the good gray poe: poe's reburial and william douglas o'connor‘s forgotten tribute

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without quotation marks or imlics, as a demonstration that the word, like “psychal,” is needed in the language and has been given frequent and classic usage by Edgar Allan Poe.8 NOTES 1 James A. Harrison, ed., The Complete Works of Edgar AUan Poe (New York: Crowell, 1902), X, 119-123; all future textual citations will refer to this edition as “H.” I must here express gratitude for a CUNY grant toward work on the Harvard edition of Poe which enabled me also to gather and process materials for this small study. 2For Schlegel on the role of the “Chorus,” see G. R Thompson, Poe’s Fiction (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1973), p. 213, a 24, and the text to which this refers. I regard the evidence a&ut Poe’s dose study of Schlegel’s whole book as very weighty but too involved to present here. 3See Poe Creatw of Words (Baltimore: Enoch Pratt Free Library and Baltimore Poe Society, 1974), p. 15. 4My views on this comparison by Poe are indicated more fully in D~scouer~es in Poe (South Bend: Notre Dame Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 112-114. 5For Poe’s variations in attitude, views, and comments on this “touchstone of taste,” see my study, “Undine in the Works of Poe,” Stdies in Romanticism, 14 (1975), 59-74. The “Marginalia” items were renumbered by the late T. 0. Mabbott to account for Griswold’s and Harrison’s omissions and errors in sequencing. 6See Poe Creatw of Wordr, p. 18. 7Note pp. 18 and 19 in Poe Creator of Wwdr for their occasional disagreements with the OED, which deprived my lists there of thirteen putative Poe CO~M~~S. 8To the seven “psychal” loci cited in Pos Creatw of Words, p. 35, may I here add two more: H, XIII, 156 and XIV, 196? The Good Gray Poe: Poe’s Reburial and William Douglas O’Connor’s Forgotten Tribute Jerome Loving Texas A & M University William Douglas O’Connor (1832-1889), minor poet and authm, is best remembered fm his championship of Walt Whiunsn. When, in the words of H. L Mencken, his- tory “brought together the greatest p t America has ever produced and the damndest ass” (Prejudices: Fust Series), that is, Whitman and Secretary of the Interior Jama Harlan, O’connOr spoke out for his friend in The Good Gray Poet (1866). He risked his government PO- sition to castigate Harlan for disrnking Whitman from the Bureau of Indian Affairs becaw he was the author of a “dirty book.” But O’Connor-who defended a num- Lier of literary underdogs-also turned his attention to Edgar Allan Poe on the d o n of his reburial in Balti- more on November 17, 1875.’ At ceremonies held at the Western Female Academy and Westminster Churchyard, a m n u m m t was dedicated to mark the pet’s “neglected grave.” Mast of the literati of the era were invited- Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, Tennyson -but only Whianan attended. O’COMO~ was also present, and-though he now refused to speak to his old friend2- he was doubtless moved by the sight of Whitman as the only poet “loyal to the spirit of the old freemasomy of letters.” In 1877, Miss Sara Sigourney Rice, a professor of eb cution at the Academy and one of the fund raisers far rhg monument (which cost in excess of 81,500), com- piled a volume consisting of John H. Ingram’s biographical sketch of Poe and the speeches delivered and autograph reproductim of the lmers sent by those invited to the ceremony? But it was published without one of the m e inqmttant and cerminly more outspoken d e f w of Poe. Unlike the others whiah alluded at most to the distor- tions of Rufus Griswold, O’Camor’s denounced the literary establishment generally for having persecuted Foe in the fashion he believed it had hatrassed Whitman. That essay, reprinted below, suggests that O’Cmmr admised Poe almost as much as Whitman. His affinity for Poe m m e d in 1851, when O%onnor, probably al- ready d of the author’s works, came to Prwidence from Baston and befriended Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet’s fianciie for a time. At first he worked as a daguerre- mypist, but under the sway of the “Poet of Providence” he turned his talents to writing verse. He published a nurmber of pieces in the Providence Journal and elsewhere under the pen mum of “Aramiq” taken from Dumas’ The Thee Gisardsm (or Mtlsketeers). Through the r e d lections of Mts. Whitman, O’Gmnm came to know Poe well and, naturally, to resent Griswold‘s fabrications. He also tmk the author uf “The Raven” as a model for some of his own poetical experiments. His “Resurgamus,” pub- lished in the Jownul for September 23, 1853, bears an obvious resemblance to “UMume”: the title of the piece, like the inscription over Ulalume’s “legended tomb,” is carved over he “black d a d ’ of the chamber of a b- lent monarch who has been deposed. The editors saw the similarity and w m e in the preface to O’Gmnor’s poem: “We have, within the last two years, published many poems of great originality and beauty, from our corre- spondent Aramis The following, we think, will be a great- er favorite than any of its predecessors It may suggest a comparison with Poe’s Ulalume, which, in some respects, it resembles.” Mrs. Whitman viewed O’connOr as a young Poe. Shortly before her death in 1878, she testified that “after her separation from Poe, her friendship with O’Gmnor, notwithstanding his youth, was the greatest relief to her, & the poem ‘To the Morning Star’ . . . was written to him.’” In that poem, which appeared in her Hours of Life ( 1853), she addressed O’Connor as the “star of Love and Hope.” In the same volume she wrote the poems entided “ Am” (“Evening Star”) for her beloved Poe. On another oocasion, after he had published the smy “What Cheer?” in Plltnam’s (July 1855), she addtessed OGmnor as her “Red-Cross Knight” who will yet ride “in the vanguard of the great army who do battle for the eternal Truth and Bea~ty.”~ The tale centers upon a morbid youth bent on suicide mtil he decides to dedicate his life to helping the p r . OCQM~ did indeed see himself as such a knight, and in the slashing style of a fencer (which he was) he used his pen to combat poverty, slavery, and ultimately the American literary establishment-the North American Re- views and the Littell’s Living Ages-that obdurately re- 18

