This selection of dialogues by Mary MacLane entails a mystery of wondering who she is speaking with. Is it the statue she describes at first? Is it an imaginary friend? Is it the author’s alter-ego? Or perhaps, is it a friend she knows in-the-flesh whom the author wished no one to recognize the identity of? These questions are never truly answered for how could a statue send word by postal mail or know some of the deeper vulnerabilities of the author without her knowing them herself? In these talks between herself and Annabel Lee come glimmerings of another time, discussions in the whimsy of personal stories, happenings in the neighbourhood, and the reflections in the deeper meaning of life as well as the bonds of friendship.
By : Mary MacLane (1881 - 1929)
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But the only person in Boston town who has given me of the treasure of her heart, and the treasure of her mind, and the touch of her fair hand in friendship, is Annabel Lee.
Since I looked for no friendship whatsoever in Boston town, this friendship comes to me with the gentleness of sunshowers mingled with cherry-blossoms, and there is a human quality in the air that rises from the bitter salt sea.
Years ago there was one who wrote a poem about Annabel Lee—a different lady from this lady, it may be, or perhaps it is the same—and so now this poem and this lady are never far from me.
If indeed Poe did not mean this Annabel Lee when he wrote so enchanting a heart-cry, I at any rate shall always mean this Annabel Lee when Poe’s enchanting heart-cry runs in my mind.
Forsooth Poe’s Annabel Lee was not so enchanting as this Annabel Lee.
I think this as I gaze up at her graceful little figure standing on my shelf; her wonderful expressive little face; her strange white hands; her hair bound and twisted into glittering black ropes and wound tightly around her head.
Were you to see her you would say that Annabel Lee is only a very pretty little black and terra-cotta and white statue of a Japanese woman. And forthwith you would be greatly mistaken.
It is true that she had stood in extremely dusty durance vile, in a Japanese shop in Boylston street, for months before I found her. It is also true that I fell instantly in love with her, and that on payment of a few strange dollars to the shop-keeper, I rescued her from her surroundings and bore her out to where I live by the sea—the sea where these wonderful, wide, green waves are rolling, rolling, rolling always. Annabel Lee hears these waves, and I hear them, at times holding our breath and listening until our eyes are strained with listening and with some haunting terror, and the low rushing goes to our two pale souls.
For though my friend Annabel Lee lived dumbly and dustily for months in the shop in Boylston street, as if she were indeed but a porcelain statue, and though she was purchased with a price, still my friend Annabel Lee is exquisitely human.
There are days when she fills my life with herself.
She gives rise to manifold emotions which do not bring rest.
It was not I who named her Annabel Lee. That was always her name—that is who she is. It is not a Japanese name, to be sure—and she is certainly a native of Japan. But among the myriad names that are, that alone is the one which suits her; and she alone of the myriad maidens in the world is the one to wear it.
She wears it matchlessly.
I have the friendship of Annabel Lee; but for her love, that is different.
Annabel Lee is like no one you have known. She is quite unlike them all. Times I almost can feel a subtle, conscious love coming from her finger-tips to my forehead. And I, at one-and-twenty, am thrilled with thrills.
Forsooth, at one-and-twenty, in spite of Boston and all, there are moments when one can yet thrill.
But other times I look up and perchance her eyes will meet mine with a look that is cold and penetrating and contemptuous and confounding.
Other times I look up and see her eyes full of indifference, full of tranquillity, full of dull deadly quiet.
Came Annabel Lee from out of Boylston street in Boston. And lo, she was so adorable, so fascinating, so lovable, that straightway I adored her; I was fascinated by her; I loved her.
I love her tenderly. For why, I know not. How can there be accounting for the places one’s loves will rest?
Sometimes my friend Annabel Lee is negative and sometimes she is positive.
Sometimes when my mind seems to have wandered infinitely far from her I realize suddenly that ’tis she who holds it enthralled. Whatsoever I see in Boston or in the vision of the wide world my judgment of it is prejudiced in ways by the existence of my friend Annabel Lee—the more so that it’s mostly unconscious prejudice.
Annabel Lee’s is an intense personality—one meets with intense personalities now and again, in children or in bull-dogs or in persons like my friend Annabel Lee.
And I never tire of looking at Annabel Lee, and I never tire of listening to her, and I never tire of thinking about her.
And thinking of her, my mind grows wistful.
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