Thomas De Quincey

Name: On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth
Author: Thomas De Quincey

On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

Summary

“On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth”, published in 1823, is a work by Thomas De Quincey. It explores elements such as understanding, murder and suspension.

Quotes from On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (Thomas De Quincey)

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ In order that a new world may step in, this world must for a time disappear. The murderers, and the murder, must be insulated—cut off by an immeasurable gulph from the ordinary tide and succession of human affairs—locked up and sequestered in some deep recess; we must be made sensible that the world of ordinary life is suddenly arrested—laid asleep—tranced—racked into a dread armistice: time must be annihilated; relation to things without abolished; and all must pass self-withdrawn into a deep syncope and suspension of earthly passion. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Hence it is, that when the deed is done, when the work of darkness is perfect, then the world of darkness passes away like a pageantry in the clouds: the knocking at the gate is heard; and it makes known audibly that the reaction has commenced: the human has made its reflux upon the fiendish; the pulses of life are beginning to beat again ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art; but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers,—like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert—but that, the further we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Here, then, was a fresh proof that I was right in relying on my own feeling in opposition to my understanding; and I again set myself to study the problem; at length I solved it to my own satisfaction; and my solution is this. Murder in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Here, as I have said, the retiring of the human heart and the entrance of the fiendish heart was to be expressed and made sensible. Another world has stepped in; and the murderers are taken out of the region of human things, human purposes, human desires. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ The effect was, that it reflected back upon the murder a peculiar awfulness and a depth of solemnity; yet, however obstinately I endeavored with my understanding to comprehend this, for many years I never could see why it should produce such an effect.
Here I pause for one moment, to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or sister, in a fainting fit, he may chance to have observed that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle, is that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the recommencement of suspended life. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ For he has actually seen the effect every day of his life. The reason is—that he allows his understanding to overrule his eyes. His understanding, which includes no intuitive knowledge of the laws of vision, can furnish him with no reason why a line which is known and can be proved to be a horizontal line, should not appear a horizontal line ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Ask of any person whatsoever, who is not previously prepared for the demand by a knowledge of perspective, to draw in the rudest way the commonest appearance which depends upon the laws of that science; as for instance, to represent the effect of two walls standing at right angles to each other, or the appearance of the houses on each side of a street, as seen by a person looking down the street from one extremity. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Thomas De Quincey, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823)

“ Accordingly he makes the line of his houses a horizontal line, and fails of course to produce the effect demanded. Here then is one instance out of many, in which not only the understanding is allowed to overrule the eyes, but where the understanding is positively allowed to obliterate the eyes as it were, for not only does the man believe the evidence of his understanding in opposition to that of his eyes, but, (what is monstrous!) the idiot is not aware that his eyes ever gave such evidence. ”

Thomas De Quincey

Summary

Quotes from On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (Thomas De Quincey)

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