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without quotation marks or imlics, as a demonstration that the word, like “psychal,” is needed in the language and has been given frequent and classic usage by Edgar Allan Poe.8

NOTES 1 James A. Harrison, ed., The Complete Works of Edgar AUan Poe (New York: Crowell, 1902), X, 119-123; all future textual citations will refer to this edition as “H.” I must here express gratitude for a CUNY grant toward work on the Harvard edition of Poe which enabled me also to gather and process materials for this small study. 2For Schlegel on the role of the “Chorus,” see G. R Thompson, Poe’s Fiction (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1973), p. 213, a 24, and the text to which this refers. I regard the evidence a&ut Poe’s dose study of Schlegel’s whole book as very weighty but too involved to present here. 3See Poe Creatw of Words (Baltimore: Enoch Pratt Free Library and Baltimore Poe Society, 1974), p. 15. 4My views on this comparison by Poe are indicated more fully in D~scouer~es in Poe (South Bend: Notre Dame Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 112-114. 5For Poe’s variations in attitude, views, and comments on this “touchstone of taste,” see my study, “Undine in the Works of Poe,” Stdies in Romanticism, 14 (1975), 59-74. The “Marginalia” items were renumbered by the late T. 0. Mabbott to account for Griswold’s and Harrison’s omissions and errors in sequencing. 6See Poe Creatw of Wordr, p. 18. 7Note pp. 18 and 19 in Poe Creator of Wwdr for their occasional disagreements with the OED, which deprived my lists there of thirteen putative Poe C O ~ M ~ ~ S .

8To the seven “psychal” loci cited in Pos Creatw of Words, p. 35, may I here add two more: H, XIII, 156 and XIV, 196?

