The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe [1161]
CXLIII.
Our “blues” are increasing in number at a great rate; and should be decimated, at the very least. Have we no critic with nerve enough to hang a dozen or two of them, in terrorem? He must use a silk-cord, of course — as they do, in Spain, with all grandees of the blue blood — of the “sangre azula.”
CXLIV.
For all the rhetorician’s rules
Teach nothing but to name the tools. — HUDIBRAS.
What these oft-quoted lines go to show is, that a falsity in verse will travel faster and endure longer than a falsity in prose. The man who would sneer or stare at a silly proposition nakedly put, will admit that “there is a good deal in that” when “that’’ is the point of an epigram shot into the ear. The rhetorician’s rules — if they are rules — teach him not only to name his tools, but to use his tools, the capacity of his tools — their extent — their limit; and from an examination of the nature of the tools — (an examination forced on him by their constant presence) — force him, also, into scrutiny and comprehension of the material on which the tools are employed, and thus, finally, suggest and give birth to new material for new tools.
CXLV.
Among his eidola of the den, the tribe, the forum, the theatre, etc., Bacon might well have placed the great eidolon of the parlor (or of the wit, as I have termed it in one of the previous Marginalia) the idol whose worship blinds man to truth by dazzling him with the apposite. But what title could have been invented for that idol which has propagated, perhaps, more of gross error than all combined? — the one, I mean, which demands from its votaries that they reciprocate cause and effect — reason in a circle — lift themselves from the ground by pulling up their pantaloons — and carry themselves on their own heads, in hand-baskets, from Beersheba to Dan.
All — absolutely all the argumentation which I have seen on the nature of the soul, or of the Diety, seems to me nothing but worship of this unnameable idol. Pour savoir ce qu’est Dieu, says Bielfeld, although nobody listens to the solemn truth, il faut être Dieu même — and to reason about the reason is of all things the most unreasonable. At least, he alone is fit to discuss the topic who perceives at a glance the insanity of its discussion.
CXLVI.
I believe it is Montaigne who says — “People talk about thinking, but, for my part I never begin to think until I sit down to write.” A better plan for him would have been, never to sit down to write until he had made an end of thinking.
CXLVII.
No doubt, the association of idea is somewhat singular — but I never can hear a crowd of people singing and gesticulating, all together, at an Italian opera, without fancying myself at Athens, listening to that particular tragedy, by Sophocles, in which he introduces a full chorus of turkeys, who set about bewailing the death of Meleager. It is noticeable in this connexion, by the way, that there is not a goose in the world who, in point of sagacity, would not feel itself insulted in being compared with a turkey. The French seem to feel this. In Paris, I am sure, no one would think of saying to Mr. F——, “What a goose you are!” — “Quel dindon tu es!” would be the phrase employed as equivalent.
CXLVIII.
Alas! how many American critics neglect the happy suggestion of M. Timon — “que le ministre de L’Instruction Publique doit lui-même savoir parler Français.”
CXLIX.
It is folly to assert, as some at present are fond of asserting, that the Literature of any nation or age was ever injured by plain speaking on the part of the Critics. As for American Letters, plain-speaking about them is, simply, the one thing needed. They are in a condition of absolute quagmire — a quagmire, to use the words of Victor Hugo, d’où on ne peut se tirer par des periphrases — par des quemadmodums