[In the following excerpt, originally published in 1977, Parrinder briefly discusses the critical theories associated with Emerson, Whitman, and Poe.]

THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN CRITICISM: EMERSON, WHITMAN AND POE

‘A BREATH AS OF THE GREEN COUNTRY,—ALL THE WELCOMER THAT IT IS NEW-ENGLAND COUNTRY, NOT SECOND-HAND BUT FIRST-HAND COUNTRY,—MEETS US WHOLESOMELY EVERYWHERE IN THESE ESSAYS’: THESE ARE THE WORDS OF CARLYLE, INTRODUCING THE FIRST COLLECTION OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON'S WRITINGS TO THE ENGLISH PUBLIC IN 1841. THROUGHOUT THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, AMERICAN AUTHORS COULD BE VERY SUCCESSFULLY INCORPORATED INTO VICTORIAN LITERARY CULTURE IN TERMS SUCH AS THESE. LATER IN THE CENTURY, WHAT SANTAYANA WAS TO CALL THE GENTEEL TRADITION GAVE RISE TO A CRITICISM THAT WAS AVOWEDLY PROVINCIAL AND TO THE MIGRATION OF WRITERS OF THE STATURE OF HENRY JAMES AND T. S. ELIOT FROM BOSTON TO LONDON. THE FIRST GENERATION OF AMERICAN CRITICS, HOWEVER, LAID STRESS ON THE FACT OF AMERICAN DIFFERENCE. EMERSON AND WHITMAN DREW ON THE REVOLUTIONARY INHERITANCE IN AMERICAN LIFE TO PRESENT A BARDIC VISION WHICH IS FUNDAMENTALLY OPPOSED TO MILL'S ETIOLATED NOTIONS OF POETRY.

EMERSON'S ESSAY ‘THE POET’ (1844) DESCRIBES ITS SUBJECT IN ‘IDEAL PERFECTION’ MUCH AS WORDSWORTH'S PREFACE HAD DONE. THE AMERICAN POET DOES NOT YET EXIST, THOUGH (EMERSON ADDS) ‘NEITHER COULD I AID MYSELF TO FIX THE IDEA OF THE POET BY READING NOW AND THEN IN CHALMERS'S COLLECTION OF FIVE CENTURIES OF ENGLISH POETS.’ AMERICA LIKE ENGLAND IS AFFECTED BY THE ‘DIFFIDENCE OF MANKIND IN THE SOUL’ AND BY THE ASSUMPTION THAT ‘ALL THOUGHT IS ALREADY LONG AGO ADEQUATELY SET DOWN IN BOOKS’;¹ BUT THE TRULY AMERICAN POET IS SIMPLY CHARGED WITH WRITING DOWN WHAT IS IN FRONT OF HIM, SINCE ‘AMERICA IS A POEM IN OUR EYES’. BY ‘AMERICA’ EMERSON, LIKE MANY OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY WRITERS, MEANS TO SIGNIFY A COMBINATION OF VIRGIN NATURE AWAITING EXPLOITATION, AND THE CHALLENGE OF POLITICAL DEMOCRACY. THE POET'S MISSION IS TO ATTEND TO THE INSPIRATION OF NATURE AND TO BECOME AN ORACLE GIVING VOICE TO THE ‘DIVINE AURA WHICH BREATHES THROUGH FORMS.’ EMERSON IS WORDSWORTHIAN IN AFFIRMING THAT ‘ALL MEN ARE POETS AT HEART,’ WHILE NEVERTHELESS RESERVING A SPECIAL MISSION FOR THE POET.²

