Previous Page - Next Page - First Page - Home
The Colloquy Of Monos And Una By Edgar Allan Poe
PAGE: 1
THE COLLOQUY OF MONOS AND UNA
_ Sophocles - Antig _:
"These; things are in the future."
_ Una._ "Born again?"
_ Monos._ Yes, fairest and best beloved Una, "born again." These
were the words upon whose mystical meaning I had so long pondered,
rejecting the explanations of the priesthood, until Death himself
resolved for me the secret.
_Una._ Death!
_Monos._ How strangely, sweet Una, you echo my words! I observe,
too, a vacillation in your step - a joyous inquietude in your eyes.
You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life
Eternal. Yes, it was of Death I spoke. And here how singularly sounds
that word which of old was wont to bring terror to all hearts -
throwing a mildew upon all pleasures!
_ Una._ Ah, Death, the spectre which sate at all feasts! How
often, Monos, did we lose ourselves in speculations upon its nature!
How mysteriously did it act as a check to human bliss - saying unto
it "thus far, and no farther!" That earnest mutual love, my own
Monos, which burned within our bosoms how vainly did we flatter
ourselves, feeling happy in its first up-springing, that our
happiness would strengthen with its strength! Alas! as it grew, so
grew in our hearts the dread of that evil hour which was hurrying to
separate us forever! Thus, in time, it became painful to love. Hate
would have been mercy then.
_ Monos._ Speak not here of these griefs, dear Una - mine, mine,
forever now!
_ Una._ But the memory of past sorrow - is it not present joy? I
have much to say yet of the things which have been. Above all, I burn
to know the incidents of your own passage through the dark Valley and
Shadow.
_ Monos._ And when did the radiant Una ask anything of her Monos
in vain? I will be minute in relating all - but at what point shall
the weird narrative begin?
_Una._ At what point?
_Monos._ You have said.
_Una._ Monos, I comprehend you. In Death we have both learned the
propensity of man to define the indefinable. I will not say, then,
commence with the moment of life's cessation - but commence with that
sad, sad instant when, the fever having abandoned you, you sank into
a breathless and motionless torpor, and I pressed down your pallid
eyelids with the passionate fingers of love.
_ Monos._ One word first, my Una, in regard to man's general
condition at this epoch. You will remember that one or two of the
wise among our forefathers - wise in fact, although not in the
world's esteem - had ventured to doubt the propriety of the term
"improvement," as applied to the progress of our civilization. There
were periods in each of the five or six centuries immediately
preceding our dissolution, when arose some vigorous intellect, boldly
contending for those principles whose truth appears now, to our
disenfranchised reason, so utterly obvious - principles which should
have taught our race to submit to the guidance of the natural laws,
rather than attempt their control. At long intervals some masterminds
appeared, looking upon each advance in practical science as a
retro-gradation in the true utility. Occasionally the poetic
intellect - that intellect which we now feel to have been the most
exalted of all - since those truths which to us were of the most
enduring importance could only be reached by that analogywhich speaks
in proof tones to the imagination alone and to the unaided reason
bears no weight - occasionally did this poetic intellect proceed a
step farther in the evolving of the vague idea of the philosophic,
and find in the mystic parable that tells of the tree of knowledge,
and of its forbidden fruit, death-producing, a distinct intimation
that knowledge was not meet for man in the infant condition of his
soul. And these men - the poets - living and perishing amid the scorn
of the "utilitarians" - of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves
a title which could have been properly applied only to the scorned -
these men, the poets, pondered piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the
ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments
were keen - days when mirth was a word unknown, so solemnly
deep-toned was happiness - holy, august and blissful days, when blue
rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn, into far forest solitudes,
primæval, odorous, and unexplored.
