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Edgar Allan Poe and the Search for the Supernal

Rising Tide Foundation

Jan 22

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By David Gosselin

That little time with lyre and rhyme
To while away—forbidden things!
My heart would feel to be a crime
Unless it trembled with the strings.

-“Romance,” Edgar Allan Poe

Is it possible that much of the world remains captive to a false Poe mythology?

Whether in respect to his fiction, prose, or poetry the typical caricature of a sullen morbid eccentric continues to dominate the popular culture’s image of Edgar Allan Poe. Much of Poe’s work is treated like a Stephen King-grade thriller, spooky and entertaining, but little else.

But is this disneyfied portrait justified?

While often thought of as a “master of the macabre,” due to the dark themes treated in many of his stories, the popular readings have led many to treat Poe’s tales like something out a modern Hollywood film, rather than, say, a Classical Greek tragedy.

In reality, both Poe’s fiction and poetry are best understood as two mutually complimentary treatments of the same poetic principle of the Sublime, which he refers to as “supernal Loveliness” and “supernal Beauty.”

In “The Poetic Principle,” Poe writes:

“the struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness — this struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted — has given to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.”

The thread of the sublime can be traced throughout all of Poe’s works, beginning with his early poetry.

But before we examine some practical examples of the poetic principle, let’s disabuse ourselves from the official Poe mythology popularized by his enemies and ill-informed critics.

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Master of the Macabre?

The popular Poe mythos was demonstrably fabricated by his own personal enemy, Rufus Griswald. Griswald forged letters in Poe’s name, took over his literary estate from an impoverished aunt, and became the principle narrative controller for all things related to Poe’s legacy. Despite the deliberate slanders and toxic mythology, audiences have remained entranced by the notion of a tormented soul whose genius essentially lay in his ability to externalize the workings of his own troubled psyche. The famous French poet and Poe translator Charles Beaudelaire believed something similar, including the idea that Poe used mind-altering substances to achieve the states of dark enchantment that supposedly made his tales possible.

In Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works, Beaudelaire writes:

“I believe that, in many cases, not certainly in all, the intoxication of Poe was a mnemonic means, a method of work, a method energetic and fatal, but appropriate to his passionate nature. The poet had learned to drink as a laborious author exercises himself in filling note-books. He could not resist the desire of finding again those visions, marvellous or awful — those subtle conceptions which he had met before in a preceding tempest; they were old acquaintances which imperatively attracted him, and to renew his knowledge of them, he took a road most dangerous, but most direct. The works that give us so much pleasure to-day were, in reality, the cause of his death.”
—Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Works, Beaudelaire

As is often the case, Beaudelaire’s analysis sounds more like a textbook case of projection, given he was himself an unabashed hedonist who loved to experiment with drugs like opium and hashish.

In Poe’s case, the only people presumably using opium were the deranged characters in his stories like “Ligeia” or “Berenice.” The villains and madmen in his stories almost always get what’s coming to them; and seldom escape their conscience without consequence. Time and time again, Poe’s tales harken back to the principle embodied by the Classical Greek goddess Nemesis—the goddess of justice and vengeance. Nemesis always gets retribution on behalf of the gods for acts of great hubris and violence. A higher system of law always prevails.

Thus, a close reading of Poe’s work suggests he wasn’t so much a master of the macabre as a master of the Sublime.

In Search of the Sublime with Schiller and Poe

It’s notable that Poe’s personal annotated copy of his beloved metaphysical prose poem Eureka contains an inscription in his own hand of the original German poem “Die Grosser der Welt” (The Greatness of the World) by Friedrich Schiller. The cosmic system detailed in Poe’s Eureka also mirrors Schiller’s own ideas of the infinite as expressed in his early metaphysical poem.

So what was this Schiller poem that Poe found so affective and inscribed on the flyleaf of his own personal copy of Eureka?

The author presents a new English translation of Schiller’s “Greatness of the World”:

Towards the world from which Creation’s Spirit thrust
Itself when it emerged from chaos on a gust,
I venture swiftly,
Across the cosmic sea,
To cast my anchor where no breezes ever blow,
At creation’s last boundary and final shore.
I witnessed nascent stars, young sparks maturing into flames,
Ready to burn across the skies with cosmic enterprise,
I saw them play,
Racing towards their goal;
My gaze then wandered for a moment, veering right
Into unstarred expanses stripped of blaze and light.
Ecstatic hopes to reach the fringes of the world unseen
Propelled me into flight upon a twinkling beam.
Mystical and dreary,
Heaven behind me,
Where fledgling systems and embryonic life
Whirl ‘round the trek of Helios throughout the night.
When suddenly, I saw a stranger drawing near
Along the way, who said, “Wait! Pilgrim, what brings you here?”
“I sail towards
The infinite coast,
Towards the regions where no breezes ever blow—
Creation’s final boundary and untread shore.”
“Stop here! You sail for naught—Infinity alone’s ahead.”
“Stop here! You sail for naught—Infinity is all behind me, too!”
Eagle-eyed visions,
Fold your wings, fledglings,
Right here is where sweet Phantasy, in fearless flight,
Must cast her anchor down dejectedly tonight!”|
Translation © David B. Gosselin

The poem dates from Schiller’s early period. It describes a pilgrim in search of Infinity. Finally, Schiller’s pilgrim meets a fellow traveller; both find themselves surrounded by an Infinity that lies both behind and ahead of them.

