Nature in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

In both the first and second published versions of Keats's poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", nature appears in nearly every single stanza, used metaphorically and sometimes literally. In the first stanza, we see examples of literal nature used to represent the scene in which the subject of this short tale, the “Knight” or “wright” is found. The "sedge" or marsh grass having withered from the lake is symbolic of death, and the birds ceasing to sing could be interpreted the same way. It could also be interpreted simply as an absence of music or happiness having disappeared from the new scene in which the narrator has stumbled into. Another example is the "roots of relish sweet, manna/And honey wild, and honey dew", which could maybe be a metaphor for heavenly delights that are not food, but could also be meant literally as delicious food found by the Knight's enchantress.

What I found most interesting, though, was the repetition of nature-themed metaphors found in this poem, especially after it was cleaned up and edited. The third stanza is solely comprised of nature metaphors! And they are beautiful!

“I see a lily on thy brow,

With anguish moist and fever dew;

And on thy cheek a fading rose

Fast withereth too.”

The strong morbid tone that was created in the first stanza is continued here with constant images of death: the “lily”, the “dew” here representing feverishness and an unhealthy-looking condition, and the loss of pink color of his face (“a rose fading”). The word “wither” is also brought back from the first stanza, but in a new way. In the first stanza, it was the world around the Knight that was withering, and reflected how he was feeling. In this stanza, however, the metaphors based on nature are used to describe the Knight himself. I think it is used as a means of transition from the narrator speaking to the Knight describing his dream and current emotional condition. If anyone else reads this that has other suggestions about why Keats would make this shift in description, please comment and let me know.

Faeries and Knights

Keats’s poem appeals to readers in that its subject matter pertains to something that most people have had to deal with: the destructive forces of love (particularly unrequited love). However, this is not what at first excites or draws my interest to this work.

I have something of a passion for old folk tales and northern mythologies, and something about the way in which this poem is written feels similar to Yeats’s Irish Folk and Fairy Tales (though certainly the poem predates this book). Keats evokes something of the mystery and wonder that must have filled the early woods of the British Isles, and he here represents a continuing fascination with the faery and woodland magic that presents itself in the folk-culture of Europe throughout history. All of this, however, ignores the position of the knight in the story.

Surely it sucks to be the knight-at-arms in this story, yet despite this I will ignore his plight to examine his role as a heroic figure. The stories of knights and their chivalry and bravery are to be found all throughout British history, and the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes or the Idylls of Tennyson both make for fascinating reading. Thus, though Keats’s subject matter is that of love lost and the cruelty (it can seem) with which lovers ensnare and then abandon their partners, the method through which he accomplishes this idea places the poem in a kind of fairy-tale mode that makes it fun to read, and lends itself to an earlier history of mythopoeic fantasy.

Keats is genuine, even when writing fiction.

One of the things that I most enjoy about reading Keats' notes and annotations in poetry anthologies is how unapologetic he is about his reasons for writing poetry. He mostly ignores critics, writes about what he wants (grecian urns, seeing friends at a party, reading books). By interlacing his collections of epic, long-form poems with shorter ones that speak to relateable topics, Keats speaks to a broad audience. When I read his poetry, I do not feel that he is trying to produce works that will be famous like Lord Byron, nor does he have an overt political agenda. He is simply writing what he likes. He is confident that, even though he is reviewed harshly by his peers and critics, his poetry will be remembered favorably. This self-assuredness carries through in his writing, and I believe that, for one so young, Keats had a remarkable sense of identity and purpose.

La Belle Dame sans Merci and Keats’s Struggle with Abandonment

Despite its brevity, John Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci holds as an extraordinarily rich and expressive piece that articulates Keats’s own perception of the “femmes fatales”. I think it’s interesting to compare Keats’s portrayal of women to Byron’s; while both seem to purport women as seductresses who control men with their alluring physical appearance, there seems to be much more anger and sexism in Byron’s work. Unlike Byron, Keats’s seems to hold a softer view of women and places less blame on them. As a corollary, Keats’s also does not seem to present men in the same “helpless victim” role, but rather a more bewildered or aloof representation.

It seems that Keats’s portrayal of women is probably somewhat reflective of his upbringing, particularly the circumstances he faced with his mother. With his father dead at the age of 9, Keats’s mother was left alone to care for him and his siblings; unfortunately, his mother was known to be extremely inconsistent in her care for Keats and his siblings. One day, she abruptly abandoned the family for four years leaving Keats and his siblings with their grandmother for care. This experience was undoubtedly incredibly traumatic to Keats and was probably the single greatest catalyst for his formation of the perception of women as inconstant presences that could disappear at any instant.

