Lamia (1820)

Question 1

Last of the romances of 1820 to be written

Answer 1

• a medieval tale dealing with a hero of chivalry, of the kind common in the Romance languages: the Arthurian romances.
• the literary genre of romance.
• a work of fiction dealing with events remote from real life, especially one of a kind popular in the 16th and 17th centuries: Elizabethan pastoral romances.

-written after Keats worked on the first act of Otho the Great

Question 2

meter and rhyme

Answer 2

triplets and alexandrines (drydenian heroic)

written in mostly couplets

Question 3

What does the poem recount?

Answer 3

Hermes’s love for a nymph that appears perfect because it exists outside the vicissitudes of human desire.

Its account of an erotic enthrallment between Lamia and Lycius that turns into possessiveness and destruction.

Shows how love is flawed, gives an account of its frailties

” A long poem that arches from beginning to end with a central consciousness, a directly traceable story, a singular (not necessarily single) purpose, is truly more novel than poem. But it’s a novel that relies upon the devices and music of poetry as its motif.”

Question 4

Part 1: Stanza 1

Breakdown

Answer 4

1. The “ever-smitten Hermes,” bent warm on amorous theft, leaves his golden throne, escapes the sight of his great summoner, because somewhere there was a sacred nymph before whom all the Satyrs knelt, laid pearls. He was standing there, pensive and full of painful jealousies, when he heard a mournful voice, which asked when from this “wreathed tomb shall” it wake, when move in a sweet body fit for life.” The dove-footed Hermes glided among the taller grasses, brushed around in the full-flowering weed, and found a palpitating snake, “Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusty brake.”

Question 5

Anatomy of the long poem

Answer 5

Long poems are extreme.
Long poems grapple with narrative.
Long poems grapple with narrative but aren’t prose.
Long poems are confessional, because there is always a human being speaking and we bear witness to the dynamism of that human’s mind.

Question 6

Part 1: Stanza 2

Breakdown

Answer 6

2. She was in a “gordian shape of a 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; And full of silver moons, that she breathed, dissolv’d, or brighter shone;” her head was serpent, but ah, bitter sweet, she had a woman’s mouth, with all its pearls complete; triplets: “but for her eyes” what could they do but “weep, and weep” that they were born so fair like Properine for the Sicilian air…” Her throat was serpent but the words she spake came as through bubbling honey, for Love’s sake, and thus, Hermes creeped there on his pinions listening.

Question 7

Long poems are all love poems.

Answer 7

“The kind of respect it means to linger, to spend time with someone, time on something. To stay,” writes McHugh in her short long poem, “Not a Prayer.”

Question 8

Part I, Stanza 3

Breakdown

Answer 8

3. She addresses him, and the address of the poem shifts. “I had a splendid dream of thee last night,” saw him sitting among the gods, “the only sad one,” and, “have you found your maid?” He responds: “anything for the beautiful serpent with melancholy eyes, telling me where my nymph is.” The snake says “Bright planet” and makes Hermes take an oath.” He does, light flies from his earnest words, and the snake says says: She is “Free as air, invisibly,” says, “she tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet / leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet.” She “plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen: and by my power is her beauty veil’d to keep it unassail’d by the glances of unlovely eyes” – and so, as a result, “I took compassion on her, bade her to steep her hair in weïrd syrops that would keep her lovelieness invisible yet free to wander as she loves in liberty” (Fancy’s casket is still unlock’d to choose, with the world of love at her feet, apparently”). The snake says that Hermes can behold her if he makes another oath to grant her “boon,” or wish–in a triplet in the narrative voice.

Question 9

Long poems create intimacy

Answer 9

Marriage or a long-term relationship isn’t a long one-night stand in which one person never goes home. A long poem isn’t just a short poem that the poet forgot to end. Both require and inspire a different mindset, a different pacing, a different way of being, a different kind and level of intimacy with another person and with the self. When reading a good short or mid-length poem, I feel a shock of recognition – like catching a stranger’s eye on the subway – but this fleeting, intense connection underscores the separation between the poem and me, the otherness of the poet and his world from me and mine. Because of the breaks and points of entry, and simply because of how long I “exist” with and within the poem, I am committed to and invested in a long poem in a way that I can never be with a short poem.

