29 Thomas De Quincey

Dr. Ansul Chandra

Module Structure

28.0 Learning Outcome

28.1 Biography

28.2 Literary career of Thomas De Quncey

28.3 Themes of his writings

28.4 Suspiria de Profundis: An Introduction

28.5 Dreaming

28.6 The Palimpset of the Human Brain

28.7 Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow

28.8 Memorial Suspiria

28.00 Learning outcomes: By the end of the lesson, Students should be able to understand.

• Who is Thomas de Quincey?
• What are the themes of his writing?
• What is the Suspiria de Profundis?
• Autobiographical impression in his essays.

28.01 Biography

Thomas De Quincey was born on 15 August 1785 in Manchester, England. His father Thomas Quincey was a successful and wealthy merchant. His mother Elizabath Penson gave him the name “de Quincey”. His father died in 1793 and after few years his family moved to Bath .In his childhood, he was a weak and sensitive boy. He spent his youth in solitude and he was tyrannized by his elder brother William. His mother was very strict. After the death of his elder sister Elizabath, his grief caused him to search an imaginary world which shaped his destiny as a writer.

He received his education at schools in Bath and Winkfield .At age of ten, he was sent to grammar school where he was not happy .When he was 17 years old, he ran away from Manchester Grammar School with a copy of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballad and a collection of Greek plays. For some months, he wandered in Wales and on the streets of London. There he met a 15 years old prostitute “Ann of Oxford Street” who showed kindness to him. After spending life in poverty and hunger, he returned home and with the help of his mother began his studies at Oxford University. This incident left a mark upon his psychology and appears in his writings. At the university “he came to be looked upon as a strange being who associated with no one”. There De Quincey first took opium as a classmate suggests the drug for a toothache in 1804, then he found lots of pleasure in it. He became addict of opium due to which he had to left oxford without completing his degree. He became close friend with S.T. Coleridge, Wordsworth and other Romantic poets when he moved to the Lake District.

In 1816, he married Margaret Simpson who was a daughter of a farmer. They had five sons and three daughters. In 1830 he permanently settled in Edinburgh with his family. After his wife’s death in 1837 he again began to take opium. He died on 8 December 1859 and was buried with his wife.

28.02     Literary Career

Thomas de Quincey was an essayist and critic who was famous for his autobiography “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” published in 1821 in London Magazine. His writings cover a great range of subjects. He started a job as an editor of Westmoreland Gazette a Tory newspaper in1818 to support his family, but soon asked to resign due to his essays on politics and philosophy. However, because his financial condition was not good, Charles Lamb introduced him to London’s journalistic circles and he was invited to write for London Magazine.

In 1821, the first half of “Confessions of an English Opium Eater” appeared and later the complete work was published in book form. The book is a mixture of stories about his life, social comments and addiction of drug. It was a huge success. After that de Quincey wrote much but due to financial problems only few of his writings were published. Most of his writings were written for periodicals and cover a variety of subjects.

He was considered as a versatile essayist and critic in literary world. He was famous for his conversation, Richard woodhouse wrote of the “depth and reality, as I may so call it, of his knowledge……his conversation appeared like the elaboration of a mine of results….” Works of many writers like Edgar Allan Poe, Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Charles Baudelaire and Jorge Luis Borges was influenced by his writings. They admired his works. Some of his selected works are:

Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 1822

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth, 1823

Walladmor, 1825

On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts, 1827

The Last Days of Immanuel Kant, 1827

Klosterheim, or the Masque, 1832

Lake Reminiscences, 1834–40

Revolt of the Tartars, 1837

The Avenger: A narrative, 1838

The Logic of the Political Economy, 1844

Suspiria de Profundis, 1845

The English Mail-Coach, 1849

Autobiographical Sketches, 1853

California and the Gold Mania, 1854

Selections Grave and Gay, from the Writings, Published and Unpublished, by Thomas De Quincey, 1853–1860 (14 vols.)

Romances and Extravaganzas, 1877

Collected Writings, 1889

Uncollected Writings, 1890

The Posthumous Works, 1891–93

Memorials, 1891

Literary Criticism, 1909

The Diary, 1927

Selected Writings, 1937

New Essays, 1966

Literarische Portraits. Schiller, Herder, Lessing, Goethe, German Translation by Thomas Klandt. revonnah Verlag Hannover. ISBN 3-927715-95-6

The Works of Thomas De Quincey, 21 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000–2003) [This is the most up to date and scholarly edition

29.03 Themes of his writings

De Quincey’s writings cover a large range of subjects. In his essays he wrote about Britain’s imperial conflicts in Asia and northern Africa, criminal violence philosophy and, theological history. His interest to the psychological side of literary life gives him an important place as a precursor to twentieth century inheritors of the Romantic tradition. Ha was a man of immense reading and extraordinary intellect. His writings have a remarkable clearness and precision of style.