THE ORACULAR POET NEEDS INTERPRETATION, HOWEVER. THIS IS THE SOURCE OF THE INTELLECTUAL VOCATION CELEBRATED IN ‘THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR’ (1857), WRITTEN FIVE YEARS AFTER EMERSON HAD RESIGNED FROM THE UNITARIAN MINISTRY. THE SCHOLAR, A REPRESENTATIVE OF ‘MAN THINKING’, IS A SECULAR PRIEST WHOSE FUNCTION IS TO RECEIVE AND IMPART BOTH THE WORKS OF NATURE AND THE AUTHENTIC UTTERANCES OF VISIONARY POETS, REJECTING WHATEVER IS SECONDHAND AND INAUTHENTIC. THE SCHOLAR-PRIEST MUST FOLLOW AN ARDUOUS AND SOLITARY DISCIPLINE, THOUGH WRITERS OF GENIUS, EMERSON ARGUES IN ‘THE POET’, CAN SHORT-CIRCUIT THE ACTIVITY OF SCHOLARLY INTERPRETATION BY ACTING DIRECTLY AS ‘LIBERATING GODS’ FOR THE PEOPLE AT LARGE: ‘AN IMAGINATIVE BOOK RENDERS US MUCH MORE SERVICE AT FIRST, BY STIMULATING US THROUGH ITS TROPES, THAN AFTERWARD, WHEN WE ARRIVE AT THE PRECISE SENSE OF THE AUTHOR.’ SCHOLARSHIP, ACCORDING TO EMERSON, SHOULD NOT BE CONCERNED SO MUCH WITH ESTABLISHING THE PRECISE SENSE OF THE AUTHOR AS WITH POINTING TO WHATEVER IS ‘TRANSCENDENTAL AND EXTRAORDINARY’ IN BOOKS.

THE POET'S RELATIONSHIP TO THE PEOPLE AND TO VIRGIN NATURE IS, OF COURSE, MEDIATED THROUGH LANGUAGE. FOR EMERSON LANGUAGE ITSELF IS ‘FOSSIL POETRY’, A PETRIFIED STRUCTURE OF IMAGES AND TROPES EACH OF WHICH ‘WAS AT FIRST A STROKE OF GENIUS, AND OBTAINED CURRENCY, BECAUSE FOR THE MOMENT IT SYMBOLISED THE WORLD TO THE FIRST SPEAKER AND TO THE FIRST HEARER’. A NEW WORLD DEMANDS A NEW OR AT LEAST A RENOVATED LANGUAGE. IN ‘LITERARY ETHICS’ (1838), CONSIDERING THE INTELLECTUAL TASKS THAT FACE THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR, EMERSON TURNS TO THE ‘NOONDAY DARKNESS OF THE AMERICAN FOREST’, TO THE ‘ABORIGINAL WOODS’ WHERE ‘YOU SHALL FIND ALL NEW AND UNDESCRIBED’, AND ‘THE EAGLE AND THE CROW SEE NO INTRUDER’. NEEDLESS TO SAY, HE IS SILENT ABOUT THE NATIVE AMERICAN POPULATION OF THESE WOODS. EMERSON'S VISION IS OF AN UNOCCUPIED AND UNNAMED CONTINENT, WHERE ‘TROPES, FABLES, ORACLES, AND ALL OTHER POETIC FORMS’ LIE DORMANT IN THE VERY GEOGRAPHY. IN SUCH A WORLD THE EXERCISE OF POETIC IMAGINATION IS A COLLECTIVE, NOT MERELY AN INDIVIDUAL, RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE CRITIC AS TRANSCENDENTALIST CAN AFFIRM THAT ‘ALL LITERATURE IS YET TO BE WRITTEN’.

