transcendence downward an essay on usher and ligeia
TRANSCRIPT
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Modern Language Studies
Transcendence Downward: An Essay on "Usher" and "Ligeia"Author(s): Beverly VoloshinSource: Modern Language Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer, 1988), pp. 18-29Published by: Modern Language StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3194965Accessed: 16/01/2010 07:06
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Transcendence
ownward:
n
Essay
n
"Usher"
nd
"Ligeia"
Beverly
Voloshin
AmericanRomanticism
egisters
a
fascinating
ransformation
f
traditional otionsof transcendence.There
are
many
reasons
or
this,
not
the least of which is that
by
the
early
nineteenth
entury
he
successof
the
scientificrevolution
and
the
dissemination f
empiricist
psychology
had
made
it
almost
impossible
to
continue
to
conceive of the universe
as a
hierarchy.
For
example,
Newton's
description
of what
exists
n
terms of
mathematicalrelations
of mass
in
time
and
space
has
no
up
or
down,
higheror lower,literally
or
metaphorically, espiteNewton'squite
firm
belief
in
God.
Although
several
aspects
of Newtonian
science
were
not
mechanistic,'
he
levelling
tendency
of Newton's work
is
evident
in
the
mechanistic
nterpretation
f Newton's
physics
which
predominated
n
the
eighteenthcentury.
This
levelling
tendency
of
the new science is also
apparent
n
Locke's
EssayConcerning
Human
Understanding,
hich was
in
part
an
attempt
o
construct
a
psychological
model
consonant
with the
new
science-especially
in Locke's
denial
of innate deas and his
concep-
tion
that all
knowledge
is built
up
from atomisticsensations
hrough
he
mind'spower of reflection.
In this
connection
it is
important
o
recall the late
popularity
of
Locke's
Essay
n
New
England.
t
was the
Essay
which
left
its
impress
on
the
preeminent
form of intellectual ife
in
New
England
from the
late
eighteenth
century
through
the first
decades
of the
nineteenth,
that
is,
religion.
It
was
in
the late
eighteenth
century
hat
Jonathan
Edwards
was
seen
as
having ncorporated
he
sensationalism
f
Locke
into
Calvinism.2
In this
period
at Yale
College,
Locke's
Essay
was
prescribed
o ward
off
the
skeptical
and
materialistic onclusions
which
an uninstructed
mind
mightderivefromtheEssay,though heresultswere often theoppositeof
President
Stiles's
ntention.3
At
the
beginning
of
the nineteenth
century,
a
particular
constructionof the
Essay
was taken as
the cornerstone
of
Unitarianism;
hroughout
he first
decades
of the nineteenth
entury,
he
literature
f
liberalProtestantism
s
drenched
n
references
and allusions
to
Locke,
and as Transcendentalism
merged
as a
dissenting
movement
n
the
Unitarian
anks,
here
were
almost
as
frequent
attackson Locke.4
n
the
preliminary
essay
to
his
edition
of
Coleridge's
Aids
to
Reflection
(1829),
James
Marsh
pointedly
argued
that
Lockean
metaphysics
is
incompatiblewithspiritual eligion, husattackingboth Unitarianism nd
the
infusionof
Lockeanism
nto
orthodoxy.
This
was the most
important
book
for
introducing
o
New
England
ntellectuals
Coleridge's
hought-
and
through
t,
German
dealism.)
In
sum,
the
empiricistpsychology
of
Locke,
by
leaving knowledge
on
the
plane
of sensationand
reflection,
seemed
to block all avenues
to
a
transcendent
eality,
conceived
in
either
Christian r
Platonic
erms,
and
it was
precisely
Locke's
heory,
n
its late
vogue
in
American ntellectual
ife,
against
which
the Transcendentalists
revolted;
yet
while Locke's
empiricism
reated
a
barrier o
a
transcendent
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reality,
it
also
pointed
the
Romantics
n
a
new
direction,
down
into
the
realm of
sensoryexperience.
When he writersof the 1830s
and1840s
ried
o
get
out of the
block
universe
or
dead level
of
eighteenth-century
mpiricism, hey produced
curious
and
paradoxical figures
of
transcendence.
In
Nature
(1836),
Emerson,
that
representative
man of
Transcendentalism,
wrestleswith
the
problem
of
conceiving
of
transcendence
which is not
hierarchical
nd
static.
Emersonretains
he
hierarchical
meaning
of
transcendence
n
his
model of
higher
uses of
nature,
but he also
argues
or
the
beauty
andvalue
of
the
common
and for
the
inherent
meaning
of
such
devalued
phenom-
ena as
"sleep,
madness,
dreams,
beasts,
sex,"
thereby
moving
us down
a
traditional
hierarchy
of
being.5
He can
resolve the
potential
problem
of
the
locus of the
transcendental
ategory
of
Spiritthrough
his
images
of
circles and
circular
power,
but in
leaving
moot the
question
whether
nature
really
exists,
Emerson
seems to
leave
his
model of
transcendence
without a base.
In such
tales
as
"Ligeia"
1838
and later
significantly
evised)
and
"The Fall of
the
House
of Usher"
(1839),
Poe
presents
transcendental
projects
which
threaten o
proceed
downward
rather han
upward.
The
tales have a
paradoxical
tructure
n
which
transcendences
figured
as an
outward or
downward
movement,
as the
method
for
going
beyond
the
universe
of
Lockean
empiricism
s
to
go through
t.
Despite
the
vogue
of
German dealism,Emerson and Poe are closer to the Anglo-American
tradition
than
has
been
generally
acknowledged.
