第 二十七 章 · THE VILLAGE STREET（5）
I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven, the bird of
ill-omen, monotonously repeating the one word "Nevermore" at the
conclusion of each stanza in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length
about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object
_supremeness_ or perfection at all points, I asked myself--"Of all
melancholy topics what, according to the _universal_ understanding of
mankind, is the _most_ melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And
when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From
what I have already explained at some length, the answer here also is
obvious--"When it most closely allies itself to _Beauty_; the death,
then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in
the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for
such topic are those of a bereaved lover."
I had now to combine the two ideas of a lover lamenting his deceased
mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word "Nevermore." I had
to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying at every turn the
_application_ of the word repeated, but the only intelligible mode of
such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the word in
answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I saw at once
the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been depending,
that is to say, the effect of the _variation of application_. I saw that
I could make the first query propounded by the lover--the first query to
which the Raven should reply "Nevermore"--that I could make this first
query a commonplace one, the second less so, the third still less, and
so on, until at length the lover, startled from his original
_nonchalance_ by the melancholy character of the word itself, by its
frequent repetition, and by a consideration of the ominous reputation of
the fowl that uttered it, is at length excited to superstition, and
wildly propounds queries of a far different character--queries whose
solution he has passionately at heart--propounds them half in
superstition and half in that species of despair which delights in
self-torture--propounds them not altogether because he believes in the
prophetic or demoniac character of the bird (which reason assures him is
merely repeating a lesson learned by rote), but because he experiences a
frenzied pleasure in so modelling his questions as to receive from the
_expected_ "Nevermore" the most delicious because the most intolerable
of sorrow. Perceiving the opportunity thus afforded me, or, more
strictly, thus forced upon me in the progress of the construction, I
first established in mind the climax or concluding query--that query to
which "Nevermore" should be in the last place an answer--that query in
reply to which this word "Nevermore" should involve the utmost
conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.
Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning, at the end where
all works of art should begin; for it was here at this point of my
preconsiderations that I first put pen to paper in the composition of
the stanza:
"Prophet," said I, "thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!
By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore,
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the
climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness,
and importance the preceding queries of the lover, and secondly, that I
might definitely settle the rhythm, the metre, and the length and
general arrangement of the stanza, as well as graduate the stanzas which
were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical
effect. Had I been able in the subsequent composition to construct more
vigorous stanzas, I should without scruple have purposely enfeebled them
so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect.
And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. My first
object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which this has been
neglected in versification is one of the most unaccountable things in
the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere
_rhythm_, it is still clear that the possible varieties of metre and
stanza are absolutely infinite; and yet, for _centuries, no man, in
verse has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original
thing_. The fact is that originality (unless in minds of very unusual
force) is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or
intuition. In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought and,
although a positive merit of the highest class, demands in its
attainment less of invention than negation.
Of course I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or metre of
the "Raven." The former is trochaic--the latter is octametre
acatalectic, alternating with heptametre catalectic repeated in the
_refrain_ of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrametre
catalectic. Less pedantically, the feet employed throughout (trochees)
consists of a long syllable followed by a short; the first line of the
stanza consists of eight of these feet, the second of seven and a half
(in effect two-thirds), the third of eight, the fourth of seven and a
half, the fifth the same, the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these
lines taken individually has been employed before, and what originality
the "Raven" has, is in their _combinations into stanzas;_ nothing even
remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted. The
effect of this originality of combination is aided by other unusual and
some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the
application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration.
The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the
lover and the Raven--and the first branch of this consideration was the
_locale_. For this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a
forest, or the fields--but it has always appeared to me that a close
_circumscription of space_ is absolutely necessary to the effect of
insulated incident--it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an
indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention, and, of
course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place.
I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber--in a chamber
rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. The
room is represented as richly furnished--this in mere pursuance of the
ideas I have already explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole
true poetical thesis.
The _locale_ being thus determined, I had now to introduce the bird--and
the thought of introducing him through the window was inevitable. The
idea of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that the
flapping of the wings of the bird against the shutter, is a "tapping" at
the door, originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's
curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising from
the lover's throwing open the door, finding all dark, and thence
adopting the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that
knocked.
I made the night tempestuous, first to account for the Raven's seeking
admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the (physical)
serenity within the chamber.
I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of
contrast between the marble and the plumage--it being understood that
the bust was absolutely _suggested_ by the bird--the bust of _Pallas_
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the
lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself.
About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of the force
of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression. For
example, an air of the fantastic--approaching as nearly to the ludicrous
as was admissible--is given to the Raven's entrance. He comes in "with
many a flirt and flutter."
