I combined the ambiguous characteristics of the poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” by romantic poet John Keats and painting “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. In doing this I took portions of the poem in order to create an image of the knight in the setting of the wanderer. The lines, “Her hair was long, her foot was light and her eyes were wild” (15, 16), “I made a garland for her head… she looked at me as she did love” (17, 19), and “And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream’d — Ah! Woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream’d On the cold hill’s side” (33-36) were inspirations for a drawing of the poem. These lines didn’t necessarily inspire change in my interpretation of the poem, but they inspired my mind to paint a picture of a scene.
I made this drawing so that the knight becomes the wanderer, wandering through his thoughts, through dreams, and through the world. I saw the lines, “And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream’d — Ah! Woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream’d On the cold hill’s side” (33-36) as an introduction for a different kind of dream than the one described by Keats. Instead I saw him alone and pondering in his head. In creating this into something real and something I can look at it made me realize that all the different interpretations of this poem should be focused on the knights interpretations instead of the readers. I believe that as poems are read, or literature in general, the reader focuses on how to interpret what the author wrote but there is something more important to do. It is important to consider what the different characters, even if made up, would be considering and interpreting if they had the mind to think so. This will make it so the reader is more personal to the characters because they are comprehending and interpreting the world together. Drawing this romantic period poem into a romantic period art form allowed me to realize that interpreting the world as the characters would do is helpful to comprehension of literature. This drawing depicts the knight wandering and pondering the world around him and the impression this fairy has upon him, as displayed through her significant presence in the sky. If the reader would go through interpreting these things through his eyes, they will progress to the same conclusion along with the characters.
Works Cited
Keats, John. “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th ed., W.W. Norton & Co., 2012, pp. 845-7. AP Literature Spring 2022, Stanford Online High School, University of Stanford, Jan. 2022. Accessed 10 Feb 2022.
Friedrich, C. 1818. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. Oil on Canvas.