Talk:Ligeia
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[edit] Analysis section
Everything in the analysis section appears to be a first person essay, or possibly original research. If there are no complaints, I'll be removing that section in its entirety after this message has been here a few days. Its a very well done review, but not something for an encylopedia. .:.Jareth.:. babelfish 16:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
It's too bad that the style of the analysis section doesn't fit the encyclopedia vernacular. I don't understand the need to sound neutral when no one truly writes without bias. Wikipdedia is a compendium of information - why not include some literary criticism? In the Wikipedia entry for "George Washington," I found the following line:
"Scholars rank him with Abraham Lincoln among the greatest of presidents."
Is only scholarly bias permissible in Wikipedia? If the value of a man and his influence on others (neither of which can be empirically determined) is a requisite addition to his entry - what's wrong with a literary analysis of Poe's Ligeia?
Literature is by nature ambiguous. An entry that simply names the author and time of print is unfair to the work - and to anyone interested in grappling with the text.
Delete it if you want. It exists purely to help others. And no, it's not a copyright infringement. I wrote it.
S0BeURself 00:44, 9 December 2005 (UTC)
- "I don't understand the need to sound neutral when no one truly writes without bias. Wikipdedia is a compendium of information - why not include some literary criticism? In the Wikipedia entry for "George Washington," I found the following line:
- "'Scholars rank him with Abraham Lincoln among the greatest of presidents.'"
- -- We can include other people's opinions in Wikipedia, if we make clear that they are opinions, and if the people or opinions are noteworthy. We can't include our own opinions. - Writtenonsand 17:39, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Analysis text
I've moved the analysis section here, just in case anything is salvageable. But I agree with Jareth that it's completely inappropriate, as a litcrit essay expressing one editor's view - see WP:NOR. Reference to analyses of the story is fine, however, if it's summarising what notable critics have said about it. Tearlach 23:28, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
When Edgar Allen Poe wrote, in his The Philosophy of Composition, that “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,” he was articulating a logical way to marry beauty, “the sole legitimate province of the poem” with “its highest manifestation,” melancholy: “the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.” In doing so, he constructed a literary vehicle through which “[his] work [could be] universally appreciable.” In the context of Poe’s Ligeia, this construct apotheosizes the essence of life that is symbolized by the character, Ligeia, whose erotic relationship with the story’s narrator – a bereaved lover - portentously illustrates the deeply woven [[]]intimacy between man and mortality, and the perversions man suffers in his futile efforts to cling to life.
Necessary for this interpretation is a bilateral reading of the story, in which the first half of Ligeia must be read as an accurate account of events, and the latter portion as an account marred by the increasingly destructive effects of the narrator’s dementia. In his essay, ‘Ligeia’ and its Critics: a Plea for Literalism, John Lauber argues against this kind of literal interpretation, urging instead that readers understand the story as a supernatural tale, lest they fail to recognize the implicit theme of “the power of the human will and its capacity to triumph over death.” He dismissively adds that “critics who doubt the narrator necessarily believe that he himself murdered Rowena, his second wife, and that the ‘revivification’ of Ligeia is a hallucination,” later noting that such a belief has little to no supporting textual evidence. Although correct about the implications of doubting the sincerity of the narrator, Lauber’s argument nevertheless suffers from two devastating flaws; it presupposes the applicability of his theme to the story, and it overlooks the preponderance of evidence that does in fact suggest that a literal reading be implemented in the extrapolation of meaning from the story.
The first of said evidence to support Ligeia's interpretion as the physical embodiment of life are the various images against which Ligeia is analogized. Consider the following excerpt:
I recognized it, let me repeat, sometimes in the survey of a rapidly-growing vine --in the contemplation of a moth, a butterfly, a chrysalis, a stream of running water. I have felt it in the ocean; in the falling of a meteor. I have felt it in the glances of unusually aged people. And there are one or two stars in heaven --(one especially, a star of the sixth magnitude, double and changeable, to be found near the large star in Lyra) in a telescopic scrutiny of which I have been made aware of the feeling. I have been filled with it by certain sounds from stringed instruments, and not unfrequently by passages from books.
The “it” to which the narrator refers is akin to the “sentiment such as [he] felt always aroused within [him]” in Ligeia’s presence; a multifaceted quality that appears to be the very essence of life, in all of its inexplicable, mysterious, and alluring grandeur. This opinion is reinforced by the elusive “strangeness” the narrator attributes to Ligeia’s beauty, “a nature distinct from the formation, or the color, or the brilliancy of [her] features,” which effectively draws a sharp demarcation between the physical aspect of Ligeia and her symbolic representation of life. Cleaving this wedge even deeper is Roy P. Basler’s remark, in his essay The Interpretation of ‘Ligeia’, that “Poe had earlier used the name Ligeia in [his poem] Al Aaraaf for a divinity representing much the same dynamic beauty in all nature.”
