Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia"

This post contains spoilers.

A few weeks ago, I finished reading a collection of Edgar Allan Poe works.  When I read "Ligeia" in March, this sentence caught my attention:

Or, perhaps, I cannot now bring these points [the circumstances under which the narrator met Ligeia] to mind, because, in truth, the character of my beloved, her rare learning, her singular yet placid cast of beauty, and the thrilling and enthralling eloquence of her low musical language, made their way into my heart by paces so steadily and stealthily progressive, that they have been unnoticed and unknown.

At the time, I just noticed that a few of the phrases sound and look similar:  "thrilling and enthralling," "steadily and stealthily," and "unnoticed and unknown."  About two weeks later, I thought of a way that they fit with the plot of the story.  I recently re-reading it so I could write this post.

At the end of the story, after Rowena - the narrator's second wife - dies, she comes to life again but looks like and apparently has become Ligeia.  So those similar-sounding and similar-looking phrases from early in the story (it's the third sentence) act - in some ways - as an element of foreshadowing.  As Rowena's body is transformed into Ligeia's, so does "thrilling" change into "enthralling," "steadily" into "stealthily," and "unnoticed" into "unknown."  The words don't undergo as perfect a change as the body, but if they did, the same word would just appear twice.

Re-reading the story, I found a few other instances of foreshadowing.  While the narrator is describing Ligeia's eyes (which eventually prove to be the attribute that convinces him that Rowena's body has become Ligeia's), he compares the feeling he gets from them to "one or two stars in heaven... [that are] double and changeable."  When Ligeia falls ill, her eyes "blazed with a too - too glorious effulgence."  As she's dying, the narrator is "entranced to a melody more than mortal - to assumptions and aspirations which mortality had never before known."  Each of these descriptions foreshadows the later transformation.  There's the narrator's inconsistent count ("one or two") of the "double and changeable stars," the double "too" - also a homophone for two, and an-other pair of similar-sounding and similar-looking words: "assumptions and aspirations."

It's very subtle foreshadowing that doesn't become apparent until re-reading the story with the knowledge that Ligeia reappears at the end, but with that knowledge, the phrases that describe doubles and changing become more significant and more meaningful.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

I just wrote a short post about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, but - as it usually happens - after I posted it, I found something else I could have added.

Last July I started reading the whole Bible.  I'm only in Job so far, but I recently read something about Creation that seems to be an-other one of the Biblical parallels in the founding of Narnia that I wrote about last year.  God asks Job where he (Job) was when the earth was created:

"Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?  Tell me, if you have understanding.  Who determined its measurements - surely you know!  Or who stretched the line upon it?  On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"  (Job 38:4-7)

Because I'd just read The Magician's Nephew, "the morning stars [singing] together" sounded really familiar.  In Chapter Eight, the whole company of characters are standing in darkness when they start to hear singing.

Then two wonders happened at the same moment.  One was that the voice was suddenly joined by the other voices; more voices than you could possibly count.  They were in harmony with it, but far higher up the scale:  cold, tingling, silvery voices.  The second wonder was that the blackness overhead, all at once, was blazing with stars.  ...  The new stars and the new voices began at exactly the same time.  If you had seen and heard it, as Digory did, you would have felt quite certain that it was the stars themselves which were singing, and that it was the First Voice, the deep one, which had made them appear and made them sing.

I'm not sure if the stars' singing is meant to be a reference to that passage in Job, but since the founding of Narnia has connections to the Creation account in Genesis and since that Job passage also deals with Creation, I think there's something to it.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew

I recently started re-reading The Chronicles of Narnia books (I read them all around this time last year).

In Chapter Five of The Magician's Nephew, the Queen explains The Deplorable Word to Digory and Polly:  "It had long been known to the great kings of our race that there was a word which, if spoken with the proper ceremonies, would destroy all living things except the one who spoke it."

I didn't realize this the first time I read that part (because The Deplorable Word comes first), but The Deplorable Word is sort of the opposite of what Aslan does in Chapters Eight and Nine.  He sings Narnia into existence:

When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she [Polly] felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before.  And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction.  Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) "out of the Lion's head".  When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked around you, you saw them.

Where Aslan's singing brings things into life and existence, the Queen's Deplorable Word "destroy[s] all living things."

Les Misérables (Part I, Book Seven, Chapter 11)

This post contains spoilers.

