Ralph Waldo Emerson ve Edgar Allan Poe`nun eserlerinde XIX.yüzyıl yazın eleştirisi

Abstract

196 SUMMARY With the introduction of romanticism into American literature a new optimism prevailed, and the intellectuals attempted to better the society and free man from his repressions - slavery as an example. Contrary to the significance of wisdom and logic in the eighteenth century Neoclassism, a stress on feeling and emotion appeared in the nineteenth century American romanticism. Once more just as in the Renaissance period in the Continent, man became prominent. Through writings of Emerson, following the example of Wordsworth, the common man living close to nature was idealized. Due to his democratic ideas, Emerson asked his countrymen to trust themselves, and he expressed his belief in the American Adam in his essay entitled Self-Reliance. Liberal thoughts also bloomed in moral and religious matters; Calvinistic dogmas were began to be questioned. Even uniterianism gave way to transcendentalism. Apart from politics and conventions, freedom prevailed in literary forms as well. The strict discipline of the heroic couplet of the previous neoclassical era was not appropriate for romantic ideas; Now individual meters, stanza forms and rhyme schemes replaced it. Among the literary figures of the age were Frenaue, Irving, Bryant, Cooper, Brockden Brown, Longfellow, Whittier, Fuller, Channing, Lowell, Emerson and Poe. Thus our research entitled `Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism as Represented in the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe,` is an humble attempt to compare and contrast these two outstanding representatives of the American romantic and symbolic movements through their poems and critical works. Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the pioneers of the American transcendentalism, believed that there was a mystical correspondance between the phenomenological and spiritual facts and worlds; that's between Nature and soul, or still in better words, between the divine spirit and the physical197 world. Both man and nature were the plots of that absolute power. Thus, due to the similarity between the moral codes and the natural laws, every substance in Nature had a significant association for the man. Therefore the task of a poet, a representative man, was to follow the symbolic order of the universe and apply it to his work of art. In this process, rather than logic, he would depend on his intuition, inspiration, and imagination, and convey his visions in a literary form as an image. For this reason, to Emerson, a poem was not a fictitious work, but a `second nature`. The transcendentalist writers who were also ex-uniterian preachers were for didacticism in literature. Rather than an aesthetic concern, they had a pragmatic or utilitarian one. To them Christianity was a basis for artistic creation. Unlike Poe, they believed art was not an end, but a means to achieve goodness in this world. Thus, contrary to uniterian belief, an imitation of divine creation could be realized in the phenomonological world through inspiration. For this reason, Emerson supported the idea that creative power was the proof of divine existence. So the poet who could create a new microcosm out of the actual facts had part of that divine power, and by the help of artistic creation he himself became God. Emerson also claimed that the prophets, such as Jesus Christ were merely poets. In this context, a poet was both a `seer` and a `sayer`; he was the `poet-priest`, a reconciler. Contrary to Poe's, Emerson's poet was a visionary, not a craftsman. According to Emerson, artistic ideal and expression could not be seperated. All through his life man was active in three fields: Knowledge, Action, and Expression (a philosopher, man of action and poet). Thus the duty of a poet was to express the universal subjects around him in Nature in different forms. However Emerson believed that outer embellishment was deformity. The form of a poem should spring from its inner necessity, and be related to its content. Emerson said poetry was not metre, but a metre-making argument, and poet's words and images had to be purified from `polite conversation`; When used suitably, even the base, mean or obscene words could be illustrious. Since all high Arts were organic and necessarry, art was a functional part of human life.198 Unlike Poe, Emerson believed that artistic expression was related to the nature of mankind and could not be achieved through a deliberate craftsmanship; Thus contrary to Poe's motto of art-for-art's sake, for Emerson, necessity of beauty or utility of art was essential. Emerson rebelled against the formalist dogmas of Calvinism, though he was from a puritan origin. With the changing economic and social conditions, the essence of protestantism, that's individual thought and nonconformity disappered. However Emerson never lost his belief in God. He believed man could still reach God or the transcendental truths by observing nature and turning inside. To him, man should follow his intuition; so he would achieve a true experience of God and his creation, universe. Yet plain experience was not always satisfactory to explain every thing. True knowledge would come from a source apart from man, that's the unifying element in the universe, the Over-Soul. Each man possessed this pure nature in him besides his common aspect. According to this mystical philosophy, Each was needed by All. Emerson said man could only realize this divine self by self-reliance. Emerson as a poet was neither really interested in form nor his poems were based on logic. They can be divided into three groups: Descriptions of nature - both simple and metaphysical; personal and nationalistic poems; and philosophic poems. At the opposite pole of this spiritual side of the nineteenth century American poetry was Poe's analytic and mathematical approach to art. As he explained it in The Philosophy of Composition, Poe's poet was a conscious craftsman. Poe was a transitory figure between the Olympian and Dionysian temperaments in Art. The infuence of the German ideaism - especially of Kant and Hegel - on Poe's art, and of Schelling through Coleridge with his idea of destroying the present order and rebuilding a new universe from those fragments, were quite obvious. Thus Poe's aesthetic theory was mainly based on Coeridge's Biographia Literaria, which was a reflection of German Romantic thought. However unlike Coleridge, Poe believed that the four modes199 of the combining intellect (imagination, fancy, fantasy and humor) differed from one another only proportionally, and his main concern was poetic effect which depended on mathematical calculation in a work of art. The poet, to Poe, was to create an artistic beauty which, like the beauty of the universe, was order, measure, proportion and geometry. Like God who had created the universe from the fragments, the poet too, would recreate his work from seperate words. To understand God's plot required a scientific or intellectual intuition, whereas to fathom the poet's an artistic intuition was necessary. According to Poe, mental faculties were divided into three groups: intellect, conscience and soul. Intellect was interested in Truth, conscience in Duty and soul in Beauty. Thus the sole province of the Arts was Beauty. To Poe, Beauty was its own excuse for being, and in poetry, the rhythmical creation of beauty was his only concern. Poe denied the romantic notion that poetry was written merely in a state of inspiration. A poem to him was a product of conscious deliberation, and was meant to be heard rather than read; Poe had a perfect sense of rhythm and an ear for music. He believed that English meter and scansion were based on time as in music rather than on accent. Poe's subject matter was narrow in range and romantic in tone. A beautiful lover dead, dream visions of a veird underworld, the poet expressing his devotion to beauty were his typical themes. As it is seen from the brief survey of the artistic achievement of the both literary figures, Poe and Emerson, they seem to represent two opposite approaches to art. Yet one cannot deny the fact that they shared the same destiny in paving the way for the forthcoming generations of American literature - in Poe's case the French as well -, and in establishing modern literary tendencies and critical approaches to poesy.