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Chapter III
Origin of the Burlesque in Poe
Part I: Early Recognition of Poe as a Satirist
Thus far in examining the origins of Poe, we have considered only that element which showed itself in a serious vein in his early stories. Indeed, it is the element, or tone, which is usually associated with him. But there was a young Poe who also attempted the comic — one who indulged in his early period even more in the burlesque and the grotesque than in the serious, or arabesque, and this element in his nature manifested itself throughout his career. More than a third of his stories deal with hoaxes, mystifications, satires, and grotesqueries. Professor Fred Lewis Pattee, one of his ablest critics, has offered the opinion that Poe began his career as a fictionist with the deliberate intention of travestying the extravagant tales and styles of his own age rather than of imitating them. He would piece even “Metzengerstein,”“Berenice,” and “Morella” among Poe's tales meant for banter and satire. He concludes his discussion of Poe's humor thus: [page 250:]
Had Tales of the Folio Club been published, as Poe did his best they should be, in 1833 or even in 1836, they would have been, by their author's intention at least, a book primarily humorous, a book surprising in its originality and variety, brilliant in its workmanship, a book of carefully wrought hoaxes, of burlesques and imitations, and in addition to these lighter elements, e book containing two or three serious pieces that are near to poetry, as, for example, the sketch, ‘Silence.’(1)
Professor James Southall Wilson would make even fewer reservations in regard to the humorous intent of this projected early collection of Poe's. He believes that in the preface to the “Tales of the Folio Club” it is made grotesquely clear that the tales which he meant to include in that collect” on were all either satires or burlesques.”(2) He thinks that the “young trickster” was learning how to write by “imitating in burlesque the foibles of fashionable literature, from the epigrammatic cleverness of Bulwer and the extravagancies of the Blackwood article to what he considered the prose-poetic nonsense of the Transcendentalists or the frozen horrors of the German tale of terror.”(2) [page 251:]
I should hesitate to agree, with Dr. Pattee, that Poe meant to be humorous in “Metzengerstein,” “Berenice,” and “Morella” or with Professor Wilson, that he also wrote “Silence” and “The Visionary” with burlesque intent. I should, however, find it even more difficult to accept the opinion of another critic who writes:
In writing “Berenice” he could not have intended to copy the style or to paraphrase any ideas obtained from other sources: it was conceived by his own darkened mind. In this tale, as published in the “Southern Literary Messenger,” Poe described a state of mind that by no acuteness of reasoning could he have related had it not been a personal experience.(3)
Poe attempted the humorous, I believe, because of his great admiration for the brilliant cleverness of Bulwer, Disraeli, and others among the younger fictionists rising to startling popularity in England. He was reading Blackwood's Magazine, no doubt, with its tales of horror and its narratives of sensations under appalling circumstances; but he was also reading the clever articles of Fraser's and, more significant still, the sparkling, cynical tales and sketches which filled the New Monthly Magazine. To this latter [page 252:] periodical Disraeli, Lady Morgan, Horatio Smith, Letitia Langdon (L. E. L.) and even N. P. Willis contributed frequently and regularly during those years when Poe was eagerly seeking the path to popularity. He determined, I think, to study their methods, imitate their styles, attempt articles in their manners, and, above all, achieve, if possible, their diversity. Poe's early work showed great variety for the very reason that he had not yet found a particular manner of his own. Moreover, even in his apprenticeship period, he had, no doubt, conceived the notion that “diversity and variety” were to some degree, indicative of genius, or greatness. As late as 1846 he was maintaining, “I do not consider any one of my stories better than another” and each tale is equally good of its kind.”(4)
In my opinion, he was never particularly happy in the comic vein and became a trotter primarily of serious tales not so much because of his failure to make his 1ighter stories understood, as because of his natural predilection for the melancholy, the “arabesque,” the singular heightened into the strange and [page 253:] mystical” with a skillful shading of terror became his true metier. He understood perfectly, too, that his genius had little bent toward comic creations. He spoke of himself as “not of the merry mood” and as unaccustomed to “the perusal of somewhat similar things” as Georgia Scenes.(5) Satire was, of course, another thing from the “merry mood,” but when he found his satires mistaken for attempts at the purely comic, he grew, or pretended to grow, contemptuous of some of his lighter tales. When he finally achieved the volume publication for which he had striven for several years, he wrote in the Preface: “There are one or two of the articles here (conceived and executed in the purest spirit of extravaganza) to which I expect no serious attention and of which I shall speak no farther.”(6)
Poe's comic vein von early recognition from critics, however. John P. Kennedy wrote him, “I like your grotesque — it is of the very best stamp, and I am sure you will do wonders for yourself in the comic.”(7) J. K. Paulding wrote [page 254:] White of the Messenger: “His quiz on Willis and the burlesque of Blackwood's were not only capital, but what is more, were understood by all.”(8) Among the commendatory notices in the Tales of 1840, the humorous tales are given laudation equal to the serious ones: “Bon-Bon is equal to anything Theodore Hook ever wrote”; “Of the lighter contributions — of the diamonds which sparkle beside the more sombre gems, commend us, thou spirit of eccentricity, forever and a day to The Duc — the best thing of the kind that we have ever read or ever expect to read”; “‘The Tale of Jerusalem’ is one of those felicitous hits which are the forte of Edgar A. Poe.”
