Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncte. .
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
College English.
http://www.jstor.org
POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION 337
professors of English. I have been ap- ences at this convention,as you hear the
pealing not to you but to them, not to messages of C. P. Snow tonight and
you who are present and already con- other speakersin the next two days, and
cerned but to them who are absent and as you participatein the program-may
unconcerned. But I appeal to them these experiences so strengthen your
through you, because you can reach presentresolutionthat upon your return
them. Each of you knows a fellow- to your schools and colleges you can
teacher, a colleague, whose professional move the indifferent and win the con-
life can be quickened by this appeal, temptuous to active participationin the
whose professionalconcerncan be roused profession,to membershipin the Council.
to action. Even if you are alone in your Only throughyou and other membersof
faculty or in your school in your live the Council, present and future, can the
awareness of the deep breadth of our cause of better English teaching be ad-
profession and of its need for teachers vanced. Yours, ours, is the responsibility
not afraidto sharethe responsibilitiesof to pushon, togetherand united, earnestly
that profession, even if you are thus and joyfully. Ours is a dedicationof the
unique in your isolation,you can reach spirit as we fling our souls high. Ours is
them. keen awarenessof the practicaltasksthat
A philosopherhas said, "A dedicated are needed as we ride the world below.
person is a majority."May your experi- This must be our new endeavor.
Poe's "Ligeia":
Dream and Destruction
W. GARGANO
JAMES
D. H. Lawrence'ssubjective criticism put an end to the couple'sprurience,for
of Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia"as a "tale "the spirit of Ligeia, leagued with the
of love pushed over a verge" is almost spirit of her husband . . . now lusts in
as sensationalas Poe's story. Lawrence the slow destruction of Rowena." And
labels the narratora "spiritualvampire" as a final refinement,Ligeia's "reappear-
who obscenely commits with Ligeia a ance" is interpreted by Lawrence as
"sin against the Holy Ghost"; refusing symbolizingher insatiabledesire"to have
to accept the individualisolationdictated more love and knowledge, the final
by their separate identities, the lovers gratificationwhich is never final, with
hysterically stimulate in each other the her husband."
delusion of spiritual union. Moreover, Of course, Lawrence's psychological
Lawrence accuses the sinners of carry- assault upon "Ligeia" does not invite
ing on their sublime eroticism for the acceptance by conservativecritics. Yet,
purpose of achieving "more conscious- their own interpretationsalmost always
ness, more beastly KNOWING." Even evaporate into textual summaries or
Ligeia's death, says Lawrence, does not obiter dicta which resemble previous
obiter dicta. Lawrence,I believe, is right
James W. Gargano, an associate professor at in
Washington and Jefferson College, has pub- treating "Ligeia"as a suggestive and
lished many articles, especially on the works symbolic complex; to take it "literally,"
of Henry James. as so many critics do, is perforce to
338 COLLEGE ENGLISH
maintaina straight face in the presence daydreams;nevertheless,the author re-
of an admittedly puerile and shabby tains a measureof impersonalitybecause,
Gothicism. Fortunately, it is becoming for all its intensity, his vicarious drama
more embarrassingto account for Poe is not ineluctably "real." In "Ligeia,"
merely as a master of eerie effects, sus- then, the narratormust not be considered
pense, and mindless extravagances of as a mere autobiographicaldisguise or
thought. Still, Lawrence seems perverse mask;he is for Poe a remarkablyinterest-
in converting "Ligeia"into a transparent ing subject, a man who mistakes his
case history of Poe's marriageto Virginia journeyinto madnessfor the culminating
Clemm. ("Ligeia," of course, was pub- achievementof a spiritualquest.
lished before Virginia's death and thus In his protagonist, Poe explores the
cannot possibly deal with Poe's emotions consequencesof man'suncontrolledsur-
upon his bereavement.) What finally render to his dreams. First of all, his
emerges from the famous essay on Poe "hero" escapes into an Ideality which
in Studies in American Literature is a provides such an encompassingsatisfac-
work in which the typically Laurentian tion that the real world forever becomes
story of "obscene"spirituallove engulfs a dismal, minatory abyss. After the
the critical analysisof Poe. eclipse of his vision, the narratorenters
I believe that "Ligeia" can best be a second stage: he now attempts to
understood as the tale of a man (the compensate for his loss by artificially
narratorand not Poe) who, having once inducing ecstasy through wild fantasies
inhabited the realm of the Ideal, seeks calculatedto distracthim from his grief.