The Good Gray Poe: Poe’s Reburial and William Douglas O’Connor’s Forgotten Tribute

Jerome Loving Texas A & M University

William Douglas O’Connor (1832-1889), minor poet and authm, is best remembered fm his championship of Walt Whiunsn. When, in the words of H. L Mencken, his- tory “brought together the greatest p t America has ever produced and the damndest ass” (Prejudices: Fust Series), that is, Whitman and Secretary of the Interior Jama Harlan, O’connOr spoke out for his friend in The Good Gray Poet (1866). He risked his government PO- sition to castigate Harlan for disrnking Whitman from the Bureau of Indian Affairs becaw he was the author of a “dirty book.” But O’Connor-who defended a num- Lier of literary underdogs-also turned his attention to Edgar Allan Poe on the d o n of his reburial in Balti- more on November 17, 1875.’ At ceremonies held at the Western Female Academy and Westminster Churchyard, a mnummt was dedicated to mark the pet’s “neglected grave.” Mast of the literati of the era were invited- Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Bryant, Holmes, Tennyson -but only Whianan attended. O’COMO~ was also present, and-though he now refused to speak to his old friend2- he was doubtless moved by the sight of Whitman as the

only poet “loyal to the spirit of the old freemasomy of letters.”

In 1877, Miss Sara Sigourney Rice, a professor of e b cution at the Academy and one of the fund raisers far rhg monument (which cost in excess of 81,500), com- piled a volume consisting of John H. Ingram’s biographical sketch of Poe and the speeches delivered and autograph reproductim of the lmers sent by those invited to the ceremony? But it was published without one of the m e inqmttant and cerminly more outspoken d e f w of Poe. Unlike the others whiah alluded at most to the distor- tions of Rufus Griswold, O’Camor’s denounced the literary establishment generally for having persecuted Foe in the fashion he believed it had h a t r a s s e d Whitman.

That essay, reprinted below, suggests that O’Cmmr admised Poe almost as much as Whitman. His affinity for Poe m m e d in 1851, when O%onnor, probably al- ready d of the author’s works, came to Prwidence from Baston and befriended Sarah Helen Whitman, the poet’s fianciie for a time. At first he worked as a daguerre- mypist, but under the sway of the “Poet of Providence” he turned his talents to writing verse. He published a nurmber of pieces in the Providence Journal and elsewhere under the pen mum of “Aramiq” taken from Dumas’ The Thee Gisardsm (or Mtlsketeers). Through the r e d lections of Mts. Whitman, O’Gmnm came to know Poe well and, naturally, to resent Griswold‘s fabrications. He also tmk the author uf “The Raven” as a model for some of his own poetical experiments. His “Resurgamus,” pub- lished in the Jownul for September 23, 1853, bears an obvious resemblance to “UMume”: the title of the piece, like the inscription over Ulalume’s “legended tomb,” is carved over h e “black d a d ’ of the chamber of a b- lent monarch who has been deposed. The editors saw the similarity and w m e in the preface to O’Gmnor’s poem: “We have, within the last two years, published many poems of great originality and beauty, from our corre- spondent Aramis The following, we think, will be a great- er favorite than any of its predecessors It may suggest a comparison with Poe’s Ulalume, which, in some respects, it resembles.”

Mrs. Whitman viewed O’connOr as a young Poe. Shortly before her death in 1878, she testified that “after her separation from Poe, her friendship with O’Gmnor, notwithstanding his youth, was the greatest relief to her, & the poem ‘To the Morning Star’ . . . was written to him.’” In that poem, which appeared in her Hours of Life ( 1853), she addressed O’Connor as the “star of Love and Hope.” In the same volume she wrote the poems entided “ A m ” (“Evening Star”) for her beloved Poe. On another oocasion, after he had published the smy “What Cheer?” in Plltnam’s (July 1855), she addtessed OGmnor as her “Red-Cross Knight” who will yet ride “in the vanguard of the great army who do battle for the eternal Truth and Bea~ty.”~ The tale centers upon a morbid youth bent on suicide mtil he decides to dedicate his life to helping the p r .

