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A FEW WORDS ABOUT BRAINARD.
——
BY EDGAR A. POE.
——
AMONG all the pioneers
of American literature, whether prose or poetical, there is not one
whose productions have not been much overrated by his countrymen. But
this fact is more especially obvious in respect to such of these
pioneers
as are no longer living, — nor is it a fact of so deeply transcendental
a nature as only to be accounted for by the Emersons and Alcotts. In
the
first place, we have but to consider that gratitude, surprise, and a
species
of hyper-patriotic triumph have been blended, and finally confounded,
with
mere admiration, or appreciation, in respect to the labors of our
earlier
writers; and, in the second place, that Death has thrown his customary
veil of the sacred over these commingled feelings, forbidding them, in
a measure, to be now separated or subjected to analysis. "In
speaking
of the deceased," says that excellent old English Moralist, James
Puckle,
in his "Gray Cap for a Green Head," "so fold up your discourse that
their
virtues may be outwardly shown, while their vices are wrapped up in
silence."
And with somewhat too inconsiderate a promptitude have we followed the
spirit of this quaint advice. The mass of American readers have been,
hitherto,
in no frame of mind to view with calmness, and to discuss with
discrimination,
the true claims of the few who were first in convincing the
mother
country that her sons were not all brainless, as, in the plentitude of
her arrogance, she, at one period, half affected and half wished to
believe;
and where any of these few have departed from among us, the difficulty
of bringing their pretensions to the test of a proper criticism has
been
enhanced in a very remarkable degree. But even as concerns the living:
is there any one so blind as not to see that Mr. Cooper, for example,
owes
much, and that Mr. Paulding owes all of his reputation as a
novelist,
to his early occupation of the field? Is there any one so dull as not
to
know that fictions which neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Cooper could
have written, are daily published by native authors without attracting
more of commendation than can be crammed into a hack newspaper
paragraph?
And, again, is there any one so prejudiced
as not to acknowledge that all this is because there is no longer
either
reason or wit in the query, — "Who reads an American book?" It is not
because
we lack the talent in which the days of Mr. Paulding exulted, but
because
such talent has shown itself to be common. It is not because we have no
Mr. Coopers; but because it has been demonstrated that we might, at any
moment, have as many Mr. Coopers as we please. In fact we are now
strong
in our own [column 2:] resources. We have, at length, arrived
at that epoch when
our
literature may and must stand on its own merits, or fall through its
own
defects. We have snapped asunder the leading-strings of our British
Grandmamma,
and, better still, we have survived the first hours of our novel
freedom —
the first licentious hours of a hobbledehoy braggadocio and swagger. At
last, then, we are in a condition to be criticised — even more, to
be neglected; and the journalist is no longer in danger of being
impeached
for lese majesté of the Democratic Spirit, who shall
assert,
with sufficient humility, that we have committed an error in mistaking
"Kettell's Specimens" for the Pentateuch, or Joseph Rodman Drake for
Apollo.
The case of this latter gentleman is
one which well
illustrates what we have been saying. We believe it was about 1835 that
Mr. Dearborn republished the "Culprit Fay," which then, as at the
period
of its original issue, was belauded by the universal American press, in
a manner which must have appeared ludicrous — not to speak very
plainly — in the eyes of all unprejudiced observers. With a curiosity
much
excited by comments at once so grandiloquent and so general, we
procured
and read the poem. What we found it we ventured to express distinctly,
and at some length, in the pages of the "Southern Messenger." It is a
well-versified
and sufficiently fluent composition, without high merit of any kind.
Its
defects are gross and superabundant. Its plot and conduct, considered
in
reference to its scene, are absurd. Its originality is none at all. Its
imagination (and this was the great feature insisted upon by its
admirers,)
is but a "counterfeit presentment," — but the shadow of the shade of
that
lofty quality which is, in fact, the soul of the Poetic Sentiment — but
a drivelling effort to be fanciful — an effort resulting in a
species
of hop-skip-and-go-merry rhodomontade, which the uninitiated feel it a
duty to call ideality, and
to admire as
such, while lost in surprise at the impossibility of performing at
least
the latter half of the duty with any thing like satisfaction to
themselves.
And all this we not only asserted, but without difficulty proved.
Dr. Drake has written some beautiful poems, but the "Culprit Fay," is
not
of them. We neither expected to hear any dissent from our opinions, nor
did we hear any. On the contrary, the approving voice of every critic
in
the country whose dictum we had been accustomed to respect, was
to us a sufficient assurance that we had not been very grossly in the
wrong.
