Glimpses of Poe by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa Translated from the Japanese by Ryan Choi

Glimpses of Poe 

by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927)

Translated from the Japanese by Ryan Choi

“Poe” refers to “Edgar Allan Poe.” When Poe was first introduced to France by the poet Charles Baudelaire, it was as “E. Poe.” The British too used this shorthand briefly. In light of Poe’s own preferences, “Poe” and “Edgar” are certainly acceptable, but “Allan,” on the other hand, is a name he never signed on his works in full. In short, “Allan” is superfluous.

*

Poe’s father’s name was David Poe. Poe was his father’s second son. The elder Poe fathered three children before abandoning the family. After Poe’s mother’s death, in the wake of his father’s departure, Poe was informally adopted by the wealthy Allan family, headed by the successful tobacco merchant John Allan. Following a series of disagreements with his foster family over the years, Poe split from the Allans. Perhaps this is why he refused to acknowledge their name in his signature beyond the letter “A,” as in “Edgar A. Poe.” 

*

The pen name “Edgar Allan Poe” originated with the editor and critic Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who spearheaded the first collected edition of Poe’s work after Poe’s untimely demise. Griswold, it should be noted, was a longtime foe of Poe’s, and is now remembered primarily as a devious villain in literary history. 

(Indeed, to live on in posterity, one only needs to be wicked to an artist destined for immortality.)

*

Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was recognized first and foremost as a literary critic. By the age of twenty-six, he was one of the most influential critics in the country, with his strident style of criticism that tended toward the vituperative and scathing. In his short life, in addition to his other writings, Poe produced over eight hundred essays in more than forty publications. If these numbers lead one to the conclusion that Poe was a heedless craftsman, this would not, in fact, be incorrect at all.

*

In his writing, brutally from the first phrase to the last, Poe had the habit of employing abstruse and lofty language. In praise, he elevated a work to the heavens, and in criticism, he condemned a work to hell. In one notorious excoriation of a certain famous poet, the writing is so littered with factual errors as to be an embarrassment, but the biggest error of all was that he even published the piece to begin with. For all his vitriol, Poe ultimately saw no innate difference in worth between the people he scorned and the people he acclaimed.

*

It was near impossible for Poe to engage in measured critique. His critical articles bordered on the abusive and habitually devolved into personal attacks, such that he was reviled and feared by almost everyone he knew. His one-time friend James Russell Lowell claimed that Poe, more than treating ink as poison, blasted bitter fire from the tip of his pen at friend and foe

alike, isolating everyone in his orbit. To all he had scathed, it was utterly fitting for his life to end as it did, in cryptic tragedy.

*

Poe’s penchant for insults and negativity, far from being baseless, had stemmed rather from his personal philosophy. In this sense, he was simply acting objectively in accordance with his system of logic that said that the chief role of the critic was to highlight the faults of a work. He stated this on many occasions unequivocally, that it is not the job of the critic to address beauty directly, for beauty that requires explaining—Poe would agree—does not count as beauty. 

*

Therefore, beauty—to Poe—was transcendent: apparent and accessible to anyone of any race. The obligation of the critic is not to mediate the aesthetic experience but to identify the defects that detract from it. Poe’s conviction about beauty’s unteachability sits at the center of his critical philosophy.

*

For Poe, the composition of a poem was a self-contained act of pleasure, done strictly for its own sake, and the pleasure in artistic creation was rooted in the transcendental aesthetic sense. 

And, as it was for poetry, so it was for all forms of art. Poe’s emphasis on this approach was one of the earliest expressions of the idea of “Art for art’s sake.”

*

Poe was absolutely opposed to all forms of didactic writing; in his aesthetic view, such piousness was a dreary exercise in melancholy. When he had espoused his version of “Art for art’s sake,” it was roundly neglected, if not mocked, by his peers. Before long, however, its influence had spread internationally, particularly to France, but also significantly to Russia and England. 

