psychological context of three tales by poe

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Amer. Stud. 7, 3, 279-292 Printed in Great Britain 279

The Psychological Contextof Three Tales by Poe

by ALLAN SMITH

University of East Anglia

I

' The Black Cat ' is one of Poe's neat little studies of obsession. JosephMoldenhauer has said diat these first-person tales of terror should beregarded less as studies of deranged minds than as controlled exercises inmadness.1 We may take his point that diere is little ' clinical' observationand that die obsession is seen from widiin, but may add furdier mat thesubjects of diese tales are the irrational motives diemselves, and thereforePoe does not need to create a motive for the motive. That is, ' The BlackCat ' is a study of the ' murdering impulse' of the sort noted by BenjaminRush in his Sixteen Lectures (1811) 2 by whose account of a famous poisonerof cats it may have been suggested.3 It is not particularly a study of dieeffects of die ' murdering impulse' but radier of the impulse itself, whichPoe simply cloaks in a non-specific narrator ' self'. Poe's habitual use of diemonologue or confessional form, and his claustrophobic interiors, are bothcalculated to produce a sense of internalized action, and the scenery of thetales is usually the chamber of die haunted mind, of which die poem ' TheHaunted Palace' is only the most explicit version. The lack of a touchstonein ' real' surroundings, of an objective point of view, togedier with thesense of identification induced by first-person narration, combines to ensure

1 Joseph Moldenhauer, ' Murder as a Fine Art ', Proceedings of the Modern LanguageAssociation of America, 83 (1968), 292.

2 Benjamin Rush, Sixteen Introductory Lectures (Bradford and Innskeep, Philadelphia, 1811),

p. 3»6-My argument here, and throughout this article, is based not on the presumption that Poe

read the works mentioned, although that is often possible and sometimes very likely, butthat he was an intellectually aware member of his community and through magazine workand his interest in scientific and medical matters would be aware of many of the con-temporary theories of the mind, as we are ourselves. I do not think it necessary to repeatthe case for such assumptions; it has been made tellingly by a number of critics, notablyI. M. Walker in his article ' The " Legitimate Sources " of Terror in " The Fall of theHouse of Usher " ' {Modern Language Review, 61 (1966), 588) and by Robert Jacobs inPoe : Journalist and Critic (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, 1969), pp. 19-34.

3 Rush's account of the poisoner of cats, John Ward, assigns him to the category of ' perver-sion of the moral faculty ' which seduces a sense to act with it. Op. cit., p. 440.

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280 Allan Smith

that the internalized action is not seen from a position safely outside thedistorted consciousness but, necessarily, from within. For this reason deepermotives cannot be explored, but only implied, because the reader is able towithdraw and evaluate the tale from an exterior point of view only afterthe reading, not during it.

When the narrator of this tale attempts to kill the cat, his wife intervenes.In a fit of rage he buries the axe in her brain, and she falls dead on thespot, without a groan. ' This hideous murder accomplished', says thenarrator, ' I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task ofconcealing the body.' That night, he stresses, he slept ' soundly and tran-quily '.4 Retrospectively, we see that the narrator has given us spuriousmotives for his conduct. He has explained by perverseness his original mis-treatment of an earlier avatar of the cat, which he hanged

because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me noreason of offence . . . because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin - adeadly sin that would so jeopardise my immortal soul as to place it — if such athing were possible - even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the MostMerciful and Most Terrible God.5

He has explained ' scientifically ' the hallucinatory appearance of a figure ofa gigantic cat with a rope around its neck which appeared on the wall ofhis burned house, and thereby satisfied his reason, if not his conscience. A' half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse ' 6 has led him to find areplacement for this focus of his obsession. Then drink, and a hallucinationabout the cat, led him into the fury in which he killed his wife.

In this account the narrator carefully includes events which indicate anassociation in his mind between die cat and his wife. She made ' frequentallusion' to the ancient notion that cats are witches in disguise.7 That meansthat the cat includes the association of a dreaded female figure, an associationwhich is directly connected, in its presentation, to the wife. Another passageindicates a similar antipathetic connexion through association: ' What added,no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery . . . that, like Pluto, italso had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, onlyendeared it to my wife.'8 A further reference indicates that the narrator'sfury tends to the same goal as his concealed animosity, for, from it, ' myuncomplaining wife, alas! was the most usual and the most patient of

4 The Complete Worlds of Edgar Allan Poe, ed. James A. Harrison, 17 vols. (Crowell & Co.,New York, 1902) (hereafter cited as Wor\s), vol. 5, p. 154. See also Poe's comments on the' amazing self-possession ' of some mad persons in ' The Trial of James Wood ', Proceedingsof the American Antiquarian Society, 52 (1943), 105-6.

