The observation
of some mental habit in men, or law of intercourse between human beings,
would strongly present itself to him; and in order to get a concise
embodiment, his genius planned some powerful situation to illustrate it
with; or, at another time it might be that a strange incident, like that
of Mr. Moody, suggesting "The Minister's Black Veil," or a singular
physiological fact like that on which "The Bosom Serpent" is based,
would call out his imagination to run a race with reality and outstrip
it in touching the goal of truth. But, the conception once formed, the
whole fictitious fabric would become entirely removed from
_himself_, except so far as it touched him very incidentally; and
this expulsion of the idea from himself, so that it acquires a life and
movement of its own, and can be contemplated by the artist from the
outside, is the very distinction between deeply creative and merely
inventive genius. Poe's was of the latter sort. He possessed a wild,
arbitrary imagination, that sometimes leaped frantically high; but his
impressiveness is always that of a nightmare, always completely morbid.
What we know of Poe's life leads inevitably to the conclusion that this
quality, if it did not spring from disease, was at least largely owing
to it. For a time, it was the fashion to make a moral question of Poe's
unfortunate obliquities; but a more humane tendency reduces it to a
scientific problem. Poe suffered great disaster at the hands of his
unjust biographer; yet he was a worse enemy to himself than any one else
could be.
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