In fact the public taste was then approaching the right. The [page
120:]
truth
indeed had not, as yet, made itself heard; but we had reached a point
at
which it had but to be plainly and boldly put, to be, at least
tacitly
admitted.
This habit of apotheosising our
literary pioneers
was a most indiscriminating one. Upon all who wrote, the
applause
was plastered with an impartiality really refreshing. Of course, the
system
favored the dunces at the expense of true merit! and, since there
existed
a certain fixed standard of exaggerated commendation to which all were
adapted after the fashion of Procrustes, it is clear that the most
meritorious
required the least stretching, — in other words, that, although
all were much overrated, the deserving were overrated in a less
degree
than the unworthy. Thus with Brainard: — a man of indisputable genius,
who, in any more discriminate system of panegyric, would have been long
ago bepuffed into Demi-Deism; for if "M'Fingal," for example, is in
reality
what we have been told, the commentators upon Trumbull, as a matter of
the simplest consistency, should have exalted into the seventh heaven
of
poetical dominion the author of the many graceful and vigorous
effusions
which are now lying, in a very neat little volume, before us.*
Yet we maintain that even these effusions have been
overpraised, and materially so. It is not that Brainard has not written
poems which may rank with those of any American, with the single
exception
of Longfellow — but that the general merit of our
whole national Muse has been estimated too highly, and that the author
of "The Connecticut River" has, individually, shared in the
exaggeration.
No poet among us has composed what would deserve the tithe of that
amount
of approbation so innocently lavished upon Brainard. But it would not
suit
our purpose just now, to enter
into any elaborate analyses of his productions. It so happens, however,
that we open the book at a brief poem, an examination of which will
stand
us in good stead of this general analysis, since it is by this very
poem
that the admirers of its author are content to swear — since it is the
fashion
to cite it as his best — since thus, in short, it is the chief basis of
his notoriety, if not the surest triumph of his fame.
We allude to "The Fall of Niagara,"
and shall be
pardoned for quoting it in full.
The thoughts are strange that crowd
into my brain
While I look upward to thee. It would seem
As if God poured thee from his hollow hand,
And hung his brow upon thy awful front,
And spoke in that loud voice which seemed to him
Who dwelt in Patmos for his Saviour's sake
The "sound of many waters," and had bade
Thy flood to chronicle the ages back
And notch his centuries in the eternal rocks.
Deep calleth unto deep. And what are we
That hear the question of that voice sublime?
O, what are all the notes that ever rung
From war's vain trumpet by thy thundering side?
Yea, what is all the riot man can make
In his short life to thy unceasing roar?
And yet, bold babbler, what art thou to HIM
Who drowned a world and heaped the waters far
Above its loftiest mountains? — a light wave
That breaks and whispers of its Maker's might. [column 2:] |
It is a very usual thing to hear these verses called
not merely the best of their author, but the best which have been
written
on the subject of Niagara. Its positive merit appears to us only
partial.
We have been informed that the poet had seen the great cataract
before writing the lines; but the Memoir prefixed to the present
edition,
denies what, for our own part, we never believed, for Brainard was
truly
a poet, and no poet could have looked upon Niagara, in the substance,
and
written thus about it. If he saw it at all, it must have been in fancy
— "at a distance" — [[Greet text=]] ekaV
[[=Greek
text]] — as the lying Pindar says he
saw
Archilocus, who died ages before the villain was born.
To the two opening verses we have no
objection; but
it may be well observed, in passing, that had the mind of the poet been
really "crowded with strange thoughts," and not merely engaged in
an
endeavor to think, he would have entered at once upon the thoughts
themselves,
without allusion to the state of his brain. His subject would have left
him no room for self.
The third line embodies an absurd,
and impossible,
not to say a contemptible image. We are called upon to conceive a
similarity
between the continuous downward sweep of Niagara, and the
momentary
splashing of some definite and of course trifling quantity of water from
a hand; for, although it is the hand of the Deity himself which is
referred to, the mind is irresistibly led, by the words "poured from
his
hollow hand," to that idea which has been customarily attached
to
such phrase. It is needless to say, moreover, that the bestowing upon
Deity
a human form, is at best a low and most unideal conception.† In fact
the
poet has committed the grossest of errors in likening the fall
to any material object; for the human fancy can fashion
nothing which
shall not be inferior in majesty to the cataract itself. Thus bathos is
inevitable; and there is no better exemplification of bathos than Mr.
