THE DEEP ONES: "Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe

"Ligeia" by Edgar Allan Poe

Discussion begins April 2.

First published in The American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts, September 1838



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/ligeiag.htm
http://poestories.com/read/ligeia
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2149/2149-h/2149-h.htm#link2H_4_0029

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?86030

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Dead Brides
The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

MISCELLANY

http://vwpro2.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-name-of-ligeia-or-i-think-too-much.html
http://www.eapoe.org/papers/psblctrs/pl20121.htm
http://english.arts.cornell.edu/publications/mode/documents/grayson.html
http://poeandlifescience.weebly.com/ligeia.html
http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/05/poe-and-the-fantastic/
http://alangullette.com/lit/hpl/bloch.htm
http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/176680/Tomb-of-Ligeia-The-Original-Trailer-.h...
http://tinyurl.com/kdbu9lk

The cover for The American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts, September 1838 is just black text on a white background. I wasn't able to find it for upload here, so I used a wonderful 1919 Harry Clark illustration instead.

I'll be reading from The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings.

Nice graphic! Was the Clark illustration for "Ligeia" specifically, or simply one you found à propos?

>3 elenchus:

It's an illustration for "Ligeia" that Clark created for the 1919 edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

I have a couple options at home to read, and suspect one is not catalogued here on LT so I aim to correct that. A side benefit of DEEP ONES reading.

Interesting that this tale was first published in The American Museum of Science, Literature, and the Arts, from the title alone, it doesn't seem a likely publication for such a tale. Maybe there's a connection in the story ....

ETA type correction: "alone" not "along"

>5 elenchus:

The September 1838 issue was Vol. 1 No. 1. It was the only issue published that year and was a special "Literature and the Arts" issue.

I've got at least a couple of options, but the graphic swung it...I'll read this one from the Folio Society edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, because it's a facsimile of the Harrap edition and includes the Harry Clarke illustration.

Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe for me.

An old publisher's edition for me, an amusing reminder of when I thought these faux leather editions were "serious" volumes. This may be the first time I've opened it in over 25 years.

I'll start by saying it's been years since I've read any Poe, but this story exemplifies what I associate with his best writing. There really was no mystery in what was unfolding, and I've never believed Poe aimed for a big reveal in order to convey his intended effect. For me, the horror of the ending lies not so much in what happens, or how it's described verbally, as in the unexpected perspective. That is, Poe doesn't use the narrator's presence as a means of showing the reader what happens, serving as the reader's eyes and ears; rather, Poe's authorial gaze is directed at the narrator himself, is transfixed by the narrator's own horror at what he sees!

This is for me the source of growing horror at the end of the story, rather than the development of Ligeia's awakening itself. I find it a stroke of genius on Poe's part to adopt this approach, rather than attempting to make horrific the transformation of Rowena itself. That, for me in any case, surely would have fallen flat.

Poe finds a number of ways to amplify the effect on the reader of watching the narrator's almost hysterical descent into terror, perhaps the main thread being the narrator's transformation from a focused acolyte of "ancient learning" to an adolescent hedonist.

Ah, the eyes of Ligeia!

Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

Here the obsessive attention to the human eye is the antithesis of the kind displayed in "The Tell Tale Heart".

I must admit that I can't help but think of a young Barbara Steele when I think of Ligeia, although she never played the role.

I had forgotten that "The Conqueror Worm" was embedded in this story.

Man, it is tres gothique. With its attention to the scene of decadence, it kind of reminds me of Vathek and even seems to be a precursor of sorts to Against Nature.

I'd also forgotten about "The Conqueror Worm", and now wonder if I read it here first, or alone. In which order was it first published?

I meant to do some sleuthing into the "figures" depicted on the drapery and wallpaper, but didn't. Came across to me as though Poe were describing something very specific, even alluding to something with perhaps occult significance.

And a very suggestive call on the Vathek! I've not read it but actually have a copy waiting for me, thanks to an anonymous benefactor. Might have to push that up in my queue.

This was the third or fourth time I read "Ligeia". Each time I think the start is sort of slow, only to be mesmerized by the later part.

One thing I reflected at this time, that I don't recall thinking much of before, is how we're supposed to imagine the circumstances of the penning. The narrator writes the story - evidently some time, long or short, after the resurrection. He writes of Ligeia in the past tense - did her return then ultimately fail, the lady sinking dead again to the floor? Controversely, if she did indeed defy death, how did that affect the narrator's life?

There's undoubtly an argument to be made that such questions miss the point, which is about making emotional impact, not sense.

Another thing I wondered about is what Ligeia saw in the narrator. He doesn't paint a terribly flattering portrait of himself, yet, at least pre-opium he presumably had something going for him to inspire such ardent devotion.