WALT WHITMAN, DISAVOWING MERELY LITERARY AIMS, SET OUT TO WRITE IT. LEAVES OF GRASS, HE CLAIMED RETROSPECTIVELY IN ‘A BACKWARD GLANCE O'ER TRAVEL'D ROADS’ (1888), WAS NOT TO BE SEEN AS A ‘LITERARY PERFORMANCE’ BUT AS THE ‘AUTOCHTHONOUS SONG’ OF A NEW NATION REJECTING ANY LITERARY AUTHORITY DERIVED FROM THE OLD WORLD. EVEN SHAKESPEARE BELONGED TO THE BURIED PAST, AND WOULD BE DISPLACED BY THE POEMS OF ‘REALITIES AND SCIENCE AND OF THE DEMOCRATIC AVERAGE AND BASIC EQUALITY’ TO BE PRODUCED IN THE NEW WORLD. WHITMAN TO SOME EXTENT REPLACES THE TRANSCENDENTALISTS' BACKWOODSMANSHIP WITH A COMMITMENT TO INTELLECTUAL AND ARTISTIC MODERNISATION, LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CRITICAL RHETORIC OF EZRA POUND. NEVERTHELESS, HE CELEBRATED THE PIONEERING SPIRIT OF RURAL AMERICA AND, IN ‘A BACKWARD GLANCE’, HE HAD TO ADMIT THAT HE HAD SUFFERED THE COMMON FATE OF PIONEERS. HIS ALMOST SHAMANISTIC 1855 PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS HAD COMPARED THE POET TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES—NOT ONLY A ‘COMMON REFEREE’, BUT FIRST AMONG EQUALS. THE POET WAS A SPOKESMAN FOR LIBERTY AND EQUALITY AND WAS HIMSELF ANSWERABLE TO DEMOCRATIC INTERROGATION; HIS POPULARITY WAS, APPARENTLY, THE INDEX OF HIS POWER. ‘THE PROOF OF A POET IS THAT HIS COUNTRY ABSORBS HIM AS AFFECTIONATELY AS HE HAS ABSORBED IT’, WHITMAN HAD OPTIMISTICALLY WRITTEN. IN THE LONG RUN HE WOULD BE PROVED RIGHT, BUT IN 1888 HE WAS FORCED TO CONFESS THAT ‘FROM A WORLDLY AND BUSINESS POINT OF VIEW LEAVES OF GRASS HAS BEEN WORSE THAN A FAILURE’.

POETRY FOR WHITMAN SHOULD BE ‘ANSWERABLE’ TO THE NATION AND ITS POLITICS:

OF THE GREAT POEMS RECEIV'D FROM ABROAD AND FROM THE AGES, AND TO-DAY ENVELOPING AND PENETRATING AMERICA, IS THERE ONE THAT IS CONSISTENT WITH THESE UNITED STATES, OR ESSENTIALLY APPLICABLE TO THEM AS THEY ARE AND ARE TO BE? IS THERE ONE WHOSE UNDERLYING BASIS IS NOT A DENIAL AND INSULT TO DEMOCRACY?

(‘A BACKWARD GLANCE’)

AMONG OTHER NINETEENTH-CENTURY POETS, EMILY DICKINSON HAS NO TRUCK WITH QUESTIONS SUCH AS THESE, WHILE EDGAR ALLAN POE'S INDIFFERENCE TO THEM GAVE RISE TO THE MOST INFLUENTIAL AMERICAN CRITICAL THEORY OF THE CENTURY. POE WAS BY NO MEANS AN UNPATRIOTIC WRITER, BUT IN HIS EYES WHITMAN'S PRESCRIPTIONS WOULD DOUBTLESS HAVE EXEMPLIFIED THE ‘HERESY OF THE DIDACTIC’ WHICH WAS ONE OF THE MAJOR LEGACIES OF NEW ENGLAND PURITANISM. POE'S ESSAYS ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ (1846) AND ‘THE POETIC PRINCIPLE’ (1850) PUT FORWARD AN IDEAL OF ‘PURE POETRY’ WHICH DEEPLY IMPRESSED BAUDELAIRE AND THE FRENCH SYMBOLIST MOVEMENT, AND WHICH THEREFORE CONTRIBUTED (AT LEAST INDIRECTLY) TO VIRTUALLY ALL SUBSEQUENT FORMALIST THEORIES.

