In Keats La Belle Dame sans Merci he tells the story a young man, a strong "knight-at-arms"(47), who was drawn in by the beauty of "a faery's child"(47). So enthralled was he with her that he "made a garland for her head, and bracelets too"(47) in a attempt to woo her. After succeeding in gaining her affection the knight follows the beautiful girl back to her "elfin grot"(48) and is "lulled.. asleep"(48). However, not all is well in his dreamland. He sees "pale kings and princes... their starved lips.. gaped wide"(48). This nightmare awakens him and he find himself "on the cold hill's side" next to a dead and withered lake.
The purpose of the poem is to the show that when the young knight submitted to his lust for the faery daughters beautiful appearance he found that her lovely figure gave him no real reward or satisfaction. This want is shown by the emaciated state of the men who had come before him, they also found no spiritual sustainable in the "elfin grot".
Keats' message is strikingly similar to that of both Augustine and Plato. In Confessions Augustine spends much time reflecting on how he was "a slave of lust"(VI,15) and how it kept him from wholly committing himself to God. Plato too states that lust for physical forms is the lowly impulse of "footed and winged animals" who are "sick for intercourse with each other"(207B) and that furthermore "beauty of people's souls is more valuable than the beauty of their bodies"(210C).
The common thread through these three texts is that the desire for the outward beauty cannot fulfill all of a person's spiritual needs. That to truly be fulfilled and elevated one must look to a being's deeper appeal, such as Plato's beautiful ideas or Augustine's holy trinity. The knight of Keats' poem clearly found the faery daughters inner beauty to be lacking.
Jon, when I read this poem I was discussing it with Lachlan and we talked about how the knight wakes up to see all the emaciated people. It says, "She lulled me to sleep... the latest dream I ever dreamt on the cold hill side/ I saw pale kings and princes too/ pale warriors, death pale were they all" (48: IX, X). This we took to mean that the knight wakes up to see all of these ghostly, dead figures. And they try to warn him, to wake him up. But then when he truly tries to wake up, he is in the same spot: "I awoke and found myself on the cold hill's side" (48: XI). We came to the conclusion that the faery killed the man and that he has become a ghost along with all of the other men she killed. This is a bit of a different interpretation than yours, Jon. The faery truly gave the knight no satisfaction or reward in the end. She instead took his life and left him a ghost.
ReplyDeleteMarlee does a good job summing up our conversation while reading the text. After the other poems we read I wasn’t at all surprised by fairy sex, but when the fairy turned out to be a serial killed, now that was a real plot twist. The fairy is definitely much more malicious than the negative aspects of love Jon quotes from Confessions and Symposium, because while slavery and illness are negative, they still leave open the possibility of recovery. The way the fairy kills her victim can be compared to how Augustine describes sin as death; however, even Augustine’s choice of words cannot truly compare to the fairy, as he uses "death" metaphorically while the fairy in the story literally kills her victim, trapping him forever as another ghostly victim on the cold hill.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this poem, I too figured the knight to have died. I, however, did not attribute this to the faery being the killer, in the sense that she murdered him. My interpretation of the poem was more similar to the story of narcissus, where he was so in love with his image that it led to his demise. Although the knight is not enthralled with his own image, we hear the pale warriors with their "starved lips" tell him that "La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!" (48). If we gather them to have met a similar dismal fate, then perhaps the answer lies in their starved state. I figured that the faery captivated them that they starved themselves without realization. Our different interpretations show the many sides of poetry people can gain, but I think the importance in this particular poem is that even something seemingly lovely, like the faery or her love, can lead to bad circumstances if one becomes too obsessed by it.
ReplyDeleteInteresting discussion guys. I didn't think about the possibility that the knight could have died. That observation really adds another dimension to the analysis.
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting twist on the story might be considering the nature of the girl with which he fell in love with. As an elf, the girl is Sans Merci, or without mercy. While this could be seen as a vile murder done by a particularly ruthless human, it could also be that the elf truly lacks the emotion of mercy. If the elf feels nothing, then it cannot truly be evil what she has done, nor can it be called murder -- she killed him because it was in her nature. This changes the tale from a cautionary parable concerning the dangers of lust, as we see above, to a tale cautioning projecting human emotions, or personifying, those things or creatures which are not human and are not like us.
ReplyDeleteGabe's point is quite interesting, that the elf, not being human, represents the dangers of attachment to non-human things, like objects. In addition to this point, with the image of the knight comes the image of armor. Armor protects the knight only until he takes it off. While there is no mention of the knight specifically taking off his armor, he does so either literally or metaphorically when he is with the fairy. I come to a similar conclusion as everyone else, that the moral of the story is that one should never give in to lust, especially of objects.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I might add is that Keats seems to be warning us specifically about the deceptive nature of lust. We come upon the knight during the autumn, when "the sedge has withered from the lake" and "no birds sing" (I.4-5). This imagery creates a barren, lonely, and apprehensive atmosphere, which sheds light upon the knight's susceptible state and contrasts against the beautiful energy of the mysterious lady. Because she feeds him "roots of relish sweet, and honey wild, and manna dew" and fills the void of emptiness among the cold hills, she appears beneficial to the knight (VII.25-26). He even tries to reciprocate by treating her tenderly (closing her eyes with "kisses four") and devoting all of his energy to her (VIII.34). In the end, though, whatever protection or nourishment he has received from her means nothing, for she ultimately drains him of life. Through this, Keats seems to be demonstrating how fleeting the benefits of lust are, how lust sometimes disguises itself as good, and how lust targets the vulnerable. By isolating himself on the desolate, autumnal hillside (perhaps a metaphor for spiritual/moral decay?), the knight has prepared himself to succumb to the siren song of lust.
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