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[page 469:]
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MORELLA.
[[Greek text]] xxxx xxx xxxx xxx
xxxxx, xxxx xxxxx xxxx xx. [[Greek text]]
Itself, by itself, solely, ONE
everlasting, and single.
PLATO.
Sympos.
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WITH a feeling
of deep yet 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 passion, nor thought of love. 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, because [[became]] her pupil. I soon, however, found
that, perhaps
on account of her Presburg education, she placed before me a number of
those mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of
the early German literature. These, for what reason 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 [page 470:]
ideal, 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. Persuaded of
this,
I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered
with
an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. And then —
then,
when, pouring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit
enkindling
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 burned themselves in upon my memory. And then, hour after hour,
would I linger by her side, and dwell upon the music of her voice —
until,
at length, its melody was tainted with terror, — and there fell 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 those
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 Fichte; the modified [[Greek text]] xxxxxxxxx [[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 termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think,
truly
defines to consist in the saneness [[sameness]] of 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 for ever, was to me — at all times, a consideration of
intense
interest;
not more from the perplexing 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 [page 471:] 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 unfathomable
abyss.
Shall I then say that I longed 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 bed-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.
"It is a day of days,"
she said, as I
approached; "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 kissed her forehead, and she
continued:
"I am dying, yet shall I live."
"Morella!"
"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 I am dying. But within me is a
pledge of that affection —
ah, how little! — which thou didst feel for me, Morella. [page 472:]
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 no longer, then, play
the
Teian with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, thou
shalt
bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as do 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, which breathed not until the mother breathed no more — her
child,
a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and
was the perfect resemblance of her who had departed, and I loved her
with
a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any
denizen
of earth.
But, ere long, the heaven of this pure
affection became darkened, and
gloom, and horror, and grief, swept 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 rigorous seclusion of my home,
watched
with an agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved. [page
473:]
And, as years rolled away, and I gazed,
day after day, upon her holy,
and
mild, and eloquent face, and poured [[pored]] over her maturing form,
day after
day
did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother,
the
melancholy and the dead. And, hourly, grew darker these shadows of
similitude,
and more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more
hideously
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 I could endure; but then they too often looked down
into
the depths of my soul with Morella's own 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
sad 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 lustra of her life,
and, as 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, save 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 terrors of my destiny. And at
the baptismal fount [[font]] I hesitated for a name. And many titles of
the wise
and beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands,
came
thronging to my lips, with 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 the purple blood in torrents 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 whispered
within
the ears [page 474:] of the holy man the syllables — Morella?
What more than fiend
convulsed the features of my child, and overspread them with hues of
death,
as starting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes
from the earth to heaven, and, falling prostrate on the black slabs of
our
ancestral vault, responded — "I am here!"
Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, fell
those few simple sounds
within
my ear, and thence, like molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain.
Years — years may pass away, but the memory of that epoch — never! Nor
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 the earth
grew
dark, and its figures 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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