LIGEIA: OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE IDEAL

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1 Serrano 1 LIGEIA: OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE IDEAL Jason Serrano State University of New York at New Paltz New Paltz, NY jason.antonio.serrano@gmail.com phone:

2 Serrano 2 In Edgar Allan Poe s Ligeia," the tale itself becomes a parallel to the reader s own endless pursuit of the ideal, which Poe believes can best be received through works of art. The titular character is the embodiment of Poe s philosophy of literature. That is to say that Ligeia is an example of Poe's belief that one can behold the ideal only after having its image woven by the imagination and crafted through the manipulation of their emotions. Poe carefully crafts characters that represent us, the ideal (found in art), and the real world to illustrate his philosophy. The structure and elements of his tale come together also come to demonstrate the last bit to this theory: the ideal is fleeting. It cannot be held onto forever, but it can be witnessed in imperfect amounts. Through this view, we can understand why as a society we still turn to works of fiction; for the ideal is like the title character. Like Ligeia, it can only be partially known, its radiance imperfectly described, and its transient nature will leave us searching for its superiority once more. We see the first clue that Ligeia is meant to be a vision of the ideal before the first paragraph of the tale. The character's name stems from one of the Sirens of Virgil's "The Georgics," who lured sailors in with their beauty and enchanting voices, only to leave them shipwrecked on the shores (Virgil). This is no coincidence as in the opening paragraph, the narrator mentions of her "low, musical language" ("Ligeia" 1543). This is very much what we see in the philosophy of Poe. The mind's construction of the ideal can be transcendently beautiful and indeed an impossible reality. It is no wonder with a dark philosophy such as this that Poe's work dives into the Gothic. The search for the ideal is then one that will lead in being "shipwrecked or forlorn once it has faded from

3 Serrano 3 the consciousness and we are left without it. Like the unnamed narrator, we can try to find it again, but ultimately we never know if we will experience it quite the same. In order to strengthen our connection to Ligeia, Poe cements the emotional hold the siren has on him immediately. In Poe's "The Philosophy of Composition," he explains that brevity in literature is important in order to solidify an effect on the reader ( The Philosophy ). As such, we are thrown quickly into this admiration of Ligeia. In the opening paragraph, we come to witness the narrator's seemingly immeasurable attraction to her. It is not enough that her song lure in the protagonist though; it must lure us in as well. This parallel effect between what Ligeia means to the narrator and what she means to us is the effect he solidifies. Poe wishes to craft the ideal for us and does so with his linguistic style. We have this said of Ligeia: "the character of my beloved... made their way into my heart by steady paces, so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown" ("Ligeia" 1543). The use of the multiple s-sounds in "steady," "steadily," and "stealthily" causes us to slow down with each s sound and mimics the slithering of Ligeia into our hearts as well. As the narrator describes it as something that had gone unnoticed or unknown, the reader is also unaware of why they feel such an allure to Ligeia, but it has actually crafted deliberately by the author in the matter of a sentence. With this connection established, the next step in creating a parallel is to plant seeds that this alluring creation will be stolen away from us. In doing so, we come to realize the emotional attachment we have to her that moments prior we were unaware of. The narrator says of her, "she came and departed like a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice..."

4 Serrano 4 ("Ligeia" 1544). After having snuck her into our hearts, we are given the description of her as a shadow that comes and departs -- much like the ideal that she is. She can only be had for a finite amount of time before she expires. This description of her also has the effect of creating a mood of ambiguity and fear by comparing her to something intangible and fleeting. This sense of peculiarity and distress also have the effect of bringing us closer to the ideal, and like Ligeia's lover, we too do not wish to lose our hold on her/it. "The Philosophy of Composition" also has Poe state the importance of unifying the elements of a piece to enhance the mood, which he argues is the first thing one should consider and the most important. We see this in his choice to spend the opening pages of Ligeia relishing in her radiance -- but not without mentioning that her features were not of "classic regularity." Of course, he continues to say that though he studied her, he could not find exactly what this "strangeness" actually entailed ("Ligeia" 1544). Adhering to Poe's philosophy, and if we understand Ligeia as "the ideal," this is because perfection is not possible in the real world. There are always flaws in our world, but here, a much closer approximation of perfection can be glimpsed at. Acting as "the ideal," a construct woven by words and imagination, and elements carefully selected -- for though Poe used "The Raven" as his example in his essay, he was talking about all his works when he said everything (i.e., the elements of the piece) was deliberate ("The Philosophy"). The choice of leaving the narrator unnamed is also a step towards eliciting an attachment to Ligeia. In doing so, the narrator is a blank slate and we envision ourselves in his situation and can become enraptured with Ligeia (the ideal) as he himself does. While we may not enjoy seeing ourselves as the angry, opium addict he becomes, we sympathize with his plight. This is natural, as death and loss are universal. When

5 Serrano 5 discussing his process for writing "The Raven," Poe stated: I asked myself- "Of all melancholy topics what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" Death, was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?"... the answer here also is obvious- "... the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover. ("The Philosophy") The setup for "The Raven" and "Ligeia" both stand on this premise of this universality of death. Therefore, even when the narrator transforms, we can experience his emotional journey. By this point, Poe has already endeared us immensely to Ligeia, and we can experience this poetic loss of beauty as our loss. Without a name, the narrator can become anybody who has or will experience a tragedy of death or loss that is to say, everyone. The lack of a setting in the beginning of this piece serves to enhance our connection to Ligeia. The narrator's world is Ligeia. Therefore, she must also be our world in order to achieve the desired bridge between her and the reader. Though we are given sparse details (such as, that he has a study), we are never fixed in a concrete realm of brick and mortar so long as Ligeia lives. Upon her demise, we are given a rather elaborately description of the abbey that he purchases in England ("Ligeia" 1548). At the same time, he enters into a bitter marriage of the Lady Rowena -- and though it is part of the plot, the plot is inferior to what we feel. Our world and our ideal have been taken from us and we are left with the real world which cannot hold a candle to our fictional construction. Even in the depiction of the abbey, we are left feeling hollow. Poe repeats words associated with loneliness and isolation: "sole window," "a single pane," and the overwhelming depiction of things as excessively large and vast ("Ligeia" ). It is a far cry from the beauty of a world populated only by an idea of perfection.

