"La Belle Dame Sans
Merci", Pure Negative Capability
During the first period of this
course we covered the subject of the Romantic era, and based on that we studied
John Keats’ life and works. Moreover the first poem that we analyzed was "La Belle Dame Sans
Merci" that particular poem called tremendously my attention because of
the embedded meanings that it has, and also because from my point of view it is
a clear representation of what negative capability is.
In those times, this poet thought
that beauty was truth, and truth beauty, but it is not in the material world,
because everything and all that could be found were material representations of
ideas, which were limited. So under his perspective to discover the world we
have to re-evaluate our attitude to physical pleasure, leaving apart reason and
using the negative capability, which implies not reasonable thinking neither analyzing
the objects, but being able to enjoy a pure essential moment that is translated
into an absolute feeling that allows you to appreciate beauty. For that we have
to use our imagination. In other words, negative capability is the action of
diving into the unknown to appreciate beauty, not for what society has defines
in its canons of beauty, but what beauty is by itself.
Keats’ poems were manifestations of
beauty, and also beauty at the same time because of their structures and topics,
and because they allude to nature, which as we all already know, had a key role
in romanticism. According this belief I can say that "La Belle Dame Sans
Merci" is describing the process of negative capability through its stanzas.
The poem begins with a description of
a grim scene, and we can realize that through the use of adjectives and verbs,
such as; ail, palely, withered, no sing, and haggard in the first 3 stanzas. So
there we have the representation of a person (the knight-at-arms) who is in a physical
world, where the beauty is not appreciated.
Then, in the fourth stanza that
person meets a lady, who is described as fully beautiful “faery’s child”, and
here starts a description of her characteristics in relation to her beauty. And
here we can appreciate how in this lonely place, were tangible elements are not
representing beauty; the person is able to find beauty in connection with nature.
But how can we identify this action? Well,
that is explained in the next stanzas where he describes his contact with this
lady (that is represented in nature) that contact is pure sex. And as we
discussed in classes, there are clear evidences that support this idea, for
instance “I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long,…” is
alluding to how long they were having sex. Furthermore he describes how this
contact is incredibly pleasant, at the point that he can achieve the absolute
felling, he is able to appreciate real beauty by itself.
After he is able to dive into the
unknown, which is represented by this mysterious entity, he realizes that he is
not the only one capable of it, so he returns to the place of first stanza, since
everything seems to happen in his dreams, as he says “The latest dream I ever
dreamt…”, and we all know that for romantics, sleeping was the moment in which
they were able to access to other worlds. The thing is that after he realizes
that he is not the only one (stanza X), he understands that after having a taste
of perfection, a contact with the truth that is beauty, there is nothing else
beyond. And here I remember the example that we talked about in classes, for
example, when you have sex with the person that you ever wanted, and it is so
amazing that nothing else can be compared, the rest of your sexual life gets ruined,
and that happened to this knight at arms, so he returns to his initial emotional
state.
All things considered, and having
into account that it is my perception of the poem, based on what we covered in
classes, and what I read about in the Internet (links attached below), I can
say that in this poems Keats shows in an implicit way to us how the negative
capability occurs and what happens when we are able to be in contact with real
beauty out of the real and reasonable world.
References:
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