by Poe · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A Byronic stranger in Venice and the married Marchesa Aphrodite share a forbidden love that ends in their simultaneous death by poison at the appointed hour; a tale of love-as-religion, doomed passion and aestheticism.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)59.9 Flesch ease10.2 FK grade13.1 Fog12% complex21.1 words/sent
Connections
Topoi: Love as Religion, Unattainable Beloved Archetypes: Lover, Outsider Motifs: Love, Death, Water, Mirror, Music and Song, Money and Gold Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Beauty, Grief and Loss, Melancholy, Mortality Forms & Genres: Short Story Historical References: Classical Antiquity Settings: Venice, Italy, Europe
Testo integrale / Full text
Stay for me there! I will not fail. To meet thee in that hollow vale.
(Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester.)
Ill-fated and mysterious man!—bewildered in the brilliancy of
thine own imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own
youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath
risen before me!—not—oh! not as thou art—in the cold valley and
shadow—but as thou _shouldst be_—squandering away a life of
magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own
Venice—which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and the wide
windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and
bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I
repeat it—as thou _shouldst be_. There are surely other worlds
than this—other thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude—other
speculations than the speculations of the sophist. Who then shall
call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary
hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life,
which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the
_Ponte di Sospiri_, that I met for the third or fourth time the
person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I
bring to mind the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I
remember—ah! how should I forget?—the deep midnight, the Bridge
of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that
stalked up and down the narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza
had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of
the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old
Ducal Palace were dying fast away. I was returning home from the
Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived
opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from
its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in one wild,
hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the sound, I
sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single
oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery,
and we were consequently left to the guidance of the current
which here sets from the greater into the smaller channel. Like
some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were slowly drifting
down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux
flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal
Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and
preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen
from an upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim
canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim;
and, although my own gondola was the only one in sight, many a
stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon
the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only
within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the
entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a
figure which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It
was the Marchesa Aphrodite—the adoration of all Venice—the gayest
of the gay—the most lovely where all were beautiful—but still the
young wife of the old and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of
that fair child, her first and only one, who now, deep beneath
the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her
sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to
call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the
black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more
than half loosened for the night from its ball-room array,
clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her
classical head, in curls like those of the young hyacinth. A
snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly the sole
covering to her delicate form; but the mid-summer and midnight
air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like
form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapor
which hung around it as the heavy marble hangs around the Niobe.
Yet—strange to say!—her large lustrous eyes were not turned
downwards upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay
buried—but riveted in a widely different direction! The prison of
the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all
Venice—but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when
beneath her lay stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche,
too, yawns right opposite her chamber window—what, then, _could_
there be in its shadows—in its architecture—in its ivy-wreathed
and solemn cornices—that the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered
at a thousand times before? Nonsense!—Who does not remember that,
at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror,
multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable
far-off places, the woe which is close at hand?
Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the
water-gate, stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of
Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a
guitar, and seemed _ennuye_ to the very death, as at intervals he
gave directions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and
aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright position I
had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have
presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and
ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I
floated down among them in that funereal gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the
search were relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy
sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child; (how much
less than for the mother!) but now, from the interior of that
dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of
the Old Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the
Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach
of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy
descent, plunged headlong into the canal. As, in an instant
afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing child
within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by the side of the
Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became
unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to
the wonder-stricken spectators the graceful person of a very
young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of
Europe was then ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now
receive her child—she will press it to her heart—she will cling
to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas!
_another’s_ arms have taken it from the stranger—_another’s_ arms
have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the
palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip trembles;
tears are gathering in her eyes—those eyes which, like Pliny’s
acanthus, are “soft and almost liquid.” Yes! tears are gathering
in those eyes—and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the
soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the
marble countenance, the swelling of the marble bosom, the very
purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a
tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder quivers about
her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich
silver lilies in the grass.
Why _should_ that lady blush! To this demand there is no
answer—except that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of
a mother’s heart, the privacy of her own _boudoir_, she has
neglected to enthral her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly
forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders that drapery which
is their due. What other possible reason could there have been
for her so blushing?—for the glance of those wild appealing
eyes?—for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?—for the
convulsive pressure of that trembling hand?—that hand which fell,
as Mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of
the stranger. What reason could there have been for the low—the
singularly low tone of those unmeaning words which the lady
uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? “Thou hast conquered,”
she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me; “thou hast
conquered—one hour after sunrise—we shall meet—so let it be!”
