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Part IV: “Ligeia” as Exemplifying the Essence of Poe
The most interesting omissions which I have noted among Poe's revisions are of passages in which he apparently discovered himself to be repeating a phrase or a detail used in another story. I cannot pretend by any means to have detected all such changes, for the same words, phrases, and ideas — the same [page 609:] quotations, the same comparisons — recur so often that it is difficult always to place the expression in a certain tale. He referred frequently, for example to the ga1vanic battery. In three of his stories the comparison to the shock of a galvanic battery recurred in almost the same words: in the Visiter, Messenger, and Gift texts of “MS. Found in a Bottle,” there occurred the sentence, it struck upon his soul with the shock of a galvanic battery.” Poe wrote also in the original of “The Oval Portrait,” “started me into waking life as with the shock of a galvanic battery.” in “William Wilson” “the whispered syllables of the stranger ... struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery”’ When Poe revised “MS. Found in a Bottle” for the 1840 volume and “The Oval Portrait” for the Broadway Journal, he omitted the comparison from both stories, presumably because he preferred to allow it to stand. In “William Wilson.” In the original version of “The Fall of the House of Usher” he had written “I shall ever bear about me, as Moslemin their shrouds at Mecca, a memory,” etc. When he revised the story for its 1845 appearance, and detected, perhaps, the existence in “Morella” of the same simile, “thou shalt bear about thee they shroud [page 610:] on the earth, as do the Moslemin at Mecca,” he deleted the phrase from “Usher.” In the earlier story the allusion is a part of Morella's significant dying prophecy and has direct bearing on the dénouement, while in “Usher” It had little meaning.
Most striking, however, are the indications that in the writing of “Ligeia” Poe gathered up the threads of his thoughts, the figures of speech, the phrases, the ideals of character and interiors, which had been taking shape in the preceding stories and molded them unconsciously into this tale. It is, in my opinion, of the essence of Poe in phraseology, in subject-matter, in spiritual qualities. It echoed the best that had preceded it and foreshadowed that which was to follow.
There are, however, evidences other than in the mere subject-matter which attest to the priority of “Ligeia” among Poe's tales. In a letter to E. A. Duyckinck in 1846 he wrote, “‘Ligeia ... is undoubtedly the best story I have written.”(21) In the same year he wrote his friend, P. P. Cooke, a long letter of comment upon his work. Of his stories he said, “The loftiest kind is that of the highest [page 611:] imagination — and for this reason only ‘Ligeia’ may be called my best tale. I have much improved this last since you saw it, and I mail you a copy,” etc. Poe and Cook [[Cooke]] had exchanged letters in 1839 in which “Ligeia” was discussed at some length. Cooke praised the tale warmly, but suggested that the ghostly proprieties” might have been better observed if the perception of the change in Rowena into the likeness of Ligeia had been more gradual.(22) With a tact characteristic of his replies to friendly criticism, at least during his earlier years, Poe agreed that Cooke's suggestion embodied a far loftier and more thrilling ideas than his own, but that since he had touched upon that particular detail in “Morella,” he had been forced to modify his treatment of the theme of “Ligeia.”
It offers in my opinion, the widest possible scope to the imagination — it might be rendered even sublime. And this idea was mine — had I never written before I should have adopted it — but then there “Morella.” Do you remember there the gradual conviction on the part of the parent that the spirit of the first Morella tenants the person of the second? It was necessary, since “Morella” was written, to modify “Ligeia.” I was forced to be content with a sudden self-consciousness, on the part of the narrator, that Ligeia stood before him. One point I have not fully carried out — [page 612:] I should have intimated that the will did not perfect its intention — there should have been a relapse — a final one — and Ligeia (who had only succeeded in so much as to convey an idea of the truth to the narrator) should be at length entombed as Rowena — the bodily alterations having gradually faded away.
But since “Morella” is upon record I will suffer “Ligeia” to remain as it is.(23)
It will be remembered, too, that in his early letter to Judge Tucker in 1835 Poe expressed his opinion that “Morella” was his best tale written up to that time and that when he wrote again, he would write something better than “Morella.”(24) He justified this boast by dealing with the same theme in his masterful tale, “Ligeia.”
