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The Colloquy of Monos and Una

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The Colloquy of Monos and Una is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 - October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career. Born in Boston, he was the second child of two actors. His father abandoned the family in 1810, and his mother died the following year. Thus orphaned, the child was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia. Although they never formally adopted him, Poe was with them well into young adulthood. Tension developed later as John Allan and Edgar repeatedly clashed over debts, including those incurred by gambling, and the cost of secondary education for the young man. Poe attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. Poe quarreled with Allan over the funds for his education and enlisted in the Army in 1827 under an assumed name. It was at this time his publishing career began, albeit humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian." With the death of Frances Allan in 1829, Poe and Allan reached a temporary rapprochement. Later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point and declaring a firm wish to be a poet and writer, Poe parted ways with John Allan. Poe switched his focus to prose and spent the next several years working for literary journals and periodicals, becoming known for his own style of literary criticism. His work forced him to move among several cities, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. In Baltimore in 1835, he married Virginia Clemm, his 13-year-old cousin. In January 1845 Poe published his poem, "The Raven," to instant success. His wife died of tuberculosis two years after its publication. For years, he had been planning to produce his own journal, The Penn (later renamed The Stylus), though he died before it could be produced. On October 7, 1849, at age 40, Poe died in Baltimore; the cause of his death is unknown and has been variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents. Poe and his works influenced literature in the United States and around the world, as well as in specialized fields, such as cosmology and cryptography. Poe and his work appear throughout popular culture in literature, music, films, and television. A number of his homes are dedicated museums today. The Mystery Writers of America present an annual award known as the Edgar Award for distinguished work in the mystery genre.

24 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1841

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About the author

Edgar Allan Poe

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The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.

Just as the bizarre characters in Poe’s stories have captured the public imagination so too has Poe himself. He is seen as a morbid, mysterious figure lurking in the shadows of moonlit cemeteries or crumbling castles. This is the Poe of legend. But much of what we know about Poe is wrong, the product of a biography written by one of his enemies in an attempt to defame the author’s name.

The real Poe was born to traveling actors in Boston on January 19, 1809. Edgar was the second of three children. His other brother William Henry Leonard Poe would also become a poet before his early death, and Poe’s sister Rosalie Poe would grow up to teach penmanship at a Richmond girls� school. Within three years of Poe’s birth both of his parents had died, and he was taken in by the wealthy tobacco merchant John Allan and his wife Frances Valentine Allan in Richmond, Virginia while Poe’s siblings went to live with other families. Mr. Allan would rear Poe to be a businessman and a Virginia gentleman, but Poe had dreams of being a writer in emulation of his childhood hero the British poet Lord Byron. Early poetic verses found written in a young Poe’s handwriting on the backs of Allan’s ledger sheets reveal how little interest Poe had in the tobacco business.

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5 stars
47 (11%)
4 stars
91 (21%)
3 stars
143 (34%)
2 stars
103 (24%)
1 star
33 (7%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
Profile Image for Francesc.
465 reviews327 followers
February 7, 2022
Diálogo filosófico entre dos personas ya fallecidas. El cuento es, sobre todo, la experiencia de la muerte de Monos.
Además, Poe recurre igualmente a los conceptos del Tiempo y el Amor.

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Philosophical dialogue between two deceased people. The story is, above all, Monos' experience of death.
Poe also draws on the concepts of Time and Love.
Profile Image for Jon Nakapalau.
6,182 reviews943 followers
July 26, 2018
Very strange story - kind of a dharmic confession between lovers after death - bought BOC's (Don't Fear) The Reaper to mind.
Profile Image for Quirkyreader.
1,629 reviews5 followers
June 6, 2021
Time is relative in this story. Read and find out why.
Profile Image for David Meditationseed.
548 reviews34 followers
May 13, 2018
A tale full of poetry and transcendence about the death process.

But not the consciousness prior to the fact itself, but beyond the processes we usually think. It is an exercise of descriptive imagination with the movements of the extinction of reason, of intuition and of the simple perception of all the procedure of death in which the soul, time and space, its laws and relations weigh in.

