Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/31

Rh writings of Poe than in the pages of any other genius, ancient or modern. Though Poe's works are, as we have seen, everywhere accessible in Italian, Previati prefers "the author's native language to the uncertainties that might arise in translation." In fact the purity and vividness of Poe's language are such that he is often used in foreign lands as the standard of classic English. "Are you familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe?" Doctor Inazo Nitobé, the famous Japanese scholar, was asked. "Familiar with them!" he replied. "We learn English in Japan from The Raven and The Gold-Bug."

It is by no means certain that Poe is better known in Spain than in Italy but the facts are more accessible. The distinguished Spanish novelist, Vicente Blasco Ibanez, when visiting the Poe Cottage at Fordham in November, 1919, said: "Poe is my spiritual and literary father. His name is as famous in Europe as Lincoln's." In Spain it is probably more famous. "Of all the American writers whose works have reached Spain," says John DeLancey Ferguson, "Poe is probably the most significant. Though in mere number of translations he is surpassed by Cooper, he has received far more respectful treatment than has ever been accorded to the older man, and from the time of his first introduction to the present day the Spaniards have shown a persistent and steadily increasing interest in his work." It may be added that in Doctor Ferguson's appended bibliography of Spanish translations and critical articles Poe occupies as much space