iu (née Oprea) is a Romanian essayist, prof (ca Pei is a gradual cf the University of Buc .ges and Literatures, with a double professi ‘competence in wuary 1991, Dr. Anca Peiu, Associate Professor at the Department of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, of the University of Bucharest, Romania, (her Alma Mater), has specialized in teaching mainly American Literature: the romantic 19" century and the early 20% century high ‘modernism, She has also taught American civilization (the 18° and 19" centuries), and 20" century British Literature. Moreover, Anca Peiu teaches comparat literature ~ high modemism in Europe, the UK, and the US ~ at the Faculty of Letters of the same University of Bucharest, due to her fruitful collaboration with old ‘Anca Peiu is the author of the following volumes of Iiterary studies: Five Versions of ‘Selfhood in 19" Cantury American Literature (C. H. Beck, 2013); “After the Final No" The Word of Wallace Stevens (E.U.B., 2001); and Trecutul timoului perfect: do ‘of @ Time Perfect: from Thomas narratoiogy, successfully defended i or Pau nas panes more than ty eg Rerary des, n restou acai, oa fay mogeins np fm and cine. Mary ofthese have been et see hy Pedueet EBSCO HOST, CEEOL, DOAL, Arca Pu has a0 oe ec ersas inves) ees, rates and erondogies to tw Romanan ic and contemporary Areran Hee) masarieces, x pat fe Fedor she hasbeen response fr rca Pot pas planed four 1 eon vlunes fishy acsimed rary re conormporryharean Were 2A orese Arne rower = 2 Un roman despre agen he Dust (124) by Wiliam Faulk olla Stor of Wl Feuer, Eby Sereman vies a8 Povot oat, (ra, 2008 Tho ve Faukner volumes have Tone rey cies nolo ad donokgan provided owas by Anca Pot Peis ha bere rm wo scholarships in 2 Fug Scolarship ‘Stale Us Baton Rouge, Lou: say thaea, New 9 rash rw Urivrsty, Ware, England, U.K arn amos Sarelaip wo he ine of Apples Ungustc orourgh,Seoland, UK ance Pou i a member of ESSE, RAAS, Romarian American Fu Mee at Sefonds of te Unied States! Assocation (Asocaa Unie} Anca Peiu ROMANTIC RENDERINGS OF SELFHOOD IN CLASSIC AMERICAN LITERATURE Bucuresti 2017FERRER REEEEEEES Contents Acknowledgements... ‘Argument: For a Poetics of Nonconformity ren of Columbus?.. Introduction: CI |. Selfhood inior Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinsor 'A) 41. From Horror to Ratiocination: The Poetic Polarity of the Human id in Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) a) Poe's After-Life Poem: Annabel Lee... b) The Poet as Critic: Poe's “Philosophy of Composition c) The Post as Sleuth: Poe's "Purloined Letter... a ‘William Wilson’ 12 19 22 26 a) The Emersonian Creed in “Self-Reliance” ) The Idea of Order in Emerson's Nature... c) The Self-Reliant Poet : "Good-Bye" b) Walden as an Allegorical Kaleidscope of Poetic Setthood 94 C) Romantic Harbingers of Modernism in American Poet 104Romantic Renderings of Selfhood in Classic American Literature 4, Walt Whitman (1819-1892): One Man Show, or, The Solitary 104 a) “Song of Myself’: Between the (Prophet and the (Other) Leaves of Grass. en 107 b) “Song of Myself’: A Lesson in Metaphor. 114 5. Emily Dickinson (1830-188 within a Skeptic Min Emily Dickinson: No-Title Poems ) Some Poetic Functions of the Verb TO BE in Emily Dickinson. ©) (The Poetry of) Genteel Epistolary Lo 4) Emilie and The Poetic Policy of Tru P.S. Emily Dickinson and Romanian Poetry. 128 132 133, 142 145 183 Il, Selthood in/or Story-Telling: Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Kate Choy 185 Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper. 187 6, Washington Irving (1783-1859): A Writer between ‘Two Continental Cultures 4) The Self Asleep in "Ri Inwardness and Ambig b) The Sleepy Self, the Hollow Eg 198 the Headless Horseman and the Ghost(less) Schoolmaster. e201 7. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851): of an American Gentleman... 210 The Last of the Mohicans: A Classic Wes ‘American Romance... cise 213 a) “Every Story Has Its Two Sides:" Hawk-eye and ‘Chingachgook ~ Friends by the Frontier (The Last of the Mohicans, Chay onc AF, ) Scout at Search: “Revenge Is an Indian Feeling” (The Last of the Mohicans, Ch. XVI)... meres A Conclusion to the Section of the Earliest American Masters of Story- .g: Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper 227 Hawthorne B) The American Renaissance in Romance: Nath: and Herman Melville. 8. Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864): Domestic Sketches of the American Double Serf. a) The Scarfet Letter. An American Romance of the a (artist's) Mind one b) "Young Goodmar se B32 ; Brown: Dr, Faustus in the New World... 262 266 295 9. Herman Melville (1819-1891): Sailing to Landlessness 2) Moby-Dick: The Seaman's Book, the Story-Teller's Boat. ») “Bartleby, the Scrivener.” A Clerk with(out) a Choice ) 10. The Realist among Romantics, or, “I was of three minds Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Mark Tw: (1835-1910) a) Huckleberry Finn: The Better Half of Mark Twain's Boyish Double. A Book with a “Notice” and an “Explanatory. From ing Huck’ to “sivilize-mme-not the (Most) Unruly Romance .....e0-nsn see b) Redefintions and Rewritings in Huckleberry Finn: Double Reflections Down the Mississippi River... soe 304 310 +315 Id South Re D) 11. Kate Chopin (1850-1904) at the Fin de Siécle 330 '2) A Stranger at Home: The “Solitary Soul” of Edna Pontellier....... 338 b) The Portrait of a Lady as an Artist: Edna's Painting 345 353 My Book of Books: Instead of a Conclusior 365 List of the Literary Works Analyzed in This Book. A Chronology in the Making: Poetic & Political Turns of the 19" Century. Before & Ate 387 Works Cited 374 Further Reading and Selected Bibliography 377Acknowledgements Itis to Dr. Oana Dimitriu, Editorial Manager of C.H. Beck Press, Bucharest, that | owe this second chance of publishing a book on classic American writers. To her goes my entire gratitude: without her disinterested support and ‘encouragement, my endeavor might have never got materialized. Beyond any words, | also have to thank my family, for unconditioned support: my husband, my son, my daughter-in-law, my parents. Knowing them always by my side has kept me working well. | could never thank fon Arana too much, nor nearly enough, for the beautiful portraits of my eleven writers here and the exquisite covers of this book. They may say one should not judge a book by its covers this book is a happy exception: you can safely trust the cover and the fine portraits of the eleven writers, as yet another interpretation, thus rendered through the eyes. of an exceptionally gifted professional artist, too. | remain indebted to a few excellent professors, whose highest academic sccoursosnen ts rarcerel ms feet privileged. These are: Prof. John jing at Louisiana State University as a Fulbright senior rese irgil Stanciu, Professor Ementus at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, who has written many a generous review for my works — my volume Five Versions of Selfhood in 19! Century American Literature included. My own Alma Mater magnanimous mentors: Prof. Geta Professor Emeritus, who initiated me 19" century Ameri ‘canon and also provided me with a comp teaching model fc ican classics; and Prof. Stefan Stoenescu, kindly supported me during my studies at Cornell University as an IREX researcher, and whose grateful disciple in American literary studies | became ever since my earliest years as an undergraduate of our University of Bucharest. | will remain spiritually indebted to both of them, as fong as I can teach what | first leamed from them. | shall never forget Prof. Dan Grigorescu, Member of the Academy of Romania, the fine scholar under ‘whose guidance | accomplished my doctoral dissertation. Last but not least, | should like to send a big THANK YOU to my students, who can lend inspiration to any responsive teacher's mind. | can only hope to share my good fortune with them,Introduction: Children of Columbus? Motto: “1 will not serve that in which | no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church. and | will ty to express myself in some mode of life or art as frealy as | can and as wholly as | can, using for my defence the only arms | allow myself to use — silence, exile, and cunning.” James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1918) ‘The quote in my motto justifies itself at least from three points of view: a) it anticipates my focus on some literary works mostly concerned with selfhood as a fluid entity, as a form of existence always in the making, b)it also announces my concern here with the American literary heritage jousness, of solftassertion despite (what Harold of influence, and yet benefiting from all the (necessary) European centuries of literary tradition and history; ) 19 century American literature champions modernism on both shores of the Atlantic. Unless the non serviam quote above were only too famous as James Joyce's manifesto as an early 20" century writer: as an ars poetica, a creed breaking — as his personal declaration of independence — any anxiety of influence from consecrated masters of his European literary legacy and, likewise, as the statement of purpose of a self-exiled writer — this splendid youthful (seifprociam: ican writer. It corresponds to most Ar ferary) versions of selfhood ~ as 9 for an infinitely obsessive first person — whether narrative The writers here considered represent two basic genres: fiction and poetry. The species here studied will therefore vary from short story to (E. A. Poe's “Annabel Lee") to eightine puzzies (Emily Dickinson's c same old "Song of Myself" (Walt yma is excluded from the picture: studied spring from a strong innermost dram dramatic than monologue? The quest(ions) of the self, in sheer loneline: . 