In
Nature,
Emerson
baseshis
transcendentalism
artly
on
a
refurbished
mpiricism-that
is,
a
purifying
of
the
sensory
apparatus,
as
in
the
famous
image
of the
trans-
parenteyeball;
for Poe
too
sensation s
virtually piritualized,
nd sensa-
tion
replaces
spirit
or reason
as
the
privileged
faculty,
but
for Poe
the
natural
process
which
promises
transcendence
s
preeminently-and
paradoxically-that
of
decomposition
or
decay.6
In "The
Fall of
the
House
of
Usher,"
metaphorical
movement
downward nto apeculiar ensations thekeynoteof thebeginningof the
tale,
and such
apsing
will
itself
figure
as
the
ground
of
transcendence.
The
narrator's
ccount
begins
with
his
feeling
of
"depression,"
hich
finds its
parallel
in
the
setting:
the
day
is
"dull,
dark
and
soundless,"
without
ordinary
ensory
stimulation,
and
similarly,
he
scene
is
oppressive
and
melancholic,
without
vitality.
The
narrator an
compare
his
experience
"to no
earthly
sensation
more
properly
than
to
the
after-dreamof
the
reveller
upon
opium,
the
bitter
lapse
into
every-day
life-the
hideous
dropping
off of
the veil."7
t
is
in
several
respects
the
experience
of
fall,
fallingaway,aftermath,asthoughsomehighpointof life werepast,and
everything-Roderick
and
Madeline,
he
House,
the
atmosphere-seems
to
be
in
the last
stages
of
decay.
The
narrator's
"depression"
and
"unredeemed
dreariness
of
thought"
also
represent
a
falling
off
from,
indeed an
inversion
of,
the
sublime
experience,
which
the
narrator
ould
have
expected,
as he
says,
from
"the
sternest
natural
mages
of
the
desolate
or
terrible"
273).
The
narratorwants
to
believe
in
natural
ause,
yet
he
cannot
even
by
an
effort
of
the will
have
one of
the
definitive
Romantic
experiences
of
nature-
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transcendence
y
sensing
n
nature
higherpowers.
Just
as his
expectation
of the sublime
experience
nverts
tself,
so
his
change
of
position
does not
produce
the
new sensationhe
anticipates
but
rather
a
deepening
of his
original
ensation,
when
he
sees the
images
of
the House inverted
n
the
tarn. The narrator's xperiencehas none of the exaltingor expansive
quality
of
the
experience
of
the
natural
ublime.
In line with
these inversions
n
the
opening
scene,
the narrator's
descriptions
re studded
with
paradoxical
mages
combining
he
spiritu-
ally high
with
the ow. The narrator
ees the
atmosphere
f the house
as "a
pestilent
and
mysticvapour"
which
is
"leaden-hued"
276).
Mysticdesig-
nateshidden
or
higher
power
(as
ater
n
the
"mystic ymbol"
and
"mystic
sign"
of The
Scarlet Letter
and
Moby-Dick),
or as
Poe writes
in
his
Drake-Halleck eview
(1836),
one of the
major
tatements
f
his
aesthetic
theory,the mysticis synonymouswith theideal,thehighestcategoryof
being.8
On
the other
hand,
pestilent
draws attention to infection
and
decay,
and lead
signifies
what
is
base
or
unredeemed
n
many
schemas,
and
most
notably
n that of
alchemical ransformation.
n
alchemy,
gold
is
the
perfected
metaland
sign
thatthe alchemisthas attained he
highest
truth;
old
is
traditionally
he
mystic
metal.
As
the narrator
s
ushered nto
the "recesses
of
[Usher's]
spirit"
he
is
moved to describe Roderick
in
similarlyparadoxical
erms:Roderick's
s
"a mind
from
which
darkness,
as
if
an inherent
positive quality,
poured
forthon
all
objects
of
the moral
andphysicaluniverse n one unceasingradiationof gloom.""Anexcited
and
highly
distempered
deality
hrew
a
sulphureous
ustre
over
all"
282).
Again,
the
mystic
or
ideal
is
tinged
with
what
is
materialor
base,
and
sulphur,
as
one of the
ingredients
or
beginning
he alchemical
process,
s
another
ign
of what
s
as
yet
unredeemed.9Roderick
appears
o
be
drawn
into the
process
of non-transcendent
ransformation
ffecting
the House.
As
the narrator's
mages
combine
the
traditional
pposites
of the
spiritually
high
with the
materially
ow,
Roderick's
xplanations
uggest
the
interdependence
of
the fall and
rise
of
thought.
In
one
of the
less
abstractof Roderick'sworks,"TheHauntedPalace,"henarrator etects
"in
the under
or
mystic
current
of its
meaning
.. a full
consciousness n
the
part
of
Usher,
of the
tottering
of
his
lofty
reason
upon
her throne"
(284).
Here the
experience
of fall-now Roderick's-is
represented
o
itself.
It is a fall
of
order
nto
chaos,
reason
nto
madness,
nnocence nto
experience.Curiously,
"arising"
rom thisballadabout the fall of
thought
are certain
suggestions
which culminate
n
Roderick's
xpression
of
his
heretical
belief
in
the sentience of
matter,
even that
of "the
kingdom
of
inorganization,"
doctrine
we
might
term the
organization
and
rise
of
thought.Sentiencedevelopsfrom the "collocation" r"arrangement"f
the
parts
of the ancestralhome of
Usher,
and
its
evidence
is
precisely,
or
Roderick,
his
own
fall: "The result
was
discoverable,
he
added,
in
that
silent,
yet
importunate
and
terrible nfluence which for centuries
had
moulded the destiniesof
his
family,
and
which made him what
I
now saw
him-what he
was"
(286-7).
The
evidence
for
the
ordering
of
thought
s
Roderick's
xperience
of
his own
disintegration,
s
represented
or
exam-
ple
in his
ballad,
so
that he
is
brought
nto relationor
harmony
with
the
whole
by losing
his
original
ordered
and harmonious unctions.
