Suspiria de Profundis
Encyclopedia
Suspiria de Profundis is one of the best-known and most distinctive literary works of the English essayist Thomas De Quincey
.
__FORCETOC__
, the work is a collection of short essays in psychological fantasy — what De Quincey himself called "impassioned prose," and what is now termed prose poetry
. The essays of the Suspiria "are among the finest examples of De Quincey's or anyone else's English style."
"Some critics consider De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis the supreme prose fantasy of English literature."http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/quincey-thomas-de
De Quincey conceived of the collection as a sequel to his masterwork, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
(1821
). Like that work, the pieces in Suspiria de Profundis are rooted in the visionary experiences of the author's opium
addiction; and at their best, the Suspiria capture the same type of dark grandeur found in the Confessions.
in the Spring and Summer of 1845. He altered its content and added material when he included it in his collected works (1854 and after); and portions of the whole were not published until the first volume of his Posthumous Works in 1891
.
Among De Quincey's papers, left after his death in 1859, was discovered a list of 32 items that would have comprised the complete Suspiria, if the work had ever been finished. This master list counts The English Mail-Coach
, first published in Blackwood's in October and December 1849
, as one of the Suspiria, though critics and scholars universally treat it as a separate work. The long essay The Affliction of Childhood, also on the master list, is more often associated with the Suspiria, since it too was printed in Blackwood's in the Spring of 1845. (The Affliction contains De Quincey's childhood recollections of the deaths of two of his sisters.) Yet for the most part, the Suspiria are commonly defined as relatively brief essays, including:
When the collection was reprinted in the collected works in the 1850s, another short essay was added: The Daughter of Lebanon, a parable of grief and transcendence.
The four pieces that first appeared posthumously in 1891 are:
Of all of the pieces, Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow is arguably the most widely anthologized, the best known, and the most admired. "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."
A few pages of Notes for the missing Suspiria were found in the author's papers.
was inspired by Suspiria de Profundis and the Confessions to write his essay Les paradis artificiels
about hashish and opium and their effect on a poet's work. The second part of this essay entitled "Un mangeur d'Opium" is a translation to French of De Quincey's Confessions, with Baudelaire occasionally adding his own impressions.(1860
).
Dario Argento
used De Quincey's Suspiria, Particularly Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, as an inspiration for his "Three Mothers" trilogy of films, which include Suspiria
, Inferno
, and The Mother of Tears.
It was adapted into luigi cozzi's 1989 movie "demons 6: il gatto nero, most commonly known a "the black cat".
Fritz Leiber
's novel Our Lady of Darkness, published in 1977, the same year as Argento's Suspiria
, quotes from Levana in the introduction, and references the third lady in the course of the novel.
Thomas de Quincey
Thomas Penson de Quincey was an English esssayist, best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater .-Child and student:...
.
__FORCETOC__
Genre
First published in fragmentary form in 18451845 in literature
The year 1845 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*April 24 - Alfred de Musset and Honoré de Balzac are awarded the Légion d'honneur.* Robert Browning begins his correspondence with his future wife, Elizabeth Barrett....
, the work is a collection of short essays in psychological fantasy — what De Quincey himself called "impassioned prose," and what is now termed prose poetry
Prose poetry
Prose poetry is poetry written in prose instead of using verse but preserving poetic qualities such as heightened imagery and emotional effects.-Characteristics:Prose poetry can be considered either primarily poetry or prose, or a separate genre altogether...
. The essays of the Suspiria "are among the finest examples of De Quincey's or anyone else's English style."
"Some critics consider De Quincey's Suspiria de Profundis the supreme prose fantasy of English literature."http://www.enotes.com/nineteenth-century-criticism/quincey-thomas-de
De Quincey conceived of the collection as a sequel to his masterwork, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life...
(1821
1821 in literature
The year 1821 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* In the first known obscenity case in the United States, a Massachusetts court outlawed the John Cleland novel, Fanny Hill ...
