In Which I Indulge in a Smidge of Literary Criticism

 So there I was, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, absent-mindedly browsing a book of The Top 500 Poems when after Poe's "To Helen" I come across an editor's note. And it was a rather puzzling editor's note.

 To really get the full flavor of the thing, you'll need the poem. Here it is:

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand,
Ah! Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

And here is the note that so perplexed me afterward:

"The classical trappings are both allusive and elusive, as though the poet preferred suggestion to assertion. Nobody has explained "Nicean"; "Naiad" and "Psyche" remain indeterminate. The poem is, nevertheless, a gem."

Surely the editor cannot mean that no one has a good explanation for what Poe is referring to in those lines? It looks like a pretty straightforward Odysseus reference to me--who else can be the "weary, way-worn wanderer" coming home by ship to a long-awaited love? Then Poe crosspollinates it with the myth of Cupid and Psyche with the lamp (in some versions of the myth Psyche is forced to freeze for a bit after looking on Cupid, so she can't chase him--thus "statue-like"). Psyche is, of course, the soul emerging from the library (where all the aforementioned classics of Rome and Greece reside) which any book-lover would know is "Holy Land." And a Naiad is a water-spirit that can (a la the Sirens/mermaids) be very attractive to men and lure them into the ocean--here, the classics, where his lady-love has inspired Poe to dwell in pure Romantic fashion.

As for "Nicean" (the toughest one) Poe might simply be under the impression that the isle of the Phaeacians, Scheria, where Odysseus caught a ride is near real-life Nicea (though it's traditional identification with Corfu is a long way from there, so that seems odd). Or maybe, like many poets throughout the ages, he needed a cool-sounding word that fit the meter!

There you go. Figured it all out. Somebody pay me.

Commonplaces: 1st QTR A.D. 2026

"Vos orate Dominum, ut quod voce hominis infertur auribus vestris, idipsum digito dei vestris inscribatur cordibus." (Pray to the Lord, that these words, by which man’s voice is brought to your ears, may by the finger of God be written in your hearts.)—Henry Bullinger, Decades I.5

“I am not, of course, maintaining that theology, even before you believe it, is totally bare of aesthetic value. But I do not find it superior in this respect to most of its rivals. Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival—what we may loosely call the scientific outlook, the picture of Mr. H.G. Wells and the rest. Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance—what tragic irony—the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life. Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama—just as everything seems to against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glanced briefly at the age of monsters.