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Interesting, Priapos, to discover that the name "Ligeia" has been used as a Greek personal name. The Ligeia that I'm familiar with was (along with her sisters Parthenope and Leucosia) one of the Sirens, and her name supposedly meant "The shrill-sounding". Rather than expiring of any sad, consumptive illnesses, though, the Ligeia of classical legend would have been far more likely to lead Poe's narrator to his own death.

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Of course, the Ligeia in the story did lead the narrator into madness. Thus prompting the eternal question about that short story of Poe's: Did Ligeia ever really exist? Or was she actually an opium-induced fantasy-woman of the narrator? And, when Rowena died, did Ligeia really "come back" into her body, or was the narrator just too far gone at this point to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality?

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And which is it that makes that short story of Poe's all the more horrific (and just plain, furkin' *weird*)? That it's merely a tale of the dead "coming back" -- or that it's a tale of an obsessive, grief-striken romantic who possibly winds up making love to the corpse of his dead wife in the mistaken belief that his non-existent fantasy woman has "possessed" her body?

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-- Nanaea

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