By David Gosselin (an original contribution to The Rising Tide Foundation)
That little time with lyre and rhyme While Edgar Allan Poe’s prominence in the world of arts and letters is undeniable, his deeper philosophy, aesthetics and character are still conspicuously misunderstood. In popular culture, Poe remains type cast as some kind of character from a Stephen King film adaptation. Otherwise, he’s often just caricatured as some sort of disturbed genius whose haunting works were simply the product of his own incurable madness. In the critical sphere, Poe’s reputation hasn’t fared much better; he’s considered less of an authority than, say, a T.S. Eliot or W.H. Auden, who command almost unlimited literary cachet.[AS1] But what if both critical and general audiences have been reading Poe all wrong? More often than not, the sophisticated psychological and spiritual level with which Poe approached poetry and literature is treated as if it were something conceived for histrionic performances at a Vincent Price spook fest. Poe is depicted as the composer of spooky jingles and memorable sing-song poetry, all of which has only managed to remain relevant thanks to the popular tastes of “the masses.” So T.S. Eliot believed Poe was “somewhat of the inferior school”; Ralph Waldo Emerson referred to him as the “jingle man,” while Henry James believed “an enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” The latest film Edgar Allan Poe’s Final Mystery: A Tale of Two Murders takes a fresh look at Poe’s legacy by addressing the many misconceptions surrounding his life and work. New revelations concerning the often concealed biographical details of his life (and death), as well as the nature of his enemies and political connections, cast Poe in a profoundly different light — one that will undoubtedly astonish Poe-admirers from all corners of the world. Now, this essay takes things a step further by offering a few additional insights into Poe’s philosophy of composition, and the significance of his Poetic Principle in respect to both the spiritual and artistic questions of our age. So, what do the popular and critical readers of Poe usually miss? From the Grotesque to the SublimeOne of the keys to understanding Poe’s work is his use of the principle of the Sublime. In his tales, the Sublime is primarily expressed in its tragic form. Gruesome crimes, vengeance, murder, adultery, pacts with the devil, madmen are all prominently featured. In these cases, the principle of the Sublime usually makes its appearance in the form of a negation, where the principle of Justice asserts itself over the perverse inclinations of villains and madmen. Thus, the murderer in the famous “The Tell-tale Heart” thinks he hears a throbbing heart, which he believes to be the heart of the old man he’s just murdered and hidden under the floorboards. However much he tries, he can’t seem to silence the gnawing, throbbing sound of a beating heart inside his head. Nothing less than his own confession offers a way out, which is exactly what he yells out before the authorities who have suddenly appeared after reports of strange sounds coming from the old man’s house. In “The Masque of the Red Death,” an oligarchy revelling in unbridled luxury within its fortified castle during an outbreak of the plague confines itself in the perfect space for the Red Death to ravage everyone. While they thought their castle of earthly delights could save them from the fate ravaging the masses beyond their castled precincts, the Red Death finds its own uncanny way of reaching the decadent congregants. Amid a brilliant ball and masquerade, the celebrants find themselves masquerading with none other than the Red Death itself, which quickly devours them all without mercy. The story reminds us that none are immune from the ravages of Fate, and our attempts to escape such things may oftentimes become the very thing that invites these forces to reap their vengeance. Regardless of the subject, in tale after tale, Poe always introduces a higher system of law which announces itself by overruling the perverse desires and hubris of wily characters. In his essay “On the Sublime,” the poet Friedrich Schiller provides an apt description of the principle at work in Poe’s tales, and the reasons for the strange delight we take in them. Schiller describes the feeling as follows:
Given Poe’s fondness for Schiller and his close study of the German poet’s work (which we previously explored here), we shouldn’t be surprised that Poe developed his own masterly way of applying the principle of the Sublime, and pioneered a new field of literature in the process. While the Sublime doesn’t easily lend itself to description, one can observe that we as limited beings in both perception and discernment on occasion find ourselves in moments where we catch glimpse of a higher system of law operating out of sight. While perhaps absent from our quotidian lives, under the right circumstances, events or actions beyond our control remind us that we too are subject to a higher system of law — which no man can overrule — and which everyone must ultimately serve. And indeed, nothing invites such revelations like hideous crimes and gruesome betrayals. For the Classical Greeks, this principle was embodied by the goddess Nemesis, who in Greek tragedy represented the divine retribution exacted from mortals for their hubris (excessive pride or arrogance) and their turning away from the higher principles of Natural Law. Thus many of Poe’s tales may be rightly viewed as adaptations of the Nemesis principle and its dark consequences. As Schiller reminds us, “although it is not properly pleasure, is yet widely preferred to every pleasure by fine souls.” The Poetic PrincipleIn contrast to his tales of the grotesque and arabesque, we find in Poe’s poetry the purest expression of the Sublime in service of what he terms “supernal Beauty.” Rather than expressed dramatically through negation, we find the poetical principle expressed in its idealized form, thanks to Poe’s apt choice of subjects, images and melodies. Perhaps the best encapsulation of the philosophy underlying his poetry appears in one dense paragraph from his essay “The Poetic Principle.” Given the passage is essentially the perfect distillation of Poe’s poetic principle, we quote it in full:
