ligeia dream and destrution

8/12/2019 Ligeia Dream and Destrution

1/7

Poe's "Ligeia": Dream and DestructionAuthor(s): James W. GarganoReviewed work(s):Source: College English, Vol. 23, No. 5 (Feb., 1962), pp. 337-342Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373801.Accessed: 12/04/2012 20:08

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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 [email protected].

National Council of Teachers of Englishis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

College English.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=nctehttp://www.jstor.org/stable/373801?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/373801?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ncte


2/7

POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION

P o e s L i g e i a :Dream and Destruction

JAMES . GARGANOD. H. Lawrence'ssubjectivecriticismof Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia"as a "taleof love pushed over a verge" is almostas sensationalas Poe's story. Lawrencelabelsthe narratora "spiritualvampire"who obscenely commits with Ligeia a"sin againstthe Holy Ghost"; refusingto acceptthe individualsolationdictatedby their separate identities, the lovershystericallystimulate in each other thedelusion of spiritual union. Moreover,Lawrence accuses the sinnersof carry-ing on their sublime eroticism for thepurpose of achieving "more conscious-ness, more beastly KNOWING." EvenLigeia'sdeath, says Lawrence,does not

put an end to the couple'sprurience, or"the spirit of Ligeia, leagued with thespirit of her husband . . . now lusts inthe slow destructionof Rowena."Andas a final refinement,Ligeia's"reappear-ance" is interpreted by Lawrence assymbolizingherinsatiabledesire"to havemore love and knowledge, the finalgratificationwhich is never final, withher husband."Of course, Lawrence'spsychologicalassault upon "Ligeia"does not inviteacceptanceby conservativecritics. Yet,their own interpretationsalmost alwaysevaporate into textual summaries orobiter dicta which resemble previousobiterdicta.Lawrence,I believe,is rightin treating"Ligeia"as a suggestiveandsymbolic complex;to take it "literally,"as so many critics do, is perforce to

James W. Gargano, an associateprofessor atWashington and Jefferson College, has pub-lished many articles, especially on the worksof Henry James.

337professorsof English. I have been ap-pealingnot to you but to them, not toyou who are present and already con-cernedbut to them who are absent andunconcerned. But I appeal to themthrough you, because you can reachthem. Each of you knows a fellow-teacher, a colleague,whose professionallife can be quickened by this appeal,whoseprofessional oncern canbe rousedto action.Even if you are alone in yourfaculty or in your school in your liveawareness of the deep breadth of ourprofession and of its need for teachersnot afraid to share the responsibilities fthat profession, even if you are thusunique in your isolation,you can reachthem.A philosopherhas said, "A dedicatedpersonis a majority."May your experi-

encesat this convention,asyou hearthemessages of C. P. Snow tonight andotherspeakersn the next two days,andas you participate n the program-maythese experiences so strengthen yourpresentresolution hat upon your returnto your schools and colleges you canmove the indifferent and win the con-temptuousto active participationn theprofession, o membershipn the Council.Only throughyou and othermembersofthe Council,presentand future,can thecause of better English teaching be ad-vanced.Yours, ours,is the responsibilityto pushon, togetherandunited,earnestlyand joyfully. Oursis a dedicationof thespiritas we fling our souls high. Ours iskeen awareness f the practical asks hatare needed as we ride the world below.This must be our new endeavor.


3/7

338 COLLEGE ENGLISHmaintaina straightface in the presenceof an admittedly puerile and shabbyGothicism. Fortunately, it is becomingmore embarrassingo account for Poemerely as a masterof eerie effects, sus-pense, and mindless extravagancesofthought. Still, Lawrenceseems perversein converting"Ligeia"nto a transparentcasehistoryof Poe'smarriage o VirginiaClemm. ("Ligeia,"of course, was pub-lished before Virginia'sdeath and thuscannotpossiblydealwith Poe's emotionsupon his bereavement.) What finallyemergesfrom the famous essay on Poein Studies in American Literatureis awork in which the typically Laurentianstory of "obscene"spiritual ove engulfsthe criticalanalysisof Poe.I believe that "Ligeia"can best beunderstood as the tale of a man (thenarratorand not Poe) who, havingonceinhabited the realm of the Ideal, seekseven unto madnessto recreate his lostecstasy. Poe's story dramatizes he ro-mantic's disenchantmentwith a worlddrainedof its power to arousejoy and asense of elevatedbeing.His theme,typi-cally romantic, has its affinities withWordworth's loss of the "visionarygleam," Coleridge's "dejection," andShelley's sharp outbursts of disillusion-ment. The narrator"Ligeia"resemblesmany other romanticheroes (and someromantic poets) in his agonized searchfor an ideal fulfillmentonce mysticallyachieved or fitfully envisioned. How-ever, Poe differsfrom most of the earlyEnglishromanticistsn his dramaticandthus relatively objective explorationofhis literaryproblem;his stories,at theirbest, are not mere lyrical releases,butpsychological investigations pursuedthrough vicarious dramas or excitingdaydreams.It is as if in his works heexperimentallyempowersa facet of theself, often imagined as the total self,to seek its full developmentor to dis-cover its own destiny. Of course, Poe'snarrative thus becomes "personal" be-cause there are real issues at stake in all

