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The expression of the eyes of Ligeia! How for long hours have I pondered upon it! How have I, through the whole of a midsummer night, struggled to fathom it! What was it—that something more profound than the well of Democritus—which lay far within the pupils of my beloved? What was it? I was possessed with a passion to discover.
Here the narrator waxes poetic about Ligeia’s mysterious dark eyes and their inscrutable expression. The curiosity Ligeia inspires in the narrator keeps him fascinated for hours, stimulating him mentally and emotionally. He describes himself as overcome with a “passion” to decipher Ligeia’s eyes, a word that imbues this desire to understand with eroticism. In other words, her mystery is central to his attraction to her.
With how vast a triumph . . . did I feel as she bent over me in studies but little sought—but less known—that delicious vista by slow but perceptible degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to the goal of a wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden!
The narrator describes how Ligeia guides him through metaphysical study. Despite describing studying together, the entire scene has a sexual charge. Ligeia bends over him, creating a close, intimate atmosphere. He describes the esoteric sensually as a “delicious vista,” and as something that beckons him down a “gorgeous path.” He further gestures toward forbidden knowledge, which evokes the forbidden fruit of Adam and Eve—another instance in which learning and sex are intertwined.
