"The Philosophy of Composition" — the Key to Poe's Method?, Part 1

If you are listening to the daily installments of my new novel, I’m Dead. Press Play., you by now have noticed that one of my favorite writers, Edgar Allan Poe, is in the house, so to speak. Since Poe’s essay “The Philosophy of Composition” figures into this part of the novel, this is a good time to take a look at this fascinating take on artistic creation.

I remember from my youth (yes, I was young once) a question that would emerge when my fellow high school students and I were studying literature. Roughly, it went like this: “Did the authors really mean to say everything we are interpreting in their works?” In other words, were they really intending to convey with symbols, etc., everything we ascribe to their works when we apply our literary analyses?

I know how one author would answer these questions.

A Glimpse of “elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought”

In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe created a “sensation” (in the words of fellow poet Elizabeth Barrett) with his poem “The Raven.” “Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it, & some by the music —” Barrett wrote to Poe. “I hear of persons haunted by the ‘nevermore’ — and one acquaintance of mine . . . who has the misfortune of possessing a ‘bust of Pallas’, never can bear to look at it in the twilight.”

The following year, Poe did something that few authors (as far as I know) have done. He published an essay delineating, in detail, the steps of his creative process — or, at least, the process he claimed to have used. (It’s not always wise to take Poe at his word. He lied about his travels, wrote a famous hoax about a balloon flight, and, for all we know, fudged on other matters throughout his life.)

In this essay, called “The Philosophy of Composition,” Poe himself draws attention to the reluctance of authors to reveal their methods. He says:

Most writers — poets in especial — prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought — at the true purposes seized only at the last moment — at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable — at the cautious selections and rejections — at the painful erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting — the step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio.

Well, that’s one way to put it.

In short, Poe suggests here that writing is indirect, even accidental. A little later in the essay, he adds, “In general, suggestions, having arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.” (If you are a regular reader of my Mind Travel newsletter, by the way, you may recognize “pell-mell” as an example of my favorite kind of word, the reduplicative.) In other words, writing is often, in Poe’s view, a matter of following various “suggestions” that come to mind in a rather disorderly fashion. This description is not a bad way to describe the process — if that’s the right word — I used in writing my new novel, I’m dead. Press play., as I discussed in my last column here in Mind Travel. I waited for ideas to emerge — to come from my muse, so to speak — and then followed them where they led.

A More Intentional Method?

After shining a light on this rather erratic approach to artistic creation, Poe then describes a very different approach, one that he claims to have taken in his own writing. Asserting that he has no trouble remembering the “progressive steps” he took in crafting his work, he goes on to say of “The Raven”:

It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition — that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.

Again, Poe may be hoaxing us — it wouldn’t be the first time. It’s also possible that he was telling the truth, revealing a remarkably deliberate approach to artistic creation. No one will ever be able to say for certain. Knowing what I do about Poe and about writing, I think the reality was somewhere in between — that Poe was exaggerating to make his essay more dramatic or interesting, to make the case for the intention behind the creative process, or simply to present himself as the artistic genius that he knew he was.

In any case, “The Philosophy of Composition” makes for some stimulating reading, as this ostensible “peep behind the scenes” calls on us to consider the choices that very well may have gone into Poe’s process — and, by extension, the creative process of other writers, as well as musicians, painters, sculptors, and more.

Choosing the Right Subject

In the most famous sentence from the essay, Poe asserts, “I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect.” This statement should come as no surprise to anyone who has read “The Raven” or, for that matter, many of Poe’s other poems or his tales, from “Annabel Lee” to “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Poe’s works often play on our emotions, creating an “effect” in our minds.

Creating his intended effect, as Poe would have it, is a matter of choosing the right elements to deploy. Subject matter is probably the most important of these elements. In the case of “The Raven,” Poe explains, he sought to create a sense of melancholy. He claims to have asked himself, “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” He goes on:

Death — was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”

Now, you don’t have to agree with Poe on any of these points. His notion that “the death . . . of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” is a provocative one, a claim that might strike some as downright disturbing. Poe was not, in my mind, a misogynist, but he clearly did not mind objectifying a woman — that is, one kind of fellow human being — for his artistic purposes. I’m not here to defend Poe, but it’s worth remembering that most writers — and, for that matter, many painters — do exploit humans for their artistry, since most characters and figures are based on people. That is, perhaps, a subject for another column.

In any case, it’s clear that Poe is claiming to have made a deliberate choice in regard to his subject matter. He wanted to instill a sense of melancholy and beauty, so he chose to conjure up the idea of a deceased woman, since the thought of loss, specifically loss of a beautiful woman, is indeed a melancholy thought. Now, the loss of any human being, regardless of her or his physical appearance, ought to be cause for sadness, but Poe is making an aesthetic argument here, one that I will not try to dissect for this column.

Next week, we will explore more of “The Philosophy of Composition,” specifically taking up some granular formal considerations of sound.

Until then, may all of your melancholy be on the page and outside of your life.