Brainard has here given.‡
The fourth line but renders the matter
worse, for here
the figure is most inartistically shifted. The handful of water becomes
animate; for it has a front [page 121:] — that is, a forehead,
and upon this
forehead
the Deity proceeds to hang a bow, that is, a rainbow. At the same time
he "speaks in that loud voice, &c;" and here it is obvious that the
ideas of the writer are in a sad state of fluctuation; for he transfers
the idiosyncrasy of the fall itself (that is to say its sound) to the
one
who pours it from his hand. But not content with all this, Mr. Brainard
commands the flood to keep a kind of tally; for this is the low
thought which the expression about "notching in the rocks" immediately
and inevitably induces. The whole of this first division of the poem,
embraces,
we hesitate not to say, one of the most jarring, inappropriate, mean,
and
in every way monstrous assemblages of false imagery, which can be found
out of the tragedies of Nat Lee, or the farces of Thomas Carlyle.
In the latter division, the poet
recovers himself,
as if ashamed of his previous bombast. His natural instinct (for
Brainard
was no artist) has enabled him to feel that subjects which
surpass
in grandeur all efforts of the human imagination are well depicted only
in the simplest and least metaphorical language — a proposition as
susceptible of demonstration as any in Euclid. Accordingly, we find a
material
sinking in tone; although he does not at once discard all imagery. The
"Deep calleth unto deep" is nevertheless a great improvement upon his
previous
rhetoricianism. The personification of the waters above and below would
be good in reference to any subject less august. The moral reflections
which immediately follow, have at least the merit of simplicity; but
the
poet exhibits no very lofty imagination when he bases these reflections
only upon the cataract's superiority to man in the noise it can
create;
nor is the concluding idea more
spirited,
where the mere difference between the quantity of water which
occasioned
the flood, and the quantity which Niagara precipitates, is made the
measure
of the Almighty Mind's superiority to that cataract which it called by
a thought into existence.
But although "The Fall of Niagara"
does not deserve
all the unmeaning commendation it has received, there are,
nevertheless,
many truly beautiful poems in this collection, and even more certain
evidences
of poetic power. "To a Child, the Daughter of a Friend" is exceedingly
graceful and terse. "To the Dead" has equal grace, with more vigor,
and,
moreover, [column 2:] a touching air of melancholy. Its melody
is very rich, and in
the monotonous repetition, at each stanza, of a certain rhyme, we
recognise
a fantastic yet true imagination. "Mr. Merry's Lament for Long Tom"
would
be worthy of all praise were not its unusually beautiful rhythm an
imitation
from Campbell, who would deserve his high poetical rank, if only for
its
construction. Of the merely humorous pieces we have little to say. Such
things are not poetry. Mr. Brainard excelled in them, and they
are
very good in their place; but that place is not in a collection of poems.
The prevalent notions upon this head are extremely vague; yet we see no
reason why any ambiguity should exist. Humor, with an exception to be
made
hereafter, is directly antagonistical to that which is the soul of the
Muse proper; and the omni-prevalent belief, that melancholy is
inseparable
from the higher manifestations of the beautiful, is not without a firm
basis in nature and in reason. But it so happens that humor and that
quality
which we have termed the soul of the Muse (imagination) are both
essentially
aided in their development by the same adventitious assistance — that
of
rhythm and of rhyme. Thus the only bond between humorous verse and
poetry,
properly so called, is that they employ in common, a certain tool. But
this single circumstance has been sufficient to occasion, and to
maintain
through long ages, a confusion of two very distinct ideas in the brain
of the unthinking critic. There is, nevertheless, an individual branch
of humor which blends so happily with the ideal, that from the union
result
some of the finest effects of legitimate poesy. We allude to what is
termed " archness" — a trait with which popular feeling,
which is unfailingly
poetic, has invested, for example, the
whole character of the fairy. In the volume before us there is a brief
composition entitled "The Tree Toad" which will afford a fine
exemplification
of our idea. It seems to have been hurriedly constructed, as if its
author
had felt ashamed of his light labor. But that in his heart there was a
secret exultation over these verses for which his reason found it
difficult
to account, we know; and there is not a really imaginative man
within
sound of our voice to-day, who, upon perusal of this little "Tree Toad"
will not admit it to be one of the truest poems ever written by
Brainard. |
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