The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4 Read online

  THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA

  "These; things are in the future."

  Sophocles--Antig:

  _ Una._ "Born again?"

  _ Monos._ Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, "born again." These werethe words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered, rejectingthe explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself resolved for methe 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 areconfused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal. Yes,it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds that word whichof old was wont to bring terror to all hearts--throwing a mildew uponall pleasures!

  _ Una._ Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How often,Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature! Howmysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss--saying unto it "thusfar, and no farther!" That earnest mutual love, my own Monos, whichburned within our bosoms how vainly did we flatter ourselves, feelinghappy in its first up-springing, that our happiness would strengthenwith its strength! Alas! as it grew, so grew in our hearts the dread ofthat 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, forevernow!

  _ Una._ But the memory of past sorrow--is it not present joy? I havemuch to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn to knowthe incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and Shadow.

  _ Monos._ And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos invain? I will be minute in relating all--but at what point shall theweird narrative begin?

  _Una._ At what point?

  _Monos._ You have said.

  _Una._ Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned thepropensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then,commence with the moment of life's cessation--but commence with thatsad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into abreathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid eyelidswith the passionate fingers of love.

  _ Monos._ One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general conditionat this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the wise amongour forefathers--wise in fact, although not in the world's esteem--hadventured to doubt the propriety of the term "improvement," as applied tothe progress of our civilization. There were periods in each of the fiveor six centuries immediately preceding our dissolution, when arose somevigorous intellect, boldly contending for those principles whosetruth appears now, to our disenfranchised reason, so utterlyobvious--principles which should have taught our race to submit to theguidance of the natural laws, rather than attempt their control. Atlong intervals some masterminds appeared, looking upon each advance inpractical science as a retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionallythe poetic intellect--that intellect which we now feel to have been themost exalted of all--since those truths which to us were of the mostenduring importance could only be reached by that analogy which speaks inproof tones to the imagination alone and to the unaided reason bears noweight--occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a step fartherin the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic, and find in themystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge, and of its forbiddenfruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation that knowledge was notmeet for man in the infant condition of his soul. And these men--thepoets--living and perishing amid the scorn of the "utilitarians"--ofrough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have beenproperly applied only to the scorned--these men, the poets, ponderedpiningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants werenot more simple than our enjoyments were keen--days when mirth was aword unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august andblissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, intofar forest solitudes, primaeval, odorous, and unexplored.

  Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but tostrengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil ofall our evil days. The great "movement"--that was the cant term--wenton: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art--the Arts--arosesupreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect which hadelevated them to power. Man, because he could not but acknowledge themajesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at his acquired andstill-increasing dominion over her elements. Even while he stalked aGod in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came over him. As might besupposed from the origin of his disorder, he grew infected with system,and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself in generalities. Among otherodd ideas, that of universal equality gained ground; and in the face ofanalogy and of God--in despite of the loud warning voice of the lawsof gradation so visibly pervading all things in Earth an Heaven--wildattempts at an omni-prevalent Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprangnecessarily from the leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both knowand succumb. Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Greenleaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face ofNature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. Andmethinks, sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of thefar-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we hadworked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or ratherin the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in truth,it was at this crisis that taste alone--that faculty which, holding amiddle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, couldnever safely have been disregarded--it was now that taste alone couldhave led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas forthe pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alasfor the which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for thesoul! Alas for him and for it!--since both were most desperately neededwhen both were most entirely forgotten or despised. {*1}

  Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!--"quetout notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;" and it is notimpossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it,would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh mathematicalreason of the schools. But this thing was not to be. Prematurely inducedby intemperance of knowledge the old age of the world drew on. This themass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily although unhappily, affectednot to see. But, for myself, the Earth's records had taught me to lookfor widest ruin as the price of highest civilization. I had imbibed aprescience of our Fate from comparison of China the simple and enduring,with Assyria the architect, with Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, morecrafty than either, the turbulent mother of all Arts. In history {*2}of these regions I met with a ray from the Future. The individualartificialities 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 regenerationsave in death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I sawthat 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 tocome, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having undergone thatpurification {*3} which alone could efface its rectangular obscenities,should clothe itself anew in the verdure and the mountain-slopes andthe smiling waters of Paradise, and be rendered at length a fitdwelling-place for man:--for man the Death purged--for man to whose nowexalted intellect there should be poison in knowledge no more--for theredeemed, regenerated, blissful, and now immortal, but still for thematerial, man.

