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[page 448, column 2, continued:]
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For the Southern Literary
Messenger.
MORELLA — A TALE.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
Auto kath' auto meth' auton, mono
eides aei ou.
Itself — alone by itself — eternally one and single.
Plato, Sympos.
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 With a feeling
of deep but
most
singular affection I regarded my friend Morella. Thrown by accident
into
her society many years ago, my soul, from our first meeting, burned
with
fires it had never before known — but the fires were not of Eros — and
bitter
and tormenting to my spirit was the gradual conviction that I could in
no manner define their unusual meaning, or regulate their vague
intensity.
Yet we met: and Fate bound us together at the altar: and I never spoke
of love or thought of passion. She,
however,
shunned society, and, attaching herself to me alone, rendered me happy.
It is a happiness to wonder. It is a happiness to dream.
Morella's erudition was profound. As
I hope to
live,
her talents were of no common order — her powers of mind were gigantic.
I felt this, and in many matters became her pupil. I soon, however,
found
that, Morella, perhaps on account of her Presburg education, laid
before
me
a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the
mere
dross of the early German literature. These, for what reasons I could
not
imagine, were her favorite and constant study: and that in process of
time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but
effectual
influence of habit and example.
In all this, if I err not, my reason
had little
to
do. My convictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by
the imagination, nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read, to
be
discovered,
unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts.
Feeling
deeply persuaded of this I abandoned myself more implicitly to the
guidance
of my wife, and entered with a bolder spirit into the intricacy
of her studies. And then — then, when poring over forbidden pages I
felt
the spirit kindle within me, would Morella place her cold
hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy some
low singular words, whose strange meaning burnt themselves in upon my
memory: and then hour after hour would
I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her thrilling voice,
until at
length its melody was tinged with terror and fell like a shadow
upon
my soul, and I grew pale, and shuddered inwardly at those too
unearthly
tones — and thus Joy suddenly faded into Horror, and the most beautiful
became the most hideous, as Hinnon became Ge-Henna.
It is unnecessary to state the exact
character of
these disquisitions, which, growing out of the volumes I have
mentioned,
formed, for so long a time, almost the sole conversation of Morella and
myself. By the learned in what might be termed theological morality
they
will be readily conceived, and by the unlearned they would, at all
events,
be little understood. The wild Pantheism of [page 449:] Fichte
—
the modified
[[Greek text:]] xxxxxxx
[[:Greek text]] of the Pythagoreans — and, above all, the doctrines of Identity
as urged by Schelling were generally the points of discussion
presenting
the most of beauty to the imaginative Morella. That Identity
which is not improperly called
Personal, I think Mr. Locke truly defines to consist
in the sameness
of a rational being. And since by person we understand an intelligent
essence
having reason, and since there is a consciousness which always
accompanies
thinking, it is this which makes us all to be that which we call ourselves
— thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us
our personal identity. But the Principium Individuationis — the
notion of that Identity which at death is, or is not lost forever,
was to me, at all times, a consideration of intense interest, not more
from the mystical and exciting nature
of
its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner in which
Morella
mentioned them.
But, indeed, the time had now arrived
when the
mystery
of my wife's manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the
touch of her wan fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor
the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this but did not
upbraid. She seemed conscious of my weakness or my folly — and,
smiling, called
it Fate. She seemed also conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the
gradual alienation of my regard; but she gave me no hint or token of
its
nature. Yet was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson
spot
settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale
forehead
became prominent: and one instant my nature melted into pity, but in
the next I met the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul
sickened
and became giddy with the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some
dreary and fathomless abyss.
Shall I then say that I long'd with
an earnest
and
consuming desire for the moment of Morella's decease? I did. But the
fragile
spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days — for many weeks and
irksome months — until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my
mind, and I grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of a fiend
cursed the days, and the hours, and the bitter moments which seemed to
lengthen, and lengthen as her gentle life declined — like shadows in
the
dying of the day.
But one autumnal evening, when the
winds lay
still
in Heaven, Morella called me to her side. There was a dim mist over all
the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and, amid the rich October
leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen.
As
I came, she was murmuring in a low under-tone, which trembled with
fervor,
the words of a Catholic hymn:
Sancta
Maria! turn thine
eyes
Upon the sinner's sacrifice
Of fervent prayer, and humble love,
From thy holy throne above.
At morn, at noon, at twilight dim,
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn,
In joy and wo, in good and ill,
Mother of God! be with me still.
When my hours flew gently by,
And no storms were in the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy love did guide to thine and thee. [column 2:]
Now, when clouds of Fate o'ercast
All my Present, and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine. |
'It is a day of days' — said Morella — 'a day of all
days
either to live or die. It is a fair day for the sons of Earth and Life
— ah! more fair for the daughters of Heaven and
Death.'
