José R. Ibáñez Ibáñez - Retrospective Poe: The Master, His Readership, His Legacy

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Professor Derek Maus, SUNY Potsdam, USA

Professor Thomas Fahy, Long Island University, USA

Professor Deborah E. McDowell, University of Virginia and Director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute, USA

Professor Laura Rattray, University of Glasgow, UK

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Over 200 years after his birth, Poes reputation is firmly established in world literature. Despite changes to the American canon, he remains a central figure in American literature and a seminal voice in the development of the modern short story globally. There is a broad consensus that Poes legacy relies to a great extent on the translations and essays of Charles Baudelaire. Indeed, so great was the importance of Baudelaire in the worldwide recognition of Poe that Paul Valry remarked that the American author would have been almost forgotten if Baudelaire had not taken up the task of introducing him into European literatures, a comment that Lois D. Vines considered both an exaggeration and an understatement (Vines 1999, 1). Had Baudelaire not regarded Poe as a model, the latters fame might well have faded, and he might now be regarded simply as one among many American writers of his age. Baudelaires discovery was consequential if one takes a cursory glance at the number of writers who have claimed to be under Poes influence in one way or another.

If, for the French poet and those he influenced, Poe became a cult figurewe might recall here Mallarms claim that he moved to London to improve his English in an attempt to better understand Poein England things were radically different. T.S. Eliots contentious essay From Poe to Valry, based on his Library of Congress lecture delivered in 1948 and published a year later in The Hudson Review, stands out as one of the most damning pieces of criticism on Poe. Eliot openly criticized Poe and declared that anyone examining his work would find nothing but slipshod writing (1949, 327). He even made the point that only a mind that was still adolescent could be attracted to Poes style, which he disparaged as puerile thinking (327). What puzzled Eliot above all was the passionate enthusiasm that Poes work aroused in Baudelaire , Mallarm , and Valry , three French poets who each offered an individual understanding of poetry and who became advocates for Poe, all playing significant roles in establishing Poes literary reputation.

Despite the harsh comments on Poe and his art, Eliots article is perhaps an interesting case of how writers, critics, artists, and the general readership have read and understood Poe. The audience for Poe is indeed a strange one: whereas there have been numerous anthologies of Poes fiction addressed to a young readership , adaptations of Poes work for the screen have largely been aimed at an adult audience. There is also the fact that Poe has been held in awe by a large number of adult readers, among them some very notable writers: Baudelaire , Pedro Antonio de Alarcn , Stphane Mallarm , Robert Louis Stevenson, Paul Valry , and Stephen King , to name just a few. All of them have claimed to have been influenced by Poes work, and none can be characterized as adolescent, though some of them are or were writers catering to a young readership in their own work.

Some of the contributors to Retrospective Poe have taken Eliots essay as a starting point, thus indicating the importance of Eliot as a critic even now, with the days of Modernism long gone. Taking that essay as a point of departure might lead contributors to downplay the importance of Poe or the extent of his influence on literature. Yet quite the contrary is true; the chapters herein attest to the vitality of such reception studies in terms of their subjects and approaches. This may be because, as Studniarz argues, Eliots response to Poes literary legacy is puzzling and complicated (99). Eliot may have felt that Poe posed a threat to the poetry he himself wrote, and thus preferred to criticize him harshly if only to avoid any literary relationship. To the names mentioned above we should add another great Modernist author, Jorge Luis Borgesthe precursor of literary Postmodernismwho also acknowledged the influence of Poe on his work, to the point of claiming that the American writer was the originator of the modern short story (Esplin 2018). Borges was an avid reader who repeatedly pointed out his indebtedness to Poe, whom he had read in his childhood (16).