Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/259

Rh his creative inspiration not in the changing moods and whims of society about him but in the unchanging visions and questionings within. His central contribution to the new form was not content but structure Poe standardized the short story.

This distinction, if just, invalidates to a degree the usual classification of Poe's stories according to topical content, or at least renders such classification less helpful than the classification based on structure. Irving, Hawthorne, Harte, Harris and O. Henry are rightly studied in their themes, for they not only identified themselves with these themes but illuminated each theme with a new popular interest and a steadily enlarging significance. Poe did not do this. It is well to know his themes but better still to know the principles of his architecture.

"Poe's tales," says Nettleton/ taking his cue from topic, "are usually divided into classes. Of the Tales of Death, The Fall of the House of Usher and Ligeia are in unity of tone and intensifying force toward the climax, almost flawless Poe strove not so much to tell a  story as to produce an effect—in one, of utter desolation, in the other, of despair. Of the 'Old World Romances,' the most noteworthy are The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask  of Antontillado, and The Assignation. Terror is the note of the first, vengeance  second, and of the third sensuousness. Of the 'Tales of Conscience,' Poe preferred William Wilson and The Black Cat. While Hawthorne turned to the spiri