← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · HrodbertAntoninus
Thread ID: 16627 | Posts: 17 | Started: 2005-02-07
2005-02-07 03:12 | User Profile
[size=2]From the little that I can apprehend, it seems that the famous Romanticist Southern writer E.A. Poe remained loyal to the venerable traditions of the Southern States of America.
It seems the most perceptive, creative, and sensitive people--in other words, the natural aristoi and Culture-sustainers of the species--instinctively favor the healthy hierarchical social structures of the pre-modern, Indo-European world. All the actually worthy artists of the last century or so have been extremely 'reactionary' (T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien) or even outrightly fascist (H.P. Lovecraft, W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound). The link between cultural excellence and a rigorously ordered eugenic civilization emphasizing what Charles Murray calls "transcendental goods", simply escapes the attention of our contemporary demolatry-besotted, communized public.
Anyhow, does anyone know of any texts or possible essays written by Poe explicitly indicative of his political worldview in the context of the aristocratic South? [/size]
2005-02-07 16:32 | User Profile
The only small tidbit I can offer here is that Poe was an officer in the Confederate Army.
2005-02-07 16:56 | User Profile
[QUOTE=HrodbertAntoninus][size=2] or even outrightly fascist ([B]H.P. Lovecraft[/B], W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound). [/QUOTE]
I read Lovecraft as a kid, but never thought of him in the same league as Yeats and Pound. I guess I always associated him with dimestore novels (which is precisely how I discovered him at the age of 12 - bought Tales of the Cthulu Mythos in the local dimestore).
Maybe I need to revisit that.
What do others think of Lovecraft?
2005-02-07 17:58 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Kevin_O'Keeffe]The only small tidbit I can offer here is that Poe was an officer in the Confederate Army.[/QUOTE] You might be thinking of Twain or Bierce here, Kevin. Poe was dead before the war, though his wealthy adoptive parents managed to get him into West Point. He was expelled after a short time (Poe was something of a deliberate troublemaker, and fashioned himself after his early idol, Lord Byron). Despite this, his first published volume of poems was dedicated to the cadets of his class.
[size=2] [QUOTE] Anyhow, does anyone know of any texts or possible essays written by Poe explicitly indicative of his political worldview in the context of the aristocratic South?[/QUOTE] I have the complete non-critical works of Poe in one volume, though I doubt any such work would be included in the book I might see if I can find anything. Library of America has his critical works, you can find that here:
[url="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0940450194/qid=1107798245/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/103-7235092-0675805?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0940450194/qid=1107798245/sr=8-3/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i3_xgl14/103-7235092-0675805?v=glance&s=books&n=507846[/url]
A good library, public or academic, would have it.
Poe was familiar with the conservative English journal Blackwood's Magazine (which, incidentally came out in favor of the Confederacy during the in the war years, see the scathing piece "Democracy Teaching by Example", an unsigned article published therein in October, 1861), and was also an editor of various journals but I am not sure that he wrote any explicitly political works. I hope this helps.
[/size]
2005-02-07 20:49 | User Profile
Please digest attentively and thoroughly the following:
[url="http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/hpl.htm"]http://pages.prodigy.net/aesir/hpl.htm[/url]
[url="http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.02.97/cover/horror1-9701.html"]http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.02.97/cover/horror1-9701.html[/url]
[url="http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft.html"]http://www.themodernword.com/scriptorium/lovecraft.html[/url]
[url="http://www.eldritchdark.com/bio/weird_modernism.html"]http://www.eldritchdark.com/bio/weird_modernism.html[/url]
[url="http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/schwarzlovecraft.html"]http://www.centrostudilaruna.it/schwarzlovecraft.html[/url]
[url="http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1979105.htm"]http://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1979105.htm[/url]
2005-02-07 21:45 | User Profile
The Street by H. P. Lovecraft
Written 1920?
Published December 1920 in The Wolverine, No. 8, p. 2-12.
"There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I will tell of the Street.
Men of strength and honour fashioned that Street: good valiant men of our blood who had come from the Blessed Isles across the sea. At first it was but a path trodden by bearers of water from the woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Then, as more men came to the growing cluster of houses and looked about for places to dwell, they built cabins along the north side, cabins of stout oaken logs with masonry on the side toward the forest, for many Indians lurked there with fire-arrows. And in a few years more, men built cabins on the south side of the Street.