I had forgotten the role that opium plays in the story. The narrator is pretty much opium-crazed at the point of Rowena's supposed poisoning by the "brilliant and ruby colored fluid". At several points he admits to having the equivalent of "wild visions, opium-engendered". Whatever the exact cause of Rowena's death, perhaps Ligeia's resurrection is nothing more than an opium dream?

Does anyone have an opinion on Tim Lucas's postulation as to the pronunciation of "Ligeia"? See the first link above under "Miscellany".

I'm totally unfamiliar with the film "The Tomb of Ligeia", but I was mentally pronouncing the name "lye-GAY-uh". So that's no help.

>15 gwendetenebre:
I'm not sure if I understand what Lucas is saying, but in Classical Greek the stress can apparently be on either the first or the second syllable (depending on dialect?). The modern Greek translation of Poe's tale goes for the second - the pronunciation would be approximately "lee-YEE-ah".

In English I'd go for "lee-JAY-uh". But I see Wikipedia cites something called The New Century Cyclopedia of Names for "lye-JAY-uh".

(I can't figure out of the first syllable was long or short in Ancient Greek.)

>16 elenchus:, >17 AndreasJ:

I've always said it "Lye-GEE-uh", which, as Lucas mentions, is how they say it in the film. His possible new pronunciation rhymes with "Lydia". I don't see that, myself.

>15 gwendetenebre: the role that opium plays ... perhaps Ligeia's resurrection is nothing more than an opium dream?

Yes. And that answers:

>14 AndreasJ: He writes of Ligeia in the past tense - did her return then ultimately fail, the lady sinking dead again to the floor?

The unwritten denouement is that Rowena finishes expiring, but she is seen entirely as Ligeia by the fevered narrator, who consequently gets to see his life-miserly first bride die for a second time.

He writes the story in a madhouse?

I wonder if the Glanvill quote inspired the story, or if Poe came across it, and it chimed with ideas already in his head? I would have assumed the story reflected his fears for his wife's health, but it was written before she contracted tuberculosis. He lost his mother when he was very young, of course, and its a cliché of Poe criticism to suggest he repeatedly returned to that trauma in his work. To say it's a cliché isn't to say it's not true, of course.

Joseph Glanvill's a strangely appropriate person to introduce, through his epigraph, a Poe story. His wikipedia entry gives us a propagandist for rationalism and the scientific method, who yet believes in the supernatural.

I was also struck by the pre-echoes of decadent prose (the more so since I've only just finished a volume of modern stories in the same tradition, A Damask of the Dead by John Gale. Poe's erudition (never lightly worn, with him!) is in evidence, in the mixture of the Norman and the "Saracenic". He surely knew that the Normans had taken Sicily from the Arabs, as well as conquering England, and a mixed Byzantine-Islamic-Norman culture had resulted.

Yes! - Barbara Steele! (and the narrator strikes me as a better fit for Vincent Price than Roderick Usher does, incidentally).

I have to confess to having always stumbled over the pronunciation of "Ligeia", and I'm happy to take Corman's film as an authority.

Nice distain for "the Trevanions of Tremaine", but I read it as aristocratic contempt for mere financial concern, and not any concern for the Lady Rowena, or for the plight of women in a patriarchal society (Tremaine is "The Squire of Gothos" in that overripe old Star Trek episode, of course).

ETA - Oops it's "Trelane". Still, maybe close enough for the one to have inspired the other.

>20 housefulofpaper:
"I wonder if the Glanvill quote inspired the story, or if Poe came across it, and it chimed with ideas already in his head?"

He apparently made it up - no-one's found it anywhere in Glanvill's writings at any rate.

Now that is interesting. I wasn't familiar with Glanvill though the gloss from wikipedia suggested a Renaissance mind. I take it Glanvill was familiar enough to Poe's readers to make it worth using, whether made up or simply (as-yet) unsourced.

>21 AndreasJ:
>22 elenchus:

I'm happy to accept that Poe successfully hoaxed me!

I wonder how familiar Glanvill actually was in Poe's day - I imagine the name at least was familiar to university-educated clergymen, people like that.

And, to be honest, I don't think you have to recognise an epigraph to enjoy it. The unfamiliarity can make the work seem more arcane, more scholarly (this opinion is based on my reading aged seven Roger Lancelyn Green'sTales of the Greek Heroes, which has epigraphs from, in the main, 19th century poets, at the head of each chapter).

Agree totally about the epigraph's effect. I often derive a different significance from one unknown to me, than one for which I have some background familiarity into its context and how it sits in a larger argument, which doesn't always fit the story for which it's been chosen.