Perhaps because it represents what was essentially Poe, it shows evidences of no radical changes in its various states with the exception of the interpolation of the poem, “The Conqueror Worm.” It was, however, exhaustively revised. It is of course impossible to say exactly what actuated Poe in any of his revisions. But there are undoubtedly very good reasons for believing that in revising other stories he gave way to the superior claims of “Ligeia.” [page 613:]
A comparison of “The Visionary” (“The Assignation”) with “Ligeia” reveals the fact that, though the incidents are entirely different, the tales have much in common. They are both studies in the same theme: supreme love; the character of Ligeia is a feminine counterpart of the “Visionary”; the room described minutely are much alike in furnishings and in atmosphere; and many of the details are similar. Naturally, then, when Poe wrote “Ligeia,” he echoed the phraseology of “The Visionary.” The earlier versions of “The Visionary” described the stranger as having a nose like “those delicate creations of the mind to be found only in the medallions of the Hebrew.” Of Ligeia Poe wrote, “I looked at the delicate outlines of the nose — and nowhere but in the graceful medallions of the Hebrews have I beheld similar perfection.” Poe later revised “The Visionary” so as to omit entirely the description of the note, although he allowed the reference to Usher's nose as being of a delicate Hebrew model” to remain unchanged. Poe spoke of the “Venus de Medicis” as “the work of Cleomenes, the son of the Athenian” in the Godey's and Messenger versions of “the contour which the god Apollo revealed in a dream to Cleomenes, the son of the [page 614:] Athenian,” he omitted from the earlier story any reference to Cleomenes.
Pedro's room in “The Bargain Lost” (“Bon-Bon”) had, it will be remembered, the essential features of the beautiful room of the “Visionary” and also of the bridal chamber in “Ligeia.” It “was of singular beauty,” had a carpet “of the most brilliant and glossy pale yellow,” and “all around from the ceiling fell tapestry — hangings of richest crimson velvet.” Its ceiling “was of brown and highly polished oak, vaulted, carved, and fretted until all its innumerable angles were rounded into a dense mass of shadow, from whose gloomy depth, by a slender golden chain with very long links, swung a fantastic Arabesque lamp of solid silver.” The window of Pedro's room was “a single, huge, bowed, and trelliced” one, glaring out upon the waters of the Adriatic” Afterward Poe realized more completely the room of “singular beauty” in “The Visionary”:
Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibrations of low melancholy music, whose unseen origin undoubtedly lay in the recesses of the red coral trellice-work which tapestried the ceiling. The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange, Arabesque censers which seemed actually endued with a monstrous vitality as their parti-coloured fires writhed up and down, and around their extravagant proportions. The rays of the rising [page 615:] sun poured in upon the whole, through windows formed each of a single pane of crimson — tinted glass; and glancing to and fro in a thousand reflections from curtains which rolled from their cornices like streams of molten silver, mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay wiltering [[weltering]] and subdued upon a carpet of rich liquid-looking cloth of gold.
When, therefore, Pedro's room became “Bon-Bon's” in the Messenger, it lost practically all of the characteristics it had earlier possessed except that “from the ceiling, suspended by a chain of very long slender links, swung a fantastic iron lamp.” It will be noted that the feature of the lamp suspended by “a chain of very long slender links” had not been used in the “Visionary's” room, and that the word “Arabesque,” which had appeared there, was deleted from the second description of the lamp. When, also the poetic background of Venice was used in “The Visionary,” Poe transferred “Bon-Bon's” room at Rouen.
With the creation of “Ligeia” the room became still more beautiful and more bizarre — its beauty was indeed tinged with strangeness. Its sole window — “an immense sheet of unbroken glass from Venice — a single pane, and tinted of a leaden hue,” had, extended “over the upper portion the trellice-work of an aged vine.” Moreover: [page 616:]
The ceiling, of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted. ... From out the most central recess of this melancholy vaulting, depended, by a single chain of gold with long links, a huge censer of the same metal, Arabesque [later: Saracenic] in pattern, and with many perforations so contrived that there writhed in and out of them, as if endued with a serpent vitality, a continual succession of parti-colored fires.