Up and down the Street walked grave men in conical hats, who most of the time carried muskets or fowling pieces. And there were also their bonneted wives and sober children. In the evening these men with their wives and children would sit about gigantic hearths and read and speak. Very simple were the things of which they read and spoke, yet things which gave them courage and goodness and helped them by day to subdue the forest and till the fields. And the children would listen and learn of the laws and deeds of old, and of that dear England which they had never seen or could not remember.
There was war, and thereafter no more Indians troubled the Street. The men, busy with labour, waxed prosperous and as happy as they knew how to be. And the children grew up comfortable, and more families came from the Mother Land to dwell on the Street. And the children's children, and the newcomers' children, grew up. The town was now a city, and one by one the cabins gave place to houses - simple, beautiful houses of brick and wood, with stone steps and iron railings and fanlights over the doors. No flimsy creations were these houses, for they were made to serve many a generation. Within there were carven mantels and graceful stairs, and sensible, pleasing furniture, china, and silver, brought from the Mother Land.
So the Street drank in the dreams of a young people and rejoiced as its dwellers became more graceful and happy. Where once had been only strength and honour, taste and learning now abode as well. Books and paintings and music came to the houses, and the young men went to the university which rose above the plain to the north. In the place of conical hats and small-swords, of lace and snowy periwigs, there were cobblestones over which clattered many a blooded horse and rumbled many a gilded coach; and brick sidewalks with horse blocks and hitching-posts.
There were in that Street many trees: elms and oaks and maples of dignity; so that in the summer, the scene was all soft verdure and twittering bird-song. And behind the houses were walled rose-gardens with hedged paths and sundials, where at evening the moon and stars would shine bewitchingly while fragrant blossoms glistened with dew.
So the Street dreamed on, past wars, calamities, and change. Once, most of the young men went away, and some never came back. That was when they furled the old flag and put up a new banner of stripes and stars. But though men talked of great changes, the Street felt them not, for its folk were still the same, speaking of the old familiar things in the old familiar accounts. And the trees still sheltered singing birds, and at evening the moon and stars looked down upon dewy blossoms in the walled rose-gardens.
In time there were no more swords, three-cornered hats, or periwigs in the Street. How strange seemed the inhabitants with their walking-sticks, tall beavers, and cropped heads! New sounds came from the distance - first strange puffings and shrieks from the river a mile away, and then, many years later, strange puffings and shrieks and rumblings from other directions. The air was not quite so pure as before, but the spirit of the place had not changed. The blood and soul of their ancestors had fashioned the Street. Nor did the spirit change when they tore open the earth to lay down strange pipes, or when they set up tall posts bearing weird wires. There was so much ancient lore in that Street, that the past could not easily be forgotten.
Then came days of evil, when many who had known the Street of old knew it no more, and many knew it who had not known it before, and went away, for their accents were coarse and strident, and their mien and faces unpleasing. Their thoughts, too, fought with the wise, just spirit of the Street, so that the Street pined silently as its houses fell into decay, and its trees died one by one, and its rose-gardens grew rank with weeds and waste. But it felt a stir of pride one day when again marched forth young men, some of whom never came back. These young men were clad in blue.
With the years, worse fortune came to the Street. Its trees were all gone now, and its rose-gardens were displaced by the backs of cheap, ugly new buildings on parallel streets. Yet the houses remained, despite the ravages of the years and the storms and worms, for they had been made to serve many a generation. New kinds of faces appeared in the Street, swarthy, sinister faces with furtive eyes and odd features, whose owners spoke unfamiliar words and placed signs in known and unknown characters upon most of the musty houses. Push-carts crowded the gutters. A sordid, undefinable stench settled over the place, and the ancient spirit slept.
Great excitement once came to the Street. War and revolution were raging across the seas; a dynasty had collapsed, and its degenerate subjects were flocking with dubious intent to the Western Land. Many of these took lodgings in the battered houses that had once known the songs of birds and the scent of roses. Then the Western Land itself awoke and joined the Mother Land in her titanic struggle for civilization. Over the cities once more floated the old flag, companioned by the new flag, and by a plainer, yet glorious tricolour. But not many flags floated over the Street, for therein brooded only fear and hatred and ignorance. Again young men went forth, but not quite as did the young men of those other days. Something was lacking. And the sons of those young men of other days, who did indeed go forth in olive-drab with the true spirit of their ancestors, went from distant places and knew not the Street and its ancient spirit.
