Reading 'Lamia' by John Keats

Part Three

Lamia is free. Having been trapped in a serpent’s body, she is a woman again – and what will she do with this freedom? It’s a very live question. At this stage of the poem, the identity of Lamia has yet to stabilise – is she the object of our pity, heartbroken and tortured? Or a femme fatale, part Eve, part ‘some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self’? She’s an unsolvable riddle and Keats’ speaker himself seems to keep changing his mind; shifting his allegiance. If she is now free to seek the object of her affections, should we – her audience – desire such a reunion? Or have we been manipulated? Is a predator about to be loosed on her prey?

Keats is writing this in 1819 at the apex of his love for fiancée Fanny Brawne, and soon after writing his famous poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (the beautiful woman without mercy). The politics and power-dynamics of heterosexual desire seem to animate both these works. Pursuit and flight; domination and submission; teasing and trapping; feinting and fainting. Can a man and woman trust each-other? It is a dangerous dance. Let’s join it again:

Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright,

A full-born beauty new and exquisite?

She fled into that valley they pass o'er

Who go to Corinth from Cenchreas' shore;

And rested at the foot of those wild hills,

The rugged founts of the Peraean rills,

And of that other ridge whose barren back

Stretches, with all its mist and cloudy rack,

South-westward to Cleone. There she stood

About a young bird's flutter from a wood,

Fair, on a sloping green of mossy tread,

By a clear pool, wherein she passioned

To see herself escap'd from so sore ills,

While her robes flaunted with the daffodils.

Hmmm, this is a bit slow for me – far too much geographical detail – and as an editor I’d be tempted to slash a red pen through all those hills, rills and ridges (although putting it like that, is there something sexual about this geography??) I suppose the main thing is she’s heading to Corinth, where her young man is. I do like ‘There she stood / About a young bird's flutter from a wood’ though. Is she the vulnerable young bird, out in the open? Or the serpent who would snatch in its jaw that young bird in the clearing?

It's interesting that she sees herself in a pool framed by daffodils too – it’s hard not to think of the vanity of Narcissus here, who was transfixed by his image in a pool and turned into a flower. She’s not just in love, but in love with the image of herself in love. Let’s continue though…

Ah, happy Lycius!—for she was a maid

More beautiful than ever twisted braid,

Or sigh'd, or blush'd, or on spring-flowered lea

Spread a green kirtle to the minstrelsy:

A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore

Of love deep learned to the red heart's core:

Not one hour old, yet of sciential brain

To unperplex bliss from its neighbour pain;

Define their pettish limits, and estrange

Their points of contact, and swift counterchange;

Intrigue with the specious chaos, and dispart

Its most ambiguous atoms with sure art;

As though in Cupid's college she had spent

Sweet days a lovely graduate, still unshent,

And kept his rosy terms in idle languishment.

This is a really interesting passage, but it’s very knotty. It even begins with a twisted braid. Keats seems to start, with his exclamation ‘Ah, happy Lycius!’, by deciding that Lycius is lucky to be loved by such a creature. Her beauty is such as to make the matter simple.

And yet - unlike the other maids described, who sigh, blush and curtesy – she is explicitly not so simple to read. ‘A virgin purest lipp'd, yet in the lore / Of love deep learned to the red heart's core’ is an incredible line – she is both virgin and wise crone, ‘purest lipp’d’, so unpenetrated, and yet penetrated right to the ‘core’. She is figured as both a babe ‘not one hour old’, yet also a kind of scientific genius, who has graduated from ‘Cupid’s college’ (where she spent so much time Keats dallies with a rhyming triplet - spent/unshent/ languishment - instead of a couplet).

We are reminded of Keats’ concept of ‘negative capability’ that we talked about in the last blog: being able to hold two incompatible ideas in the mind at once. He is still straining not to define Lamia, but to let her be many things. Schrödinger’s serpent, if you will.

More confusingly though, Lamia is capable of ‘unperplexing’ (what a verb!!) the chaos of human emotion; taking ‘ambiguous atoms’ and dividing them; parsing pleasure and pain. So, in this sense the poem seems to say that Lamia dispels negative capability. She makes love easy. And yet Keats says it in the most complicated way possible!

If you’re a bit lost, like me, let’s just enjoy that word ‘pettish’. Such a great Keatsian word for the boundaries between pleasure and pain – those moments when lust tips over into childishness, bad-temper and petulance; when the line between tame and wild is tested. The word ‘pet’ hangs there, with all its connotations: stroking, petting, scratching, hissing….

