Text: Malakoff, “Affairs in France: Edgar A. Poe,” New York Times (New York, NY), vol. V, no. 1508, July 19, 1856, p. 2, col. 6

[page 2, column 6, continued:]

EDGAR A. POE.

Since I have referred to the book of this singular genius, I ought to record the progress of his fame in France. Criticisms continue to rain in a deluge on his extraordinary book, and I had thought been that exhausted. every, But possible here eulogism is had long ago one from the pen of M. BARBEY D’AUREVILLY, which contains more epithets than I ever recollect to have seen in the same number of lines. Every adjective has been pushed out of the dictionary for the occasion.

“There is indeed something Medusean in EDGAR POE — genius and destiny! His life and his talent frighten us. Everything is, in this great outlaw, sinister, black, terrible, of a profound and tragically voluntary disorder. EDGAR POE was an unfortunate of the most startling proportions. Aristocratic, like Lord BYRON; he was born chained to the yoke of a democracy. America, which covers with dollars the meanest mountebank, was for him the tower of starvation, and made him swallow every evening the key which GILBERT swallowed but once — in the agonies of death. The same eternal history, but with a still more beautiful variation in its inexhaustible cruelty! POE lived all his life, which was happily short, in disdain, in misery, and in ceaseless labor, for he worked like a negro in his slave country; but the sweat in which we are to eat our bread flowed fruitless over his stoical forehead. Unhappy vagabond he! He became a drunkard by misery of the heart, like SHERIDAN — poor BRINSLEY — who drank for hours, silently, in tears! Formed from a harder marble, EDGAR POE drank his chalice of fire with a colder frenzy. But the alcohol did none the less asphyxiate his powerful youth. In full physical and mental beauty, he died of delirium tremens in the street — no, not in the street, but in the gutter — stretched out helpless, far from God and damned, he believed, for he believed that! The fixed idea of POE, the idea which usurped his mind, which crushed him, but which in striking, found him impassible, was the idea of his damnation, without remission and without mercy. A thing as horrible as true, he accepted his position of reprobate and nursed it.”