Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/261

Rh cies? Read again Poe's appraisal of Hawthorne, which we have entitled The Technique of the Short Story (pages 149-158). It was this review together with his consistent practice of its principles that gave Poe his priority and his primacy in the building of the new type. "Toe first laid down the principles," say Brander Matthews, "which governed his own construction and which have been quoted very often because they have been accepted by the masters of the short story in every modern language" Poe was the first to recognize in the sketchy tales of his day the possibilities of a type of literature as distinctive in its rôle  and as exigent in its form as  the novel or the drama or any other genre, however ancient and honorable its lineage. His influence on the new type was legislative, executive, and judicial: he framed the laws of its structure, he carried out these laws in his own stories, and he passed authoritative judgement on those who obeyed or disobeyed the code which he had himself enacted.

Making no attempt to circumscribe the topics amenable to short story treatment, Poe devoted his genius to the form of the new type. It must converge cumulatively and undeviatingly upon one and only one effect. This effect being the goal, the writer must see iit and move straight toward it from the beginning. The old way was to begin with background or setting, with character or characters, with plot or plan. Poe saw at a glance that these three essentials of a short story might all be excellent in their separate kind and  yet the story prove unappealing and ineffective. The