With such a flighty mother-role, it seems appropriate to speculate that this perception of women comes through in much of his writing including La Belle Dame sans Merci. In this piece it seems clear that the beautiful “faery’s child” who has assumed the role of the fleeting presence of women. At first the woman seduces the knight with her beauty and then lures him to her “elfin grot”. Promising that she “loves him true”, the knight follows her to her cave where he is then lulled to sleep. Upon waking he finds himself on the cold hillside alone where he remains waiting for her return. The knight’s circumstances may at first seem cliché, but upon considering Keats’s own struggle with abandonment, the message is tragic and reflects the pain that Keats must have experienced in facing the loss of his mother.

La Belle Dame sans Merci is a simple yet beautiful poem that seems to be a deeply personal manifestation of Keats’s struggle with women and abandonment. I’m interested to see if this portrayal of women as powerful yet inconstant figures remains consistent throughout the rest of his work.

From Imagination to Pessimism, then back to Imagination

Akin to Blake's "Experience" poems, Keats' The Eve of St. Agnes discusses the pain one feels when imagination is thrust into reality. Here Madeline, trapped in a rigid pattern of behavior, is allowed a night of pleasure and thus beautifies it. Food, comfort, and a man's presence create an illusion of decadence, an idea ironically founded in inexperience that someday, marriage will free virgins from it. If such a fantasy were to occur in reality, however, it would spoil. The truth would efface the pleasant vision, and guilt from a lifetime of purity expired would coat the event.
For at least a moment, it seems Madeline's fantasy is quite different from Porphyro's presence: "there was a painful change, that nigh expell'd/ The blisses of her dream so pure and deep."
Soon the tide changes, however, when she asks Porphyro to "give [her] that [sweet] voice again" rather than act as if he has sinned. The couple decides that deserting their standards would be preferable living in purity with a tarnished dream. Because they sleep together they must consolidate the dream by fleeing town and the statutes that render such actions fatal.
The poem enforces the idea that reality is not a governing force but rather a function of the society in which we live. If the society is unaware of any social deviance, it can occur as vividly as imagined. Thus, even as the poem depicts an old Catholic ritual, it shows a virgin's illicit joy in both fulfilling her wishes and breaking the rules undetected. Though I doubt this was meant to incite people to subversive revolt, it does describe a way to usurp society by burying oneself within it and than running away. This is additionally revolutionary as it portrays sex positively without portraying its willing participants negatively, particularly Madeline.

Keats in The Examiner

When I read John Keats' sonnet, 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer,' in its original context that it was published in, I am curious to know why Leigh Hunt included this poem into his article and not something to show off Keats as a qualified poet and as an individual. 'On First Looking' first appeared in an article of the Examiner in December 1816 by editor of the newspaper, Leigh Hunt. The sole purpose of the article is to advertise three young and promising English writers, PB Shelley, JH Reynolds, and John Keats, and to acknowledge them as being contributors and promoters of a new school of poetry that had recently emerged. This new school seems to be only centered around the revival of real Nature. However, I found it odd that Hunt, when introducing the poem, did so with criticism. He first points out an incorrect rhyme, then vagueness in a phrase, and then lastly calling only the first 6 lines excellent. Perhaps Hunt just needs some assistance in his promoting tactics. Only after reading this article a few times do I see the subtleties in Hunt's purpose. In this sonnet, Keats' embraces the new school ideal of Nature almost innocently through his youthful ('To put a spirit of youth in every thing.') admiration of Chapman's translation of Homer. Chapman is able to give new light to Homer's writings in the eyes of Keats. Keats describes this affect on him in his poem by comparing it to discovering a new planet or ocean.

Man Without Mercy

La Belle Dame Sans Mercy is relating a story of lost "love" and seemingly warns us of what comes of interactions with femmes fatales. That is, one is left wretched, alone, woebegone even in a time of joy and thanksgiving ("The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done.). In this poem, the blame appears to be placed on the woman for causing such misery, but is it really her fault? In part, yes, for she is a participant in the error in communication and misunderstanding, but the man is equally to blame, whether you think it the lone man at the beginning or, as speculated, the narrator of the poem. I personally think it is the former, as at the end of his story he repeats some of the opening lines, as if in response to the initial question.

Our poor lover never actually receives confirmation from the woman of her constant affection. In the line "She look'd at me as she did love,", "as" is interpreted as "while; as if". These lead to two wildly different readings. If read as while, it could mean simply that she looked at him as they made love, which fits with the next line, "And made sweet moan". If she looked at him as if she did love, though, then it implies a quality of seeming so, but appearances are often misleading. This makes the lady's love much less concrete. It also gives birth to the possibility that the lover willed himself to imagine she loved him, when in truth such feelings may not have existed. It could be a realization on his part in retrospect that all may not have been as it seemed.

One of the most interesting lines to me was "And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true". She did not say "I love you" plainly, in a way impossible to misread, but rather in a "language strange". This serves to further question whether she ever explicitly expressed her love for him. It more and more seems as if the man, in fact, is deluding himself. His whole story has a dreamlike quality to it. The lady is "a fairy's child". Fairies are mystical creatures, not humans, and one questions whether or not they even exist at all. This man is fixated, he set her on his horse and saw nothing else all day long. When we are so obsessed with something, it is easy to interpret things the way we want, even imagine fanciful situations with the object of our fixation.