Over the seas there was a great victory, and in triumph most of the young men returned. Those who had lacked something lacked it no longer, yet did fear and hatred and ignorance still brood over the Street; for many had stayed behind, and many strangers had come from distance places to the ancient houses. And the young men who had returned dwelt there no longer. Swarthy and sinister were most of the strangers, yet among them one might find a few faces like those who fashioned the Street and moulded its spirit. Like and yet unlike, for there was in the eyes of all a weird, unhealthy glitter as of greed, ambition, vindictiveness, or misguided zeal. Unrest and treason were abroad amongst an evil few who plotted to strike the Western Land its death blow, that they might mount to power over its ruins, even as assassins had mounted in that unhappy, frozen land from whence most of them had come. And the heart of that plotting was in the Street, whose crumbling houses teemed with alien makers of discord and echoed with the plans and speeches of those who yearned for the appointed day of blood, flame and crime.
Of the various odd assemblages in the Street, the Law said much but could prove little. With great diligence did men of hidden badges linger and listen about such places as Petrovitch's Bakery, the squalid Rifkin School of Modern Economics, the Circle Social Club, and the Liberty Cafe. There congregated sinister men in great numbers, yet always was their speech guarded or in a foreign tongue. And still the old houses stood, with their forgotten lore of nobler, departed centuries; of sturdy Colonial tenants and dewy rose-gardens in the moonlight. Sometimes a lone poet or traveler would come to view them, and would try to picture them in their vanished glory; yet of such travelers and poets there were not many.
The rumour now spread widely that these houses contained the leaders of a vast band of terrorists, who on a designated day were to launch an orgy of slaughter for the extermination of America and of all the fine old traditions which the Street had loved. Handbills and papers fluttered about filthy gutters; handbills and papers printed in many tongues and in many characters, yet all bearing messages of crime and rebellion. In these writings the people were urged to tear down the laws and virtues that our fathers had exalted, to stamp out the soul of the old America - the soul that was bequeathed through a thousand and a half years of Anglo-Saxon freedom, justice, and moderation. It was said that the swart men who dwelt in the Street and congregated in its rotting edifices were the brains of a hideous revolution, that at their word of command many millions of brainless, besotted beasts would stretch forth their noisome talons from the slums of a thousand cities, burning, slaying, and destroying till the land of our fathers should be no more. All this was said and repeated, and many looked forward in dread to the fourth day of July, about which the strange writings hinted much; yet could nothing be found to place the guilt. None could tell just whose arrest might cut off the damnable plotting at its source. Many times came bands of blue-coated police to search the shaky houses, though at last they ceased to come; for they too had grown tired of law and order, and had abandoned all the city to its fate. Then men in olive-drab came, bearing muskets, till it seemed as if in its sad sleep the Street must have some haunting dreams of those other days, when musketbearing men in conical hats walked along it from the woodland spring to the cluster of houses by the beach. Yet could no act be performed to check the impending cataclysm, for the swart, sinister men were old in cunning.
So the Street slept uneasily on, till one night there gathered in Petrovitch's Bakery, and the Rifkin School of Modern Economics, and the Circle Social Club, and Liberty Cafe, and in other places as well, vast hordes of men whose eyes were big with horrible triumph and expectation. Over hidden wires strange messages traveled, and much was said of still stranger messages yet to travel; but most of this was not guessed till afterward, when the Western Land was safe from the peril. The men in olive-drab could not tell what was happening, or what they ought to do; for the swart, sinister men were skilled in subtlety and concealment.
And yet the men in olive-drab will always remember that night, and will speak of the Street as they tell of it to their grandchildren; for many of them were sent there toward morning on a mission unlike that which they had expected. It was known that this nest of anarchy was old, and that the houses were tottering from the ravages of the years and the storms and worms; yet was the happening of that summer night a surprise because of its very queer uniformity. It was, indeed, an exceedingly singular happening, though after all, a simple one. For without warning, in one of the small hours beyond midnight, all the ravages of the years and the storms and the worms came to a tremendous climax; and after the crash there was nothing left standing in the Street save two ancient chimneys and part of a stout brick wall. Nor did anything that had been alive come alive from the ruins. A poet and a traveler, who came with the mighty crowd that sought the scene, tell odd stories. The poet says that all through the hours before dawn he beheld sordid ruins indistinctly in the glare of the arc-lights; that there loomed above the wreckage another picture wherein he could describe moonlight and fair houses and elms and oaks and maples of dignity. And the traveler declares that instead of the place's wonted stench there lingered a delicate fragrance as of roses in full bloom. But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travelers notoriously false?
There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself, but I have told you of the Street."