O C Q M ~ did indeed see himself as such a knight, and in the slashing style of a fencer (which he was) he used his pen to combat poverty, slavery, and ultimately the American literary establishment-the North American Re- views and the Littell’s Living Ages-that obdurately re-

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jd anything that did not reflect the literary traditions and practices of the Old World. Whiunan, of course, fit his idea of the literary maverick better than Poe; yet for OConnor Poe had been a crusader in the area of criticism as well as the creator of a literature that was marked by originality if not by a native American character.

OConnor’s essay on Poe (which like the other tributes took the form of a letter to Miss Rice) followed the pat- tern used in The Good Gray Poet, contrasting the mag- nanimity of his subject (in long Whitmanesque catalogs) with the pettiness of the literary establishment that had rejected him. This alone persuaded Miss Rice to ask O C m r to tone dawn his remarks, for she had invited many of its members to the memorial and intended to publish their letters in her book. Furthermore, she object- ed to the reference to Whiunan which chastised the liter- ary lights who had failed to attend the ceremony. In a letter dated Cktaber 23, 1876, she told him: “while I was happy to see Ur. Whitman present the eventful afternoon & myself greeted him cordially, taking special care when I learned who he was that every respect should be paid, still as the Memorial is to be in no sense of the word polemic I desire to omit the few lines in which you reflect upon the absence of some we would have liked to have had with us.”6

Always a foe of any sort of comstockery, OConnor balked at the thought of her expurgation. And when Miss Rice failed to return his manuscript, he feared she would make the excisians on her own and publish the piece with the other, m e cordial tributes. He expressed this fear to Mrs. Whiunan, who advised him to “politely request the return of the Ms.” again. She agreed with OConnor that the volume by its timidity lost its force as a vindication of Poe and commented, rather bitterly: ‘*The book is evidently intended for the hour & the p lace -a Baltimore annual- only this & nothing more.”’

Although OConnor’s essay adds no new information to the Poe biography, it is nevertheless significant as one of the early attempts to vindicate the maligned poet-taking its place beside Mrs. Whitman’s Edgar Poe and His Critics (1860) and Ingram’s endeavors to correct Griswold‘s dis- tortions. Unfortunately, more than its predecessors, it leans (as did The Good G a y Poet) toward hagiography. The essay is also valuable to literary historians because it links, however remotely, two very important American poets of the nineteenth century. OConnor began his career as a writer under the aegis of Sarah Helen Whitman and learned to regard Poe as o m of America’s greatest poets. He concluded that career in the vanguard of Walt Whit- --in whom he found a poetic talent at least equal to Poe’s. Ultimately, of course, he selected Whiunan as the greater American poet because of the autochthonic char- acter of Leaves of Grass. But it was Poe’s poetry and his fiery career that helped significantly to shape the mind that created the myth of “the good gray poet.”

[December, 1875]*

Dear Miss Rice:

paper slips. Mrs Wg has sent me your kind note, with the news-

The author of the petty paragraph in the N.Y. World,

in alluding to the Poe monument as having been raised by the contributions of a few professorJ and half a dozen school-mistresses, failed to perceive that, even i f literally true, the fact would only have given additional value and interest to the tribute.10 Certes, it would be no theme for mockery if it came out that Shakespeare’s bust in the old church, was the gift of the traditionary grammar school nl Stratford!” But the editorial on Edgar Poe in the World of October 8th,’2 honoring alike the poet and the memorial enterprise, is so ample, so generous and superb, that it more than offsets any small subsequent cynicasterism.l3 Which, at all events, mutters little. W e who understood and loved him-we, at any rate, can never forget that we owe it to those stanch professors, those gracious ladies and sweet school-girls of Baltimore, that our poet has his fu- neral honors. And beyond all private feeling, Edgar Poe having, as Winter well said in his noble elegy,14 gained the universal affection, what you and your associates have done for his memory, is happily secure of the undying respect and rememfbrance all beautiful and pious deeds deserve. Against Juch, derision is harmless. Whatever be the power of the malign barbed word, actions like these, in their moral elevation and their quality are far removed from its injury. The hornet cannot sting the star.