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As
Roderick's
xplanations
ffect
a
crossing
of
exalted
hought
and
base
matter,
so
the
narrator's
anguage
or
describing
his own
experience
complicates
conventional
uppositions
boutthedistinction
f mind
and
body.
The
narrator's
depression"
ecasts
he
experience
of
Coleridgean
dejectionor visionarydreariness f Romanticpoetry,for dejection s a
psychological
or
spiritual
tate,
but
depressionnicely
blends notions
of
psychological
and
physical
cause.
The
same is
true of the
narrator's
confession hathe is "unnerved"
y
the
sight
of
the Houseof
Usher,
or
the
nerves
are
the
connectionbetween consciousnessand
physicality.
The
narrator's
nnerved onditionand
nervous
agitation
grow
moreand
more
like Roderick's
tate,
raising
he
question
whether he narrator
s
perceiv-
ing
Roderick
through
the lense of his own
condition
or
whether
the
narrator
s
being
affected
by
whatever
it
is
that
affects
Roderick.
The
languageof sensationhroughouthetalesuggestsanintimateconnection
of
the
mental
and the
physical
without
allowing
or
conclusions bout
the
direction
of
causeand
effect;
this
anguage
n
fact
intensifies he
presump-
tion
of
connection amiliar
n
Lockean
psychology,
while a
distinguishing
markof
Kantian
nd
post-Kantian
dealism
s
the
conception
of the mind
as
having
powers
apart
from
and
transcending
ensation.
The narrator'snitial
discussion
of
transcendence
"that...
poetic
...
sentiment,
with
which
the
mind
usually
receives even the
sternest
natural
mages
of
the
desolateor
terrible"
273])
provides
a
link
between
him and the alien Roderick, who, in the traditionof his family,has a
singular
emperament
which
might
be
described
as
transcendental.
[H]is
very
ancient
family
had
been
noted,
time out
of
mind,
for
a
peculiar
sensibility
of
temperament,
displaying
tself,
through
ong
ages,
in
many
worksof
exalted
art,
and
manifested,
of
late,
in
repeated
deeds
of
munifi-
cent
yet
unobtrusive
charity,
as
well as
in
a
passionate
devotion to the
intricacies,
perhaps
even
more
than
o the
orthodox
and
easily
recogniza-
ble
beauties,
of
musical
science"
275).
The
family's
ensibility
manifests
itself
on
the
plane
of
the
Beautiful,Good,
and
True,
as
if
rising
above
mundanereality.
Roderick
himself
is
associated
with
the
abstract,
atemporal,
and
ideal.
Roderick's
world s one
of
abstract
pattern
n
black,
white,
and
gray.
His
art
works
remarkably
nticipate
he abstract
movements
in
poetry,
music,
and
painting.
He
himself is a
man of
ideality,
as
the
narrator
remarks,
and
as shown
in
phrenological
erms
by
the
expanse
of his
temples;
that
is,
in
the
nineteenth-century
ontrast
of
ideal and
real,
Roderick
is
a
person
who
seeks
or
perceives
the
truth
beyond
merely
mundane
phenomena.10
oderick
comments
on his
"nervous
ffection,"
displaying tself"ina host of unnatural ensations" nd "amorbidacute-
ness of
the
senses,"
and
the narrator
peaks
of
Roderick's
"excitedand
highly
distempered
deality,"
uggesting
hat
Roderick's
heightened
and
painful
ensitivity
s his
mode of
contactwith
the noumenal
280).
Because
of his
peculiar
sensitivity,
Roderick
s
"un
uth
suspendu
Sitot
qu'on
e
touche l
resonne"
273).
The
Romantic
aeolian
harp,
Roderick
vibrates
o
all
motion
and
change,
the
whole
outward
universe." As
the
man
of
heightened
ensitivity,
Roderick
s
exquisitely
onnectedwith
matterand
decay.
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As
Roderick s
aligned
with
the
ideal,
his twin
Madeline
s
asso-
ciated
with
the material nd
temporal-in
other
words,
the
real.Madeline
matches
her
brother's
pallor,
but her
special
mark is red-a faint blush
when she
is
interredand blood
on
her
garments
when she
emerges,
this
matched
by
the
blood-red
ight
of
the
emergent
ull moon
at
the moment
of the destructionof the House of Usher.As
female,
Madelineseems
to
represent
he counter
o
Roderick's imeless
abstraction,
lood
red
being
the
token of both life and
death.'2
She
impinges
on Roderick's ranscen-
dental
project,
hrough
his
very
mechanism
or contact
with
the
ideal,
his
heightenedsensitivity,
or he
is
tuned,
so to
speak,
especially
to
her,
the
twin with whom he'd
always
had
"sympathies
f a
scarcely
intelligible
nature"
289).
In
Roderick's
yric
aboutthe
palace
of
thought,
he abstract
and mathematical
harmony
of the ideal
kingdom
shifts
unaccountably
into madness,chaos, terror.Mightthe elusive cause be life itself, the
proximity
of the
"feminine"
rinciple
n
Madeline?
A similar
allegory
of Roderick's ate
can be found
in his
paintings,
which
gesture
towardsa transcendence
o be achieved
through
a move-
ment
downward
nto
pure
sensation,
which tself
gives way
to the extreme
and
objectless
feeling
of terror.
The
narrator
mphasizes
the
abstract,
non-representational
ualities
of Roderick's
paintings:"By
the
uttersim-
plicity,
by
the nakedness
of his
designs,
he arrested
and
overawed
atten-
tion.