Said otherwise, in its highest expression the poetic principle acts like a spectre, riveting our senses and reminding us of that which dwells beyond our mortal grasp. So Poe uses Shelley’s lines “the desire of the moth for the star” to capture the spirit of poetical longing which ultimately sits on the throne of all our souls, whether we embrace it or not. The fact that we may — at least temporarily — cast off our tightly bound mortal coil and learn to feed this desire with the aid of music and poetry’s supernal rhythms, remind us of our dual nature: we are the only creatures uniquely capable of partaking in both the mortal and immortal spheres. But while the necessity of partaking in the former comes without any choice, the latter necessarily comes as a choice — or a desire — which we can choose to pursue and cultivate within ourselves. Interestingly, Christian theologian, philosopher and author C.S. Lewis describes the nature of this very same desire in his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” using the German word “Sehnsucht”:
Thus, Poe’s philosophy of verse arguably isn’t so much an aesthetic theory as it is a philosophy of Man applied to poetry. And even beyond simply the domain of wisdom or wisdom literature, or didactic forms of poetry, Poe’s poetical ideal pertains to that principle which is necessary to awaken and cultivate that indwelling desire for Beauty, Truth, and Goodness in the first place. Poe knew that if a population wasn’t in a disposition to receive beautiful and impassioned conceptions in the realms of the arts, they could never pursue them in the real world. Beauty awakens those deeper desires; the Sublime inspires us with the will and courage to pursue them in the real world. Supernal AestheticsPoe implicitly understood poetry and spirituality as two facets of the same reality; both pertained to man’s relationship to the mysterious source of Beauty from which all creation springs, which mundane life and its quotidian rhythms often drown out. Poetry serves to lift that veil of mutability and familiarity, and to shine light on those eternal things which are always there and always waiting. As Percy Bysshe Shelley writes in his Defence of Poetry:
And indeed, Shelley, whom Poe greatly admired and ready very closely, argued that the poetic principle was essential to any living spiritual tradition. In his “Defence of Poetry” Shelley observes the natural poetry abounding in the teachings of Christ:
Consequently, Shelley argues that the corruption of Western spiritual institutions shouldn’t be attributed to any intrinsic institutional failure, but to the extinction of the poetic principle within said institutions:
These observations beg the question: can any religious or spiritual movement truly survive and thrive without the poetic principle? Was Poe’s choice of compositional method just a matter of poetic taste, or was it a spiritual intervention on poetry itself? Arguably, centuries of critical analysis and exegesis have done as much to obscure as to clarify the essential teachings and poetry of the West’s great spiritual movements. As Shelley reminds us in the same essay:
And indeed, there is much evidence to support Shelley’s claims and Poe’s underlying philosophy regarding poetical composition and its spiritual function. As Dana Gioia observes in “Poetry and Christianity,” the role of sacred hymns, song and poetry have always occupied a fundamental place in Christianity’s sacred texts:
In the same way poetry has always animated man’s spiritual institutions in their living forms, a spiritual principle has always animated Poe’s living verses. Arguably, his work cannot be truly appreciated unless we’ve wrestled with this same principle ourselves. Otherwise, all we’re left with are repetitive verses and meaningless jingles, much like a spiritual life reduced to turgid liturgies, rigid superstitions, and pretensions of piety — without ever experiencing the real thing within ourselves and others. IsrafelOne of the clearest ways of analyzing Poe’s own poetical approach to the spirit is by reading some of his early poetry. Poe’s early poems reflects his guiding philosophy most transparently — which in later works appears veiled, visible largely only through its effect on the audience. A notable example is the early poem “Israfel” (1831), which Poe composed while he was still studying at West Point when he was 22 years old. In “Israfel,” we find perhaps the most explicit treatment of the Poetic Principle per se. While in “The Raven” the poetic principle is expressed through the narrator’s longing for a departed beloved, whom he now hopes rests “in the distant Aden,” in “Israfel,” the longing is spurred by the beautiful music of an angel in Heaven, whose music surpasses all “mortal melody.” The poem begins with a verse from the Qur’an: And the angel Israfel, whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures. —KORAN In Heaven a spirit doth dwell And the giddy stars (so legends tell), And they say (the starry choir But the skies that angel trod, Therefore, thou art not wrong, If I could