The Slender Poe Anthology (12 page)

This exceedingly rich conversation is worthy of the highest of praise one can give any author: re-reading. Published first in
Graham's Magazine
in August of 1841, its opening question could be asked to anyone waking up from sleep.

In his work, Poe examines death from many angles, but nowhere else does he take you through such an imagining of the “passage through the dark Valley and Shadow” as he does here.

He addresses again the “forbidden fruit” of the “mystic parable”; has knowledge led to “huge smoking cities” and Nature deformed “with the ravages of some loathsome disease”?

Poe added the following as part of a note on
mousika
, the “ancient education for the soul”—it's from Plato's
Republic:
“For this reason is a musical education most essential; since it causes Rhythm and Harmony to penetrate most intimately into the soul, taking the strongest hold upon it, filling it with
beauty
and making the man
beautiful-minded…
”

THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA

“These things are in the future.”
Sophocles—Antig:

Una.
“Born again?”

Monos.
Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, “born again.” These were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved for me the secret.

Una.
Death!

Monos.
How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I observe, too, a vacillation in your step
—
a joyous inquietude in your eyes. You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts
—
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!

Una.
Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss
—
saying unto it “thus far, and no farther!” That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, which burned within our bosoms how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feeling happy in its first up-springing, that our happiness would strengthen with its strength! Alas! as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to separate us forever! Thus, in time, it became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.

Monos.
Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una
—
mine, mine, forever now!

Una.
But the memory of past sorrow
—
is it not present joy? I have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.

Monos.
And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos in vain? I will be minute in relating all
—
but at what point shall the weird narrative begin?

Una.
At what point?

Monos.
You have said.

Una.
Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then, commence with the moment of life's cessation
—
but commence with that sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into a breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.

Monos.
One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general condition
at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise among
our forefathers
—
wise in fact, although not in the world's esteem
—
had
ventured to doubt the propriety of the term “improvement,” as applied to
the progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the five
or six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose some
vigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whose
truth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterly
obvious
—
principles which should have taught our race to submit to the
guidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. At
long intervals some masterminds appeared, looking upon each advance in
practical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally
the poetic intellect
—
that intellect which we now feel to have been the
most exalted of all
—
since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that
analogy
which speaks in
proof tones to the imagination alone and to the unaided reason bears no
weight
—
occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step farther
in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in the
mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbidden
fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was not
meet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men
—
the
poets
—
living and perishing amid the scorn of the “utilitarians”
—
of
rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been
properly applied only to the scorned
—
these men, the poets, pondered
piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were
not more simple than our enjoyments were keen
—
days when
mirth
was a
word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness
—
holy, august and
blissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into
far forest solitudes, primæval, odorous, and unexplored.

Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to
strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil of
all our evil days. The great “movement”
—
that was the cant term
—
went
on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art
—
the Arts
—
arose
supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which had
elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge the
majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired and
still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked a
God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might be
supposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system,
and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among other
odd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face of
analogy and of God
—
in despite of the loud warning voice of the laws
of
gradation
so visibly pervading all things in Earth and Heaven
—
wild
attempts at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang
necessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both know
and succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green
leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of
Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And
methinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the
far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we had
worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our
taste
, or rather
in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth,
it was at this crisis that taste alone
—
that faculty which, holding a
middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could
never safely have been disregarded
—
it was now that taste alone could
have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for
the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas
for the
mousika
which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for the
soul! Alas for him and for it!
—
since both were most desperately needed
when both were most entirely forgotten or despised.

Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!
—
“
que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment;
” and it is not
impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it,
would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh mathematical
reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely induced
by intemperance of knowledge the old age of the world drew on. This the
mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affected
not to see. But, for myself, the Earth's records had taught me to look
for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed a
prescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring,
with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more
crafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In history
of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individual
artificialities of the three latter were local diseases of the Earth,
and in their individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied;
but for the infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration
save in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw
that he must be “
born again
.”

And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits, daily,
in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the days to
come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone that
purification which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities,
should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes and
the smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fit
dwelling-place for man:
—
for man the Death purged
—
for man to whose now
exalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more
—
for the
redeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for the
material
, man.

Una.
Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epoch
of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and as
the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Men
lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into the
grave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And though
the century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thus
together once more, tortured our slumbering senses with no impatience of
duration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.

Monos.
Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, it
was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxieties
which had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbed
to the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamy
delirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistook
for pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you
—
after some
days there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionless
torpor; and this was termed
Death
by those who stood around me.

Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. It
appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him,
who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless and
fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back into
consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and without
being awakened by external disturbances.

I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased to
beat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses were
unusually active, although eccentrically so
—
assuming often each
other's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricably
confounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. The
rose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last,
affected me with sweet fancies of flowers
—
fantastic flowers, far more
lovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have here
blooming around us. The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered no
complete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the balls
could not roll in their sockets but all objects within the range of the
visual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rays
which fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye,
producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front or
interior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so far
anomalous that I appreciated it only as
sound
—
sound sweet or discordant
as the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark in
shade
—
curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time,
although excited in degree, was not irregular in action
—
estimating real
sounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility.
Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions were
tardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always in
the highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingers
upon my eyelids, at first only recognised through vision, at length,
long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delight
immeasurable. I say with a sensual delight.
All
my perceptions were
purely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by the
senses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceased
understanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was
much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild
sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and were
appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft
musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no
intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and
constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a
heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy
alone. And this was in truth the
Death
of which these bystanders spoke
reverently, in low whispers
—
you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin
—
three or four dark figures which flitted
busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they
affected me as
forms;
but upon passing to my side their images impressed
me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal expressions of
terror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed
in all directions musically about me.