for this purpose too that he spoke of that effect as the pure elevation of the soul.9 So when Poe said, "Taste informs us of the Beautiful," we understand that the information produces pleasure. And however Poe shifted his terminology, from "Letter to B ," wherein he spoke of pleasure, pure and simple, through the Drake-Halleck review, wherein he identified Shelley's "intellectual happiness" with ideality, and finally to "The Poetic Principle," wherein he termed the effect of beauty "the pleasurable elevation or excitement of the soul," the object of poetry remained to evoke pleasure by beauty. Taste, as Poe used the term in his later work, was simply a mental activity or faculty which performed the action.

v

In addition to establishing the close relationship between beauty, taste, and pleasure, Poe's depiction of mind as divided into three compartments provides him with a convenient rationale for establishing a hierarchy of poetic forms. By placing taste in the middle and adding ingeniously that "it holds intimate relations with either capacity founded on a "rich ideality" which he explained as a "keen appreciation of the beautiful and fastidious sense of the deformed" (Works, XII, 239-240).

8 The probable reason for Poe's dual terminology (ideality and taste) lies in his initial interest in phrenology and his subsequent cooling off toward it. At one time he felt that phrenology would provide an "analysis of the real principles and a digest of the resulting laws of taste" (Works, XI, 65, in the review, March, I842, of Long- fellow's Ballads). Later Poe doubted phrenology's usefulness and even made light of its validity. (See Works, XV, i 8, 122; see also note 7 here.) Thus no mention of the term "ideality" occurs in "The Philosophy of Composition" or "The Poetic Prin- ciple." Instead taste takes on a twofold meaning as the perceptor of the qualities of beauty, and as the exalted sense of high pleasure. (For a highly exalted view of taste, see Poe's "The Colloquy of Monos and Una," where he presents a discursive commentary on taste as the key to beauty, nature, and life-Works, IV, 200 f.)

'Norman Foerster contends that Poe's sole concern was with pleasure in both a qualitative and quantitative sense (American Criticism, pp. 21 f.). Foerster's admirable chapter on Poe in American Criticism is a considerable elaboration of his "Quantity and Quality in Poe's Aesthetic," Studies in Philology, XX, 310-335 (July, 1923).


PoUe's Theory of Beauty 53I

extreme," he allowed the introduction of such effects as "the incitements of passion, or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of truth" if they were properly subordinate to the purpose of poetry, which was to create high pleasure by providing for the contemplation of beauty. Conversely, he allowed other literary forms, whose province might be variously the passions or duty or truth, to intro- duce effects of beauty. But by making beauty the exclusive "province" of poetry, Poe established taste as a mechanism for determining the relative values of poetic forms. We recall that in Poe's system ideal beauty is pure; thus any encroachment upon its representations by the reason, the moral sense, or the passions is a violation of its proper nature. The critic, then, has but to consult his taste to determine the degree of violation of the poetic principle- that universal force which so intensely urges the poetic sentiment to direct its representations of the attributes of beauty toward the ideal realm of pure beauty. Thus Poe is able to call a didactic poem "precisely no poem at all," and to sniff at Lowell's "The Legend of Brittany" for being "poetry of sentiment," an order of verse "far inferior to that of the imagination or that of the passions" (XIII, i68).

Probably the most influential of Poe's critical principles, his antididacticism, which he transfixed in the theological metaphor, "4the heresy of the didactic," derived from his concept of the purity of ideal beauty. Time and time again Poe dismissed the poetic efforts of his contemporaries as tainted by this heresy.'0 His final and most complete imprecation of the didactic is to be found in "The Poetic Principle." There he confronted the heresy with the opposing dogma of pure aestheticism and in doing so became one of the founders of a literary movement.