I'm sorry, my thoughts are not really being expressed clearly here, but what I essentially want to say is that the man seems to have willfully imagined the seriousness of the lady's affections, and in his language has given her a mystical, unattainable quality. Perhaps she did lead him on, but he seems to have led himself on just as much. And so the title of the poem is perhaps slightly inaccurate. Perhaps it is the man who is without mercy (for himself, and for this woman).

Edits of "La belle dame sans merci"

I was pleased to see two versions of “La belle dame sans merci” in our anthology, because I think being privy to the writing process can enlighten readers’ to poets intentions. I was surprised that the preferred version of the poem (pg 906-907) seems more forgiving of the femme fatale, whereas the earlier draft (pg 904-905) made her seem stronger and more seductive—closer to what I think of when I think of femmes fatales.

In the earlier draft of the poem, the woman is described as lulling the narrator to sleep (line 33), whereas in the later version the pair “slumber’d on the moss,” (line 33). Combined with her “fairy’s song,” or her “sweet moan,” the woman seems like a siren. Having her lull the knight to sleep adds to this depiction because it contributes to the idea that she has power over him.

Additionally, Keats changes some words between the earlier and later versions, with the effect of making the woman in the poem seem tamer. These changes include “wept” to “gaz’d” in line 33/30 and “wild wild eyes,” (line 31) to “wild sad eyes,” (line 31). By changing “wept” to “gaz’d”, Keats takes away an emotional expression from the woman. In a way, he replaces that emotion with “sad” in line 31, but sadness is a less powerful expression than weeping is. Additionally, the repetition of “wild” in line 31 emphasized the untamable nature of the woman. Pairing “wild” with “sad” makes her seem less dangerous—the difference in connotation reminds me of the difference between a caged wild animal and a loose one.

The woman still seems quite deadly in the preferred version of the poem—after all, she caused the knight to become “haggard and woe-begone,” (line 6). The differences between the two versions are subtle. I wonder if Keats thought he had created too deadly a woman in his first draft, and whether the changes contributed to different interpretations of the 1819 and 1848 versions by readers.

"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" and Translations

Keats's poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" was interesting to me in the way that it pointed out the fundamental difficulty of translation, and the effect that a difference in translation can have on the perception of the work of literature in question. Keats praises Chapman's translation of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad compared (implicitly) to the standard translation by Pope. The two translations, as we can see in the excerpts given in the book, are remarkably different, and not only because of their different metrical qualities and line lengths. Entire phrases present in one (such as "Such glories Pallas on the chief bestowed") are absent entirely from the other, or moved to a different place in the verse. This is a consequence of how differently the Greek and English languages (and poetry in particular) work. More closely-related languages, of course, are easier to translate, and Keats alludes to that in the poem. He claims to have been "[r]ound many western Islands" of poetry, referring to poetry from other Western European countries--France and Germany, perhaps--yet never having been able to fully appreciate the poetry of Homer to the degree that others praise it before seeing Chapman's translation. Keats compares the revelation of seeing the translation to discovering a new planet or seeing a new ocean. The magnitude of this shift raises questions about art, to what degree the original writer is responsible for the translated work, and whether we can in fact translate literature and maintain much of the original content at all. After all, if mere differences in translation can account for such a shift in perception, is not the translator as responsible for the final artistic product as the original author?

Keats's experience with Homer mirrors the one I had with Dostoyevsky, who wrote in another famously-difficult-to-translate language. The first time I tried to read Crime and Punishment, the translation I had seemed incredibly stilted and boring. A year or two later, I picked up a new translation recommended by a friend, and it was a revelation.

The Beautiful Lady Without Pity

In "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy," John Keats creates the imaginary world that seems so real to someone in love. Keats relies on nature as well as fantasy in establishing contrasting worlds - one is a luscious paradise filled with mythical beings and endless possibilities while the other is a bleak swamp in which no birds sing and there are virtually no signs of life. As the now "wretched" and "haggard" man "palely" loiters about a swamp, Keats describes the man's face as possessing images of both a lily and a rose - symbols for death, and love respectively. The man, who can be seen as Keats himself, then goes on to describe the mythical fairy he met in the "meads", which acts a parallel to the swampy marsh he now finds himself in. The man instantly falls for the beautiful fairy, but as he describes setting her atop his "pacing steed", it seems as though she is reluctant to reciprocate. She soon tells the man that she does indeed love him, bringing him to her "elfin grot". While Keats uses this fantastical imagery, what he is alluding to is something much more simple. The fairy's act of bringing the man to her grotto is akin to a woman allowing someone into her life - developing a more personal bond, learning dark secrets, perhaps even meeting the parents.