5 Wor\s, vol. 5, p. 147.6 Works, vol. 5, p. 148.7 Wor\s, vol. 5, p. 144. 8 Works, vol. 5, p. 150.



The Psychological Context of Three Tales by Poe 281

sufferers '.9 Again, it was his wife who called his attention, more than once,to the strange mark of white hair on the cat, it was ' a great favourite' ofhers, and her humanity of feeling and uncomplaining qualities are like thequality of fondness in the animal which ' disgusted and annoyed' him.10

Thus we may understand that the narrator accepts the death of his wife sophlegmatically not because his ' disease ' of alcoholism has rendered himinhuman but because a strong chain of associations has bound his hatred ofthat patient, long-suffering wife together with the figure of the cat, andthereby enabled him to direct his hatred against a substitute object, concealingit even from himself.

This may be thought a fanciful, or a Freudian, explanation. However,even in Poe's time, such an understanding was possible, if not common. In1840, Frederick Rauch, one of the American ' psychologists', offered thisinterpretation of dreams:

As it is the province of the imagination to express a general thought or truth,or that which is common to many things of the same kind by a single concreteand individual image or symbol, so in our dreams it produces images, concretesigns or symbols, by which it speaks and acts. The course of an unfortunate life,for example, it will describe by a high mountain which we have to ascend . . .Instead of words we have a fine imagery, thus, pearls indicate tears.11

In an example which is remarkably like Poe's account of his narrator'snightmares, Rauch offers the case of a man who, ' suffering from cramps inhis breast, saw himself attacked and wounded by cats whenever his diseasewas about to return \12 Poe's narrator, of course, states that ' very surely I donot dream ', in the introductory paragraph of the tale. However, the parallelsbetween madness and dreaming were frequently pointed out by writers onpsychology in this period, for die madman, as Rauch describes him, ' losesevery idea of the world as it is and his relation to it [and] feels convincedhis imaginations are real \1 3 This was regarded as the case in dreaming, aswe may see in the writings of Abercrombie,14 and Upham,15 and otherstandard texts of the period.

Probably Poe had not read Rauch's work, although the two years betweenits publication in New York and the writing of ' The Black Cat ' make thisa possibility. Still, we may be sure that such ideas were in circulation, and

9 Wor\s, vol. 5, p. 152. 10 Worths, vol. 5, pp. 149, 150.11 Frederick Rauch, Psychology; or A View of the Human Soul (New York: M. W. Dodcl,

1840), pp. 108-9.12 Ibid., p. no . 13 Ibid., p. 140.14 John Abercrombie, Inquiry into the Intellectual Powers ([1st U.S.A. ed., New York, 1832;]

Harpers, New York, 1853), p. 196.15 Thomas C. Upham, Elements of Mental Philosophy (Wells, Boston, 1831), 2 vols.; vol. 1,

pp. 208-9.

AM.ST.—5



282 Allan Smith

Poe was always interested in scientific developments. The principle ofassociation, or ' relative suggestion ', was the keystone of the Common Senseschool of metaphysical psychology, die school which dominated Americanpsychological speculation at this time, and Poe's story is really a simpleextension of this principle into the realm of domestic terror. He liked tooffer more or less concealed ' scientific ' explanations for the odd phenomenain his tales, as I. M. Walker, Sydney E. Lind, Herbert F. Smith, EdwardHungerford and S. Gerald Sandier have pointed out.16 Finally, the narratorof ' The Black Cat ' is at pains to tell us that we ought to look for somerational explanation of the apparent mystery:

Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasmto the common-place — some intellect more calm, more logical, and far lessexcitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail withawe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes andeffects.17

From die cryptographer Poe, this is a direct challenge to the reader to lookfor the pattern which underlies such bizarre events.

