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Levana And Our Ladies Of Sorrow
Levana And Our Ladies Of Sorrow
Introductory Note
Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859) was born at Manchester, England, the son
of a merchant of literary tastes. He was a precocious student, but, revolting
from the tyranny of his schoolmaster, he ran away, and wandered in Wales and
in London, at times almost destitute. On his reconciliation with his family he
was sent to Oxford, and during this period began taking opium. The rest of his
life was spent mainly in the Lake Country, near Wordsworth and Coleridge,
later in London, and finally in Edinburgh and the neighborhood. He succeeded
in checking but not abandoning his addiction to the drug, the craving for
which was caused by a chronic disease which nothing else would alleviate.
Most of De Quincey`s writings were published in periodicals, and cover a
great range of subjects. He was a man of immense reading, with an intellect of
extraordinary subtlety, but with a curious lack of practical ability. Though
generous to recklessness in money matters, and an affectionate friend and
father, his predominating intellectuality led him even in his writings to
analyze the characters of his friends with a detachment that sometimes led to
estrangement.
His most famous work, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater" (1821)
was based on his own experiences, and it has long held its place as a classic.
Here, and still more in his literary and philosophical writings, he shows a
remarkable clearness and precision of style, his love of exact thinking at
times leading him to hair-splitting in his more abstruse discussions. In
what he called the "department of impassioned prose," of which the following
piece is one of the most magnificent examples, he has a field in which he is
unsurpassed. To the power of thought and expression found throughout his work
is here added a gorgeousness of imagination that lifts his finest passages
into the region of the sublime.
Levana And Our Ladies Of Sorrow
Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. I knew her by her Roman
symbols. Who is Levana? Reader, that do not pretend to have much leisure for
very much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for telling you. Levana
was the Roman goddess that performed for the new - born infant the earliest
office of ennobling kindness, - typical, by its mode, of that grandeur which
belongs to man everywhere, and of that benignity in powers invisible which
even in pagan worlds sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of
birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our
troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. But immediately, lest so grand a
creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal
hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the
father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world,
and presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in his heart,
"Behold what is greater than yourselves!" This symbolic act represented the
function of Levana. And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face
(except to me in dreams), but always acted by delegation, had her name from
the Latin verb (as still it is the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft.
This is the explanation of Levana, and hence it has arisen that some
people have understood by Levana the tutelary power that controls the
education of the nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a
prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, far less could be
supposed to suffer the real degradation attaching to the non - development of
his powers. She therefore watches over human education. Now the word educo,
with the penultimate short, was derived (by a process often exemplified in the
crystallisation of languages) from the word educo, with the penultimate long.
Whatever educes, or develops, educates. By the education of Levana, therefore,
is meant, - not the poor machinery that moves by spelling - books and
grammars, but by that mighty system of central forces hidden in the deep bosom
of human life, which by passion, by strife, by temptation, by the energies of
resistance, works for ever upon children, - resting not night or day, any more
than the mighty wheel of day and night themselves, whose moments, like
restless spokes, are glimmering for ever as they revolve.
If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana works, how profoundly
must she reverence the agencies of grief. But you, reader! think, - that
children are not liable to such grief as mine. There are two senses in the
word generally - the sense of Euclid, where it means universally (or in the
whole extent of the genus), and in a foolish sense of this word, where it
means usually. Now, I am far from saying that children universally are capable
of grief like mine. But there are more than you ever heard of who die of grief
in this island of ours. I will tell you a common case. The rules of Eton
require that a boy on the foundation should be there twelve years: he is
superannuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at six. Children torn
away from mothers and sisters at that age not unfrequently die. I speak of
what I know. The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief; but that
it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has killed more than have ever
been counted amongst its martyrs.
Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the powers that shake a
man`s heart: therefore it is that she dotes on grief. "These ladies," said I
softly to myself, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was conversing,
"these are the Sorrows; and they are three in number, as the Graces are three,
who dress man`s life with beauty; the Parcoe are three, who weave the dark
arras of man`s life in their mysterious loom, always with colours sad in part,
sometimes angry with tragic crimson and black; the Furies are three, who visit
with retribution called from the other side of the grave offences that walk
upon this; and once even the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the
trumpet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man`s impassioned creations.
These are the Sorrows, all three of whom I know."
The last words I say now; but in Oxford I said, "One of whom I know, and
the others too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent youth, I saw
(dimly relieved upon the dark background of my dreams) the imperfect
lineaments of the awful sisters. These sisters - by what name shall we call
them? If I say simply, "The Sorrows," there will be a chance of mistaking the
term; it might be understood of individual sorrow, - separate cases of sorrow,
- whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstractions that incarnate
themselves in all individual sufferings of man`s heart; and I wish to have
these abstractions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed with human
attributes of life, and with functions pointing to flesh. Let us call them,
therefore, Our Ladies of Sorrow. I know them thoroughly, and have walked in
all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of one mysterious household; and
their paths are wide apart; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I saw
often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about myself. Do they talk, then?
O, no! mighty phantoms like these disdain the infirmities of language. They
may utter voices through the organs of man when they dwell in human hearts,
but amongst themselves there is no voice nor sound; eternal silence reigns in
their kingdoms. They spoke not, as they talked with Levana; they whispered
not; they sang not; though oftentimes methought they might have sung, for I
upon earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered by harp and
timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like God, whose servants they are, they utter
their pleasure, not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, but by
signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses in secret rivers, heraldries
painted on darkness, and hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain.
