FEINBERG/WHITMAN  LITERARY FILE Prose "Edgar Poe's Significance" (Jan 1, 1880). The Critic. A. MS. draft. (DCN62)
Box 33 Folder 16760

1880 Jan. 1 EDGAR POE' SIGNIFICANCE: an essay. 
A.MS. (6p. 23 1/2 x 13 1/2 cm. largest)
Draft of an essay printed in Specimen Days, 1882-83, p. 156-158. Wanting 
the last three paragraphs. In upper left corner of first page Walt Whitman 
wrote: "Sent N.Y. Critic April '82." 

{62}Sent NY critic April '82
Significance
Edgar Poe's
My diagnosis this disease called [thumani?] - (or to [?e?r] bog the [?ouse] at [?to], what seems, the chief moor of the personality of my subjects)
[The human diagnosis I believe the [?]
[Perhaps the] poets present all the most marked lessons and types indication.Will you please write your autograph on the enclosed slip of paper and forward to me, and oblige
            Yours res[?]
            Miss F.C. GiffordComprehending [not poets alone but] [all the] [writers]
[To including] [other artists] and artists in a mass -- [including] musicians,
painters, actors, [and all] [who are]
[but --] [certainly -- and] and so on, [-- and]
[considering them] and considering all of them as radiations or
flanges of [that central] [the] that
[centre or axis of the] furious whirling wheel, poetry the [or]
centre [we call poetry] and axis [of all] of the whole -- where
else [ca] indeed may we so well invigorate so [found] [so well], the
[the whole matter] [and malady] causes, growths,
[although] [results] tally-mark's of the time -- [the] whole
matter and malady?2                                             Madame Piedmont
                                                        died June ‘76
                                                                    Edgar Poe

         By common consent there is nothing better, for man or woman, than a perfect & noble life happily balanced in activity.  Morally without flaw physically.  Sound & pure & giving & no more it’s due proportion to the sympathetic, the human emotional element - a life, in all these {?} {?} untiring to the end? {?} is rarely the lot of humanity - “almost never”.  Yet there is another shape of  personality rare {?} to the artist lense (which likes strong lights & shades) and that is where the perfect character, the good[?] [Thoughts,] [never
of utmost ?nobility? itself] is yet
heroic,never [a??amed], never lost sight
of, but, through failure,
sorrow, temporary downfalls,
passing clouds, is returned to
with resolute ardor, again
and again [[?]] [[?]] striven for,
fought for, though never violated and never fu?fully itself,
and adhered to as long as [while] the
mind, [the] muscles or [the]
voice obey [this] the wondrous
power we call volition.
This sort of character [so dear to
artists & students] we
see more or less in [Schiller] [in] Burns, [in] Byron
[in] Schiller and [in] George Sand. But we
do not see it in Edgar Poe
[Of] to the sort first outlined. The
service Poe renders [to it]
is that entire contrast
[to this to Burns]
and contradiction which
is next best to fully
exemplifying it.[The lyric and other works of Poe,]
almost without the first sign of moral principle, or [the] heroism, or of the concrete.
[The] [or conviction] [y] or of the [common and] [sane] simpler emotions
of [universal] humanity, [or the ?? majestic]
or the [brain sense of] instincts of 
[the] fresh air, [and] the sunshine, and the sweet
smelling day, they illustrate[s] [of]an intense
faculty for technical abstract joined with [das] a good share of the technical
rhyming art,  [no extras?] and an incorrigible propensity
toward [morbid] nocturnal themes, [something nocturnal,]
with a demonic undertone [to all] beneath [all] every line.
[He] Poe is, [The we] the fierce [el] electric light, brilliant and harsh but no heat.5[That marvellous [?]]
To one who could [subtly]
work out [the] [then] [the] their subtle retracing and [the]
retrospect, [the] [his] [poems] [they] would
[not only the peculiar]
[physical] doubtless pick up 
and [tall] connect [then] a close tall
[connection] between [his] the author's birth and
antecedents, his childhood & youth, [his advocates], ['bringing up'], his
physique, his so-called education,
[the literary one] his studies, his [?] associates, the
literary and social Baltimore,
Richmond, Philadelphia and New
York, of [the time] those times - not only
[those] [only] in themselves, but [sometimes] often a
violent spurring of, and reaction from them all.6