It is
jugglery, though such juggling as only a master-musician can
perform. In "Ulalume" and other showpieces the wires get crossed
and the charm snaps, scattering tinsel fragments of nonsense
verse. Such are the dangers of the technical temperament
unenriched by wide and deep contact with human feeling.
Poe's theory of the art of the short story is now familiar
enough. The power of a tale, he thought, turned chiefly if not
solely upon its unity, its harmony of effect. This is illustrated
in all of his finest stories. In "The Fall of the House of Usher"
the theme is Fear; the opening sentence strikes the key and the
closing sentence contains the climax. In the whole composition
every sentence is modulated to the one end in view. The autumn
landscape tones with the melancholy house; the somber chamber
frames the cadaverous face of Roderick Usher; the face is an
index of the tumultuous agitation of a mind wrestling with the
grim phantom Fear and awaiting the cumulative horror of the final
moment. In "Ligeia," which Poe sometimes thought the best of all
his tales, the theme is the ceaseless life of the will, the
potency of the spirit of the beloved and departed woman.
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