The man lays with his lover, but it becomes apparent that she is deeply troubled by her own demons. As she gazes into nothing and "sigh(s) deep", her "wild sad eyes" shut and the two fall asleep. When the man awakes, the fairy is gone and he is left to sit alone on a "cold hill side" which bears no resemblance to the grotto he was in previously. The man, who has loved and lost, is transported back to a startling reality - one that is without beautiful meadows, fairies, and grottos. The fantasy world described by Keats was not entirely true, but far from a figment of the man's imagination. Rather, it was derived from the true emotions that the young lover truly felt. There never was a real fairy, grotto, or even a meadow. Instead, there was a love affair with a girl whose presence made the entire world seem brighter. Now that she is gone, life seems worthless by comparison. The poem ends with repetition from the first stanza, describing the man's current state: "Alone and palely loitering,/Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,/And no birds sing."

The Jarring Tonal Switch in La Belle Dame sans Merci

There are many Romantic-era poems about forlorn artists pining after subjects that will never return their affections. What makes this one unusual, however, is the drastic juxtaposition of tones. Most of the romantic eulogies I’ve read have been fairly consistent in their mood. Either it is the despondent wailings of some victim of unrequited love or the hungry adulations of some seductive ode throughout. Either there is nothing but despair, or the subject of affection inspires the writer completely and by virtue of being their glorious selves, can do no wrong.

The lyrical, smitten descriptions of a man utterly taken by a love interest are sandwiched between two far more depressing segments. The poem takes on a sort of novel narrative format, with the discovery of a character at the end of some tale, following with the changing of the narrative voice and a telling of the events leading up to that moment.

The irregularity of this, paired with the un-emphasized segues between narrators (“And on they cheek a fading rose” moves right into the lovesick man’s answer “I met a lady in the meads”) makes a rereading even more helpful.

Once these things are distinguished, the drastic difference between the start of the poem (“what can ail thee, wretched wight,/ So haggard and so woe-begone?”), the middle of the poem (“I met a Lady in the meads/ Full beautiful, a fairy’s child”) and again the end of the poem (“And this is why I sojourn here/Alone and paley loitering”) still stands out.

It is a striking first-person reminder that the most wonderful and unambiguous of romantic feelings can end up being cause for discomfort and misery, rather than just a constant source of indulgent pain or inspiration. An odd, bitter realism is brought into play when a poem is willing to address both functions of romance in the same work, and to such extremes. Though the undertones of the poem suggest perhaps a sense of entitlement to the lady in question, if this is bypassed, it can be read as an unusually insightful cautionary story regarding presumptuous love.

Keats "Eve of st. Agnes"

Keats “Eve of St. Agnes”: The idealization vs. the reality
of love and sexuality

“It seem’d he never, never could redeem/ from
such a steadfast spell his lady’s eyes;/ So mus’d awhile, entoil’d in woofed (woven)
phantasies.” (286-288). Keats describes the strong “spell” of Madeleine’s
sexual fantasies and Porphyro’s difficulty in awaking her from them. As a
virgin, “free from mortal taint” (225), Madeleine’s dreams of love or sexual
fantasy are rooted in the idealization of an inexperienced mind. Love and
intercourse to her are something larger than mortality, characterized by the
spiritual atmosphere surrounding her dreaming that is developed within the
language of the poem by the author.
From this idealization or dream,
Porphyro brings a contrasting scene to Madeleine when he finally wakes her
through the playing of her lute. “Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep:/ There
was a painful change, that night expell’d/ the blisses of her dream so pure and
deep.” (299-301). Madeleine proceeds to weep, saddened by the reality of
Porphyro compared to the beauty of her dreams. Keats displays pessimism in
bringing focus to the difference of idealization vs. reality in terms of love
and sexual intercourse.
This pessimism is further
complicated, when Madeleine and Porphyro have intercourse. “Into her dream he
melted, as the rose/ Blendeth its odour with the violet,” (320-321). Madeleine
is fearful afterwards, questioning whether or not she will be abandoned by
Porphyro. Porphyro does not leave her however, he instead brings her with him,
as the two escape into the night, gliding away into the storm “like phantoms”
(361).
After
displaying a contrast between the idealization and lesser reality of love and
sexuality, Keats depicts the two having intercourse, then fleeing away into the
night. By describing them as phantoms, Keats places them both within the realm
of the dream or the supernatural. The author asserts then, that while a
division between the idealization and the reality of love and sexuality exists,
it is possible for the two to coexist, as he depicts elements of the dream transcending
into reality.