If
ever mortal
painted
an
idea,
thatmortalwas RoderickUsher."The
narrators usingideaherein the Lockeanandeighteenth-centuryense,
that
s,
what is
given
n
perception
or
what is
present
n
consciousness,
ut
there
is
simultaneously
he
sense
of
the ideal
or
mystic,
that
is,
what
lies
behind
appearances
or
phenomena,
for Roderick's
"pure
abstractions"
produce
in
the narrator
"an
ntensity
of intolerable
awe,
no shadow of
which felt
I
ever
yet
in
the
contemplation
of the
certainly
glowing
yet
too
concrete
reveries
of Fuseli."
Thus the abstract
ensoryexperience
seems
to
lead
to the
verge
of
a
transcendent
eality,
as the ideal manifests
tself
n
the
idea
and threatens o overwhelm
the consciousness f the
perceiver.
Atthesametime,we can seeintheleastabstractof Roderick's aintingsa
representation
which
the
narrator annot
yet recognize,
for the
painting
which
presents
a subterranean vault
or
tunnel,"
presents
the
real,
the
tomb of Madeline.
Madeline
s
Roderick's
ast
genealogical
ink with
the
House,
with
the human
biological
condition.The
painting
n
its
"ghastly
and
inappropriate
plendour"
283)
suggests
Roderick's ear of
Madeline.
In the recesses
of
Roderick's
pirit
s a
fear
of
the
recess
which
the womb
and
tomb
of life.
We
might say
that Roderick
transcends
his
horror
of
Madeline
and the real not
by rising
above but
by living
through
t.
Roderickfeels himselfto be in a strugglefor survivaland fears
both Madeline
and
the
House,
which he sees as
molding
him
into
its
image.l3
As an artist
who
must
rely
on
his
heightened
sensitivity
o
reach
the
ideal,
Roderick
s
necessarily
connected
with
that real
world
(real,
however
strange)
which
he would
like to
transcend;
unlike the
artist-
percipient
of
Emerson's
Nature,
Roderick
cannot
simply
use and thus
subsume
nature o make
his own world.
In the
apocalyptic
end
of
the
tale,
Roderick
s
finally
overcome
by
the
natural
world
with which
Madeline
has been
aligned
and
is
brought
down
into
its
domain
of
inorganization,
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figured
n
the
moment
in
which the
re-emergent
Madeline
alls
"heavily"
(296) upon
the
person
of her
brother,
and the House
of
Usher
also
splits
apart
and falls
together,
nto the
abyss,though
n
a
paradox
ypical
of
Poe,
Roderick's
destruction
may
also
be that
supreme
moment
of
transcen-
dence,
of
passing
from
the limited
self to the unlimited
whole, which
Roderickhas been
seeking.
Thus
the
intractable
materialsof
Roderick's
transcendental
roject,
ncluding
Madeline,
are
absolutelynecessary
o
its
fulfillment.
In
"Ligeia,"
Poe's favorite and most
frequently
revised
tale,
the
search
for
transcendental
ruth,
explicit
on
the
part
of
the
narrator,
s
renderedas
an
even
more
complex
abyssalprocess
than
s
the
simultane-
ous
rise
and
fall of
sentience
n
"Usher."
This tale
begins
not
only
in
the
aftermathof
extraordinary
xperience-experience
which
promises
to
revealtheoriginorgroundof life itself-but beginsindeedin thenarra-
tor's
orgetfulness
f
the
origin
of this
experience.
This
absence
gives
rise
to a
process
of
invocation
designed
to
restore
he
lost
origin.
The
structure
of
the
tale
is
thus
a
paradoxical
nfolding:
forward motion
is
always
motion
backward
o
that
origin
which
is
anticipated.
ThoughLigeia
was
everything
o the
narrator,
e
begins
his
tale,
"I
cannot,
or
my
soul,
remember
how,
when,
or
even
precisely
where,
I
first
became
acquainted
with
the
lady
Ligeia" (II, 248).
The
narrator
can
account
for
this
blank
in
memory only
by
the
gradualness
of
Ligeia's
influenceonhim,the work of slowtime,aninfluencematched-or really
reversed-by
the
decomposing
effects of
time
in
the
place
in
which
the
narrator hinks
he
met
this
spectral
woman-"some
large,
old,
decaying
city by
the Rhine."
Ligeia's
amily,
too,
the
narrator hinks
mustbe
"of a
remotely
ancient
date,"
n
other
words an
original
amily, yet
he
cannot
remember or
perhaps
never knew
her
family
name,
that markerof
her
identity
and
origin.'4
The
narrator as
ost all
sight
and
memory
of
origins.
By
rehearsing
is
forgetfulness
by
writing,
as
he
says),
the
narrator
begins
to
recollect
Ligeia.
He
indeed
re-calls
her,
for
she
re-emerges
throughthe music of her name: "it is by that sweet word alone-by
Ligeia-that
I
bring
before mine
eyes
in
fancy
the
image
of her who is
no
more"
249).
5 The
Ligeia
whose
image
is
called
up-the
living
Ligeia-is
a
decidedly spectral
presence,
an
"emaciated"woman
who
"came
and
departed
as a
shadow,"
whose
beauty
had
"the
radianceof
an
opium-
dream
...
wildly
divine"
(249).
The narrator's
work
of
calling
up
this
specter
involves
those
"studiesof
a nature
more than
all else
adapted
to
deaden
impressions
f
the
outward
world"
and
would seem to
replicate
the
circumstances
of
Ligeia's
earlier
presence,
as
the
narrator
ecalls,
"I
was nevermadeawareof herentrance ntomy closedstudysaveby the
dear
music
of
her low
sweet
voice,
as
she
placed
her
marble
hand
upon
my
shoulder"
249).
He has
returnedto
the
study
and to
those
studies
which
are
the
putative
scene
of
Ligeia's
nfluence.
