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LIFE IN DEATH.

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by Edgar A. Poe
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Elgi e vive e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio.

(Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.)

My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Appennine region had been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau, was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood - of which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I has acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was employed. Usually, I had half filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar affects; at other times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the affect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them I had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken, than myself - and thus, in the sad emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed by degrees. I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week. No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses - it was the dull delirium which already oppressed me - that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason - which blinded me to the folly of defining any thing as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard for comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might, in fact, be an excessively large one. On the contrary I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in possession. The portion which, in conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.

The chateau into which Pedro had ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition to pass a night in the open air, was one of those fantastic piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have for so long frowned among the Appennine, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we expected the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for the intrusion. Meantime, that this intrusion might be taken in better part, we had established ourselves in one of the smallest and sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with and unusually great number of spirited and modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these painting, which depended from all walls not only in there main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary - in these painting my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed the opium, as before I told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room - since it was already night - to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed - and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticize and describe them.

Long - long I read - and devoutly, devoutly I gazed. I felt meantime, the voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to my brain. I felt that in its magnificent influence lay much of the glorious richness and variety of the frames-much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas - and much of the wild interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness rather strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it weakened the illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I so placed it as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.

But the action produced an affect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bedposts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was a portrait of a young girl just ripened into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought - to make sure that my vision had not deceived me - to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me into waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.

The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders , done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair, melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shallow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly, yet fantastically gilded and filigreed. As a work of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. The loveliness of the face surpassed that of the fabulous Houri. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half-slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting and of the frame must have instantly dispelled such idea - must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for some hours perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied of the true secret of the effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in a perfect life-likeliness of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and appalled me. I could no longer support the sad meaning smile of the half-parted lips, nor the too real lustre of the wild eye. With deep and reverent awe I placed the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I then read the vague and quaint words which follow:

"She was a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely than full of glee: all light and smiles and frolicsome as the young fawn: loving and cherishing all things: hating only the art which was her rival: dreading only the pallet and brushes and the untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see the light which fell so ghastily in the lone turret withered the health and the spirit of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who has high renown,) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and week. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of a power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter has grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him. And when many weeks had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, which yet he gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice 'This is indeed Life itself!' turned himself suddenly round to his beloved - who was dead. The painter added - 'But is this indeed Death?'"

Poe and his wife, Virginia Clemm

a bonus poem by Poe from the same publication.

TO ONE DEPARTED - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Seraph! thy memory is to me
Like some enchanted far-off isle
In some tumultuous sea -
Some ocean vexed as it may be
With storms; but where, meanwhile,
Serenest skies continually
Just o'er that one bright island smile.

For 'mid the earnest cares and woes
That crowd around my earthly path,
(Sad path, alas, where grows
Not even one lonely rose!)
My soul at least a solace hath
In dreams of thee; and therein knows
An Eden of bland repose.

Email: dsteele@AntiqueZone.com

updated Nov. 17, 2007 originally created 1996