Confession, internal struggle with one’s self and autobiographical description are the main theme of his writings. His confessional writing is not just an imagination but it displays a psychological awareness. His autobiographical works recreates his dreams of youth which help in development of soul. Readers connect with insight into their own experience. His style is a mixture of literary allusion and memoir. Miller says, “De Quincey’s work is an autobiographical expression of lost connection with god and an attempt to overcome that loss”.

In most of his works, De Quincey used his own life as the subject. The most important event of his autobiography is the death of his sister Elizabeth. His work Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is described his addiction to drug and a portrait of his psychological state.

28.04 Suspiria de Profundis: An introduction

It is a collection of short essays published in 1845 and a sequel of “Confessions of an English Opium-Eater” (1821). It is a Latin phrase which means “sighs from the depths”. It is considered as the supreme prose fantasy of English literature. The theme of the essays is confessions. He focuses on the spiritual effects of the suffering and agony as it develops the spirit of man. He was very much attached to his elder sister Elizabeth. He describes her death memories, hallucinations and dream vision in this autobiographical work.

Suspiria was incomplete in its original publication. After De Quincey’s death, among his paper list of 32 items was discovered as the complete Suspiria. They are as follows;

    1.  Dreaming,

2.  The Affliction of Childhood. Dream Echoes.

3.  The English Mail Coach.

(1)   The Glory of Motion.

(2)   Vision of Sudden Death.

(3)   Dream-fugue.

4.  The Palimpsest of the Human Brain.

5.  Vision of Life.

6.  Memorial Suspiria.

7.  Levana and our Ladies of Sorrow.

8.  Solitude of Childhood.

9.  The Dark Interpreter.

10.  The Apparition of the Brocken.

11.  Savannah-la-Mar.

12.  The Dreadful Infant. (There was the glory of innocence made perfect; there was the dreadful beauty of infancy that had seen God.)

    13.  Foundering Ships.

14.  The Archbishop and the Controller of Fire.

15.  God that didst Promise.

16.  Count the Leaves in Vallombrosa.

17.  But if I submitted with Resignation, not the less I searched for the Unsearchable–sometimes in Arab Deserts, sometimes in the Sea.

18.  That ran before us in Malice.

19.  Morning of Execution.

20.  Daughter of Lebanon.

21.  Kyrie Eleison.

22.  The Princess that lost a Single Seed of a Pomegranate.

23.  The Nursery in Arabian Deserts.

24.  The Halcyon Calm and the Coffin.

25.  Faces! Angels’ Faces!

26.  At that Word.

27. Oh, Apothanate! that hatest Death, and cleansest from the Pollution of Sorrow.

28. Who is this Woman that for some Months has followed me up and down? Her face I cannot see, for she keeps for ever behind me.

29. Who is this Woman that beckoneth and warneth me from the Place where she is, and in whose Eyes is Woeful remembrance? I guess who she is.

30. Cagot and Cressida.

31. Lethe and Anapaula.

32. Oh, sweep away, Angel, with Angelic Scorn, the Dogs that come with Curious Eyes to gaze.

28.05 Dreaming

It is the introduction of the whole work “Suspiria de Profundis”. In this De Quincey foregrounds the importance of dreams and their potentiality. He describes the power of dreaming, “the machinery for dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one great tube through which man communicates with the shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connection with the heart, the eye, the ear, composes the magnificent apparatus which forces the infinite into the chamber of the human brain, and throws dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleeping mind.”

Dreams are like, “realm of enlightenment”. They are the key to understand reality. It gives human being a world where they may live in harmony with nature and their childhood. The power of dreaming enhances the potential of human mind as it merges into infinite. It is a way of finding hidden truth within him that would normally be repressed. It is self exploratory instrument.

28.06 The Palimpset and Human brain

This essay compares the human brain to a palimpsest. Palimpsest is derived from the Latin word , “Palimpsests” which means , “a parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased and then over written by another ,a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing.”(Oxford Dictionary) .

The Palimpset is considered as a metaphor .In opening lines,De Quincey addresses the “masculine reader” but later he shifts his attention to “female reader”.He describes that, “A palimpsest then is a membrane or roll cleansed of its manuscript by reiterated succession”. It is of two fold which preserves the text. In the middle Ages, these parchments were created from vellum, which can be recycled.

In this essay he compares the human mind to a palimpsest. He writes, “The mind, is but a palimpset of the human brain… where everlasting layers of ideas, images, feelings have fallen upon your brain softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury all that went before. And yet in reality not one has been extinguished. […] They are not dead but sleeping […] there is none of passion or disease that can scorch away these immortal impulses”.

