Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/46



, to know Poe, we must know him as a world-author, it is equally necessary that we know him as a man. His world-fame is, after all, but the reach of his genius; it is not its source or matrix. These are to be sought in the man himself, in his reaction to the life about him, in the temper and quality of his thought about things unliterary as well as literary. In a word, Poe's personality is not only essential in the interpretation of his work; it is, unfortunately, that part of the man that has been consistently ignored or as consistently misrepresented. The common view of Poe is that he had no personality. He had temperament; he had genius; he had individuality. But that richer combination that we call personality, that coordination of thought and mood and conduct, of social action and reaction, of daily interest and aim, this finds no portrayal in the biographies of Poe. Instead, we are told that Poe alone among American writers was utterly unrelated to time and place; that he saw only through a telescope; that for him the contemporary did not exist; that, like the lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror with her back to the realities of life, Poe was a dreamer and nothing but a dreamer.

Let us try to break away from the stereotyped biographies of Poe. They confuse the exceptional with the characteristic in his life, and they exalt particular