POE—‘THREE FIFTHS OF HIM GENIUS AND TWO FIFTHS SHEER FUDGE,’ ACCORDING TO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL'S ‘A FABLE FOR CRITICS’ (1848)—WAS ONE OF THE GREAT OPPORTUNISTS OF CRITICISM. HIS VIEWS ON POETRY LAY CLAIM TO UNIVERSAL VALIDITY BUT IN THE END, IT MIGHT BE SAID, THEY ARE NOT MUCH MORE THAN POE-TRY. HIS DOCTRINE THAT THE ONLY AUTHENTIC WORK OF LITERARY ART IS ONE WHICH CAN BE TAKEN IN AT A SINGLE SITTING STANDS, FOR EXAMPLE, AS A JUSTIFICATION OF THE SHORT-WINDEDNESS OF POE'S OWN VERSE AND OF THE BEST OF HIS PROSE. HE TOOK FROM COLERIDGE THE NOTION OF ORGANIC UNITY AND ITS IDIOSYNCRATIC COROLLARY THAT ‘A POEM OF ANY LENGTH NEITHER CAN BE, NOR OUGHT TO BE, ALL POETRY’; FOR POE (THOUGH, OF COURSE, NOT FOR COLERIDGE) THIS WAS SUFFICIENT TO DISPOSE OF THE POETIC CLAIMS OF AN EPIC SUCH AS PARADISE LOST. SINCE THE ‘UNITY OF EFFECT OR IMPRESSION’ SOUGHT BY THE TRUE POET WOULD BE DISSIPATED ONCE THE READER'S CONCENTRATION WAS DISTURBED, A LONG POEM WAS A CONTRADICTION IN TERMS. THE EFFECT OF ‘TOTALITY’ COULD ONLY BE ACHIEVED BY THE BRIEF LYRIC OR—AS HE ARGUED IN A REVIEW OF HAWTHORNE'S TWICE-TOLD TALES—THE PROSE NARRATIVE REQUIRING ‘FROM A HALF-HOUR TO ONE OR TWO HOURS IN ITS PERUSAL’. THERE IS A CURIOUS MIXTURE IN THIS OF A DOGMA PERHAPS ANALOGOUS TO THE NEOCLASSICAL UNITIES, AND OF THE EMPIRICAL PSYCHOLOGIST CONSULTING HIS STOPWATCH.

‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’, PURPORTEDLY A SOBER EXAMINATION OF POE'S OWN METHODS, EXPLAINS THAT HE DESIGNED HIS POEM ‘THE RAVEN’ AS A KIND OF EMOTIONAL MACHINE TO ACHIEVE THE MAXIMUM INTENSITY OF ARTISTIC EFFECT. IN FORM, LENGTH, SUBJECT-MATTER, ATMOSPHERE AND DICTION ‘THE RAVEN’ WAS INTENDED TO PROVIDE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AND MELANCHOLY READING EXPERIENCE POSSIBLE. OUR SUSPICIONS WITH REGARD TO POE'S ESSAY SHOULD BE AROUSED, HOWEVER, BY THE FACT THAT ‘THE RAVEN’ MANIFESTLY DOES NOT PRODUCE THE EFFECT PREDICTED. IF IT PROVIDES A RATHER DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE, THIS MAY BE BEST ACCOUNTED FOR BY THE ELEMENT OF THE GROTESQUE, SO CHARACTERISTIC OF ITS AUTHOR, WHICH ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ PASSES OVER IN SILENCE. THE GROTESQUE ELEMENT IN ‘THE RAVEN’ MOST EVIDENTLY APPEARS IN THE RAVEN ITSELF, AND THE EFFECTS OF ITS SPEECH. POE'S THEORY (LIKE THOSE OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY STRUCTURALISTS), REDUCES THE RAVEN'S SPEECH TO A MERELY LINGUISTIC EVENT, THE REPETITION OF THE MAGIC WORD ‘NEVERMORE’. WHY ‘NEVERMORE’? HIS EXPLANATION SEEMS AT FIRST SIGHT TO BE A MASTERPIECE OF DEDUCTIVE LOGIC:

