A Pilfering by Poe

IF YOU have read Charles Dickens’ interestingnovel Barnaby Rudge, you will recall that poor Barnaby had a pet raven named Grip. The raven was almost a part of Barnaby because Barnaby carried the bird in a cage on his back. Thus Grip went along when Barnaby was thrown into Newgate prison at the time of the Gordon riots. The bird, having a somewhat limited vocabulary, was constantly repeating himself, and one of his favorite statements was, “I’m a devil. I’m a devil.” As Dickens tells it, Grip would sometimes combine the phrase with another, saying, “Polly put the kettle on — I’m a devil, I’m a devil,”

This reminds us of what Poe says to his own bird in his poem “The Raven.”Beginning with the fifteenth stanza he says, “‘Prophet!' said I, ‘thing of evil! — prophet still, if bird or devil!' ” and at the beginning of the next stanza, as it for emphasis, he repeats the line.

Dickens calls attention to the bright red shining in Grip’s eye as boy and bird sit in their prison cell, looking out at the light from the burning buildings. “As if,” Dickens says, “it were a spark from the fires of the Gordon riots.”

Poe, sitting in his dreary chamber at midnight, had little illumination. The fire in the fireplace had almost gone out. “And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.” There was a lamp above the bust of Pallas upon which the raven sat — such a meager flame as lamps gave before the days of kerosene. There was not much light there — hardly anything “fiery” — and yet Poe pictures himself as sitting in the lonesome chamber looking up at the visiting fowl “whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core.” From what source of fire or conflagration would these fiery eyes get such notable reflection? It would seem here that Poe was thinking more about Barnaby’s bird than the one he was writing about.

Poe said that the fascinating quality of his visiting raven was due to its prophetic nature — a brainless bird giving an answer that fit right in with the question asked, and especially an answer with such a doleful future as “Nevermore.”

Barnaby’s mother sat with him during much of the time that he spent behind the bars. She expressed the hope that they would soon be given their freedom. “You hope,” said Barnaby. “Ay, but your hoping will not undo these chains. I hope, but they do not mind that. Grip hopes, but who cares for Grip?” The raven gave a short melancholy croak. It said “Nobody” as plainly as a croak could speak. Later on, Barnaby asked the question, “But who cares for Grip?” Again the raven answered “Nobody.” “Nobody” and “Never” were among his favorite words.

Here then we have that same prophetic quality and the same doleful meaning coming from a brainless bird which Poe, in his essay on “The Raven,” said was so necessary to the success of his poem.

How are we going to account for these coincidences between Dickens’ novel, published in 1841, and Poe’s “The Raven,” which came out on January 29, 1845? Coincidences are just chance, and they hardly occur so often in such short space. As yet we shall not accuse Poe of plagiarism. He himself accused too many of plagiarism. He was noted for finding literary thieves and liars to right and left of him, and he made many enemies thereby. He summed up his activity in that line by speaking of “Longfellow and other plagiarists.”And New England retaliated by calling him “the jingle man.”

Let us now consider what likelihood there might be that Poe would take ideas from Dickens, and especially from Barnaby Rudge. Poe knew more about the novel than anyone else living, so it was said. The Encyclopædia Britannica, eleventh edition, under the heading “Charles Dickens,” tells us: “The plot [of Barnaby Rudge] is of the utmost complexity; and Edgar Allan Poe, who predicted the conclusion, must be one of the few persons who ever really mastered it.”

As the novel came out serially in an American publication, Poe attracted much attention when he successfully predicted, from early numbers, the course and outcome of the story. He was therefore deeply familiar with every detail of the passages about Grip, Barnaby’s raven.

When the book came out, Poe reviewed it. In the review he shows evidence of being much impressed by the raven. He said, “The raven, too, intensely amusing as it is, might have been made, more than we now see it, a portion of the conception of the fantastic Barnaby. Its croakings might have been prophetically heard in the course of the drama.” (The italics are Poe’s.)

So now what have we? We have Poe, sometime before he wrote the poem, beginning to have ideas. The two vital and fundamental ideas of the poem are here quite explicitly expressed — the ideas of having a brainless bird who could give answers that would happen to fit in with the question asked and that would strike the imagination as being prophetic. And then a word of a doleful nature. Dickens provided such words. Grip’s favorite words were “Never" and “Nobody.” Poe made his raven’s “Nevermore.”They were both prophetic in their use. Shall we accuse Poe of plagiarism?

To be sure of our work we must look into it a little more deeply. In 1845 “The Raven” made its appearance in the New York Evening Mirror. It soon became the best-known poem in America. When “The Raven” was an established success, Poe wrote a review of it himself. In the review he undertook to explain to the public that every idea, every line of the poem, seemingly inspired, was a work of pure reason. Each step was thought out. It was shrewdly devised. It was an achievement of intellect. He had calculated the effect of each word and sound and image. The poem was not the result of mysterious inward promptings or suggestion from without; this he is careful to have you understand. And this, it would seem, is his reason for writing a review of the poem himself. It is a sort of confession to the public of how such things are done.

His thoroughness in implanting this point of view is interestingly exhibited in the so-called review. He starts with the word “Nevermore" and the effect to be worked by its reiteration. And so problem number one is to choose a speaker. First he thought of using a human being, but decided that it would not do to use a reasoning creature. The effect of brainless reiteration would be hard to contrive. Then he took up the parrot and thought that over. It would not do; he said it was “unnatural.” Then he hit upon the idea of using the raven; he said it was “equally capable of speech with the parrot” and “infinitely in keeping with the intended tone.” Thus he goes on with his review, or confession, and never once mentions the raven with which he became so familiar in reviewing Barnaby Rudge.

Now, must we force ourselves to believe that never at any moment while he was writing “The Raven,” and then writing his review of “The Raven,” did he recall that other raven named Grip? Did he forget what he had observed so carefully in Barnaby’s bird: the effect of prophecy that could be achieved by the reiterated word? Did he never think of Grip’s words “Never” and “Nobody” and compare them with his own “Nevermore”? Would it be possible for a man with any memory at all to have had so much to do with Grip as Poe had and then forget all about it? Did Poe forget that Barnaby’s bird was repeatedly calling himself a devil, and that he, Poe, made his own bird a visitor from the nether regions? Was all this so far gone from Poe’s mind that when it came to choosing a mouthpiece for “Nevermore” he had to think it all out — first a human being, then a parrot, and finally, at last, a raven?

Poe had made quite a reputation by attacking other writers as plagiarists. Now that his own poem was a great success he would naturally begin to feel uneasy. He would want nothing that might be called plagiarism attached to that. And so what would he do? He would head it all off by writing a so-called review of his own poem. He would be careful not to say a word about Barnaby Rudge.

Poe was a detective in the sense that he was the originator of the detective story. He would now use his craft in throwing literary detectives off the trail. But he overdid it. When a detective has a culprit in hand, the wrongdoer will keep away as far as possible from the object of the search. A detective is often able to tell by little moves of the culprit’s hand or arm, little opposed pressures which the detective can feel, just where the object is.

That is just what Poe is doing in this so-called review. He is keeping the public mind as far as possible from Barnaby Rudge’s raven.

Mr. Poe accuses himself of plagiarism.