They wheeled in mazes; I spelled the steps. They telegraphed from afar; I read
the signals. They conspired together; and on the mirrors of darkness my eye
traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols; mine are the words.
What is it the sisters are? What is it that they do? Let me describe
their form, and their presence: if form it were that still fluctuated in its
outline, or presence it were that for ever advanced to the front, or for ever
receded amongst shades.
The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears.
She it is that night and day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She
stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamentation, - Rachel weeping for
her children, and refusing to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem
on the night when Herod`s sword swept its nurseries of Innocents, and the
little feet were stiffened for ever, which,heard at times as they tottered
along floors overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that were not
unmarked in heaven.
Her eyes are sweet and subtle, wild and sleepy, by turns; oftentimes
rising to the clouds, oftentimes challenging the heavens. She wears a diadem
round her head. And I knew by childish memories that she could go abroad upon
the winds, when she heard the sobbing of litanies or the thundering of organs,
and when she beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, the eldest,
it is that carries keys more than papal at her girdle, which open every
cottage and every palace. She, to my knowledge, sat all last summer by the
bedside of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly I talked with,
whose pious daughter, eight years old, with the sunny countenance, resisted
the temptations of play and village mirth to travel all day long on dusty
roads with her afflicted father. For this did God send her a great reward. In
the spring - time of the year, and whilst yet her own Spring was budding, he
recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns for ever over her; still
he dreams at midnight that the little guiding hand is locked within his own;
and still he wakens to a darkness that is now within a second and a deeper
darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum has also been sitting all this winter of 1844
- 5 within the bed - chamber of the Czar, bringing before his eyes a daughter
(not less pious) that vanished to God not less suddenly, and left behind her a
darkness not less profound. By the power of the keys it is that Our Lady of
tears glides a ghostly intruder into the chambers of sleepless men, sleepless
women, sleepless children, from Ganges to Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. And
her, because she is the first - born of her house, and has the widest empire,
let us honour with the title of "Madonna!"
The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum - Our Lady of Sighs. She
never scales the clouds, nor walks abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem.
And her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither sweet nor subtle; no
man could read their story; they would be found filled with perishing dreams,
and with wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her eyes; her head,
on which sits a dilapidated turban, droops for ever, for ever fastens on the
dust. She weeps not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at intervals. Her
sister, Madonna, is oftentimes stormy and frantic, raging in the highest
against heaven, and demanding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs never
clamours, never defies, dreams not of rebellious aspirations. She is humble to
abjectness. Hers is the meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she may,
but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight;
Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as
she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest.
This sister is the visitor of the Pariah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the
oar in the Mediterranean galleys; and of the English criminal in Norfolk
Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance in sweet far - off England;
of the baffled penitent reverting his eyes for ever upon a solitary grave,
which to him seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody sacrifice, on
which altar no oblations can now be availing, whether towards pardon that he
might implore, or towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave that
at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid reproach, as he points with
one hand to the earth, our general mother, but for him a stepmother, - as he
points with the other hand to the Bible, our general teacher, but against him
sealed and sequestered; - every woman sitting in darkness, without love to
shelter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because the heaven - born
instincts kindling in her nature germs of holy affections which God implanted
in her womanly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, now burn
sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps amongst the ancients; every nun
defrauded of her unreturning May - time by wicked kinsman, whom God will
judge; every captive in every dungeon; all that are betrayed and all that are
rejected outcasts by traditionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace, -
all these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries a key; but she needs
it little. For her kingdom is chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the
houseless vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest walks of man she
finds chapels of her own; and even in glorious England there are some that, to
the world, carry their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet secretly have
received her mark upon their foreheads. But the third sister, who is also the
youngest -! Hush, whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or
else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her
head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight.
She droops not; and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance; but,
being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crape
which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for
matins or for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for
flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She
is also the mother of lunacies, and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the
roots of her power; but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can
approach only those in whom a profound nature has been upheaved by central
convulsions; in whom the heart trembles, and the brain rocks under
conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves
with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of
Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with
incalculable motions, bounding, and with tiger`s leaps. She carries no key;
for, though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is
permitted to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tenebrarum - Our Lady of
Darkness.
These were the Semnai Theai, or Sublime Goddesses, these were the
Eumenides, or Gracious Ladies (so called by antiquity in shuddering
propitiation), of my Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her mysterious
hand. Touching my head, she said to Our Lady of Sighs; and what she spoke,
translated out of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, was this: -
"Lo! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to my altars. This is he
that once I made my darling. Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven
I stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did he become idolatrous; and
through me it was, by languishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and
prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to him; lovely was its darkness;
saintly its corruption. Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee,
dear gentle Sister of Sighs! Do thou take him now to thy heart, and season him
for our dreadful sister. And thou," - turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she
said, - "wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take him from her.
See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his head. Suffer not woman and her
tenderness to sit near him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope,
wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountain of tears, curse him as only
thou canst curse. So shall he be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see
the things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abominable, and secrets
that are unutterable. So shall he read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths,
fearful truths. So shall he rise again before he dies, and so shall our
commission be accomplished which from God we had, - to plague his heart until
we had unfolded the capacities of his spirit."
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