The
attempt
to
recall
Ligeia
at
the
beginning
of
the
tale-the
work
of
recollection
which
does
not
quite
produce
origins-is
similar o the
narrator's
xperience
of
Ligeia,
who
led
him
to
the
very
verge
of
tran-
scendental truth.
Through
Ligeia's
mediation,
or
through
Ligeia
as
a
medium,
the
narrator did...
feel...
that
delicious
vista
by
slow
degrees
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expanding
before
me,
down
whose
long,
gorgeous,
and
all
untrodden
path,
I
might
at
length
pass
onward
to
the
goal
of a wisdom
too
divinely
precious
not to be forbidden "
254) Again
n
the narrator's
ecollection
Ligeia
s
the medium-the
presence,
he
voice,
the
light-through
which
thenarratorsvirtually levatedto theapprehension f thetranscenden-
tal:
"Her
presence,
her
readings
alone,
rendered
vividly
luminousthe
many
mysteries
of the
transcendentalism
n
which we were
immersed.
Wanting
he radiant
ustreof her
eyes,
letters,
ambentand
golden,
grew
duller
than Saturnian
ead"
(254). Ligeia
is
a medium
in
an even more
powerful
sense
than
this,
for
the
narrator
eems to
apprehend
he
tran-
scendentalnot
merely hroughLigeia
but in
Ligeia:
"The
expression
f the
eyes
of
Ligeia
How
for
long
hours
have
I
pondered
upon
t ...
Whatwas
it-that
something
more
profound
than
the
well of
Democritus-which
lay farwithin thepupilsof my beloved?"He can go to thebrinkof this
well
but
not-yet-down:
"in
our
endeavors
o recall to
memory
some-
thing
long
forgotten,
we often find
ourselves
upon
the
very verge
of
remembrance,
without
being
able,
in
the
end,
to remember. And thus
how
frequently,
in
my
intense
scrutiny
of
Ligeia's
eyes,
have
I
felt
approaching
he
full
knowledge
of their
expression-felt
it
approaching
-yet
not
quite
be
mine-and
so
at
length
entirely
depart "
251-2)
Democritus
s
said to have
said
that truth
s in
the
depths.
What
s
that
something
more
profound
than the
deeper
truth
of
the
father
of
atomism?Thedeeptruth xpressednLigeia's yesisclearly ranscenden-
tal
truth,
here the
origin
and
ground
of
life
forms,
for
in
an
echo of
Emerson's
Nature,
the narrator
found,
n
the
commonest
objects
of the
universe,
a circle of
analogies
to
that
expression"
252).
The
narrator
associates
his
profound
omething
with
the
mysteries
nd
power
of
God's
will-again,
the
origin
and
ground
of
life-in
that non-existent
passage
from
Glanvill
cited
by
the narrator nd
by Ligeia
(and
finally,
by way
of
epigraph,by
Poe).16
What
is
structurally
nd
thematically ignificant
here is
that
the
narrator egins by meditatingon all thathe hasforgottenaboutLigeia's
origins,
hereby
recalling
and
recreating
his
experience
of
Ligeia,
whose
presence,
n
turn,
eems-or
seemed-to
offer
the narrator n
apprehen-
sion of
the
origin
or
ground
or
principle
of life. And the
narrator
quates
this near
apprehension
with not
quite
remembering,bringing
us back to
the
beginning
of
the
tale-in the
same sort of circularmotion which
characterizes
nd baffles
humanendeavor
n
Ligeia'spoem,
"The Con-
queror
Worm,"
which
in its turn
gestures
toward
a
God or
originating
force
which can
never
be
apprehended
on the level of
appearance.
Ligeiastrugglesoconquer heworm of death hroughheforceof
her
will;
with
her
"gigantic
volition"
he
mimes
that God
who is
"buta
great
will
pervading
all
things
by
nature
of
its
intentness"
253).
Therecan
be
only
one
God,
and
Ligeia
would seem
to be
a
usurpingdaughter
of
her
"DivineFather"
257).
But
the
struggle
or
ascendancy
could
as
well be
described
as
takingplace
between
Ligeia
and
the
narrator,
who in their
extreme
solation
comprise
a world unto themselves.
Each
struggles
or
complete knowledge
and
possession
of the other.
The
aspect
of
passion-
ate
antagonism
between
the two intellectual overs is marked
by
their
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preoccupation
with the
strength
of the will
and
by
the narrator's
truggle
"to
fathom"and
"passion
o
discover"
he
meaning
expressed
n
Ligeia's
eyes.
The narrator
omes
closest
o
apprehending
nd
possessing
Ligeia
n
her
death:"But
n
death
only
was I
fully mpressed
with
the
strength
f
her
affection" 251-2,255).
Full
knowledge
of the otherwould mean a
divinization f the
self
and the
obliteration f
the
other,
yet
the isolatedself cannot
exist
without
that
other
in
which
and
against
which
to see itself. And so
the
narrator
s
distraught
fter
the
death
of
Ligeia
and descends
nto
that"mental
liena-
tion"which
matches he dramaof
Ligeia's
poem-"much
of
Madness
and
more of
Sin
/
And
Horror
he soul of the
plot"
(259,
257).
He
marries
he
Lady
Rowena
only,
it
would
seem,
to
intensify
his
longing
for
Ligeia.
Now
the
maddened narrator
plays
God,
so to
speak,
and
arranges
he
horriddramaof Rowena'sartificially nimatedsurroundings.Rowena's
name,
as
ClaudeRichard
points
out,
means what is
left over.17 he
is
the
matter
hrough
which the
struggle
between
Ligeia
and
the narrator
an
be
replayed.