II

A similar pattern of strange events shaped over a carefully constructedscientific substructure appears in the early tale ' Berenice'. In a letter, Poesaid that this story ' originated in a bet that I could produce nothing effectiveon a topic so singular, provided I treated it seriously'. And the techniquethat he chose was ' the ludicrous heightened into die grotesque: die fearfulcoloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: thesingular wrought out into the strange and mystical \1 8 These are the methodswe recognize in his odier tales of terror but widial, we notice, he is treatinghis topic ' seriously '. The chosen subject is a morbid event arising from ' anirritability of those properties of mind in metaphysical science termed theattentive'.19 Poe's description of diis state of mind is almost clinical, or asmuch so as diose in die psychological texts of his period, except diat dieevents are portrayed from within the deranged mind. Egaeus doubts whetherhe can convey an adequate idea of ' that nervous intensity of interest withwhich, in my case, die powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied

16 I. M. Walker, op. cit.\ Sydney E. Lind, ' Poe and Mesmerism ', P.M.L.A., 62 (1947),1077—94; Herbert F. Smith, ' Usher's Madness and Poe's Organicism; A Source ', AmericanLiterature, 39 (1967), 379—89; Edward Hungerford, ' Poe and Phrenology ', AmericanLiterature, 2 (1930), 209—31; S. Gerald Sandier, 'Poe's Indebtedness to Locke's " A nEssay Concerning Human Understanding" ', Boston University Studies in English, 5,107-21. 17 Works, vol. 5, p. 143.

'» The Letters of E. A. Poe, edited by John Ostrom (Harvard University Press: Cambridge,Mass., 1948), vol. 1, p. 57. 19 Worlds, vol. 2, p. 19.




and buried themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinarysubjects of the universe '.20 He would muse for hours on the margin of abook, or a quaint shadow, lose himself for a night in watching the flame of alamp, or dream away whole days in contemplating die perfume of a flower.He would repeat a common word until its meaning was lost, or lose diroughbodily quiescence all sense of physical existence. ' Such were a few of diemost common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of themental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly biddingdefiance to anything like explanation or analysis.'21

The pose is characteristic of Poe. This condition was ' not, indeed,altogether unparalleled'. In Abercrombie's notes on insanity (Inquiry Intothe Intellectual Powers, 1832) is a description of such illness:

Either the mind is entirely under the influence of a single impression, without thepower of varying or dismissing it, and comparing it with other impressions; orit is left at the mercy of a chain of impressions which have been set in motion,and which succeed one another according to some principle of connection overwhich the individual has no control.22

Five years after ' Berenice' was published Thomas Upham took notice ofsuch defects of the attentive powers in his Outlines of Imperfect and Dis-ordered Mental Action (1840), a treatise which systematized the diinking ofthis time. He also chronicled another of the problems which Egaeusdescribes as his symptoms: imbecility of die will, in which the mind is' essentially in the condition of a paralytic limb \2 3 This may be compared toEgaeus's comment that ' it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon thesprings of my life' in this illness.24 (There is some validity in Poe's claimthat such phenomena bid defiance to explanation or analysis, for die theoristsof the mind delighted in classification rather dian scientific explanation.)

The second and major phase of Egaeus's illness is his morbid obsessionwith die teedi of Berenice. Even as early as 1796, in the work of ErasmusDarwin (Zoonomia, 1794-6), obsession had been described as a principalfeature of madness: ' In every species of madness there is a peculiar ideaeither of desire or aversion which is perpetually excited in the mind with allits connections.'2S And this view was echoed in later works, such as Rauch's

20 Worlds, vol. 2, p . 19. 2 1 Worlds, vol. 2, pp. 19-20.2 2 Op. cit., p . 225. Upham makes a similar point in his Outlines of Imperfect and Disordered

Mental Action (Harpers: New York, 1840), p . 217, where he says that the judgement may

become defective, rendering the person unable to distinguish between the important and the

trivial. This may be connected with ' defective attention ' he says.2 3 Ibid., p . 305.2* Wor\s, vol. 2, p . 17.2 5 Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (2nd ed. corrected, London,

1796), vol. 2, p . 350.



284 Allan Smith

Psychology (1840),26 which indicates a continued acceptance of the idea.Egaeus is correct in calling his illness' monomania '.

