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, 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."