The Marriage of Love and Death

Death casts a shadow--or perhaps seeps outward from within--Keats' representation of love. In The Eve of St. Agnes leading into La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, he interrupts the dichotomy of romantic love and death, making them inextricable from one another. Pronounced glimpses of morbidity, both in his language and his content, lace Madeline and Porphyro's tale of passion between. For instance, the poem's atmosphere of excited anticipation and romantic convergence is infused with a dissonant and macabre tone. Keats writes of the room in which Porphyro talks to Angela as, "silent as a tomb," of the sculptures lining the chapel as the, "sculptur'd dead," of the beauty of young maidens as, "lily white" (the lily being a sign of death and the standard flower used for funerals), and of the two lovers as "phantoms" while they escape--not to mention the fact that this is all set on a night which commemorates the dark tale of St. Agnes in which she is condemned to rape and execution before she is saved by a powerful storm. Another significant element in the poem that contributes to its morbidity is the ending: not only does the storyline cut off just as the happily-ever-after moment of the two lovers' escape is occurring, but it is also replaced by death and decay (nightmares and Angela and the Beadsman's deaths). Serving as a kind of foreshadowing, the gloomy overcast in Keats' writing of this romance (also pinpointed in his mention of the future La Belle Dame Sans Mercy as Porphyro plays the song) is confirmed by the follow poem in our anthology. La Belle Dame Sans Mercy brings the demise of young men in the marriage of lust, love, and feminine sexuality with fatality, emptiness, and betrayal. Again, imagery of death--represented by the lily--is juxtaposed and united with imagery of love--represented in this poem by the rose. The supernatural quality about the maiden in the poem is an indicator of discord or unfamiliarity. Unlike the fleshy but fragile entity of a human virgin (that can be controlled and easily possessed by any mortal man), the belle dame sans mercy is an evil goddess/elf.
The suggestion here becomes one of foreboding or maybe even lamentation. Keats uses ironic to describe the very emotional and unintellectual process of disappointment or heartbreak in the actuality of love, which can be painful and unpleasant and in stark contrast to its idealistic iterations in fables, myths, or legends. However, he draws upon some of the myth archetypes of a darker and more twisted nature. He shows a love the may on the surface seem satisfying and euphoric, but is imbued with morbidness.

Plate 10 from Illustrations to the Book of Job

This is the 10^th of Blake’s 22 engraved prints of The Book of Job. In this print, Satan, with God’s permission, has already deprived Job of his family and wealth. And Job’s friends are rebuking him. The highly expressive hands of the friends impress me a lot. Instead of fiercely pointing to Job, the hands of the friends have strangely smooth lines. If I don’t know what this engraving is supposed to be about, I might think that the three friends are magicians casting spells over Job, because their hand gestures look so much like that of magicians’. Take a look at the picture of a wizard.

Or are the friends somehow like magicians in the story? Yes, they are. Although they are depicted in the story as hateful figures rebuking Job, they do cast light on Job’s blindness in a way. Job wrongly believes that he is so righteous that God surely will protect his wealth and family. The friends make Job accept that he doesn’t behave blamelessly and he has sins, even if Job barely knows what he has done wrong.

Do the friends know what Job has done wrong? No. This is a question that the friends, Job, and viewers keep asking but can hardly find an answer. It is not until the 13^th print(the picture on the left) that God answers Job out of the whirlwind, showing Job’s fault of being blind to the transcendent power of divinity and trying to understand God’s ways with limited human intelligence. Asserting that Job is punished because he is a sinner, Job’s friends also go wrong in this way. Thus, the 10^th print at the very top, (in which the friends rebuke Job), has a hidden irony of human’s blindness of their limited intelligence and God’s transcendent power.

Word and Image in The Book of Job

This is a somewhat belated blog post, but when we went to look at the Blake engravings of the Book of Job last Tuesday, I was very taken with the innovative way in which he treated the relationship between the word and image. From my experience with this somewhat charged relationship in the 19th century, it seems that while the two were heavily integrated--as they have been since...well, forever--oftentimes an artist or writer gave precedence to one medium over the other in his or her work. However, while looking at Blake's engravings, I was intrigued at how Blake obtains a complete marriage of the two art forms in his engravings of the Book of Job.

It does not appear to me that Blake gives supremacy to one or the other in his work, as is apparent in Thus did Job Continually. The picture here takes the central place; however, he uses the words almost as a kind of border--an inversion of the traditional illuminated manuscript, in which the border was second to the word, despite being the ornamentation and visual beauty of the work. While the traditional illuminated manuscript the border compliments the word and renders it more visually appealing; here, in Blake's inversion of this medieval tradition, the word appears to illuminate intellectually and visually the picture, while not assuming a secondary position. Visually, it acts as the frame, the context within which we view the picture, but Blake also gives it an image-like quality. The diagonal placement of "Our Father which art in Heaven" and "hallowed be thy Name", coupled with the varying sizes of text and their purposeful separation makes them more challenging to read than the average text, and means that they cannot be read simply from left to right, just as a painting cannot.

This use of visual elements in the text as well as Blake's clear interest in reinventing the illuminated manuscript indicates his desire to marry word and image. To me, it also indicates Blake's higher realm, one in which two arts traditionally in constant conflict with one another come together in perfect harmony--a perfect harmony he is striving to achieve in his Book of Job engravings.