The final stage of the narrator's madness is what contemporary theoristscalled ' divided consciousness' and somnambulism. (Interestingly, Berenicesuffers from a related illness, catalepsy, if we may call in evidence FrederickBeasley's study A Search for Truth in The Science of the Human Mind[Philadelphia, 1822].) The phenomenon of divided consciousness, a trance-like state in which the person performs actions of which he has no wakingmemory, or only faint intimations of what he has done, was documented bymany mental philosophers in Poe's time. Upham mentioned it in hisOutlines," and the subject received much attention with the advent of' Mesmerism ', wherein die ' magnetic sleep ' was direcdy comparable to thestate of divided consciousness. And the phrenologist George Combe offeredthis description of the somnambule:

He does not recollect the transactions of his ordinary state of existence, butacquires the power of speaking and of thinking in his induced state of abstrac-tion from the external world. When this state has subsided, all that passed in it isobliterated from the memory, while the recollection of ordinary events isrestored.28

Abercrombie pointed out that somnambulism differs from dreaming inthat the senses are, to a certain extent, awake to external stimuli, and alsothat ' the remarkable difference between the somnambulist and the maniacis that he can be roused from his vision \2 9 Beasley offered the explanationthat somnabulism is due to persons having dreams so vivid that they act asif they are awake. Some analysis at least was possible despite Poe's claimto the contrary.

The progress of Egaeus's disease is from ' defective attention' through' monomania ' and into ' somnambulism ' or ' divided consciousness ', with,finally, a return into horrified sanity. His symptoms are coherent with oneanother, and with their treatment in contemporary works of psychology.Thus Poe has constructed a careful scientific case history of a rather morbidphenomenon, in which every aspect, even Egaeus's half-memory of thescream, is consistent with medical science. The symptom of ' divided con-sciousness ' is exploited to produce suspense, while the nature of the obsessionprovides an element of horror. An added twist is given to the story by thenature of Berenice's illness, catalepsy, which has caused her to be buriedalive.

2 6 Op. tit., p . 141.2 7 On catalepsy, Beasley, as cited in text, p . 468. Upham, Outlines, notes that the ' sleep of

the senses is imperfect or partial ' , p . 188.2 8 George Combe, Phrenology ([1st U.S.A. ed. 1824] New York: Fowler & Wells, 1897),

p. 489. 2 9 Abercrombie, op. cit., p . 197.




III

What we find to be true of the tales of terror is, in this respect, equally trueof the tales of ratiocination. In ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue' thelengthy process of deduction which results in Dupin's comment: ' He is avery little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the Theatre desVarietes,' astonishes his friend, and amuses us, the modern readers. Wetake it to be another example of Poe's ability to exaggerate the witty into theburlesque, and so, doubtless, it is. Readers of his own time, however, wouldhave received the passage with additional delight, because they wouldperceive its compatibility with current' scientific ' views. Dupin's mysteriouspower becomes, in this light, a nineteenth-century variety of science fiction.

Since Locke and Hartley, the principle of association had become a main-stay of psychological theory, and by the time of Thomas Brown it wasregarded as almost the sole principle of mental action, under die preferredname of ' suggestion'. The principle extended, in the work of Brown andhis follower, George Payne, to include the association of feelings as well asideas:

Any feeling does not follow any feeling. There is a fixed and regular order ofsequence, ascertainable by experience and experience alone. And the business ofthe mental philosopher is to observe this order, and to reduce the particular casesof suggestion, to general laws or tendencies of suggestion.30

Dupin himself points out that ' . . . observation has become with me, of late,a species of necessity '.

It was believed that association or suggestion operated according to certainwell known rules of resemblance, contiguity, contrast, or cause and effect,and we can see these principles applied in Dupin's analysis of his com-panion's actions. The general laws are modified by circumstance, Payneargues, and the ' secondary laws of suggestion ' which govern such modifica-tions should also be considered. The states of mind most likely to suggestone another will be those diat were longest in the mind originally, or werethe most lively, or the most recent, or the most frequently together, or have' coexisted least with other feelings'. The process is further modified byconstitutional differences, the state of die body, and by habit.31

If Dupin's account is examined with these points in mind, we find con-siderable agreement between Poe's version and that of the mental philo-sophers. When Dupin's companion slips on the stones [state of the body]he appears vexed or sulky [constitutional reaction]. A ' recent' conversationupon Epicurus prompts him to look up at Orion, which makes him

30 George Payne, Elements of Mental and Moral Science ([1st U.S.A. ed. 1828] New York.

1835), P- i7'-••*> Ibid., p . 1 8 2 .



