La Belle Dame Sans Merci
“And sure, in language strange she said-
‘I love thee true’”
Seeing as this is my website and blog, I can do whatever the heck I want. Which means I can write about what I want. Now, seeing as today is my 26th birthday I’ll write about one of my favourite nuggets of literature ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by John Keats.
Keats is probably my favourite poet of all time. His poems inspired many Pre-Raphaelite artists such as Frank Bernard Dicksee. His painting of the same name is pretty incredible. Seriously, check it out!
‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is written as a ballad, similar in style to those by the medieval ‘Troubadours’. Troubadours were famous for writing love songs and poems for women, they encompassed the ideals of courtly love and placing women on a pedestal. It was common that the women, who were the subjects of these poems, would be out of reach, unattainable, often so far above the courtly singers who sung their praises. It mirrors the real-life events of John Keats and the love he held for his neighbour Fanny, a love that ultimately never came to fruition. It was due to his station in conjunction to hers as well as the fact that Keats died at a very young age from Tuberculosis which he contracted through nursing his brother.
We first start the story with the ending, a knight who is wondering a cold lonely hillside, lost and forlorn. However, the narrative voice changes from passive to first person as we hear of the impending tale from the perspective of the knight. As all good fairy tales, a white knight always appears to the salvation of a lady, yet this lady is not like your atypical princess. We hear that she is ‘wild’, a ‘faery’s child’ so in terms of courtly love, she isn’t necessarily a lady of high station, but a lady that is a liminal entity, someone not of this world.
At least, that’s what we are led to believe. In light of the recent #MeToo events the reading of ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ has somewhat changed. Instead of the surface reading which involves a beautiful woman seducing an honourable knight, there comes a new reading looking at consent and the complex relationship between idyllic courtly love and the reality of who ‘La Belle Dame’ is. In that light the knight believes that he has been bewitched by this lady as she continuously sings a ’faery’s song’ in his ear, however nothing is as it seems. The knight goes on to explain “and sure in language strange she said- ‘I love thee true’” there is no positive way of saying that she did say ‘I love thee true’ because the knight himself isn’t sure. What if, this was all a rather uncomfortable miscommunication? ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ is written in French, however there is nothing else French about the poem. So, at what time in history did an English knight find himself in France? Okay, so the resounding conflict between the English and the French is very well documented, we were each invading the other up until about 150 years ago. But a knight? In medieval times when troubadours were at the height of their poetic prowess? Perhaps the crusades to reclaim the holy land? What if this was a knight who met a lady and they did not speak the same language? So how can our knight truly be sure that the lady said ‘I love thee true?’. Can the reader then be surprised, therefore that, in her ‘elfin grot’ she ‘wept and sighed full sore’.
Even so, the idyllic courtly love ends rather quickly, the dream the knight has on the hillside turns our fairy tale into a horror show where we meet other supposed ‘victims’ of La Belle. She is after all an idea of courtly love, one that goes horribly wrong for the knight awakens from his dream alone and cold. The idea of her ultimately leads to the death of the knight. The very idea of her was life itself, but without it, life is ‘withered’ and ‘no birds sing’, our fairy tale has ended. Fairy tales are never what they seem in the first place, they often romanticise events that are really quite horrendous (look at Disney and then compare them to the Brother Grimm’s version). Instead of this poem being about a beauty who has no mercy, rather it’s a poem of those who show no mercy in spite of beauty. If it makes you uncomfortable, soothe yourself with the painting by Dicksee like a visual bucket of sand to stick your head under.