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Many years ago, when I was looking over Piranesi's, Antiquities of
Rome, Mr. Coleridge, who was standing by, described to me a set of
plates by that artist, called his DREAMS, and which record the
scenery of his own visions during the delirium of a fever. Some of
them (I describe only from memory of Mr. Coleridge's account)
represented vast Gothic halls, on the floor of which stood all sorts
of engines and machinery, wheels, cables, pulleys, levers,
catapults, etc. etc., expressive of enormous power put forth and
resistance overcome. Creeping along the sides of the walls you
perceived a staircase; and upon it, groping his way upwards, was
Piranesi himself: follow the stairs a little further and you
perceive it come to a sudden and abrupt termination without any
balustrade, and allowing no step onwards to him who had reached the
extremity except into the depths below. Whatever is to become of
poor Piranesi, you suppose at least that his labours must in some
way terminate here. But raise your eyes, and behold a second flight
of stairs still higher, on which again Piranesi is perceived, but
this time standing on the very brink of the abyss. Again elevate
your eye, and a still more aerial flight of stairs is beheld, and
again is poor Piranesi busy on his aspiring labours; and so on,
until the unfinished stairs and Piranesi both are lost in the upper
gloom of the hall. With the same power of endless growth and self-
reproduction did my architecture proceed in dreams. In the early
stage of my malady the splendours of my dreams were indeed chiefly
architectural; and I beheld such pomp of cities and palaces as was
never yet beheld by the waking eye unless in the clouds. From a
great modern poet I cite part of a passage which describes, as an
appearance actually beheld in the clouds, what in many of its
circumstances I saw frequently in sleep:
The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,
Was of a mighty city--boldly say
A wilderness of building, sinking far
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth,
Far sinking into splendour--without end!
Fabric it seem'd of diamond, and of gold,
With alabaster domes, and silver spires,
And blazing terrace upon terrace, high
Uplifted; here, serene pavilions bright
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt
With battlements that on their restless fronts
Bore stars--illumination of all gems!
By earthly nature had the effect been wrought
Upon the dark materials of the storm
Now pacified; on them, and on the coves,
And mountain-steeps and summits, whereunto
The vapours had receded,--taking there
Their station under a cerulean sky.
The sublime circumstance, "battlements that on their RESTLESS fronts
bore stars," might have been copied from my architectural dreams,
for it often occurred. We hear it reported of Dryden and of Fuseli,
in modern times, that they thought proper to eat raw meat for the
sake of obtaining splendid dreams: how much better for such a
purpose to have eaten opium, which yet I do not remember that any
poet is recorded to have done, except the dramatist Shadwell; and in
ancient days Homer is I think rightly reputed to have known the
virtues of opium.
To my architecture succeeded dreams of lakes and silvery expanses of
water: these haunted me so much that I feared (though possibly it
will appear ludicrous to a medical man) that some dropsical state or
tendency of the brain might thus be making itself (to use a
metaphysical word) OBJECTIVE; and the sentient organ PROJECT itself
as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a
part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from
all touch or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to
say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it
seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had
never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, except
rheumatic pains caused by my own folly. However, I got over this
attack, though it must have been verging on something very
dangerous.
The waters now changed their character--from translucent lakes
shining like mirrors they now became seas and oceans. And now came
a tremendous change, which, unfolding itself slowly like a scroll
through many months, promised an abiding torment; and in fact it
never left me until the winding up of my case. Hitherto the human
face had mixed often in my dreams, but not despotically nor with any
special power of tormenting. But now that which I have called the
tyranny of the human face began to unfold itself. Perhaps some part
of my London life might be answerable for this. Be that as it may,
now it was that upon the rocking waters of the ocean the human face
began to appear; the sea appeared paved with innumerable faces
upturned to the heavens--faces imploring, wrathful, despairing,
surged upwards by thousands, by myriads, by generations, by
centuries: my agitation was infinite; my mind tossed and surged
with the ocean.
