Poe

"While for Emerson "the paths or methods are ideal and eternal", for Poe the composition of the poem proceeds "to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem"; while Emerson insists on inspiration in the creative process, Poe renders it no value at all; while Emerson's poet "pursues a beauty, half seen, which flies before him", Poe's stresses on forethought as the prerequisite of poetic beauty. A work of Art, Emerson insists, lasts "in proportion as it was not polluted by the willfulness of the writer, but flowed from his mind after the divine order of cause and effect" (W, XII, 466); "the extent of a poem, Poe responds, may be made to bear mathematical relation to its merit". It is amazing how the two authors use the same "mathematical" idiom to express their contrastive positions: Emerson to recommend a sort of automatic writing and Poe to contradict any "Aeolian harp" approaches and to insist on the mere technique of the poem-making." daqui.