*

Poe coined the term “Totality of Effect” to encapsulate his view on the subject of beauty and form. He insisted on the superiority of poems that could be read in one sitting, during a time when the British preference for the long poem had a lingering hold on the American poetic mind. For him to have pushed this contrarian idea so boldly was a mark of his singularity. 

*

For Poe, Milton’s masterwork, Paradise Lost, was the antithesis of effective poetry, a prolonged work of poeticized prose, peppered only here and there with actual poems. 

He declared that the optimal length of a poem was about one hundred lines, and his opinion about stories and novels complied with this logic—that the best can be read in one sitting.

Shorter poems and stories as a whole, Poe believed, had a better chance of surviving history, and whether he was correct or not, poetry after his death trended toward the length he shrewdly defended.

*

Poe died destitute in 1841, leaving not a penny for his headstone, and not only did he die a wretch, but even in death he was not granted rest. 

Poe’s cousin the judge Neilson Poe eventually had a headstone cut and engraved for him. After its completion, however, before it was installed, a train derailed and obliterated the headstone and the monument yard where it was being kept. 

*

Decades later, Sara Sigourney Rice, a local Baltimore schoolteacher, began campaigning for Poe (whose reputation, by then, was on the mend) and soliciting donations for a stone monument to him. At the unveiling ceremony, not one American writer of note was in attendance, except for one, a gloomy old man standing in silence at the foot of the monument, who was none other than the poet Walt Whitman.

*

Even in death, Poe was subjected to trials of derision and tragedy, including the aforesaid fate of the first edition of his collected writings, the editorship of which had been usurped by

Rufus Wilmot Griswold, his arch nemesis and the originator of the “Allan” in “Edgar Allan Poe,” the name by which he is now known. 

In spite of all this, today there is little doubt about the greatness of Poe, for all greatness—so it seems—must wait for posterity.