HAVING MADE UP MY MIND TO A REFRAIN, THE DIVISION OF THE POEM INTO STANZAS WAS, OR COURSE, A COROLLARY: THE REFRAIN FORMING THE CLOSE OF EACH STANZA. THAT SUCH A CLOSE, TO HAVE FORCE, MUST BE SONOROUS AND SUSCEPTIBLE OF PROTRACTED EMPHASIS, ADMITTED NO DOUBT: AND THESE CONSIDERATIONS INEVITABLY LED ME TO THE LONG O AS THE MOST SONOROUS VOWEL, IN CONNECTION WITH R AS THE MOST PRODUCIBLE CONSONANT.

THE SOUND OF THE REFRAIN BEING THUS DETERMINED, IT BECAME NECESSARY TO SELECT A WORD EMBODYING THIS SOUND, AND AT THE SAME TIME IN THE FULLEST POSSIBLE KEEPING WITH THAT MELANCHOLY WHICH I HAD PREDETERMINED AS THE TONE OF THE POEM. IN SUCH A SEARCH IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERLOOK THE WORD ‘NEVERMORE.’ IN FACT, IT WAS THE VERY FIRST WHICH PRESENTED ITSELF.

PRETTY CLEARLY, THE FINAL TWO SENTENCES HERE REVEAL THAT THE ACTUAL PROCESS FOLLOWED WAS RATHER MORE INDUCTIVE THAN DEDUCTIVE; AND THIS IS WHAT WE CONVENTIONALLY EXPECT OF POETS. BUT THERE IS MORE TO BE SAID, SINCE—IF POEMS AIMING AT THE MAXIMUM INTENSITY OF EFFECT WERE TO BE CONSTRUCTED BY THE METHODS POE DESCRIBES—THEN HE HIMSELF WAS APPARENTLY NOT THE FIRST TO ATTEMPT IT.

AMONG THE MATTERS ON WHICH POE'S ‘PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ REMAINS SILENT IS HIS DEBT TO TENNYSON. (IN ‘THE POETIC PRINCIPLE’, HOWEVER, HE WAS TO QUOTE ‘TEARS, IDLE TEARS’ IN FULL AND TO DESCRIBE HIS ENGLISH CONTEMPORARY AS ‘THE NOBLEST POET THAT EVER LIVED’.) TENNYSON'S ‘MARIANA’ (1830) USES THE WORDS ‘DREARY’ AND ‘AWEARY’ IN A MONOTONOUS REFRAIN, WITH MORE OR LESS THE RESULTS THAT POE DESCRIBES; MILL, FOR EXAMPLE, WROTE OF THE POEM THAT ‘WORDS SURELY NEVER EXCITED A MORE VIVID FEELING OF PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL DREARINESS.’³ POE'S CHOICE OF ‘NEVERMORE’, AND OF THE LONG O AS THE MOST MELANCHOLY VOWEL, IS BETTER UNDERSTOOD WHEN WE REMEMBER THAT TENNYSON HAD ALREADY PRE-EMPTED ONE OF THE ALTERNATIVES. SIMILARLY, ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ LAYS DOWN ONE HUNDRED LINES AS THE OPTIMUM LENGTH FOR A POEM. ‘MARIANA’, AT EIGHTY-FOUR LINES, HAD SOMEWHAT UNDERSHOT THIS, BUT THIS HELPS TO EXCUSE POE'S OTHERWISE INEXPLICABLE ERROR IN ALLOWING ‘THE RAVEN’ TO RUN ON TO A HUNDRED AND EIGHT.