The Terrors of the Book of Job

First to the literary aspects. As a side note, there seems to be a love of odd numbers (at least as the opening number, ie 7, 500, 7000). Though Job has an even number of children, they can be divided into seven and three; he owns 500 yoke of oxen, 500 donkeys, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, and there are three friends who come to visit him (plus a fourth one who is not mentioned until he speaks). I have heard that this is a common occurrence, though I do not know why these numbers are so favored.

On a more thematic level, there is a decided obsession with birth. To begin with, especially by the standards of that era, having ten children was extremely rare, and thus assumedly would suggest that God had favored the couple. Also, I doubt that all of the livestock had been bought, and thus it suggests that the animals as well are extremely fertile (thus a truly charmed home). When Job begins to pray to God for forgiveness and removal of the horrors he is facing, he proclaims that he has returned to the form from whence he came, thus naked as he was in birth. His resolve breaks with the stanza cursing his birth, wishing that rather than the life giving event that it typically stands for, that it would steal away his life. There are many similes/metaphors dealing with birth also, such as the sea braking forth as if were being birthed (though this is a somewhat inaccurate metaphor, as the child does not return inside).

Unfortunately, this work also seems to be quite opposite from the movement of the romantics. How can one claim that it is wrong for a king to rule over his people strictly, to kill people just because he can, tax them to points they cannot afford, and then chastise them most sanguinarily when they arise in protest; when all of this is done by God? It is clearly stated that the only reason that Job is put through all of these trials is because he is the most righteous, and thus he makes for a lovely experiment. It seems to send the message, 'do not be too good, or else I will use you like a guinea pig, and your life will be ruined'. And what of his children? They were never convicted of a crime, and yet God saw it fit to permit a house to fall on them! With this parallel, the Wicked Witch of the East must have been a not-the-best Christian who just so happened to be attached to someone being tested. And of course, once Job has finally broken down because he has lost everything, and God is doing nothing to make his existence even moderately tolerable, then God appears in the most flamboyant way he can possibly find, and berates Job for thinking he had been abandoned. This seems to point out why it is important to be God-fearing, rather than God-loving (inspiration for 'The Prince' perchance?). The most disturbing aspect of all of this, is that once God has decided that Job shall no longer be tested, he grants him the reward of twice as much livestock, and... a new family? God saw it fit that because he disposed of Job's original family, that he could just give him a new one, and that would be perfectly fine. A mirror of today's consumerism, one might add.

Ethereal Language in "Daughters of Albion"

When reading "Visions of the Daughters of Albion," I was struck by its natural imagery. Given the fiery, "electric" nature of previous message poems, or poems of revolutionary sentiment, I was surprised that the trio's misery seemed to be couched in pastoral, albeit dark, metaphors. The poem uses "soft American plains" as hope. Oothoon describes herself as prey throughout the poem, like a "fruit that the worm feed on," or as that of eagles. Here, nature is used to render the situation horrid, yet typical and natural in our eyes. Blake used this imagery, often utilized to pacify readers and take them to a beautiful place beyond the common world to describe rape, jealousy and slavery. In doing this, I beleive he intended to remind readers that the oppression of women and gender dynamics which effect both genders are equally commonplace, but must, like nature, be called into attention.

Beethoven and Keats: Symphonies in Different Media

Beethoven chose each phrase, each chord, each note with such care and purpose that the listener is constantly challenged to dig deep into the work, looking beyond the obvious and finding the hidden emotion in what may seem to be a straightforward, simple composition. Professor Takacs explained how Beethoven used elements of musical key, piece structure, and the properties of the piano to carefully direct the listener, almost subconsciously, to feel a certain emotion. Longing, fear, isolation, fate, and transcendance were all at Beethoven's fingertips. This reminds me of my favorite romantic poet, John Keats. Much like Beethoven, Keats packs so much meaning into each carefully chosen word and phrase that he can mould the reader's emotions with little effort. When I read Keats, I feel that his words are a symphony; like Beethoven's masterpieces, he artfully spins a web of feeling and power, yet never gives away his full intention. I enjoyed seeing Prof. Takacs play some Beethoven live because I was able to notice his facial expressions as he played. I could tell that he was moved by what he was doing. I feel the same way when I read Keats. Neither Keats nor Beethoven meanders, neither do they lay their intentions bare. Byron, on the other hand, is long-winded and sometimes obvious in that he is doing something amazing. How refreshing it is to hear the amazing and be moved without even being aware of it at the time. Only on looking back can we see that something marvelous has just taken place.

Nature as a Flexible Device in "Visions of the Daughters of Albion"

Descriptive analogies involving animals, landscapes and the elements are staple devices in romantic literature, but rarely to the extent of Blake’s “Visions of the Daughters of Albion.” In the long monologues found here, there are lengthy repetitive tracts of various combinations of these nature comparisons, used both as poetic ornaments, and as tools to adduce the points the characters are making. Their relentlessness in this piece is very noticeable, as many will be stacked up in tandem and in parallel structure to support a single point.

