Arthur Breon's Canonball

Arthur Breon

April 5, 2011

John Keats poem “Lamia” serves as a particularly strong piece for inciting discussion and should be included in future courses of British Romantic Literature. During our segment on the Big Six of Romantic literature we have used the Romantic Irony and Romantic Imagination to help us try and understand the content of various poems. Today I will go over Lamia Part I as an example of a poem that can be used to argue for either Irony or Imagination. Its complexity lends itself to the questions of what Romantic Irony and Imagination are and a close reading of select passages from the text to support my own view of where the poem stood and its importance. Keats, to me, represents the complexity of Romantic poetry, being a poet of the Imagination who incorporates Irony into his work.

If Romantic Irony is defined as self-reflection and Romantic Imagination is defined as self-expression then Keats provides a voice for both. The poetry of Keats examines expression, straddling the fence as it were between poets such as Shelley who were clearly of the Imagination, taken up completely by their work and those of Irony such as Blake who always placed himself at a distance from his work examining it with a critical eye. Keats either could not or would not exempt his intellect from his pursuit of imagination.

The poem opens with “Upon a time, before the faery broods/ Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods,” (1-2). By placing the setting firmly in the realm of myth the reader is cued to the poems fantastic nature. By thrusting the reader back into the ancient world he is able to conjure up the feeling of a new mythology, inciting our imaginations. The poem proceeds to follow Hermes searching the world for a new love until “There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice, /Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys “(35-36). Here Hermes meets the serpent woman Lamia who has the pieces of a beautiful woman but not the whole. Eventually she asks Hermes to be turned into a woman “I was a woman, let me have once more /“A woman’s shape, and charming as before./ “I love a youth of Corinth—O the bliss! “Give me my woman’s form, and place me where he is (118-120) to which the god agrees. Lamia gains human form and travels to Corinth, uniting with her love “She saw the young Corinthian Lycius” (216).This is the setup for a tragic fairytale, of love lost and regained yet fragile. The word that comes to mind is entropy, the gradual decay and desolation of all things. But the strength of the poem is not simply in its bleak view; instead it is in the notion that something good, in this case love, has to be lost. The tragedy of the poem can only exist because of beauty, not in spite of it but because of it.

“Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse, / Though Fancy’s casket were unlock’d to choose. / Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!” (19-21). What could be “unknown to any Muse”? This gets to the heart of Keats’ concept of ‘negative capability’ wherein the reader is supposed to read a poem without trying to fit it the ideas into a rational system. A very reflective way to appreciate reflection, to consciously avoid looking for certainties but instead to relish the ambiguity of the poem.

Part I of Lamia ends with “For truth’s sake, what woe afterwards befel” (395). The poem concludes with an appeal to truth harking to the famous line from Keats “Ode to a Grecian Urn”, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all”. Here the speaker is not referring to empirical truth but instead to the truth of the natural world, that nature is inescapable. He goes on to declare, ” ’Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus,” (396) showing an awareness for the natural urge to provide a happy ending which is rarely found in real life. The last line goes “Shut from the busy world of more incredulous”(397) to drive home the point that life and nature intrude and that no situation, not even grand romance exist in a vacuum. The poem is no less fantastic for this foreboding end to Part I, the preponderance of tragedies in classic Greek literature and myth provide ample proof of that.

Keats uses his familiarity with the classical world to craft evocative allusions throughout Lamia. While the speaker recedes into the background, allowing the reader to be immersed in the poem, the author never loses sight of where he is taking us. This clarity of awareness and purpose is both the beauty of Keats’ writing and what makes defining his position so challenging. While I believe that Keats was at heart a poet of the Imagination over Irony due to his use of self-expression, the debate could easily be made for Irony as uses his poetry to reflect on mortality and nature. This is the heart of why Keats Lamia deserves a place in the canon, to show that no matter what conclusions the individual reader comes to regarding the poem, someone will inevitably disagree. What could make for better discussion? Word Count 886