The scene that November afternoon will long live in grateful tradition. As I muse, it all flmts softly back into memory: the warm, square, handsome hall, lit from the sides; the vast parterre of blooming and animated faces in the pale sunshine and pleasant winter light; the multitude of bright eyes all looking toward the platform where we were grouped; the silken rustlings, the perfume, the soft electric life of the concourse; the eager silences, the fre- quent bursts of plaudits, attending the graceful and gen- erous letter of Holmes, the tributes of Bryant, Whittier, Aldrich, Saxe and the others, and Winter’s glorious verses, all of which you read so admirably; the music of Mendels- sohn and Rossini from the choir, lifting us, from time to time, like wings; Shepherds brilliant and delicate address, and the stout and genial speech of Latrobe, like fine old wine; and then, crowning all, after these shows and voices, after the ringing acclamations, the thronging memories and emotions of those glowing hours, when we had trooped down tumultuously into the cold open air of the church- yard, there, in that place rough with tombs, central amidst the w i n g crowd, with the aerial singing of the chair floating above it in the requiem, the unveiled cenotaph, white and beautiful in the red dying light upon the no longer neglected grave! No fear that a memorial, of which these are among the memories and pictures, can fail of appreciation and respectful remembrance! Edgar Poe is one of the two or three American poets of our generation, whom the future, oblivious of many insolent current liter- ary fames, will deeply remember, and it will not less re- member, in its simple humility and glory, the occasion that hung garlands upon his memory and his tomb. I know what can be said because our prosperous and popular liter- ary people stayed away or were nm there, few of them even sending messages. But no judgment worth notice will deizy sufficient noble celebrity to the platform up whae stairs we saw slowly limp our loftiest poet, broken with his hospital service to the wounded and dying of both sides in the war, and grand in his age and infirmity, like a

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crippled eaglels-he, at least, loyal to the spirit of the old freemasanry of letters, and paying with his presense his h e in the honors the litera.ry class in Europe never ne- glcm to offer its illustrious dead. Whatever they m y say here, the Old World, where his name lives in light from Copenhagen to London, will not find Lacking in rhe proper literary dignity, an occasion graced by the great and ven- erable presence of Walt Whitman. Where Mac Gregor sits, is the head of the table!

Some day, when time permits, I hope to add my humble tribute to the character and genius of Edgar Poe. The genius, half latent, has probably been the character has c d n l y been misread. In him the soul was eminent, and the heart all alive; well, therefwe, may the memorials o f his life convey the paramount impression of m y sufferings! Mr James Russell Lowell, noticing these sufferings, styles them ‘self-ausecL“7 It i s a shallow judg- nzent, The philosopher sadly sees that society, by its form, evolves fatality, far less for rogues and satans than for those who by peculiar nability of nature are not in accord with the evil condition5 to which they are born; and this explains the dooms of messiahs and heroes, the fates of the martyrs and the anguished lives of the geniuses. A phrase yau will heat among mughs, on the streets and wharves, spoken of some person, expresses the social des- tiny evolved for one like Edgar Poe: the one the others are down 09. Why should they not be down upon one like him? He was praud, superior, solitary; he had the courage of his opinians; he disdained fools and despised knaves; he felt and showed acesbity and scorn for things imperfect and base in art and life; he co& not see a corrupt and impious author, like Michel Ma~son,’~ without conuulsws loathing; he d d not hear hause cadrus bawl in sang without samething of the contempt of Juvenal, he would not join h e coteries; he was impurchasea,ble, undissuad- able; he was original; he endowed literature with fresh thou& and glorious imaginings, cast in novel forms, al- ways an offense to mediocrities and men of conuention and routine; he had conscience, honor, moral purity, swt- ml reverence, deep religious f eelhgs-shown everywhere in his sombre and stmy pages; he was disinterested, to- mantic, simple, chi-, guileless, trum sensitive, lov- ing; it might have been little chat he dwelt in the land without being one with the nation, but he lived on the globe without mu& belonging to the world. How could one unrelad by such a coarrbination of traits to the secular men and things amund him, ascape the penalty of his ir- relation? Necessarily, he had m y bitter enemies. No doubt, also, he had friends, but this, alas! for one made like him, was p h p s only anocher reason far his mis- fortunes. We often suffer no less fnrm the sad fatuity of friends than the enmity of foes. How few, even among those who valued him, could have been in rapport with rhat lofty and melancholy d; so proudly reticent, yet so impassioned and sensitive; so loving and so craving h e ; beautiful with a nocturnal beauty; darkly sweet and tender; and suffused with a strange grace of quaintness, like r@ht momentarily flushed with elfin lightning! In the rnystesiousness of such natures, in thew singular beau- ties and unusual virtues, are the conditions of every mis- understanding and every disaster.