It seems that the traces of writing disappears from the sheet but actually it leaves its marks permanently same as in our mind we think that the new things has rub off the past but the past in fact never fully gone from memory .The different event of one’s life contributes to the unity of the whole .De Quinecy writes , “Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand-writings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves successively upon the palimpsest of your brain; and, like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the undissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling upon light, the endless strata have covered up each other in forgetfulness. But by the hour of death, but by fever, but by the searching of opium, all these can revive in strength. They are not dead, but sleeping”.

Human mind also recalls our past memories and Quincey describes through this essay that the incidents of childhood may haunt a person. It shapes his adult life. Same as Quincey would never escape from the pain of childhood and his sister’s death…. “Alchemy there is none of passion or disease that can scorch away these immortal impresses;”

28.07 Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow

Of all of the essays, “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow” is most admired. Lyon says “The whole of this vision is clothed in a prose so stately, intense, and musical that it has been regarded by some…as the supreme achievement of De Quincey’s genius, the most original thing he ever wrote”.

The essay starts with the description of Levana, the ancient Roman Goddess who oversaw the birth and education of children .The word Levana is derived from the Latin verb (as still it the Italian verb) Levare.

As a child, De Quincy had to suffer lots of pain; he explains his grief and also says that his personal experience is not unique. In next stanza, he says that often he saw in his dream that Levana is communicating with three sisters, “Our Ladies of Sorrow”. “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 or sound; eternal silence reigns in their kingdoms”.

He presents these three sisters as something real. In next paragraph, he describes their form and presence. The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears. She is the mother of lamentation. “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.”

The second sister is Mater Suspiriorum—Our Lady of Sighs. She neither weeps nor groans but sighs inaudibly at intervals. She is humble and meek. “Murmur she may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it is to herself in the twilight; Mutter she does at times, but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone down to his rest.”

The third sister is Mater Tenebrarum-Our lady of Darkness. She is the mother of Lunacies and songstress of suicides… “Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight.”

These were the gracious ladies and sublime goddesses. In his dreams Madonna speaks to our lady of sights…“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.”

28.8: Memorial Suspiria

In this essay De Quincey recalls life’s miseries, foreshadowing and anticipation. In the opening lines of the essay he remembers his bitter experience. He lived on the streets of London in poverty and hunger. There was a fifteen years old prostitute who helped her. Later in life he often saw her in his dreams and called her, “Ann of Oxford Street”. He sees past as the mirror, “the past viewed not as the past, but by a spectator who steps back ten years deeper into the rear, in order that he may regard it as a future;”

He describes death of his sister Elizabeth and problems of his life in this essay. He gives the example of a young woman and a timid girl. The lady is younger girl’s aunt who assailed her niece. Her aunt had admonished her though still with a relenting in her eyes.

According to him all the experience of past is simply not an event but it is actually effective in our present. He raises so many questions and also answers them all. He also tells us about a little girl Grace who was the niece of that elder and happy Grace. She spent her days in happiness but now she is sad because she never saw her grandmother, aunt and mother. She suffers a lot in her eighteen years of life but still there are hopes for her. He describes, “Death we can face: but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which of us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously we were summoned) face the hour of birth?”

Reference

• Judson S. Lyon, Thomas De Quincey, New York, Twayne Publishers, 1969; pp. 96-105.
• “Thomas De Quincey Critical Essay”. eNotes.
• Thomas De Quincey, Posthumous Works, Vol. 1, London, 1891; reprinted New York, Georg Olms Verlag, 1975; pp. 4-5.
• Horace Ainsworth Eaton, Thomas De Quincey: A Biography, New York, Oxford University Press, 1936; New York, Octagon Books, 1972; p. 456.
• Jacqueline Reich, “The Mother of All Horror: Witches, Gender, and the Films of Dario Argento,” in: Monsters of the Italian Literary Imagination, Keala Jane Jewell, ed., Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2001; pp. 89, 94
• Barrell, John. The Infection of Thomas De Quincey: A Psychopathology of Imperialism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991.
• Dillon, Sarah. “Reinscribing De Quincey’s Palimpsest: The Significance of the Palimpsest in Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies.” Textual Practice 19.3 (Fall 2005): 243-263
• Ainsworth, Horace Eaton, Thomas De Quincey: A Biography, New York, Oxford University Press, 1936; reprinted New York, Octagon Books, 1972;
• Lindop, Grevel The Opium-Eater: A Life of Thomas De Quincey, London, J. M. Dent & Sons, 1981.
• Confessions was first published in London Magazine in 1821. It was published in book form the following year. (Morrison, Robert. “Thomas De Quincey:
• Chronology.” TDQ Homepage. Kingston: Queen’s University, 2013. http://www.queensu.ca/english/tdq/chron.html)