Egli è vivo e parlerebbe se
non osservasse la rigola del silentio.
Inscription
beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.
MY fever had been excessive and of
long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Appennine region had
been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely
chateau, was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting
blood — of which indeed I had already lost too much in the affray with the
banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of
assistance. At length I bethought me of a little pacquet of opium which lay
with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had acquired the
habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and
found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of
hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was
employed. Usually, I had half filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and
tobacco cut and mingled intimately, half and half. Sometimes when I had used
the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other
times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms
of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the
effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all
danger. Here, however, the case was different. I had never swallowed
opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them
should have had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen
employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken, than
myself — and thus, in the sad emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture.
Still I felt no especial uneasiness; for I resolved to proceed by degrees.
I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove
impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the
fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which
my reeling senses had not been blessed for now more than a week. No doubt it
was this very reeling of my senses — it was the dull delirium which already
oppressed me — that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason —
which blinded me to the folly of defining any thing as either large or small
where I had no preconceived standard of comparison. I had not, at the moment,
the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of
solid opium might, in fact, be an excessively large one. On
the contrary I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be
taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in possession. The
portion which, in conclusion, I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no
doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.
The chateau into which Pedro had
ventured to make forcible entrance rather than permit me, in my desperately
wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those fantastic
piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the
Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all
appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. Day by day we
expected the return of the family who tenanted it, when the misadventure which
had befallen me would, no doubt, be received as sufficient apology for the intrusion.
Meantime, that this intrustion might be taken in better part, we had
established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished
apartments. It lay high in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations
were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and
bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an
unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich
golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in
their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of
the chateau rendered necessary — in these paintings my incipient delirium,
perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that having swallowed the opium,
as before told, I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room — since it
was already night — to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by
the head of my bed — and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of
black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I
might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation
of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon
the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.
Long — long I read — and devoutly,
devotedly I gazed. I felt meantime, the voluptuous narcotic stealing its way to
my brain. I felt that in its magical influence lay much of the gorgeous
richness and variety of the frames — much of the ethereal hue that gleamed from the canvas — and much of the wild
interest of the book which I perused. Yet this consciousness rather
strengthened than impaired the delight of the illusion, while it weakened the
illusion itself. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and the deep
midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching
my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I so placed
it as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect
altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were
many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into
deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all
unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into
womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I
did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids
remained thus shut, I ran over in [[my]] mind my reason for so shutting them.
It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought — to make sure that my
vision had not deceived me — to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and
more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the
painting.
That I now saw aright I could not
and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had
seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to
startle me into waking life as if with the shock of a galvanic battery.
The portrait, I have already said,
was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is
technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite
heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom and even the ends of the radiant hair,
melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the
back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly, yet fantastically gilded
and filagreed. As a work of art nothing could be more admirable than the
painting itself. The loveliness of the face surpassed that of the fabulous
Houri. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the
immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently
moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its
half-slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once
that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting and of the frame
must have instantly dispelled such idea — must have prevented even its
momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for
some hours perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon
the portrait. At length, satisfied of the true secret of its effect, I fell back
within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in a perfect life-likeliness
of expression, which at first startling, finally confounded, subdued and
appalled me. I could no longer support the sad meaning smile of the half-parted lips, nor the too real lustre of the wild eye. With a deep and
reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my
deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which
discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which
designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which
follow:
“She was a maiden of rarest beauty,
and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and
loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having
already a bride in his Art: she a maiden of rarest beauty and not more lovely
than full of glee: all light and smiles and frolicksome as the young fawn:
loving and cherishing all things: hating only the Art which was her rival:
dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which
deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for
this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride.
But she was humble and obedient and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark high
turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead.
But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour
and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild and moody man, who
became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which
fell so ghastlily in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of
his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Ye [[Yet]] she smiled on and still
on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter, (who had high renown,)
took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to
depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And
in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as
of a mighty marvel and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his
deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the
labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret;
for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his
visage from the canvas rarely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And
he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were
drawn from the cheeks of her who sate [[sat]] beside him. And when many weeks
had passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and
one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame
within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint
was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work
which he had wrought; but in the next, while yet he gazed, he grew tremulous
and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice ‘This is indeed Life
itself!’ turned suddenly round to his beloved — who was dead. The
painter then added — ‘But is this indeed Death?’ ”
Notes:
In the subsequent version of this
tale, Poe made numerous changes, most notably dropping the full first
paragraph.Latter named "The Oval Portrait"
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