88, striving to reach the other by a poem or a story. “The the” — as Wallace : : 22___ Romantic Renderings of Selfhood in Classie American Literature Stovonds “Man on the Dump" would say. And maybe there is no better name for it There is also the American essay, as a form of writing derived from the ‘ecture, derived itself from the old Puritan sermon. This is another way of (na }) coming to terms with one's self, or of dealing with a divinity whose patience with the human self has to be eamed again and again. lerature — ever since its beginnings — has spoken about the 1a of a poetic conscience tom between what it feels like to be a ind yet at home in a second-best homeland; remaining deeply ‘a chosen innermost God, and yet changing the pattern of worship again and again; fostering and honestly hoping for inter-racial tolerance, and yet desperately denying the other as belonging to the race rejected — or even worse, to the race enslaved, The way in which Tzvetan Todorov portrays Christopher Columbus in his masterpiece, The Conquest of America. The Question of the Other relies on the three-fold pattem is the one that | should like to employ ~ with the required nuances ~ all through my approach of the main American writers and their outstanding works. hostility toward the supposedly “inferior” race of the natives — which will not the disastrous clash between the races, doomed to start with that ‘fateful day of early October, 1492. ‘These three gifts which make Columbus unforgettable — in Todorov's view — actually correspond to the three main challenges and agencies whictt have marked the entire American literature, and which particularly distinguish 19° century American literature from its former European springs. They are: ntier myth; ism — as the dominant expression of Christian belief until The Great Awakening, its swan-song by the mid-18" century?; 2 “Because their societies were tightly organized, and above all because 1 und America.” (Perry American Grab Be in The American Puritans, as quoted in Dean Curry, An jaws of the Amencan Experience in Prose and Poety, English _ Introduction: Chicren of Columbus? 3 ¢) interracial tension — and particularly, (though not exclusively), the issue of chattel slavery. Let us now retum to Todorov's analysis of these three great gifts of Columbus: courage, faith, and lack of prejudice towards the diferent race(s) he encounters. For, allegoricaly, i. assuming we could claim an alter-ego for each one of us, we are all offspring of Columbus ~ as Tzvetan Todorov states: [a Even if every date that permits us to separate any two periods is arbitrary, rhone is more suitable, n order to mark the beginning of the modem era, than the {year 1492, the year Columbus crosses the Allantic Ocean. We are all the direct bescendants of Columbus, it fs with him that our genealogy begins, insofar the word beginning has a meaning. (6; my emphasis) Courage opens Todorov's list of Columbus's virtues: Columbus's courage Is admirable (and has been admired many times over): Vasco da Gama and Magellan may have undertaken more difficut voyages, bi they knew where they were going. For all his assurance, Columbus could not be certain that the Abyss — and therefore his fall into it~ di of the ocean: of again, that this westward voyage was not downward slope (since we are at the earth's summit), wh be impossible to reascend; in short, that his return was at all likely. The fist ‘question in our genealogical investigation will therefore be, What impelled him to set out? How could the thing have happened? ® Columbus's limitless ocean is an allegory for the American hero’ heroine's frontierless country. For a nation that has conquered the moon, is final frontier? In other words: what is that final country (with no frontiers), where this kind of hero can actually be at home? Columbus's deep religious feeling. santically) belated crusader, going II the way to win over more and Christian believers. Aware of his jon as a good Catholic, Columbus need not despise a businessman's to gather riches for his royal employers. This qu ides him with Just a (better and more convincing) means to carry out his sacred mission, ‘The second virtue on Todorov's a Teaching Division, Educational and Cultural Affairs, United States Information ‘Agency, Washington, D.C., 1987)Romantic Renderings of Saifhood in Classic American Literature eastern shore of the continent “egrvered” by Columbus no sooner than 1620, on “The Mayflower, and in 1530, on “The Arabella”. Theit main European import to the frst Chvetian ‘ihencan colonies is Purtanism. Yet hat the Plgim Fathers share with Catholic Columbus is that sound reverence for hard cash, Indeed, for the Puritans, three things were beyond any doubt: ‘olumbus says quite explicily that gold was, in some sense, the lute he offered so that the monarch: 18 would agree to finance him © {Basie al this, greed is not Coumbus's tue motive: i wealth matters to him, Fecause wealth signifies the acknowledgement of his fole as decoveror fk self would prefer the garment of a monk Gold is too human to him winen he waites. in the do not bear these sufferings to enrich myself, fr, corti in this age is vain except what is done for the honor and ily 1 know that everything service of God" (9-10; my emphasis) j odorov raises Columbus his hero to a tragic stature: discovering America * 2 Splendid error, a blessed mistake. According to Columbus's notes voyage, his highest ambition was to teach the Emperor of una) the wisdom of Christianity. Missing his itinerary, Columbus ‘saches a foreign land which he mistakes for india. All he can stil do to pages his (American) dream is play the businessman, go on with his trade, retend to be only providing his royal employers with the demanded gold and precious stones, Since, anyway, {J the need for money and the desire to impose the true God exclusive, There is even a relation of subordination between means, the other an end, ‘are not mutually the two: one is a (10; my emphasis) 5 Introduction: Chitdren of Columbus? the Racial intolerance is our third line of pursuit. Like the previous feo, be ne westward expansion and the tendency fo gain ever more tomtory (whict wit later identify itself with the fronler myth), plus the powerful religious stain (which will transtate into the Pilgrim eae imposing Purtariam foal the ‘embers of the first American colonies) ~ the clash between t a ‘aot intolerance hus resuing vil leave a deep trace in American mentality Todorov claims that: . sees arta i Sa i snc os Cae Fe corre ane eemes Ot es en ce ne eee wee Shoe rereer cost epeenamiaee op acing Soe ©) ich as itis is historical moment of catastrophic racial intolerance, su tendered In Todorov Deautl Book, othe nex! one, represented. by slavery, a couple of centuries will only mark a fluid interval. Ever since The Declaration of Independence, signed by the thirteen United States of America ‘slavery was regarded as the major contradiction in the status of a country claiming democracy as its cause, It is a well-known fact that Thomas Jefferson, the actual author of the document solution for almost another century. The Civil War of 1861-1865, remembered as the re having ever taken place on North American t echo to the events triggered by that October 1482, which Todorov regarded as “the greatest genocide in human history", The tragic significance that makes these two historical moments at least comparable, if not strikingly similar to each other, ironically highlights a ‘specific crisis: racial intolerance. jon of Independence of July 4, 1776 remains unique as a text securing the foundation of the first modern ined by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the English philosopher who maintains that any government must guarantee if, and property, the American ‘Thomas Jefferson states that the three nable Rights” of “all Men” are. life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, thus giving the touch ot poetry to the basic political document of the United States of America are cas ness, Tus toe sot-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they te endowed by tha Creator wih cata unalonable Rage ina a are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. ng thee (Gta. in Lemay, 689) Aire BERET AN ; 3 ;| FR ee NE RARER ALERT URE 6 Re tc Renderings of Seifhood in Classic American Litereture The in the (European) Enlightenment is responsibi this catalogue ssings — with one final exception: Happiness, which represented the American contribution to the contemporary view upon the meaning of human life. it is this particular detail that has distinguished ~ from that fist 4" of July on ~ the American (sense of selfhood, And this pred reme is best reflected in the literary heritage with which the American writers studied here have privileged us readers. col his Beek, Tzvetan Todorov emphasizes the paradox ef Christopher ‘olumbus ah inger of modernity. Todorov presents his (antijhero as an usader, a man with a medieval mentality, a Quixotic who, for all his magnanimous intentions, triggers a lasting disaster ~ possibly as the price in suffering for the birth of The New Wor Strange as it may seem, the generation of the new nat fers: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James M: George Washington 's Founding Abraham Lincoln preserved jon to preserve: the United States of America as a 13% Amendment to the Constitution of The United ‘of America, by which slavery was abolished, this is how Lincoln ‘accomplished his historical task before being assassinated in 1865, harbingers of modemity. If that be their major despite their intentions, and only as a consequence (ov's complete book title is The Conquest of America. The Other. | have found in it the necessary support for a starting tension (and intolerance) ~ in the various ways which the American FY) !can find to express both seif and other. Introduction: Children of Columbus? z ‘Therefore, | can find no better argument to my introduction than the first paragraph of Todorov's book, his own statement of purpose, to which he remained truthful and which he eventually fufiled: My subject — the discovery the self makes ofthe other = is so enormous that any {general formulation soon ramifes into countess categories and rections. We can Gecover tho other in ourselves, realize we are not a homogeneous substance, {aciealy alien to whatever isnot us: as Rimbaud said, Je est un autre. But thers ‘re also "Pe subjects ust as | am, whom only my point of view ~ according '@ ‘thich all of them are ouf there end 1 alone am in here ~ separates and ‘authentically distinguishes from m Gepending on the case: beings whom everything | historical plane; or ise unknown quantities, ‘customs do net understand, so foreign that in extreme instances | am reluctant to ‘admit they belong to the same species as my own, reco 3) {As the attached Bibliography of this volume will show, | have had plenty of books to choose from — as far as the main viewpoint on the seffis concerned. have read them all with a good profi atic issue of self affinities as East to the ineffable My preference for Todorov's approach of this di selfhood and othemess is finally determined by our cul European thinkers, and thus, by the distance that we ‘object of our contemplation here.