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 . . . 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

10 Bryant, Longfellow, and Lowell were among the major poets accused by Poe of didacticism. Despite their heresy, however, he admired them. (See Works, XIII, I3I; XI, 68; XIII, I70.)



poem-this poem per se-this poem which is a poem and nothing more- this poem written solely for the poem's sake. (XIV, 27I-272)

VI

Two more important principles in Poe's theory of beauty derive from his concept of the realm of ideal beauty. Both principles of modification, they establish qualities of beauty in literature upon the secondary attributes of supernal beauty. The first, which defines the melancholy tone of beauty as an effect, has unfortunately occasioned some confusion. The source of this lies in "The Philos- ophy of Composition," where Poe applied the principle in analyzing his own work.

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation-and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all poetical tones. (XIV, I98)

The fact that Poe went on from this statement to arrive, by the most specious kind of logic, at the conclusion that the death of a beautiful woman was the most poetical of all topics, is some justifi- cation for adding that conclusion to his theory of beauty." How- ever, such a view neglects several important matters. The first of these is that the connection between the death of a beautiful woman and the melancholy tone of beauty occurs in "The Philosophy of Composition," an essay which is devoted to reconstructing or, more accurately, to rationalizing "The Raven." The second is that Poe

"Among critics who have accepted the death of a beautiful woman as a critical principle in Poe's theory of beauty are Margaret Alterton, who sought its source in Poe's reading medical case histories in Blackwood's (Origins of Poe's Critical Theory, pp. 23 ff.), Joseph Wood Krutch, who finds it an expression of Poe's sexual aberrations (Edgar Allan Poe, p. 232), and C. C. Walcutt, who demonstrates its illogicality ("The Logic of Poe," College English, II, 433, Feb., I94I). Norman Foerster's study of Poe's theory of beauty properly finds the source of Poe's concept of melancholy in the concept of ideal beauty, but he also places the death of a beautiful woman among Poe's principles (American Criticism, p. 44). An idea which would appear related to Poe's notion about the death of a beautiful woman, especially when we recall Morella and Ligeia, is his frequent linking of strangeness and beauty. Poe frequently quoted Bacon's apothegm, "There is no exquisite beauty which has not some strangeness in its proportions." But only in his fiction ("Ligeia," II, 250) did he apply the quotation to a beautiful woman. In Poe's criticism, the Bacon quotation applies specifically to the "quaintness" of Shelley and Tennyson (XI, I76; XII, 33; XVI, I49). The weird beauty that Poe became famous for in prose and poetry is undeniably a part of his work; but it derives from his peculiar sensibility, not his aesthetic theory.



could on another occasion completely reject the sentimentalization of death as he did in a comment on Bulwer's Ernest Maltravers. "That sweet smile and serene-that smile never seen but upon the face of the dying and the dead." Bulwer is not the man to look a stern fact in the face. He would rather sentimentalize upon a vulgar although picturesque error. Who ever really saw anything but horror in the smile of the dead? We so earnestly desire to fancy it "sweet"-that is the source of the mistake; if, indeed, there was ever a mistake in the question. (XVI, 42)

The attendant tone of melancholy associated with highly elevated beauty Poe believed to be actually an effect or an emotional response by humanity to the supernal beauty it "glimpses" but cannot attain. Poe's statement in "The Poetic Principle" makes this quite obvious. . . .when by Poetry-or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods-we find ourselves melted into tears-we weep then . . . through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rap- turous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses. (XIV, 274)

Thus because the ideal beauty is beyond man's knowledge yet tantalizingly immanent as a result of his dual nature, beauty in its ideal representations evokes melancholy.

The second of Poe's principles which define the tone or character of beauty as an effect is his concept of indefinitiveness. This like the principle of melancholy he drew from his Schlegelian concept of the supernal realm. Throughout his discussion of indefinitiveness, Poe drew a close connection between the lyrical beauty of the poem and the beauty of music; however, he did not base his concept of indefinitiveness upon a desire for poetry to imitate music; but rather upon his insistence that poetry, like music, should contain in its attributes of the beautiful the power to produce effects like those of the supernal realm of beauty.