There’s also some foreshadowing, so let’s notice he’s talking about science and education - setting up themes which will become more important as the poem continues.

And hang on, let’s also remember that though Keats has said ‘Ah, happy Lycius!’ the youth has not actually even seen Lamia yet. This reverie about Lamia’s beauty is entirely the poet’s, which makes it hard to see it as anything but Keats working through some of his confused feelings towards real-life women. In fact, Lycius doesn’t even know of Lamia’s existence, as we will hear more clearly in the next verse:

Why this fair creature chose so fairily

By the wayside to linger, we shall see;

But first 'tis fit to tell how she could muse

And dream, when in the serpent prison-house,

Of all she list, strange or magnificent:

How, ever, where she will'd, her spirit went;

Whether to faint Elysium, or where

Down through tress-lifting waves the Nereids fair

Wind into Thetis' bower by many a pearly stair;

Or where God Bacchus drains his cups divine,

Stretch'd out, at ease, beneath a glutinous pine;

Or where in Pluto's gardens palatine

Mulciber's columns gleam in far piazzian line.

And sometimes into cities she would send

Her dream, with feast and rioting to blend;

And once, while among mortals dreaming thus,

She saw the young Corinthian Lycius

Charioting foremost in the envious race,

Like a young Jove with calm uneager face,

And fell into a swooning love of him.

So this is another diversion, but before we strike it through with a red pen, let’s ask what’s so odd about it. I think, for me, it’s the unnecessary exposition. I guess I just assumed Lamia had seen Lycius some time when he’d passed her on a hunt or something, and fallen for him. But I wasn’t worried about it. I didn’t think it was a plot-hole or anything.

But Keats is obviously concerned it’s a massive plot-hole, because Lamia has been a snake for ages and Lycius is young. So he sets up this idea that she’s been able to kind of remote-view anyone and anything the whole time she’s been a snake. And she was just lying there for decades, watching Nereids, or seeing what Bacchus was up to, or maybe changing the channel and flicking over to watch a chariot race and check out the hot young charioteers for a bit….

‘Uneager face’ seems like a bit of a duff line to me?? I suppose he’s hard to get? But anyway, that’s the story of her ‘swooning love’ and if I’m honest, it kind of tests my personal definition of love. It sounds more like lust to me.

Now on the moth-time of that evening dim

He would return that way, as well she knew,

To Corinth from the shore; for freshly blew

The eastern soft wind, and his galley now

Grated the quaystones with her brazen prow

In port Cenchreas, from Egina isle

Fresh anchor'd; whither he had been awhile

To sacrifice to Jove, whose temple there

Waits with high marble doors for blood and incense rare.

Jove heard his vows, and better'd his desire;

For by some freakful chance he made retire

From his companions, and set forth to walk,

Perhaps grown wearied of their Corinth talk:

Over the solitary hills he fared,

Thoughtless at first, but ere eve's star appeared

His phantasy was lost, where reason fades,

In the calm'd twilight of Platonic shades.

This is still a bit slow, although I like some of the specifics – the galley grating on the quaystones is the kind of realistic detail that I enjoy in this mythical world. It cuts through the artifice and makes it more vivid, somehow. And I suppose the slow pace does build a kind of tension. I’m interested in what kind of tension you feel as a reader, as the youth wanders towards where Lamia waits. Is it sexual tension? Or is it the tension of a thriller – the solitary boy walking at dusk towards the wood, not knowing something lurks in the shadows?

Lamia beheld him coming, near, more near—

Close to her passing, in indifference drear,

His silent sandals swept the mossy green;

So neighbour'd to him, and yet so unseen

She stood: he pass'd, shut up in mysteries,

His mind wrapp'd like his mantle, while her eyes

Follow'd his steps, and her neck regal white

Turn'd—syllabling thus, "Ah, Lycius bright,

And will you leave me on the hills alone?

Lycius, look back! and be some pity shown."

