Text: Anonymous, “Southern Literature,” New-York Tribune (New York, NY), vol. XXX, whle no. 9,101, June 8, 1870, p. 4, cols. 3-4

SOUTHERN LITERATURE.

Can anybody tell us what is “The Poesque?” Of Poe, per se, most of the old habitués of newspaper offices in New-York have a very distinct remembrance as an exceedingly seedy, ill-conditioned individual, who wrote, when sober, some genuine poetry, and when drunk a great deal of labored trash. The few real poems are there to speak for themselves; unhealthy and powerful as some poisonous growth, yet giving evidence of a unique, absolute genius, both tempting and impossible for mere talent to counterfeit. Lately, however, he has gone up among the gods of the South. Every new aspirant for literary honors, below Mason and Dixon's line, is now approved or condemned as Poesque or non-Poesque. The new adjective troubles us. If to be Poesque means that these people are out of money, and out at elbows, trying to make their daily bread or morning bitters by scribbling verses or slanders upon men who befriended them, the case is lamentable enough; but if it means that the mob of gentlemen and ladies who write with such alarming ease in the South all design to draw their inspiration from “the scoriac rivers that roll their sulphurous currents down Yaanek,” the state of affairs is appalling and must be looked to at once. The Wertherian and Byronic epidemics in our fathers’ days were disastrous; but what are we to do if the Southern school-girls and boys, instead of go-into [[going into]] well-conducted offices or shops, permanently abandon themselves to “the mad pride of intellectuality,” or to wandering down ghoul-haunted woodlands with Psyche their soul?

Such a catastrophe really seems imminent. A crop of novelists, poets, and essayists has sprung up in the South since the war thick as mushrooms after a rain. There is, too, a constant boastful attempt to parade and thrust them en masse upon our notice. The latest compilation contains two hundred and forty writers, all living, and with the great majority of them Poe's Poems seem actually to have constituted the sole literature with which they were acquainted. The compilation is worth attention, as it gives very fairly an insight into the present intellectual condition of the South as developed in literature. The editor indulges, from preface to finis, in a perpetual cackle of delight. He marshals his host, from Mrs. Southworth to the callow fledgling who has chirped feebly once or twice in the county newspaper, as the Immortals at whose coming the ancient masters, Greek as well as English, will hasten to yield their long-held thrones. When we know that this Mrs. Southworth and the author of St. Elmo (as the “De Stael of America”) lead this troop we can have a very fair conception of their rank and quality.

There is something pitiable to us in all this. We cannot laugh at the proud display of “keen satires written by young ladies as graduating odes.” at the wild confusion of [column 2:] “scintillating gleams — zephyrs freighted with perfume — horror-glares — magnolia blooms — the tragedies about Greek maidens, Scandinavian gods, or Aztec prophets,” that rush pell-mell out of the brains of this people when the first outlet of pen and ink is given them. If now and then a glimpse of plain natural feeling appears, the editor hastens to apologize for the homeliness, and turns us to some author “intensely Southern;” by which he means, he tells us, “abounding in uncontrolled emotion, clothed in tropical drapery.” What can be done with this people? Is it worth while to sit down and reason with them? to tell them that vague gaspings for thought, without definite thought in the brain, and the utterance instead of a weak dribble of flamboyant adjectives, is not literature? Can they understand that “never to have spent more than two hours in writing the longest effort of his muse” does not “speak volumes for the genius of Mr. Flash,” but accounts for the effusions so worthy of his name. Are Bombast and Gush ineradicable in their nature? When, in the language of one of themselves, “the amber-hued Falernian of Truth and the aromatic Tokay of Passion are set before them,” must they always choose the Tokay?

We chose to be more hopeful about our Southern brethren, and to reject this book, and in fact any recent offering they have made to literature, as a fair sign of their intellectual status. Surely the experience of the last ten years has taught them sterner and nobler lessons than this mawkish sentimentality. During the war their actions proved them to be brave men and resolute, long-enduring women. “They learned in suffering,” says our editor, “what they here teach in song.” Suffering such as theirs ordinarily teaches very little song, but a large amount of sound common sense; and however much their literature may belie them, we believe they learned the lesson. “It was Ares who led them to Athenæ,” says their eulogist, explaining the sudden appearance of Southern writers after the war. Heaven forbid that the dragon's teeth should yield another such crop! But the truth is, we believe that the books which have inundated us are no exposition of Southern thought or feeling, but so many attempts to make money. The first mode of money-making to which an educated person turns when thrown on his own resources is almost invariably authorship. They would shrink from attempting to make a table or a chair, yet they go to work boldly at novel, essay, or poem, without materials, tools, or knowledge of even the rudiments of art. Our Southern friends, we trust, as more ways of earning a livelihood open to them, will see their mistake; and then, when time has made real their new and broader views of life, we may hope for a literature from them that will be as genuine and strong an exponent of their condition as these crude efforts are frothy and worthless.