daydreams;nevertheless, he author re-tainsa measureof impersonalitybecause,for all its intensity, his vicarious dramais not ineluctably "real." In "Ligeia,"then,the narratormustnot be consideredas a mere autobiographicaldisguise ormask;he is for Poe a remarkablynterest-ing subject, a man who mistakes hisjourney nto madness or the culminatingachievementof a spiritualquest.In his protagonist,Poe explores theconsequencesof man'suncontrolledsur-render to his dreams. First of all, his"hero" escapes into an Ideality whichprovidessuch an encompassing atisfac-tion that the real world foreverbecomesa dismal, minatory abyss. After theeclipse of his vision, the narratorentersa second stage: he now attempts tocompensate for his loss by artificiallyinducing ecstasy through wild fantasiescalculated o distracthim from his grief.In the third distinctphaseof his history,he descends into the real world bymarrying Rowena "in a moment ofmental alienation."Finally, consideringhis alliancewith realitya profanationofhis earlier "marriage"o the Ideal, heinsanely "triumphs" over the actualworld by resurrectingLigeia and re-establishing s a permanent onditionthereign of the spirit she represents.

Ligeia symbolizes he narrator's reamand the cause of his destruction, theheightand color of hisaspiration ndthesymptom of his romantic disease.Herrareandgarishpoetic qualities ransformher into what might be regardedas anadolescent's personification of imagi-native and exaltedbeing. Appropriately,she is compoundedof vagueness,mys-tery, strange beauty, and wild passion.Obviously an apotheosisof the poeticvision, she lacks a local habitationanda name;the narratorcannotrecallwhenor where he first met her and, thoughshe becomes his wife, he confessesthathe never knew her "paternalname." Thespirit of "Romance" presided, we are


4/7

POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION 339told, over the narrator's union with her;yet, even after their marriage she "cameand departed like a shadow." That sheis the creation of a rhapsodizing fancyand cannot be imprisoned in actualityis shown by the consistent use of dreamimagery in the description of her "beautyof face": "It was the radiance of anopium-dream-an airy and spirit-liftingvision more wildly divine than thephantasieswhich hovered about the slum-bering souls of the daughters of Delos."Even the "formation" of her chin has"the contour which the god Apollo re-vealed but in a dream, to Cleomenes."As Poe's protagonist continues his de-scription of Ligeia, he makes it clearthat he has soared into a transcendentrealm of dream and delusion. In thisrealm, he discovers a beauty "above orapart from the earth"; he finds a spiritualIdeal forever exciting and worthy ofadoration. His experience is clearly mys-tical, for it nourishes his whole beingand yet remains ineffable. Indeed, inspite of his frenzied attempts to defineand classify his sensations, he ultimatelyabandons himself to supernal satisfactionswhich he cannot anatomize. Like manyanother romantic idealist, he lives tenselyat the highest pitch of his passion andimagination. He inhabits a sphere wherethe perpetual novelty of beauty arouses,like an ever-renewed creation, continu-ous wonder and awe. Momentarily, then,he attains that glory or intensification ofbeing which justifies existence for theromantic. In other words, he has escapedthe limitations of the mortal conditionthrough a vision of the ethereal andeternal sphere of the Ideal. Ligeia, then,is not, as Lawrence assumes, a fictionalsubstitution for Poe's wife; she is, in-stead, a huge metaphor for the narrator'sromantic version of a Platonic "heaven."In her effect upon her adorer, Ligeiahas the combined force of Keats's night-ingale, Grecian urn, and La Belle DameSans Merci or Lamia.

