John Henry Ingram

“ Poe could not have written The Raven in youth. It exhibits a method so positive as almost to compel us to accept, against the denial of his associates, his own account of its building. The maker does keep a firm hand on it throughout, and for once seems to set his purpose above his passion. This appears in the gravely quaint diction, and in the contrast between the reality of everyday manners and the profounder reality of a spiritual shadow upon the human heart. The grimness of fate is suggested by phrases which it requires a masterly hand to subdue to the meaning of the poem. ”

“ Not only is the whole conception and construction of the poem evidence of his inventive originality, not only are the artistic alliteration, the profusion of open vowel sounds and the melodious metre, testimony to his sense of beauty, but, by the introduction of the third rhyme into the fourth line of the stanza, and by the new, the novel, insertion of a fifth line between that fourth line and the refrain, he did really do, what, as he pointed out, no man had done for centuries, an original thing in verse! ”

“ But the truth was Poe found as the most distinctive—the only salient—feature in his contemporary's poem the refrain,
"Thou art lost to me forever, Isadore."
Naturally, Poe's genius impelled him to improve upon the simple repetend: "I considered it," he says, "with regard to its susceptibility of improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used the refrain, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but depends for its impression upon the force of monotone—both in sound and thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity—of repetition. ”

“ In the higher qualities of poetry it is better than The Raven; but there is not one man in a million who could be brought to agree with me in this opinion. The Raven, of course, is far the better as a work of art; but in the true basis of all art, The Sleeper is the superior. ”

“ William Minto, in a remarkably thoughtful and original essay [1] —have elected to place entire reliance upon Poe's statements, as given in The Philosophy of Composition; we, for reasons to be given, can only regard them as the result of an afterthought, as the outcome of a desire—or perhaps of a necessity—to produce an effect; to create another sensation.
Those unable or unwilling to accept the poet's theory for The Raven's composition have diligently sought for the source of its inspiration—for the germ out of which it grew. ”

“ This led me at once to a single word as the best refrain.
"The question now arose," pursues the poet, "as to the character of the word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the division of the poem into stanzas was of course a corollary, the refrain forming the close to each stanza. That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt, and these considerations inevitably led me to the long o as the most sonorous vowel in connection with r as the most producible consonant. ”

“ Thus far the theme, the refrain, and the word selected for the refrain, have been somewhat closely paralleled in the poem by Pike, whilst over the transmutation of the heroine's name from Isadore into Lenore no words need be wasted.
But the ballad of "Isadore" contains no allusion to the "ghastly grim and ancient Raven"—the ominous bird whose croaking voice and melancholy "nevermore" has found an echo in so many hearts. Where then did Poe obtain this sable, sombre auxiliary, the pretext, at he tells us, for the natural and continuous repetition of the refrain? ”

“ Autant certains écrivains affectent l'abandon, visant au chef-d'œuvre les yeux fermés, pleins de confiance dans le disordre, et attendant que les caractères jetés au plafond retombent en poème sur le parquet, autant Edgar Poe—l'un des hommes les plus inspires que je connaisse—a mis d'affectation à cacher la spontanéité, a simuler le sangfroid et la délibération. ”

“ As to The Raven, tell me what you shall say about it! There is certainly a power—but it does not appear to me the natural expression of a sane intellect in whatever mood; and I think that this should be specified in the title of the poem. There is a fantasticalness about the 'Sir or Madam,' and things of the sort which is ludicrous, unless there is a specified insanity to justify the straws. Probably he—the author—intended it to be read in the poem, and he ought to have intended it. The rhythm acts excellently upon the imagination, and the 'nevermore' has a solemn chime with it. ”

“ While the classic tongues, especially the Greek, possess, by power of accent, several advantages for versification over our own, chiefly through greater abundance of spondaic feet, we have other and very great advantages of sound by the modern usage of rhyme. Alliteration is nearly the only effect of that kind which the ancients had in common with us. It will be seen that much of the melody of 'The Raven' arises from alliteration, and the studious use of similar sounds in unusual places. ”