These metaphors are very mutable in their intent. They are used menacingly, beseechingly, to describe emotional breakdowns and dramatic situations, and to persuade. The range of topics treated by these nature references is especially broad, which is jarring for the reader, because often in romantic poetry these descriptors will be used for more or less the same purpose throughout the poem, if not repeatedly for a specific point within it. In some poems, nature is a torrential, personified enemy, in some poems it is a wiser embodiment of consciousness alluded for sage counsel, in some poems, it is a means of painting a more dramatic picture of love or oppression. In this poem, the natural world becomes the instrument of whichever character chooses to wield it, and is applied to all of these uses in one part or another.

The first major example is simultaneously an amplification of scale and a euphemism, as it is applied to the rape of Oothoon by Bromion- “Bromion rent her with his thunders on his stormy bed.” Early on it is established that the natural world is going to play a striking and at times upsetting role in the poem. Immediately following this, these disturbing euphemisms are used as possessive threats, as Bromion says to Oothoon “thy soft American plains are mine, and mine they north and south”.

Oothoon then exercises these natural world comparisons in a completely different way; to lament at her lack of control over the situation and her nature, using multiple examples to emphasize the ubiquity of her point; “With what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk/ With what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse?/ With what sense does the bee form cells?”

Oothoon recites another one of these long strings of citations of nature when referring to the variety of viewpoints that can be tied to the same event; “Does not the eagle scorn the earth and despise the treasures beneath?/ But the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee.”

There are many other examples- they pervade the work. It is possible that Blake added these as a means of enhancing the mythic quality of the narrative, because it expands the story to something of epic and universal proportions. To this reader, it creates a sense of confusion, despite Blake’s strong feelings regarding sex and relationships. Oothoon makes very powerful sentiments with nature as her ally in expressing them. But if the grand and natural world can be called upon by rapists, it lessens the security that can be gained from a reliance on those forces, and induces unrest in the audience of this story.

Oothoon's mind vs. Theotormon's mind in "Visions of the Daughters of Albion"

"They told me that the night & day were all that I could see;

They told me that I had five senses to inclose me up.

And they inclos'd my infinite brain into a narrow circle."

The above lines (31-33, plate 2) of Blake’s “Visions of the Daughters of Albion,” spoken by the forlorn Oothoon, showcase the difference between Oothoon’s mind and Theotormon’s, the man Oothoon loved and who was devastated to learn that she had been raped. Oothoon has called upon an eagle to rip out the soiled part of her body, thinking that this will make her acceptable to Theotormon again. In earlier lines, she compares her two situations (being soiled and being pure) to night and day. Here, I think she is showing us that she believes she is pure because she can only see night and day, black and white, pure and soiled. In contrast, Theotormon seems to be senseless because he can neither see her nor hear her talking to him. Without his senses, he is lost in the infinite world of his own mind where he cannot see the light of day and where his thoughts take him places he really doesn’t want to be.

Oothoon seems to know that Theotormon will never be able to accept her after her violation because, in lines 2-5 of plate 3, she ponders over how different animals have the same senses, yet are able to do so many diverse things. I think you could say that she believes animals do diverse things with the same senses because they are born in different forms. I believe that here Oothoon shows that her fate, the inclosing of her "infinite brain into a narrow circle," similar to the animals’ which are determined by their outer forms, is determined by her inner experience of having been raped and not by the outward purity that she has attained at the eagle’s claws.

Visions of the Daughters of Albion: The Ultimate Song of Innocence and Experience

I’m sorry this is not about Beethoven! I thought Tuesday’s class was wonderful but I just couldn’t resist Blake…

I feel that Visions of the Daughters of Albion is a fitting pen-ultimate work for our studies of Blake. Visions of the Daughters of Albion contains numerous rhetorical and symbolic devices that allude to works we have read thus far such as The Sick Rose, London, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Visions of the Daughters of Albion, published three years after the “Songs of Innocence and Experience” and one year after Wollstonecraft’s “Vindication of the Rights of Women,” relates the plight of the late 18^th and early 19^th century female experience through an allegorical/pseudo-mythological narrative.

