Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe by Daniel Hoffman (1972)

Many readers are put off from Poe by the décor of his writings – the setting of his tales and poems, the often grotesque style of his prose, what Aldous Huxley object to as the vulgarity of his verse.  His excrescent Gothic conventions which are often on the verge, if not over the verge, of self-parody, seem willfully remote from any possible reality.  It is, however, a function of Poe’s theories of both poetry and fiction that so many mannerisms be interposed between reality and the reader.  It is my hope, in writing sometimes personally about one reader’s relationship to Poe’s work, to suggest how Poe’s artifices – the images and patters in his Arabesques, the strange diction of his poems and tales – are intensifications of the realities they seem to avoid.  Poe has exerted a force upon later readers and writers quite disproportionate to the weight of his slender stock of verses and the brevity of his tales.  Although the characters in his tales are without exception fantastic personages, they must touch some deep, responsive nerve hidden in ourselves.  Whose image do we see in Poe’s insane criminals, in his detectives with their superhuman intelligence, in his protagonists driven by mysterious obsessions or passively suffering equally mysterious adventures?  As Thoreau replies to a correspondent who complained about Whitman’s animality, of whose experiences has he the power to remind us?

Quite excellent, and taken from one of the most idiosyncratic – if not the most idiosyncratic – book on Poe, poet Daniel Hoffman’s odd Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, first published in 1972.

If the French believe it’s essential to send a thief to catch a thief, it is probably fitting that we send a poet to root out another one.  Hoffman (1923-2013) was a poet, essayist and academic, serving a term as the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (1973).

Born in New York, Hoffman was a World War II veteran, and a graduate of Columbia (B.A., M.A., and Ph.D.).  He wrote several volumes of poetry and criticism, and despite holding many public positions (he was Poet in Resident at the Cathedral of St. John the Devine, for example), he is perhaps best known for his study of Poe.

To be sure, Poe⁷ is a very strange book.  Hoffman set out to write a book about Poe in much the same manner Poe would have written it.  This leads to a sometimes labyrinthine syntax, a love for emphasis, and a heavily-applied layer of subtext (and sub-subtext).  It is not to everyone’s taste, but if you are interested in Poe, Hoffman’s book is essential.

Hoffman makes the point throughout that we never quite get our hands around the totality of Poe; that once we think we have wrung him dry of layers of meaning and importance, more come to light.  I first came to Poe thought my keen interest in the Gothic, then found that – despite the gloom – that he had much in common with the aesthetes.  What is his figure of Roderick Usher, for example, other than that of an aesthete who finds his highest artistic fulfillment in decadent art?  All artists speak in the language that means the most to them, and Poe’s taste for Gothic tropes and wildly Romantic characters does not mean his art is any the less subtle, layered or significant.

I had revisited Hoffman’s book recently when reading about Poe in the news.  Hoffman goes into great detail on Poe’s inductive reasoning regarding the origin of the cosmos and our place within them, as outlined in the prose-poem Eureka.  Hoffman wrote his book in 1972, yet here is author Marilynne Robinson writing about Poe and Eureka in the New York Review of Books this past February:

Poe’s mind was by no means commonplace. In the last year of his life he wrote a prose poem, Eureka, which would have established this fact beyond doubt—if it had not been so full of intuitive insight that neither his contemporaries nor subsequent generations, at least until the late twentieth century, could make any sense of it. Its very brilliance made it an object of ridicule, an instance of affectation and delusion, and so it is regarded to this day among readers and critics who are not at all abreast of contemporary physics. Eureka describes the origins of the universe in a single particle, from which “radiated” the atoms of which all matter is made. Minute dissimilarities of size and distribution among these atoms meant that the effects of gravity caused them to accumulate as matter, forming the physical universe.

This by itself would be a startling anticipation of modern cosmology, if Poe had not also drawn striking conclusions from it, for example that space and “duration” are one thing, that there might be stars that emit no light, that there is a repulsive force that in some degree counteracts the force of gravity, that there could be any number of universes with different laws simultaneous with ours, that our universe might collapse to its original state and another universe erupt from the particle it would have become, that our present universe may be one in a series.

All this is perfectly sound as observation, hypothesis, or speculation by the lights of science in the twenty-first century. And of course Poe had neither evidence nor authority for any of it. It was the product, he said, of a kind of aesthetic reasoning—therefore, he insisted, a poem. He was absolutely sincere about the truth of the account he had made of cosmic origins, and he was ridiculed for his sincerity. Eureka is important because it indicates the scale and the seriousness of Poe’s thinking, and its remarkable integrity. It demonstrates his use of his aesthetic sense as a particularly rigorous method of inquiry.

