Not Poe’s Opinion on Dreams
Ton Fafianie
Poe Studies, Volume 48, 2015, pp. 84-88 (Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/604023
Accessed 18 Jun 2017 04:05 GMT
Not Poe’s Opinion on Dreams
TON FAFIANIE
I
n Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine for August 1839, there appeared a one-page
anonymous essay titled “An Opinion on Dreams” [5:105].1 Richmond’s
self-styled Poe scholar James H. Whitty was the first to assert boldly that
the author of this short expository work was Edgar Allan Poe, who coedited the
magazine with William Burton, although Whitty did not directly mention the
title or its publication source or date. In a letter to the editor of the “Saturday
Review of Books” of the New York Times, dated 14 March 1910 (published 19
March), Whitty states:
I notice your suggestion of “a collection of all the dream-suggested
poems, tales, and novels” has brought out several poems in that direction. I have imagined that Poe must have had some of his lines revealed
in sleep, but I have read an article by him in an obscure publication
where he argued that a distinction exists between dreams of the mind
and visions of the soul. In this early article he believed man to be in
himself a trinity, viz. mind, body, and soul, which idea was found in his
pencil notes in his copy of “Eureka” found after his death. Whatever he
believed about dreams, he is reported to have written on the margin of
his story “Legia” [sic] sent to Mrs. Whitman, “Suggested by a dream.”
So here you have a record of a well-known tale and by Poe.2
Subsequently, whatever attention this minor item has attracted has been chiefly
due to the early hint of Eureka. Most prominent in this discussion have been
Thomas Ollive Mabbott, who disagreed with Whitty and attributed the item to
Horace Binney Wallace (“William Landor”); George E. Hatvary, who reasserted
Poe as the likely author; and Burton R. Pollin, who stated that probably neither
of these men wrote it, without offering any alternative names.3 This veil of
doubt may now be lifted, however, and the actual source and author identified absolutely. The text is lifted directly from an extended note in Chaos and
the Creation; An Epic Poem, in Eight Cantos, with Elucidative Notes, by Trinitarius
[(London: Hatchard and Son; Cambridge: Stevenson, 1834), notes to canto 3, pp.
103–5]. Chaos and the Creation was a Protestant religious work, dedicated to
the University of Cambridge, England.4
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The poet “Trinitarius” was William James Achilles Abington, a London
barrister at the time, who lived c. 1808–1849.5 A fresh alumnus of Cambridge’s Trinity College, he was a professed Trinitarian and as such opposed
to Unitarianism. As a whole, Chaos and the Creation reads as an inspired manifesto of his strong theological convictions. It is today an even more obscure
work than at the time of its original publication, and the question of how it
might have come to the attention of either or both editors of Burton’s remains
open. Poe, if he was the editor in charge for the August number, must at least
have thumbed through the finished poem volume, which contained the notes
to canto 3. There is, of course, also a chance that Burton, who was an Englishman, used it himself. While there is no proof that Burton had met Abington
in England, he probably would have liked the fellow because Abington since
the early 1840s had been a devoted theatre manager on familiar grounds.6
Abington’s star had been rising since 1837, after publication of his second
poetical work, a long didactic poem on melancholy that was dedicated to the
pious Queen Adelaide. The queen awarded him a silver medal with a suitable
inscription for this later work.7
With the author now certainly identified as someone other than Poe,
there is still an interesting question as to why Poe might have selected the item,
or if Burton selected it, whether it to some degree had an influence on Poe’s
own ideas. Indeed, Whitty was the first who read the text, or misread it given
the erroneous attribution, as a framework for Poe’s thoughts on dream-vision.
And it is easy to see why some thought they saw in the piece, extracted from
the original context as it was in Burton’s, the hand of Poe. Abington’s note is in
itself concise and highly self-contained, not clearly betraying its small place in
a larger text.8 Even in the fuller work, the preface and tone of what we may call
the glossary of Chaos and the Creation has a ring something like Poe’s Eureka
about it: “In offering this Poem for the perusal of the public, I am particularly
anxious to give my reasons for having selected so lofty a theme” [5]. “Trinitarius” also hazards a few astronomical observations on the authority of Laplace:
he suspects, for example, that the universe is spherical with the sun revolving
around its common center, or perhaps it is the center of the visible universe
[169–70]. The irony of the book is that it is, as a purported epic whole, an
unbalanced mix of Miltonic poetry, biblical interjections, lengthy essay-like
notes in imitation of biblical glosses, and a concluding literary discourse, all
reminding us of the difficult genre of Poe’s Eureka. William J. Fox in the London Monthly Repository called the first two cantos “a mass of confusion” [see
“Critical Notices,” n.s. vol. 7, n.s. no. 88 (April 1834): 305]. The religious
elements, the faulty logic, and the circular arguments Abington employed in
his fuller poem would be unlikely to be mistaken for Poe, at least if one is
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thinking of Poe in his later years. The refined metaphysics of poetics, of cosmic
dream-vision, of a redeeming female life-in-shadow and death-in-life that Poe
displayed in his maturity—“The Rationale of Verse,” “The Poetic Principle,”
and Eureka—were not yet fully formed in 1839 when “An Opinion on Dreams”
was printed.