). Like that work, the pieces in Suspiria de Profundis are rooted in the visionary experiences of the author's opium
Opium
Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy . Opium contains up to 12% morphine, an alkaloid, which is frequently processed chemically to produce heroin for the illegal drug trade. The latex also includes codeine and non-narcotic alkaloids such as papaverine, thebaine and noscapine...
addiction; and at their best, the Suspiria capture the same type of dark grandeur found in the Confessions.
Publication
De Quincey left the work incomplete in its original publication, in Blackwood's MagazineBlackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...
in the Spring and Summer of 1845. He altered its content and added material when he included it in his collected works (1854 and after); and portions of the whole were not published until the first volume of his Posthumous Works in 1891
1891 in literature
The year 1891 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Guy de Maupassant is officially diagnosed as insane.*Tristan Bernard has his first work published in La Revue Blanche....
.
Among De Quincey's papers, left after his death in 1859, was discovered a list of 32 items that would have comprised the complete Suspiria, if the work had ever been finished. This master list counts The English Mail-Coach
The English Mail-Coach
The English Mail-Coach is an essay by the English author Thomas De Quincey. A "three-part masterpiece" and "one of his most magnificent works," it first appeared in 1849 in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in the October and December issues.The essay is divided into three sections:*Part I, "The...
, first published in Blackwood's in October and December 1849
1849 in literature
The year 1849 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*La Tribune des Peuples, a pan-European romantic nationalist periodical, is published between March and November by Adam Mickiewicz.*Who's Who is published for the first time....
, as one of the Suspiria, though critics and scholars universally treat it as a separate work. The long essay The Affliction of Childhood, also on the master list, is more often associated with the Suspiria, since it too was printed in Blackwood's in the Spring of 1845. (The Affliction contains De Quincey's childhood recollections of the deaths of two of his sisters.) Yet for the most part, the Suspiria are commonly defined as relatively brief essays, including:
- Dreaming — the introduction to the whole.
- The Palimpsest of the Human Brain — a meditation upon the deeper layers of human consciousness and memory.
- Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow — beginning with a discussion of LevanaLevanaIn ancient Roman religion, Levana was the goddess of newborn babies. Her name comes from the practice of the father lifting the child off the ground where it was placed by the child's mother to show that he officially accepts the child as his own.Thomas de Quincey's prose poem Levana and Our...
, the ancient Roman goddess of childbirth, De Quincey imagines three companions for her: Mater Lachrymarum, Our Lady of Tears; Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs; and Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness. - The Apparition of the Brocken — on an optical illusionBrocken spectreA Brocken spectre , also called Brocken bow, mountain spectre or glockenspectre is the apparently enormous and magnified shadow of an observer, cast upon the upper surfaces of clouds opposite the sun...
associated with a German mountaintop. - Savannah-la-Mar — a threnody on a sunken city, inspired by the 1692 earthquake1692 Jamaica earthquakeThe 1692 Jamaica earthquake struck Port Royal, Jamaica on June 7, at exactly 11:43 a.m., according to a stopped pocket watch found in the harbour in the 1950s. Port Royal was then the unofficial capital of Jamaica, and one of the busiest and wealthiest ports in the West Indies...
that sank Port RoyalPort RoyalPort Royal was a city located at the end of the Palisadoes at the mouth of the Kingston Harbour, in southeastern Jamaica. Founded in 1518, it was the centre of shipping commerce in the Caribbean Sea during the latter half of the 17th century...
in Jamaica; beginning, "God smote Savannah-la-Mar...." - Vision of Life — "The horror of life mixed...with the heavenly sweetness of life...."
- Memorial Suspiria — looking forwards and backwards on life's miseries; foreshadowing and anticipation.
When the collection was reprinted in the collected works in the 1850s, another short essay was added: The Daughter of Lebanon, a parable of grief and transcendence.