In reading Les Misérables, I recently got to the courtroom scene where Monsieur Madeleine reveals his true identity as Jean Valjean.  He does this to protect Champmathieu, who was thought to be Jean Valjean and who was going to be sent to the galleys for life.  In the preceding chapters, it was explained that Champmathieu allegedly stole a branch of apples.  The particular object of his alleged theft got me thinking about religious parallels here, and in Chapter 11 ("Champmathieu More and More Astonished"), I found many of them.

First, from the previous chapters, Champmathieu's alleged theft of apples is a parallel to Adam and Eve's taking the forbidden fruit from the tree in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:6).  Jean Valjean intercedes for him, and in doing so, I found a lot of parallels between Valjean and Christ.  By correcting the misplacement of the identity, Valjean obviates the punishment that Champmathieu would have been faced with.  Similarly, Christ takes on humanity's punishment in the crucifixion.  To some degree, 1 Corinthians 15:22 demonstrates this parallelism and Christ as a second Adam:  "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive."

Chapter 11 itself starts with a description of Monsieur Madeleine (not yet revealed as Jean Valjean).  It's specifically noted that "his hair, already grey when he came to Arras, was now perfectly white."  There's a footnote in my edition that explains that "To have hair turn white overnight from an emotional shock is a common melodramatic device in nineteenth-century fiction."  I suppose "emotional shock" is a valid reading, but if Valjean is Christ-like in his intercession, that whiteness demonstrates purity and even the Transfiguration.  Later in the chapter, the narrator says, "Nobody said to himself that he there beheld the effulgence of a great light, yet all felt dazzled at heart."  The revelation of Valjean's identity is also called a "luminous fact."  This isn't too different from "And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light" (Matthew 17:2).  Valjean reveals his identity before Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille, three of his former galley-mates, and Christ's identity as true God at His Transfiguration is revealed before Peter, James, and John, three of his disciples.  After Valjean provides some details about some suspenders that Brevet owned in the galley, Brevet is "struck with surprise" and "gazed wildly at him" - a reaction that isn't too dissimilar from the disciples:  "When the disciples heard this ["This is my beloved Son"], they fell on their faces and were terrified" (Matthew 17:6).

Immediately after Valjean reveals his identity, "That species of religious awe was felt in the hall," and as he leaves the courtroom, "there was at this moment an indescribable divinity within him."  Like the Transfiguration, there are features that indicate a deity.

When an attorney calls for a doctor, thinking Monsieur Madeleine has gone mad, Valjean interrupts him "with a tone full of gentleness and authority" - more Christ-like attributes.  Valjean also says, "I tell you the truth," which Christ frequently says in the Gospels.

Finally, while Valjean's intercession for Champmathieu could be read as Christ's intercession for Adam (and for humanity as a whole), there are also parallels to Christ's trial before His crucifixion.  There's the obvious similarity that both are trials, but more specifically there's the crowd's choice to release Barabbas instead Christ where here Valjean acts to release Champmathieu and offers himself instead.  There are slight differences, since Christ didn't act to release Barabbas and Valjean is actually guilty, but the decisions of each that lead to the courtroom scenes are similar.  Before being turned over in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prays, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39).  Valjean goes through his own version of this, asking himself what is the right thing to do and pondering over it for multiple chapters.  But he too does as God wills (or as he thinks God wills) and gives himself up.

At the end of the chapter, Champmathieu is released from all accusations, because even though Valjean thinks Champmathieu is guilty (in his lengthy considerations in Book Seven, Chapter 2, he tells himself, "He has stolen!  it is useless for me to say he has not stolen, he has stolen!"), he still interceded for him.

---

After writing the original draft of this post, I found in later chapters some parallels that are more crucifixion-centered.  At the beginning of Chapter 5 in Book Eight, the narrator describes the reaction that the citizens of M--- sur M--- have after Monsieur Madeleine is revealed to have been Jean Valjean the galley slave.  "We are sorry not to be able to disguise the fact that, on this single sentence, he was a galley slave, almost everybody abandoned him.  ...  Three or four persons alone in the whole city remained faithful to his memory."  This is similar to Christ's disciples' falling away after His arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane:  "Then all the disciples left him and fled" (Matthew 26:56).

About a page later, Valjean escapes from prison and returns home.  The narrator explains that

It has never been known how he had succeeded in gaining entrance into the court-yard without opening the carriage port.  He had, and always carried about him, a pass-key which opened a little side door, but he must have been searched, and this taken from him.  This point is not yet cleared up.

This seems to have some connection to Christ's appearing to His disciples (after the resurrection) even though they were within a locked room.  "On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you'" - John 20:19.

I'm not sure if the Valjean-as-Christ parallels continue throughout the book (I guess I'll find out), but they do seem particularly strong in these chapters.