As
thenarrator
ormentshis
second
bride,
he
"call[s]
aloud
upon
[Ligeia's]
name"
n
an
effort to
"restore" er
(261).
To the
narrator,
he
artificial
animation
of
the bridal
chamber,
really
a
torture
chamber,
begins
to
seem
like real
animation,
s
he
senses
something
oming
(back)
to
life.
This is
of
course
Ligeia
as
figured
finally
n
"the
eyes
of
the
figure
which
stood
before me"
(268).
Ligeia'snfluenceon thenarrator'smetaphysicalnvestigationsad
not
been
a
new
conception
but,
as the
narrator
ays,
a new
"sentiment,"
new
feeling,
aroused
nitially
by
the
expression
of
her
eyes
(252).
Feeling
takes
over
the
traditional
unctionof
reasonor
spirit,
and the
movement
downward
nto
sensation
ecomes
the
ground
of
transcendence,
ground
which
itself
will
crack
to
expose
a
lower
depth.
In
his
awakenedsensitiv-
ity,
the
narrator s
finally
full
impressed
with
the
expression
of
Ligeia's
eyes,
that
force
which,
he
imagines,
ies behind all
material
appearances,
and
so all
else but
the
expression
falls
away,
as
the
narrator
himself
is
overcomewithterror.Themomentof transcendencesagain iguredasa
downward
motion,
the descent
into
the
bottomless
well,
into
the
pit
of
unconsciousness.
The
narrator
f
"Ligeia,"
arrating
nd
recasting
his
past,
would
seem
to
live
in
pulsations
of
recollection,
collapse,
and
recollection-
much
ike
the
pulsating
universe
Poe
would
later
describe
n
Eureka.
The
narrator
recalls
Ligeia's
eyes
as
the
origin
of his
experience,
just
as
he
regards
them
as
the
key
to
the
origin
of
life
forms,
yet
his
experience
properly
has
no
origin
and can
only
be
repeated.
Might
we
say,
then,
that
in "Ligeia" he projectedrepetitionof the transcendent xperienceof
collapse
is a
mirrorof
the
origin
which
vanishes?
I
would
like
to
conclude
by
shifting
slightly
my
perspective
on
transcendence
n
"Ligeia."
Ligeia's
commentary
on
the
search
for
tran-
scendental
truth
s
her
poem
about
"the
tragedy
'Man."'
Curiously,
he
most
prominent
features of
this
drama of
aspiration
and
failure
are
mimicry
and
mechanical
ontrivance.
God
is
represented
by
mimes,
and
humans
are
"Mere
puppets,"
but
power
itself is
"formless,"
invisible,"
ungraspable
256-7).
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In
the
first
movement
of the
narrative,
Ligeia's
presence
and the
creative
power
of
her voice
produce
an
alchemical
transformation,
turn-
ing
lead
or
dead letters
"lambent
and
golden"
(254).
Still,
Ligeia
seems
to
fail
at
miming
God,
and when
the focus
of
the
narrative
shifts
from
Ligeia's power
to the
narrator's,mimicry
and
mechanical contrivance
become
prominent again,
as the
narratoruses Rowena to
recall
Ligeia.
He
exchanges
his
gold
for
Rowena,
and
his
manipulations-to
terrorize
his
second
bride and to
bring
back
Ligeia's spirit
through
the
deadened
or
leaden
body
of
Rowena-are
highly
mechanical.
Despite
the
pentagonal
room,
traditionally
the
space
of
magic,
and
many
hints
of ancient occult
arts,
the
setting
seems to
be mere
machinery,
as
in
that "contrivance"
which makes
the
simple
arabesque
figures
into "an
endless succession
of
the
ghastly
forms which
belong
to
the
superstition
of
the
Norman,
or arise
in the guilty slumbers of the monk. The phantasmagoric effect was vastly
heightened
by
the
artificial
introduction of a
strong
continual
current
of
wind
behind
the
draperies-giving
a hideous and
uneasy
animation to the
whole"
(260-1).
This
machinery
for
producing
effects
is
equivalent
to
literary parody
(the
letter
without
the
spirit)
and
suggests
how
thin
the line
was for Poe
between,
on the one
hand,
the search for transcendental
truth
(the mystic,
the
ideal,
in
the terms of the
Drake-Halleck
review)
and on
the
other
hand,
a
contrivance,
a
game,
a
joke,
a
parody,
even
a
self-
parody.
And even
"Ligeia,"
the
author's
favorite
among
his works and a
tale whose occult significance Poe endorsed, was not spared mechanical
conversion,
for it is
thoroughly
parodied
in
Poe's
story
"The Man
That
Was
Used
Up."18
San Francisco State
University
NOTES
1.
Though
Newton came close to
eliminating
occult force from the scientific
model
in his
proposition
that
first causes cannot
be
known-"hypotheses
non
fingo"-his
descriptions
of
gravity
and of
ether
parallel
the occult
forces of
scholasticism,
and
throughout
the
eighteenth
century
the line
between
occult force
and
demystified
natural
philosophy
was
quite
fine
indeed,
for
educated
lay persons
as well
as for scientists.
Further,
Newton's
optics,
which
pictured
nature
as
a
system
of
transmutations,
esisted
a
thoroughly
mechanistic
nterpretation.
2. This view of
Edwards,
enshrined
n
modern
scholarship
by Perry
Miller's
Jonathan
Edwards
(New York,1949),
has been
significantly
altered
by
the
recent
work
of Norman
Fiering, especially
Jonathan
Edwards's
Moral
Thought
and Its British
Context
(Chapel
Hill:
University
of North
Carolina
Press,
1981);
see also
Fiering,
Moral
Philosophy
at
Seventeenth-Century
Harvard:
A
Discipline
in Transition
(Chapel
Hill:
University
of
North
Carolina
Press,
1981);
David
Laurence,
"Jonathan
Edwards,
John
Locke,
and
the Canon
of
Experience,"
Early
American
Literature,
15
(1980),
107-
23;
Laurence,
"Moral
Philosophy
and New
England
History:
Reflections
on
Norman
Fiering,"
Early
American
Literature,
18
(1983),
187-214.
