Evening star., 1935-12-04
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
THE STRANGE LIFE AND THE
STRANGE LOVES OF EDGAR
ALLAN POE. BY Emile Lauvriere.
IL. u L 10
Margaret Germond.

Philadelphia: j. B. Lippincott Co.
Explaining the life of q genius Is
task as difficult as that Of solving the
mysteries of the plan Of the universe.
Man has studied the plan of the uni
verse, checked the pattern Of its move
ments and found that 1t operates with
mathematical precision. But the source
of that plan and the force which drives
1t are matters that are still behind the
veil that science has not yet been able
to penetrate. Genius gives to the world
the fruits of its labors, but no man can
dissect the human soul and reveal the
well-spring of inspiration from which the
creations Of an exalted intellect flow.
A veritable mountain of biographical
and intellectual vivisectionist literature
has been written about Edgar Allan Poe.
1t has been the purpose of all of these
writers and critics to present true por-
trait of the man who was as much of a
mystery to his friends and his contem-
poraries as he has been to the later
generations who have sought to define
his character and account for his genius.
Admirers and defamers alike founder in
the Quagmire of contradictory qualities
that made him a man apart and invar-
iably fail to get beyond the unenlighten-
ing conclusion that he was an unfor-
tunate degenerate and an incompre-
henSible genius.
For some inexplicable reason man.
kind in general and moralistS in particu-
lar make heavy weather of accepting the
fact that degeneracy and genius, far
from being natural enemies, are often
the companionate counterparts of the
balance between total incompetence and
sanity. There will always be moralists
who love to shake their heads in self
righteousness and say: Just think what
he might have done had he not
been a degenerate!" Yet the world of
art, drama, letters and poetry is the
richer because such men as Van
Gogh, Casanova, DoStoevsky, Baudelaire,
Strindberg. Oscar Wilde, Frans Halls,
RoSSeau, Francois Villon, Da Vinci and
other notorious wanderers from the con-
fining path of accepted virtue were en-
dowed with superior gifts of intellectual
creation. And who can rightfully say
whether they attained fame in spite of
the forces which drove them to extremes,
or because of those compelling inner
fires. William Cowper's famous lines,
God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform"
are seldom thought of as applicable to
the extraordinary achievements of the
occasional weaklingS of the human race
in whom the flame of genius burns with
mighty fervor.
After many years Of devotion of inter-
est and energy to the subject, the author
of this latest endeavor to explain the
character and the genius of Poe and to
synchronize the two, declares that the
secret of all of the anomalies in the life
and in the work of the unhappy poet was
| revealed through the study, in connec-
ton with the proposed thesis, of morbid
psychology. This led to the conclusion
that Poe was a dipSomaniac, and upon
arriving at this diagnosis of the strange
mans beSetting weakness much of the
hitherto myStifyiRg contradictions of his
character became clear. The result of
all this is just as clarifying as the find
ingS of all Of the other Poe biographerS
and commentators, from DR.. Griswold to
Hervey Allen. Whether in plain words
or in more kindly phraseology, they all
manage to arrive by one route or another
at the same conclusion that the
man was an hereditary degenerate and
an unfathomable genius. Beyond that
the present volume gets no farther than
its predecessors.
Edwin Gile Rich has done much better
work on other translationS than he can
be given credit for in this work. Many
sentences are so clumsily constructed that
they have to be read several times before
their significance becomes clear The
book is interesting chiefly because it is
just another volume to add to the already
yoluminous Poe biography.
**
SILAS CROCKETT BY Mary Ellen
Chase. New York: The Macmil-
Ian Co.
-Four generations of the family Crock
EFT, abiding in and sailing from a seacoast
town in Maine, are presented by the
author of the engaging Mary Peters," in
this new story about the hard-bitten,
Seafaring men of the rockbound coast of
New England and of the women who wait
and pray for their safe return, or who
go with them rather than be left behind
to a life of anxiety and doubt.
The story is in four parts, beginning
with the prosperous days of 1880 when
handsome young Silas Crockett was cap
tain of the clipper Southern Seas, en-
gagged in the flourishing Canton trade.
Steam navigation was then in its infancy
and no Crockett who had ever mastered
the winds and waves under billowing sails
could possibly look with favor upon a
steam-driven ship.
Then came his son Nicholas, in the
days when the schooner was in its hey
dey and the rounding of Cape Horn as
the first officer of the Mildred May was
an experience, less glorious perhaps than
the colorful adventures of his dauntleSS
father, but exciting nevertheless. BY the
time young Reuben, grandson of Silas,
was old enough to take to the sea steam
navigation had become an established
fact, and significant changes had af-
! fected not only the home life, but the
| livelihood of the coast dwellerS, whose
! men folk had for years returned from
| three or four year voyages as casually
as though they had been to neigh
boring town for half day. The excite
ment in Reuben's professional career was
confined to passenger steamer plying
between coast towns.
The fourth generation brings a new
Silas to the Crockett clan, but the sea
no longer beckons to the adventurer, for
| it is 1890 and civilization has made a
safe and sane highway through the
rolling waters of the Seven Seas, and ro-
nance beyond the horizon has ceased to
call forth the spirit of hope for danger
Gus and exciting experiences. So Silas
prefers to study medicine. Times are
not so good, however, for the dwellers
in Saturday Cove, so the great-grandson
of the handsome Silas of 1880 is re-