Keats: la belle dame sans merci

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Categoria:	Letteratura Inglese
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Data:	18.06.2008
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JOHN KEATS

John Keats was born in London in 1765 in a middle class family and died in Rome in 1821 because of tuberculosis. His short life was not a lucky one; he lose his mother and one of his brothers for tuberculosis and his early poems were not appreciated by the critics, but now he is one of the most important romantic poets on England.
His most famous poems are La Belle Dame Sans Merci and the Odes.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

O what can ail thee Knight at arms, She found me roots of relish sweet,
Alone and palely loitering? And honey wild, and manna dew;
The sedge has withered from the Lake And sure in language strange she said
And no birds sing! I love thee true –

O what can ail the Knight at arms, She took me to her elfin grot,
So haggard, so woe-begone? And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
The squirrel’s granary is full And there I shut her wild wild eyes
And the harvest’s done. With kisses four.

I see a lily on thy brow, And there she lulled me asleep,
With anguish moist and fever dew, And there I dream’d, Ah woe betide!
On thy cheek a fading rose The latest dream I ever dreamt
Fast withereth too – On the cold hill side.

I met a Lady in the Meads I saw pale Kings, and Princess too,
Full beautiful, a faery’s child; Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Her hair was long, her foot was light, They cried “La belle Dame sans merci
And her eyes were wild – Thee hath in thrall.”

I made a garland for her head, I saw their starv’d lips in the gloam
And bracelets too, and fragrant Zone; With horrid warning gaped wide,
She look’d at me as she did love And I awoke, and found me here
And made sweet moan – On the cold hill’s side.

I set her on my pacing steed, And this is why I sojourn here
And nothing else saw all day long; Alone and palely loitering;
For sidelong would she bend and sing Though the sedge is withered from the Lake,
A faery’s song – And no birds sing.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a ballad, and like others ballads, narrates a story with characters acting in a setting.
The story is introduced in the first lines by the narrator, and then the past events are narrated by the Knight; in the first lines, when the narrator meets the Knight is winter, when the Knight is alone before meeting the Lady is autumn, while when he is with the woman is spring. For the first time, nature acquires the romantic meaning of a mirror of feelings. When the Knight meets the Lady has a shock, an emotion so strong that he forgets everything, just fixed on her, he misunderstands her attitude and thinks that she loves him, but that’s not the reality, when she took him to the grot, – that might be considered the symbol of the maternal womb – she lulled and abandoned him.
Keats believed that the joys of sensual love can not last and often lead to destruction and this is the theme of the ode. As a matter of fact, when the Lady leaves the Knight his pain is so strong that he is destroyed inside, but also he is going to die, the destruction comes from his feelings and attacks his body.
The poem is also elusive and can be interpreted in different ways, the Lady could be the symbol of sensual love and an anticipation of “femme fatale” that is accused to ruin man, her double image (she is a sort of compromise between the Queen of Faeries and a witch) suggest a double nature: it is both benign and evil. Her transfiguration comes through her absence: it is her absence, the impossibility to find her again that starts Knight’s agony; but also she might symbolise the inspiration that comes unexpected and then abandon the poet who can no longer be a poet without it.
Keats’s highest art is expressed in his odes, sonnets and a ballad which, however, can’t be considered in the line of mediaeval tradition, but is rather a literary, more refined and elaborated version of this poetic form. In all his poems, his emotions are expressed through sensuous imagery where all the senses are often at play simultaneously and this gives his poems concentration and richness of expression.