Keep KNOWLEDGE for the world of matter, force, and function. It has got nothing to do with being. But Poe wanted to know--wanted to know what was the strangeness in the eyes of Ligeia. She might have told him it was horror at his probing, horror at being vamped by his consciousness. But she wanted to be vamped. She wanted to be probed by his consciousness, to be KNOWN. She paid for wanting it, too. Nowadays it is usually the man who wants to be vamped, to be KNOWN. Edgar Allan probed and probed t So often he seemed on the verge. But she went over the verge of death before he came over the verge of knowledge. And it is always so. He decided, therefore, that the clue to the strangeness lay in the mystery of will. "And the will therein lieth, which dieth not..." Ligeia had a "gigantic volition.... An intensity in thought, action, or speech was possibly, in her, a result, or at least an index" (he really meant indication) "of that gigantic volition which, during our long intercourse, failed to give other and more immediate evidence of its existence." I should have thought her long submission to him was chief and ample "other evidence." "Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stem passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me--by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness, and placidity of her very low voice--and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered." Poor Poe, he had caught a bird of the same feather as himself. One of those terrible cravers, who crave the further sensation. Crave to madness or death. "Vultures of stern passion" indeed! Condors. But having recognized that the clue was in her gigantic volition, he should have realized that the process of this loving, this craving, this knowing, was a struggle of wills. But Ligeia, true to the great tradition and mode of womanly love, by her will kept herself submissive, recipient. She is the passive body who is explored and analyzed into death. And yet, at times, her great female will must have revolted. "Vultures of stem passion!" With a convulsion of desire she desired his further probing and exploring. To any lengths. But then, "tumultuous vultures of stem passion." She had to fight with herself. But Ligeia wanted to go on and on with the craving, with the love, with the sensation, with the probing, with the knowing, on and on to the end. There is no end. There is only the rupture of death. That's where men, and women, are "had." Man is always sold, in his search for final KNOWLEDGE.