Longfellow's Ballads, by Edgar Allan Poe
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2015
This week's guest writer: Edgar Allan Poe. More than a great writer, Poe was a witty and perspicacious literary critic. We'll let him tell you what he likes – and doesn't like – about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Yeah, we wanted him to review The Hobbit, too, but Mr Poe was unavailable for time travel.
Longfellow's Ballads, by Edgar Allan Poe
Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible of his many errors of affectation and imitation. His artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception
of the aims of poesy is all wrong1; and this we shall prove at some future day to our own satisfaction, at least. His didactics are all
out of place. He has written brilliant poems by accident2; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinking, a habit deduced from German study3. We do not mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the undercurrent of a poetical thesis; but that it can
never be well put so obtrusively forth, as in the majority of his compositions. . . .
We have said that Mr. Longfellow s conception of the aims of poesy is erroneous; and that thus, labouring at a disadvantage, he does violent wrong to his own high powers; and now the question is, what are his ideas of the aims of the Muse, as we gather these ideas from the general tendency of his poems4? It will be at once evident that, imbued with the peculiar spirit of German song (in pure conventionality) he regards the inculcation of a moral as essential5. Here we find it necessary to repeat that we have reference only to the general tendency of his compositions; for there are some magnificent exceptions, where, as if by accident, he has permitted his genius to get the better of his conventional prejudice. But didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song6. His invention, his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the elucidation of some one or more points (but rarely of more than one7) which he looks upon as truth. And that this mode of procedure will find stern defenders should never excite surprise so long as the world is full to overflowing with cant and conventicles8.
There are men who will scramble on all fours through the muddiest sloughs of vice to pick up a single apple of virtue9. There are things called men who, so long as the sun rolls, will greet with snuffling huzzas every figure that takes upon itself the semblance of truth, even although the figure, in itself only a "stuffed Paddy10", be as much out of place as a toga on the statue of Washington11, or out of season as rabbits in the days of the dog-star. . . .12
We say this with little fear of contradiction13. Yet the spirit of our assertion must be more heeded than the letter. Mankind have seemed to define Poesy in a thousand, and in a thousand conflicting definitions14. But the war is one only of words. Induction is as well applicable to this subject as to the most palpable and utilitarian15; and by its sober processes we find that, in respect to compositions which have been really received as poems, the imaginative or, more popularly, the creative portions alone have ensured them to be so received. Yet these works, on account of these portions, having once been so received and so named, it has happened, naturally and inevitably, that other portions totally unpoetic have not only come to be regarded by the popular voice as poetic, but have been made to serve as false standards of perfection, in the adjustment of other poetical claims. Whatever has been found in whatever has been received as a poem has been blindly regarded as ex statti poetic16. And this is a species of gross error17 which scarcely could have made its way into any less intangible topi18. In fact, that license which appertains to the Muse herself, it has been thought decorous, if not sagacious to indulge, in all examination of her character. . . .
…
In "The Wreck of the Hesperus19" we have the beauty of child-like confidence and innocence, with that of the father s stern courage and affection. But, with slight exception, those particulars of the storm here detailed are not poetic subjects. Their thrilling horror belongs to prose20, in which it could be far more effectively discussed, as Professor Longfellow may assure himself at any moment by experiment. There are points of a tempest which afford the loftiest and truest
poetical themes points in which pure beauty is found, or, better still, beauty heightened into the sublime, by terror21. But when we read, among other similar things, that
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes,
we feel, if not positive disgust, at least a chilling sense of the inappropriate.
Ed Note:So there you have it. Poe on Longfellow. What do you think? We still prefer the cartoon version. It may prove Poe's point – the subject is not that 'poetic' – but it's at least entertaining.