May 1818
The Malay has been a fearful enemy for months. I have been every
night, through his means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know
not whether others share in my feelings on this point; but I have
often thought that if I were compelled to forego England, and to
live in China, and among Chinese manners and modes of life and
scenery, I should go mad. The causes of my horror lie deep, and
some of them must be common to others. Southern Asia in general is
the seat of awful images and associations. As the cradle of the
human race, it would alone have a dim and reverential feeling
connected with it. But there are other reasons. No man can pretend
that the wild, barbarous, and capricious superstitions of Africa, or
of savage tribes elsewhere, affect him in the way that he is
affected by the ancient, monumental, cruel, and elaborate religions
of Indostan, etc. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their
institutions, histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive, that
to me the vast age of the race and name overpowers the sense of
youth in the individual. A young Chinese seems to me an
antediluvian man renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any
knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic
sublimity of CASTES that have flowed apart, and refused to mix,
through such immemorial tracts of time; nor can any man fail to be
awed by the names of the Ganges or the Euphrates. It contributes
much to these feelings that southern Asia is, and has been for
thousands of years, the part of the earth most swarming with human
life, the great officina gentium. Man is a weed in those regions.
The vast empires also in which the enormous population of Asia has
always been cast, give a further sublimity to the feelings
associated with all Oriental names or images. In China, over and
above what it has in common with the rest of southern Asia, I am
terrified by the modes of life, by the manners, and the barrier of
utter abhorrence and want of sympathy placed between us by feelings
deeper than I can analyse. I could sooner live with lunatics or
brute animals. All this, and much more than I can say or have time
to say, the reader must enter into before he can comprehend the
unimaginable horror which these dreams of Oriental imagery and
mythological tortures impressed upon me. Under the connecting
feeling of tropical heat and vertical sunlights I brought together
all creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and plants, usages
and appearances, that are found in all tropical regions, and
assembled them together in China or Indostan. From kindred
feelings, I soon brought Egypt and all her gods under the same law.
I was stared at, hooted at, grinned at, chattered at, by monkeys, by
parroquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas, and was fixed for
centuries at the summit or in secret rooms: I was the idol; I was
the priest; I was worshipped; I was sacrificed. I fled from the
wrath of Brama through all the forests of Asia: Vishnu hated me:
Seeva laid wait for me. I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris: I
had done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the crocodile
trembled at. I was buried for a thousand years in stone coffins,
with mummies and sphynxes, in narrow chambers at the heart of
eternal pyramids. I was kissed, with cancerous kisses, by
crocodiles; and laid, confounded with all unutterable slimy things,
amongst reeds and Nilotic mud.
I thus give the reader some slight abstraction of my Oriental
dreams, which always filled me with such amazement at the monstrous
scenery that horror seemed absorbed for a while in sheer
astonishment. Sooner or later came a reflux of feeling that
swallowed up the astonishment, and left me not so much in terror as
in hatred and abomination of what I saw. Over every form, and
threat, and punishment, and dim sightless incarceration, brooded a
sense of eternity and infinity that drove me into an oppression as
of madness. Into these dreams only it was, with one or two slight
exceptions, that any circumstances of physical horror entered. All
before had been moral and spiritual terrors. But here the main
agents were ugly birds, or snakes, or crocodiles; especially the
last. The cursed crocodile became to me the object of more horror
than almost all the rest. I was compelled to live with him, and (as
was always the case almost in my dreams) for centuries. I escaped
sometimes, and found myself in Chinese houses, with cane tables, etc.
All the feet of the tables, sofas, etc., soon became instinct with
life: the abominable head of the crocodile, and his leering eyes,
looked out at me, multiplied into a thousand repetitions; and I
stood loathing and fascinated. And so often did this hideous
reptile haunt my dreams that many times the very same dream was
broken up in the very same way: I heard gentle voices speaking to
me (I hear everything when I am sleeping), and instantly I awoke.
It was broad noon, and my children were standing, hand in hand, at
my bedside--come to show me their coloured shoes, or new frocks, or
to let me see them dressed for going out. I protest that so awful
was the transition from the damned crocodile, and the other
unutterable monsters and abortions of my dreams, to the sight of
innocent HUMAN natures and of infancy, that in the mighty and sudden
revulsion of mind I wept, and could not forbear it, as I kissed
their faces.
June 1819
I have had occasion to remark, at various periods of my life, that
the deaths of those whom we love, and indeed the contemplation of
death generally, is (caeteris paribus) more affecting in summer than
in any other season of the year. And the reasons are these three, I
think: first, that the visible heavens in summer appear far higher,
more distant, and (if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite;
the clouds, by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance of the
blue pavilion stretched over our heads, are in summer more
voluminous, massed and accumulated in far grander and more towering
piles. Secondly, the light and the appearances of the declining and
the setting sun are much more fitted to be types and characters of
the Infinite. And thirdly (which is the main reason), the exuberant
and riotous prodigality of life naturally forces the mind more
powerfully upon the antagonist thought of death, and the wintry
sterility of the grave. For it may be observed generally, that
wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a law of
antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual repulsion, they are apt
to suggest each other. On these accounts it is that I find it
impossible to banish the thought of death when I am walking alone in
the endless days of summer; and any particular death, if not more
affecting, at least haunts my mind more obstinately and besiegingly
in that season. Perhaps this cause, and a slight incident which I
omit, might have been the immediate occasions of the following
dream, to which, however, a predisposition must always have existed
in my mind; but having been once roused it never left me, and split
into a thousand fantastic varieties, which often suddenly reunited,
and composed again the original dream.
