The aim of poetry, according to
Poe, is not truth but pleasure--the rhythmical creation of
beauty. Poetry should be brief, indefinite, and musical. Its
chief instrument is sound. A certain quaintness or grotesqueness
of tone is a means for satisfying the thirst for supernal beauty.
Hence the musical lyric is to Poe the only true type of poetry; a
long poem does not exist. Readers who respond more readily to
auditory than to visual or motor stimulus are therefore Poe's
chosen audience. For them he executes, like Paganini, marvels
upon his single string. He has easily recognizable devices: the
dominant note, the refrain, the "repetend," that is to say the
phrase which echoes, with some variation, a phrase or line
already used. In such poems as "To Helen," "Israfel," "The
Haunted Palace," "Annabel Lee," the theme, the tone, the melody
all weave their magic spell; it is like listening to a
lute-player in a dream.
That the device often turns into a trick is equally true. In "The
Bells" and "The Raven" we detect the prestidigitator.
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