Memory and the Past

Where it surfaces

• Dreaming

  The chapter revisits childhood afflictions as a key agency that, combined with opium, shaped the narrator's dreams.

• The Affliction of Childhood

  The chapter is built on the narrator's memories of his sister, the nursery, and the Bible stories, showing how past experiences shape present emotions.

• The Glory of Motion

  De Quincey recalls these events from a distance of 'some twenty or more years,' and notes how the mail-coaches 'tyrannise over my dreams,' linking past experiences to present memory.

• The Palimpsest of the Human Brain

  The central theme: the brain as a palimpsest where all past experiences are preserved and can be revived.

• Memorial Suspiria

  The narrator invokes the past as a 'secret exhibition,' and the mother's letter serves as a tangible link to memory and maternal love.

• The Apparition of the Brocken

  The narrator recalls a childhood affliction that returns in memory like April showers, linking past grief to present experience.

• The Daughter of Lebanon

  The daughter yearns for her native hills and the memory of her twin sister, with whom she wandered among the cedars in childhood.

• The Princess Who Overlooked One Seed in a Pomegranate

  The parable and personal reflection illustrate how past errors and griefs echo across time, resurging unexpectedly.

• Who Is This Woman That Beckoneth and Warneth Me from the Place Where She Is, and in Whose Eyes Is Woeful Remembrance? I Guess Who She Is

  The narrator grapples with memories of a past life or preexistence, and the woman's face is described as looking at 'some unknown past,' making it 'awful.'