The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the
palace, and the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon
the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye
glanced around in search of a gondola. I could not do less than
offer him the service of my own; and he accepted the civility.
Having obtained an oar at the water-gate, we proceeded together
to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-possession,
and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great
apparent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being
minute. The person of the stranger—let me call him by this title,
who to all the world was still a stranger—the person of the
stranger is one of these subjects. In height he might have been
below rather than above the medium size: although there were
moments of intense passion when his frame actually _expanded_ and
belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of his
figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at
the Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has
been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more
dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity—singular,
wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows varied from pure hazel to
intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling, black hair,
from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at
intervals all light and ivory—his were features than which I have
seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble
ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance was,
nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period
of their lives, and have never afterwards seen again. It had no
peculiar, it had no settled predominant expression to be fastened
upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgotten, but
forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of recalling it
to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any
time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that
face—but that the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the
passion, when the passion had departed.
Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me,
in what I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him _very_ early
the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself
accordingly at his Palazzo, one of those huge structures of
gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the
Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad
winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose
unparalleled splendor burst through the opening door with an
actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his
possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of
ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not
bring myself to believe that the wealth of any subject in Europe
could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and
blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still
brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well
as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend,
that he had not retired to bed during the whole of the preceding
night. In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the
evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention
had been paid to the _decora_ of what is technically called
_keeping_, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered
from object to object, and rested upon none—neither the
_grotesques_ of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the
best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich
draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibration of
low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. The
senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes,
reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with
multitudinous flaring and flickering tongues of emerald and
violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the
whole, through windows, formed each of a single pane of
crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand
reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like
cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at
length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in
subdued masses upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth of
Chili gold.
“Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!”—laughed the proprietor, motioning me to
a seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at
full-length upon an ottoman. “I see,” said he, perceiving that I
could not immediately reconcile myself to the _bienseance_ of so
singular a welcome—“I see you are astonished at my apartment—at
my statues—my pictures—my originality of conception in
architecture and upholstery! absolutely drunk, eh, with my
magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice
dropped to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my
uncharitable laughter. You appeared so _utterly_ astonished.
Besides, some things are so completely ludicrous, that a man
_must_ laugh or die. To die laughing, must be the most glorious
of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was Sir
Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in
the _Absurdities_ of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of
characters who came to the same magnificent end. Do you know,
however,” continued he musingly, “that at Sparta (which is now
Palæochori,) at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among
a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of _socle_, upon
which are still legible the letters ΛΑΞΜ. They are undoubtedly
part of ΓΕΛΑΞΜΑ. Now, at Sparta were a thousand temples and
shrines to a thousand different divinities. How exceedingly
strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the
others! But in the present instance,” he resumed, with a singular
alteration of voice and manner, “I have no right to be merry at
your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot
produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My
other apartments are by no means of the same order—mere _ultras_
of fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashion—is it not?
Yet this has but to be seen to become the rage—that is, with
those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony.
I have guarded, however, against any such profanation. With one
exception, you are the only human being besides myself and my
_valet_, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these
imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened as you see!”
I bowed in acknowledgment—for the overpowering sense of splendor
and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity
of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in
words, my appreciation of what I might have construed into a
compliment.
“Here,” he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered
around the apartment, “here are paintings from the Greeks to
Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen,
as you see, with little deference to the opinions of Virtu. They
are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this.
Here, too, are some _chefs d’oeuvre_ of the unknown great; and
here, unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose
very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence
and to me. What think you,” said he, turning abruptly as he
spoke—“what think you of this Madonna della Pieta?”
“It is Guido’s own!” I said, with all the enthusiasm of my
nature, for I had been poring intently over its surpassing
loveliness. “It is Guido’s own!—how _could_ you have obtained
it?—she is undoubtedly in painting what the Venus is in
sculpture.”
