catapults, &c. &c. 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 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 labors 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 labors: and so on, until the unfin
and judicial authority in Republican Rome. Quincey's note in the revised edition].
2. The raising of the king's banner on Castle Hill, 7. A word expressing collectively the gathering of Nottingham, on August 22, 1642, signaled the the Roman war-cries [De Quincey's note in the beginning of the English Civil War. revised edition]. The word is Greek. 3. Scenes of the defeat of King Charles's forces in 8. Giovanni Piranesi (1720-1778), a Venetian the Civil War. especially famed for his many etchings of ancient 4. The reigning monarch at the time De Quincey and modern Rome. He did not publish prints was writing. called Dreams; De Quincey doubtless refers to his 5. Lucius Paulus (d. 160 B.C.E.) and Caius Marius series called Careen d'Invenzione, 'Imaginarypris( d. 86 B.C.E.) were Roman generals who won ons.' The description that De Quincey recalls from famous victories. 'Paludaments': the cloaks worn Coleridge's conversation is remarkably apt for by Roman generals. these terrifying architectural fantasies.
6. The signal which announced a day of battle [De
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56 4 / THOMAS DE QUINCEY
ished 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 splendors 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 poet9 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 splendor?without end! Fabric1 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 vapors had receded,?taking there Their station under a cerulean sky, &c. &c.
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 Fuseli2 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:3 and in ancient days, Homer is, I think, rightly reputed to have known the virtues of opium.4
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 brain5 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 Orford6 said of his stomach, that it seemed
9. The quotation is from Wordsworth's The Excur-4. In the Odyssey, book 4, Homer praises nepenthe sion, book 2, lines 834ff. It describes a cloud struc-(which is probably opium) as a 'drug to heal all ture after a storm. pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every 1. I.e., building. sorrow.' 2. John Henry Fuseli (1741?1825) was born in 5. De Quincey's sister Elizabeth died at age nine Switzerland and painted in England. He was noted of hydrocephalus, water on the brain. 'Dropsical': for his paintings of nightmarish fantasies. afflicted with dropsy?an accumulation of fluid in 3. Thomas Shadwell was a Restoration dramatist the bodily tissues and cavities. and poet. He is now best-known as the target of 6. Horace Walpole, 18th-century wit and letter Dryden's satire (in Mac Flecknoe and elsewhere) writer, author of the Gothic novel The Castle of than as a writer in his own right. Otranto (1764).
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CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER / 565
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, &c. The mere antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions, histories, modes of faith, &c. 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 man7 renewed. Even Englishmen, though not bred in any knowledge of such institutions, cannot but shudder at the mystic sublimity of castes8 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,