|. Selfhood in/or Poetry: Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, EmilyA) 1. From Horror to Ratiocination: The Poetic Polarity of the Human Mind in Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) ‘Tavetan Todorov, the French philosopher of Bulgarian origin, with an cutstanding academic career on both shores of the Atiantic (Harvard and Yale Universities included), remains a providential choice here, he championed Poe in his much acclaimed structural study of 1970: introduction 2 /a literature fantastique. This book translated into American English by Richard Howard’ as The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Litterary Genre in 1973 is now a classic reference study for all those who approach Edgar Allan Poe. important for us, as Romanian readers, to remark now that the book's jon into Romanian was achieved during the same year, 1973 Todorov's approach of Poe to demonstrate the polarity between the uncanny and the marvelous within the structure of all fantastic literature in our country from the very beginning of its international (and inslation, in the first place, American) career. As known, Todorov postulates that fantastic literature stems fro iy, Le. a hesitation between the uncanny ~ which does al ‘approach of mysterious dark phenomena decisive for th fy — and the marvelous — which allows no such interpretation’. Todorov builds up his celebrated demonstration proceeding from Poe's classics: the novella The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) and the psychological thriler short story “William Wilson” (1844). It is remarkable that ‘odorov's interpretation tips the scale towards the uncanny in both cases he regards Poe as a precursor of modern psychoanalytical fiction ~ and not as just an(other) American author eager to conform to the old European T Richard Howard also transiated from the French Tzvetan Tod. 086, published with a Foreword by Jonathan a, 1992 (197). The chapter of particu ‘Typology of Detective Fiction’, pp. 42-52. __? See also David Lodge, The Art of Fiction ~ llustrated from Classic and Modem Texts, Penguin Books, London, England, 1992, 211-214, Lodge highlights there particularly the propensity Gothic tradition in Anglo-American fiction, shared by pite James's obstinate rejection of Poe on account latter's would-be vulgar availabilty 10 a readership unable to reach higher ie standards, interest to us here, 13 Eagar Allan Poe (1809-1849) _ 4 his Gothic masterpieces ues in a successful fairytale tradition’ - since the fantastic strain rather enables the reader to use some /e understanding of both fantastic stories. 1am keen on this particular aspect in order to make Ty & student aware of red status of the 19" century American \ the, vied "Bus to some endsiast transistors! Edgat Alan Foe fos : i ers, wi been a favorite author to generations of Romanian readers. n ‘admirers. Poe is quite at home as numerous as fi ie French fanatic 6 land. His influence on Romani Romania — as he is in France and Englan an i i Poe as a supreme artis Symbolism — via French Symbolism which fy Sym reser — ie obvious enough if we only think of @ post like George Bacovia (1881-1957). Hence, Todorov’s signal of a Poe-cult revival during the late 20" century Jeonfrs the romantic American writer's top rank i We (East) European rary canon. This extremely complex American writer's. suce Moran) certo of iterary Wansiations all over the word is just one of the Feasons why there can be no innocent approach of Poe today, snrmeiementanty, es ar se e) beginners. There is no reading of Poe's “Annabel Lee’ without ‘Nabokov's Lolita’. A reading of Poe's “William Wilson” and/or even Tava ths lov had areedy boon overcome by Washington iving (1783-i859) eee precursor ste American Goie. Ivings two Best known Gothic seen aR ke’ and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” have fong been 2eaiaod by onal time American popula culture pt days Scrons of Gotic had ingld with American Fistor allusions Soncan Wer of independence), thus enhancing (and emphasi stan’ stores, The’ main achievement of this ambiguous. ‘the subtle meaning of such. fiction, originating rather-in tho legend tha /-tale tradition, Both protagonists: Rip Van Winkle and Ichabos Crane, respectively, are defintely anti-heroes, unlike fairy-tale versions of “charming princes.” # Outstanding posts like lon Vinea, Dan Botta were among thé Academic studies in E. A. Poe represent nowadays a cor research in our country, due to some of our most distin themselves founders of Americanism as a cul Cartianu, Zoe Dumitrescu-Bugulenga, Dan Grigorescu, Geta Dut ‘nase. tocratic Russian origin Nabokov is an emblematic postmodern writer. He wrote his books in Russian and in4 ___ Seithood infor Postry of the House of Usher’ without Paul Auster's New York Trilogy 5 unlikely today, when we are already in \d decade of the 21* cent ere is hardly any watching of some 21% century mystery movie featuring Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot”, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes* - without E. A. Poe's C. Auguste Dupin at the back of our minds. There is no and suspense in today's psychological horror fiction, no thriller del coday’s ever darker strains of 3 D Gothic — without the 1839 novella \¢ House of Usher’. There is no “shadow of a doubt” about how much 1d Hitchcock owes to Poe's Gothic mysteries and grotesque tales, and to e “The Raven" looming beyond the silver screen of any with a dash of film noir such as “The Birds" (made in asychological thi American English. His masterpiece is Lolita (1955), a postmodern quintessence of sarody, pastiche, intertextuality, metafiction. The book delights attentive readers of He is a middle-aged professor of literature by the ni with Lolita, a thirteen year old nymphet, who re Leigh — his first sweetheart having died at thirteen, killed ike Poe's Annabel Lee. ‘an outstanding contemporary American writer of novels, 2ssays, poems, His exqi .ssic American literary background, inviting funny games of intertextuality and ion consisting metaphorical image of late 20" century New Hawthome (1804-1864) whose Fanshawe tums up in ‘The je gray cells" always case might be. He has been popularized by the numerous film series nspired by the books. Among his most successful interpreters there have been great ia a the writer would always come out victorious from any ‘se, no matter how obscure. His ingenious use of unexpected clues and his faltered confidence in logic will always baffle Or. Watson, his best friend, ator and narrator of these adventures within the maze of evil minds. lumerous film series fave popularized Sherlock Holmes as a hero who now belongs > cineme-lavers as much as he delights his reading fans all over the world. 168 aftr a story by Daphne du Maurier, herself indebted to the American master). acknowledged as respectable professions today contribution. strange to think when he had the span of barely forty years: the exact contemporary musician Frederic Chopin (1810-1849), also enthusiastically adopted once by romantic France; and likewise, the contemporary of the romantic Russian writer N. V. Gogol (1809-1852), whose influence upon Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) was no greater than that of Edgar Allan Poe. Like Columbus, the other favorite protagonist of Todorov's studies, Poe had no patience with ideological clichés: to him democracy was ‘the tyranny "- Survival is to him a solitary business, and success were only ‘one's mind ~ if anywhere at all. This skepticism (unless we call pessimism) may stem from the American author's double mentality: that of a worshipper of reason with an Enlightenment cast of mind “his personal myth of ‘ratiocination” as insistently demonstrated by Dupin, his astute Parisian detective, the prototype of an entire Western detective gallery — and at the same time that of a Gothic master of thrillers and horror stories. This view of Poe as a writer of the human mind trapped between grotesque nightmares of the irrational (as in his best Gothic short stories and poems) and the idealized triumph of reason, personified by the brillant detective, has also rendered the romantic American author as a founding father of the Southem Myth. Since the Souther Myth writes the story of ‘mental confinement between the two forces governing poetic imagination: the irrational and the rational, Poe — despite his atypical settings, and although he was not even a Southerner by birth - remains a characteristically Souther author: of the Wester Myth in Iterature, even ‘And if Cooper’ was the founding fathe then, even more queerly, Edgar Allan though he never actually saw the prai + James Fenimore Cooper (1789 ~ 1851), celebrated author of The Leatherstocking Tales, telling in five books the prairie adventures of Natty Bumppo, a.k.a. Hawkeye, aka. Leatherstocking ~ the literary prototype of the Fror ‘The best achievement of the entire cycle is The Last of the Mohicans (182 the tragic friendship between the white hero (Natty Bumppo) an ) of the Mohawk (one of the sacrificed native American trib upon the chances of the emerging “new nation” confro lerance and the ultimate indifference of (human) nature,16 ‘Setfhood in/or Poetry Pos was the founding father of Southem Myth, although he was actually bom in Boston and hardly ever used Southem settings in his fiction or his poetry. (Gray, 2004, 118; my emphasis) This is the way in which the British scholar Richard Gray’ portrays E. A. Poe today. Like Todorov's Columbus revi in the late 20" century, Gray's Poe of our early 21% century is of two minds. Detachment in time adds up to the palimpsestic picture; moreover, the projection