Though
Miller's
nalysis
of Edwards's
heology
may
be
seriously
n
error,
t
remains
26
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8/19/2019 Transcendence Downward an Essay on Usher and Ligeia
11/13
important
or
intellectual
history
and
literary
history
o
note that
Edwards's
successors
did indeed associate
him with
the
new
psychology.
3. See
James
E.
Cronin,
Introduction,
The
Diary of
Elihu Hubbard
Smith
(1771-1798),
ed. Cronin
(Philadelphia:
American
Philosophical
Society,
1973).
4. Forasamplingof this iterature, ee TheTranscendentalists:nAnthology,
ed.
Perry
Miller
Cambridge:
Harvard
University
Press,
1950).
The
reaction
against
Locke
was
sharpestamong
the
Transcendentalists,
who
objected
to
the
atomism,
materialism,
nd
mere
reasonableness
f
Lockean
empiricism;
their
search for
spiritual
renewal
was
expressed
in
terms of
connection,
process, development,
and
was
sustained
by
a set
of
conceptions
which had
coexisted
with
empiricism
in
complex
ways throughout
the
Enlighten-
ment-ideas of
organicism,
reformulations f
notions
of
the connectionof
microcosm and
macrocosm,
a
modernized
hermetic notion of the
divine
mind
radiating
hroughout
reation,
and a
conception
of
occult
force
under-
lyingthe empiricalsurfaceof things.
5.
Nature,
n
Selections
rom Ralph
Waldo
Emerson,
ed.
Stephen
E.
Whicher
(Boston:
Houghton
Mifflin
Company, 1960),
p.
22.
6.
In
The Tower
and
the
Abyss:
An
Inquiry
nto
the
Transformation
f
Man
(1957;
rpt.
New
York:
Viking
Press,
1967),
Erich
Kahlertraces
the
new
emphasis
on
perceptual experience
in
French
Romanticism
and
Symbol-
ism,
leading
to what
he
also
terms a
transcendence
downward;
his
devel-
opment
culminates,
Kahler
eloquently
argues,
n
Sartre'sLa
Nausee,
with
the
"decomposition
of
the
substance of our
phenomenal
world"
(p.
176).
(Onemight
add to
Kahler's
iteraryhistory
he
singular mportance
of
Poe
to
several
of
the
French
Romantics
and
Symbolists.)
See also
David
H.
Hirsch's fine
essay,
"The Pit
and the
Apocalypse,"
Sewanee
Review,
76
(1968),
632-52.
7.
"The Fall of
the
House of
Usher," n
The
Complete
Works
of
Edgar
Allan
Poe,
ed.
James
A.
Harrison,
17
vols.
(New
York:
Thomas
Y.
Crowell &
Company,
1902),
III,
273.
8.
Works,VIII,
275-318.
9.
On
Poe's uses
of
alchemy,
see
Jean
Ricardou,
"L'Or
du
scarabee,"
Pourune
theorie du
Nouveau Roman
(Paris:
Editions du
Seuil,
1971),
pp.
40-58;
BartonLeviSt.Armand,"Poe's SoberMystification':TheUses of Alchemy
in
'The
Gold-Bug,"'
Poe
Studies,
4
(1971),
1-7;
St.
Armand,
"Usher
Unveiled: Poe
and
the
Metaphysic
of
Gnosticism,"
Poe
Studies,
5
(1972),
1-8;
Claude
Richard,
"'L'
ou
l'indicibilite
de
Dieu:
une
lecture
de
'Ligeia,"'
Delta,
12
(1981),
11-34.
Poe's
knowledge
of
alchemy
came
from
a numberof
sources-encyclopedias,
journals,
nd
such
popular
worksas
IsaacD'Israe-
li's
Curiosities
of
Literature
with
a note
on
"alchymy"
n
vol.
I)
and God-
win's
St.
Leon,
a
moralized
novel
about a
man who
learns
he
secret
of
the
magnum
opus,
the
transmutation
f
metalsand
the
elixir
vitae.
(These
atter
two
works Poe
mentions n his
journalism.)
also think
Poe
was
acquainted
with the seriousliteratureof hermeticism:among the recherchebooks in
Roderick's
library
is
"the
Chiromancy
of
Robert
Flud
[sic]" (287);
the
seventeenth-century
Fludd was
best
known for
his
work
on
alchemy.
Hawthorne's
and
Melville's
descriptions
of the
mystic
symbol
also
draw on
the
imagery
of
alchemy
and
may
indeed
owe
something
to
the
work
of
their
confrere in
the
house
of
letters,
the late
Edgar
Poe.
The
narratorof
The
Scarlet
Letter
describes his
reaction to
finding
the
rag
or
remnantof
the
scarlet
etter with
its
traces of
gold
embroidery:
"Certainly,
there
was
some
deep
meaning
in
it,
most
worthy
of
interpretation,
and
which,
as
it
were,
streamed
orth
from
the
mystic symbol,
subtly
communi-
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12/13
eating
itself
to
my
sensibilities,
but
evading
the
analysis
of
my
mind"
"The
Custom-House").
Hester
has
worked
gold
into
the
dross,
the
cloth,
trans-
forming
the
original
etter
through
his act of
self-expression,
as she trans-
forms
it
through
her
living.