Of course, the intensity of the mysti-cal vision cannot be long sustained. In-deed, in "The Poetic Principle" Poehimself declares, in arguing that a mov-ing poem must be short, that "all excite-ments are, through a psychal necessity,transient." The narrator, then, cannotcontinue to possess his Ligeia any morethan Poe's other protagonists can pre-serve their Lenores, Irenes, or Ulalumesfrom the grave. Disenchantment is theguerdon of thrilling fantasy; the knightin Keats's poem must wake up from hisdream to find himself on "the cold hill-side." The romantic ecstasy is alsotransient because through it he has tres-passed into eternal or forbidden realmswhich he may glimpse but not longinhabit. The brief bliss of Keats's heroeswith Lamia or La Belle Dame Sans Mercihas about it a frenzy which suggeststhe illicit and the sinful. Well mightPoe's hero fear that his love for Ligeiamakes available to him "a wisdom toodivinely precious not to be forbidden "

Yet, though the narrator of Ligeiacannot be forever "married"to the Ideal,he will be forever haunted by it. Hislife will be a continuous quest for it,a dream or nightmare of it; for hecannot finally admit to himself that "thetranscendentalism in which [he andLigeia] were immersed" is irrecoverable.His wife, then, will not yield herself"unto death utterly," in spite of her ownpoetic admission "That the play is thetragedy, 'Man,'/And its hero the Con-queror Worm." Poe's narrator is caughtin the dilemma of the romanticist com-pelled to descend from the peaks whereeternal values immutably reign into aworld that is fragmented, dreary, andmutable. Incapable of making any realcommitment to an invidiously, lowerplane of existence, he must remain thevictim-lover of obsession and dream.

The loss of his "vision" drives thenarrator into an "utter abandonment"which he describes as "incipient mad-ness." Although he presumably attempts


5/7

340 COLLEGE ENGLISHto alleviate his grief, he actually seems,in this second stage of his life, to plungeinto substitute and counterfeit and equal-ly "forbidden" exictements. Certainly,his retreat into a gloomy English abbeyis a fascinated discovery and explorationof macabre and wild sensations. He be-comes "a bounden slave in the trammelsof opium" and seeks incessant psychicagitation from the "creations" of a per-verted and ingenious imagination. Thetufted gold carpets of "Bedlam patterns"and the "gorgeous and fantastic dra-peries" are merely details in the totalhallucination into which he wishes toescape. Certainly, he regards immersionin the grotesque and phantasmagoric aspreferable to a fall into the slough ofordinary life. The "leaden-hued" Vene-tian glass, the Saracenic censer, the"sarcophagus of black granite," and the"strong continual current of wind behindthe draperies," all make the "bridalchamber" emblematic of mental and emo-tional disorder, but they also suggest theexquisite pleasure which man can derivefrom the staging and intensification ofhis own suffering. His conscious partici-pation in his unique doom (and most ofPoe's characters consider themselves vic-tims of fate) is jealously cherished asconferring extraordinary distinction uponhim. Indeed, one sometimes wonderswhether the bereft romantic is not morehappy with his heightened anguish thanhe was with his orignal vision.

There is no doubt, however, of thedreary insufficiency of the "real" worldfor Poe's narrator. Following both hisabandonment to Ligeia and his abandon-ment to sensuous excesses, his marriageto Rowena demonstrates that he cannotcontent himself with "ordinary" life.He confesses that he married her "in amoment of alienation" from Ligeia andhe describes his first month with heras made up of "unhallowed hours."Clearly, he considers his second marriagean act of infidelity to his first wife, amomentary repudiation of his once ideal

existence. By bringing Rowena into hischamber of horrors, he refuses to sub-scribe to the values or accept the re-sponsibilities which govern commonhumanity. There is not even a hint thathe entertains a single gentle or chivalricfeeling for his new wife. He loathes thereality she represents, and while hedelights in the pain he inflicts upon herhe "revelled in recollections of [Ligeia's]purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, herethereal nature, of her passionate, heridolatrous love."

