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Updated: June 23, 2025
Let us therefore analyze one of Poe's short-stories following in the main the method which he himself pursued in his analysis of "The Raven" in order to learn the successive steps by which any excellent short-story may be developed from its theme. Let us choose "Ligeia" for the subject of this study, because it is very widely known, and because Poe himself considered it the greatest of his tales.
Guthrie's instructions as to how they should find it read like a page from Poe's "Gold Bug." This you must climb and walk so many paces north, turn and go so many feet west, and then north again. You then came to a white stone, from which you laid your course through more latitude and longitude until you were right over the spot.
The second piece was a rendering of Poe's ``Bells, and was a most amazing declamation, the different sorts of bells being indicated by changes of voice ranging from basso profondo to the highest falsetto, and the feelings aroused in the orator being indicated by modulations which must have cost him months of practice.
'Boast not thyself of to-morrow, said the preacher; but I cannot even boast of to-day, or this hour. The world knows nothing of this; it has been carefully concealed by my parents; but I know it! and, Beulah, I feel as did that miserable, doomed prisoner of Poe's 'Pit and Pendulum, who saw the pendulum, slowly but surely, sweeping down upon him. My life has been a great unfulfilled promise.
Poe's paradox that a poem cannot greatly exceed a hundred lines in length under penalty of ceasing to be one poem and breaking into a string of poems, may serve to suggest the precise difference between the Short-story and the Novel, The Short-story is the single effect, complete and self-contained, while the Novel is of necessity broken into a series of episodes.
The germ-idea of Kipling's Finest Story in the World is to be found in Poe's Tale of the Ragged Mountains; Apuleius's germ-plot, of the man who was changed by enchantment into an ass, and could only recover his human shape by eating rose-leaves, was taken either from Lucian or from Lucius of Patrae.
I have known them since, and felt their quality, which I have gladly owned a genuine and original poetry; but I answered then truly that I knew them only from Poe's criticisms: cruel and spiteful things which I should be ashamed of enjoying as I once did. "Whose criticisms?" asked Emerson. "Poe's," I said again.
But I think it has been clearly shown that the structure of "Ligeia" is at all points inevitably conditioned by its theme, and that no detail of the structure could be altered without injuring the effect of the story; and I am confident that some intellectual process similar to that which has been outlined must be followed by every author who seeks to construct stories as perfect in form as Poe's.
Poe's early productions show that he could see through the verse to the spirit beneath, and that he already had a feeling that all the life and grace of the one must depend on and be modulated by the will of the other. We call them the most remarkable boyish poems that we have ever read.
"I'm married!" repeated Dacres, who now seemed to have become like Poe's raven, and all his words one melancholy burden bore. "You were not married when I was last with you?" said Hawbury at last, in the tone of one who was recovering from a fainting fit. "Yes, I was." "Not in South America?" "Yes, in South America." "Married?" "Yes, married." "By Jove!"
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