The four pieces that first appeared posthumously in 1891 are:
- Solitude of Childhood — "Fever and delirium," "sick desire," and the Erl-King'sErlkingThe Erlking is depicted in a number of German poems and ballads as a malevolent creature who haunts forests and carries off travellers to their deaths. The name is an 18th-century mistranslation of the original Danish word elverkonge, "elf-king"...
daughter. - The Dark Interpreter — he was a looming shadow in the author's opium reveries.
- The Princess that lost a Single Seed of a Pomegranate — echoes upon echoes from an Arabian Nights tale.
- 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 — "memorials of a love that has departed, has been — the record of a sorrow that is...."
Of all of the pieces, Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow is arguably the most widely anthologized, the best known, and the most admired. "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 lost Suspiria
Out of the 32 pieces on the Suspiria master list, 18 are not extant; they were either planned but never written, or written but lost before publication. (In his later years, De Quincey, working by candlelight, had an unfortunate propensity to set things — his papers; his hair — on fire.) The lost pieces bear evocative and provoking titles:- The Dreadful Infant (There was the glory of innocence made perfect; there was the dreadful beauty of infancy that had seen God)
- Foundering Ships
- The Archbishop and the Controller of Fire
- God that didst Promise
- Count the Leaves in Vallombrosa
- But if I submitted with Resignation, not the less I searched for the Unsearchable — sometimes in Arab Deserts, sometimes in the Sea
- That ran before us in malice
- Morning of Execution
- Kyrie Eleison
- The Nursery in Arabian Deserts
- The Halcyon Calm and the Coffin
- Faces! Angels' Faces!
- At that Word
- Oh, Apothanate! that hatest death, and cleansest from the Pollution of Sorrow
- 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
- Cagot and Cressida
- Lethe and Anapaula
- Oh, sweep away, Angel, with Angelic Scorn, the Dogs that come with Curious Eyes to gaze.
A few pages of Notes for the missing Suspiria were found in the author's papers.
Translation, adaptation
Charles BaudelaireCharles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...
was inspired by Suspiria de Profundis and the Confessions to write his essay Les paradis artificiels
Les paradis artificiels
Les paradis artificiels is a book by French poet Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1860, about the state of being under the influence of opium and hashish. Baudelaire describes the effects of the drugs and discusses the way in which they could theoretically aid mankind in reaching an "ideal"...
about hashish and opium and their effect on a poet's work. The second part of this essay entitled "Un mangeur d'Opium" is a translation to French of De Quincey's Confessions, with Baudelaire occasionally adding his own impressions.(1860
1860 in literature
The year 1860 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*January - First issue of the Cornhill Magazine*June 9 ****- Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter becomes the first dime novel to be published....
).
Dario Argento
Dario Argento
Dario Argento is an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, particularly in the subgenre known as giallo, and for his influence on modern horror and slasher movies....
used De Quincey's Suspiria, Particularly Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow, as an inspiration for his "Three Mothers" trilogy of films, which include Suspiria
Suspiria
Suspiria is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento and co-written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi. The film follows an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy in Germany, only to discover that it is controlled by a coven of witches. The film's score was...
, Inferno
Inferno (1980 film)
Inferno is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film written and directed by Dario Argento. The film stars Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi, and Alida Valli. The cinematography was by Romano Albani, and Keith Emerson composed the film's thunderous musical score...
, and The Mother of Tears.
It was adapted into luigi cozzi's 1989 movie "demons 6: il gatto nero, most commonly known a "the black cat".
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber
Fritz Reuter Leiber, Jr. was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. Possibly his greatest chess accomplishment was winning clear first in the 1958 Santa Monica Open.. With...
's novel Our Lady of Darkness, published in 1977, the same year as Argento's Suspiria
Suspiria
Suspiria is a 1977 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento and co-written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi. The film follows an American ballet student who transfers to a prestigious dance academy in Germany, only to discover that it is controlled by a coven of witches. The film's score was...
, quotes from Levana in the introduction, and references the third lady in the course of the novel.