An awesome Poe's work.
Profile Image for K. Anna Kraft.
1,167 reviews39 followers
March 25, 2020
I have arranged my takeaway thoughts into a haiku:

"Death comes in stages,
But don't sweat! First thing he takes
Are the fucks you give."
3,363 reviews46 followers
October 14, 2020
Even though the overcurrent of this tale is the conversation between two lovers whose essence of spirit has been reunited after a century from their deaths there are also undercurrents flowing through the tale. This tale actually brings forth in its prose many of Poe's views and beliefs. Early interest in the environment was a feature of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century. In Poe's tale The Elk (1843) one can hear rumblings of Poe's concern for the preservation of nature and its pristine beauty. In this tale The Colloquy of Monos and Una Poe writes ". . . huge smoking cities arose, innumerable. Green leaves shrank before the hot breath of furnaces. The fair face of Nature was deformed as with the ravages of some loathsome disease." I believe that Poe was letting an undercurrent of his beliefs into this tale that Man was in the pursuit of moving forward with knowledge at the expense of forgetting about the beauty of the Arts. "que tout notre raisonnement se rèduit à céder au sentiment; [all our reasoning is reduced to giving in to feeling, quote from Pascal, a philosopher] and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency over the harsh mathematical reason of the schools." Poe was notorious for putting subtexts into his tales in this one Monos is telling Una the reasons for the end of the world which happened a century after their own deaths in what Monos/Poe termed humanity will be "born again" with humanity doing it right the next time. And of course Poe wraps this tale in descriptive prose concerning his fascination with death, the sensation of dying, and his answer to the question of life after death, leaving his readers with lots of ideas to ponder over with many of them scratching their heads and wondering about their own beliefs in death.
333 reviews24 followers
February 26, 2018
romantic, gothic, but you definitively have to be in the mood for it. I didn't like it.
Profile Image for Kai.
245 reviews23 followers
March 4, 2023
"The colloquy of Monos and Una" is framed as a conversation between two lovers reunited after death. Una has only just joined her lover in Eden and her somber mind still lingers on the mortal world. She's most concerned with thoughts that occupied her in her last days on Earth, namely how Monos experienced his final hours.

The narrative he gives in respons/review/show... is a romantic essay on the opposition of reason and sentiment. He discusses the triumph of the understanding in the era of industrial revolution and how reason makes humanity its servant in its quest for progress and productivity. Gradually the landscapes are transformed into the filthy mess that makes it difficult to breath. He laments the time when thinkers like Plato or Pascal championed the importance of intuition, when people still fought against the all too human urge of abstracting away from the moment.

In his delirious hours of dying, Monos was given the chance to perceive the world purified from the influences of the intellect. His senses are heightened and his perception becomes perfectly sensual. It's especially her touch in the hour when most gave up on him that was felt ever more intensely. Monos narrative is lacking in detail, though. Little do we learn how perfect passivity can be eternal bliss. Yet, his cultural pessimism appears to express deep concern with the developments of his day and will strongly echo in the philosophy after the Second World War. The themes deeply resonate with me.
Profile Image for Omar Amat.
123 reviews1 follower
April 27, 2023
there are some interesting critiques here and there, but I feel the story needed to be fleshed out a little more as it seems only as a vehicle for said criticisms (unnecessary constructs in society; how arts are dismissed in favor of science.)

the part I enjoyed the most involved a description similar to what Poe has done already in "How to write a Blackwood article" to much greater effect in the Blackwood article.

there is even some spirituality I think referering to the name of the characters, and their eventual fate.
Profile Image for salchupup.
105 reviews1 follower
August 22, 2024
4 estrellas.

Un bello relato de Edgar Allan Poe. Destaco sus referencias filosóficas, que logran mezclar la metafísica más pura sobre la muerte con la política y la crítica al progreso de la Humanidad. A su vez, el relato cuenta con unas descripciones hermosamente inquietantes de las sensaciones del protagonista al morir.
Profile Image for M. Ashraf.
2,360 reviews131 followers
November 18, 2020
The Colloquy of Monos and Una
Edgar Allan Poe

A conversation from the other side, between a couple, a bit of drama, confession, fun, feelings all over the place, process of death...
Not exciting enough and I did not like it that much either.
Part of the collected work of Poe
Profile Image for Natalie.
3,137 reviews182 followers
June 20, 2018
You are confused and oppressed by the majestic novelty of the Life Eternal.

Monos and Una are discussing how passionately they love each other, even beyond death. They discuss what it was like to die and be without one another.

How mysteriously did it [Death] act as a check to human bliss--saying unto it "thus far, and no farther!"

Thus, in time, it became painful to love. Hate would have been mercy then.

As far as the dialogue goes, there was quite a bit that didn't make sense. I'm getting used to that with Poe. He's an odd duck.