And the fake epigraphs are a time-honoured trick. James Branch Cabell comes readily to mind in this respect.

Certainly Cabell. How different is it, really, to ascribe a translation of the Necronomicon to John Dee?

I'm currently reading an Amelia Peabody mystery (The Falcon at the Portal) which has all of the chapter epigrams purportedly drawn from the same imaginary memoir, written by one of the fictional characters in the story. He is not a sympathetic character, and the epigrams serve to make him more offensive.

My only original thought about this story is that the psychic dislocation of Rowena for Ligeia may have inspired Lovecraft's "The Thing on the Doorstep" -- assuming that's what's going on.

A half-baked thesis: Poe's stories often have ambiguities and omissions in the text while Lovecraft frequently presents us a narrator who unconvincingly tries to introduce ambiguity into their experiences, experiences we the reader think are more clear and plain than the narrator does. Poe's narrators sometimes may unconsciously or artfully attempt to deceive or obfuscate their story or, at least, omit important details. They, in some way, attempt to confuse readers. Lovecraft's narrators are more confused than the reader -- at least until the end. Lovecraft narrators often want to relate a story of cosmic and species significance. Poe's narrators tell personal stories.

As Stephen Peithman's annotations make clear, there are at least three major interpretations.

1) Everything is literally true.
2) Ligeia is real but given qualities by the narrator that are impossible for any human. His obsessive studies kill both women, and he's hallucinating at the end.
3) Rowena is real, and Ligeia is a wishful fantasy.

"The Conqueror Worm" was first incorporated into the story in an 1845 version.

Peithman notes the narrator only remembers Ligeia's face and head, perhaps a clue to her unreality.

Poe uses "fancy" like Coleridge does, to mean "confused perception".

Finally the observations of Marvin and Frances Mengeling, in "From Fancy to Failure: A Study of the Narrators in the Tales of E. A. Poe", are interesting. Poe's narrators often have some hyperacute sense, they come into contact with old books whose meaning they misinterpret, and the women in their lives often have a deeper understanding of those books.

Other annotations note that, in addition to a freakish perception, Poe's narrators often are not terribly introspective or very self-perceptive or aware of the general wordl. The narrator here doesn't have much of a memory for a lot of his life. And the stories frequently end with shrieking narrators like here.

Apart from Peithman, I think this is another example of Poe the poet having written a story which seems ripe for reading aloud. And it and "The Masque of the Red Death" are not the only Poe stories which feature detailed descriptions of interior decorations.

>26 RandyStafford:
Peithman notes the narrator only remembers Ligeia's face and head, perhaps a clue to her unreality.

To nitpick, he remembers her marble hands, and that she was tall - increased height is one of the clues Rowena has metamorphosed into Ligeia - and slender.

If one accepts Peithman's (3), however, one could take the end as signifying that the real woman becomes identified with the ideal one as she dies. Living she couldn't match the fantasy, but dead she can be reinterpreted.

>26 RandyStafford:
>27 AndreasJ:

Nice observations about the narrator, here.

With Peithman's (1), I think there are a number of ways to understand the events as literally true. For example:
(1a) Rowena is possessed by Ligeia, and possibly dies in the possession
(1b) Both Ligeia and Rowena are sequentially possessed by a third demonic force
(1c) Ligeia and Rowena are separate, but undergo similar transformations / distortions at the forces unleashed either by the narrator, perhaps in Ligeia's case amplified by her own dabblings.

In the end I'm not sure it matters which, from the standpoint of the effect upon the reader. In fact, the ambiguity itself contributes to the effect.

>28 elenchus: Poe certainly understood that motives and explanations can get in the way of an effect. In "The Casque of Amontillado", a revenge story, we don't get a key element of a typical revenge story -- what Fortunato did exactly to deserve his fate.

Do the colors of the rooms in "The Masque of the Red Death" symbolize anything or are they just there for effect?

Maybe Poe the Hoaxer liked characters who, in some way, hoaxed themselves.

>29 RandyStafford:

Maybe Poe the Hoaxer liked characters who, in some way, hoaxed themselves.

I like it.

ETA Hoffman details which were posted here moved to http://www.librarything.com/topic/172318

>30 gwendetenebre: Good to know. Sounds worth looking for.

Oops! The last two posts I made were supposed to be in the ETA Hoffmann thread. I've moved them to where they belong. Apologies!

http://50watts.com/Harry-Clarke-s-Poe-Up-Close

Some close-ups of Harry Clarke's incredibly detailed Poe illustrations on this blog.

Incidentally, I should mention - as a public service - the Folio Society edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination is not a facsimile of the 'expanded' edition; and that means no colour illustrations. Which is a bit of a shame.

Great illustrations. What a moribund looking raven.