THE POE-TENNYSON CONNECTION WAS REMARKED BY ANOTHER MID-CENTURY AMERICAN CRITIC, HENRY TIMROD, WHO WROTE THAT IF POE'S THEORY LED TO THE CONCLUSION THAT TENNYSON WAS THE NOBLEST OF POETS, IT IMPLIED THAT POE HIMSELF CAME A CLOSE SECOND.⁴ THE MORE WE EXAMINE POE'S SOMEWHAT REPETITIOUS ESSAYS, THE MORE WE ARE LIKELY TO AGREE WITH WHITMAN THAT THEY ‘BELONG AMONG THE ELECTRIC LIGHTS OF IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE, BRILLIANT AND DAZZLING, BUT WITH NO HEAT’.⁵ NEVERTHELESS, HE FORMALISED AND MADE EXPLICIT THE SHIFT TO THE SHORT POEM WHICH WAS ALREADY IMPLICIT IN ROMANTIC THEORY, AND WHICH IN TURN WOULD COME TO DOMINATE THE CLASSROOM METHODS OF TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ASSOCIATED WITH THE NEW CRITICS.

POE'S REVIEW OF HAWTHORNE BOLDLY ASSERTS THE AESTHETIC CLAIMS OF PROSE FICTION, AND ANOTHER OF HIS LEGACIES (FOR BETTER AND WORSE) IS HIS ASSERTION THAT BOTH CREATIVE AND CRITICAL WRITING ARE RATIONAL, INDEED CLINICAL, PROCEDURES. IN LITERARY COMPOSITION, HE ARGUES, EVERY WORD SHOULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE FULFILMENT OF THE INITIAL DESIGN. THE CRITIC—OR, AS IN ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’, THE SELF-CRITIC—MAY THEN DEMONSTRATE WITH INEXORABLE LOGIC HOW THE DESIGN WAS FULFILLED. POE'S PROJECT IN THIS WAS THAT OF THE ARCHETYPAL RATIONAL LITERARY THEORIST, BUT ONCE WE ATTEND TO THE FLAWS IN HIS ARGUMENT, AND THEN PUT IT BESIDE SUCH EXTRAORDINARY WORKS AS EUREKA, ‘THE UNPARALLELED ADVENTURE OF ONE HANS PFAALL’, ‘THE BALLOON-HOAX’ AND SO ON, ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ ASKS TO BE READ AS AN ALMOST SWIFTIAN SATIRE ON THE HUMAN SUSCEPTIBILITY TO RATIONAL PERSUASION. IF WE ARE PREPARED TO ADMIT THAT AN ORANG-UTAN MUST HAVE CARRIED OUT THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, THEN WHY SHOULD NOT ‘THE RAVEN’ HAVE BEEN CONSTRUCTED BY A COMPUTER PROGRAM? THE POEM ITSELF, HOWEVER, PRESERVES ITS UNIQUENESS—GAWKY, ODDLY DISTINGUISHED AND NOT OVER-IMPRESSED BY ITS AUTHOR'S RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS. A SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM ON THE LINES ADUMBRATED IN ‘THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION’ WOULD BE AN ABSURDITY, AS I BELIEVE POE INTENDED. THE NEAREST THAT WE COME TO A GENUINELY SYSTEMATIC CRITICISM AMONG THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SUCCESSORS OF COLERIDGE IS IN THE WRITINGS OF ANOTHER FORMIDABLY IDIOSYNCRATIC FIGURE, JOHN RUSKIN.

NOTES

1. RALPH WALDO EMERSON, ‘LITERARY ETHICS’, IN MISCELLANIES (LONDON, 1896), PP. 129, 136.

2. IBID., P. 138.

3. [JOHN STUART MILL,] MILL'S ESSAYS ON LITERATURE AND SOCIETY, [NEW YORK: COLLIER, 1965,] P. 135.

4. HENRY TIMROD, ‘A THEORY OF POETRY’ (1863), IN DANIEL G. HOFFMAN, ED., AMERICAN POETRY AND POETICS: POEMS AND CRITICAL DOCUMENTS FROM THE PURITANS TO ROBERT FROST (GARDEN CITY, N.Y., 1962), P. 318.

5. WALT WHITMAN, ‘EDGAR POE'S SIGNIFICANCE,’ IN AMERICAN POETRY AND POETICS, P. 392.