The poem, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”, is about a knight who with some sort of difficulty (inferring from the first to third stanzas: “O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms, alone and palely loitering … Fast withereth too.”) was approached, relieved, and put to death eventually by a beautiful and yet dreadful goddess; I described the lady as goddess because in the poem, the knight describes her as “a faery’s child”, and also no human can lull a person asleep. The poor knight was beauty trapped and gave everything he could to her(the 5th stanza: “I made a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone;”), and when he realized he was trapped, it was too late. In my opinion, Keats’s intention in this poem is to advise men how dangerous it can be to fall in love with fatally beautiful woman; and by “fatally beautiful woman”, I mean a woman who possesses beauty and uses it for a evil purpose.
In the poem, “Bright Star”, Keats says that he desires to be steadfast as the bright star not to watch his love at a distance as the star does to “the moving water” and “the new soft-fallen mask of snow” but instead to feel his love. He mentions the moving waters and snow on mountains: things that are parts of eternal nature, to describe his eternal affection toward his lover. This poem explains Keats’s deep love with someone because in the poem, he mentions “Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, … and so live ever – or else swoon to death” which to me meant that he would exist steadfast for his love, not for other reasons, and he would rather die if it was not for his love. Then I wondered why he had to use a star among many steadfast things to describe his love. So I mused over the words that he uses to describe the star and tried interpreting “bright” as something that can metaphorically be bright: passion, and “lone” as “only”. And I came to a conclusion that he might have wanted to be the only passionate and eternal love of his loved one.
Additionally, with regard to the two letters, the one Keats wrote to his brothers shows his daily life and his interests at the time. Apparently, his interests are focused on arts and literature. In the other letter written to J.H. Reynolds, Keats provides his opinion about leading a happy life, which is to read and ponder over “Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose”. However, throughout the letter, he uses his sophistication to conceal his indolence. He claims that “the Minds of Mortals” are different from one another and therefore have different ways of thinking, but eventually at the end, they all come together (from the line 14 to 20: “man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Webb of his Soul … and [at] last greet each other at the Journeys end). I think that this idea is what is behind Keats’s indolence and the main reason why Keats takes so passive a way when it comes to learning – because, with this notion, you don’t have to actively run around to learn and find answers, but rather, you just have to sit, be a “passive and receptive” flower waiting for “noble insects” to come by and learn from them as Keats says in the poem (from the line 18 to 22: “Now it is more noble to sit like Jove [than] to fly like Mercury … taking hints from every noble insects that favors us with a visit”). He also refers to the poem he wrote in the letter and how he was led to the thoughts: “by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness – I have no read any Books”, which is also an implication that he does not value active learning. And at the end of the letter, he himself admits that he is “sensible all this is a mere sophistication … to excuse my indolence”.
Jun Ho,
I couldn’t agree with you more on your interpretation of the poem “La Bella Dame Sans Merci”. Keats in this poem is clearly discussing the ways of seduction brought on by women, and how they can have a strong affect on men when used negatively. Now, because I tend to always try to relate to each reading realistically, or literally in a sense that the everyday person can connect with the reading through perhaps an experience that they encountered. My opinions on the female in the piece tends to differ, I believe that this Knight was dealing with a shrewd nympho. Malicious, or vicious in her approach to simply get off by sleeping with a Knight, playing each card the right way so that she can get her lay, and get the hell on with her life. If you look at it in this manner, you can see that back in this time a Knight was a glorified suspect, everything they represented was dashing, charming, and somewhat dangerous. I mean what broad (and I used the term broad to distinguish this type of female compared to a proper etiquette lady like character) wouldn’t get off by this type of guy. I see it as she just used him for the sex, got her action and just split in the night. Uncommon because now a day, as I’m sure it was back then the role in this manner is always flipped. It’s always the man who is pulling his pants up in the middle of the night, coming up with some lame excuse to leave while he walks out the door. And it’s here that I believe Keats makes the biggest impact in this poem, depicting the man as the one left behind with the broken heart, and sorrow felt head, for believing he was in love was a mistake on his behalf. Showing to the audience that men to go through the same feelings as women when placed in a similar circumstance, and ultimately showing that we are all the same, proving equality between the two genders matters most. Clearly Keats was thinking way before his time if my opinion tends to me accurate, and this I believe is why you Eli chose this particular piece for us to read today.
Giancarlo out
Btw I did all this on my phone so please forgive any major grammatical mistakes.
Personally, I disagree with both of your opinions concerning the woman in this poem. Although I do agree with Jun Ho that the woman has a certain form of divineness to herself, especially since she feeds the knight “honey wild, and manna dew” which I take as food of the gods, I do not think the girl is a lesson Keats is trying to teach us about falling in love with women who have wrongful intentions.
My interpretation of the poem was that the knight was sick and in his sickness death comes to him in the form of a woman. He envisions death as this beautiful woman who drags him along using her seductive powers. Death disguises himself as the perfect woman for the knight so that death can easily take the knight on the road to the afterlife. The knight, being deeply under the spell of the beauty of the woman, presents her gifts (garland and bracelets) to show his affection towards her. The woman accepts them and then shares sexual relations with the knight. To me, this sexual relation is a symbolism for death sucking the life from you. In the poem the way death tricks you to follow him is by using seduction. She takes him to her cave and lulls him to sleep where he dreams his final dream “the latest dream I ever dream’d” and dies. The men in his dream are others who have fallen for the trick of death and attempt to warn him to stay away, but it is too late. He wakes up on the hillside of death where he will remain forever. For me, there is no moral to the story except that death will eventually come to us all in one way or another. No matter which form death shows us, we will be seduced by its offer and follow him to the afterlife.
I don’t think Keats wrote this poem to advise men on how dangerous it can be to fall in love with a fatally beautiful woman. I think La Belle Dame Sans Merci is just a story about love and death. The Knight met this beautiful lady and he thought she loved him. “I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful – a faerys child”. She looks innocent and she uses her beauty to attract men and then kills them with her supernatural powers. “Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild”. In my opinion she is pure evil. She made him think she loved him and then she poisoned him. She uses the food of the Gods, so he wont suspect that she has malicious intent. “She found me roots of relish sweet, and honey wild, and manna dew, and sure in language strange she said – I love thee true.” She speaks in a strange language because she is not human. She is manipulative. She puts him to sleep and he has this dream about pale kings, pale princes and pale warriors. These are all the men that she killed. They actually tell him that they have been enslaved by a beautiful lady. “They cried – La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall”. I believe they try to tell the knight to stay away from her because she is dangerous. But it is too late now; he has already been poisoned by her. When he wakes up from this dream, he is dead. La Belle Dame Sans Merci is probably seducing another man already. It seems that her only purpose is to seduce men and kill them afterwards.
Edirlene
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