In keeping with this understanding of Ligeia’s dual representation, the idolatrous manner with which the narrator regards Ligeia too can be read to have an abstract meaning: that man can become dangerously infatuated with the splendors of life. This infatuation pervades much of the earlier portion of the story, where [the narrator] spends pages vomiting praise upon his wife, who, among other things, is described as “an airy and spirit-lifting vision” whose “beauty of face no maiden ever [equaled].” Such flattery, while not inherently dangerous, foreshadows the difficulty the narrator ultimately encounters in losing his lover to death. Like the spring bloom that indulges in sunshine, flourishes into the summer, and only grudgingly submits to the encroachment of winter - fighting well into autumn before the last vibrant petal falls - the narrator stubbornly “[struggles] desperately in spirit with the grim Azrael,” the Christian angel of death, in his utter reluctance to part with his beloved.
To be sure, the narrator is not the only person who resists death. “The struggles of [Ligeia] [are], to [the narrator’s] astonishment, even more energetic than [his] own.” She harbors an “eager vehemence of desire for life --but for life,” before she finally “[suffers] her white arms to fall.” This reluctance, however, starkly differs from that of the narrator, insofar as it reaffirms Ligeia’s status as the figurative embodiment of life. It is thus fitting that she ardently resists death, for it can be safely said that life is in the business of living, and only retires when necessity leaves no other choice. Ligeia personally testifies to this truism in “verses composed” by her own hand, wherein she laments the too familiar fate of “an angel throng, bewinged, bedight / in veils, and drowned in tears,” who “within the lonesome latter years,” submits to “the Conqueror Worm,” namely, death. As much as she might dread it, it is nevertheless fated that the “vermin fangs” of the Worm “in human gore [imbue].” While Ligeia’s testimony plainly indicates that she understood the import and necessity of her demise, there is no indication that the narrator similarly benefited from such an understanding. As an animal rationis capax, or capable of reason, this should not be the case. Yet he nonetheless partakes in actions that have no place in rationality, essentially sewing the seeds of his ruin and setting the stage for his allegoric depiction of the dangers awaiting all men reluctant to come to terms with mortality.
It is at this point in the story that my interpretation of Ligeia diverges most from John Lauber’s reading of the text, since this latter portion of the tale can only retain its allegoric implications when firmly grounded in reality. The narrator, following Ligeia’s death, is ravaged by “an intense megalomania motivated by his will to restore [Ligeia] to life in another body through a process of metempsychosis.” Although Lauber argues that there is “no reason for doubting [the narrator’s] word,” it is precisely the narrator’s “obsessed psyche” that “entirely, and obviously, [draws a] fantastic representation of the facts.” Thus, when the narrator testifies to bearing witness to ghastly events, such as the “faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect” he observes looming over Rowena, he is subconsciously constructing his view of reality in such a way as to justify his increasingly demented behavior, a practice that is culminated when he perceives to “fall within [Rowena’s] goblet, as if from some invisible spring in the atmosphere of the room, three or four large drops” of poison. Such self-deceit, while clearly implicating the narrator’s guilt in the murder of his second wife, serves the symbolic purpose of expounding the terrible calamity awaiting those who obdurately refuse to relinquish life to death.
Not surprisingly, Lauber contends that “nothing suggests that the narrator himself is guilty of murder or that the apparent revival of Ligeia is an insane delusion,” adding with a sense of finality that Ligeia must ultimately be read as a supernatural tale, if for no other reason than because of that which is revealed by the following letter Poe wrote to his friend, Phillip P. Cooke:
“I should have intimated that the will did not perfect its intention – there should have been a relapse – a final one – and Ligeia (who had only succeeded in so much as to convey an idea of the truth to the narrator) should be at length entombed as Rowena – the bodily alterations having gradually faded away.”
Lauber argues that this admission, on behalf of Poe, proves that Ligeia cannot in any sense be interpreted without first validating some supernatural aspect of the story.
Fortunately, Lauber’s claims turn out be less of a threat to a literal interpretation of Ligeia than any of his previous arguments. As Basler is keen to note, Poe’s letter was written in response to Cooke’s disappointment over Ligeia’s ending. Furthermore, it is common knowledge that Poe habitually edited his literature, always seeking to perfect his writing. If he was thus sincere in his reply to Cooke, he would have edited Ligeia accordingly. However, because he did not, one can only infer that his response to his colleague was of a conciliatory nature, a courtesy that was never intended to be taken seriously. Lauber’s supernatural reading of Ligeia then, and with it his theme of the plight of the human will, can no longer be justifiably entertained.
“Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?”
There is a sense, in this excerpt from British author Anna Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose, that mankind laments his fleeting love affair with mortality. Through a literal interpretation of Edgar Allen Poe’s Ligeia, a similar theme seems to emerge. The tale’s narrator, although deliriously bound to the notion of perpetuating the sanctity of life, is at his heart remorseful over the loss of so precious a gift as life. In this sense, Ligeia not only allegorically warns its readers to come to terms with their mortality, it also asks, perhaps uncharacteristically of Poe, that they join in a celebration of the transient beauty, fragility, and mystifying nature of life.
[edit] Annihilator
The Canadian Heavy Metal band Annihilator have a song called Ligeia on the Alice In Hell album which is an interesting musical adaption of the story.