Lovecraft on Modern Civilization: "It is not a true civilization, and has nothing in it to satisfy a mature and fully developed human mind. It is attuned to the mentality of the galley-slave and the moron, and crushes relentlessly with disapproval, ridicule, and economic annihilation any sign of actually independent thought and civilised feeling which chances to rise above its sodden level. It is a treadmill, squirrel-trap culture - drugged and frenzied with the hashish of industrial servitude and material luxury. It is wholly a material body-culture, and its symbol is the tiled bathroom and steam radiator rather than the Doric portico and the temple of philosophy. Its denizens do not live or know how to live."
It surprises me how little "conservatives" and Traditionalists pay attention to Lovecraft. His philosophy, except for the Lucretian element, corresponds almost exactly to Joseph de Maistre or Russell Kirk. Lovecraft's literature is a form of esoteric philosophical guerrila-warfare against the disenchanted, decadent West.
I will comment on Poe later.
2005-02-25 03:13 | User Profile
HrodbertAntoninus,
Are you talking about Edgar Allan Poe?
Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809ââ¬âOctober 7, 1849) [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe[/url]
Esoterist,
I love "The Street"! I remember being almost in shock the first time I read it, that is one un-PC short story.
2005-02-25 03:23 | User Profile
I picked up a book of Poe's non-fictional and an non-poetic works, so far I notice there is not much about politics by the writer. I thought some might find this brief excerpt interesting. This is from an essay about American Literature and its relation to satire:
(so far Poe has been discussing the lack of quality of satire written by Americans)
"It has been suggested that this deficiency arises from the want of suitable field for satirical display. In England, it is said, satire abounds, because the people there find a proper target in the aristocracy, whom they regard as a distinct race with whom they have little in common; relishing even the most virulent abuse of the upper classes with a gusto undiminished by any feeling that they (the people) have any concern in it. In Russia or Austria, on the other hand, it is urged, satire is unknown; because there is danger in touching the aristocracy, and self-satire would be odious to the mass. In America, also, the people who write are, it is maintained, the people who read:--thus satirizing the people we satirize only ourselves and are never in condition to sympathize with satire.
And this is more versimilar than true. It is forgotten that no individual considers himself as one of the mass. Each person, in his own estimate, is the pivot on which the rest of the world spins. We may abuse the people by wholesale, and yet with a clear conscience so far as regards any compunction for offending any one from among the multitude of which that "people" is composed. Every one of the crowd will cry "Encore!- give it to them, the vagabonds!-it serves them right". It seems to use that, in America we have refused to encourage satire-not because what we had touches us to nearly-but because it has been too pointless to touch us at all. Its namby-pambyism has arisen, in part, from the general want, among out men of letters, of that minute polish - of that skill in details-which, in combination with natural sarcastic power, satire, more than any other form of literature, so imperatively demands. In part, also, we may attribute our failure to the colonial sin of imitation. We content ourselves-at this point not less supinely at all others-with doing what has not only been done before, but what however well done, has yet been done ad nauseum. We should not be able to endure the infinite repititions of even absolute excellence; but what is"McFingal" more than a faint echo from "Hudibras"?-and what is "The Vision of Rubeta" more than a gilded swill-trough overflowing with Dunciad and water? Although we are not all Archilochuses, however-although we have few pretensions to the echoing iambics- although, in short, we are no satirists ourselves-there can be no questions that we answer sufficiently well as subjects for satire."
The rest of the essay is for the most part a commentary on James Russell Lowell.
There are a few other pieces of various essays that contain views on American society or politics that I would like to post when I have time. Poe apparently did not have a very postive view of Edward Gibbon. Poe's critical works show him to be very erudite, and they are actually quite readable. Most of it though, is divided into fairly short works, just a few quick (though definitely not poorly thought out) comments and the piece is finished. As a side note, it seems that in addition to other languages, he apparently read Hebrew.
2005-02-25 03:33 | User Profile
Poe died in 1849; if he [I]was [/I] in the CSA, that would be a neat trick indeed.
Be [I]very careful [/I] when playing this game of "true artistic merit = sharing my politics". Leftists do this [I]all [/I] the time and it's not just false but insulting to one's intelligence. It's depressing to see the Right indulging in this kind of narcissism as well.