Rather than an infinite world unbounded by any limits, Schiller’s poem treats Infinity as the absolute limit of the world itself, beyond which none can venture. The concept functions much in the same way a negative theology treats man’s knowledge of an unknowable and infinite God as the absolute limit which circumscribes all that is knowable. To know God is to fathom the fathomless. And yet, nothing can truly be fathomed without that fathomless Infinite which bounds all Creation. Here, the imagination must “cast down its anchor dejectedly” and wrestle with a Truth that escapes all comparison in words or images.

As Poe argues in Eureka, such knowledge is best approached with a poetical intuition, rather than mathematical or linear logic.

But despite the limitation of words and images, words and images are essentially all man has to work with. Hence, the purpose of poetry is to use words and images in ways that allow us to transcend their inherent limitations.

In “The Poetic Principle,” Poe describes the deeper spiritual implications of this poetical principle, first as it relates to words and images, and then to poetry and music proper:

“He who shall simply sing, with however glowing enthusiasm, or with however vivid a truth of description, of the sights, and sounds, and odors, and colors, and sentiments, which greet him in common with all mankind — he, I say, has yet failed to prove his divine title. There is still a something in the distance which he has been unable to attain. We have still a thirst unquenchable, to allay which he has not shown us the crystal springs. This thirst belongs to the immortality of Man. It is at once a consequence and an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us — but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by Poetry, —or when by Music, the most entrancing of the Poetic moods — we find ourselves melted into tears — we weep then — not as the Abbaté Gravina supposes — through excess of pleasure, but through a certain, petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses.”

Quoting Shelley, Poe refers to as innate spiritual hunger as “the desire of the moth for the star.” Man is endowed with the unique capacity to fathom the fathomless; through a sublime disposition, he becomes capable of developing the ability to personally acquaint himself with this supernal spring of Loveliness.

Here, music and poetry become the ideal mediums through which this immortal thirst can be awakened in our fellow mortals.

And that leads us to Poe’s own supernal aesthetic.

The Search for the Supernal

An image from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” illustrated by Gustave Doré

From the time of his earliest poems, we see the thread of the sublime and a kindred Schillerian spirit running throughout Poe’s work.

Take a simple strophic example like “To One in Paradise” (1831):

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o’er!
No more—no more—no more—
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy grey eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams—
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Poe’s longing is personified by someone who once tread the earth, but who has since departed from earth and dwells in paradise. Despite her parting from the sublunary realm and its fruits and flowers, the paradisal figure continues to animate all his dreams and trances back on earth.

The poem perfectly captures the tension that Poe explores throughout his poetical works.

The Philosophy of Composition

In his “Philosophy of Composition,” Poe walks us through the thinking process involved in creating a similar, albeit more elaborate and memorable work of the sublime, “The Raven.” Like many of his poems, “The Raven” demonstrates the same idea of reaching for a “something in the distance”—in this case a beloved—only this time he uses a more refined and sophisticated form of narrative and versification.

Poe specifically identifies his idea of sublime beauty as an effect that must be consciously created, and which in turn has the power to awaken a new sensibility in man through the pleasure it arouses:

“That pleasure which is at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the most pure is, I believe, found in the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect—they refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of soul…”

Interestingly, Poe’s notion of an immortal instinct echoes Schiller’s own idea of the Sublime, which he described as a delight “widely preferred to every pleasure by fine souls”:

“The feeling of the sublime is a mixed feeling. It is a combination of woefulness, which expresses itself in its highest degree as a shudder, and of joyfulness, which can rise up to enrapture, and, although it is not properly pleasure, is yet widely preferred to every pleasure by fine souls. This union of two contradictory sentiments in a single feeling proves our moral independence in an irrefutable manner. For as it is absolutely impossible that the same object stand in two opposite relations to us, so does it follow therefrom, that we ourselves stand in two different relations to the object, so that consequently two opposite natures must be united in us, which are interested in the conception of the same in completely opposite ways. We therefore experience through the feeling of the sublime, that the state of our mind does not necessarily conform to the state of the senses, that the laws of nature are not necessarily also those of ours, and that we have in us an independent principle, which is independent of all sensuous emotions.”
—On the Sublime, Friedrich Schiller

Poe is concerned with the kind of Beauty that is neither purely sensual nor intellectual, but the sublime kind whose effect he describes as a “pure elevation of the soul.”

Poe proceeds to outline the various kinds of subjects, tones and poetical forms that most fittingly assist in the creation of such Beauty.

