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9/4/24
I probably won't go on about this at much length, as my earlier entry is long enough, and this only requires a more-or-less self-evident observation. I was just cleaning up photographs of Mathew Franklin Whittier's work in the 1855 Portland "Transcript," and ran across a grief poem written in pretty-much the same state of mind as "Abigail P----" (which Edgar Allan Poe renamed "Annabel Lee," disrespectfully re-writing the last four lines). It's of comparable quality, and I had the urge to share it--which urge I talked myself out of, because it's sacred, and I don't know what my audience is, here. But this got me thinking along the following lines...
If I announced that the real author of poems like "The Raven" and "Annabel Lee" was Mathew Franklin Whittier, wouldn't people naturally want to see what else he wrote? Wouldn't people want to see poems of comparable quality, by the same author, which they'd never seen, before? And if I announced that Mathew and his wife Abby were the real co-authors of "A Christmas Carol," wouldn't people naturally want to see stories of comparable quality, by the same authors, which they'd never read, before?
But this doesn't happen. It is always a great offended protest over reputation, that I dare to impune the reputation of Poe, or Dickens. It is always a huffy disdain that I dare to put my research subject in the same rarified atmosphere as the great Poe, or the great Dickens. There is not the slightest whiff of interest, by these people--and I include, of course, academic scholars--in Mathew or Abby's other works.
Why is this? Is it sheer incredulity? I'll tell you what I think it is. These people can't understand "The Raven," or "Annabel Lee," or "A Christmas Carol." They only pretend to understand them. Their published papers prove it, because they go off on the silliest, irrelevant, nit-picky tangents. Their interest is solely a matter of reputation. That's why they are completely uninterested in Mathew and Abby's other works--because those works have no reputation.
So there, I've said it. And I swear, this goes to precisely the same insight Mathew had, when he created his caricature of Academia named "Dr. E. Goethe Digg," for the Boston "Carpet-Bag." I got a past-life hit on that series. Mathew must have eagerly scheduled a meeting with a prestigious academic philosopher when he arrived in England, in mid-1851. And it was a huge let-down, because he found the man a stuffy, arrogant ignoramus. So much so, that he created this caricature.
So, how do I go about finding people who understand "A Christmas Carol?" Because anybody who understands it, will immediately recognize that Charles Dickens could not possibly have written it. Conversely, anyone who imagines that Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol" (and that, within six weeks), can't truly understand the work.
It's a Catch-22, which means that what I've discovered should only require a brief announcement, and it should immediately spread like wildfire. It's a "word to the wise" situation--except, there aren't any "wise" to give the word to.
But this is why I must preserve this legacy for posterity. People of the future will immediately get it. I will only have to point it out to them, and they will respond, "Of course!"
And then they will be eager to see what else was written by these two authors, which they have never seen, before.
Best regards,
Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.