of the thinkers self adds up to this picture. And it is the thinker's (different) national identity which enhances the value of this double detachment (in both time and place): Richard Gray, like Malcolm Bradbury once, is a British scholar; whereas ‘Tzvetan Todorov, a Bulgarian by birth, has been adopted by both his French and American second homelands, Todorov has proved himself right in his double focus. If itis correct for him to say that somehow we are all modem offspring of Columbus (in a globalized world) — then so is his intuition about Poe, our contemporary our retum fo the fantastic with still some hope in cool intellectual uoialty): Poe's is a trademark to be detected nowadays in the best of (not only best- selling) world literature and cinema. Edgar Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a couple of young actors, Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe Jr. Before him, there was Henry, his elder brother, after him there was Rosalie, his younger sister. The fami cissolved as the father abandoned them, then the mother died of tuberculosis, of the lungs, in her mid-twenties. His father is reported to have died too, in a couple of years, in his late-twenties. The three siblings were rately entrusted to foster families, and practically lost touch with each her. Edgar was entrusted to John and Frances Allan, from Richmond, inia, who gave him their family name, but never legally adopted him. ‘The Allans were quite wealthy, which meant for Edgar a good opportunity fe lly abroad. He was a precocious creative reader ~ thus from 1815 to 1820. Young Edgar went to grammar school in ‘vine, Scotland; then he attended a boarding schoo! in Chelsea. From 1817 See Richard Gray, Southam Aberrations. Whiters of the American South and the Problems of Regionalism, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 2000; and Richard Gray, A History of American Literature, Blackwell Pi Gntish scholar is an expert in the vast domain of Americ 12 intricate culture(s) of the Old South. Thi ‘approach of E, A. Poe as a central creative personality of ‘more meaningful 47 (1009-1849) use School at ‘Stoke ave been also the Bransby's manor Ho! ‘This last setting must hi ind’ appears with his unaltered real name shed psychological thriller short ly translated into French already Edgar Allan Poo ‘on he went to Reverend John Newington, not far from London, most impressive, as the Revere! “Wiliam Wilson”, one of Poe's most acco! stories and his very first to be success! within his lifetime. plantation master and slave-owner was also For a while, luck seemed to be on his side. llan attended the University of Virginia as a student of ancient and modem languages and literatures. Judging by Poe's propensity for precious quoting in foreign languages (both madern and Fass) in most of his fiction, we can see now that he was quite fone De Te Saaioe. Yet he also became fond of gambling, so that his debts required ue ‘hore money ~ with which his foster father could (or would) ne more Prowse fm Hence ther relationship deteriorated. And the young undergraduate Ne to give up his academic studies. ‘ad to find a job, which was that of a private in the United ‘1827 he published Tameriane and Other Pooms ~ his first ned “by a Bostonian", which went practically unnoticed. He received his foster father's support for an appointment to West Point, the United States Military Academy. Before undertaking it, Poe went to Baltimore visiting Maria Clemm, his paternal aunt, and Virginia Clemm, her daughter and first rank cousin. He also met there Henry, his elder brother, and invalid their paternal grandmother. This is the time when a second Volume of poetry got issued: A/ Aaraaf, Tamerlane and Minor Poems (1828). His foster father, a Virgi involved in tobacco tradi For only one year, Edgar Al ‘Thus Poe hi States Army. In volume of poetry, sig The West Point interval proved a disappointment. Poe seems to have done all he could to get dismissed from there ~ which he managed. Thus in the early spring of 1831 he arrived in New York, where his third volume of verse came out, entitled just Poems. He soon returned to Baltimore, just in time to sée his brother once more before the latter's death as a consequence of heavy drinking and poor health. ‘The only way to earn his living by that he could think of was a professional writer's career. This is how Poe started writing short stories and contr atticles to the literary magazines of his day. With his quarrelsome diffic temperament and his morbid inclination for heavy drinking, Poe never managed to keep up a job for too long. Yet he was a hard-working editor, a most demanding literary critic - actually the first serious American literary critic, generously praising Nathaniel Hawthome (in an article called “A Review of Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales") and mercilessly accusing Henry Wadsworth Longfellow of plagiarism in the latter's poetry.18 = Selfhood infor Poetry a _ When he was twenty-six, E. A. Poe martied Virginia Clemm, his thirteen years old first cousin. This episode (plus its autobiographical projection upon Such stories like “Berenice”, “The Fall of the House of Usher’, or such poes like “Annabel Lee") has inspired a great mid-20" century book: Viadimir Nabokov's Lolita plus a lt of speculation. The latter amounts to highlighting a deep sense of solitude and insecurity within the poet's soul. He certainly could have used a true family atmosphere support in his life. The former amounts to the framing of a typological category for such improbable romances in all American literature to come: the nymphet, i.e. the perfect ephemeral feminine hypostasis, the thirteen year old seducer — herself seduced by the elusiveness of her evanescent age. Whether caused by actual death or by “natural” maturing process, the nymphet miracle is soon afterwards bound to vanish, Virginia Clemm would soon fall prey to tuberculosis of the lungs, the fatal disease of the age, with so many romantic vietims — whether in real life or in literature. She died by the beginning of 1847, after a twelve years’ marriage to the poet, The year 1839 brings about the first publishing of Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque in two volumes. The previous year had marked The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym first published. In 1843, the detective story “Murders of the Rue Morgue” was first ied. Two years thereafter the poetry volume The Raven and Other Poems would bring Poe a well- deserved acknowledgement Poe was no stranger to literary success, even if this did not occur from the start of his short but dense literary career. He did conquer the critical acclaim of James Russell Lowell, who saw in Poe a man of “some genius.” Some of his short stories were translated 10h right after they had been first published in the United States (e.g. am Wilson’). He was glorified by his contemporary French readers — whether professionals or amateurs, The French Symbolists exalted E.A. Poe as a spiritual master of their was Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) who discovered and championed Poe ever since the latter's lifetime (around 1847), and then ‘ranslated-Poeinto-French for the first time ever, referring to him as ‘soukmate’ who had made ‘profound discoveries about the human heart was Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1898) who wrote the sonnet "Le Tombeau 3'Edgar Poe", in veneration of the archetypal poet. Tribute was paid to Poe also by Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), even in his prociaiming the musical character of poetry. His final achievement was "Eureka: A Prose Poem,” an essay published in 1848, one year before his death. The essay foretold the Big Bang theory by > Edgar Allan Pos (1809-1849) 419 ‘almost a century. This is his favorite work, which he preferred to regard as that of a visionary poet rather than that of a scholar. Yet Poe died misunderstood and truly doomed, under the most sordid and ‘obscure circumstances. Found unconscious somewhere in Baltimore, on October 3, 1849, he was taken to hospital, where he died on October 7, early in the moming. No coherent account from him could explain such sudden moral and physical disintegration. av Lately there has been some speculation that ~ there being a presidential election campaign in full swing at the time ~ he might have been intoxicated ww alcohol, and then forced to vote for a candidate he disliked; or even forced to vote several times, against his wish. In itself, Poe's life (and/in-death) story is rich in puzzling melodrama, mystery, and detective fiction aspects — as if in some hallucinatory mirror of shis own fiction and poems. Moreover, the poet's own personal inconclusive | ending ironically echoes his lifelong disdain for the games of democracy ~ or U*the tyranny of the mob’, as he used to call it. ich as he may have-disagreed-with his utopian contemporaries, lied Transcendentalists (whom Poe would rather call “Froo- luding to Walden Pond) — he oddly shared their attitude towards the main issues of their times of crisis. By defiantly refusing to pay his poll- tax, Henry David Thoreau denied and denounced the same system of a democracy only worthy of his *Civil Disobedience.” ‘And that happened exactly at the time when Poe was dying: during the same election year 1849. a) Poe's After-Life Poem: Annabel Lee twas many and many a year ago, Ina kingdom by the sea ‘That a maiden there lived whom you may know Than to love and be loved by me. | was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love — Vand my ANNABEL LEE — With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. ‘And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, ‘A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling20 ‘Selfhood infor Poetry — 19 my ANNABEL LEE; So that her highborn kinsmen came And bore her away from me, er up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. Tosi The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me — ‘Yes! ~ that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) ‘That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE. But our love it was stronger by far than the love (Of those who were older than