Yet these noble exceptions from the general misrule served but to
strengthen it by opposition. Alas! we had fallen upon the most evil
of all our evil days. The great "movement" - that was the cant term -
went on: a diseased commotion, moral and physical. Art - the Arts -
arose supreme, and, once enthroned, cast chains upon the intellect
which had elevated them to power. Man, because he could not but
acknowledge the majesty of Nature, fell into childish exultation at
his acquired and still-increasing dominion over her elements. Even
while he stalked a God in his own fancy, an infantine imbecility came
over him. As might be supposed from the origin of his disorder, he
grew infected with system, and with abstraction. He enwrapped himself
in generalities. Among other odd ideas, that of universal equality
gained ground; and in the face of analogy and of God - in despite of
the loud warning voice of the laws of gradation so visibly pervading
all things in Earth an Heaven - wild attempts at an omni-prevalent
Democracy were made. Yet this evil sprang necessarily from the
leading evil, Knowledge. Man could not both know and succumb.
Meantime huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank
before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was
deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease. And methinks,
sweet Una, even our slumbering sense of the forced and of the
far-fetched might have arrested us here. But now it appears that we
had worked out our own destruction in the perversion of our taste, or
rather in the blind neglect of its culture in the schools. For, in
truth, it was at this crisis that taste alone - that faculty which,
holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral
sense, could never safely have been disregarded - it was now that
taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and
to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic
intuition of Plato! Alas for the which he justly regarded as an
all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it! -
since both were most desperately needed when both were most entirely
forgotten or despised. {*1}
Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly! -
"que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment;" and it
is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time
permitted it, would have regained its old ascendancy over the harsh
mathematical reason of the schools. But this thing was not to be.
Prematurely induced by intemperance of knowledge the old age of the
world drew on. This the mass of mankind saw not, or, living lustily
although unhappily, affected not to see. But, for myself, the Earth's
records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest
civilization. I had imbibed a prescience of our Fate from comparison
of China the simple and enduring, with Assyria the architect, with
Egypt the astrologer, with Nubia, more crafty than either, the
turbulent mother of all Arts. In history {*2} of these regions I met
with a ray from the Future. The individual artificialities of the
three latter were local diseases of the Earth, and in their
individual overthrows we had seen local remedies applied; but for the
infected world at large I could anticipate no regeneration save in
death. That man, as a race, should not become extinct, I saw that he
must be "born again."
And now it was, fairest and dearest, that we wrapped our spirits,
daily, in dreams. Now it was that, in twilight, we discoursed of the
days to come, when the Art-scarred surface of the Earth, having
undergone that purification {*3} which alone could efface its
rectangular obscenities, should clothe itself anew in the verdure and
the mountain-slopes and the smiling waters of Paradise, and be
rendered at length a fit dwelling-place for man: - for man the Death
purged - for man to whose now exalted intellect there should be
poison in knowledge no more - for the redeemed, regenerated,
blissful, and now immortal, but still for the material, man.
_Una._ Well do I remember these conversations, dear Monos; but
the epoch of the fiery overthrow was not so near at hand as we
believed, and as the corruption you indicate did surely warrant us in
believing. Men lived; and died individually. You yourself sickened,
and passed into the grave; and thither your constant Una speedily
followed you. And though the century which has since elapsed, and
whose conclusion brings us thus together once more, tortured our
slumbering senses with no impatience of duration, yet, my Monos, it
was a century still.
_Monos._ Say, rather, a point in the vague infinity.
Unquestionably, it was in the Earth's dotage that I died. Wearied at
heart with anxieties which had their origin in the general turmoil
and decay, I succumbed to the fierce fever. After some few days of
pain, and many of dreamy delirium replete with ecstasy, the
manifestations of which you mistook for pain, while I longed but was
impotent to undeceive you - after some days there came upon me, as
you have said, a breathless and motionless torpor; and this was
termed Death by those who stood around me.
Words are vague things. My condition did not deprive me of
sentience. It appeared to me not greatly dissimilar to the extreme
quiescence of him, who, having slumbered long and profoundly, lying
motionless and fully prostrate in a midsummer noon, begins to steal
slowly back into consciousness, through the mere sufficiency of his
sleep, and without being awakened by external disturbances.
Previous Page - Next Page - First Page - Home