Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1918-03-12
POET POE'S FAME
IS INTERNATIONAL.
Lecture At Mcdowell Hall By
DR.. c. A. Smith Charms
Large Audience.
POETIC ACHIEVEMENT.
Poe's Constructive Genius Uh-
paralleled In Our Literature.
A Strange Abnormal
Reino.

ne lecture gwen last HASuI Ou Eu-
gar Allan Poe by DR.. Alphonso
Smith, of the Naval Academy. both in
terested and delighted the large au-
! dience present The St. Johns
Cadets were enthusiastic in their
praise and the others present were
equally as commendatory in their ex-
pressions concerning the address
! DR.. Smith, who formerly was the Poe
Professor of English at the Univers-
ity of Virginia, was thoroughly al
home in his subject and showed a
familiarity with his theme, that not
only interested. but also carried con-
viction with il.
No one who was present can fail
now to realize that Poe has been a
great international figure in Litera-
ture and the reasons therefor.
Promptly at o'clock Dr. Smith
was introduced by DR.. Thomas Fell,
who said that the speaker of the eve
ming needed no introduction to an
AnnapOlltan auulence.
Among other things DIR. Smith
said:
THE year 1909 witnessed the births
of more remarkable babies than any
other single year of modern history.
If 1 were an artist, l should try to
paint Poe, Lincoln, Darwin, Glad
stone, Holmes and Chopin on one
broad canvass, each a baby but each
so characteristically occupied, or
posed as to prophesy the distinctive
fame of coming years.
"Of these coming years 1909 has
proved the most significant. 1t was
then that historians looked back over
the century and attempted a fresh ap-
praisal of the sceptered sovereigns
who had now rounded out their first
hundred years. Anniversaries and
commemorative exercises were held
in our own land and in foreign lands.
If the name of Poe did not lead all
the rest, it was surpassed by none in
the interest awakened, in the num-
ber of places where exercises were
held, and in the international ac-
claim rendered his works. At the
University of Virginia, in Baltimore,
in New York, in London, in Paris,
and in Berlin, Poe's birthday was
celebrated as no Americans poets
birthday had ever been celebrated
before.
'And yet the popular conception of
the mans real service remains
strongly vague. AS a poet there are
thousands of Americans who still
think of him only as the jingle man,
and as prose writer they consider
him chiefly a manufacturer of cold
creeps and a maker of shivers' If
this were all, his international fame
would be not only inexplicable, but a
stinging indictment of the literary
taste of two worlds"
Three ways were given in which
Poe influenced world literature.
They were: First. a discoverer in
the realm of meter and rythm; Sec
ond, a pioneer in the short story;
and third, the exponent of self-con-
sciousness in literature.
In conclusion DR.. Smith said:
Let us think of Poe, then, not as
some strange abnormal being. ILL
starred and ineffective. Let us think
of him as one who, suffering much
thought much and wrought much
one who enlarged the realm of poetry
by enriching and diversifying the
range of poetic effect; one who touch.
ed the short story to finer issues in
all lands: one who revealed the
secret of poetic achievement as it hat
never been revealed before; and one
who not only carried our common
Americanism to the utmost bounds o
civilization. but who enriched th'
concept of Americanism by a con
structive genius still unparalleled il
our literature"