even unto madness to recreate his lost In the third distinct phase of his history,
ecstasy. Poe's story dramatizesthe ro- he descends into the real world by
mantic's disenchantmentwith a world marrying Rowena "in a moment of
drainedof its power to arousejoy and a mental alienation."Finally, considering
sense of elevated being. His theme, typi- his alliancewith reality a profanationof
cally romantic, has its affinities with his earlier "marriage"to the Ideal, he
Wordworth's loss of the "visionary insanely "triumphs" over the actual
gleam," Coleridge's "dejection," and world by resurrecting Ligeia and re-
Shelley's sharp outbursts of disillusion- establishingas a permanentcondition the
ment. The narrator "Ligeia" resembles reign of the spirit she represents.
many other romantic heroes (and some
romantic poets) in his agonized search Ligeia symbolizesthe narrator'sdream
for an ideal fulfillment once mystically and the cause of his destruction, the
achieved or fitfully envisioned. How- height and color of his aspirationand the
ever, Poe differs from most of the early symptom of his romantic disease. Her
English romanticistsin his dramaticand rare and garishpoetic qualitiestransform
thus relatively objective exploration of her into what might be regarded as an
his literary problem;his stories, at their adolescent's personification of imagi-
best, are not mere lyrical releases, but native and exalted being. Appropriately,
psychological investigations pursued she is compounded of vagueness, mys-
through vicarious dramas or exciting tery, strange beauty, and wild passion.
daydreams.It is as if in his works he Obviously an apotheosis of the poetic
experimentallyempowers a facet of the vision, she lacks a local habitation and
self, often imagined as the total self, a name;the narratorcannot recall when
to seek its full development or to dis- or where he first met her and, though
cover its own destiny. Of course, Poe's she becomes his wife, he confesses that
narrative thus becomes "personal" be- he never knew her "paternal name." The
cause there are real issues at stake in all spirit of "Romance" presided, we are
POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION 339
told, over the narrator's union with her; Of course, the intensity of the mysti-
yet, even after their marriage she "came cal vision cannot be long sustained. In-
and departed like a shadow." That she deed, in "The Poetic Principle" Poe
is the creation of a rhapsodizing fancy himself declares, in arguing that a mov-
and cannot be imprisoned in actuality ing poem must be short, that "all excite-
is shown by the consistent use of dream ments are, through a psychal necessity,
imagery in the description of her "beauty transient." The narrator, then, cannot
of face": "It was the radiance of an continue to possess his Ligeia any more
opium-dream-an airy and spirit-lifting than Poe's other protagonists can pre-
vision more wildly divine than the serve their Lenores, Irenes, or Ulalumes
phantasies which hovered about the slum- from the grave. Disenchantment is the
bering souls of the daughters of Delos." guerdon of thrilling fantasy; the knight
Even the "formation" of her chin has in Keats's poem must wake up from his
"the contour which the god Apollo re- dream to find himself on "the cold hill-
vealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes." side." The romantic ecstasy is also
As Poe's protagonist continues his de- transient because through it he has tres-
scription of Ligeia, he makes it clear passed into eternal or forbidden realms
that he has soared into a transcendent which he may glimpse but not long
realm of dream and delusion. In this inhabit. The brief bliss of Keats's heroes
realm, he discovers a beauty "above or with Lamia or La Belle Dame Sans Merci
has about it a frenzy which suggests
apart from the earth"; he finds a spiritual
Ideal forever exciting and worthy of the illicit and the sinful. Well might
adoration. His experience is clearly mys- Poe's hero fear that his love for Ligeia
tical, for it nourishes his whole being makes available to him "a wisdom too
and yet remains ineffable. Indeed, in divinely precious not to be forbidden!"
spite of his frenzied attempts to define Yet, though the narrator of Ligeia
and classify his sensations, he ultimately cannot be forever "married"to the Ideal,
abandons himself to supernal satisfactions he will be forever haunted by it. His
which he cannot anatomize. Like many life will be a continuous quest for it,
another romantic idealist, he lives tensely a dream or nightmare of it; for he
at the highest pitch of his passion and cannot finally admit to himself that "the
transcendentalism in which [he and
imagination. He inhabits a sphere where
the perpetual novelty of beauty arouses, Ligeia] were immersed" is irrecoverable.
like an ever-renewed creation, continu- His wife, then, will not yield herself
ous wonder and awe. Momentarily, then, "unto death utterly," in spite of her own
he attains that glory or intensification of poetic admission "That the play is the
being which justifies existence for the tragedy, 'Man,'/And its hero the Con-
romantic. In other words, he has escaped queror Worm." Poe's narrator is caught
the limitations of the mortal condition in the dilemma of the romanticist com-
through a vision of the ethereal and pelled to descend from the peaks where
eternal sphere of the Ideal. Ligeia, then, eternal values immutably reign into a
world that is fragmented, dreary, and
is not, as Lawrence assumes, a fictional
mutable. Incapable of making any real
substitution for Poe's wife; she is, in- commitment to an invidiously, lower
stead, a huge metaphor for the narrator's
plane of existence, he must remain the
romantic version of a Platonic "heaven." victim-lover of obsession and dream.