  _Una._ Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but the epochof the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we believed, and asthe corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in believing. Menlived; and died individually. You yourself sickened, and passed into thegrave; and thither your constant Una speedily followed you. And thoughthe century which has since elapsed, and whose conclusion brings us thustogether once more, tortured our slumber
ing senses with no impatience ofduration, yet, my Monos, it was a century still.

  _Monos._ Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity. Unquestionably, itwas in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at heart with anxietieswhich had their origin in the general turmoil and decay, I succumbedto the fierce fever. After some few days of pain, and many of dreamydelirium replete with ecstasy, the manifestations of which you mistookfor pain, while I longed but was impotent to undeceive you--after somedays there came upon me, as you have said, a breathless and motionlesstorpor; and this was termed Death by those who stood around me.

  Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of sentience. Itappeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme quiescence of him,who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying motionless andfully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal slowly back intoconsciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his sleep, and withoutbeing awakened by external disturbances.

  I breathed no longer. The pulses were still. The heart had ceased tobeat. Volition had not departed, but was powerless. The senses wereunusually active, although eccentrically so--assuming often eachother's functions at random. The taste and the smell were inextricablyconfounded, and became one sentiment, abnormal and intense. Therose-water with which your tenderness had moistened my lips to the last,affected me with sweet fancies of flowers--fantastic flowers, far morelovely than any of the old Earth, but whose prototypes we have hereblooming around us. The eyelids, transparent and bloodless, offered nocomplete impediment to vision. As volition was in abeyance, the ballscould not roll in their sockets but all objects within the range of thevisual hemisphere were seen with more or less distinctness; the rayswhich fell upon the external retina, or into the corner of the eye,producing a more vivid effect than those which struck the front orinterior surface. Yet, in the former instance, this effect was so faranomalous that I appreciated it only as sound--sound sweet or discordantas the matters presenting themselves at my side were light or dark inshade--curved or angular in outline. The hearing, at the same time,although excited in degree, was not irregular in action--estimating realsounds with an extravagance of precision, not less than of sensibility.Touch had undergone a modification more peculiar. Its impressions weretardily received, but pertinaciously retained, and resulted always inthe highest physical pleasure. Thus the pressure of your sweet fingersupon my eyelids, at first only recognised through vision, at length,long after their removal, filled my whole being with a sensual delightimmeasurable. I say with a sensual delight. All my perceptions werepurely sensual. The materials furnished the passive brain by thesenses were not in the least degree wrought into shape by the deceasedunderstanding. Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there wasmuch; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wildsobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and wereappreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were softmusical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason nointimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large andconstant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of aheart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasyalone. And this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spokereverently, in low whispers--you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

  They attired me for the coffin--three or four dark figures which flittedbusily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision theyaffected me as forms; but upon passing to my side their images impressedme with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal expressions ofterror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited in a white robe, passedin all directions musically about me.

  The day waned; and, as its light faded away, I became possessed by avague uneasiness--an anxiety such as the sleeper feels when sad realsounds fall continuously within his ear--low distant bell-tones, solemn,at long but equal intervals, and mingling with melancholy dreams. Nightarrived; and with its shadows a heavy discomfort. It oppressed my limbswith the oppression of some dull weight, and was palpable. There wasalso a moaning sound, not unlike the distant reverberation of surf, butmore continuous, which, beginning with the first twilight, had grown instrength with the darkness. Suddenly lights were brought into theroom, and this reverberation became forthwith interrupted into frequentunequal bursts of the same sound, but less dreary and less distinct. Theponderous oppression was in a great measure relieved; and, issuing fromthe flame of each lamp, (for there were many,) there flowed unbrokenlyinto my ears a strain of melodious monotone. And when now, dear Una,approaching the bed upon which I lay outstretched, you sat gently bymy side, breathing odor from your sweet lips, and pressing them uponmy brow, there arose tremulously within my bosom, and mingling withthe merely physical sensations which circumstances had called forth, asomething akin to sentiment itself--a feeling that, half appreciating,half responded to your earnest love and sorrow; but this feeling tookno root in the pulseless heart, and seemed indeed rather a shadow than areality, and faded quickly away, first into extreme quiescence, and theninto a purely sensual pleasure as before.