286 Allan Smith

remember a ' recent' reference to a Latin line about which ' we have oftenconversed ' [most frequent]. From certain ' pungencies ' [most lively]connected with the explanation Dupin is sure that he will not have forgottenit. It is now clear to Dupin that his companion would not fail to combinethe two ideas [contiguity, resemblance] and he sees by his friend's smile [atthe contrast] that this is the case. Dupin's companion now draws himself upto his full height as he reflects upon the diminutive figure of Chantilly.32

The rewards of such careful observation, Dupin's ' necessity', are spelledout by Payne:

One of the major causes to which is to be ascribed ihe power which one mindfrequently exercises over others, bending and directing them at its will, is thesuperior acquaintance of its possessor with the order of succession of humanthought and feeling, and his consequent higher capability of originating thetrain, which will ultimately lead to the accomplishment of his own purposes.33

This is precisely the power which Dupin demonstrates in his ability toplace himself in the situation of the other when solving his problems ofdetection.

' The Purloined Letter' hinges upon a similar process of deduction. BothDupin and the Minister are aware that in the mind of the Prefect and hiscohorts the association of concealment with out-of-the-way hiding places isinvariable. Furthermore, the Prefect associates poetry with foolishness, andtherefore assumes that because the Minister is a poet, he must be a fool. Onthe contrary, Poe says, the fact that die Minister is a poet as well as amathematician means that he can reason well. This is, perhaps, because diepoet is more finely adapted dian other thinkers to be aware of die widevariety of suggestions which are available from any object; as Payne puts it:

Many of our rhetorical figures owe their origin to these analogies of objects, ortheir tendency to excite resembling emotions; and it is upon the quickness of themind in recognising these analogies that some of its higher powers, such asfancy, or imagination, depend. Under the impulse of powerful feeling whichimparts an increased degree of vigor to all the mental faculties the strong emotionof the moment will naturally suggest a variety of objects which have excitedsimilar states of emotion; hence a profusion of metaphors will be poured forth.54

Thus the mind of the poet will be more flexible, and more open to a varietyof analogies; therefore incomprehensible to the more restricted andmechanical mind of the Prefect.35

32 Worlds, vol. 4, pp. 154-6. 33 Payne, op. cit., p. 26.3* Ibid., p. 175.3 5 We should be aware that Poe's intentions in his description of Dupin's ability to unravel

apparent mysteries on the basis of an understanding of the association process may havebeen largely satirical, for although the views quoted above were widely accepted, not allmental philosophers agreed with them. George Combe, for example, of whose lectures Poe



The Psychological Context of Three Tales by Poe 2$J

There are implications for the poet or fiction-writer in the general principlesof association or suggestion. On the fictive level, Dupin is enabled to under-stand the reasoning of other men, but perhaps more importantly, at thelevel of composition of the fiction, the writer is enabled to understand theprobable reactions of his audience. In the critical essay ' The Philosophy ofComposition', Poe's emphasis is on effect, the effect to be produced by acareful and systematic manipulation of the suggestions arising in the mindof the reader while the ' wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting —the step-ladders and demon-traps ' are kept out of sight36:

I say to myself, in the first place, ' Of the innumerable effects, or impressions, ofwhich the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, whatone shall I, on the present occasion, select? ' Having chosen a novel, first, andsecondly, a vivid effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident ortone.. . afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations ofevent, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect.37

In his preparations for ' The Raven', Poe says, first a parrot ' suggested'itself, but was superseded by a raven as more in keeping with die intendedtone. The following passage also indicates diat Poe was working along thelines of suggestion:

' Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding ofmankind,38 is the most melancholy? ' Death was the obvious reply. ' And when,'I said, ' is the most melancholy topic most poetical? ' . . . ' When it most closelyallies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably,the most poetical topic in the world.39

The sly humour in this remark is rendered doubly effective because of itstruth, for Poe, but we should not underestimate die seriousness of intentwhich lies beneath the burlesque. Poe evidently did work according to arather mechanical dieory of the mind of his readers, dirough which theoryhe believed that correct treatment of the right theme would infallibly giverise to die desired effect. On the one hand, this view led him into a concernfor craftsmanship, and the conviction that language could be manipulated to

seems to have been aware by 1838 (see Edward Hungerford's article, noted in footnote 16,

p . 214; ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue ' was written in 1841), said in his Phrenology

' Ideas arise from impressions on the various faculties of the mind; and there is as little

regularity in the order in which they are received, as in the breathing of the air on the

strings [of an ^Eolian harp] ' , op. cit., p . 499. Although Combe's views were not the most

popular, Poe does seem to have taken Phrenology quite seriously, as Hungerford proves.