In her effect upon her adorer, Ligeia The loss of his "vision" drives the
has the combined force of Keats's night- narrator into an "utter abandonment"
ingale, Grecian urn, and La Belle Dame which he describes as "incipient mad-
Sans Merci or Lamia. ness." Although he presumably attempts
340 COLLEGE ENGLISH
to alleviate his grief, he actually seems, existence. By bringing Rowena into his
in this second stage of his life, to plunge chamber of horrors, he refuses to sub-
into substitute and counterfeit and equal- scribe to the values or accept the re-
ly "forbidden" exictements. Certainly, sponsibilities which govern common
his retreat into a gloomy English abbey humanity. There is not even a hint that
is a fascinated discovery and exploration he entertains a single gentle or chivalric
of macabre and wild sensations. He be- feeling for his new wife. He loathes the
comes "a bounden slave in the trammels reality she represents, and while he
of opium" and seeks incessant psychic delights in the pain he inflicts upon her
agitation from the "creations" of a per- he "revelled in recollections of [Ligeia's]
verted and ingenious imagination. The purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her
tufted gold carpets of "Bedlam patterns" ethereal nature, of her passionate, her
and the "gorgeous and fantastic dra- idolatrous love."
peries" are merely details in the total At this crucial point in his life, the
hallucination into which he wishes to narrator has moved beyond the stage of
escape. Certainly, he regards immersion "incipient madness." Now, he attempts
in the grotesque and phantasmagoric as
through sheer will and desire to impose
preferable to a fall into the slough of his ideal vision of things upon an in-
ordinary life. The "leaden-hued" Vene- tractable reality. He is aided in his
tian glass, the Saracenic censer, the
attempt by his unnatural seclusion, by
"sarcophagus of black granite," and the his addiction to opium, and by the un-
"strong continual current of wind behind wholesome stimulation induced by the
the draperies," all make the "bridal lurid, Gothic furniture and devices that
chamber" emblematic of mental and emo- clutter his "bridal chamber." Certainly,
tional disorder, but they also suggest the he goads himself into the insanity through
exquisite pleasure which man can derive which he will realize his passionate
from the staging and intensification of hopes:
his own suffering. His conscious partici-
In the excitement of my opium dreams
pation in his unique doom (and most of (for I was habitually fettered in the
Poe's characters consider themselves vic- shackles of the drug) I would call aloud
tims of fate) is jealously cherished as upon her name, during the silence of the
conferring extraordinary distinction upon night, or among the sheltered recesses
him. Indeed, one sometimes wonders of the glens by day, as if, through the
whether the bereft romantic is not more wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the
happy with his heightened anguish than consuming ardor of my longing for the
he was with his orignal vision. departed,I could restore her to the path-
There is no doubt, however, of the ways she had abandoned-oh, could it be
forever?-upon the earth
dreary insufficiency of the "real" world
for Poe's narrator. Following both his The hysterical appeals for the return of
abandonment to Ligeia and his abandon- Ligeia have of course a causal connection
ment to sensuous excesses, his marriage with the illness of Rowena. Symbolically,
to Rowena demonstrates that he cannot the former must rescue him from what
content himself with "ordinary" life. the narrator of The Fall of the House
He confesses that he married her "in a of Usher calls the "bitter lapse into
moment of alienation" from Ligeia and every-day life-the hideous dropping off
he describes his first month with her of the veil."
as made up of "unhallowed hours." The last act of the narrator's drama
Clearly, he considers his second marriage begins with the fading away of the real
an act of infidelity to his first wife, a world and the gradual reemergence of
momentary repudiation of his once ideal the poetic or ideal world. Little by little,
POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION 341
Poe underwent in real life most of his where his character fiercely possesses his
protagonist'sexperiences,it must be re- dream, Poe displays a completely realistic
memberedthat he returnedto reality to grasp of the situation. He knows only
write his tale. Moreover, as artist he too well that the wages of protracted
clearly understoodwhat his hero or alter romantic self-indulgence are self-de-
ego did not, for at the critical point ception and ultimate madness.
Hawthorne's Choice:
The Veil or the Jaundiced Eye
ROBERT W. COCHRAN