Not the _least obeisance made he_--not a moment stopped or stayed he,
_But with mien of lord or lady_, perched above my chamber door.
In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously carried
out:
Then this ebony bird beguiling my _sad fancy_ into smiling
By the _grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore_,
"Though thy _crest be shorn and shaven_, thou," I said, "art sure no
craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore--
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night's Plutonian shore?"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."
Much I marvelled _this ungainly fowl_ to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
_Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door--
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door_,
With such name as "Nevermore."
The effect of the dénouement being thus provided for, I immediately drop
the fantastic for a tone of the most profound seriousness--this tone
commencing in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, with
the line,
But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only, etc.
From this epoch the lover no longer jests--no longer sees anything even
of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and feels the
"fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." This revolution of
thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar
one on the part of the reader--to bring the mind into a proper frame for
the _dénouement_--which is now brought about as rapidly and as
_directly_ as possible.
With the _dénouement_ proper--with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to
the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another
world--the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may
be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the limits
of the accountable--of the real. A raven having learned by rote the
single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its
owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek
admission at a window from which a light still gleams--the
chamber-window of a student, occupied half in pouring over a volume,
half in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being
thrown open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself
perches on the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the
student, who, amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's
demeanor, demands of it, in jest and with out looking for a reply, its
name. The Raven addressed, answers with its customary word,
"Nevermore"--a word which finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart
of the student, who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts
suggested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's repetition of
"Nevermore." The student now guesses the state of the case, but is
impelled, as I have before explained, by the human thirst for
self-torture, and in part by superstition, to propound such queries to
the bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow
through the anticipated answer "Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the
extreme, of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its
first or obvious phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has
been no overstepping of the limits of the real.
But in subjects so handled, however skilfully, or with however vivid an
array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness which
repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably required--first,
some amount of complexity, or more properly, adaptation; and, secondly,
some amount of suggestiveness, some undercurrent, however indefinite of
meaning. It is this latter, in especial, which imparts to a work of art
so much of that _richness_ (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term)
which we are too fond of confounding with _the ideal_. It is the
_excess_ of the suggested meaning--it is the rendering this the upper
instead of the under current of theme--which turns into prose (and that
of the very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called
transcendentalists.
Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the
poem--their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative
which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first
apparent in the lines:
"Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!"
Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore!"
It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the
first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer,
"Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been
previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as
emblematical--but it is not until the very last line of the very last
stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of _Mournful and
never-ending Remembrance_ is permitted distinctly to be seen:
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul _from out that shadow_ that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted--nevermore!
* * * * *
OLD ENGLISH POETRY. [1]
It should not be doubted that at least one-third of the affection with
which we regard the elder poets of Great Britain should be attributed to
what is, in itself, a thing apart from poetry--we mean to the simple
love of the antique--and that, again, a third of even the proper _poetic
sentiment_ inspired by their writings, should be ascribed to a fact
which, while it has strict connection with poetry in the abstract, and
with the old British poems themselves, should not be looked upon as a
merit appertaining to the authors of the poems. Almost every devout
admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,
would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,
wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on
being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he
would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general
handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to
ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the
author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and
their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid
delight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one
source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a
very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems
_now_--we mean it only as against the poets _then_. There is a growing
desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless,
sincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general
error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of
supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth
and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end--with the
two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly
artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth--the
poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through
channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure
what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path
which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is
not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the
multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical verse" of Cowley is
but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he
was in this but a type of his _school_--for we may as well designate in
this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the
volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very
perceptible general character. They used little art in composition.
Their writings sprang immediately from the soul--and partook intensely
of that soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of
this _abandon_--to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind--but,
again, so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and all
good things, with the lowest possible bathos, baldness, and imbecility,
as to render it not a matter of doubt that the average results of mind
in such a school will be found inferior to those results in one
(_ceteris paribus_) more artificial.
We cannot bring ourselves to believe that the selections of the "Book of
Gems" are such as will impart to a poetical reader the clearest possible
idea of the beauty of the _school_--but if the intention had been merely
to show the school's character, the attempt might have been considered
successful in the highest degree. There are long passages now before us
of the most despicable trash, with no merit whatever beyond that of
their antiquity. The criticisms of the editor do not particularly please
us. His enthusiasm is too general and too vivid not to be false. His
opinion, for example, of Sir Henry's Wotton's "Verses on the Queen of
Bohemia"--that "there are few finer things in our language," is
untenable and absurd.
