Complete Prose Works
States, and at no period before this. If you want to see what the
railroad is, and how civilization and progress date from it--how it
is the conqueror of crude nature, which it turns to man's use, both on
small scales and on the largest--come hither to inland America.
I return'd home, east, Jan. 5, 1880, having travers'd, to and fro and
across, 10,000 miles and more. I soon resumed my seclusions down in
the woods, or by the creek, or gaddings about cities, and an occasional
disquisition, as will be seen following.
EDGAR POE'S SIGNIFICANCE
_Jan. 1, '80_.--In diagnosing this disease called humanity--to assume
for the nonce what seems a chief mood of the personality and writings of
my subject--I have thought that poets, somewhere or other on the list,
present the most mark'd indications. Comprehending artists in a mass,
musicians, painters, actors, and so on, and considering each and all of
them as radiations or flanges of that furious whirling wheel, poetry,
the centre and axis of the whole, where else indeed may we so well
investigate the causes, growths, tally-marks of the time--the age's
matter and malady?
By common consent there is nothing better for man or woman than a
perfect and noble life, morally without flaw, happily balanced in
activity, physically sound and pure, giving its due proportion, and no
more, to the sympathetic, the human emotional element--a life, in all
these, unhasting, unresting, untiring to the end. And yet there is
another shape of personality dearer far to the artist-sense, (which
likes the play of strongest lights and shades,) where the perfect
character, the good, the heroic, although never attain'd, is never
lost sight of, but through failures, sorrows, temporary downfalls, is
return'd to again and again, and while often violated, is passionately
adhered to as long as mind, muscles, voice, obey the power we call
volition. This sort of personality we see more or less in Burns, Byron,
Schiller, and George Sand. But we do not see it in Edgar Poe. (All this
is the result of reading at intervals the last three days a new volume
of his poems--I took it on my rambles down by the pond, and by degrees
read it all through there.) While to the character first outlined the
service Poe renders is certainly that entire contrast and contradiction
which is next best to fully exemplifying it.
Almost without the first sign of moral principle, or of the concrete
or its heroisms, or the simpler affections of the heart, Poe's verses
illustrate an intense faculty for technical and abstract beauty, with
the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal
themes, a demoniac undertone behind every page--and, by final judgment,
probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative literature,
brilliant and dazzling, but with no heat. There is an indescribable
magnetism about the poet's life and reminiscences, as well as the poems.
To one who could work out their subtle retracing and retrospect, the
latter would make a close tally no doubt between the author's birth
and antecedents, his childhood and youth, his physique, his so-call'd
education, his studies and associates, the literary and social
Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia and New York, of those times--not only
the places and circumstances in themselves, but often, very often, in a
strange spurning of, and reaction from them all.
The following from a report in the Washington "Star" of November 16,
1875, may afford those who care for it something further of my point
of view toward this interesting figure and influence of our era.
There occurr'd about that date in Baltimore a public reburial of Poe's
remains, and dedication of a monument over the grave:
"Being in Washington on a visit at the time, 'the old gray' went over
to Baltimore, and though ill from paralysis, consented to hobble up and
silently take a seat on the platform, but refused to make any speech,
saying, 'I have felt a strong impulse to come over and be here to-day
myself in memory of Poe, which I have obey'd, but not the slightest
impulse to make a speech, which, my dear friends, must also be obeyed.'
In an informal circle, however, in conversation after the ceremonies,
Whitman said: 'For a long while, and until lately, I had a distaste
for Poe's writings. I wanted, and still want for poetry, the clear sun
shining, and fresh air blowing--the strength and power of health, not of
delirium, even amid the stormiest passions--with always the background
of the eternal moralities. Non-complying with these requirements, Poe's
genius has yet conquer'd a special recognition for itself, and I too
have come to fully admit it, and appreciate it and him.
"'In a dream I once had, I saw a vessel on the sea, at midnight, in a
storm. It was no great full-rigg'd ship, nor majestic steamer, steering
firmly through the gale, but seem'd one of those superb little schooner
yachts I had often seen lying anchor'd, rocking so jauntily, in the
waters around New York, or up Long Island sound--now flying uncontroll'd
with torn sails and broken spars through the wild sleet and winds and
waves of the night. On the deck was a slender, slight, beautiful
figure, a dim man, apparently enjoying all the terror, the murk, and the
dislocation of which he was the centre and the victim. That figure of my
lurid dream might stand for Edgar Poe, his spirit, his fortunes, and his
poems--themselves all lurid dreams.'"