I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May, that it was Easter
Sunday, and as yet very early in the morning. I was standing, as it
seemed to me, at the door of my own cottage. Right before me lay
the very scene which could really be commanded from that situation,
but exalted, as was usual, and solemnised by the power of dreams.
There were the same mountains, and the same lovely valley at their
feet; but the mountains were raised to more than Alpine height, and
there was interspace far larger between them of meadows and forest
lawns; the hedges were rich with white roses; and no living creature
was to be seen, excepting that in the green churchyard there were
cattle tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and particularly
round about the grave of a child whom I had tenderly loved, just as
I had really beheld them, a little before sunrise in the same
summer, when that child died. I gazed upon the well-known scene,
and I said aloud (as I thought) to myself, "It yet wants much of
sunrise, and it is Easter Sunday; and that is the day on which they
celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. I will walk abroad; old
griefs shall be forgotten to-day; for the air is cool and still, and
the hills are high and stretch away to heaven; and the forest glades
are as quiet as the churchyard, and with the dew I can wash the
fever from my forehead, and then I shall be unhappy no longer." And
I turned as if to open my garden gate, and immediately I saw upon
the left a scene far different, but which yet the power of dreams
had reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene was an
Oriental one, and there also it was Easter Sunday, and very early in
the morning. And at a vast distance were visible, as a stain upon
the horizon, the domes and cupolas of a great city--an image or
faint abstraction, caught perhaps in childhood from some picture of
Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, upon a stone and shaded by
Judean palms, there sat a woman, and I looked, and it was--Ann! She
fixed her eyes upon me earnestly, and I said to her at length: "So,
then, I have found you at last." I waited, but she answered me not
a word. Her face was the same as when I saw it last, and yet again
how different! Seventeen years ago, when the lamp-light fell upon
her face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, that to
me were not polluted), her eyes were streaming with tears: the
tears were now wiped away; she seemed more beautiful than she was at
that time, but in all other points the same, and not older. Her
looks were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, and I
now gazed upon her with some awe; but suddenly her countenance grew
dim, and turning to the mountains I perceived vapours rolling
between us. In a moment all had vanished, thick darkness came on,
and in the twinkling of an eye I was far away from mountains, and by
lamplight in Oxford Street, walking again with Ann--just as we
walked seventeen years before, when we were both children.
As a final specimen, I cite one of a different character, from 1820.
The dream commenced with a music which now I often heard in dreams--
a music of preparation and of awakening suspense, a music like the
opening of the Coronation Anthem, and which, like THAT, gave the
feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, and the
tread of innumerable armies. The morning was come of a mighty day--
a day of crisis and of final hope for human nature, then suffering
some mysterious eclipse, and labouring in some dread extremity.
Somewhere, I knew not where--somehow, I knew not how--by some
beings, I knew not whom--a battle, a strife, an agony, was
conducting, was evolving like a great drama or piece of music, with
which my sympathy was the more insupportable from my confusion as to
its place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, as is
usual in dreams (where of necessity we make ourselves central to
every movement), had the power, and yet had not the power, to decide
it. I had the power, if I could raise myself to will it, and yet
again had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics was upon
me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. "Deeper than ever
plummet sounded," I lay inactive. Then like a chorus the passion
deepened. Some greater interest was at stake, some mightier cause
than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had proclaimed.
Then came sudden alarms, hurryings to and fro, trepidations of
innumerable fugitives--I knew not whether from the good cause or the
bad, darkness and lights, tempest and human faces, and at last, with
the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that
were worth all the world to me, and but a moment allowed--and
clasped hands, and heart-breaking partings, and then--everlasting
farewells! And with a sigh, such as the caves of Hell sighed when
the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of death, the sound
was reverberated--everlasting farewells! And again and yet again
reverberated--everlasting farewells!
And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud--"I will sleep no more."
But I am now called upon to wind up a narrative which has already
extended to an unreasonable length. Within more spacious limits the
materials which I have used might have been better unfolded, and
much which I have not used might have been added with effect.
