Reflections on "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

I know I’m supposed to be sticking to the American Sampler and later materials, but I thought this might be a good place for me to briefly mention a few things that I originally wanted to mention in my paper but didn’t feel would fit. It’s not terribly important, it just makes me feel better to have it written. Firstly, the first several times I read Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci, I imagined the whole poem looking like a Waterhouse painting. Then, while I was in the process of writing my paper, I happened to Google the poem. Imagine my surprise when I saw that among the suggested images was, of all things, an actual Waterhouse painting. I had no idea, but apparently I was on the right wavelength. (As an aside, I think I like Frank Dicksee’s painting more. It’s probably the red hair.)

Secondly, every time I read “La Belle Dame” I think of this song by my favorite musician, Miyavi. It’s called Mata Yume de Aimashou, which translates to “Let’s Meet Again in the Dream.” I think it totally fits if one were to interpret La Belle Dame as just a part of Keats’s narrator’s dream, and not real at all. He sees her in a dream, but when he wakes up, she’s gone, so he keeps trying to get back to that dream. If I recall, the professor of my Fantasy class last semester suggested something along those lines when we looked briefly the poem. Anyway, here’s the song with a lyric translation, just because I can.

Yes, I do listen mostly to Japanese music. Anyway.

This has been a brief interlude. I will now return to more recent subjects.