In this later quotation from “Ligeia” may be discovered an interesting combination of details from the passages quoted out of various versions of the two earlier stories. The ceiling is directly from the material discarded by Poe in re-writing “Bon-Bon” for the Messenger. The censer is a curious composite of “the fantastic Arabesque lamp suspended by a chain of very long slender links” of “Bon-Bon” and “the strange, Arabesque censers which seemed actually endued with a monstrous vitality as their parti-colored fires writhed up and down” in “The Visionary.” It is of significance, therefore, in our efforts to follow the craftsman to note that when Poe revised “Bon-Bon” for the Broadway Journal, he prepared “The Visionary” for the Journal under the title of “The Assignation,” he left out the word “Arabesque” and the clause, “which seemed actually endued with a [page 617:] monstrous vitality as their parti-colored fires writhed up and down.” Perhaps because of “the trellice work” over the window and “the melancholy vaulting” of the ceiling in “Ligeia,” he omitted from “The Assignation” the former statement that the “unseen origin” of the music “lay in the recesses of the crimson trellice-work which tapestried the ceiling.”
Other stories bear traces of the influence of “Ligeia” upon their revised forms. In the original version of “The Man that was Used Up” there occurred a quotation from Bacon, “there is no exquisite beauty existing in the world without a certain degree of strangeness in the expression.” In “Ligeia” Poe wrote, “ ‘There is no exquisite beauty,’ says Lord Bacon, Lord Verulam ... ‘without some strangeness in the proportion.’ ” This passage was so frequently quoted by Poe that it is doubtful whether he was deliberately deferring to its presence in “Ligeia” when he deleted it from the other story. It is more probable that he merely sensed its incongruity in the farcical tale with which he was dealing. In “Life in Death,” the original version of “The Oval Portrait,’” the woman of the portrait was said, to have surpassed in loveliness “that of the fabulous Houri.” [page 618:] Perhaps again Poe detected an echo of “Ligeia,” for her “beauty was the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk.” At any rate, the phrase was omitted from the next version of the “The Oval Portrait,” as was also the allusion to the “too real lustre of the wild eye.”
Even more interesting for its significance in estimating the preferential rank of “Ligeia” among Poe's tale is the treatment he accorded certain allusions in the use of opium. The original version of “Berenice” had spoken of the narrator's malady as “aggravated in its symptoms by the immoderate use of opium.” Likewise, the first version of “The Oval Portrait” had continued a long account of the taking of opium and its effects upon the narrator of that tale. Both of these references were discarded when the tales were republished in 1845, may indicate that he had by that time formed the habit of using opium and thought to minimize evidences of his familiarity with the drug by omitting allusions to it whenever it was possible to do so without affecting the theme of the [page 619:] story itself.(25) He believes that in some of the stories in which the reference was of a general nature Poe did not trouble to make this emendation. Poe omitted. allusions to opium in 1845 in four stories: “Loss of Breath,” A Predicament,” “Berenice,” and “The Oval Portrait.” He made no changes in similar passages in “MS. Found in a Bottle,” “The Duc de L’Omelette,” “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “Ligeia.” The omitted allusion in “Loss of Breath” was a part of the long passage in which the victim detailed his sensations upon the gallows, a section very obviously deleted by Poe for artistic reasons. In “A Predicament” Poe merely restored the more appropriate name, “Dr. Ollapod,” of the original version instead of retaining “Dr. Morphine” of the text of 1840. In other words, the only significant omissions of opium references were made in the tales, “Berenice” and “The Oval Portrait,” in both of which the passages containing such allusions described the taking of opium by the narrator of the story and thus had immediate [page 620:] bearing upon the reader's attitude toward that incidents of the stories. The narrator of “Ligeia” also described himself as a habitual user of opium; indeed, in the course of the narrative there are half a dozen allusions to the narrator's use of the drug. It seems obvious to me, therefore, that in the deletion of the passages referring to opium in “Berenice” and “The Oval Portrait,” Poe was motivated by a reason very different from that suggested by Mr. Church: he was not the drug-addict concealing his secret, but the artist yielding to the claims of his masterpiece.
