Lamia: Keats, A.S. Byatt
Details
In Greek mythology, Lamia was a beautiful woman who incurred the jealousy of Zeus's wife, Hera, and was transformed into a terrifying blood-drinking monster.
In 1820, John Keats popularized a version of the myth based on a passage in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, in which Lamia is a spirit trapped in a snake's body. When Hermes grants her wish to assume human form, she succeeds in becoming engaged to her beloved, Lycius. But at their wedding feast, Lamia's true identity is exposed, causing her to instantly vanish. (Burton adds that "many thousands" of witnesses testified to the truth of the story.)
A.S. Byatt modernized the tale in her collection, Elementals (2000). In this rendering, Bernard Lycett-Kean ("Lycius-Keats"?) is an artist who has retired to the Cévennes. When he decides to fill his swimming pool with river water, he discovers that he is visited by a snake-like spirit. This Lamia tries to entice him into a kiss, promising that she will transform into the woman of his dreams.
Melville also wrote a poem, "Lamia's Song" (in Timolean, 1891, and reproduced in the Extracts, below), which is a pseudo-elaboration of the siren song from Moby-Dick: "from the hearts of infinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them—“Come hither, broken-hearted...“"
According to Merrell Davis (in Melville's Mardi: A Chartless Voyage), "the haughty queen Hautia" of Mardi bears "a general resemblance to the sensuous queens of [a] romantic tradition" that includes "the false Florimel and seductive Acrasia of Spenser's Faerie Queene, the wicked queen of Southey's Thalaba, and the host of treacherous nymphs, water spirits, and lamias from which Keat's Lamia and Coleridge's Garaldine were taken." Such characters "were primarily enchantresses and mistresses of palaces of pleasure in some far-off land, often mysterious islands."
For this Meetup, we will discuss the Lamia stories of John Keats, A.S. Byatt, and Melville.
"Lamia" by John Keats:
"Lamia in the Cévennes" by A.S. Byatt:
Supplemental:
- "Lamia: The Child Devourer of Greek Mythology"
- "Lamia" lecture by Dr Scott Masson
- Symphonic Poem (1918) by Dorothy Howell
Extracts:
- "Ha, what form is this?—hast mosses? sea-thyme? pearls?—Help, help! I sink!—Back, shining monster!—What, Hautia,—is it thou?—Oh vipress, I could slay thee!" (Mardi, 2.91)
- "Descend, descend! / Pleasant the downward way- / From your lonely Alp / With the wintry scalp / To our myrtles in valleys of May. / Wend then, wend: / Mountaineer, descend: / And more than a wreath shall repay. / Come, ah come! / With the cataracts come, / That hymn as they roam / How pleasant the downward way!" ("Lamia's Song")
This meetup is part of a series on Muses and Monsters.