Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow
(Thomas De Quincey, 1821)
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."