Perhaps, however, enough has been given. It now remains that I
should say something of the way in which this conflict of horrors
was finally brought to a crisis. The reader is already aware (from
a passage near the beginning of the introduction to the first part)
that the Opium-eater has, in some way or other, "unwound almost to
its final links the accursed chain which bound him." By what means?
To have narrated this according to the original intention would have
far exceeded the space which can now be allowed. It is fortunate,
as such a cogent reason exists for abridging it, that I should, on a
maturer view of the case, have been exceedingly unwilling to injure,
by any such unaffecting details, the impression of the history
itself, as an appeal to the prudence and the conscience of the yet
unconfirmed opium-eater--or even (though a very inferior
consideration) to injure its effect as a composition. The interest
of the judicious reader will not attach itself chiefly to the
subject of the fascinating spells, but to the fascinating power.
Not the Opium-eater, but the opium, is the true hero of the tale,
and the legitimate centre on which the interest revolves. The
object was to display the marvellous agency of opium, whether for
pleasure or for pain: if that is done, the action of the piece has
closed.
However, as some people, in spite of all laws to the contrary, will
persist in asking what became of the Opium-eater, and in what state
he now is, I answer for him thus: The reader is aware that opium
had long ceased to found its empire on spells of pleasure; it was
solely by the tortures connected with the attempt to abjure it that
it kept its hold. Yet, as other tortures, no less it may be
thought, attended the non-abjuration of such a tyrant, a choice only
of evils was left; and THAT might as well have been adopted which,
however terrific in itself, held out a prospect of final restoration
to happiness. This appears true; but good logic gave the author no
strength to act upon it. However, a crisis arrived for the author's
life, and a crisis for other objects still dearer to him--and which
will always be far dearer to him than his life, even now that it is
again a happy one. I saw that I must die if I continued the opium.
I determined, therefore, if that should be required, to die in
throwing it off. How much I was at that time taking I cannot say,
for the opium which I used had been purchased for me by a friend,
who afterwards refused to let me pay him; so that I could not
ascertain even what quantity I had used within the year. I
apprehend, however, that I took it very irregularly, and that I
varied from about fifty or sixty grains to 150 a day. My first task
was to reduce it to forty, to thirty, and as fast as I could to
twelve grains.
I triumphed. But think not, reader, that therefore my sufferings
were ended, nor think of me as of one sitting in a DEJECTED state.
Think of me as one, even when four months had passed, still
agitated, writhing, throbbing, palpitating, shattered, and much
perhaps in the situation of him who has been racked, as I collect
the torments of that state from the affecting account of them left
by a most innocent sufferer {20} of the times of James I. Meantime,
I derived no benefit from any medicine, except one prescribed to me
by an Edinburgh surgeon of great eminence, viz., ammoniated tincture
of valerian. Medical account, therefore, of my emancipation I have
not much to give, and even that little, as managed by a man so
ignorant of medicine as myself, would probably tend only to mislead.
At all events, it would be misplaced in this situation. The moral
of the narrative is addressed to the opium-eater, and therefore of
necessity limited in its application. If he is taught to fear and
tremble, enough has been effected. But he may say that the issue of
my case is at least a proof that opium, after a seventeen years' use
and an eight years' abuse of its powers, may still be renounced, and
that HE may chance to bring to the task greater energy than I did,
or that with a stronger constitution than mine he may obtain the
same results with less. This may be true. I would not presume to
measure the efforts of other men by my own. I heartily wish him
more energy. I wish him the same success. Nevertheless, I had
motives external to myself which he may unfortunately want, and
these supplied me with conscientious supports which mere personal
interests might fail to supply to a mind debilitated by opium.
Jeremy Taylor conjectures that it may be as painful to be born as to
die. I think it probable; and during the whole period of
diminishing the opium I had the torments of a man passing out of one
mode of existence into another. The issue was not death, but a sort
of physical regeneration; and I may add that ever since, at
intervals, I have had a restoration of more than youthful spirits,
though under the pressure of difficulties which in a less happy
state of mind I should have called misfortunes.
One memorial of my former condition still remains--my dreams are not
yet perfectly calm; the dread swell and agitation of the storm have
not wholly subsided; the legions that encamped in them are drawing
off, but not all departed; my sleep is still tumultuous, and, like
the gates of Paradise to our first parents when looking back from
afar, it is still (in the tremendous line of Milton)
With dreadful faces throng'd, and fiery arms.
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