2005-02-25 04:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno] Be very careful when playing this game of "true artistic merit = sharing my politics". Leftists do this all the time and it's not just false but insulting to one's intelligence. It's depressing to see the Right indulging in this kind of narcissism as well.[/QUOTE] I understand what you're saying, but the Left acts as though it has a monopoly on artists and scholars. Every time some Leftist waves Marxist-sympathizers like Hemingway, O'Neill, Sartre, Ernst or Picasso around as proof-positive that Leftism is the ideology of all thinking men, it's important for us to be able to respond in kind with names like Eliot, Pound, Hamsun, Heidegger, or Dali. Of course, this doesn't mean that having rightist or racialist views automatically makes for a good artist any more than being leftist automatically renders an artist's output rubbish, but the balance is valuable nevertheless.
[quote=robinder]I picked up a book of Poe's non-fictional and an non-poetic works, :
Didn't Poe also write a field guide to sea shells? I remember reading somewhere that he did, and that it was one of the few things he ever wrote that earned him any money to speak of.
2005-02-25 04:37 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]I understand what you're saying, but the Left acts as though it has a monopoly on artists and scholars. Every time some Leftist waves Marxist-sympathizers like Hemingway, O'Neill, Sartre, Ernst or Picasso around as proof-positive that Leftism is the ideology of all thinking men, it's important for us to be able to respond in kind with names like Eliot, Pound, Hamsun, Heidegger, or Dali. Of course, this doesn't mean that having rightist or racialist views automatically makes for a good artist any more than being leftist automatically renders an artist's output rubbish, but the balance is valuable nevertheless.[/QUOTE] [quote=robinder]I picked up a book of Poe's non-fictional and an non-poetic works, :
Didn't Poe write a field guide to sea shells? I remember reading somewhere that he did, and that it was one of the few things he ever wrote that earned him any money to speak of.
2005-02-25 04:43 | User Profile
[QUOTE]it's important for us to be able to respond in kind with names like Eliot, Pound, Hamsun, Heidegger, or Dali. [/QUOTE]
Add to that list Louis-Ferdinand Céline, and Ludovici: [url]http://www.anthonymludovici.com/texts.htm[/url]
2005-02-25 04:45 | User Profile
If he did, I haven't heard of it, and in any case, it is not in the volume I bought. If such a book exists, I'm sure a first edition would be a real prize for rare/unusual book collectors. Even a reprint would suffice as a curiousity.
2005-02-25 04:52 | User Profile
Here you go [url="http://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/conch.htm"]http://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/conch.htm[/url] . Good luck tracking down a copy.
2005-02-25 04:57 | User Profile
A brief biographical note mentions that Poe intended to publish a journal (he never succeeded in raising the necessary capital) for the "well educated" readership of the "plantations" of the South. We might conjecture from this that Poe had no real objection to slavery and the social structure of the South. This is from a letter he wrote to Lowell, and seems like a fairly good indicator of his worldview:
"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."
2005-02-25 10:42 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno] Be very careful when playing this game of "true artistic merit = sharing my politics". Leftists do this all the time and it's not just false but insulting to one's intelligence. It's depressing to see the Right indulging in this kind of narcissism as well.[/QUOTE]Your tone of condescension is silly. No games here. I am glad you can imply I'm a fool in an arrogant pseudo-genteel manner. I have noticed a pattern with you of making comments to suggest wittiness but mere writing skills cannot compensate for lack of meaning. Contra your implication that I am some philistinish partisan trying to bolster his solipsistic ideological self-image via literary means, the significance of such giants of modern Western literature as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound is universally acknowledged by the anti-Marxist and Marxist intelligentsias.
My thesis is simple: the intelligent, penetrant, and creative among us (e.g. supersensitive geniuses like Poe or Eliot) instinctively prefer the organicist and areté-oriented social arrangements lacking in the modern world. The 'inhumane' Feudalistic Culture we have been taught to disesteem by entrenched progressivism realized the cascading harmony of the materialistic, passional, and spiritual virtues, and produced the most sublime art and civilization ever to appear on earth.
Do you dispute my thesis that what is presently called "Rightism" is associated with cultural and civilizational health and flourishing?
Have you noticed that since about 1950, when the last traces of the ancient Feudalistic Order were obliterated, nothing of enduring significance has been accomplished in the realm of human culture? Charles Murray points this out in his book Human Accomplishment. Potential geniuses are suppressed due to the state-enforced equalitarianism, resentment towards gifted men forming the only impetus behind this suicidal conformist civilization. Petty nihilism reigns undisputed. This goes much more deeper than merely 'sharing politics'.