we ~ (Of many far wiser than we — ‘And neither the angels in heaven above, ‘Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE; ‘And the stars never rise, but | feel the bright eyes: Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE: ‘And so, all the night tide, | lie down by the side Of my darling ~ my dar ‘and my bride, In her sepulch in her tomb by the sounding sea (ata. in Norton, vol. 1, 679) In the Preface to his 1845 volume The Raven and Other Poems, Poe H makes a statement of belief: “With me poetry has not been a purpose, but ! passion; and the passions should bs in reverence; they must not — they | paltry commendations, of mankind." | Lee” was not yet born at the time. Despite its dangerous is poem is quite apart - at least in point of its literary history/ destiny. » Apparently written in May 1849, i.e. some five months before the poet's untimely and obscure death, “Annabel Lee" would get published within a | couple of days after Poe's life ended. So we cannot escape the feeling that — even unconsciously ~ the poem speaks to all its readers as the final will and testament of E. A. Poe. In the poem though, the grand show of dying is granted to the absolute diva: the “beautiful ANNABEL LEE". The lyrical I-speaker outlives her in a strange way: he “lies down by her side’, even in death. Eros and Thanatos cannot/ would not part with each other. Yet abstractly "beautiful ANNABEL Eagar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 21 LEE" never utters one word: itis to him, eternally in love with her, that we owe the poem with its entirely gratuitous, funereal gracefulness. Poe seems to have written for! about just one and only melancholy muse: the beautiful woman having just died. Nothing can mar her statuary consummation anymore now: neither old age, nor disease; the routine of slow disintegration and decay is not her lot. Death saves her forever: it freezes her in the poet's memory at the peak of her perfection. uta ih i at defies time... The version above quoted — one of the eleven known so far -was published by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, Poe's literary executor. It is funny that most anthologies choose this version, since in fact Griswold was no friend of Poe's. But ironically this poem's best version remained in the hands of the very man who tried everything destroy Poe's reputation, even posthumously. And even more ironically, though Poe was no more there to defend himself, the poem survived — despite the poisonous slander and the terrible envy of a petty mortal The most evident difference between this best known version and any one ‘of the others lies in the final epithet: “by the sounding sea” has been preferred here to the rather conventional nding “by the side of the sea.” Perhaps the decisive argument in favor of the e| thet-formula is dictated by the selfreflecting sonorous image thus rounding up Poe's intensely musical poem. The poem is made up of six stanzas, of which the first, the second and the fourth contain six lines each. The fifth stanza has seven lines; the third and the sixth stanzas have eight lines each. The rhyme pattern varies from one stanza to another. The rhythm is trochaic (much like that of the poem “The Raven’, which is thus established by Poe himself in the famous essay, “The Philosophy of Composition’). ‘Actually, even if such details make it difficult for readers to ascribe the above poetic particularities to any specific lyrical category, even if Poe himself seems (from between the lines) to mock at his (too) serious readers, and escape the trap of rigid classification, the poem is intensely suggestive due to its obsessive music It demands loud recitation: the result is a monotonous waltz rhythm, an emphatically clockwork resonance — reinforced by the prevailing anaphora Cin this kingdom by the sea” occurs four times, after the original kingdom by the sea” of the poem's very second line) and alliteration ‘opening line to stanza four: "The angels, not half so happy in heaver The lyrical setting takes us nowhere: in illo tempore, “many and many a ‘year ago’, ‘in a kingdom by the sea” ~ no American age or place. The letter L recurs obstinately here, as well as in other fatal female names on Poe's map: Lenore of “The Raven", or Eulalie, or Ulalume. Due to this,Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 23 reflection’), Poe's “Philosophy of Composition” does anticipate James's “Art ) in more than one respect. The foremost message thus eshadowed is that literary writing presupposes (8 | detachmer the modem age of acknowledged artistic conscience in a writer starts with E &. Pos. we seriously consider when the time was for ‘ipmecent’, “spontaneous” poems-wrting, inspired by suave muses out of the blue — I'm afraid we can always rely on masters like Plato and Aristotle to ‘The muse and the “fine frenzy” of inspiration are neither Coleridge's, nor } Shakespeare's fault: itis the mob of idle vulgar readership who reduced this tough work of a writer's job to the gross cliché of an (almost pathological) ely trance, Writers of all ages have relied on lucidity: a strange mixture of, uch of) genius plus (a lot of) tough work and seltimposed discipline. “The literary histrio” is no dandy: he only acts like one, to conceal the traces of his superhuman effort under a bold defying mask. He likes his novels Smitten backwards’ by his own design. 2006/1090 Ete, _witten backwards" by his own desi 2 Paradoxically or not, aestheticism presupposes a decisively moratizing attitude’ as far as the relationship author-reader is concemed. An author refines his/her readers’ taste. oper inds, performs like a show-man_ the task of an accomplished teacher_If the-water is necessarily doubled by. the (ever moré Self demanding) critic, then so is the writer doubled (tripled?) by the feachor (of iterature). It may be that, though thoroughly aware of this and de: uneasiness with any conventional didactic purposes in terms those tums of didé Pondians”) Transcer “the literary histrio” lives principle that "ridendo castigat mores.’ of which he would rather accuse his (‘Frog- ies. And yet he could not help it ing classic (and still highly poetic) ‘Therefore, the essay “The Philosophy of Composition’ is carried out on two levels: one conveys Poe's ars postica, his statement of the ‘witer's professionalism, who knows that any story must have a beainning and an ending front its very star ords, that is a mal tough cfafismanship in.the fst place ("There is no such thing as a.m an immoral book, Books are well written, or badly written. That is all? says " See Isobel Murray, a distinguished expert in Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, editor of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the Oxford English Novels series, ikewise The Soul of Man and Prison Writings, Oscar Wilde's Completa Pootry and his Complete Shorter Fiction.22. Selthood infor Poetry Gouble-. (self-reflecting), the name of the Bolle for ever fast here (Annabel €e. quite @ Souther kind of cold abstract feminine beauty) sounds itself like 8 (rather shallow, empty, absent-minded) refrain (‘la-fa-la'), or indeed like some Bells’ chimes (as in an echo to another one of Poe's celebrated poems, The Bells’, often derided by readers who would stubbomly expect it to be anything else than what it actually means to be": just a sophisticated sing- song hoax). » Poe saw in “Annabel Lee" the ballad it was not. Yet its morbid musicality, plus the suggestion of necrophilia closing the poem made this into a favorite of the French Symbolists. And then soon afterwards the same puzzling metaphorical qualities of Poe's number-one posthumous poem metamorphosed the lyrics-like verse into the outrageous Lolita of Nabokov's Humbert Humbert- persona: an aging teacher of literature intoxicated with Poe. b) The Poet as Critic: Poe's “Philosophy of Composition” We may start our discussion here from A. S. Byatt's witticism in her late 20” century romance Possession: “Literary critics make natural detectives.” We find in Poe a living proof (if we may say so) of Miss Byatt’s rather waspish remark. ‘Yet perhaps we should take a (belated) step back and wonder: when did Poe “really mean” what he asserted? Is his essay work we study today — as represented by “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846) and "The Poetic ism, or rather as theory, or In of (double) virtuosity? | rather suspect Mr Poe of the latter: he remains “the literary hi to the last. Born of stage acting parents, he could not help it. He practically used every opportunity to put on his show. This time itis a (free) lesson in creative writing. In other words, we should read in “The Philosophy of Composition” a clue to what has rather failed to become “The Theory of Creative Writing’. If Poe-was_ seriously concerned about something ~ it was the so-called nuch later in the century he left before its midst) “art for art's sake.” Among _ ry fields of activity in which he was a pioneer there is aestheticisi Though Henry James (1841-1916) dismisses nim_with”pattonizing disgust enthusiasm for Poe is thé mask of a decidedly primitive state of i (One of Poe's most merciless critics, particularly in view of “The Bells*, is Wallace Stevens, who cannot find to forgive Poe's “tintinnabulations’ ~ see Stevens's essay “Two or Three Ideas" in the volume of Collected Poetry & Prosa mentioned in my Works Cited section. Likewise, Emerson, Poe's contemporai dismisses him as ingle man’ — apparently on account of the same obsessive ells’ ringing sonorities of Poe's verse. Edgar Allan Poo (1809-1849) 23 Poe's “Philosophy of Composition” does anticipate James's “Art reflection’ of Fiction” ‘98. Because should we seriously consider when the time was for indcent’, “spontaneous” poems-writing, inspired by suave muses out of th blue — I'm afraid we can always rely on masters like Plato and Aristotle to sober us up. 4} The muse and the “fine frenzy” of inspi } Shakespeare's fault: it is the mob of idle vulgar readership who reduced | tough work of a writer's job to the gross cliché of an (almost pathological Luntkely trance. Writers ofall ages have relied on lucilty: a strange mixture of touch of) genius plus lot of) tough work and self-imposed he literary histrio” is no dandy: he only acts like one, to conceal the of his super-human effort under a bold defying mask. He likes his novels Switten backwards’ by his own design. 