We have seen that Poe considered music the one poetic form which might attain supernal beauty and the ultimate elevation of the soul. This conviction he based upon the quality of indefinitiveness in music. . . . one thing is certain-that the sentimental pleasure derivable from music, is nearly in the ratio of its indefinitiveness. Give to music any



undue decision-imbue it, with any very determinate tone-and you deprive it, at once, of its ethereal, its ideal, and . . . essential character. (X, 42)12

The same quality of indefinitiveness that Poe admired earlier in music he could laud later in the poetry of Tennyson. If the author did not deliberately propose to himself a suggestive indefinitiveness of meaning, with the view of bringing about a definitiveness of vague and therefore spiritual effect-this, at least, arose from the silent analytical promptings of that poetic genius which, in its supreme development, embodies all orders of intellectual capacity. (XIV, 28-29)'3

Here it can be seen that Poe has tied in his concept of the beauty of effect to the ideality of musical-poetic indefinitiveness. In addition he has said that the effect of vagueness is somehow spiritual, because, as we have seen, the effect of the spiritual was vague. And this much of his statement is a pretty elementary logical fallacy.'4 However, Poe's rationale for indefinitiveness was not logic; instead, it was his concept of effect: the object in art was not to reproduce the ineffable spiritual ideal, but to produce effects in the work of art like effects produced by the realm of supernal beauty. "When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect. . . ." Thus because the ideal realm of supernal beauty is transcendent and indefinitive, its proper repre- sentation will, through effect, evince a certain indefinitiveness.

VII

There is a further aspect of Poe's theory of beauty which, though important, cannot be readily connected to the same transcendental metaphysics which was the source for so much of the theory already examined. Poe's discussion of music, and especially his examination of the principles of prosody, suggests at times a theory of beauty more classical than romantic. A passage from his early comments on music contains this statement: The sentiments deducible from the conception of sweet sound simply

12 The text is Poe's article on "George P. Morris," Burton's Gentleman's Magazine (Dec., I839).

1The text is the "Marginalia," Democratic Review (Dec., I844). 14Norman Foerster's perceptive analysis of Poe's concept of indefinitiveness called

attention to Poe's fallacy, pointing out the "logical blunder" of maintaining that if the infinite is indefinite then the indefinite is also infinite and spiritual (see his American Criticism, p. 39).


Poe's Theory of Beauty 535 are out of the reach of analysis-although referable, possibly, in their last result, to that merely mathematical recognition of equality which seems to be the root of all beauty. (X, 41) Here is a principle of beauty which has none of the transcendental quality of Poe's concept of the supernal realm; nor does it contain the subjectivism of his concept of the poetic sentiment manifested as a pleasurably elevated effect; it is an objective principle in which beauty is regarded as dependent upon an observable quality-equality. And "The Rationale of Verse," Poe's final commentary on prosody, completes the circle by tying pleasure to the concept of equality and thus to beauty. Thus Poe had created the outline for a theory of beauty quite different from the one that has been analyzed thus far.

Verse originates in the human enjoyment of equality, fitness. To this enjoyment, also, all the modes of verse-rhythm, meter, stanza, rhyme, alliteration, the refrain, and other analogous effects-are to be referred.... To return to equality. Its idea embraces those of similarity, proportion, identity, repetition, and adaptation or fitness. It might not be very difficult to go even behind the idea of equality, and show both how and why it is that the human nature takes pleasure in it, but such an investigation would, for any purpose now in view, be supererogatory. It is sufficient that the fact is undeniable-the fact that man derives enjoyment from his perception of equality. (XIV, 2I8)

The only element in the theory of beauty previously analyzed which bears any relationship to the aesthetics in these two passages is Poe's depiction of taste as the perceptor of harmony, proportion, and fitness. Both passages are instances of conventional eighteenth- century aesthetics-the analysis of the objective qualities of the beautiful and the pleasing. But despite this point of similarity there is a significant difference: In Poe's basic aesthetics, taste relates the objective qualities of beauty and pleasure to the manifestations of the supernal realm; in his incipient secondary aesthetics, the objective qualities of beauty and pleasure are resolved into a kind of symmetry and consistency.

