Chapter 1 - Transnational topographies in Poe, Eliot and St.-John Perse

Summary

ELIOT, POE AND THE ENIGMA OF NATIONALITY

Weighing the importance of Poe's style for his own coming of age as a poet, in a 1948 lecture Eliot presented Poe as something of an enigma. “One cannot be sure that one's own writing has not been influenced by Poe,” he said; “I can name positively certain poets whose work has influenced me, I can name others whose work, I am sure, has not; there may be still others of whose influence I am unaware, but whose influence I might be brought to acknowledge; but about Poe I shall never be sure.” Contrasting with this perceptible uncertainty in “From Poe to Valéry,” in a previously aired BBC broadcast Eliot remarked upon Poe's enduring power in terms that were far more unequivocal. “Poe chooses to appear, not as a man inspired to utter at white-heat, and not as having any ethical or intellectual purpose, but as the craftsman,” he observed; “His poetry is original … ; he has the integrity not to attempt … to do anything that any other poet has already done. And … his poetry is significant: it alters the Romantic Movement, and looks forward to a later phase of it. Once his poems have become part of your experience, they are never dislodged.”

There are many reasons Poe's body of work would have had a persistent but ambiguous appeal for Eliot over the course of his lifetime.