“Ha!” said he thoughtfully, “the Venus—the beautiful Venus?—the
Venus of the Medici?—she of the diminutive head and the gilded
hair? Part of the left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be
heard with difficulty,) and all the right, are restorations; and
in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the quintessence
of all affectation. Give _me_ the Canova! The Apollo, too, is a
copy—there can be no doubt of it—blind fool that I am, who cannot
behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help—pity
me!—I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates
who said that the statuary found his statue in the block of
marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his
couplet—
‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.’”
It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the
true gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the
bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to
determine in what such difference consists. Allowing the remark
to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanor of my
acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more
fully applicable to his moral temperament and character. Nor can
I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place
him so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by
calling it a _habit_ of intense and continual thought, pervading
even his most trivial actions—intruding upon his moments of
dalliance—and interweaving itself with his very flashes of
merriment—like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the
grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.
I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the
mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly
descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of
trepidation—a degree of nervous _unction_ in action and in
speech—an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at
all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me
with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence
whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be
listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary
expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had
existence in his imagination alone.
It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent
abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet and scholar
Politian’s beautiful tragedy “The Orfeo,” (the first native
Italian tragedy,) which lay near me upon an ottoman, I discovered
a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end
of the third act—a passage of the most heart-stirring
excitement—a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no
man shall read without a thrill of novel emotion—no woman without
a sigh. The whole page was blotted with fresh tears; and, upon
the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines, written
in a hand so very different from the peculiar characters of my
acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in recognising it as his
own:—
Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers; And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “Onward!”—but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies, Mute—motionless—aghast!
For alas! alas! with me The light of life is o’er. “No more—no more—no more,” (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore,) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar!
Now all my hours are trances; And all my nightly dreams Are where the dark eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams, In what ethereal dances, By what Italian streams.
Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o’er the billow, From Love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow!— From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!
That these lines were written in English—a language with which I
had not believed their author acquainted—afforded me little
matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his
acquirements, and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing
them from observation, to be astonished at any similar discovery;
but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little
amazement. It had been originally written _London_, and
afterwards carefully overscored—not, however, so effectually as
to conceal the word from a scrutinizing eye. I say, this
occasioned me no little amazement; for I well remember that, in a
former conversation with a friend, I particularly inquired if he
had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni, (who for
some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city,)
when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he
had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as
well here mention, that I have more than once heard, (without, of
course, giving credit to a report involving so many
improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak, was not only
by birth, but in education, an _Englishman_.
“There is one painting,” said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy—“there is still one painting which you have not seen.” And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length portrait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With her left she pointed downward to a curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth; and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois, quivered instinctively upon my lips:
“He is up
There like a Roman statue! He will stand Till Death hath made him marble!”
“Come,” he said at length, turning towards a table of richly
enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets
fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases,
fashioned in the same extraordinary model as that in the
foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be
Johannisberger. “Come,” he said, abruptly, “let us drink! It is
early—but let us drink. It is _indeed_ early,” he continued,
musingly, as a cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the
apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise: “It is _indeed_
early—but what matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out an
offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and censers
are so eager to subdue!” And, having made me pledge him in a
bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the
wine.
“To dream,” he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of
the magnificent vases—“to dream has been the business of my life.
I have therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of
dreams. In the heart of Venice could I have erected a better? You
behold around you, it is true, a medley of architectural
embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by antediluvian
devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets
of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone.
Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears
which terrify mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent.
Once I was myself a decorist; but that sublimation of folly has
palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose.
Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in fire, and
the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder
visions of that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly
departing.” He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom,
and seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At
length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated the
lines of the Bishop of Chichester:
_“Stay for me there! I will not fail_
_To meet thee in that hollow vale.”_
In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw
himself at full-length upon an ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock
at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a
second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni’s household burst into
the room, and faltered out, in a voice choking with emotion, the
incoherent words, “My mistress!—my mistress!—Poisoned!—poisoned!
Oh, beautiful—oh, beautiful Aphrodite!”
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the
sleeper to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs
were rigid—his lips were livid—his lately beaming eyes were
riveted in _death_. I staggered back towards the table—my hand
fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet—and a consciousness of
the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my soul.