Furthermore, certain other changes which Poe made in “Berenice” indicate that he was conscious of its similarity in certain details to “Ligeia.” in some respects “Ligeia” echoes “Berenice” as well as “Morella.” in his letter to Cooke in 1839 in which he pointed out certain resemblances between “Morella” and “Ligeia,” Poe did not comment upon the fact that in “Berenice” he had also made use of the idea of a gradual change taking place in the physical appearance of the woman. But even there he had been preoccupied with the conception of a change in identity, though in the case of metempsychosis as in “Morella.” When Berenice in the last stages of her illness appeared [page 621:] before her husband, he thought, ‘Perhaps she had grown taller since her malady.” One of the striking features of the final scene in “Ligeia” is the horror-stricken query of the husband, “but had she then grown taller since her malady?” One is not surprised, I think, to note that Poe omitted from the 1845 version the reference to Berenice's having grown taller. Also of Berenice he originally wrote, “... the once golden hair fell partially over it innumerable ringlets now black as the raven's wing of midnight.” The 1845 version of “Berenice” was revised to read, “the once jetty hair ... with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow.”
Still another illuminating trace of Poe's catching himself in one of his most obvious repetitions is the change which he made in the final revision of “Eleanora” by omitting the detailed descriptions of Eleonora and Ermengarde. Probably he made this alteration, for the most part, to increase the dreamy unreal effect of the story by leaving the girls as ethereal, unvisualized creations. I believe he was [page 622:] motivated, also, by his desire to eliminate the obvious similarity of the two feminine characters to two feminine characters to Ligeia and Rowena.
Eleanora, as described, suggests a youthful Ligeia:
And here, as in all things referring to this epoch, my memory is vividly distinct. In stature she tall and slender even to fragility; the exceeding delicacy of her frame, as well as of the hues of her cheek, speaking painfully of the feeble tenure by which she held existence. The lilies of the field were not more fair. With the nose, lips, and chin of the Greek Venus, she had the majestic forehead, the naturally-waving auburn hair, and the large luminous eyes of her kindred. ... The grace of her motion was surely ethereal. Her fantastic step left no impress upon the asphodel.
Of Ligeia he wrote:
There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Ligeia. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, an in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. ... I examined the contour of that lofty and pale forehead — it was faultless — how cold indeed that word when applied to a majesty so divine ... and then the raven-black, the glossy, the luxuriant and naturally-curling tresses. ... I scrutinized the formation of the chin — and here, too, I found the gentleness of breadth, the softness and the majesty, the fullness and the spirituality, of the Greek — the contour (of the Venus) which the god Apollo revealed ... to Cleomenes ... and then I peered into the large eyes of Ligeia. [page 623:]
The original version of “Eleanora” had included also the too pointed suggestion: “I could not but dream as I gazed enrapt, upon her alternate moods of melancholy and of mirth, that two separate souls were enshrined within her. So radical were the changes of countenance, that at one instant I fancied her possessed by some spirit of smiles, at another by some demon of tears.” And. “Pyrros” started to see upon the face of Ermengarde “the identical transition from tears to smiles that I had wondered at in the long-lost Eleonora.” Liegia, also, was possessed of a two-fold spirit: “the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was ... most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion.” As “Eleonora” first read, therefore, it pointed much more clearly to the dénouement than “Ligeia” had done, and at the same time echoed the situation of the earlier tale. Then Poe caught the definite repetition of the language of the one story in the other, he must have seen also that he was making his theme of metempsychosis too obvious, particularly in view of the etherealized style and atmosphere of “Eleanora.” Perhaps, then, a minor cause led him to a very great artistic result in his revision of the story into it present beautiful form.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 610:]
21. January 6, 1843. Letters, 227.
[The following footnote appears at the bottom of page 611:]
22. September 16, 1839. Ibid., 49f.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 612:]
23. September 21, 1839. Ibid., 52f.
24. J. S. Wilson, “Unpublished Letters of Edgar Allan Poe,” loc. cit.
[The following footnotes appear at the bottom of page 619:]
25. The Alcoholism and Opiumism of Edgar A. Poe, 1932, 147ff. (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Virginia.) See also Emile Lauvrière, L’Etrange Vie et Les Etranges Amounts d’Edgar Poe, Paris, 1934, 264.
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Notes:
None.
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[S:0 - RLH35, 1935] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - Bookshelf - Poe's Craftsmanship in the Short Story (Hudson)