It is nothing to me, this dwindled basis for the ma-

lignant verdict, this charge to which all the lavish calumai- ation has already pitiably shrunken, that sometimes in his life, at long intervals, in certain wild haus of maddening misery, these was the glass too mudl which tradition says caused the death of Shakespeare. When the excelling sin is judged by its spots, or OUT own fair and habitable tmth by its quagmires, I will allow chat SRlah a defect in the con- duct of life is either an indication or an epitome of his character, whom every authentic d e c t i m p r o c l a i m s an exceptionally unworldly, noble and loving human being. For him, however, the w m t is over, and mine is the sad pleasure I always feel when the blcming c l a d disperses fram the children of light, for I know that his vindication draws nigh. He has been long coffinel in slandm, but the m i d e tangle of the lies and forgeries of Griswold and his allies, will soon be deared away forever. Thanks foi this to rhe muvment begun by Mrs Whitman in her beau- tiful little book, ‘Edgar Poe and His Critics,’ and soon to be completed by the patient research and clear insight of Ingram. Thanks also to you and YOUT associates for fresh glory upon his manmy, and the flower of marble upon his grave.

I am, dear Miss Rice, Yours faithfully,

W. D. o%onnor Mia S. S. Rice

NOTES 1 Actually, Poe’s body and that of Mrs. Clemm had been trans- ferred to the new grave site on November 6. For the riotous story of this reburial and another in 1885, see John C. Miller, “The Exhumations and Reburials of Edgar and Virginia Poe and Mrs. Clemm,” Poe Slndies, 7 (1974). 46-47. 2Whitman and OConnor quarreled in 1872, supposedly over the merits of the Fifteenth Amendment (giving blacks the right to vote in 1870); see Clara Barrus, Whit- and Buwwghs, Comrades (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931). p. 96. A fuller account of this quarrel and the ten-year rift between the two men is contained in my forthcoming Walt Whitman’s Champion: William Douglas O’Connor.

SEdgOr Allan Poe: A Memorid Volume (Baltimore: Turnbull Brothers, 1877). Ingram’s sketch was expanded in his EdgM Allan Poe: His Life, Letters, and Opinions, 2 vols. (London: John Hogg, Paternoster Row, 1880). See also John C. Miller, “Poe’s Biographers Brawl,’’ American History Zllustrated, 11 ( 1976), 20- 29.

William F. Channing (O’Connor’s brother-in-law) to C. Fiske Harris, August 23, 1876; printed with the permission of the Brown University Library. sLetter dated July 112)) 1855, and quoted with the permission of Charles E. Feinberg. This letter (cited below as Feinberg) is now in the Library of G m g r e s s .