  And now, from the wreck and the chaos of the usual senses, thereappeared to have arisen within me a sixth, all perfect. In its exerciseI found a wild delight--yet a delight still physical, inasmuch as theunderstanding had in it no part. Motion in the animal frame had fullyceased. No muscle quivered; no nerve thrilled; no artery throbbed. Butthere seemed to have sprung up in the brain, that of which no wordscould convey to the merely human intelligence even an indistinctconception. Let me term it a mental pendulous pulsation. It was themoral embodiment of man's abstract idea of Time. By the absoluteequalization of this movement--or of such as this--had the cycles of thefirmamental orbs themselves, been adjusted. By its aid I measured theirregularities of the clock upon the mantel, and of the watches of theattendants. Their tickings came sonorously to my ears. The slightestdeviations from the true proportion--and these deviations wereomni-praevalent--affected me just as violations of abstract truth werewont, on earth, to affect the moral sense. Although no two of thetime-pieces in the chamber struck the individual seconds accuratelytogether, yet I had no difficulty in holding steadily in mind thetones, 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 ofany succession of events--this idea--this sixth sense, upspringing fromthe ashes of the rest, was the first obvious and certain step of theintemporal soul upon the threshold of the temporal Eternity.

  It was midnight; and you still sat by my side. All others had departedfrom the chamber of Death. They had deposited me in the coffin. Thelamps burned flickeringly; for this I knew by the tremulousness ofthe monotonous strains. But, suddenly these strains diminished indistinctness and in volume. Finally they ceased. The perfume in mynostrils died away. Forms affected my vision no longer. The oppressionof the Darkness uplifted itself from my bosom. A dull shock like thatof electricity pervaded my frame, and was followed by total loss of theidea of contact. All of what man has termed sense was merged in the soleconsciousness of entity, and in the one abiding sentiment of duration.The mortal body had been at length stricken with the hand of the deadlyDecay.

  Yet had not all of sentience departed; for the consciousness and thesentiment remaining supplied some of its functions by a lethargicintuition. I appreciated the direful change now in operation upon theflesh, and, as the dreamer is sometimes aware of the bodily presence ofone who leans over him, so, sweet Una, I still dully felt that you satby my side. So, too, when the noon of the second day came, I was notunconscious of those movements which displaced you from my side, whichconfined me within the coffin, which deposited me within the hearse,which bore me to the grave, which lowered me within it, which heapedheavily the mould upon me, and which thus left me, in blackness andcorruption, to my sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.

  And here, in the prison-house which has few secrets to disclose, thererolled away days and weeks and months; and the soul wa
tched narrowlyeach second as it flew, and, without effort, took record of itsflight--without effort and without object.

  A year passed. The consciousness of being had grown hourly moreindistinct, and that of mere locality had, in great measure, usurped itsposition. The idea of entity was becoming merged in that of place. Thenarrow space immediately surrounding what had been the body, was nowgrowing to be the body itself. At length, as often happens to thesleeper (by sleep and its world alone is Death imaged)--at length, assometimes happened on Earth to the deep slumberer, when some flittinglight half startled him into awaking, yet left him half enveloped indreams--so to me, in the strict embrace of the Shadow came that lightwhich 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 dampearth. 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 hadsupervened. Dust had returned to dust. The worm had food no more. Thesense of being had at length utterly departed, and there reigned inits stead--instead of all things--dominant and perpetual--the autocratsPlace and Time. For that which was not--for that which had no form--forthat which had no thought--for that which had no sentience--for thatwhich was soulless, yet of which matter formed no portion--for all thisnothingness, yet for all this immortality, the grave was still a home,and the corrosive hours, co-mates.