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A Poe story which fuses the themes of transcendence and lost love is "Ligeia," Poe's own favorite of his tales. The story's narrator marries a woman of exquisite beauty--a woman named Ligeia. To the narrator (and to Poe, naturally), she is the ....

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... exceeds that of anyone whom the narrator has met. The acquisitions of Ligeia were gigantic, were astounding; yet I was sufficiently aware of her infinite supremacy to resign myself, with childlike confidence, to her guidance through the chaotic world of metaphysical investigation at which I was most busily occupied during the early years of our marriage. With how vast a triumph--with how vivid a delight...did I feel...that delicious vista by slow degrees expanding before me, down whose long, gorgeous, and all untrodden path, I might at length pass onward to a goal of wisdom too divinely precious not to be forbidden (Poe Modern Library ed., ...