As in The Sick Rose, Blake’s phallic, penetrating worm rears its head in Visions of the Daughters of Albion to feed on the sweetest (virgin) fruit of Oothoon (plate 3, line 17). I read this boring worm to be a euphemism for penetration or rape, as Oothoon gets raped by Bromion the worm’s “dark secret love” defiles the sick rose. At this time rape and sexual violence or transgression was seen to be as much the victim’s fault as the perpetrator’s and as a result women who were raped were seen as defiled and dishonorable, often necessitating prostitution as the only means of support for a undesirable woman. Blake references this caustic mentality in London, stating, “…the youthful harlot’s curse; Blasts the newborn Infants tear; and blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.” If the “Infants tear” refers to prenatal blindness caused by sexually transmitted diseases as the footnote suggests, then this might be another relation to Visions of the Daughters of Albion in that Theotormon blinds both Oothoon and Bromion for their transgressions. This cursing of “the Marriage hearse” denotes a similar undertone to that of Visions of the Daughters of Albion, as in the latter Blake bemoans the stringent constrictions placed on women’s sexual activity and the obligatory normative trajectory of a woman’s life from birth to marriage to childbirth to death. This circumscribed path, which was disrupted by rape in Visions of the Daughters of Albion, was dictated by a dichotomous Christian ideology of righteousness (Adam) and sin (Eve). It is this ideology that Blake calls into question in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as well. On plate seven, lines three through eleven, Blake problematizes the idea of sex as sin, asking:

…In the shadows of his curtains and in the folds of his silent pillow
Are not these the places of religion, the rewards of continence,
The self-enjoyings of self-denial? Why dost thou seek religion?
Is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude,
Where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire?

Here Blake seems to be mocking the predominant Victorian era silence in discussing sex and the Christian values of chastity that so often resulted in harmful repression. As in The Marriage of Haven and Hell Blake supports an expression of these desires, sexual and otherwise, as a means to forge a humanist as opposed to a religion or reason based order for society that might free slaves, “children bought with money”, and women alike from the “mind forged manacles” (London, line 8) of oppression.

Divinity in Romantic Music And Poetry

“Bach’s music is expressive but not romantic, because it expresses the love to God instead of personal feelings.”

The quote above from the Beethoven lecture interests me. Although it is about the significance of divinity in Bach’s music, it reflects how the idea of divinity is used in Beethoven’s music and other works in the Romantic Era. Beethoven is fond with the idea of divinity and he uses it in plenty of works, such as his Piano Sonata 110, Symphony 9, etc. How does he use the idea differently from Bach so that it contributes to romanticism? Bach expresses his love and awe to God in his music, without showing his personal feelings; While Beethoven relates divinity to his personal feelings or human feelings, making it the salvation of human in a sorrowful world. And the expression of human feelings plays a fundamental role in romanticism. In the third movement of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata 110, the sorrowful arioso alternates with the peaceful fugue. The arioso, written in minor mode, is gloomy and secular; while the fugue, written in major mode, is light and sacred. The alternation represents the man’s moving between the painful human world and the heaven. And it sounds like he suffers from his life and cries sadly. Suddenly he finds that all the sorrows are gone. But he realizes shortly that he is still in pain. Where are the happiness and peace? Are they just illusions? They might not be. Finally the happiness and peace return and the movement ends joyfully. Thus, Beethoven presents the connection between divinity and the human world, paying a lot of attention to human feelings. Here is a link to Alfred Brendel's performance of the third movtment of Beethoven's Piano Sonata 110.

Besides Beethoven, lots of composers and poets in the romantic period connect divinity with the human world. Take Hemans’ “Evening Prayer” as another example. In Stanza 6, Hemans shows how desperate life is in the words “Watching the stars out by the bed of pain…And a true heart of hope, though hope be vain”. (Line 32-34). At the end of the stanza, she says, “Therefore pray!”(Line 36). Thus, Hemans tells the girls that life is desperate and painful. But if you pray to God, he will save you.

Beethoven's "Heroic Artist"

So central to the Romantic ideology was the study of and emphasis on humanity — human emotions, human thought and the human environment. William Blake even went so far as to humanize theology in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This humanity is key in much of the work of Beethoven as well, encapsulated in his idea of the “heroic artist.”

Rather than using his music as a vehicle for a higher cause, Beethoven intentionally personalized much of his music by bringing the raw emotional power of his pieces to the fore. Music and art was intensely personal to Beethoven, supported by the fact that he injected personal experiences into his works. His sonatas are vividly expressive, stressing the visceral and inherently personal nature of art.

Whereas Bach chose to channel the emotive power of his music through his religion, Beethoven placed the artist at the center of his work. This choice is emblematic of Romanticism’s quasi-deification of the human experience, and it was the artist — the expressive voice of human emotion — that was the epitome of the celebration of humanity.

Rather than God or another awe-inspiring entity, it was simply the human that aroused such passionate and forceful music. The human condition and essence was, after all, believed by romanticists to be the deepest and broadest realm of study — filled with contradictions, yes, but passion as well. It was for this reason that Beethoven placed a variety of emotional symbols into his work, such as the “Fate” knocking on the door in the iconic Fifth Symphony.

The fact that Beethoven ascribed a commanding fate or destiny to his artist speaks volumes. He gave the artist a power previously restricted to the divine, suggesting the added importance he placed on the place of humanity in the world. Human emotion and experience, as encapsulated in the expressive power of the artist, was the most championed of all beings, heavenly or otherwise.