Poe on Progress
/The capital P above is intentional. Here’s a passage by Poe that I’ve run across in excerpt several times, from an 1844 letter to fellow poet James Russell Lowell, who had requested “a sort of spiritual autobiography” from Poe. In the course of laying out his beliefs and opinions, Poe writes:
“I have no faith in human perfectibility. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active—not more happy—nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago. The result will never vary—and to suppose that it will, is to suppose that the foregone man has lived in vain—that the foregone time is but the rudiment of the future—that the myriads who have perished have not been upon equal footing with ourselves—nor are we with our posterity.”
I’ve written often enough about the myth of Progress—whether applied to politics as Progressivism, to the study of history as Whig or Progressive history, or in the popular imagination as the constant general improvement of everything over time—but Poe captures both my beliefs and my mood just about perfectly. Not only does the myth of Progress blind us to our own potential for failure, it rubbishes and belittles our forebears. It is not only incorrect, but impious.
You can read Poe’s entire letter to Lowell, which is full of personal asides and opinions, here. It’s available as part of a great archive of Poe correspondence made available online by the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, an act of service that I deeply appreciate. You can peruse that here.
