| She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, | |
| Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; | |
| Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, | |
| Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr’d; | 50 |
| And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, | |
| Dissolv’d, or brighter shone, or interwreathed | |
| Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries— | |
| So rainbow-sided, touch’d with miseries, | |
| She seem’d, at once, some penanced lady elf, | 55 |
| Some demon’s mistress, or the demon’s self. | |
| Upon her crest she wore a wannish fire | |
| Sprinkled with stars, like Ariadne’s tiar: | |
| Her head was serpent, but ah, bitter-sweet! | |
| She had a woman’s mouth with all its pearls complete: | 60 |
| And for her eyes: what could such eyes do there | |
| But weep, and weep, that they were born so fair? |
Keats’ glorious unveiling of the Lamia dramatically arrests our attention. It is as if we, like Hermes, stumble across this dazzling creature whilst fascinated already by her haunting, beseeching voice calling to us.
The vibrancy and hyperbolic visual qualities of the Lamia induce a shapely sensory overload in the reader. She is far beyond any encounter we have ever enjoyed. Her ‘excess’ is her charm, and charming and ‘enchanted’ she truly is with the paradoxical details of her appearance, all literally ‘beyond’ any context we have met before. She is the embodiment of conflict, alternatively rhapsodically allluring and then repulsive. And she is not still, she is a ‘palpitating’ creature whose very movement suggests orgiastic pleasure and release. The co-existence of pleasure and pain, of happiness and misery emphasises the magical character of the Lamia. She is a ‘beyond’; a possible dwelling place for Keats’ ‘Fancy’ ungoverned by the exigiencies of earthly regulation and contained desire.
I love the imaginative challenge laid down for the reader here. For what does the Lamia look like with her serpent’s head, her ‘woman’s mouth’ and her weeping eyes? The combination of her human and non human parts transports the reader into the realms of secret ‘fancy’ and seduction and the layering of such rich and evocative detail makes one’s mouth and mind water at the overload of our senses. Who could resist the Lamia? Who would want to? Only Apollonius of course, the consummate rationalist, whose world view negates ‘poesy’ and seems a sterile, life defeating choice, killing both the Lamia herself and Lycius her lover. The pulse of the Lamia here as she breathes and moves however suggests the radiation of pleasure. She conjures with all our senses at one thirst quenching glance!