I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means
common, in which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps
by which his conclusions have been attained. In general,
suggestions, having arisen pell-mell are pursued and forgotten in a
similar manner.
For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded
to, nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the
progressive steps of any of my compositions, and, since the interest
of an analysis or reconstruction, such as I have considered a
desideratum, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in
the thing analysed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum
on my part to show the modus operandi by which some one of my own
works was put together. I select 'The Raven' as most generally
known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in
its composition is referable either to accident or intuition- that the
work proceeded step by step, to its completion, with the precision and
rigid consequence of a mathematical problem.
Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, the circumstance-
or say the necessity- which, in the first place, gave rise to the
intention of composing a poem that should suit at once the popular and
the critical taste.
We commence, then, with this intention.
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