Writing on the Scientific American blog, writer scientist John Horgan responds to Robinson with: Now that is a theory of everything. But it isn't "sound," it's batshit crazy—in a good way.

Like Hoffman, I don’t think we will ever be through with Poe, nor will we completely understand him.  His mind was too subtle (the melodrama of his plots and prose notwithstanding), his science too colored by aesthetics, his aesthetics too colored by his deductive and inductive reasoning, his true sense of beauty too tinged with melancholy and sadness.  Poe remains one of the few great writers who was, at heart, a fairly miserable man – a walking anomaly, a personality divided.  A man who saw horrors and sorrow everywhere, and yet dreamed of beauty.

Books of Wonder Hosts William Joyce

Bill Joyce in the Books of Wonder Gallery (and an N.C. Wyeth Behind Him)

During our recent (too long) hiatus, readers have asked where we have been keeping ourselves.

One of the many answers is Books of Wonder, an oasis for bibliophiles, art collectors, and people – both young and old – interested in children’s literature.  For your correspondent, who has been dutifully tracing the history of children’s literature from its Victorian Golden Age to its kaleidoscopic present, it is paradise.  For those who love this often neglected realm of literary and artistic endeavor, or who wish to share wondrous creations with the young, there is simply no better place. 

Books of Wonder has been around since 1980 – it’s an independent store owned and operated by Peter Glassman, who has managed to create a space with something for everybody.

Our recent trips have left us marveling at original illustrations by N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945) and Wizard of Oz illustrators John R. Neill (1877-1943) and W.W. Denslow (1856-1915), as well as original Disney animation cells, in the back gallery.  Also there are glorious first editions of the Oz books, along with facsimile reproductions of Andrew Lang’s (1844-1912) fairy books, as well as brand new books by today’s leading lights in the field.

The staff is always friendly and extremely knowledgeable; there is rarely a Christmas shopping trip when I do not come home laden with treasures, many often for myself.  With the holidays approaching, you cannot have a better resource.

Another great plus for the shop is the frequent appearance of the world’s finest illustrators and writers of today’s children’s books.  Recent guests have included such luminaries as Oliver Jeffers and Garth Nix.  This past weekend, Books of Wonder played host to the doyen of the field, William Joyce.

It is a tribute to his considerable artistry that an equal number of adults attend his public appearances as do children, and his recent appearance was no exception.  He spoke to a capacity crowd, regaling them with stories of his adventures at the Academy Awards (where he won an Oscar, along with Brandon Oldenburg, for his short, The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore); his adventures in school; the creation of his company, Moonbot; his efforts to launch young artists and animators into the field; and, his love of story-telling and images.

Joyce had the crowd gather closer as he showed his recent animated short, the Numberlys, chatted with aspiring artists and writers, and even provided a sneak-preview of his next animated short, an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado.  This was a stunning piece of work – daringly conceived in its overall design and dramatically streamlined to deliver maximum impact.  Be on the lookout for this, as it will rank as the finest animated adaptation of Poe, ever.

Joyce was also in town for a screening of The Numberlys at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, where it was included as part of its permanent collection, and to talk about his new book, A Bean, A Stalk and a Boy Named Jack, which he created with Kenny Callicutt.  (Watch these pages for a review next week.)  And next year, the 2015 holiday season will also see the new installments in his Guardians of Childhood series.  It would seem as if this protean talent is entering a new era of growth and creativity.

William Joyce has been a consistently energetic and enjoyable artist since his debut on the scene more than 20 years ago.  His love of fun and dedication to his craft has provided a much-needed joyous note in these days of “dark and gritty.”  The world of William Joyce is one where everyone is happy, and is a tonic (if not a benediction) young and old alike.  He is, as an artist and a man, someone who matters.

Tomorrow – Bambi. 

Part I -- Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde

For years, Dorian Gray could not free himself from the influence of this book. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he never sought to free himself from it.  – Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I will break from tradition somewhat with this post, and insert an annoying autobiographical passage.

I started reading detective and gothic fiction of the Victorian era when I was a boy.  It was almost as if a world opened before me – a world of the mind and of the senses.

Armed with these twin passions, I also greatly enjoyed the pop culture transformations of them, including (or, perhaps, especially) the series of films based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe starring Vincent Price.  I became a card-carrying Vincent Price devotee.

So, imagine my delight when, in 1979, Price came to New York to star in the Broadway production of John Gay’s Diversions and Delights.  Diversions is a one-man show that takes as its conceit Oscar Wilde lecturing a Parisian audience near the end of his life.  The Broadway run did not last long, but it rapidly moved off-Broadway, where it settled at the Roundabout Theater (then on West 23^rd Street) for an extended stay.