At this crucial point in his life, thenarrator has moved beyond the stage of"incipient madness." Now, he attemptsthrough sheer will and desire to imposehis ideal vision of things upon an in-tractable reality. He is aided in hisattempt by his unnatural seclusion, byhis addiction to opium, and by the un-wholesome stimulation induced by thelurid, Gothic furniture and devices thatclutter his "bridal chamber." Certainly,he goads himself into the insanity throughwhich he will realize his passionatehopes:In the excitementof my opium dreams(for I was habitually fettered in theshacklesof the drug) I would call aloudupon her name, duringthe silence of thenight, or among the sheltered recessesof the glens by day, as if, through thewild eagerness, the solemn passion, theconsuming ardor of my longing for thedeparted,I could restoreher to the path-

ways she had abandoned-oh, could it beforever?-upon the earthThe hysterical appeals for the return ofLigeia have of course a causal connectionwith the illness of Rowena. Symbolically,the former must rescue him from whatthe narrator of The Fall of the Houseof Usher calls the "bitter lapse intoevery-day life-the hideous dropping offof the veil."

The last act of the narrator's dramabegins with the fading away of the realworld and the gradual reemergence ofthe poetic or ideal world. Little by little,


6/7

POE'S "LIGEIA": DREAM AND DESTRUCTION 341he endowsLigeiawith increasing itality;in other words, he wills more and morelife into his returningvision.Expectedly,she first appearslike a "shadow of ashade,"but she soon becomesemboldenedto act asaninstrumentof deathby pour-ing "three or four drops of a brilliantand ruddy colored fluid" into Rowena'swine. In reporting these supernaturaloccurrences,the narratordeclares thathis imagination had been "renderedmorbidly active"by terror, opium, andthe darkness.Yet, though he may notaccurately account for what happenedoutside of himself,he faithfully explainshis internaldrama.Obviously,he madly"destroys"the world of objective factand remakes t nearer to the heart'sde-sire; Ligeia, as surrogate, merely per-forms deeds for which, refusing toaccept responsibility,he must invent afantasticagency.The end of the story presentsthe ab-sorbing psychological spectacle of thenarrator'scomplete withdrawal into anall-absorbingprivatefantasy.This with-drawal, which reaches a pathologicalclimax in the resurrection of Ligeia, isrealized in distinct stages of passionatewilling. Materializingat the bedside ofthe supposedlydeadRowena, each stageis preceded by the narrator'salmostviolent concentrationon the image ofLigeia. First of all, his revery is inter-rupted by a "low, gentle"sob from thedeathbed; though he deceives himselfinto thinkingthat the sound came fromRowena, he does admit that "my soulwas awakened within me." When themomentaryburst of life fades from thecorpse, he again gives himself up "topassionatewaking visionsof Ligeia."Asexpected,new life is suffused nto Ligeianow struggling to be embodied inRowena; in this second stage there ap-pearsa "partialglow upon the foreheadand upon the cheek and throat." Agreatervitalitythanbefore now animatesthe body on the bed, only to be followedby more complete evidences of death.

For the third time, the narrator sinks"into visions of Ligeia" that recall "life"to the lady beside him. This pattern ofalternating life and death is reenactedthrough the night: the "hideous dramaof revivification" goes on like a pre-posterous melodrama; yet, symbolically,each wild meditation on Ligeia is anassertion of the narrator's desire and will.Finally, the lover annihilates death andreality by the leap into insanity whichconverts life into what he wishes it tobe. He has regained, at the cost of hisreason, the revelation of spiritual beautyand perfection represented by Ligeia:" 'Here, then, at last,' I shrieked aloud,'can I never be mistaken-these are thefull, and the black, and the wild eyes-of my lost love-of the Lady-of theLADY LIGEIA.' "

Significantly, despite his occasionallyuncanny acumen, the narrator has sothoroughly duped or bewitched himselfthat he does not understand what ishappening to him. His conscious selfalmost willfully blinds itself to thefrantic activity of the subconscious self.In a sense, indeed, the whole story maybe taken as an account of the dis-integration of responsible and rationalconsciousness. Even when the narratorresurrects Ligeia from the grave he con-fronts the miracle he has performed withdismay and wonder. In the actualizingpresence of his new creation, he does notknow what he is creating; until almostthe last moment, when he acknowledgesLigeia's identity, he forces himself intobelieving that Rowena and not her prede-cessor is returning to life. At the endof the story, then, the narrator hasescaped his inhibitory reason, weakenedby drugs, abandonment to fantasy, gro-tesque environment, and maddening se-clusion. He does not know that hisrecovery of his Ideal world is the de-lusion of a lunatic.

On the basis of this reading of"Ligeia," it seems to me uncritical toidentify Poe with his narrator. Even if


7/7

ligeia dream and destrution

Documents