6 Serrano 6 With the introduction of Lady Rowena, we receive a contrast between Ligeia, our ideal, and Rowena who represents "the real." A lack of a surname and no discernible origin had been used to give Ligeia that subtle intangibility of the "ideal." She was not anchored down in the real world with such things while Lady Rowena is immediately given a last name, "Trevanion" ("Ligeia" 1548). By giving her a last name, as well as a place of origin, we no longer feel that sense of wonder or mystery. We know where we are and we know more details about Rowena's past than we had known about Ligeia. As we have already been placed in the seat of the narrator, we see Rowena and, by default, the real world as something that stands in the way of us and the ideal. Through this, Poe is sneaking his philosophy by steady paces, so steadily and stealthily into our minds. However, there is a risk that Poe is taking by creating this parallel to literature and the real world. He hazards the chance that the reader will actually be swept back into the real world, or as he fears in his essay, to have to finish his story in more than one sitting ( The Philosophy ). Poe combats this by having the narrator constantly be swept up in memories of Ligeia, and as time is of the essence, he also does this in bursts of descriptions of the departed. "I reveled in recollections of her purity, of her wisdom, of her lofty, her ethereal nature, of her passionate, her idolatrous love" ("Ligeia" 1549). The rapid-fire memories of Ligeia serve to snap us back to those moments of her existence and mirror our own longing to return to the ideal once it is gone. The narrator s grasp for those memories mirror our own interest in seeing where the tale takes us, and as it prevents us from placing the book down, it prevents the narrator from moving on. To circumvent this, Poe creates a foreboding mood and atmosphere to lull us back in with opium-laced vague sights from the narrator and ambiguous sounds heard by

7 Serrano 7 Rowena. Whereas before, Ligeia was our world and surrounded by a slight aura of mystery, Poe introduces eeriness to elevate us back towards the ideal. In this, the narrator's time with Rowena is an imperfect parallel to the "real world" because to create a "perfect" parallel, Poe would have to eject us from the tale by removing the promise of ever feeling that emotional connection once more. She is the most approximate facsimile he can provide without doing so. The sounds Rowena hears and the shadow the narrator sees are akin to a vague promise that the ideal still lurks through the abbey, and that this "reality" will give way once more to Ligeia. As the narrator is the vehicle for the reader, we experience all that he feels. When the narrator states that he "loathed [Rowena] with a hatred belonging more to a demon than to man," we come to have the same disdain for her ("Ligeia" 1549). As the narrator describes with indifference her illness, we feel the same indifference. As the narrator partakes in opium, we feel his longing to live in that intense excitement and relive that feeling of walking on air that Ligeia provided -- though, perhaps we do it without partaking of opium. Therefore, when Rowena passes, we feel nothing for a woman who had died having done us no actual wrong. We simply exist to linger on a hope that those sounds Rowena heard and the ghostly sights the narrator thought to have witnessed were not for naught ("Ligeia" ). Poe, therefore, knows we are waiting for her death. We may not even be aware that we have bought into his philosophy, but we have because we await the glory of the ideal once more. We long for this death of the real and the resurrection of the ideal, and he has made sure to only vaguely hint that we may get it back. With her death, we wait -- and when the narrator hears a sob from the death bed, we barely think to question him.

8 Serrano 8 When a corpse is said to sob, we are willing to buy it, because the narrator is willing to buy it. When terror washed over our narrator, when the sob became a sigh -- we waited, we feared, and we hoped. Poe delivers this final cathartic release by having the protagonist proclaim that a ghost had risen, and it was not Rowena before him, but Ligeia ("Ligeia" ). We have her again, and yet on that last image, the story deliberately ends. The ideal has been returned to us, but only for a single brief moment before he finally ejects us from the tale. We are left with a book in our hands and a rapidly fading vision of the ideal, surrounded by our material world and our mundane lives. "Ligeia" can best be described as a meta experience, crafted to illustrate Poe's philosophy on literature and subtly sell it to us. The work itself was designed to create a parallel to the reader's own experience when being submerged in the story. The three characters each represented something about us and our reality: the narrator, on his continuous quest for the ideal; Ligeia, the ideal created by fiction; and Rowena, the real world absent of this ideal. By the end of the tale, we do not get to know if the narrator has acquired Ligeia (the ideal) once more of it is his opium-induced haze. However, we hope he does, because we are also left chasing it -- and Poe would argue that is exactly the point, and that is what we spend our lives doing. Works Cited Poe, Edgar A. "Ligeia." Ed. Nina Baym, Robert S. Levine, and Arnold Krupat. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. Vol. B. New York: W. W. Norton &, Print. Poe, Edgar A. "The Philosophy of Composition." Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

9 Serrano 9 Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, n.d. Web. 05 Nov Virgil. "Georgic IV." The Internet Classics Archive The Georgics by Virgil. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov