【正文】 The Poetical Principle Edgar Allan Poe, The Poetic Principle (B), Home Journal, series for 1850, no. 36 (whole number 238), August 31, 1850, p. 1, cols. 16. IN SPEAKING of the Poetical Principle， I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetical, my principle purpose will be to cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightful or wrongfully, has always had it influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long poem,” is simple a flat contradiction in terms. I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitement are, through a psychal necessity, transient. The degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a position of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it flags fails a revulsion ensues and then the poem is, in effect, and in fact, no longer such. There are, no doubt, many who have found difficult in reconciling the critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute impossibility for maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded poetical, only when, losing sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity its totality of effect or impression we read it(as would be necessary) at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no critical prejudgment can force us to admire。 but if , upon pleting the work, we read it again。 omitting the first workthat is to say, mencing with second we shall be surprised at now finding that admirable which we before condemned the damnable which we had previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate, aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a nullity: band this precisely the fact. In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not possible proof, at least very good reason, for it intended as a series of lyrics。 but, granting the epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect sense of art. The modern epic is, of the suppositious ancient model, but an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these anomalies is over. If , at any time, any very long poem were popular reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular again. That extent of a poetical work is, ceteris paribus, the measure of its merit, seems undoubted, when we thus state it, a proposition sufficiently absurd