The Slender Poe Anthology by Edgar Allan Poe Page B

odor,—there is a dream-like intermingling to the eye of tall slender Eastern trees—bosky shrubberies—flocks of golden and crimson birds—lily-fringed lakes—meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoses—long intertangled lines of silver streamlets—and, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic architecture sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii and of the Gnomes.

    First published as Life in Death in Graham’s (1842), it sustained serious cuts when it re-appeared in the Broadway Journal three years later with the title it now bears. An opening passage that began “My fever had been excessive and of long duration” was eliminated, along with any mention of the intake of opium.
    There is a painterly dimension to Poe’s work; remember the images he wants to project onto the canvas or screen of a reader’s mind come there through the skillful use of verbal description. No video camera was available.
    The act of reading, indeed, is emphasized by an old novelistic device, the reading of a text within the text. The small volume “found upon the pillow” will relate the history of how the painting came to be.
    Poe also presents us with one of the enduring problems every artist faces; how does one reconcile being married to Art as well as being married to another?

THE OVAL PORTRAIT
    The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance,rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass anight in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom andgrandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less infact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had beentemporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in oneof the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in aremote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tatteredand antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked withmanifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusuallygreat number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich goldenarabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not onlyin their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarrearchitecture of the chateau rendered necessary — in these paintings myincipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; sothat I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room — since it wasalready night — to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood bythe head of my bed — and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtainsof black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this donethat I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to thecontemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume whichhad been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise anddescribe them.
    Long — long I read — and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly andgloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came. The position ofthe candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty,rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw itsrays more fully upon the book.
    But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays ofthe numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche ofthe room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of thebed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. Itwas the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glancedat the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did thiswas not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lidsremained thus shut, I ran over in my mind