Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.

The sentence comes from The Philosophy of Composition, in which Poe claims to explain how he wrote “The Raven”. Having fixed the proper length of a poem at about a hundred lines, he turns to the effect to be conveyed and states as a point needing no demonstration that beauty is the poem’s only legitimate province. He then clarifies that by Beauty he means not a quality of things but an effect, “that intense and pure elevation of soul”. From this he derives that sadness is the most legitimate of poetic tones and that the death of a beautiful woman is “the most poetical topic in the world”.

The essay appeared in Graham’s Magazine in April 1846, a year after “The Raven” had made Poe famous. Its cold account of inspiration as calculation has been read as a hoax by some and a manifesto by others; Baudelaire translated it.

The line remains the clearest statement of Poe’s creed: a poem exists to produce beauty, not to teach.

The Philosophy of Composition, 1846

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