by Poe · Cluster: Self-Knowledge · Immortality · Self-Reliance
Abstract
A dialogue between two reunited souls after death describing the sensations of dying and bodily decay, framed by a critique of mechanical progress and modern civilization.
Testo / Text
Parti / Parts
Readability (prose)61.6 Flesch ease9.5 FK grade12.6 Fog12% complex19.3 words/sent
Connections
Motifs: Death, Decay Themes & Concepts: Mortality, Self-Knowledge, Critique of Progress, Immortality, Nature vs Civilization, Apocalypse
Testo integrale / Full text
Μελλοντα ταυτα.—SOPHOCLES—Antig.
“These things are in the near future.”
_ 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 μουσικη 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. {*1}
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 {*2} 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 {*3} 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.
The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed
by a vague uneasiness—an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when
sad real sounds fall continuously within his ear—low distant
bell-tones, solemn, at long but equal intervals, and mingling
with melancholy dreams. Night arrived; and with its shadows a
heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbs with the oppression of
some dull weight, and was palpable. There was also a moaning
sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, but more
continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown
in strength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into
the room, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted
into frequent unequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary
and less distinct. The ponderous oppression was in a great
measure relieved; and, issuing from the flame of each lamp, (for
there were many,) there flowed unbrokenly into my ears a strain
of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una, approaching the
bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently by my side,
breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them upon my
brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling with
the merely physical sensations which circumstances had called
forth, a something akin to sentiment itself—a feeling that, half
appreciating, half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but
this feeling took no root in the pulseless heart, and seemed
indeed rather a shadow than a reality, and faded quickly away,
first into extreme quiescence, and then into a purely sensual
pleasure as before.
And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, there
appeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its
exercise I found a wild delight—yet a delight still physical,
inasmuch as the understanding had in it no part. Motion in the
animal frame had fully ceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve
thrilled; no artery throbbed. But there seemed to have sprung up
in the brain, that of which no words could convey to the merely
human intelligence even an indistinct conception. Let me term it
a mental pendulous pulsation. It was the moral embodiment of
man’s abstract idea of Time. By the absolute equalization of this
movement—or of such as this—had the cycles of the firmamental
orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I measured the
irregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches
of the attendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The
slightest deviations from the true proportion—and these
deviations were omni-prevalent—affected me just as violations of
abstract truth were wont, on earth, to affect the moral sense.
Although no two of the time-pieces in the chamber struck the
individual seconds accurately together, yet I had no difficulty
in holding steadily in mind the tones, and the respective
momentary errors of each. And this—this keen, perfect,
self-existing sentiment of duration—this sentiment existing (as
man could not possibly have conceived it to exist) independently
of any succession of events—this idea—this sixth sense,
upspringing from the ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and
certain step of the intemporal soul upon the threshold of the
temporal Eternity.
It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had
departed from the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the
coffin. The lamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the
tremulousness of the monotonous strains. But, suddenly these
strains diminished in distinctness and in volume. Finally they
ceased. The perfume in my nostrils died away. Forms affected my
vision no longer. The oppression of the Darkness uplifted itself
from my bosom. A dull shock like that of electricity pervaded my
frame, and was followed by total loss of the idea of contact. All
of what man has termed sense was merged in the sole consciousness
of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration. The
mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the
deadly Decay.
Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and
the sentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a
lethargic intuition. I appreciated the direful change now in
operation upon the flesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware
of the bodily presence of one who leans over him, so, sweet Una,
I still dully felt that you sat by my side. So, too, when the
noon of the second day came, I was not unconscious of those
movements which displaced you from my side, which confined me
within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse, which
bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heaped
heavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness
and corruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.
And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose,
there rolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul watched
narrowly each second as it flew, and, without effort, took record
of its flight—without effort and without object.
A year passed. The consciousness of being had grown hourly more
indistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure,
usurped its position. The idea of entity was becoming merged in
that of place. The narrow space immediately surrounding what had
been the body, was now growing to be the body itself. At length,
as often happens to the sleeper (by sleep and its world alone is
Death imaged)—at length, as sometimes happened on Earth to the
deep slumberer, when some flitting light half startled him into
awaking, yet left him half enveloped in dreams—so to me, in the
strict embrace of the Shadow came that light which alone might
have had power to startle—the light of enduring Love. Men toiled
at the grave in which I lay darkling. They upthrew the damp
earth. Upon my mouldering bones there descended the coffin of
Una.
And now again all was void. That nebulous light had been
extinguished. That feeble thrill had vibrated itself into
quiescence. Many lustra had supervened. Dust had returned to
dust. The worm had food no more. The sense of being had at length
utterly departed, and there reigned in its stead—instead of all
things—dominant and perpetual—the autocrats Place and Time. For
that which was not—for that which had no form—for that which had
no thought—for that which had no sentience—for that which was
soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion—for all this
nothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a
home, and the corrosive hours, co-mates.