3« Worlds, vol. 14, p . 195. 3 7 Works, vol. 14, p . 194.3 8 This phrase was a catchphrase of the Common Sense school; a basic test of the validity of

statements. Its incorporation here may indicate some additional satiric intent.3 9 Wor\s, vol. 14, p . 201. Wagenknecht suggests in his Edgar Allan Poe : The Man Behind

the Legend (Oxford University Press: New York, 1963) that this association might itself

have been influenced by Blackwoods, or Burke, or Archibald Alison (p. 163).



288 Allan Smith

suggest the Ideal; on the other hand, it led him to provide gloomily fantastictrappings and dead maidens, the cliches and banalities which follow from awillingness to go for an easy effect. Instead of creating a new imaginativerealm of his own, he turned mechanically to the realm that was readilyavailable.

IV

Considered psychologically, Beauty, like Unity, refers to the attainment, howeverfleeting, of a state of perfect satisfaction. It is the completion not only of thedemands of form, but of the impulses of the poet and his audience. Poe's aestheticscheme, even in its religious dimension, is fundamentally affective or rhetoricalrather than objective or formalistic; and that which in the spiritual vocabulary is' ambrosia ', in the psychological vocabulary is ' pleasure '.40

Poe's scheme of the mind varied a little from die pattern which waspopular among contemporary psychologists such as Thomas Upham. Hedivided it into its ' three most immediately obvious distinctions ' : the ' PureIntellect', ' Taste', and ' The Moral Sense '. Upham, on the other hand,offered the two categories of the ' Understanding' and the ' Heart ' , andadded a third, the ' Will ' , after further reflexion. In fact Upham's oudineinvolved a basic division within the sensibilities, between die ' natural' or' pathematic ' (equivalent to Poe's ' Taste ') and the ' moral sensibilities ',which sit in judgement over the former.41

Poe explained his view, saying, ' I place Taste in the Middle, because it isjust diis position which, in the mind, it occupies '. The Taste ' holds intimaterelations with either extreme', and is separated from the Moral Sense byonly a faint difference, yet there is a sufficient distinction: ' Just as theIntellect concerns itself with Trudi, so Taste informs us of the Beautifulwhile the Moral Sense is regardful of Duty.'42 We may compare Upham'sversion: ' Emotions always occupy a place between intellections . . . and thedesires if diey are natural emotions and feelings of moral obligation if dieyare moral emotions.'" Upham uses ' taste' in a more restricted form as amodification of the intellect, although connected to the sensibilities. Still,Upham does contend that in the sensibilities ' we are let into the secrets ofmen's actions ',44 and Poe's argument is substantially in agreement widi diatof another American mental philosopher, Asa Burton, who argues in hisEssays (1824) t h a t ' . . . taste is die spring of action in all moral agents \*5

4 0 Moldenhauer, op. cit., p . 287. 4 1 Upham, Elements, vol. 2, p . 25.

42 Worlds, vol. 14, p . 273. ' The Poetic Principle ' . (Poe's idea is reminiscent of the work of

Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue

(London, 1726).)4 3 Upham, Elements, vol. 2, p . 32. 4 4 Ibid., p . 18.4 5 Asa Burton, Essays, on Some of the First Principles of Metaphysic\s, Ethic\s, and Theology

(Portland, 1824), Essay VIII, p . 58.




What Poe seems to be offering is a view of the emotions phrased entirelyin terms of perception of beauty; a version which perhaps owes more to theformulations of such philosophers as Francis Hutcheson46 dian to Americandoctrine of die time. In Poe's scheme, either the concept of beauty is socomprehensive as to include all diat is perceived as ' good', or die emotionsare so narrow as to be purely aesthetic. This second alternative has temptedsuch critics as Moldenhauer to argue that even in Poe's most murderouscharacters the primary impulse is an aesthetic one, the creation of anartistically satisfying action in terms of an aesthetic conception of the achieve-ment of ultimate Unity. I shall show later that this view is not entirelyacceptable.

Actually, Poe chooses in the passage above to speak very selectively of diemind's operations, in order to add weight to his view of aesthetics. Con-cealed behind his definitions is a fourdi category, the ' Heart ' , as we can seein this statement from' The Poetic Principle ' :

In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasur-able elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognise as the PoeticSentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satis-faction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart.47

[Poe's italics.]