22<¢<¢/.u920 ZEAzg 3 Paradoxically or not, aestheticism presupposes a decisively mor ing attitude'- as far as the relationship author—reader is concerned. An author refines his/her readers’ taste, oper ‘ir_minds, rms like a show-man the task of an accomplished teacher_If the-water is necessarily doubled b) ipled?) the (ever more self-demanding) ertti, then so is the writer do by the teacher (of fiteratu It may be that, though thoroughly aware of this and despite his own uneasiness with any conventional didactic purposes in terms of literature, Ee. A. Poe fell into his own trap: for tone takes precisely those tums of didacticism of which he would rather accuse his (‘Frog- fentalist contemporaries. And yet he could not help it: 's upon the moralizing classic (and still highly poetic) principle that “ridendo castigat mores.” Therefore, the essay “The Philosophy of Composition” is carried out on two levels: one conveys Poe's ars poetica, his_ statement of belief in the. writer's professionalism, who knows that any story must have a beginning and an ending from its very start-"Irr other Words. that writing is a matter-of_ tough craftsmans ‘it fifst/place (‘There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all— says + See Isobel Murray, a distinguished expert in Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), professor at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, editor of The Picture of Dorian Gray in the ‘Oxford English Novels series, likewise The Sou! of Man and Prison Writings, Oscar Wilde's Complete Posty and his Complete Shorter Fiction.offered as an exemplary (yet hardly convincing) illustration, And this brings us to the second level of his essay: the poem “The Raven’ employed as a hoax. Poe has his own way of expressing the same notion we find much later, in Paul Ricoeur's work, in The Rule of Metaphor as well as in Time and Narrative: namely that “the same basic phenomenon of semantic innovation" is responsible for both metaphor “alive” and plot invention. Thus the poet (i.e. 12 maker of this new living world) offers his/her readers the chance to enjoy @ double existence, in a world of his/ her making, as ifthe reader's own. Poe's “Philosophy of Composition” is therefore an essay on poetics: the eminently classic domain of literary study ever since Aristotle. Thus @ workmanlike “plotting for effect” demolishes any (kitsch illiterate) stereotype of the poet's (read maker's) spontaneity. On the contrary: the writer's job of duty is to select his/her target carefully and carry out his/her plan cautiously. When Poe blames “authorial vanity” for the usual writers’ reluctance to a step-by step disclosing of their specifically chosen strategies, proposing le, his shrewdness is (again) rather than giving us some (would-be candidly) disinterested (free) lesson in poetics? And then, since his poem contradicts his own aesthetic precepts @.g. itis obviously longer than ideally stated for one reading sitting), what are we to make out of his poetic norms and rules? J On the other hand, in Poe's “Philosophy of Composition” we can read a sort of post-modern stratagem avant-la-lettre (taking for granted that post- modernism is just a 20 century invention): a grand show of laying bare of tic devices. As it is obvious that the poem “The Raven” can hardly ipport the “philosophy” in question — what are we to make of it all? To what 's theoretical contribution abstract, or innocent of any turns and \vicks of “the literary histrio"? 4, Poe is actually quite preoccupied, it seems, by (the right making of) fiction, even in this essay apparently concemed with poem writing. He is very particular about the fine techniques of building up a specifically suitable atmosphere. His distinguishing between may well have been at the back of Henry James's mind when the latter Pos (1609-1849) 25 debated in his own essay “The Art of Fiction” (1884) upon the false separation between novels of character and/or novels of incident, and likewise between the two distinctly different fiction species of novel and romance. It is not uncommon for strong artistic personalities to oppose exactly the influence of predecessors impossible to ignore. For all the repulsion that Henry James claimed to feel for him, Poe anticipates James in more than (this) one (double) way: in his propensity for dark psychological thrillers, in his (secret and ironic) self-detachment from the Gothic strain apparently ubiquitous in his own fiction. it may be just a classic case of ‘anxiety of influence’ as defined by Harold Bloom. Stil, with or ‘ous 20" century label, the dialogue is there, between the two masters of literary American writing, in front of our eyes. All we have to do is perform our exercise of close reading. ‘The most celebrated image of the Poesque "Philosophy of Composition” is, cone built up on another instance of the double selfhood, or split person: ‘The first person speaker imagines a dialogue between himself and his other self - in a typically Aristotelian way of Platonic inspiration. It is a question and-answer test that carries out the demonstration by the conclusion of whi we have to agree with him that the most poetic of all melancholy topics in the world is the death of a beautiful woman: fs the most melancholy?” Death — was the obvious reply. this most melancholy of topics most poeticar?” {J "When it most closely allies &self to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful Woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally itis beyond doubt that the lips bast sulted for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.” {ats in Norton, 728; my emphasis) Still this is by no means the exclusive case within Poe's Raven-poem: the death of a beautiful (and likewise vengeful) woman is typical mainly for Poe's fiction — at least to the same extent as in his poetry (see Lenore in “The Raven’, Annabel Lee in the namesake poem). Berenice, Ligeia, Morelia, Madeline Usher testify to it in his fiction. And they prove that Poe's Gothic “survival of the fittest” went to the territory of fiction rather than poetry — at least with us, his surviving readers. Another aspect Poe emphasizes in his rather practical than theoretical essay is poetic musicality. Obsessive refrain, anaphora, alliteration are al reliable strategies to make the poem memorable to the readers’ minds absorbing thus Poe's popular versions of Gothic darkness. This has been at -2B ‘Selthood in/or Postry nce his main argument for success with early French fanatic admirers, virtue of which modem American poets tely — at least as a superficially rhyming poet. The all we have to do is read his work attentively and case remains open: ag; decide for ourselves. Perhaps the only aspect in which Poe practices what he preachesiis in his “expression. This_monotone_serves the faihful_suagestion_of makes us wonder about Poe's image His subtlety only becomes manifest from this level: one wonders the accuracy of his narrators’ detailed descriptions should be taken \gn_of (ucidity or rather insanity. Taking us into his confidence, as a squist speaker in some pompous essay, some melodramatic pseudo- or some story with the same haunting presence-in-absence of the woman — Poe remains to this day a mystery master as the ied “literary histrio.” But read him we will: as an astute modern founder of all Western detective fiction, also. ith: Poe's “Purloined Letter” c) The Poet as y's whodunit owes a Poe's foundation of this popular'genre, ;chieved by his three classic short stories: “The Murders in the Rue “The Mystery of Marie Roget" and “The Purloined L Yet some specific elements of the genre (such as the pense and mystery) appe ers of Poe's tales, too, which are not proper: for instance, the (allegedly) forensic tone of the “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.” psychological thrillers like "The Black Cat’ or ‘The to have particular elements in common with the detective it were only for the murderer's compulsive confession of guilt. Dostoyevsky reacted to this nareissistic mspration from Poe by building it up crucially doomed persona of Raskolnikov in his novel Crime and jishment (1866). A dark guilty conscience, a sense of danger (which mplies moral insecurty also), violent death as either accomplished or as just ihreat — all these are ingredients shared by both genres of fiction: the josphere of Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) 27 psychological thriller and the detective story. Last but not least: the issue of unreliable death: to what extent may the murderer trust the victim to be 100_ _% dead? OF course the issue is forensic (as in “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar’): how can one legally account for death by an_experiment in. mesmerism — when precisely did death occur? And of course this is all-the more exciting for a ra (rather primitive) r readership eager to swallow the tall-tale of Life-in-Death, again_and_again? Poe's sense of (black) humor—is_not— entirely innocent: from_between_the lines, he enjoys mocking at his own audience. ‘And the best part of the story ~ whether jon or psycholo- iller — happens within the mind: actual “facts” form just the pretext for sal turmoil of human nature striving from the irrational to the with obsessive 1m the raw picture of a mind tom and torment guilt, doubt and despair — to the forensic reconstruction of the case, the detective's cool judgement of the criminal's cold blood accomplished fact. torical game of verisimilitude gives the ultimate comfort to. This is how the triumphant detective actually continues the ancient chivalric tradition: he is the hero of all hopes in recovering truth and re the (logic of) law; and even despit ,, he can still bring back (some kind of poetic) justice. The supreme intellectual artifice serves a good moral cause. "Ratiocination” is the pompous word he uses for his exquisite skill: meet C. Auguste Dupin. % antificial and pedantic, C. Auguste Dupin is an amateur Parisian sleuth. As he inaugurates a traditional modern Westem gallery