6 Feinberg. ‘Both quotations are taken from her letter of November 24, 1876 (Feinberg) . 8 This date is based upon the appearance of Richard Grant White’s Galmy article; see n. 13, below. OConnor’s essay is reprinted with the permission of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. The text, including punctuation and the use of italics, follows the holograph. I wodd like to thank my colleague, Carroll D. La- verg, for his assistance in preparing this article. 9 Sarah Helen Whitman. 1OIn B short editorial in the issue of November 18, the World stated: “Some half dozen patient and admiring school-mistresses

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. . . yesterday erected a monument over [Poe’s) grave exactly ‘eight feet high.’ A number of eminent poets, none of them sub- scribers, wrote letters on the occasion. Some of them suggested epitaphs. A professor of English literature professed profusely. Of all this the American people are pretty proud. For our own part we can only regret that Poe is not alive to write an account of his own funeral.” OConnor was a160 a Shakespearian scholar; in Hornlet’s Note-

book ( 1886) and Mr. Donnelley’s Reviewers ( 1889), he defend- ed the view that attributed the Shakespearian plays and poems to Francis Bacon. I2In “Poe” the editors acknowledged the universal appal of the pcet’s work but were ambivalent about his character. They con- cluded: “We have thought it well to take occasion from the erection of his tardy monument to forget his errors and remember his genius, and to fling a leaf upon his grave.” lsOConnor doubtless borrowed this word from White’s “Cynicas- terism: An Egotistical Dissertation Concerning Dogs’ Tails,” Gdmy, 20 (December 1875), 837-845. White was a well- known anti-Baconian whom OConnor attacked in Hamlet’s Note- book (see n. 11, above). White defined “cynicasterism” as “a sort of sneering and carping which does not attain the dignity of cynicism . . . the first little creature who would be a cynic, but i s too ignorant, and too foolish, and who has no element of cynicism in him but the desire to be disagreeable, is a cynicaster” (p. 845). ‘*“At Poe’s Grave,” Rice, pp. 48-49. Further references by OConnor to the program are easily found in this volume and are therefore not annotated. O’Connor disliked Winter because of his unfriendly criticism of Walt Whitman. Yet he was often will- ing to embrace such adversaries whenever they took his side on an issue-if only to name-drop for his cause.

15Here OConnor cancelled the sobriquet “the Good Gray Poet.”

16 In calling Poe’s genius “half Iatent,” O’Connor may have been reiterating Walt Whitman’s estimate of the p. In an anonymus article in the Washington Star of November 18, 1875, headlined “Walt Whitman at the Poe Funeral-Conspicuous Absence of thz POpsllaz Poets” (reprinted as “Walt Whitman on Poe” in the World, November 2 1) , he quoted himself as having only recent- ly overcome a distaste for Poe’s work. He now recognized a cer- tain power in the writings; yet he still objected to his frequent “delirium.” Whitman incorporated the Stw report in “Edgar Poe’s Significance” (Critic, June 3, 1882) and in Specimen- Dws ( 1882). There he remarked that “Poe’s verses illustrate an intense facuIty for technical and abstract beauty, with the rhyming art to excess, an incorrigible propensity toward nocturnal themes, a demonic undertone behind every p a m d , by final judgment, probably belong among the electric lights of imaginative litera- ture, brilliant, dazzling, but with no heat.” See Walt Whitman: Prose Works 1892, ed. Floyd Stovall (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1936), I, 230-233; and Roll0 G. Silver, “A Note about Whitman’s Essay on Poe,” Amm’cun Literature, 6 ( 1935), 435-436. See aIso Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer; A Cricicd Biography of W d t Whitmon (New Y a k : New York Univ. Press, 1955, 1967), p. 71, for Whitman’s 1845 association with Poe. 17 I have been unable to locate the source of OConnor’s informa- tion. Lowell was adamantly opposed to Walt Whitman’s poetry, and OConnor may simply be using the New England Brahmin as a symbol of the literary establishment he indicts for persecuting Poe. In fact, Lowell thought highly of Poe’s talent if not his character--see The Recognition of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. Eric W. Carlson (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1966), pp. 5-17; and Lstters of James Rwsell Lowell, ed. Charles Eliot Norton (New York: Harper, 1894), I, 99-and in his letter of regret to Miss Rice (which, curiously, she did not include in her volume) he wrote: “I regret very much that it will be quite impossible for me to be present at the very interesting ceremony of unveiling the monument to Poe. I need not assure you that I sympathize very heartily with the sentiment which led to its erection.’’ See “The Memory of Poe,” New York Times, and ”Edgar Allan Poe,” New York World, November 18, 1875. 18 Unidentified.

