Volume 31, Number 15 · October 11, 1984
Inescapable Poe
By Harold Bloom
Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales
edited by Patrick F. Quinn
Library of America, 1408 pp., $27.50
Edgar Allan Poe: Essays and Reviews
edited by G.R. Thompson
Library of America, 1544 pp., $27.50
Valéry, in a letter to Gide, asserted that: 'Poe is the only impeccable writer. He was never mistaken.' If this judgment startles an American reader, it is less remarkable than Baudelaire's habit of making his morning prayers to God and to Edgar Poe. If we add the devotion of Mallarmé to what he called his master Poe's 'severe ideas,' then we have some sense of the scandal of what might be called 'French Poe,' perhaps as much a Gallic mystification as 'French Freud.' French Poe is less bizarre than French Freud, but more puzzling, because its literary authority ought to be overwhelming, and yet vanishes utterly when confronted by what Poe actually wrote. Here is the second stanza of the impeccable writer's celebrated lyric, 'For Annie':
Review, 5902 words
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