Suspiria de Profundis by Thomas De Quincey (urban books to read .TXT) ๐
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The Suspiria is a collection of prose poems, or what De Quincey called โimpassioned prose,โ erratically written and published starting in 1854. Each Suspiria is a short essay written in reflection of the opium dreams De Quincey would experience over the course of his lifetime addiction, and they are considered by some critics to be some of the finest examples of prose poetry in all of English literature.
De Quincey originally planned them as a sequel of sorts to his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, but the first set was published separately in Blackwoodโs Magazine in the spring and summer of that 1854. De Quincey then published a revised version of those first Suspiria, along with several new ones, in his collected works. During his life he kept a master list of titles of the Suspiria he planned on writing, and completed several more before his death; those that survived time and fire were published posthumously in 1891.
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- Author: Thomas De Quincey
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I mention this little incident for its connection with what followed. A Welsh rustic, sitting behind me, asked if I had not felt my heart burn within me during the progress of the race? I said, with philosophic calmness, No; because we were not racing with a mail, so that no glory could be gained. In fact, it was sufficiently mortifying that such a Birmingham thing should dare to challenge us. The Welshman replied that he didnโt see that; for that a cat might look at a king, and a Brummagem coach might lawfully race the Holyhead mail. โRace us, if you like,โ I replied, โthough even that has an air of sedition; but not beat us. This would have been treason; and for its own sake I am glad that the โTallyhoโ was disappointed.โ So dissatisfied did the Welshman seem with this opinion that at last I was obliged to tell him a very fine story from one of our elder dramatists: viz., that once, in some far Oriental kingdom, when the sultan of all the land, with his princes, ladies, and chief omrahs, were flying their falcons, a hawk suddenly flew at a majestic eagle, and, in defiance of the eagleโs natural advantages, in contempt also of the eagleโs traditional royalty, and before the whole assembled field of astonished spectators from Agra and Lahore, killed the eagle on the spot. Amazement seized the sultan at the unequal contest, and burning admiration for its unparalleled result. He commanded that the hawk should be brought before him; he caressed the bird with enthusiasm; and he ordered that, for the commemoration of his matchless courage, a diadem of gold and rubies should be solemnly placed on the hawkโs head, but then that, immediately after this solemn coronation, the bird should be led off to execution, as the most valiant indeed of traitors, but not the less a traitor, as having dared to rise rebelliously against his liege lord and anointed sovereign, the eagle. โNow,โ said I to the Welshman, โto you and me, as men of refined sensibilities, how painful it would have been that this poor Brummagem brute, the โTallyho,โ in the impossible case of a victory over us, should have been crowned with Birmingham tinsel, with paste diamonds and Roman pearls, and then led off to instant execution.โ The Welshman doubted if that could be warranted by law. And, when I hinted at the 6th of Edward Longshanks, chapter 18, for regulating the precedency of coaches, as being probably the statute relied on for the capital punishment of such offences, he replied drily that, if the attempt to pass a mail really were treasonable, it was a pity that the โTallyhoโ appeared to have so imperfect an acquaintance with law.
The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the old mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocityโ โnot, however, as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence: as, for instance, because somebody says that we have gone fifty miles in the hour, though we are far from feeling it as a personal experience; or upon the evidence of a result, as that actually we find ourselves in York four hours after leaving London. Apart from such an assertion, or such a result, I myself am little aware of the pace. But, seated on the old mail-coach, we needed no evidence out of ourselves to indicate the velocity. On this system the word was not magna loquimur, as upon railways, but vivimus. Yes, โmagna vivimusโ; we do not make verbal ostentation of our grandeurs, we realise our grandeurs in act, and in the very experience of life. The vital experience of the glad animal sensibilities made doubts impossible on the question of our speed; we heard our speed, we saw it, we felt it as a thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder-beating hoofs.
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