Diversions and Delights is a remarkable work.  Culled largely from Wilde’s own writings, it also incorporates bits of later-written biographies and much of Gay’s own keen dramatic sense.  I believe that only two plays about Wilde have really captured him to some extent: Diversions and Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde.

I initially went first to see Price, but returned again and again for Wilde.  I asked the management of the Roundabout if I could work as an usher at the theater in exchange for seeing the show every night, and I managed see Price as Wilde some 30-odd times.  It was a revelation to me.

Once the show was over, I immediately procured a copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and it became my golden book – I read it countless times after first buying it, so much so that passages of it are now forever locked in my memory.  It was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Oscar Wilde.

In Dorian Gray, Wilde writes of a book that poisoned Dorian – a heavily perfumed volume that opened to him wonderful sins disguised with incomparable beauty.  I was indeed luckier than Wilde’s fantastic hero – instead of being poisoned by a book, I was saved by one.  London during the Yellow Nineties and fin de siècle Europe became for me an alternate world where I lived another, perhaps more intense, life.  Just as Renaissance Italy became for Wilde and his mentor, Walter Pater, more of a state of mind than an historical period, the world of the aesthetes became a cornerstone of my philosophical compass.

Aside from the dramatic and fantastic events of Wilde’s life, I became deeply enamored of the philosophy of aestheticism, and looked too at others who explored the same creed.  I became interested in Walter Pater, John Ruskin, James Whistler, Aubrey Beardsley, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Théophile Gautier.

But more than aestheticism and a fascination with the Victorian era, I was deeply moved and beglamoured by Wilde himself.  And the thing that most fascinated me was that he was a figure at times fully-defined, and at others horrifyingly indistinct.  And that is because, I believe, that Wilde the man was too multiform and protean.  He embodied the Renaissance ideal of mastery of many types of mind and genius.  Even after reading Wilde for more than 30 years, I find it remarkable that the man who wrote the witty drawing-room comedy The Importance of Being Earnest is also the man who wrote the strangely musical, Symbolist Salome.  I have difficulty reconciling that the keen mind who deduced the possibility of Willie Hughes with the brain responsible for The Selfish Giant; and that the pen responsible for The Mind of Man Under Socialism is the same that wrote The Harlot’s House.  And is it possible that the bare, blunt and deeply affecting lines of The Ballad of Reading Goal could be written by the same man who wrote the perfumed and sensual Picture of Dorian Gray?

In the contemporary public mind, we have cut Wilde down to our own smaller-size.  We do not have the proper aspect ratio of the whole, multi-talented man.  We think of Wilde the Gay Martyr, or Wilde the Sensualist.  But these are only parts of the picture – if indeed they make up any significant proportion of the man at all.  To really know Wilde, we must know Wilde the gifted classics scholar and intellectual; Wilde the poet and Wilde the playwright; Wilde the novelist and Wilde the political thinker.  We have to consider Wilde’s upbringing and his deep appreciation of Irish folklore before knowing Wilde the fantasist.  We must know Hellenism and the works of Pater, Ruskin, Symonds and Mahaffy before we can fully understand Wilde the aesthete and dandy.  Aside from his success as a writer, the list of his accomplishments in so brief a life are immense, staggering: the finest talker and raconteur of his age, lecturer and arts advocate, moralist and social critic.  One of the most fascinating images in my mind’s eye is the thought of Oscar lecturing the denizens of the Old West about Cellini’s place in the history of art – it’s too delicious.  And to top it off, his was one of the most fascinating personalities of an age crammed with remarkable figures.  In his bravery and insouciance, his remarkable panache and élan, Wilde was also a swashbuckler without a sword, a courtier who became a type of personality unto himself.

Perhaps the only constant in Wilde’s life was his deep an abiding aestheticism; his passionate, deeply-ingrained and unending devotion to Art.  An appreciation of the arts (and the art of life) was encoded in Wilde’s DNA, it was impossible for him to engage in the world in any other way.  He saw his personal experience (both his joys and his tragedies) through the prism of art, and the world around him either reflected the canons of art, or fell disappointingly short.  There are many disparate facets of Wilde the man to explore, but if they are not seen through the green-tinted glasses of an aesthete, we do not see them as they really were.  It was the filter through which his protean intellect travelled, and the fundamental core of his philosophy and personal vision.

It is not impossible to believe that Wilde courted, to some degree, his own ruin and disgrace because it was the ending most dictated by satisfying dramaturgy.  That every epoch of his life, from his meteoric rise to his exile where he roamed Europe under the name Sebastian Melmoth, was in some way performance art, that he lived strictly for dramatic, aesthetic effect.

Tomorrow we finish our review of Built of Books: How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde