Poe often themed loss in his inimitable ways while entering strange worlds on the wings of absinthe. Of course, life is the greatest loss of all--and he drilled into that misadventure on several occasions.
I suppose life can never be the same after taking the life of others to preserve your own and those on your side. Good of you to share that friendship and those personal thoughts with us.
I have not read that Poe story for so long. Powerful...
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"and the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
--Joseph Glanvill.
"O God!" half shrieked Ligeia, leaping to her feet and extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement, as I made an end of these lines -- "O God! O Divine Father! -- shall these things be undeviatingly so? -- shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who -- who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will."
And now, as if exhausted with emotion, she suffered her white arms to fall, and returned solemnly to her bed of death. And as she breathed her last sighs, there came mingled with them a low murmur from her lips. I bent to them my ear and distinguished, again, the concluding words of the passage in Glanvill -- "Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will." |