VIII

There is a high irony in the fact that when Poe attempted to explain the Creation and the destiny of the universe through aesthetic theory, he applied his barely articulated secondary theory



of beauty to effect the ultimate union of truth and beauty-a union which it had been one of the purposes of his primary theory of supernal beauty to deny. The preface of the Eureka announces the union of truth and beauty by the force of beauty's qualities. There Poe offered "this Book of Truths, not in its character of Truth-Teller, but for the Beauty that abounds in its Truths; con- stituting it true" (XVI, I83). And later within the body of the Eureka, Poe joined the "obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth."

And, in fact, the sense of the symmetrical is an instinct which may be depended upon with an almost blindfold reliance. It is the poetical essence of the Universe-of the Universe which, in the supremeness of its symmetry, is but the most sublime of poems. Now symmetry and consistency are convertible terms:-thus Poetry and Truth are one. A thing is consistent in the ratio of its truth-true in the ratio of its consistency. A perfect consistency, I repeat, can be nothing but an absolute truth. We may take it for granted, then, that Man cannot long or widely err, if he suffer himself to be guided by his poetical, which I have maintained to be his truthful, in being, his symmetrical, instinct. (XVI, 302) Now the union of truth and beauty that occurs in this statement is not so much as it appears at first glance a denial of what Poe had propounded in his theory of beauty up to this point. It should be noted that his definition of truth is based upon an aesthetic principle: consistency is merely perfect symmetry. Truth then is defined by no appeal to authority nor by any dialectic of ends, nor by any transcendental realm of reason, but simply by its aesthetic appearance.'5 It is significant, too, that only in the Eureka did Poe propose the unity of truth and beauty. There he was describing the universe as the perfect work of art, by the perfect creative artist-a work of art, itself supernal. In the absolute unity of the supernal work of art, it is not surprising to find a unity of truth and beauty.

"5Poe's definition of truth is closest in its terminology to the coherence test of truth. (See L. J. Lafleur, "Edgar Allan Poe as Philosopher," Personalist, XXII, 405, Oct., 194I).


Article Contentsp. [521]p. 522p. 523p. 524p. 525p. 526p. 527p. 528p. 529p. 530p. 531p. 532p. 533p. 534p. 535p. 536

Issue Table of ContentsAmerican Literature, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Jan., 1956), pp. 475-628+iii-ixVolume Information [pp. ]The Triple Quest of Henry James: Fame, Art, and Fortune [pp. 475-498]Hudibras in the American Revolution [pp. 499-508]Deism in Joel Barlow's Early Work: Heterodox Passages in The Vision of Columbus [pp. 509-520]Poe's Theory of Beauty [pp. 521-536]The Character of Flame: The Function of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter [pp. 537-553]Notes and QueriesNotes on the Thomas Hooker Canon [pp. 554-555]Richard Henry Wilde on Greenough's Washington [pp. 556-557]The Humorists of the Old Southwest in the London Bentley's Miscellany [pp. 557-560]A New Account of Hawthorne's Last Days, Death, and Funeral [pp. 561-565]Immortality vs. Mortality in Septimius Felton: Some Possible Sources [pp. 566-570]Melville's Pierre in the City [pp. 571-577]More Temperance Tales by Whitman [pp. 577-578]DeForest, Van Petten, and Stephen Crane [pp. 578-580]

Research in Progress [pp. 581-583]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 584-586]Review: untitled [pp. 586-589]Review: untitled [pp. 589-590]Review: untitled [pp. 590-592]Review: untitled [pp. 592-593]Review: untitled [pp. 593-594]Review: untitled [pp. 595-596]Review: untitled [pp. 596-598]Review: untitled [pp. 598-600]Review: untitled [pp. 601-602]Review: untitled [pp. 602-604]Review: untitled [pp. 604-606]Review: untitled [pp. 606-608]Review: untitled [pp. 608-611]Review: untitled [pp. 611-612]

Brief Mention [pp. 613-614]Articles on American Literature Appearing in Current Periodicals [pp. 615-628]

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1956 - Poe's Theory of Beauty.pdf