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Updated: June 17, 2025
The story, then, divided itself into two parts: the first, in which Ligeia was alive, terminated with her death; and the second, in which she was dead, ended with her resurrection. Having thus arrived at the main outline of his plot, Poe was next forced to decide on the point of view from which the story should be told.
I fell back with a shudder upon the couch from which I had been so startlingly aroused, and again gave myself up to passionate waking visions of Ligeia. I listened in extremity of horror. The sound came again it was a sigh. Rushing to the corpse, I saw distinctly saw a tremor upon the lips. In a minute afterward they relaxed, disclosing a bright line of the pearly teeth.
It was likewise impossible to tell the tale from the point of view of an external omniscient personality. In order that the final and miraculous incident might seem convincing, it had to be narrated not impersonally but personally, not externally but by an eye-witness. Therefore, the story must, of course, be told by the husband of Ligeia. At this point the main outline was completed.
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.
Were his dreams of "Morella" and of "Ligeia" to come true? Was he to know in reality the miracle he had imagined and written of in these two phantasies? the reincarnation of personal identity? Was he in this second Helen, in this second garden, to find again the worshipped Helen of his boyhood?
Yet it was only at intervals in moments of intense excitement that this peculiarity became more than slightly noticeable in Ligeia. And at such moments was her beauty in my heated fancy thus it appeared perhaps the beauty of beings either above or apart from the earth the beauty of the fabulous Houri of the Turk.
Kipling has not always done so, because he has frequently used language more with manner than with style; but in his best stories, like "The Brushwood Boy" and "They," there is a unity of tone throughout the writing that sets them on the plane of highest art. The analysis of "Ligeia" which follows was first printed in the Reader for February, 1906.
Ah, word of no meaning! behind whose vast latitude of mere sound we intrench our ignorance of so much of the spiritual. The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it that something more profound than the well of Democritus which lay far within the pupils of my beloved?
Little by little the shadow lifted from over the cottage the shadow of the wings of the Angel of Death and sunshine fell where the shadow had been, and a soft zephyr made music, that was like the music of the voice of "Ligeia," in the trees which dropped their sheath of ice.
For this reason only he considered that 'Ligeia' might be called the best of his stories. Now, after a lapse of threescore years, the 'Fall of the House of Usher, with its "serene and somber beauty," would seem to deserve the first place of all.
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