In respect to tone, Poe writes:

“Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the tone of its highest manifestation—and all experience has shown that this tone is one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.”

Another chief concern for Poe was the musicality of poetry, given its unrivalled ability to generate the various states of emotion that are conducive to awakening the “immortal instinct.” Whether the desired state of emotion is sadness, joy, desire, or horror, a different kind of musicality is appropriate, just as the Greeks used anapestic meters for elegies, dactyls for epics, iambs for comedy and countless metrical variations depending on the kind of song intended.

Poe writes:

“Contenting myself with the certainty that Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected — is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music, perhaps, that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles — the creation of supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the angels.”

Hence, “The Raven’s” weightier trochaic rhythms and the stark concluding refrains of “Nevermore,” which echo like a melody in the minds of audiences long after they’ve read or heard the poem.

Poe proceeds to describe his process for selecting the most fitting topic for poetical development:

“Now, never losing sight of the object—supremeness or perfection at all points, I asked myself—’Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?’ Death, was the obvious reply. ‘And when,’ I said, ‘is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?’ From what I have already explained at some length the answer here also is obvious—’When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.’

Thus, rather than being the product of some morbid eccentricity or symptom of some incurable melancholy spurred by Saturnian influences, Poe’s fascination with images of death, the departed, the haunted and the spiritual are emblematic of his efforts to perfect an aesthetic of the sublime—an effort cut short by his own mysterious death.

On the Threshold the Sublime

Both Poe and Schiller describe an immortal or “independent principle,” which exists in man whether he chooses to act on it or not, whether he strives towards it or runs from it in fear—whether he embraces destiny or tries to cheat Fate.

The purpose of sublime art is to awaken and strengthen the immortal instinct which makes men emotionally capable and willing to envision and pursue lofty ideals in the first place. For as we know, every idea—beautiful or perverse—begins in the imagination. Without adequate aesthetic judgement, ugly ideas may appear beautiful, sublime haunting or dangerous.

When the desire for Supernal Loveliness becomes transparent, it becomes abundantly clear that our higher innate desires cannot be quenched by anything less. On the other hand, those who lack the needed sensitivity are the ones usually visited by the perverse “imps” detailed in Poe’s tales.

Thus for Poe, the Perverse is treated as the natural inversion of the Sublime. In the former, the universe asserts itself in opposition to the will of the Perverse; in the latter, the Sublime asserts itself in favor of a higher system of law.

And nothing is more delightful.

“Sweets and Sours”

In another early poem, Israfel (1831), we find the most transparent poetical example of Poe’s underlying philosophy, which he would hone and refine throughout his life.

The poem draws on the tension between the imperfections of the earthly realm—“a world of sweets and sours”—and the realm of angels. It begins with an inscription:

“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
“Whose heart-strings are a lute”;
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamoured moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli’s fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings—
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty,
Where Love’s a grown-up God,
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit—
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervour of thy lute—
Well may the stars be mute!
(…)

Poe describes a spirit in Heaven whose songs are perfect in comparison to his earthly ditties. The poem is ostensibly about music—and those who sing with passion vs. those who lack passion in their song.

However, a qualitative change occurs in the poem when the narrator begins to explain the reason for the discrepancy between his songs and those of Israfel:

Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely—flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

The narrator offers a defense of his own imperfect songs, arguing that any lack of fervor or passion in his mortal melodies isn’t due to any lack of desire on his part, but the fact that he is still bound by his earthly coil, and must therefore suffer the “sweets and sours”—the harmonies and disharmonies—that characterize the created world.

The tension between one’s hopes and desires, abilities and limitations, creates precisely the kind of poetical tension and longing that awakens in us an awareness of both our “thirst unquenchable” and the inherent limits of our powers.

However, rather than being demoralizing, the unattainability of Israfel’s heavenly musical perfection becomes itself a limitless font of inspiration on earth for all those who long to create heavenly music. We feel both a sorrow and the sweetness in our inadequacy, whose final resolution “we attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses” in dreams and songs.

The poem, like most of Poe’s poetry, is an invitation to join him in drinking from the true fount of all immortal inspiration, and to acquaint ourselves with those poetical crystal springs which flow forevermore.

In this way, we may nurture ourselves and our fellow mortals with the same “desire of the moth for the star” which Poe fed on until his dying day.

David Gosselin is a poet, translator, and linguist based in Montreal. He is the founder and Editor in Chief of the New Lyre journal and he publishes on Age of Muses. His first collection of poems is entitled Modern Dreams.

David is also the Director of the newest Rising Tide Foundation documentary ‘Edgar Poe’s Final Mystery: A Tale of Two Murders’ which can be viewed here:

The Rising Tide Foundation (RTF), a non-profit based out of Montreal, Canada, dedicated to the rigorous re-examination of Universal History and the principles governing the cyclical appearance of Renaissances and Dark Ages in human civilization.