The ' soul' which here appears to have almost the function of ' taste ' in dieabove passage, belongs to distinctions of the order of ' mind ' , ' body ' , ' soul';and Poe finds it to have a convenient vagueness, as it does in all the work ofpsychologists at this time. My stress is on his use here of ' heart ' : a properstatement of Poe's view of the mind would offer three basic categories, theunderstanding, the heart, and die moral sense, with taste an important aspectof die heart. From the tales, we may extrapolate a furdier category, diat ofthe will, a mysterious faculty related to identity and the immortal soul (cf.' Ligeia ' and ' Morella'). In this construction, the difference between Poe'sversion and the conventional view lies only in the weight which he chooses(in an essay on poetics) to put upon taste, a sub-category of the heart.

The critic who argues, as Moldenhauer does, that taste is for Poe thepre-eminent faculty,48 ought to be careful to explain that it is pre-eminentonly in respect of the perception of ideal beauty, which is the anti-didacticconcern of the essay ' The Poetic Principle ' but not necessarily Poe's idea ofthe motivating force behind men's actions.

4 6 Op. cit., p. xv, for example: ' He (God) has made virtue a lovely Form, to excite our

pursuit of it; and has given us strong Affections to be the Springs of each virtuous Action.'

(But Poe makes a different use of his scheme.)4 7 Wor\s, vol. 14, p . 275.4 8 Moldenhauer, op. cit,, p . 286.



290 Allan Smith

In fact, other arguments made by Poe in Eureka and in the tales of ratio-cination encourage the suggestion that the workings of the intellect may beas exalted as those of taste. Poe objects, in ' Mr. Griswold and the Poets',to ' the old dogma, that the calculating faculties are at war with the ideal;while, in fact, it may be demonstrated that the two divisions of mental powerare never to be found in perfection apart. The highest order of the imagina-tive intellect is always pre-eminently mathematical, and the converse.'

If we return to ' The Murders in the Rue Morgue' we find the preferreddistinction, which is between ingenuity and the analytic ability; a differencefar greater than that between the fancy and the imagination ' but of acharacter very strictly analogous'. Poe says, ' It will be found, in fact, thatthe ingenious are always fanciful, and the truly imaginative are neveromerwise dian analytic' 49 With due allowance for the possible failings of thenarrator, it is nevertheless plain that the difference between these two cate-gories is some kind of intuitive ability; in Dupin's case, the ability to puthimself in the place of the other; or, more formally stated in Eureka, ' theconviction arising from those inductions or deductions of which the processesare so shadowy as to escape our consciousness, elude our reason, or defy ourcapacity of expression '.50

The intuitive power is able to pierce the veil of everyday reality, whetherin playing cards, solving a murder, or reaching beyond the perceived worldto intimations of the ideal. It is an idea resembling the familiar concept ofLocke, who said that intuitive knowledge, as when the mind perceives thatwhite is not black, ' is the clearest and most certain knowledge that humanfrailty is capable of. This part of knowledge is irresistible, and like brightsunshine, forces itself immediately to be perceived as soon as ever the mindturns its view that way.' He added that it is the basis of all other know-ledge.51 But Locke's version of such knowing is much more restricted thanPoe's, because it applies only to the primary truths. When Poe's narratorclaims that the analyst's results, ' brought about by the very soul and essenceof method, have, in truth, the whole air of intuition ',52 he is referring to ahigher order of thought. In analysis, the narrator of ' The Mystery of MarieRoget' claims, ' Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. Wemake chance a matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked forand unimagined, to the mathematical formulae of the schools.'53 Dupin

i9 ' Mr. Griswold and the Poets ' , Worlds, vol. n , p . 148; Wor\s, vol. 4, pp. 149-50.5 0 Works, vol. 16, p . 206.5 1 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. by A. S. Pringle-Pattison

(Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1924), p . 261.

52 Works, vol. 4, p . 146. 5 3 Works, vol. 5, p . 39.




further elucidates the method when he speaks of the theory of probabilities' - that theory to which the most glorious objects of human research areindebted for the most glorious of illustration \5 4 Tempting as it is to concludethat Poe anticipates Gibson, we must instead note this as an example of Poe'sscientific hopefulness, which rests upon the concept of a mechanistic anddetermined, theoretically predictable, universe, as outlined in Eureka.

