Within the Private Vi·ew:
A
note on Re-read·ing the Poetry of
Edgar
Allen P·oe
Horace Gregory
So far as the public is concerned, Edgar Poe is in no need
of
discovery or revival; anthologists of American literature de–
vote a considerable allotment of their treasured "space" to an
adequate representation of his prose or verse; and as if to justify
the anthologist's concern for Poe's general reputation, four gen–
erations of thoroughly respectable Americans have read his
Tales
of Mystery
and
Imagination
with undiminishing, and perhaps (to
judge by the number of popular reprint libraries that list among
their titles one or another of his books )-no, certainly, increasing
enthusiasm. It can be safely said that the works
of
Edgar Poe
are better known than the poetry of Longfellow or of Whitman or
the novels of Hawthorne, Melville and Henry James. In contrast to
this picture, only the critical attitude seems ill at ease, and of
recent years it has been insisting, though almost in a whisper, that
Poe
is not to be considered a true poet, that by some sleight of
band or eye or psychic deformity he had tricked us into believing
that he was something other than he was.
It
is not without reason that critical opinion regards Poe
warily, because, as all of us know well-and some of us within
me past two decades have learned with grief-matters of taste,
aesthetics, morality, religion and politics cannot come to rest, and
indeed, remain unsettled by measuring the fluctuations of popular
response. In the case of Poe critical objection carries with it a
number of highly unpleasant names and it is well to consider a
few
of them before we go much further. Even the inost casual
reader of Poe's tales and verse has a word to offer here, and Poe's
writings are frequently described as "morbid," "unreal," "un-
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