However tempting it may be, we must restrain ourselves in wandering
too far afield with interpretations or in forging an “ideational connection” with
Poe’s works, as Hatvary observed after discussing “An Opinion on Dreams”
with Professor Mabbott.9 In general, not knowing the original source of a text
has created its own contingency that, on more than one occasion, has proved
fallacious. On the literal level Poe never referred to the Burton’s piece, nor did
his work repeat key thoughts and phrases. Also, though the Trinitarian miscellany ends with a discourse on the epic poem, which could have interested Poe,
we have no direct evidence in his writings for such an interest. We probably
will never know whether it was Burton or Poe who selected the text. Both
men could have been intrigued by the contents; and there is not necessarily
any further intent beyond an editor’s immediate need for a filler adapted to
the proclivities of the age for religion and mesmerism. In the end, the history
of the text’s attribution perhaps serves most usefully as a cautionary tale about
allowing fancy to form elaborate academic arguments based too heavily on
purely internal evidence.
Independent Scholar
Notes
1
It was obviously used as an editorial filler, wedged between J. E. Dow’s “Sketches
from the Log of Old Ironsides” and the unsigned “A Chapter on Field Sports and Manly
Pastimes,” both of them installments of serials.
2
Whitty first named his source in the memoir he included in The Complete
Poems of Edgar Allan Poe (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), lxiii-lxiv:
“Poe embodied some of his ideas in Eureka in an article in Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine for August, 1839, which is headed ‘An opinion on Dreams.’” In his letter to the
New York Times, Whitty appears to be intentionally engaging in a bit of mystification,
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine hardly being “an obscure publication” with regard to
Poe’s writings.
3
For opinions, background, and text, see Wallace’s biographer, George E.
Hatvary, “Poe’s Possible Authorship of ‘An Opinion on Dreams,’” Poe Studies/Dark
Romanticism 14 (December 1981): 21–22. Hatvary does not mention that the title
and most of the last two paragraphs had already been printed by John W. Robertson
in Bibliography of the Writings of Edgar A. Poe (San Francisco: Russian Hill Private Press, 1934), 1:136. Following his somewhat clumsy extract, Robertson states:
“This article has not been attributed to Poe and I may be in error in so assigning it.
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The contents are my justification. Poe was a ‘dreamer’ and certain of his stories and
poems had, as a basis, this lapse of memory—day-dreaming such as he described
in certain of his stories and in communications with intimate friends, notably Mrs.
Whitman.” In this statement, Robertson shows that he is unaware of the prior attribution by Whitty in 1910–11, and also the comment on it by Killis Campbell in
1912 (“The Poe Canon,” PMLA 27 [September 1912]: 348 n. 2). Mabbott’s opinion
was stated in “Poe’s Vaults,” Notes and Queries (December 1953): 543. The comment
by Burton R. Pollin appears in the second volume of his edition of The Collected
Writings of Edgar Allan Poe: The Brevities (New York: Gordian Press, 1985), 57, note
to Pinakidia no. 84.
4
It seems there was one earlier but incomplete printing at Paris, France, issued in
London, titled “The Wonders of Chaos and the Creation Exemplified. A Poem,” consisting of the first two cantos of part 1. This 80-page booklet appeared on 21 March 1834,
but an 8 March advertisement in the London Spectator [vol. 7, no. 297] had already
announced that the completed work would contain eight cantos. The first full edition
was prepared for the 1834–35 Christmas and New Year’s market and contained 286 pages,
without a division in parts. A second edition from 1835 is listed in several book and old
library catalogues, but as yet no copies have been located.
5
A short biography appeared in John Venn and John A. Venn, eds., Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of All Known Students . . . (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1940), 2:4.
6
Coincidence has it that William Burton after his apprenticeship as a printer
joined the Norwich circuit of theatres in 1824 and remained there seven years,
playing an extensive range of characters; Abington was to become manager of the
Norwich circuit and lessee of the Norwich Theatre from 1845 to 1848. When Burton
arrived in America in early August 1834, he could not yet have purchased Abington’s book as a full edition. Indeed, I know of no other instance in which the dream
fragment was published in American magazines or newspapers, or in any review of
the book. Copies of the book are still rare in the United States, but it is not impossible that Burton, as a known book collector, received it from a friend sometime
between 1835 and 1839. The book, however, has not been found among the items
from Burton’s voluminous library, auctioned in October 1860. See Burton’s obituary in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 25 February 1860. Also see Bibliotheca
dramatica. Catalogue of the theatrical and miscellaneous library of the late William E.
Burton, the distinguished comedian, comprising an immense assemblage of books relating to the stage. . . . To be sold at auction by J. Sabin & Co. . . . October 8, 1860, and
following days (New York: J. Sabin, 1860); and Michael Blackwell, Carole Blackwell,
and Harriet Walter, The Norwich Theatre Royal: The First 250 Years, (Norwich: Connaught Books, 2007).
7
The award was mentioned in the London New Monthly and Belle Assemblée 6
(April 1837): 212, but it was wrongly attributed to Chaos and the Creation by Venn and
Venn, eds., Alumni Cantabrigienses, 2:4. The latter work did receive a boost from the
honor bestowed by the queen and was hailed in the same London monthly as an “epic
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. . . [which] has already stood the test of criticism.” The medal was in fact for Pensive
Musings on the Pleasures of Melancholy, a Didactic Poem (London: Fraser; Cambridge:
Stevenson, 1836).
8
To make the adaptation into a stand-alone text, the editor of Burton’s has omitted
a tell-tale phrase from the original—“as I have before stated” (referring to the preface
of the work)—along with five small paragraphs concluding the note and a reference to
notes to another canto.
9
Hatvary, “Poe’s Possible Authorship,” 21.
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