Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia

Love Becomes Addiction

Plot Summary

A young artist, imprisoned within the trammels of opium addiction, relives his phantasmagorical courtship with a mysterious Soprano known only as Ligeia. While exploring these opium induced memories, the lines dividing reality and fantasy, memory and hallucination, begin to blur into an indecipherable labyrinth of obsession and despair. Though he is nursed back to health by a new love, the Lady Rowena, the haunting of Ligeia's memories as well as the spirits of Azrael and Nehushtan, continue to plague his mind and soul.