dwell The poem is ostensibly about music, and those who sing with passion versus those who lack passion in their song. At first, the poem is laudatory, praising the remarkable strains of the angel Israfel. However, by the penultimate stanza the tone shifts from laudatory to plaintive. Yes, Heaven is thine; but this At the heart of “Israfel” lies the tension between two worlds: the sidereal realm of angels and the sublunary realm “of sweets and sours,” the mortal vale we all inhabit. The narrator recognizes the limitations of his own song, which serves as the ultimate reminder of a music which transcends the capabilities of even the world’s greatest bards and musicians. The thought that his songs might fall short of the beauty and passion which animates Israfel’s lyre weighs heavily on the narrator. Yet he musters a defence: the discrepancy between the two qualities of song isn’t due to a lack of desire on his part, but the condition of his own earthly lot. If I could dwell Now, if Poe were a minor poet, the significance of the poem could be summed up by a literal interpretation of the final stanza. The angels sing better songs in their heavenly abode because they inhabit a perfect world. But familiarity with Poe’s deeper philosophy allows us to recognize that the tension between the two worlds of “Israfel” and the narrator is what makes us conscious that we are all stricken by the same desire. The tension between our desires and abilities, the weight of our limitations and the boundlessness of our dreams, creates precisely the kind of poetical tension that awakens something transcendent, supernal, within us. Said otherwise, the only way to transcend our natural limitations is to embrace them. Only through the artful wedding of music and poetry is this immortal instinct truly awakened in Man— and only through these mediums can it be truly cultivated and preserved. For just this reason, one isn’t without cause if he “despises an unimpassioned song,” or sheds tears when hearing a heavenly melody. As Poe reminds us, nothing brings us closer to our desired object than music:
The Philosophy of CompositionFor Poe the pairing of music and poetry was never a matter of artistic preference, convention or style. He understood that when music and poetry disappear, our deepest and noblest desires disappear with them. As St. Augustine reminds us:
Poe’s short but melodic piece of strophic poetry “To One In Paradise” (1831) is another transparent instance of his guiding philosophy. He composed the poem nearly 15 years before “The Raven” (1844):
The narrator’s longing is personified by someone who has departed the mortal world and now dwells in paradise. Despite her absence from the sublunary realm and all its “fruits and flowers,” the paradisal figure continues to animate the narrator’s dreams and trances from beyond — breathing life into those moments where his creative spirit lives. Poe’s supernal aesthetics remind us that in the face of the seemingly infinite gulf separating Heaven and Earth, we should not despair at our incapacity — we should embrace it. In such instances, on the part of “souls fittingly constituted,” a different music sometimes appears, which “cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels.” Conclusion: The Desire of the Moth for the StarThe desire of the moth for the star, —Percy Bysshe Shelley, “One Word Is Too Often Profaned.” Poe’s special appreciation for the works of Shelley and his overall vision for poetry shines the clearest light on Poe’s compositional method and its inspiration. In a review of Alciphron, a Poem, for Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in January 1840, Poe specifically references Shelley’s “The Sensitive Plant” as emblematic of the poetical ideal he pursued throughout his life:
The conclusion of “The Sensitive Plant” reads:
Poe’s very own ecstatic defence of the poetic principle specifically includes Shelley’s line “the desire of the moth for the star”, from his poem “One Word Is Too Often Profaned.” The poem was addressed to a very dear friend of Shelley’s, Jane Williams, to whom he addressed many poems.
The word “love” is “too often profaned” for the poet to use it to describe his relationship with Jane. Only an original poem suitably conveys the poet’s true meaning and emotion. It expresses a profound love for his friend, which isn’t of the familial or erotic kind, but something spiritual and transcendent; they both share the same profound yearning and desire which moves all devotees of the Beautiful and Sublime. In the words of Poe, this desire “has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.” Or as C.S. Lewis preached, “this hunger is better than any other fullness, this poverty better than all other wealth.” In conclusion, while Poe’s life and work were tragically cut short, and many of his greatest compositions surely never made it on paper, let us inspire ourselves with the poet’s great vision; and let us to cultivate the same desire of the moth for the star which animated Poe until his dying day. To learn more about Poe and the work to revive his legacy, watch: 
David Gosselin is a poet, translator, researcher and filmmaker. He publishes a weekly journal of arts and letters on Substack called Age of Muses. Discover his new expanding Theatre of the Sublime too, which includes his latest films, The Devil at Woodstock, Reclaiming the Mysteries and The Jesuit Government in Paraguay. His latest book is titled, A Renaissance or New Middle Ages: Magic, Mystery and the Trance-formation of the West. You're currently a free subscriber to Rising Tide Foundation. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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