When I was finished reading Berenice, I thought wow that was a little autobiographical. "Berenice and I were cousins...Yet we grew differently...I living in my own heart, and addicred body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation...she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path.." (226). Poe was intellectual and made it a point in his writings to show this (obscure references, passages in other languages etc) while Virginia was more naive and not into serious study. Poe continues "Disease-a fatal disease-fell like the simoom upon her frame..."(226). Then the main character becomes monomaniac (OCD? that was my first thought) and fixated on one thing until it drives him mad. I felt like if we looked at this from an autobiographical stance this is the dark picture of his relationship with Virginia and living with illness and addiction. The ending was horrorfic and was almost like the description of a mental patient who finally remembers the reason he went mad in the first place (which in this case was obsession over the teeth!).
Yet Eleonora paints a different picture. "She whom I loved in youth...was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin."(468). The setting is calm, serene and beautiful. The imagery had me wishing to be in meadow rather then my bland bedroom. The love that was felt from the narrator and Eleonora was at a pinnacle on page 470: "Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before love entered within our hearts....we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the seperant like trees...We had drawn the God Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers." The ending of Eleonora was not grotesque like Berenice but a reminder of the vows the narrator had made to Eleonora. Unlike Berenice, the death in Eleonora did not involve removal of teeth (the teeth!) or gross clods of dirt and blood sticking to the oblivious narrator but peacefully.
Did anyone else find these stories to be an examination of Poes relationship with Virginia? Perhaps one more than the other or were they both different ends of the spectrum of his grief over her death?
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4 comments:
we can only draw that connection to virginia ourselves. however, poe said for the record of his attraction to the idea of a woman's death. Poe witnessed his mother's death at age 3, a traumatic event which i think served as a muse for his later writings. also: "The death of a beautiful woman, is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world. "
I like your notice of the teeth in "eleonora." when i saw it thrown in there, i knew there was a reason, a clue in the interweaving layers in the story.
firstly, we shant forget the initial paranoid proclamation "men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled." like many other poe works, this sets the bar for our perception of what he's about to tell us. are we going to be sceptical in all we read? should we trust the narrator's "story" as being accurate, or why would he distort its accuracy. by him saying this, we want to resolve the issue ourselves through the clues given.
we see a few clues throughout the story which lead us back to some of these initial statements.
in the first paragraph he speaks of wisdom being of good and knowledge being of evil. on pg 473, when he finds himself in 'a strange city,' he starts to lose control at the sight of a new maiden, with all signs of eleonora becoming 'dark before mine eyes.'
"Oh bright was the seraph Ermengarde!and in that KNOWLEDGE i had room for none other."
we see the loss of control, perhaps madness.
what i'm getting at is a simple allusion between teeth and losing control. namely, a common freud dream interpretation is this very issue. when you dream of losing your teeth, it is said that it means you subconsciously feel that you are losing control in your life or that you FEAR that you will lose control in your life. in the case of eleonora, the narrator is dealing with this very issue, as he has FEARED it in the first paragraph.
that's it. really. i just thought that was interesting.
In "Berenice", I believe that Poe used portions of his life to enhance story and theme rather than an autobiographical means to convey his personal life.
Quickly succeding the lines "Bernice and I were cousins..." Poe goes on to recall about her through "gray ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections" (226). I do not think this passage is autobiographical as much as it is merely telling a tale about a moment when he caught himself thinking of Virginia. To me, there seems to be a fine line between autobiographical and the telling of a story. Poe's use of narrative dialogue neglects the description of specific emotions, but rather is built upon the interpretation of the reader to explicate the feeling from the narrator's description of the memories and Berenice. Poe then completes the passage by stating, " --then all
is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told" (226). To me this confirms that his intentions are not autobiographical in nature; instead he is using the mystery and terror of the death of a beautiful woman, who could or could not be comapred to Virginia, to tell a simple tale. Although he may have pulled details from his own life in order to give perosnal depth to his text, the lack of descriptive emotion and acute detail is indicative that this is just a story: a tale.
Oh yes, Nicole. Very much so. There are many different elements of Poe's love and relationship for Virginia in the stories.
I certainly found some connection between these two stories and the death of Virginia. Though we can never be sure of the actual meaning, it is hard to ignore the similarities found within these female characters and that of his dead beloved. I believe you’re completely correct in guessing that these stories represent the two sides of the emotional spectrum that Poe was dealing with concerning Virginia’s death. Virginia suffered endlessly for many years, so although Poe was devastated by her loss, I’m sure he couldn’t help but feel a little bit of relief, if even only for her own soul. I feel like the tranquil feeling that you experienced while reading “Eleonora” represents this relief; the end to his beloveds pain.
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