approbation bestowed on its every effort—having adopted this idea, we say, without attention to the obvious fact that praise of all was bitter although negative censure to the few alone deserving, and that the only result of the system, in the fostering way, would be the fostering of folly—we now continue our vile practices through the supineness of custom, even while, in our national self-conceit, we repudiate that necessity for patronage and protection in which originated our conduct. In a word, the press throughout the country has not been ashamed to make head against the very few bold attempts at independence which have, from time to time, been made in the face of the reigning order of things. And if, in one, or perhaps two, insulated cases, the spirit of severe truth, sustained by an unconquerable will, was not to be so put down, then, forthwith, were private chicaneries set in motion; then was had resort, on the part of those who considered themselves injured by the severity of criticism, (and who were so, if the just contempt of every ingenuous man is injury,) resort to arts of the most virulent indignity, to untraceable slanders, to ruthless assassinations in the dark. We say these things were done, while the press in general looked on, and, with a full understanding of the wrong perpetrated, spoke not against the wrong. The idea had absolutely gone abroad—had grown up little by little into toleration—that attacks however just, upon a literary reputation however obtained, however untenable, were well retaliated by the basest and most unfounded traduction of personal fame. But is this an age—is this a day—in which it can be necessary even to advert to such considerations as that the book of the author is the property of the public, and that the issue of the book is the throwing down of the gauntlet to the reviewer—to the reviewer whose duty is the plainest; the duty not even of approbation, or of censure, or of silence, at his own will, but at the sway of those sentiments and of those opinions which are derived from the author himself, through the medium of his written and published words? True criticism is the reflection of the thing criticised upon the spirit of the critic.
—Graham’s Magazine, August 1841
OBSERVATIONS
As a magazinist Poe composed notes, squibs, short essays, and editorial comments on a wide range of topics. These pieces served several purposes, one of which (admittedly) was to fill empty column space. But these “brevities” also enabled Poe to flaunt his learning, to deliver pungent insights, to convey literary gossip, to indulge in philosophical speculation, and to play the cultural pundit. From the beginning of his tenure at the Southern Literary Messenger, he contributed scraps of filler, culled mainly from the classics, and in one issue supplied nine pages of scholarly tidbits that he called “Pinakidia.” Poe’s best known series of general observations, “Marginalia,” made its 1844 debut in the Democratic Review, and over the next five years, installments also appeared in Godey’s, Graham’s, and the Southern Literary Messenger. As editor of the weekly Broadway Journal in 1845, Poe likewise composed brief miscellaneous comments, mostly concerned with contemporary literary culture.
From these stray writings, one gains both a better appreciation of Poe’s intellectual range and a clearer sense of his concerns as an American man of letters. The selections included in the section cohere around several organizing ideas—art, imagination, reason, genius, insight, spiritual revelation—and reflect his preoccupations mostly during the 1840s, a period of profound uncertainty when he was increasingly drawn toward a compensatory vision of cosmic unity. Inevitably, his comments also betray the inconsistency of his thinking. Poe defines art as “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul,” and he emphasizes the role of that “veil,” which restricts conventional sight that always sees “too much” by focusing on material surfaces. Yet elsewhere he hails the “clear-sightedness