Our artificial modern class-system, which rests on nothing more than cheap quantitative materialistic criteria, is really more 'inhumane' and hostile to human flourishing than the supposedly 'outmoded' caste-system, which ensured that everyone had his own functional area of excellence according to his inborn specialized tendencies and was protected from the emotional and physical ravages of occupational instability. Nietzsche is right:
"In order that there may be a broad, deep, and fruitful soil for the development of art, the enormous majority must, in the service of a minority be slavishly subjected to life's struggle, to a greater degree than their own wants necessitate. At their cost, through the surplus of their labor, that privileged class is to be relieved from the struggle for existence, in order to create and to satisfy a new world of want.
Accordingly we must accept this cruel sounding truth, that slavery is of the essence of culture; a truth of course, which leaves no doubt as to the absolute value of existence. This truth is the vulture, that gnaws at the liver of the Promethean promoter of Culture. The misery of toiling men must still increase in order to make the production of the world of art possible to a small number of Olympian men. Here is to be found the source of that secret wrath nourished by Communists and Socialists of all times, and also by their feebler descendants, the white race of the " Liberals," not only against the arts, but also against classical antiquity.
...Therefore we may compare this grand Culture with a blood-stained victor, who in his triumphal procession carries the defeated along as slaves chained to his chariot, slaves whom a beneficent power has so blinded that, almost crushed by the wheels of the chariot, they nevertheless still exclaim: "Dignity of labor!" "Dignity of Man!" The voluptuous Cleopatra-Culture throws ever again the most priceless pearls, the tears of compassion for the misery of slaves, into her golden goblet. Out of the emasculation of modern man has been born the enormous social distress of the present time, not out of the true and deep commiseration for that misery; and if it should be true that the Greeks perished through their slavedom then another fact is much more certain, that we shall perish through the lack of slavery. Slavedom did not appear in any way objectionable, much less abominable, either to early Christianity or to the Germanic race. What an uplifting effect on us has the contemplation of the medieval bondman, with his legal and moral relations,ââ¬ârelations that were inwardly strong and tender,-towards the man of higher rank, with the profound fencing-in of his narrow existenceââ¬âhow uplifting!ââ¬âand how reproachful!"
2005-02-27 01:47 | User Profile
For anyone with an interest in Gibbon, or prose style, this is an essay Poe wrote for American Museum magazine in 1839:
"Gibbon's "splendid and artifical style" is often discussed; yet its details have never, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily pointed out. The peculiar construction of his sentences, being since adopted by his imitators without that just reason which, perhaps, influenced the historian, has greatly vitiated our language. For in these imitations the body is copied, but without the soul, of his phraseology. It will be easy to show wherein his chief peculiarities--yet this, I believe has never been shown. In his autobiography he says "Many experiments were made before I could hit the middle tone between a dull chronicle, and a rhetorical declaimation". The immense theme of the decline and fall required precisely the the kind of sentence which he habitually employed. A world of essential, or at least of valuable, information or emark, had to be omiited altogether, or collaterally introduced. In his endeavors thus to crowd in his vast stores of research, much of the artificial will, of course be apparent; yet I cannot see that any other methods would have answered as well. For example, take a passage at random:
"The proximity of its situation to that of Gaul, semmed to invite their arms; the pleasing, although doubtful, intelligence of a pearl-fishery, attracted to their avarice; and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distant and insulated world, the conquest scarecly formed any exception to the general system of continental measures; after a war of about forty years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most dissolute, and terminated by the most timid of all emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke."
The facts and allusions here indirectly given might have been easily diluted into a page. It is this indirectness of observation, then, which forms the soul of the style of Gibbon, of which the apparent pompous phraseology is the body.
Another peculiarity. somewhat akin to this, has less reason to recommed it, and grows out of an ill-concealed admiration and imitation of Johnson, whom he styled "a bigoted, yet vigourous mind". I mean the coupling in the one sentence matters that have but a shadow of connexion. For instance--
"The life of Julian, by the Abbe de la Breterie, first introduced me to the man and to the times, and I should be glad to recover my first essay on the truth of the miracle which stopped the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem." This laughable Gibbonism is still a great favorite with the stelle minores of our literature.
In the historian's statements regarding the composition of his work, there occurs a contradiction worthy of notice. "I will add a fact",--he in one place says--"which has seldom occured in the composition of my six quartos; my rough MMS. without any intermediate copy, has been sent to the press." In other passages he speaks of "frequent experiments", and states distinctly, that "three times did he compose the the first chapter, twice the second and third"--and that the fiftenth and sixteenth chapters have been reduced, by successive revisals, from a large volume to the present size;" upon every page of the work, indeed, there is most ample evidence of the limae labor."