King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Ligeia


author: Edgar Allan Poe


genre: short story/horror


published: 1838


first line: I Cannot, for my soul, remember how, when, or even precisely where, I first became acquainted with the lady Ligeia.





In this short story an unnamed narrator is describing his wife Ligeia, claiming that she is beautiful, yet also strange looking. She's pale and thin with unusually large eyes.

Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they
became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

Ligeia falls ill and as her health begins to decline, the narrator knows she will die. She suffers and fights for her life. On her deathbed she asks him to read aloud verses she wrote a few days earlier.





After her death, the narrator moves away and buys an abbey in England. He begins to use Opium to ease his pain over the death of his wife. The narrator eventually remarries, his new bride is the Lady Rowena.

The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, the many melancholy and time-honored memories connected with both, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that
remote and unsocial region of the country.

His marriage is an unhappy one. He misses Ligeia so much that he can't fully love his second wife.



One line in particular made me laugh out loud. Yes, laugh while reading Poe.

I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.

That's harsh! I wondered why he married her then.




Lady Rowena becomes sick suffering from a chronic disease that has her bedridden and feverish. She tells the narrator that she thinks she sees and hears things in their room. He also thinks he sees something, but blames it on the opium.




After Rowena passes, she is wrapped for burial and the narrator is grieving at her deathbed, when he hears a low sobbing. He checks on his wife and thinks he sees color in her cheeks and her breathing, but he isn't sure. Throughout the night he keeps hearing sighs coming from the body. After many hours, he sees the body rise from the bed and walk to the center of the room. He's frozen in horror and when he looks at her face, her eyes look just like his beloved Ligeia's.



While this is not my favorite Poe, mostly because I felt the writing to be too mellow, I enjoyed it. I'm used to alot more darkness and intensity in his writing. I liked the creepy ending. I felt there was a mystery to the story because the since the narrator wasn't too reliable due to his opium habit, I was guessing as to what to believe or not.






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