of eccentric amateur- detectives (Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot), Dupin mocks at the police (as representing official authority, always conventional and narrow-minded). He is permanently accompanied by his friend, the nameless narrator — so useful to the curious reader as an intermediary, at once a witness, a narratee, and an alter-ego of Dupin Yet we must not ignore that the other, ie. the second alter-ego of the astute amateur-detective and actually his third version of selffiod is the culpriveriminallmurderer himself. Thus_the detective story mind at work ~ whether it belongs to the criminal orto the sleuth. We are already well acquainted with this traditional couple of friends ~ or double protagonist of ratiocination adventures — from its more recent versions; Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories by the end of the 19" century; or even more familiar, Hercule Poirotwe Seiood infor Posty and Hastings in Dame Agatha Christie's intricate detective fiction, having moved from her early and mid-20® century books to the grand cinema, asei reliable partnership in fighting doubt: one solitary self is not enough — the structure of the story requires the other for the balance. Hence what matters is not so_ ‘much what ha whodunit enigma — as rather how it is solved: the operating with (liferary) abstractions. The absolute game of ratiocination. ~ Neither Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, nor Dame Agatha Christie chose this fiction formula just for ‘the pure good of theory’, for the sake of its guaranteed popular success, for its delightful excitement and suspense. What we mean to highlight here is that somehow these writers’ professional and/or personal experience in psychic crisis inspired them each to this particular literary genre of the detective story, so confidently demonstrating the triumph of reason and logic over the chaos and obscurity of the irrational. Conan Doyle used to be 2 medical doctor in Edinburgh. He was well ‘acquainted with the fascinating show of evil and/or Morbid criminal minds. It is in Dr Watson rather than in Sherlock Holmes, that we find the writer's setf- jection, therefore. He reacted to this personal source of inspiration — plus f Poe, himself preferring Dupin’s nameless friend (.2. Dr Watson's forerunner) as a spokesman, rather than the brillant hero-detective ‘Agatha Christie had first to overcome her own personal experience of a nervous breakdown before she started writing about the precious “litle gray ‘of her formidable Belgian hero, the exquisite Hercule Poirot. She chose lion national identity: bis refined Belgian tastes humorously tishness. So had Poe formerly picked Dupin from decadent worldly-wise Paris — quite European typology of characters rather than an American one, and iikewise for Europe rather than America, in point of settings and atmosphere. Before we approach it property, we must say that “The Purloined Letter" zady been discussed at the highest scholarly level in a celebrated ‘exchange between two representative minds of late 20" century French thinking: Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalyst, and Jacques Derrida, the champion deconstruction. Poe himself regarded this one as the best of a les of ratiocination.* Edgar Allan Poo (1809-1849) - 2 Last but not least, national (literary) pride nudges us to regard th with particular fondness, since itis presumed to have inspired |. L. Caragiale (1852-1912) — the greatest Romanian playwright ever — in writing his best achievement: *O scrisoare pierduta’! “A Lost Letter" (premiered in 1884, the same year with Henry James's aesthetic manifesto “The Art of Fition”) This paticular play represents the absolute top of alhtime Romanian comedy 1m Poe's (mock-)mystery story, Car ° ‘ain double motive line of his own masterpiece plot development. ‘The affinity between Poe and Caragiale should be looked for in the zone bitter disay tment with universal human shallowness, Scat sen rrosteninditonn to routine, lack of imagina- 1. Germany, to the last day of never-never lands as Dupin's mysterious Paris, William Wilson's England. Or even better, the House of Usher, on the brink of some timeless decay, on a ‘map with no recognizable frontiers. Beyond the comedian mask, whether roaring with laughter Twain, 1835-1910), or just sharply grinning (as in the case of Po . always an embittered social crtic’s conscience, a selfhood at a loss with ise and the peopl it should be kin fo. Despite Mark Twain's outspoken rejection of EA. Poe, in point of humor they share (at least) this profound stratum o bitterness and desperate disappointment with their own native people. Irrespective of their genre of literary expression, most comedy writers have put on a noisy camival mask to shelter the despair and the darkest disgust with and/or against particularly those to whom they should have tuned as toward their family: their own native people. To detach himself from these, though, Poe preferred the sarcastic grin. Mark and flattering praising hymns. To make it more mysterious maybe — or rather to mock at his audiences of sensation-mongers, Poe's supreme myster rously.pinned down by three items of stylistic affectation: the file, the motto, and the maralizing final.quote,-actually-Oupin’s meaningful retorting message _on his own fake version letter in question.30 ‘Setthood infor Poetry _ Firstly. the epithet ‘purioined” in the title is an 18 > epithe unusual sett oye ope WS a atte ea te pous, and presumptuous, just fi es fonsieur G — Parisian pole. Ard itis actually his own word to Teter To having Deen stolen from the royal boudoir with a view to "yan unscrupulous, envious (perhaps downright Jealous?), yet ingenious Mini 3 alted mind with a double talent: that ofa poet plus n. Like Dupi ‘matter. (The implied sexual scandal the Prefect’s hypocritical covering Cara yal adultery both send us directly to le's masterpiece, obviously inspired by Poe.) “Purloined’ is a term belonging with seme universal wooden language of police stcly recorded minutiae, Secondly, the mock-didactic motto: “Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio,” meaning “Nothing is more disgusting to wisdor astuteness,” is erroneously ascribed by Poe to Seneca, being actually pronounced by Petrarch, Nevertheless, the sarcastic motto also belongs with the story ~ Poe's error (ironically) included, ‘This leaves us with the third affectation issue: the final message put down Sy Oupin himself as @ meaningful retort to his rival, the culprit Minister D — -mind; Oupin himself is an ar just ashe is an amateur detective — another postic f D: stil an “amateur” in his perfectly practiced hobby, and still “es of possible decodings for the self-reflecting allegorical letter D. another 2 And since the devil dwells in detaifs, this dubious letter might also signify broad) daylight, dainty, dandy, danger, dark, dawn, deal, deadly, death, .code, deconstruct, deduce, deep, defamiliarzation, defeat, defend, deform, defy, delicacy, delinquency, demand, demonic, demonstration, denuement, depression, design, desire, detail, detective, development, devotion, devil, diegesis, disbelief, discovery, dishonor, divine, document, doom, Doppelganger, (hey, Dorian?...), downfall, double, doubt, drama, ducl, usk, duty. We still have plenty of choice. The concluding quotation used by Dupin is in his native French ~ the language of the story setting, and also Poe's favorite (foreign) language. d'Atrée, est digne de Thye: worthy of Thyeste.") ‘Atrée", an early eighteen fer. The two characters here a story of jealousy and revenge, a case of “fraternal fury.” By this victorious hint, detective Dupin Edgar Allan Pos (1808-1649) a means to remind Minister D ~ that he stil owed the latter some revenge for one of their former intellectual duel encounters. And time had come now for them to settle their older deal. This is how we understand why certain erties" approaches of this funny tale have put forth the possibilty that Dupin and Minister D — be actually brothers. Therefore, double_entendre is the key palimpsesiic story. The letter 9 ce stolen: Stolen back from him by-Detective Dupin. It got thrice writen: once by the Queen herself (or by her secre Minister D - ; then, last buf not least, having rescued the original twice-writen letter, plus the Queen's jeopardized honor (the Old South chivalric code is at work here again, as formerly inspired by Walter Scot's romances) ~ Dupin writes the third fake letter, with the allusive message by the French quote, to ‘serve Minister O ~ the right moral lesson. ‘Thus the letter is more than a palimpsest: itis a as simultaneously-is own comment and critique. occasion_for_the-mise-en-abyme_game: the is object, the letter endlessly re-wniting itself. We take thi letter is the absolute parody of any kind of wnting, any . doomed to finally exhaust its own meaning, after layer-upor-layer of erasure = rather than text stance of metafiction — is moreover, another _ Dupin thus demonstrates he can stand Minister D's challenge, who had riot only “purisined” the letter, but also “hi it in plain sight, ie. in a battered shabby ‘card-rack, whom the narrow-minded policemen did but (much worse than that) simply overlooked. Their duty ‘ceful as the thief: they fai if detective Dupin — who was fi by his well-deserved emolument — sss. Which actually means that their two the letter written on both its sides. Hence, one name of the game may be quid-pro-quo. This means also that we can read not only the classic thriller ratiocination-talo, as tured inside-o\ we have been right from the very beginni lucid mind of the detective 2, beneath the scratchy traces of multiple erasures above the selfsame lost (and found?) literary text ‘extremes of this fictive polarity communicate: they actually presuppose each other.32 Selfhood infor Pooky ‘The Purloined Letter sets the rue for an entire tradition of further coming detective stories. The best part we all expect is always the final demonstra- tion, the grand ratiocnation show. Sheriock Holmes the stages of tellectual and “moral triumph to Dr Watson; Hercule Poirot's final assembling of all the suspects in one room, challenging by the intuition of his genius the