In such lines we can perceive not one of those higher attributes of
Poesy which belong to her in all circumstances and throughout all time.
Here everything is art, nakedly, or but awkwardly concealed. No
prepossession for the mere antique (and in this case we can imagine no
other prepossession) should induce us to dignify with the sacred name of
poetry, a series, such as this, of elaborate and threadbare compliments,
stitched, apparently, together, without fancy, without plausibility, and
without even an attempt at adaptation.
In common with all the world, we have been much delighted with "The
Shepherd's Hunting" by Withers--a poem partaking, in a remarkable
degree, of the peculiarities of 'Il Penseroso'. Speaking of Poesy, the
author says:
"By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least boughs rustleling,
By a daisy whose leaves spread,
Shut when Titan goes to bed,
Or a shady bush or tree,
She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties con
In some other wiser man.
By her help I also now
Make this churlish place allow
Something that may sweeten gladness
In the very gall of sadness--
The dull loneness, the black shade,
That these hanging vaults have made
The strange music of the waves
Beating on these hollow caves,
This black den which rocks emboss,
Overgrown with eldest moss,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight,
This my chamber of neglect
Walled about with disrespect;
From all these and this dull air
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might
To draw comfort and delight."
But these lines, however good, do not bear with them much of the general
character of the English antique. Something more of this will be found
in Corbet's "Farewell to the Fairies!" We copy a portion of Marvell's
"Maiden lamenting for her Fawn," which we prefer--not only as a specimen
of the elder poets, but in itself as a beautiful poem, abounding in
pathos, exquisitely delicate imagination and truthfulness--to anything
of its species:
"It is a wondrous thing how fleet
'Twas on those little silver feet,
With what a pretty skipping grace
It oft would challenge me the race,
And when't had left me far away
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay;
For it was nimbler much than hinds,
And trod as if on the four winds.
I have a garden of my own,
But so with roses overgrown,
And lilies, that you would it guess
To be a little wilderness;
And all the spring-time of the year
It only loved to be there.
Among the beds of lilies I
Have sought it oft where it should lie,
Yet could not, till itself would rise,
Find it, although before mine eyes.
For in the flaxen lilies shade
It like a bank of lilies laid;
Upon the roses it would feed
Until its lips even seemed to bleed,
And then to me 'twould boldly trip,
And print those roses on my lip,
But all its chief delight was still
With roses thus itself to fill,
And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,
Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within."
How truthful an air of lamentations hangs here upon every syllable! It
pervades all. It comes over the sweet melody of the words--over the
gentleness and grace which we fancy in the little maiden herself--even
over the half-playful, half-petulant air with which she lingers on the
beauties and good qualities of her favorite--like the cool shadow of a
summer cloud over a bed of lilies and violets, "and all sweet flowers."
The whole is redolent with poetry of a very lofty order. Every line is
an idea conveying either the beauty and playfulness of the fawn, or the
artlessness of the maiden, or her love, or her admiration, or her grief,
or the fragrance and warmth and _appropriateness_ of the little
nest-like bed of lilies and roses which the fawn devoured as it lay upon
them, and could scarcely be distinguished from them by the once happy
little damsel who went to seek her pet with an arch and rosy smile on
her face. Consider the great variety of truthful and delicate thought in
the few lines we have quoted--the _wonder_ of the little maiden at the
fleetness of her favorite--the "little silver feet"--the fawn
challenging his mistress to a race with "a pretty skipping grace,"
running on before, and then, with head turned back, awaiting her
approach only to fly from it again--can we not distinctly perceive all
these things? How exceedingly vigorous, too, is the line,
"And trod as if on the four winds!"
a vigor apparent only when we keep in mind the artless character of the
speaker and the four feet of the favorite, one for each wind. Then
consider the garden of "my own," so overgrown, entangled with roses and
lilies, as to be "a little wilderness"--the fawn loving to be there, and
there "only"--the maiden seeking it "where it _should_ lie"--and not
being able to distinguish it from the flowers until "itself would
rise"--the lying among the lilies "like a bank of lilies"--the loving to
"fill itself with roses,"
"And its pure virgin limbs to fold
In whitest sheets of lilies cold,"
and these things being its "chief" delights--and then the pre-eminent
beauty and naturalness of the concluding lines, whose very hyperbole
only renders them more true to nature when we consider the innocence,
the artlessness, the enthusiasm, the passionate girl, and more
passionate admiration of the bereaved child:
"Had it lived long, it would have been
Lilies without, roses within."
[Footnote 1: "The Book of Gems." Edited by S. C. Hall.]
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