But, for myself, the Earth's records had taught me to look for widest ruin as the price of highest civilization.
Profile Image for Lee Foust.
AuthorÌý10 books201 followers
January 31, 2023
So, have come to a pair of dialogues here in Poe's collected works. Not sure if these come from German Romanticism (didn't Novalis write some like this?) or perhaps the Renaissance resurrection of Plato and Socratese via Giordano Bruno et al.? At any rate, both of Poe's seem to begin with one thing and then veer off, not uninterestingly, into another. This one seemed to want to explore life after death but ends up (mansplaining!) the stages of death in which the eternal soul, through the purifying medium of fire, moves from a consciousness of time (life) to that of place (eternal death). Interesting, as always.
Profile Image for Evelyn.
63 reviews6 followers
July 8, 2020
At first I found it very similar to The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion, two lovers in the afterlife remembering their lives on Earth. However, this story has a different approach and explains the feelings after passing away.
Profile Image for Delanie Dooms.
590 reviews
May 3, 2022
A metaphysical work.

It is a discussion between to lovers, deceased (or regenerated, I suppose). From what I can tell the name Monos and Una are derived from Greek and Latin, respectfully. Both mean "One".

I am sorry to say that the story is nothing more to me than a story of the soul's perpetual existence within the body until the time of regeneration. The feelings, especially the feeling of a objective time, which Monos feels as a 6th sense, is especially well done; the meaninglessness of the occupation of this mental pulsation of time all throughout his stay in the ground (until his love reunites with him) is also well done.

The story, if Monos can be trusted in his political opinions, is anti-democratic and for natural law. The "gradation" of the world (where some are more such-and-such a thing, some less) is his reason for his anti-democratic stance. Humans, apparently, have overshot the purposes of nature. Technological advancement ("Art"), the ugly buildings it produces, the evil that the tree of knowledge wrought, etc., are all mentioned and abhorred by Monos as reasons for apocalypse. The purely mathematized moral thought of the "utilitarian" of this period also mocked.

"And these men, the poets, living and perishing amid the scorn of the "utilitarian's"--of rough pedants, who arrogated to themselves a title which could have been properly applied only to the scorned--these men, the poets, ponder piningly, yet not unwisely, upon the ancient days when our wants were not more simple than our enjoyments were keen--days when mirth was a word unknown, so solemnly deep-toned was happiness--holy, august and blissful days, when blue rivers ran undammed, between hills unhewn into far forest solitudes, primeval, odorous, and unexplored."
130 reviews1 follower
April 5, 2025
“Of pain there was some little; of pleasure there was much; but of moral pain or pleasure none at all. Thus your wild sobs floated into my ear with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fiber of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers—you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.�

Back on my Edgar Allan bullshit.

Two Lovers, Monos and Una, contemplate death after dying. Monos gives a descriptive retelling of how it was to slip into the “shadow�.

There’s a lot of interesting musings here. Poe seems to damn the world for not embracing its natural inheritance, too much art, reason and mathematics has made humanity spiritually corrupt. Bit hypocritical for a writer to say, but Poe was a repressed soul wasn’t he?
Had sins he wasn’t proud of, wife/underage cousin notwithstanding; his sensual approach to death is compelling and focusing on consciousness after rather than before dying is different. The story does end abruptly for me, but other than that it’s worth reading if you enjoy Poe.

Rating: 4 Stars
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for (Xoch).
47 reviews
December 1, 2019
Thus your wild sobs floated into my ears with all their mournful cadences, and were appreciated in their every variation of sad tone; but they were soft musical sounds and no more; they conveyed to the extinct reason no intimation of the sorrows which gave them birth; while the large and constant tears which fell upon my face, telling the bystanders of a heart which broke, thrilled every fibre of my frame with ecstasy alone. And this was in truth the Death of which these bystanders spoke reverently, in low whispers � you, sweet Una, gaspingly, with loud cries.