actual crimina's confession, But if we want our cake, we must dligently and patiently first get lost in the labyrinth of mis atigenty 2 pater labyrinth of misleading guesses and The story consists of three log i logical parts of an exemplary plot. The first sramte movement inseduces reaver othe sahty Cathie anoaphee of 8 qulet actu Poe to say “al..), spent siting in the dark’ by C. guste Dupin and the narrator, his faithful yet nameless ftiend, at the detective’s lodgings in Faubourg St. Germain, Paris. Smoking their (meerschaum) pipes, (and thus setting the cliché for Sherlock Holmes, who is an expert in exquisite tobacco blends) — they silently meditate upon the intieacies of former cases in their disinterested and/or amateur career gether. Monsieur G — Prefect of Pans police, ares and asks for assistance in the delicate business of “the purloined letter.” Dupin keeps the affair details in his mind, butt does not commit himself yet. Yo The second movement of the plot occurs within a month, when the Prefect ccs, opaas. Ho tle the two tends abut ne abu evar et by te’ Gueen for sling the proiem, tho hither caemony, Du jemands th chock withthe Pretee’s agate, oflerng the pata lott 1 change teh Yo he ends aa the Pres onetrant Oan a breduces te lt. nes and needs nothing more to depart in bliss. ee ‘The third movement consists in Dupin's is fie bat bon hoe at consi In upls teting his end rather taf al lereafter to perform the empathetical ritual of wr eye ay ae fey eum tig ain this type of narrative discourse is just as utopian — which is ht a est te tty hy age ea es ef a ct ane een, Hel ae a a Edgar Allan Poo (1809-1849) 33 icity” — whatever that joke for Poe. Dupin's puts you at faulf’ ~ is not Poe's rebe mind against the American narrow-minded authorities at home, in the United States, overpowered by the ever deeper mid-19” century rely on one's own judgement to convince, individualism is (or “ratio paradoxical only solution: “simple and od Hence_hawever shocking it might seem, Poe's message of ratiocinalion is ‘one _of sulérallance and-simplicty. Despite his calegorical disapproval of Emerson and Thoreau (his Frog-Poncian contemporaries), Poe's stand as @ ‘nonconformist comes strikingly close to theirs. Tale -Teller: f the House of Usher” perception: British scholar Richard ‘American South in general — of particular, is giving us hi insight in a nutshell. His message focus mn that “the Old South” ‘of both the Southern Myth and the Southern Gothic is no place under the sun: rather under the skull of a writer doomed to such lifelong confinement _What makes Poe a founder of Southern myth, typicaly for him, is not so much a ‘mattor ofthe iteral as ofthe imaginative. “The Fall of he House of Usher” (1839) {s set in an anonymous landscape, or rather dreamscape, but it has all the floments that were later to characterize Souther Gothic: a grest house and family faling into decay and ruin, a feverish, introspective hero half in love with ine who seems and then is more dead than alive, ‘and, above all, the sense that the past haunts the ‘world and itis strong. Typically for Poe, who of solf- {ured his own ‘consciousness: the causas he espoused, the opinions he express he told about himself. 1am a Vi 1@ wroto in 1842, ‘at least | cal ‘one, for have resided all my lif, until within the last few months, in Richmond.” (Gray, 2004, 118; my emphasis) According to any Southern narrative tradition, any story worth telling at all must expand into some kind of tall-tale, “The Southern oratory of solitude” is what they call it ~ referring to William Faulkner's mythological of ‘Yoknapatwpha’. The weakling as Quentin Compson, or as Henry Sutpen; the * Wiliam Faulkner (1897-1962) is a major modern American witer of the Old South, which he tums into a doomed county of his own, knapatawoha (a ‘mysterious name supposed to mean water-runs-slow-through-flatland in the ancientKad Selfhood in/or Poetry incestuous Charles Bon, seducing both (half-)sister Judith and (hi Henry: the three of them in just another version of the Usher Madeline (claiming her brother-lover-murderer from her tomb); Sit Usher (both seducer and murderer), and his funny friend, the nameless narrator, outliving them both just to tell us thelr uncanny story. Faulkner's Henry Sutpen — the mad brother in ihe attic, Warnings like “The past is never dead: it is not even past’; morbid obsessions of a writer whom neighbors used to call “Count-No-Couni” Doom and decay so dreary they slip into (self-Jparody. And what better: reply to ‘of monomania in his entire horror fiction, than Faulkner obsession Id such characters find energy to cope with their iey had one) when all they saw was an all-engulfing fictive past, which would not let go of their minds? In “The Fall of the House of Usher’ — the triple self and/or menage a trois Roderick ~ Madeline — nameless narrator; in “William Wilson”: the obsessive double self, so keen on his oneness. Both no\ ist versions of an infinite nauseating reflection of the deeply ingrained sense of solitude and solipsistic awareness of an intensely romantic writer's mind, Or, back in some dark evil-idden Old Northern Europe, by the dawn of the 20" century: in Thomas Mann's novel Die Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familie (1901)', in the high-schoolboys' friendship (which is also that Chickasaw American Indian idiom), and which he also provides with a famous double map. Thus he makes all his Yoknapatawpha novels and stories communicate — hough the way in which he develops them is by adding up iscovering them d. Like all the great writers, Faulkner was first and foremost an accomplished land attentive reader. There are in his fiction influences of the American 19” century masters: E. A. Poe's Southern Gothic, Herman Melville's elusiveness of meaning and all-pervasive sense of existential emptiness, Nathar scrutiny of @ guilty conscience. Faulkner brings toget 11875-1955) is an outstanding modern German writer. His books belong to world literature, e.g. novels like: Die Buddenbrooks: Verfall einer Familio (Buddenbrooks: Decline of a Family ~1901), Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain ~ 1924), or the novella: “Der Tod in Venedig* (‘Death in Veni for cinema. In each one of his writings he performs a detailed psychi ‘ragicomic characters, Thomas Mann is 2 major represent support of the USA government and hos Delano Roosevelt, during The Second World War. So thal ly one may say ‘Thomas Mann also enjoyed an American writer's career. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1929, ____Edgar Allan Pos (1809-1849) _ __ 38 between the-two “outlaws”): Hanno Buddenbrook, the very last offspring of the dignified outspent Labeck bourgeois family, and Kai, the young destitute Count von Molin. We can find in it distinct echoes of both novellas by Poe we are here concerned with: on the one hand, so much of the atmosphere of “Wiliam Wilson” as a reminiscence of schooldays bosom-friendship; and on the other hand, “The Fall of the House of Usher’ as an instance of intertextuality: Kai explicitly dectares himself a fan of Poe's celebrated novella. Fragile Hanno dies as a teenager, killed by typhus: as dreadful a disease as the romantic tuberculosis of the lungs of Poe's days. The utter downfall of the Buddenbrooks ~ *both [as] the family and [as] the family mansion’, echoing the fall of the Ushers is now accomplished. With a poisoned chime of Poe's inuating itself into its fin-de-siécle macabre majesty. (i) William Wilson, c'est moi! 1m Wilson marked E.A. Poe's entrance ched French readership a: a Parisian magazine, which publ ive for another five years, so he could enjoy Wilson” as a successful The “uncanny* story of (one?) in the cultural conscience of Frar ry translation of 1844, iments. Poe would in romantic literature, finds its canonic illustration here: likewise, the theme of and that of the_Thou,-announcing_modem fiction of psychoanalytic But above all, “William Wilson” is a fine autobiographic piece of fiction. It has invited to meditation generations of readers, who have found in it the message of an arlist’s mind craving fac unity and coherence. Yet the creative ind is a dialogical structure, self-contradicting, beyond any hope yn__with itself. Obsessive ambition, selfesteem,_narcissism, .gredients of this demonically and/or divinely creative mind of the romantic genius — all of which will deny his peace for ever._ cemplary romantic story distinguishes itself from the protagonist's ing Anglo-Saxon used to classic, many respects, or Roderick (of the time the mask of the protagonist's name does not even pretend to meet the * See Martin Buber, Otto Rank, Tzvetan Todorov, with their particular books as mentioned in the Works Cited section,36 ___Selthood infor Postry Teader's expectations. Wiliam Wilson is an assumed name, like an omit Password to the ultimate artifice of self-destruction. Or like no name at all Calling the main dramatis persona by this everyday name, like any Tom, Dick, or Harry, should actually work like the first alarm to a reader ‘accustomed to Poe's standards of ancient European romance names. 1 ‘We will never know who William Wilson is ~ because he does not know (it) himself. And, since this is a wicked story, whose double reflection is targeted at author and reader at once, it makes us wonder how much it is that we can rely on, as soon as this Boomerang-dilemma reaches our own selves. Who are you, reader? Who are you, Mr Poe? Which one of the two William Wilsons is yourself? The frontier betwee between guilt and sai artists (Byronic) Self, ‘ile anc death — will never show clearly in Poe's diegesis. Staying halF-aive in Geath is one of his characters main sources of anxiety. Their primary fear yet 15 that of losing one’s identity. Selflove can be stronger even than love of ‘sis the kind of fear within the mind of William Wilson. sanity and insanity, between madness and genius; innocence; between the ! and the Thou within the en the original personality and its copy; between In "The Purloined Letter’ — the classic detective story ~ no one dies. In ‘William Wilson” — the classic psychological thriller - the final suicide must be

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