Analysis begins by examining the anomalies of a situation, for, as Dupinsays, ' it is by these deviations from the plane of the ordinary, that reasonfeels its way, if at all, in the search for the true \5 5 His statement is amplifiedin Eureka:

. . . it is by just such difficulties as the one now in question - such roughness -such peculiarities - such protruberances above the plane of the ordinary - thatReason feels her way, if at all, in her search for the True. By the difficulty - the' peculiarity ' - now presented, I leap at once to the secret. . .56

In short, the celebrated processes of analysis reduce in the end to faith indie intuitive leap, which works dramatically in a mystery created by theauthor, but less well in die larger mystery which Poe did not invent.

In speaking of the imagination, Poe similarly relies upon the intuitivepowers:

The truth is, that the just distinction between the fancy and the imagination (andwhich is still but a distinction of degree) is involved in the consideration of themystic. [The term is applied to] that class of composition in which there liesbeneath the transparent upper current of meaning, an under, or suggestive one.What we vaguely term the moral of any sentiment is its mystic or secondaryexpression. It has the vast force of an accompaniment in music. This vivifies theair; that spiritualizes the fanciful conception, and lifts it into the ideal.57

In this passage, Poe takes refuge in the term ' mystic ', which for him sumsup the ' ghosdy, and not always distinct, b u t . . . august and soul-exaltingecho' when ' in every glimpse of beauty presented, we catch, dirough longand wild vistas, dim bewildering visions of a far more ethereal beautybeyond ' . " The refuge is needed because imagination and fancy belong con-ventionally in the department of intellect, but the distinction which Poewishes to make patendy involves that of taste and the emotions. It is thedistinction concealed in his remarks about the ' analytic' as opposed to die' ingenious' ability, and it is one which the normal divisions between

•>< Worlds, vol. 4, p . 169.5 5 Worlds, vol. 4, p . 169.5 6 Wor\s, vol. 16, p . 228. A broader application of this principle might underlie Poe's interest

in the bizarre, exemplified in his tales of terror. By ' such protruberancies above the plane

of the ordinary ' he may have hoped, as later psychologists have hoped, to investigate the

secrets of human nature.5 7 Worlds, vol. 10, p . 62. 5 S Worlds, vol. 10, p . 63.



292 Allan Smith

intellect and sensibility make difficult for him to express. Quite understand-ably, Poe was confused by the psychological schema of his time.

Edward Davidson has argued that Poe's view of the ' mystic' followedfrom an acceptance of Coleridge's distinction between the primary andsecondary imagination.59 This diesis is brilliantly argued - in terms of die' Romantic Mind', but it should not be maintained of Poe, who firmlyrejects even the Coleridgean distinction between fancy and imagination, aswe see in the passage above. What Poe means by the ' mystic' is not dierecombination of the ideal realm after the destructive operations of diesecondary imagination but radier, as he carefully says, the ' suggestivecharacter' (Poe's italics) of diose works which he admires.

I have already noted (p. 286) that Payne considered the poetic ability as thecapacity to call up appropriate suggestions, and the connexion of beauty withthe associative process was made by most psychologists of this time.60 Thebeauty to which Poe refers is always partial and fleeting, and glimpses of dieideal are found in ' the waving of die grain fields ', ' die gleaming of silverrivers ' , ' the songs of birds ', ' the repining voice of the forest', ' in all noblethoughts ' , ' in die beauty of woman — in die grace of her step '. The narratorof ' Ligeia' offers a similar listing of visions reminiscent of Ligeia's expres-sion, ' in the survey of a growing vine — in the contemplation of a modi, abutterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water', in the ocean, in a meteor,in ' the glances of unusually aged people', and in one or two stars. Hack-neyed as diese ' dim bewildering visions', diese ' brief indeterminateglimpses ', diese ' echoes ', are, dieir essential and shared quality is diat theyare not fully capturable by the writer, who is able only to achieve a glimpseof supernal loveliness, a mere suggestion of die ideal realm.

Thus Poe's aesthetic is actually unable to envisage more than approaches tothe beautiful; it cannot aspire to the full imaginative reordering of realityinto an ideal realm. It cannot do so because it is based on a theory of associa-tion or suggestion which prevents the writer from employing images whichwill not be universally understood, and encourages the use of hackneyed andsterile metaphors.

•"•9 Edward Davidson, Poe : A Critical Study (Belknap Press, Harvard University Press:Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 57-65-

60 e.g. Upham, Elements, vol. 2, pp. 89-90.


psychological context of three tales by poe

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