Edgar Allan Poe and Democracy

DR M. C. SAXENA

Politics everywhere has dwarfed every other activity of homo sapiens. Man being a political animal, it is no exaggeration to say that to a vast majority of people politics has been the most animating and stimulating subject. Since times immemorial poets, philosophers and scientists have stirred at the bidding of politicians.

Despite this animating and stimulating nature of politics Edgar Allan Poe was not actively interested in politics. Most Poe critics start from the assumption that he was immune to the political problems of his day. However, a close look at his writings would dispel this assumption. At a time when most of the contemporaries were extolling democracy, his was the minority opinion which went unheard and unheeded. The psychological make-up of Poe was such that he was to denigrate democracy once he came to turn his attention to the political problems of his day. In this regard he was very unlike Walt Whitman who extolled democracy–in the process he came in be regarded as “the poet of democracy.” Whitman identified America with democracy. His “Democratic Vistas” is considered a modern Bible of liberal convictions. Whitman thought that democracy was the order of the nature and it embraced every walk of human life. Poe, on the other hand, was much like Soren Kierkegard who, on the continent was issuing his unheeded warnings about the tyranny ofequality and dangers of democracy. There were certain factors which contributed to and influenced Poe’s dislike of democracy. First, a sensitive poet like Edgar Allan Poe must have felt hurt at the callous indifference showed him by a nation which prided itself on its political awareness.¹ Poe, the lonely, poverty-stricken genius, who was better than many others in the field was not adjudged so by his contemporaries. The chapter of American literature which records Poe’s neglect by his contemporaries and his ecstatic acceptance by the French makes, to say the least, dismal reading. Secondly, being bread and brought up in an almost aristocratic family he imbibed the traditions which could not see eye to eye with mass-culture. He believed that democracy was an outmoded, exploded political doctrine; for him it was a word that was continually making people weak and weak.

Poe believed that politics was the engagement, rather the entertainment of the rich. He could not imagine that a person possessing no fortune could think of engaging in politics. Ellison, the protagonist of the story “The Domain of Arnheim” who is by far the richest character in any fictional narrative has fabulous wealth. The inheritance although not beyond human calculation is certainly beyond human credulity. About this inconceivable wealth Poe says,

Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three per cent, the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen million and five hundred thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. ²

This superfluous opulence was Ellison’s after he had given to his relatives the very unusual wealth which was his own before this inheritance. That only rich people indulge in the luxury of politics is obvious. It is a fashion of the rich. Recounting the possibilities of the disposal of such fabulous wealth Poe names “political intrigue” and “ministerial power.” To quote him extensively:

The possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been imagined to perform anyone of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to suppose him in engaging to supreme excess in fashionable extravagances of his time–busying himself with political intrigue, or aiming at ministerial power, or purchasing increase of nobility, or collecting large museums of virtu, or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science of art, or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of charity. (606)

Democracy was one of the most abominable doctrine for Edgar Foe. The case for democracy is built upon the assumption that in its absence man might become a tool of others. Poe did not put faith in this theory. And he was not alone in his beliefs. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Poe’s contemporary in England, also turned his attention to political problems of the day expressing contempt for democracy. In Chartism he says, democracy “is the consummation of no-government.….” ³ The same view, in a more exaggerated form is expressed in Latter-Day pamphlets: “Alas, on this side of the Atlantic and on that, democracy, we apprehend, is forever impossible”.⁴ In Poe’s story Some Words with a Mummy the protagonist-narrator, with some of his friends talks to the mummy of Count Allamistakeo–the name of the dead Count is highly suggestive. The protagonist-narrator and his friends try to impress upon him the great beauty and importance of democracy and try to bring home to the count the advantages of living in a country where there was suffrage ad libitum and no king. In his characteristic manner the Count replies these arguments–in the reply the reference to United States is obvious:

...a great while ago, there had occurred something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined all at once to be free, and set a magnificent example to the rest of mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenuous constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some fifteen or twenty others in the most odious and insupportable despotism that was ever heard of upon the face of the earth. (547)