There was every reason in 1836 to expect that Poe would develop into a successful writer of comic or satiric sketches, if he wished to exploit this rich vein he had discovered. He failed, however, to take into account his own subtlety in satire and the lack of penetration on the part of his readers.
It will be remembered that in writing to T. White of his failure to interest Harper's in publishing “Tales of the Folio Club,” J. K. Paulding had explained [page 255:] that the publishers “most especially object that there is a degree of obscurity in their application, which will prevent ordinary readers from comprehending their drift, and consequently from enjoying the fine satire they convey. It requires a degree of familiarity with various kinds of knowledge which they do not possess, to enable them to relish the joke: the dish is too refined for them to banquet on.”(9) The publishers, through Paulding, informed Poe that if he would “lower himself a little to the ordinary comprehension of the generality of readers,” they would be glad to consider publishing his work. Paulding himself has added that he should advise Poe “to amply his fine humor, and his extensive acquirements, to more familiar subjects of satire,” since, “for Satire to be relished, it is necessary that it should be leveled at something with which readers are familiar.” Even so cultured a reader as Kennedy apparently missed the “fine satire” in these tales, for he wrote Poe: [page 256:]
Some of your bizarreries have been mistaken for satire and admired too in that character. They deserved it, but you did not, for you did not intend them so.(10)
Tactfully Poe replied;
You are nearly, but not altogether right in relation to the satire of some of my Tales. Most of them were intended for half banter, half satire although I might not have fully acknowledged this to be their aim even to myself. “Lionizing” and “Loss of Breath” were satires properly speaking — at least so meant — the one of the rage for Lions and the facility of becoming one — the other of the extravagances of Blackwood.(11)
The dish served up in Poe's satire has also proved “too refined” for most of his critics since his own day. As we have seen, there is the widest divergence of opinion among them as to the purport of many of these early tales. As Professor Wilson has explained,(12) Poe was himself responsible for this later misinterpretation because his subsequent revisions removed many traced of his original burlesque intent. But the fact remains that they missed fire among his contemporaries because he chose as the objects of his satire writers and topics not generally familiar to American readers. Perhaps, too, he overlooked the [page 257:] fact that the burlesque pieces in the British magazines, which he had taken for his models, were executed in a vein of cruder, more understandable satire.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 250:]
1. Op. cit., 126.
2. “The Devil was In It,” loc. cit., 215 and 216.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 251:]
3. John W. Robertson, Commentary on the Bibliography of Edgar A. Poe. II, 119.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 252:]
4. See his letters to Griswold, 1846 (?), Letters, 228, and to P. P. Cooke, August 9, 1846, ibid., 226.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 253:]
5. Review of Georgia Scenes, S.L.M., March, 1836, Works, VIII, 258.
6. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, 1840.
7. Feb. 9, 1836. Letters, 28.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 254:]
8. March, 1856. Woodberry, op. cit., I, 157-8.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 255:]
9. Paulding to White, March 3, 1836. Woodberry, op. cit., I, 157-8.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 256:]
10. Kennedy to Poe, Feb. 9, 1836. Letters, 28.
11. Poe to Kennedy, Feb. 11, 1836. Ibid., 30.
12. The Devil Was in It,” loc. cit., 216.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RLH35, 1935] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story (Hudson)