ポーの片影

芥川龍之介

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　ポーとは、ヱドガー、アラン、ポーのことです。ポーは初めフランスに紹介された時分にはポーヱと呼ばれてゐました。英国人等にも、この読み方をするものがあります。けれども、ポーがたゞしいことは明かです。モ一つ名前についていへば、ヱドガーはいゝが、アランは決して彼が自ら持つてをつたものでないといふことです。つまり、アランだけは全然余計なものだといふことです。
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　ポーの父はヱドガー、デビツト、ポーといひ、ポーは二男でした。その父はポー等三人の子供を残して死んだのです。でむを得ず、ポーはジヨン、アランといふに養はれることになりました。がポーは間もなくそこを離れてしまつたのです。だから、ポー自身は未だ曾て、アラン、ポー等と署名したことはないのです。
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　アランと呼ばれるやうになつたのは、ポーの全集を編纂したグリスボートといふ男が故意に書き加へたことによつて初まつたのです。この男は、事毎にポーにし、毒ついた男で、唯それだけで芸術史上に名を残された男です。（名を後世に残さんとする者は、後世に生命あるであらう芸術家に何でもかまはず喧嘩を売ることです………）
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　ポーは一八〇九年ボストンに生れた人です。彼が最もよく世に知られたのは、批評家としてゞした。二十六歳の時、彼は既に立派な批評家として全米に認められました。ポーの批評は辛辣で鳴るものです。関係した新聞雑誌の数が四十幾つ、発表した論文が八百あまり、この事実から見て、彼が名文家たり得ないであらうことは窺はれますが、事実彼は、名文家ではあり得ませんでした。
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　彼は文中終始最上級の言葉ばかり使用する癖がありました。だから褒める場合は九天の高きに迄持上げます。けなす場合は九の底まで落します。或る人の詩を批評した中に、非常な誤りばかりに充ちてゐるがその中もつとも大きな誤りは、これを印刷したといふことであるなどゝいつてをります。所が彼がけなした人と、褒めた人と、彼がいつたほど価値に相違があるとは認められないのです。
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　ポーには中庸なる批評は出来なかつたのです。そして、いふ迄もなく罵倒非難したものゝ方が遥に多いのです、彼の唯一の友人ローヱルさへ、彼ポーは毒薬とインキ壺と間違へてゐるといつた位で、彼の筆端は火を吐いて辛辣に、人に迫つたのです。だから、彼には味方といふものは殆んどありませんでした。彼がその終生を不遇に了つたのは故あることです。
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　然しポーの悪口は、彼自身の哲学から出てゐたのですから止むを得ないことです。ポーに従へば、批評の役目はアラを探すことにあるといふのです。ポーは斯う云ふのです。作品の美点は批評家が説明して始めて現はれるやうなものではない。自然に現はれ、自然に感得されるのでなければ美点ではない。
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　だから、真の美点は、何人にもすぐ味得される筈のものだ、従つて、批評の使命は美点を挙げるより欠点を指摘するにある。といふのです。彼はこの信条から悪口に終始した訳です。
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　ポーは詩は快楽の為めに作られるものだといつてゐる。詩の目的は其処にのみあるといつてゐる、勿論、詩とは云つても、それは芸術を代表さして云つてゐるのです。そして快楽は何処から生れるかといふに、それは美を感ずることからだといふのです。この主張は、彼の芸術の為めの芸術の先駆を為したものです。
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　ポーは、だから所謂教訓主義には絶対に反対しました。ポーの美に対する考へ方は、その最も高いものはメランコリツクなものである。といふのでした。ポーが、この芸術の為めの芸術を主張した当時は、何等省みられませんでしたが、やがて、フランスに影響し露英くその風靡するに任せたことは御存じの通りです。
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　また彼は Totality of effect といふ言葉を使ひました。彼はこの見地から、詩は一気に読み得るものでなければならないと主張しました。当時対岸の英国には長詩が非常な勢ひを持つてゐたのですから、その時、敢然としてう云ひ得た彼の卓見と自信とは偉とすべきです。
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　ポーはの失楽園の如きは決して詩ではない。れは詩が所々にあつて、それを散文でつないでゐるのだと。そして彼は結局、詩は百行内外が最適であると云つてゐます。小説に対しても、一度に読み切り得るものでなければならないと主張してゐるのです。
　後代に迄残る作品は短いものだと断言してゐるのです。ポー逝いて後の傾向に照し彼の鋭い洞察力に感ぜざるを得ないではありませんか、彼が偉大なる先駆者であることは疑へないところです。
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　ポーは一八四一年になくなりました。その死の悲惨であつたばかりでなく、死後も亦甚だ浮ばれないものでした。ポーには墓を建る遺産もありませんでした。
　バルチモアの親戚のものが、漸くにして石を求め、石屋に刻ませ、いよ／＼出来上がらうとした時、列車が脱線してその家に飛込み、ポーの石碑は微塵に砕かれてつたのです。
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　其後久しくして、其地の学校の女教師が主唱となり、永く掛つて寄附金を集め漸くにして石碑が建ちました、けれども、其の除幕式には、当時米国の文人にして名あるもの一人も参列しませんでした。その中に、タツタ一人、年老た、淋しい一人の人けが、黙々としてその墓碑の前に立ちました、それはホイツトマンでした。
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　ポーは斯く死後迄不幸な人だつたのです、殊に不幸の最大なるものは、その全集編纂が、「敵」であつたところのグリスボートの手に依つて為されたことです。然しながら、今日ポーの偉大さを疑ふものはありません。偉大なる人は遂に後代をまつより仕方がないものかと思はれます。

Ryan Choi is the author of the forthcoming book In Dreams: The Very Short Works of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (London: Paper + Ink, 2021). His work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He lives in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, where he was born and raised. 

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927), born in Tokyo, Japan, was the author of more than 350 works of fiction and non-fiction, including Rashōmon, The Spider’s Thread, Kappa, and In a Grove. Japan’s premier literary award for emerging writers, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him.

22 September 2021