The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1880-06-04
EDGAR ALLEN POE.
BY L. G. HARRIS.

variance with those surrounding them,
SO unnatural and equivocal IN their con-
struction, that they have seemed more
like Grant spirits from the world be-
You'd than those possessing the attri-
butes and propensities of common NOR
tails.
Prominent among the names in this
strange order of beings occurs that of
Edgar Allen Poe. He combines in re-
markable degree two elements of mind
seldom found united-analysis and i'm
agination. These constitute the ground
work of his genius, they are the source
of his wonderful power. No two facul-
ties could stand more opposite In their
effects Their union In him give to many
of his subjects the effect of what can
only be expressed by the extraordinary
phrase of the spiritually material. He
treats the most ideal themes in the most
realistic manner. He is both poet and
mathematician. He conceives with all
the vividness of the former, but he rea-
sons with all the GOODNESS and precision
of the latter. He is living fire hedged in
with ice. He reduces the widest play
OF passion to the most exact order. He
unites the severest logic to the most ex-
uberant fancy, the heat of passion to the
GOODNESS of reason.
A too-close observance of the poetical
and ideal part of his nature has gained
for him the appellation Of dreamer. He
has his moods of abstraction, but he is
not the typical dreamer. His piercing
acuteness, his minuteness of detail, his
subtle distinctions, his refined reason
ings, all separate him from the purely
meditative mind. The dreamer is pas
sive Poe concentrates them. The
dreamer revels in the mysterious Poe
will have nothing to do with it, only as
he can explain it. The dreamer sur
renders himself to contemplation and
reverie till his own individuality is lost
in that of the objects around him Poe
never loses himself In his abstraction, he
is most keenly alive when most absorbed.
Mark the contrast between the
strength, clearness and precision of his
intellectual, and the wild disorder and
disease of his moral and aesthetic facul-
ties. He naturally possesses delicate
perceptions and refined sensibilities.
But what do we find in his tales :? A
nature attuned to the harmonious and
the beautiful reveling in all that is dis
cordant and hideous; mind intoxicated
by the fendishness of it's own creations
indulging in all that is selt-destructive;
all the natural, genuine emotions of the
heart blighted and turned away; hope
driven into the icy caves of despair; JOY
banished into rayless caverns Of gloom;
poetic fervor turned into demoniacal
fury; feeling frozen into frenzy; smiles
wlthered into sneers. In fine, the i'm
preston produced by these wierd COM
positions is that Of demon mounting to
throne of evil eminence on the wreck
of all that is pure and beautiful; and,
having attained it, gazing down with
fendish glee upon the ruins below. The
diseased condition of his mind we see
manifested in the unnatural delight he
seems to take in dwelling on the sub
jects of death and decay. In one of his
tales he says; Il have imbibed the
shadows of the fallen columns of Tad
NOR, Balbec and Persepolis, till my
very soul has become ruin" That is
it. 1t is always beauty and grace de-
throned; shattered columns, crumbling
walls and tottering arches; the lingering
smile on the lips of death; the false and
treacherous bloom on the features of
disease; "the gilded halo lowering
round decay" it is all these that his
morbid fancy seizes upon with such
greedy avidity.
He cares nothing for mere external OBJ
jects only as they excite his emotions.
Therefore he always chooses such sub
jects as are suggestive of melancholy
and sadness. He ever represents love
as in the icy clutches of death, not that
he may show his affection for the dead,
but rather as a means of gratifying his
abstract love of grief. He has morbid
craving for unnatural sensations. He
feeds on mockeries. He taunts himself
with the hopelessness of his despair, and
takes strange delight in this process of
self-torture. His most intolerable an
guish is his keenest JOY; the more pain
full his emotions, the more pungent his
pleasure; the greater his grief, the more
delicious his sorrow.
But how shall we account for this per-
version of his nature? That a mind
should indulge in all that is self-destruct-
i've; that the very order and nature of
things should be reversed; that OUT OF
cosmos should come chaos, and out of
beauty hideousness, seems moral an
tithesis-inexplicable The explanation
of this apparent contradiction is to be
found in peculiar tendency Of his nat
ure-his morbid habit of introspection.
Hawthorne the profoundest moral
philosopher that America has ever
produced said that, of all of the
practices in which mind may indulge,
this one Of introspection is the most
pernicious. Poe is a slave to it. His
eyes are ever eurned inward to "heart
gnawed with anguish. Here, within
this spiritual laboratory, he dissects,
analyses, watches. He notes each pass
ing breath of emotion. He catches each
fuctuating shade of feeling. He stud
les with painful minuteness the creeping
sensations of crime, guilt, sin and re-
morse. He pursues with nervous in