Current Poe Bibliography

J. Lasley Dameron Thomas C. Carlson John E. ReiUy Judy Osowski

This cheddist supplemehts “Current Poe Bibliography” appearing in Poe Studies, 8 (1975), 43-46. This listing was compiled by a Committee composed of J. Lasley Dameron, Chairmm, Memphis State University; John E. Redly, College of the Holy Cross; ’l?hmas C. Carlson, Memphis State University; and Judy Osowski, University of Wisamin-Smt. The conunittee will be pleased to re- ceive offprints from any source. Send offprints to J. Iasley Dameron, Department of English, Memphis State Univer- sity, Memphis, Tennessee 38152. The Committee wishes to thank the Mississip@ Quarterly for granting permission to indude listings from its a n a d bibliography of criticism on Southern Literature. In some instances, mareover, annotations from variaus bibliographi- cal sources like the MLA I f i t e m a t i d Bibliogrehy a d Amxican Literatwe are utilized, Foreign entries are not annotated, and reprints of earlier studies ate listed but not atlIlotated unless additional bibliographical information is required. The Committee wishes also to acknowledge the aid of several scholars in compiling this list, especially Professors Burton R. Pollin, Alexander Hammond, and Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV.

Aldiss, Brian Wilson. ‘‘ ‘A Clear-sighted, Sickly Literature’: Edgar Allan Poe,” Billion Yerw Spree (Garden City, N.Y.: Double- day, 1973), pp. 40-56. [Poe, primariry a Gothic writer whose characters are given to much reflection and internalizing, com- poses a group of narratives that are akin to science fiction, including The Narrative of Artbar Gordon Pym.]

Angyal, Andrew J., and Kent Ljungquist. “Some Early Frost Im- itations of Poe,” Poe Swdies, 9 (1976), 14-16. [Frost “im- mersed himself in Poe’s work’ and may have composed four poems based on Poe’s poetry.]

Armistead, J. M. “Poe and Lyric Conventions: The Example of ‘For Annie,’’’ Poe Studies, 8 (1975), 1-5. [As a love lyric, Poe’s “For Annie” is transitional, revealing Poe’s capacity to create a new genre from old forms and “to transform ego- tistical expression into formal, publicly pleasing artifice.”]

Asarch, Joel Kenneth. “A Telling Tale: Poe’s Revisions in ‘The Murclers in* Rue Morgue,’ ’’ Library Chronicle (Univ. of PennsyIvania), 41 (1976), 83-90. [Poe’s revisions reveal a change in “emphasis from a theoretical study of analysis to a practicaI demonstration of the imagination.”]

Asselineau, Roger. “Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849,” Americcm Writers, ed. Leonard Unger, 4 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974), 111, 409-432. [First appeared in the series Pamphlets on American Writers, No. 89 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970).]

Bandy, W. T. “Hugo’s View of Poe,” Rwue de Litthatme Com- purbe, 49, No. 3 (1975), 480-483. [Quotes passages from an interview with Hugo from a newspaper clipping found in a scrapbook assembled by Amelia F. Poe. Hugo briefly praises Poe and comments on Whittier, Lowell, Holmes, and Paul Hayne.]

. “Poe’s Alone: The First Printing,” Papers of the Bibliographicd Society of America, 70 ( 1976), 405-406.

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