More than any other principle, Poe emphasized the unity of effect that one should strive for in any work of art. For example, words and phrases that occur and re-occur in Poe's various critical writings include the following: "to affect," "the totality of impression," "the unity of effect," "the novelty of the effect alone," and "the single effect," and these are only selected examples of his repetition of the value of this principle; Poe's writings contain many more examples of this emphasis. By these statements, Poe meant that the artist should decide what effect he wants to create in the reader's emotional response and then proceed to use all of his creative powers to achieve that particular effect: "Of the in-numerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart or the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select?" ("The Philosophy of Composition"). Fear, for example, was often the effect Poe chose for many of his short stories and every word and every image was carefully chosen to create an effect of fear within the mind of the reader. (In regard to this, see the critical discussions of "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Pit and the Pendulum.") After choosing the effect that one desires, the artist should then decide on the best manner to achieve that effect, whether by incidents or plot, by narration, or by a peculiar tone, or by a "peculiarity both of incident and tone . . . looking . . . for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid . . . in the construction of the effect" ("Philosophy of Composition").
In much of his poetry, the effect he most aimed for was one of beauty and melancholy. "The most elevating and the most pure pleasure is found in the contemplation of the beautiful," he said in the same essay, and "if beauty is the province of the poem, then the tone should be one of sadness. . . . Melancholy is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones." As a result of these views, Poe felt that the most effective subject for a work of art was the death of a beautiful young lady; this is perhaps Poe's most famous and most often repeated dictum, and, furthermore, to achieve the greatest amount of emotional melancholy, the death of the beautiful young lady should be expressed by the lips of the bereaved lover. As examples, we have "Annabel Lee," "Lenore," "Ligeia," "To Helen" and numerous other works on this subject. And even though Poe did recognize other subjects as legitimate topics for art (he did praise Hawthorne, who very rarely concerned himself with a beautiful, dying woman), the death of a beautiful woman remained Poe's favorite subject. In his own words, he writes: "The death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world — and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such a topic are those of a bereaved lover" ("Philosophy of Composition").
