
Apollonius wrote:Man marries snake! It all goes horribly wrong. Just an everyday story of wriggly folk?
How about this for a reading? Lycius's dream/fantasy in which he loves Lamia is a delusion destroyed by the power of fact and logic which the Romantics found so limiting. You could argue that Keats's sympathies are with Lycius and that nasty old Apollonius is just the wrecker of beauty and the sense world and thus an enemy.
On the other hand you can see Apollonius as a friend of beauty and truth. Lamia may be beautiful, but she isn't true. She is a snake!
The immortal products of the imagination will stand the Apollonius test. Lamia won't. She is nothing but a self indulgent dream, and there is evidence in the poem that she will not withstand the trial of reality - I am thinking of the bit where Lycius hears the sound of horns from outside the window and thinks for a moment. Lamia cannot stand this.
Just to get you all going......
How about this for a reading? Lycius's dream/fantasy in which he loves Lamia is a delusion destroyed by the power of fact and logic which the Romantics found so limiting. You could argue that Keats's sympathies are with Lycius and that nasty old Apollonius is just the wrecker of beauty and the sense world and thus an enemy.
On the other hand you can see Apollonius as a friend of beauty and truth. Lamia may be beautiful, but she isn't true. She is a snake!
The immortal products of the imagination will stand the Apollonius test. Lamia won't. She is nothing but a self indulgent dream, and there is evidence in the poem that she will not withstand the trial of reality - I am thinking of the bit where Lycius hears the sound of horns from outside the window and thinks for a moment. Lamia cannot stand this.
I found this post interesting, however the idea that Apollonius is a friend of truth AND beauty confuses me a bit, as Keats did say "beauty is truth, and truth beauty"; this is quite conflicting with the aforementioned point as if Lamia is beautiful but not true, then surely truth cannot be beauty and vice versa, even though keats himself said this...
Apollonius wrote:Acepted. All the same, I caution against reading any artistic work as a didactic statement.
There is a world of difference between what one might say in a letter to a friend and what one might say in a poem.
Who believes urns anyway?
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