I turned towards her, and she
continued.
'I am dying — yet shall I live.
Therefore for me,
Morella, thy wife, hath the charnel house no terrors — mark me! — not
even
the terrors of the worm. The days have never been when thou
couldst
love me; but her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt
adore.'
'Morella!'
'I repeat that I am dying. But within
me is a
pledge
of that affection — ah, how little! which you felt for me, Morella.
And
when my spirit departs shall the child live — thy child and mine,
Morella's.
But thy days shall be days of sorrow — that sorrow which is the most
lasting
of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of trees. For the
hours
of thy happiness are over, and Joy is not gathered twice in a life, as
the roses of Pæstum twice in a year. Thou shalt not, then,
play the Teian with Time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the
vine,
thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on earth, like the Moslemin
at Mecca.'
'Morella!' — I cried — 'Morella! how
knowest thou
this?'
—— but she turned away her face upon the pillow, and, a slight tremor
coming
over her limbs, she thus died, and I heard her voice no more.
Yet, as she had foretold, her child —
to which in
dying she had given birth, and which breathed not till the mother
breathed
no more — her child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in
size and intellect, and was the
perfect
resemblance
of her who had departed, and I loved her with a love more fervent and
more
intense than I believed it possible to feel on
earth.
But ere long the Heaven of this
pure affection
became overcast; and Gloom, and Horror, and Grief, came over it in
clouds.
I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange
indeed
was her rapid increase in bodily size — but terrible, oh! terrible were
the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while watching the
development
of her mental being. Could it be otherwise, when I daily discovered in
the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the
woman?
— when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy? and
when
the wisdom or the passions of maturity I found hourly gleaming from its
full and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became evident to my
appalled
senses — when I could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw it off
from those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be
wondered
at that suspicions of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my
spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and
thrilling
theories of the entombed Morella? I snatched from the scrutiny of the
world
a being whom Destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigid
seclusion
of my ancestral home, I watched with an agonizing anxiety over all
which
concerned my daughter.
And as years rolled away, and daily I
gazed upon [page 450:] her eloquent and mild and holy face,
and
pored over her maturing form, did I discover new points
of
resemblance in the child to her mother — the melancholy, and the dead.
And
hourly grew darker these shadows, as it were, of similitude, and became
more full, and
more
definite, and more perplexing, and to me more terrible in their
aspect.
For that her smile was like her mother's I could bear — but then I
shuddered at its too perfect identity: that her eyes were like
Morella's
own I could endure — but then they looked down too often into the
depths of
my soul with Morella's intense and bewildering meaning. And in the
contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair,
and
in the wan fingers which buried themselves therein, and in the
musical
tones of her speech, and above all — oh! above all, in the phrases and
expressions of the dead on the lips of the loved and the living, I
found
food for consuming thought and horror — for a worm that would
not
die.
Thus passed away two lustrums of her
life, yet my
daughter remained nameless upon the earth. 'My child' and 'my love'
were
the designations usually prompted by a father's affection, and the
rigid
seclusion of her days precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name
died
with her at her death. Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter
— it was impossible to speak. Indeed during the brief period of her
existence the latter had received no impressions from the outward
world
but such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her
privacy.
But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind in its
unnerved
and agitated condition, a present deliverance
from the horrors of my destiny. And at the baptismal font I hesitated
for
a name. And many titles of the wise and beautiful, of antique and
modern
times,
of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips — and many, many
fair titles of the gentle, and the happy and the good. What prompted
me
then to disturb the memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to
breathe
that sound, which, in its very recollection, was wont to make ebb and
flow the
purple
blood in tides from the temples to the heart? What fiend spoke from
the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles, and in the
silence
of the night, I shrieked within the ears of the holy man the syllables,
Morella? What more than fiend convulsed the features of my child and
overspread them with the hues of death, as, starting at that sound, she
turned her glassy eyes from the Earth to Heaven, and falling prostrate
upon the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded 'I am here!'
Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct —
like a knell
of death — horrible, horrible death, sank the eternal sounds within my
soul. Years — years may roll away, but the memory of that epoch —
never!
Now was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine — but the hemlock
and the cypress overshadowed me night and day. And I kept no reckoning
of time or place, and the stars of my Fate faded from Heaven, and,
therefore,
my spirit grew dark, and the figures of the earth passed by me like
flitting
shadows,
and among them all I beheld only — Morella. The winds of the firmament
breathed but one sound within my ears, and the ripples
upon the sea murmured evermore — Morella. But she died, and with my own
hands I bore her to the tomb, and I laughed, with a long and bitter
laugh
as I found no traces of the first in the charnel where I laid the
second
— Morella. |
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