“ We are permitted to copy [in advance of publication] from the second No. of The American Review, the following remarkable poem by Edgar Poe. In our opinion it is the most effective single example of 'fugitive poetry' ever published in this country, and unsurpassed in English poetry for subtle conception, masterly ingenuity of versification and consistent sustaining of imaginative lift and 'pokerishness.' It is one of those 'dainties bred in a book,' which we feed on. It will stick to the memory of everybody who reads it. ”

“ Browning thought fit, at a later period, to speak in terms of stronger admiration of Poe's poem. Writing to an American correspondent she said: "The Raven has produced a sensation—a 'fit horror,' here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the Nevermore, and one acquaintance of mine, who has the misfortune of possessing 'a bust of Pallas,' never can bear to look at it in the twilight. Our great poet, Mr. Browning, author of Paracelsus, &c., is enthusiastic in his admiration of the rhythm." ”

“ A perusal of Pike's poem, however, rendered it needless for Poe to seek far for the needed word, for, not only does the refrain to Isadore contain the antithetic word to never, and end with the ōre syllable, but in one line of the poem are "never" and "more," and in others the words "no more," "evermore," and "for ever more"; quite sufficient, all must admit, to have supplied the analytic mind of our poet with what he needed. ”

“ The effect of this originality of combination is," as he justly claims, "aided by other unusual and some altogether novel effects, arising from an extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and alliteration."
This is, indeed, a modest method of placing before his public the markedly original variations from known and well-worn forms of versification. "The possible varieties of metre and stanza are," as Poe remarks, "absolutely infinite, and yet, for centuries, no man, in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original thing. ”

“ As has already been pointed out Poe made no claim to originality as regarded either the rhythm or the metre of the Raven: the measures of each of the lines composing the stanzas of his poem had been often used before, but to cite his own words with respect to this feature of the work, "what originality the Raven has, is in their combination into stanza, nothing even remotely approaching this combination has ever been attempted. ”

“ As regards Poe's favorite name of Lenore, an early use of it may be pointed out in his poem entitled "Lenore," published in the Pioneer for 1842, the germ of the said poem having been first published in 1831.
We are now about to touch more solid ground. In 1843 Edgar Poe appears to have been writing for The New Mirror, a New York periodical edited by his two acquaintances, G. P. Morris and N. P. Willis. In the number for October the 14th appeared some verses entitled Isadore: they were by Albert Pike, the author of an Ode to The Mocking Bird and other pieces once well-known. ”

“ For the purposes of poetry it is quite sufficient that a thing is possible, or at least that the improbability be not offensively glaring. It is true that in several ways, as you say, the lamp might have thrown the bird's shadow on the floor. ”

“ As might be expected Pike's metre and rhythm are very much less dexterously managed than are Poe's, but, to some extent the intention was to produce an effect similar to that carried out afterwards in the Raven, and this is the greatest proof of all that the author of the latter poem derived the germ thought of it from Isadore. ”

“ The resources of English rhythm for varieties of melody, measure, and sound, producing corresponding diversities of effect, have been thoroughly studied, much more perceived, by very few poets in the language. ”

“ January 29. "The Raven" published in the Evening Mirror, New York. " February In The American Review, as by "Quarles." " "⁠8. Republished in The Broadway Journal, New York. " Winter, "The Raven and Other Poems," one of Wiley and Putnam's Library of American Books, New York. ”

“ Holley, D. W. 24
Horne, R. H. 28
Hughes, W. 41
"Isadore" 35
Jacobson, Betty 66
L. E. L. quoted 1
Leigh, Henry S. 111
Mallarmé, Stèphane 42
Manet, Edward 123
Minto, William 3
"Moral for Authors" 101
Müller, Niclas 58
New Mirror 5
New Orleans Times 91
Pike, Albert 5
"Philosophy of Composition" 2, &c. ”