About “ Eleonora ”by Astra Dance Company Producer David Wilkinson
Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “Eleonora,” first published in 1842, is in some ways very Poe-esque both in its subject, style, and point of view. The subject is love and death: romantic love, lost and betrayed The style is gorgeous, the language powerfully visual.
The point of view is--untrustworthy. The narrator of Eleonora—“Pyrros” in the 1842 edition, nameless later—invites us to consider whether he is, or is not, insane, and apparently settles it for us: “We will say, then, that I am mad.” Yet he insists that he was surely not always so, and may even as he writes still be merely a visionary, who perceives true reality but can neither persuade himself nor prove to others that this is so. He tells us of his deep promise, solemnly made to his dearest—yet in her absence, swiftly and casually broken.
“Eleonora” tells the story of Pyrros, as we shall call him, his first cousin--and first love—Eleonora, and his second and final love, Ermengarde. Pyrros and Eleonora become lovers; she dies, having received his promise of eternal fidelity; he breaks his promise, and loves another.
What is less Poe-esque about “Eleonora” is that the treason of the narrator goes unpunished, even rewarded: “thou are absolved, for reasons which shall be made known unto thee in Heaven”! It is Love, in this case, which conquers all, even infidelity and jealousy.
The story is, of course, subject to conflicting interpretations. Ermengarde may be merely Pyrros’s imaginary lover, balm for his loss of Eleonora. Eleonora’s spiritual messages to Pyrros may be nothing more than his hallucinations. Or both may be real, and Eleonora’s forgiveness of her faithless lover a manifestation of her own spiritual growth “in Heaven.”
We cannot overlook the parallels in “Eleonora” to elements in the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Pyrros and Poe married their (very young) first cousins, Eleonora and (for Poe) Virginia Clemm. During her brief and passionate romance with Pyrros, Eleonora had already “seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom”;Virginia Poe died of tuberculosis, which first manifested its symptoms in 1842, the year of her marriage to Poe, and of the first publication of “Eleonora.”
Devotees of the language and style of Poe can enjoy pursuing the obscurer passages of “Eleonora,” such as the Latin quotations from the alchemist-mystic Ramon Llull or the “Nubian geographer” al-Idrisi; the references to the Riddle of the Sphinx, the giant serpents of Syria, the “bard of Schiraz” (Hafez), “the “light ineffable”; the meanings of the evolving colors of the flowers in the Valley of the Many-Colored grass, most notably of the “ruby-red asphodel”; the uncommon but exact and fascinating words—“ephemeron.” “Zephyr,” “lustrum,” “Hesper,” “Seraphim.” “recreant,” “Helusion” (for “Elysium”) , “censers.” The warmth and beauty of “Eleonora” commend it to the lovers of romantic stories; its hints of something darker beneath give it at least a Gothic flavor.
So if we wish, we may treat Poe’s “Eleonora” as a feast of mystery, love and learning. And that is what the Astra Dance Company has undertaken, with our production of Eleonora. |
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About Eleonora
Thank you for a great Show!
Location
The El Portal Theatre,
5269 Lankershim Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 91601
Schedule
Feb 17, 2012 @ 8:00pm
Feb 18, 2012 @ 7:30pm & 10:00pm
Feb 24, 2012 @ 8:00pm
Feb 25, 2012 @ 7:30pm & 10:00pmInformation and Tickets: (818) 508-4200
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