Her
example
of
the
feminine
art
parallels
the
more
obviously
occult
practices
of
the learned
Roger
Chillingworth;
hough
Chillingworthuses hisknowledgeto tormentDimmesdale,hisstudieswere
aimed
at
healing,
as he
says
to
Hester,
"My
old
studies n
alchemy...
and
my
sojourn,
for
above
a
year
past,
among
a
people
well
versed
in
the
kindly
properties
of
simples,
have
made a
better
physician
of
me than
many
who
claim the
medical
degree" (Chapt.
4).
In
giving
expression
to
the mere
remnantor letter of
the
story
by
looking
into the interior
of
hearts,
Haw-
thorne
combines the
expressive
art of
Hester
with
the
sympathetic
art
of
Chillingworth;
e becomes the
artistwhose letters ive.
As
the narrator
ays
of
himself,
the failed
artist
n
the house of
custom,
if
he
could
look
through
the common
life to
its
"deeper
import"
he would find "the letters
turnto
gold
upon
the
page"
("The
Custom-House").
The
"mysticsign"
of
Moby-
Dick
is
the famous
whiteness
of
the
whale,
the terrorof
which,
Ishmael
ays,
would
be
apprehended
by
the
man of
"untutored
deality"
Chapt.
42);
this
whiteness
is
associated
with that other
sign
and
talisman
of
the white
whale-the
gold
doubloon.
10.
For
a more
conventional
rendering
of
the contrast
of
real
and
ideal,
a
contrast
which runs
hrough
nineteenth-century
merican
iterature,
ee
the
description
of
Augustine
St. Clare's
ife and character
n
Chapt.
5 of
Uncle
Tom's
Cabin.
My
discussion
of realand ideal
draws
on
my
note on
"Usher,"
TheExplicator(forthcoming).
11.
A
precedent
for the
Romantic
mage
of the aeolian
harp
might
be the
view
of
the
Cambridge
philosopher
Henry
More
that
space
is the sensorium
of
God,
which influenced
Newton and
others.
12.
In "The
Masque
of
the
Red
Death,"
he
masked
figure
of the Red Death
has
a similar
role,
bringing
time back
to consciousness
to
obliterate Prince
Prospero's
atemporal
phantasm.
13. This
struggle
is
limned
by
Roderick's
terrific
apprehensions
and
by
his
summoning
he
narrator-metaphorically
or
literally
o
break
the
connec-
tion Roderickhas to Madeline
and the House.
It
is also
figured
forth
by
the
transferof luminosity rom Roderick o Madelineand theHouse,for when
the luminousness
of
Roderick's
eyes-the light
or
fire
of life-is extin-
guished,
this
force
intensifies
n
Madeline
and
in
the
House,
until the life
force,
except
in
the
narrator,
s
spent.
14. The
nineteenth-century
anguage
of race
suggests
hat
Ligeia,
who is
"not
of
our
own race"
(251),
is of
the "race"
f
the
Jews
and hence
genuinely
from
the most ancient
amily.
That
Ligeia,
with dark
hairand
eyes,
is
paired
with
the fair-and
English-Lady
Rowena of course
recallsScot'srivalheroines
in
Ivanhoe,
the
Jewish
Rebecca
and
the
Saxon
Rowena,
a further
hint of
Ligeia's
oreign
and ancient
ineage.
15. Poe had alreadyin "AlAaraaf"given the name Ligeiato the personified
spirit
of
music,
recallingperhaps
the siren
Ligea
in
Milton'sComus.
16.
Though
no
scholar
has found
Glanvill's
tatement
about
the
power
of
the
will,
in
"Descent
nto the
Maelstrom" oe
paraphrases
he
following
related
passage
from
Glanvill's
Essays
on Several
mportant
Subjects
n
Philosophy
and
Religion (1676):
"The
ways
of
God
in
Nature
(as
in
Providence)
are
not
as ours
are:
Nor arethe
Modelsthat
we
frame
any
way
commensurate
o the
vastness
and
profundity
of
his
works;
which
have
a
depth
in
them
greater
than the
Well
of
Democritus."
17.
Richard,
"'L'
ou
l'indicibilitede Dieu."
28
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13/13
18. The Letters
of Edgar
Allan
Poe,
ed.
John
Ward
Ostrom,
2
vols.,
2nd
ed.
(New
York:
Gordian
Press,Inc.,
1966),
I, 117-9;
oi
Poe's
parodying
"Ligeia"
see G.
R.
Thompson,
Poe's Fiction: Romantic
Irony
in the Gothic
Tales
(Madison:
University
of Wisconsin
Press,
1973),
pp.
83-5,
Evan
Carton,
The
Rhetoric
of
American
Romance:Dialectic
and
Identity
n
Emerson,
Dickin-
son, Poe,andHawthorne Baltimore:TheJohnsHopkinsUniversityPress,
1985),
pp.
144-5.
I
am
grateful
to
William
H.
Marks
II for
his criticism
of
a
draft
of
this
essay.
AAS/NEMLA
Fellowship
The
American
Antiquarian
Society
and
NEMLA
offer a
short-term
fellowship
limited
to
research in
American
literary
studies
through
1876.
The
winner of
the
AAS/NEMLA fellowship for 1988 is Shirley Samuels,
an
assistant
professor
of
English
at
Cornell
University.
Her
research
project
is
entitled
"Politics
and
the
Family
in
the
Early
Republic."
Profes-
sor
Samuels
holds
the
AB,
MA,
and PhD
degrees
from
the
University
of
California,
Berkeley.
For her
project,
part
of
a
book-in-progress,
she will
make
use of
the
facilities of
the AAS
during
the
term
of her
fellowship,
September-November,
1988.
NEMLA
members
interested
in
this fellow-
ship
should
write for
information
to
the
American
Antiquarian
Society,
185
Salisbury
Street,
Worcester,
MA.
01609.
29