Much more may be said, but I most desired to exploit the idea put at the
beginning. By its popular poets the calibres of an age, the weak spots
of its embankments, its sub-currents, (often more significant than the
biggest surface ones,) are unerringly indicated. The lush and the weird
that have taken such extraordinary possession of Nineteenth century
verse-lovers--what mean they? The inevitable tendency of poetic culture
to morbidity, abnormal beauty--the sickliness of all technical thought
or refinement in itself--the abnegation of the perennial and democratic
concretes at first hand, the body, the earth and sea, sex and the
like--and the substitution of something for them at second or third
hand--what bearings have they on current pathological study?
BEETHOVEN'S SEPTETTE
_Feb. 11, '80_.--At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera
house, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never
did music more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove its
soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the
rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosen and
perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello
and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders.
Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the
sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding
through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing
floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing,
muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now
and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods--but mainly
spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment of the postures of
naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the
violinists drawing their bows so masterly--every motion a study. I
allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit
came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst
a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own
pensiveness, joyousness.
A HINT OF WILD NATURE
_Feb. 13_.--As I was crossing the Delaware to-day, saw a large flock
of wild geese, right overhead, not very high up, ranged in V-shape,
in relief against the noon clouds of light smoke-color. Had a capital
though momentary view of them, and then of their course on and on
southeast, till gradually fading--(my eyesight yet first rate for
the open air and its distances, but I use glasses for reading.) Queer
thoughts melted into me the two or three minutes, or less, seeing
these creatures cleaving the sky--the spacious, airy realm--even the
prevailing smoke-gray color everywhere, (no sun shining)--the
waters below--the rapid flight of the birds, appearing just for a
minute--flashing to me such a hint of the whole spread of Nature, with
her eternal unsophisticated freshness, her never-visited recesses of
sea, sky, shore--and then disappearing in the distance.
LOAFING IN THE WOODS
_March 8_.--I write this down in the country again, but in a new spot,
seated on a log in the woods, warm, sunny, midday. Have been loafing
here deep among the trees, shafts of tall pines, oak, hickory, with
a thick undergrowth of laurels and grapevines--the ground cover'd
everywhere by debris, dead leaves, breakage, moss--everything solitary,
ancient, grim. Paths (such as they are) leading hither and yon--(how
made I know not, for nobody seems to come here, nor man nor
cattle-kind.) Temperature to-day about 60, the wind through the
pine-tops; I sit and listen to its hoarse sighing above (and to the
_stillness_) long and long, varied by aimless rambles in the old roads
and paths, and by exercise-pulls at the young saplings, to keep my
joints from getting stiff. Blue-birds, robins, meadow-larks begin to
appear.
_Next day, 9th_.--A snowstorm in the morning, and continuing most of the
day. But I took a walk over two hours, the same woods and paths, amid
the falling flakes. No wind, yet the musical low murmur through the
pines, quite pronounced, curious, like waterfalls, now still'd,
now pouring again. All the senses, sight, sound, smell, delicately
gratified. Every snowflake lay where it fell on the evergreens,
holly-trees, laurels, &c., the multitudinous leaves and branches piled,
bulging-white, defined by edge-lines of emerald--the tall straight
columns of the plentiful bronze-topt pines--a slight resinous odor
blending with that of the snow. (For there is a scent to everything,
even the snow, if you can only detect it--no two places, hardly any
two hours, anywhere, exactly alike. How different the odor of noon from
midnight, or winter from summer, or a windy spell from a still one.)
A CONTRALTO VOICE
_May 9, Sunday_.--Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s--good
supper, to which I did justice--lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and
J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the
church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, _Ein
feste berg_, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. For
nearly half an hour there in the dark (there was a good string of
English stanzas,) came the music, firm and unhurried, with long pauses.
The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's dim
roof-ridge. Vari-color'd lights from the stain'd glass windows broke
through the tree-shadows. And under all--under the Northern Crown up
there, and in the fresh breeze below, and the _chiaroscuro_ of the
night, that liquid-full contralto.
SEEING NIAGARA TO ADVANTAGE
_June 4, '80_.--For really seizing a great picture or book, or piece of
music, or architecture, or grand scenery--or perhaps for the first time
even the common sunshine, or landscape, or may-be even the mystery
of identity, most curious mystery of all--there comes some lucky
five minutes of a man's life, set amid a fortuitous concurrence of
circumstances, and bringing in a brief flash the culmination of years of
reading and travel and thought. The present case about two o'clock this
afternoon, gave me Niagara, its superb severity of action and color and
majestic grouping, in one short, indescribable show. We were very slowly
crossing the Suspension bridge-not a full stop anywhere, but next to
it--the day clear, sunny, still--and I out on the platform. The