Her ‘turn’ here is also a switch in position. She is the hunter watching an oblivious deer, but then her ‘neck regal white’ makes her the deer. Earlier in today’s reading, she was a ‘lady bright’, now he is ‘bright’. She has been the active partner in this dance, but now she accuses him of ‘leaving’ her and asks for ‘pity’ as if he is the one with the power. So addressed, he looks:

He did; not with cold wonder fearingly,

But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice;

For so delicious were the words she sung,

It seem'd he had lov'd them a whole summer long:

‘Eurydice’ is very, very hard to rhyme with, so fair-play to Keats for having a go. It’s quite a strange allusion to bring up at this stage of the story though – one begins to wonder if Keats can ever resist an allusion to classical myth? Lycius is looking at someone he has literally never seen before. He hasn’t been told not to, and she’s not going to end up dead forever. It’s…actually fine. So the situation is not that Orpheus-like, except maybe they’re both looking at people they fancy? Anyway, Lycius has a good long stare:

And soon his eyes had drunk her beauty up,

Leaving no drop in the bewildering cup,

And still the cup was full,—while he afraid

Lest she should vanish ere his lip had paid

Due adoration, thus began to adore;

Her soft look growing coy, she saw his chain so sure:

So this is a trap, right? He’s walked right into it and now Lamia’s got him. She has, in fact, enslaved him – in 1807 slave-trading in British Ships had been abolished, but slavery was still woven into the fabric of the empire, and would have surely been conjured by any reference to a man in chains. The power-balance has tilted back, as he now ‘adores’ her like an underling.

"Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, Goddess, see

Whether my eyes can ever turn from thee!

For pity do not this sad heart belie—

Even as thou vanishest so I shall die.

Stay! though a Naiad of the rivers, stay!

To thy far wishes will thy streams obey:

Stay! though the greenest woods be thy domain,

Alone they can drink up the morning rain:

Though a descended Pleiad, will not one

Of thine harmonious sisters keep in tune

Thy spheres, and as thy silver proxy shine?

So sweetly to these ravish'd ears of mine

Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade

Thy memory will waste me to a shade—

For pity do not melt!"—

So he’s demanding twice that she pity him! After she asked for pity! It’s turning into quite a pity-party! But I’m also starting to gather that this was the language of flirtation in the 1800s. I imagine if you were advising your friends on pickup lines in 1819, you’d say: ‘Start by asking for their pity, the girls love that stuff’.

And actually, does he think she’s a goddess for real? Or is he just flirting? It’s hard to tell as the world of the poem is full of goddesses (and Lamia is actually a supernatural snake woman). But when he describes her as ‘a descended Pleiad’ (the nymphs who were companions to Artemis, then turned into a cluster of stars) does he think she really might be? Or is it just, you know, bants?

—"If I should stay,"

Said Lamia, "here, upon this floor of clay,

And pain my steps upon these flowers too rough,

What canst thou say or do of charm enough

To dull the nice remembrance of my home?

Thou canst not ask me with thee here to roam

Over these hills and vales, where no joy is,—

Empty of immortality and bliss!

So she’s replying here as if she is a goddess. To trick him? Or, again, are we actually just watching some sexy roleplay here? Saying the flowers are too rough for her feet feels like a little joke, delivered with a wink. (And perhaps implicit is the idea they could both just stay and lie down on that flower-strewn floor). The thrust and parry of this dialogue is itself quite sensual, like the verbal conflict in screwball comedy. She continues:

Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know

That finer spirits cannot breathe below

In human climes, and live: Alas! poor youth,

What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe

My essence? What serener palaces,

Where I may all my many senses please,

And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease?

It cannot be—Adieu!"

How does she know he’s a scholar, by the way? Because he was visibly thinking? (She last saw him in a chariot). But as we said, the scholar thing is going to become important further on… in the meantime, I feel like these lines are also quite clearly light-hearted and twinkly. She wants her senses pleased; she has a hundred thirsts. The whole thing is meant to work Lycius into a lather. And her “Adieu!" is a very stagy exit! But it works rather too well:

So said, she rose

Tiptoe with white arms spread. He, sick to lose

The amorous promise of her lone complain,

Swoon'd, murmuring of love, and pale with pain.

Really, John Keats? More swooning? Swooning is becoming the new blushing.

But perhaps we shouldn’t take Lycius’ ‘pain’ too seriously – he is a youth, after all, standing in front of a fantasy woman. Perhaps it is just the pain of an excruciating hardon.

Anyway, I’ve run out of time for this week. Here’s Lamia (first version) by John William Waterhouse. Drink her beauty up from the ‘bewildering cup’, do share your thoughts and comments below, and more soon…