“From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the “River of Silence”; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all…” [v]
Likewise, after Eleonora’s death, when his mind is withdrawn from pleasure and heart ailing from loss of love, the atmosphere of the Many Colored Grass turns dull and dour to reflect the inner condition:
“The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again…” [vi]
The concept of the ‘divided self’ is of salience to the discussion of Eleonora, for the narrator expresses his two distinct selves across the two epochs of his life. The ‘divided self’ also plays out in the authorial process, where the Romantic poet (both Poe and Hoffman can be classified as such) is always struggling with himself to reach beyond his own existence. Since Poe is strongly influenced by German Romanticism, and by extension the ideas and style of Hoffmann, we see a cognitive dissonance in the authorial mind, just as it is projected outward through the conflict experienced by the narrator in Eleonora. Fitchean Idealism is central to the idea of the ‘divided self’ or the ‘double’. According to this, “the ego creates and projects itself onto the world, and in Schelling’s concept of “identity” as developed in his philosophy of nature, which illustrates the interaction of the individual with its counterpart in nature.” [vii] The contrasting descriptions of the splendor and gloom in the mountains of Many Colored Grass is congruent with the states of mind experienced by the subject/narrator before and after the death of Eleonora respectively. This evidence of the ‘double’ signifies
“the Romantic poet’s continuous longing for the infinite, which can never be fulfilled. Since the Romantic ego is continuously striving for something higher than itself, the Romantic poet finds himself divided into two parts: one is rooted in his mortal existence, the other pursues a higher transcendental harmony with the infinite. Typically, Romantic literature abounds with references that illustrate the discrepancy between the “real” and the “ideal,” that seek to express the sublime, the longing for mystical and spiritual unity, and the interaction between man and nature.” [viii]