For Edgar Allan Foe democracy is at the most “mobocracy” because the name of this usurping tyrant was “mob.” In yet another story “Mellonta Tauta” Poe is highly critical of democracy. Pundita writes in her journal: “He has been occupied all the day in the attempt to convince me that the ancient Americans governed themselves!–did ever anybody hear of such an absurdity that they existed in a sort of everyman-for-himself confederacy, after the fashion of the ‘prairie dogs’ that we read in the fable”? (390) In this “mobocracy” everyman “voted” as they called it–“that is to say, medelled with public affairs, until, at length, it was discovered that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s, and that the “Republic” (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government at all.” (390)

The circumstances which lead to the position of “no government at all” are also explained by Edgar Poe. Universal adult franchise is a very handy and effective tool in the hands of any country’s ruling coterie to maintain itself in the seat of power in perpetuity. Universal suffrage is considered as one of the most mischievous and fraudulent schemes for the furtherance of one man’s good: “Universal suffrage gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the possibility or even detection, by any party which shouldbe merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the fraud. A little reflection upon this discovery sufficed to render evident the consequences, which were that rascality must predominate–in a word, that a republican government could never be anything but a rascally one.” (390) And naturally to this democracy–or in Poe’s words ‘mobocracy’ the most despotic of despotism is preferable:

While the philosophers … were busied in blushing at their stupidity in not having foreseen these inevitable evils, and intent upon the invention of new theories, the matter was put to an abrupt issue by a fellow of the name of mob, who took everything into his own hands and set up a despotism, in comparison with which those of the fabulous zeros and Hellofagabaluses were respectable and delectable. (390)

This tyrant “mob” was one of the most odious of creatures: “This Mob (a foreigner, by the by) is said to have been the most odious of all men that ever encumbered the earth. He was a giant in stature–insolent, rapacious, filthy; had the gall of a bullock with the heart of a hyena and the brains of a peacock.” (390)

The tenet of equality is equally not acceptable to him. Equality has been one of the central tenets of all modern societies. However, to the 19th century America, the notion of equality “boiled down to the sentiment that each man was as good as another and no man was better than anyone else”.⁵ The American and the French revolutions tried to establish the tenet that all men were born equal. Alexis de Tocqueville was struck by this equality in America and in his remarkable work “Democracy in America” wrote to this effect. Poe finds this sort of equality against the natural laws of gradation. In “Mellonta Tauta” Pundita says that the Americans started “with the queerest idea conceivable, viz, that all men are born free and equal–this in the very teeth of the laws of gradation so visibly impressed upon all things both in the moral and physical universe.” (390)

The effects of liberty and radicalism are against general prosperity. In “The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall” Poe relates the story of a bellows mender who feels the effects of it all.

...We soon began to feel the effects of liberty and long speeches, and radicalism, and all that sort of thing. People who were formerly the best customers in the world had now not a moment of time to think of us at all. (6)

The only legitimate benefit, according to Edgar Poe, of the experiments of the rule of the “Mob” can be: “Never to run contrary to the natural analogies.” (390-91)

There would appear to be little doubt that of all political abstractions the notions of equality and liberty have in the modern times become major political and ideological issues. Conflicting opinions are expressed by authorities in the field. Further, despite all talk about the concepts the problem seems beyond the thrashing out competence of politicians. However Poe is clear in his mind. He concludes his diatribe against democracy with the final assault that “Democracy is a very admirable form of government–for dogs.” (391)

References

¹ In Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird (New Delhi, 1973). Mr. Cunningham is “Willing to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased.” (Page 26) 
² Hervey Allen, The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, (New York, 1938). P. 606 Hereafter all references to this collection are given in parentheses (only page numbers).
³ Quoted from William Ebenstein, Modern Political Thought – The Great Issues (New Delhi, 1970). P. 354.
⁴ Ibid, page 351.
⁵ Daniel Bell, “A ‘Just’ Equality”, The American Review, Autumn 1975. p. 85.