Eleonora (short story)

Eleonora is a story by Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in 1842. In it 's about the paradox of fidelity in faithlessness.

Action

The unnamed narrator describes himself as insane and thinks he can reliably report only the first part of his life, from the time in which he lived in a secluded mountain valley along with his cousin Eleonora, which was of unearthly beauty and grace. As Eleonora was 15 and the first-person narrator 20, awoke love between them - and the developed until then adorned only by multicolored grass valley tropical variegation, even flamingos found a ... But Eleonora fell ill, and her illness was accompanied by anticipatory jealousy: She could not bear that the narrator would love after her death another woman's thoughts. Therefore swore the narrator never to love another as Eleonora:

Eleonora rewarded him for it with the promise to watch the Beyond about him and to see him. Then she died.

This, however, begins the second part of the life of the narrator, and for its correct playback it does not guarantee. For a time he had endured in the valley of many-colored grass, Eleonora was a time him there also appeared, but the place had gradually lost all its magic, and in him was the desire awakened by new love, he had the valley leave, had entered into the service of a king - and there he had the wonderful Lady Ermengard know and learned to love with an even more passionate than the love he had felt for Eleonora, and did, his vow less forgetful than ignoring aware geehelicht. Because he had one night again heard Eleanor sighs and her voice, said to him:

- Words that can be interpreted only as that Eleonora has reincarnated in Ermengard.

Interpretation

Even Baudelaire has assumed that Poe confronts in this story with the question of loyalty to his seriously ill wife and cousin, Virginia, because even as she lived, he would rave relationships with female admirers, such as to the poet Frances Sargent Osgood, for which he had to be justified on the basis of anonymous letters to Virginia.

Motto

The Latin motto Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima translation reads: Keeping the (outer) form got soul. Raymond Lully, the French form of the name of Ramon Llull.