They attired me for the coffin � three or four dark figures which flitted busily to and fro. As these crossed the direct line of my vision they affected me as forms; but upon passing to my side their images impressed me with the idea of shrieks, groans, and other dismal expressions of terror, of horror, or of wo. You alone, habited in a white robe, passed in all directions musically about me.
Profile Image for Valentina027.
5 reviews
February 13, 2025
Era media noche y tú seguías a mi lado.
Los demás habíanse marchado de la cámara mortuoria. Descansaba yo en el ataúd. Las lámparas ardían intermitentemente, pues así me lo indicaba lo trémulo de las monótonas melodías. Súbitamente aquellos cantos perdieron claridad y volumen, hasta cesar del todo. El perfume dejó de impresionar mi olfato.
Las formas no afectaban ya mi visión. El peso de la tiniebla se alzó por sí mismo de mi pecho. Un choque apagado, como una descarga eléctrica, recorrió mi cuerpo y fue seguido por una pérdida total de la idea del contacto.
El cuerpo mortal había sido al fin golpeado por la mano de la letal Corrupción.
Y, sin embargo, no toda sensibilidad se había apagado. Apreciaba el espantoso cambio que se estaba operando en mi carne, y tal como el soñador advierte a voces la presencia corporal de aquel que se inclina sobre su lecho, así, dulce Una, sentía yo que aún seguías a mi lado.
🖤🥀
Profile Image for Javier Muñoz .
319 reviews12 followers
December 17, 2024
Había olvidado el cuidado de Poe en cada línea de sus inolvidables textos. En este veo que se divide en dos secciones: la primera, en que Monos explica cómo eran los hombre en aquel tiempo, los "utilitaristas" o los proclives al Conocimiento, en detrimento del pensar poético que promulgaban los despreciados artistas; me gusta en particular lo que se dice de la enseñanza de la música en que se aprende sobre la armonía y ritmo, y cómo esto impacta en el ser humano y lo inclina hacia la Belleza; otra también es la que se menciona a Pascal con lo del pensamiento del corazón: "El corazón tiene sus razones que la razón no conoce".
La segunda parte es la explicación minuciosa de la muerte o transformación, y sus goces o deslumbramientos en ese transcurso, en donde al final Monos y Una amplían sus contornos y se transforman en "1" con el todo, como sus nombres.
85 reviews
February 23, 2025
First published in Graham's Magazine in August 1841 finds us once again exploring the realm of life after death. Only this time around the charters names are Monos and Una. I had hight hopes that this one would focus more on the dark dealings of death and the after life. But sadly it started off so very slow I found it ever so hard to read. One sentence that kinda stuck out to me was four words which have nothing really to do with the story but as someone who makes their livelihood writing are very strange. "Words are vague things. " And Mr. Poe knows this very well. However I will say the end of this short was much more to my liking than the first part I only wish he had taken this route from the beginning I believe more readers would have received it much better, I know I would have.
167 reviews
February 27, 2022
The souls of two deceased lovers meet years after they have both crossed into the astral plane and discuss death and the afterlife. I imagine it would be a beautiful thing to be reacquainted with your lover after years or centuries of separation, but ‘Monos and Una� was tedious and a chore to get through. The saving grace was in the last few paragraphs of when Monos (who died first) discusses the state of the soul immediately after death. Monos was present at his own funeral and felt the presence of his lover Una there before he gradually lost all sense of time. That was an interesting concept to think about.
Profile Image for Amelia Bujar.
1,589 reviews1 follower
May 28, 2024
FULL REVIEW ON MY WEBSITE


This one have all the points which a good gothic story should have which of course is the gothic vibe, romance, dark mood and a deeper meaning behind it.

And to be honest but I got Friedrich Nietzsche vibes from this one which was really strange for me. Which of course I really dont mind.

The whole potential of this story for me at least wasn’t used as it could have been. So this is the reason why I give this one so low rating.

The writing style is far from good or even okay. It almost doesn’t feel like Edgar Allan Poe have written it.
Profile Image for Ahmud Sharara.
1 review
October 21, 2023
The main genre is a combination of science fiction and philosophical fiction. The text explores speculative concepts such as the experience of the afterlife and the nature of existence. It delves into sensory perceptions and sensations in a unique and abstract way, using vivid descriptions and metaphors. The narrative also reflects on philosophical themes such as the relationship between knowledge and perception. The text combines elements of science fiction, as it imagines a futuristic or otherworldly setting, with philosophical contemplation on the nature of reality and consciousness.
Profile Image for Nicolás Guasaquillo.
193 reviews
March 18, 2025
Desde las postrimerías de la muerte, dos espíritus conversan sobre el devenir humano, sobre la influencia de la ciencia en la creación e interpretación del mundo y sobre el amor, fuerza animada que pulsiona el alma y la conecta con su dimensión sensible.

Este relato, como todos los demás de Poe, posee intensidad poética, cada palabra empleada es crucial para suscitar en el lector esa experiencia melancólica y sublime tan característica del autor.

El estilo narrativo del relato se embarca en lo filosófico, estableciendo una distancia considerable con lo literario, hecho que puede llegar a confundir al momento de atravesar la lectura. De ahí su puntuación.
Profile Image for David Meditationseed.
548 reviews34 followers
May 13, 2018
A tale full of poetry and transcendence about the death process.

But not the consciousness prior to the fact itself, but beyond the processes we usually think. It is an exercise of descriptive imagination with the movements of the extinction of reason, of intuition and of the simple perception of all the procedure of death in which the soul, time and space, its laws and relations weigh in.

An awesome Poe's work.
Profile Image for Mel Shield.
48 reviews
August 20, 2023
A dialogue of two lovers reunited in immortal death, which turns into a monologue of Monos recounting the moments after death.

There's a segue prodding against man's search for knowledge relative to a departure from the arts, which I didn't particularly care for - it added little to the tale.

I was drawn in by the speculative (from Poe's, rather than Monos', side of things) post-death experience.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews

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