lunes, 12 de septiembre de 2011

"The Sick Rose": satyre or simple love poem?

According to the literary critics who edited this book for the Spanish publisher Cátedra, the poem titled "The Sick Rose" is a "poem with a satyric background where the rose may represent the woman, beauty, romantic love" and may actually be "a veiled attack against the common conception of love as something sinful":
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm
That flies in the night,
In the howling storm,

Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark, secret love,
Does thy life destroy.

(William Blake: Canciones de Inocencia y de Experiencia, p. 126)

Perhaps they are right. However, I think they read too much into it, as it tends to happen to literary critics. I prefer to read it as a simple love poem. Actually, I think it is much more beautiful that way. The critics dissecting things to death once again?

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