In a letter to his brother George dated April, 1819, Keats wrote: “The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more—it is the one in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca—I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life—I floated about the whirling atmosphere as it is described with a beautiful figure to whose lips mine were joined at it seem’d for an age—and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm—even flowery tree tops sprung up and we rested on them sometimes with the lightness of a cloud till the wind blew us away again….O that I could dream it every night” (The Oxford Authors John Keats, 1990). A few days later he sent a draft of “La Belle Dame sans Merci” to George.
Keats’ dream was probably induced by opium which he took in the form of laudanum, a mixture of wine or brandy and opium. At that time it could be purchased “over-the-counter” and was taken as we take aspirin for pain. (Regulation began with the foundation of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain in 1841 which sponsored the Pharmacy and Poisons Acts of 1868.) At any rate, in his dream Keats completely missed Dante’s point.
For Dante the punishments in his Inferno fit the crime. Thus, though Paulo and Francesca are with one another for eternity, swept in a great whirlwind, they are “shades” rather than bodies and can never touch. Francesca tells Dante that they began their “dalliance” after reading the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. (The lovers were caught by her husband—his brother—who killed them. Canto V, Circle Two The Carnal.)
Since the knight in “La Belle” is not gleeful as Keats was in his dream, I’m wondering if we could read the poem as Keats’ version of an inferno.
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