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I have spoken of the learning of Ligeia: it was immense such as I have never known in woman. In the classical tongues was she deeply proficient, and as far as my own acquaintance extended in regard to the modern dialects of Europe, I have never known her at fault.
In a poem named "Ligeia," under which title he intended to personify the music of nature, our boy-poet gives us the following exquisite picture: John Neal, himself a man of genius, and whose lyre has been too long capriciously silent, appreciated the high merit of these and similar passages, and drew a proud horoscope for their author. Mr.
Hence, although, in writing the first part of the story, he devoted several pages to the description of the heroine, he dismissed the Lady Rowena, in the second part, with only two descriptive epithets, "fair-haired and blue-eyed," to distinguish her briefly from the dark-eyed and raven-haired Ligeia. With the help of this convenient body, it was easy for Poe to develop his final scene.
In other words, should this first half of the story be a description or a conversation? The matter was easy to decide. The method of conversation was unavailable; because a dialogue between Ligeia and her husband would keep the attention of the reader hovering from one to the other, whereas it was necessary for the purpose of the tale to focus all of the attention on Ligeia.
But the deep, low tones of her speaking voice, full of restrained feeling, could only be compared by her husband to the melodious voice of the dream-woman, "Ligeia." They recalled to him the impression that the voice of the priest as he read the funeral rite over his dead mother had made upon his infant mind the impression of spoken music.
Love was, nevertheless, as necessary to this poet's soul as meat and drink were to his body, and in the No Man's Land, "out of space, out of time," which his fancy created and where it loved to stray, he fashioned for himself the weirdest, strangest lady ever loved by mortal. The name he gave her was "Ligeia."
Whether in the objective detail of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," with its subtle illusion of realism, or in the nuances and delicatest tonality of "Ligeia," he has left specimens of the different degrees of romance which have not been surpassed, conquering in all but that highest style of romantic writing where the romance lies in an emphasis upon the noblest traits of mankind.
Let us see how, starting with the theme of the story, Poe developed step by step the structure of his finished fabric; and how, granted his preëstablished design, the progress of his plan was in every step inevitable. The theme of "Ligeia" was evidently suggested by those lines from Joseph Glanvill which, quoted as a motto for the story, are thrice repeated during the course of the narrative:
In the realm of letters, a real transformation scene, rendered credible to the higher fancy by its slow cumulative movement, is the tale of the change of the dying Rowena to the living triumphant Ligeia in Poe's story of that name. Substitution is not the fairy-story. It is transformation, transfiguration, that is the fairy-story, be it a divine or a diabolical change.
Poe wrote, "These are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes of my lost love of the Lady of the LADY LIGEIA": and the story was ended. For it must be absolutely understood that with whatever may have happened after that moment of entire recognition this particular story does not, and cannot, concern itself.
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