Question 10

Part I, Stanza 4

Breakdown

Answer 10

The serpent says that she “was a woman, let me have once more / A woman’s shape, and charming as before,” that she loves a youth of Corinth, that “give me a woman’s form, and place me where he is” (she was probably a cursed fairy); “Stoop” she tells him so that she can “breath upon his brow / and thou shalt see thy sweet nymph even now.” Triplet: “The god on half-shut feathers serene, / She breathed upon his eyes and swift was seen / Of both the guarded nymph near-smiling on the green.” Then, repetition: “It was no DREAM, or say a DREAM it was, / REAL are the DREAMS of Gods, and smoothly pass / Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.” He experiences a “warm, flush’d moment, hovering,” dashed and enamored. Hermes puts a languid arm over the serpent. Then, at last, he turned to the nymph, his eyes bent upon her and full of adoring tears and step’t towards her. And “she, like a moon in wane, faded before him.” She cower’d, could not restrain her fearful sobs, was “self-folding like a flower.” Hermes took her chilled hand, she felt his warmth. Her eyelids open’d bland, and bloomed, like new flowers at the morning song of bees. THEN: Into the green recessed woods they flew; Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do.

Question 11

Long poems discover themselves

Answer 11

David Trinidad, who writes long and short poems: “I also remember thinking, in the middle of ‘A Poem Under the Influence,’ that it was like a mural (versus a shorter poem, which is more like a single canvas), so long and wide I couldn’t see what was around the corner, or where it would end.” Just as the essay is a form in which a writer discovers what she believes, the long poem is a form in which the poet discovers herself and the shape of the poem in the writing.

Question 12

Part I, Stanza 5

Breakdown

Answer 12

Hermes and the nymph leave the serpent alone, who begins to change. Her “elfin blood in madness ran,” her mouth “foam’d…” Triplet: “Her eyes in torture fix’d, and anguish drear, / Hot, glaz’d, and wide, with lashes all sear, / Flash’d phosphor and sharp sparks, without one cooling tear.” In her train, the colors inflam’d, “she writh’d about in scarlett pain.” Her milder-mooned body’s grace turned yellow, and spoilt her silver-gold scales, made her frecklings, streaks and bars gloomy, “eclips’d her crescents, lick’d up her stars.” “Nothing but pain and ugliness were left.” She literally disappeared. “And in the air, her new voice luting soft, / Cried Lycuis!” And then these words dissolved.

Question 13

Long poems allow the poet to change her mind.

Answer 13

This is part of the delight of the long poem. “Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” writes Whitman.

Question 14

Part I, Stanza 6

Breakdown

Answer 14

Whither fled Lamia, now a lady bright? Asks the narrative voice. To Corinth for Lycius. There she sat, “finally “passioned, / To see herself escap’d from so sore ills, / While her robes flaunted with the daffodils.”

Question 15

Long poems change the mind.

Answer 15

In an interview with Jennifer Dick (on Doublechange), Notley said, “What I’m doing is creating – trying to create – a different consciousness … And I think this happens for some other people. It actually makes your head different.”

Question 16

Part I, Stanza 7
Breakdown

Answer 16

Happy Lycius, for she was now a maid
“Yet of sciential brain / To unperplex bliss from its neighbor pain ; / Define their pettish limits and estrange / Their points of contact, and swift counterchange. This is “Intrigue with the specious chaos” to “dispart / its most ambiguous atoms in with sure art.” Basically, forcing univocity on things that are inextricably entangled to the point of ambiguity. Another triplet at the end, in cupids college she had spent / sweet days as a lovely graduate still unshent / and kept his rosy terms in idle languishment.”

Question 17

Long poems are about process and highlight process.

Answer 17

Jackson Pollock’s paintings are a record of his body’s movements and his physical presence in relation to the canvas. The long poem is a record of the poet’s mind over time. Not surprisingly, time and progress are often explicit, central themes in the long poem as is the writing process itself. There is a self-consciousness (sometimes an embarrassment) about the project of writing (“I hate fussing with nature and would like the world to be / all weeds …” writes Schuyler) but also a compulsion to continue. The long poem is fueled by an unflagging curiosity about the world; “why not leave the world alone?” writes Schuyler in “Hymn to Life,” “Then there would be no books, which is not to be borne.”

The poet keeps writing, keeps writing. It is an odd thing to do, a strange way to spend time, but there is the world with its innumerable glories, and what else can a poet do but write?

The attention to process makes the long poem a highly artificial, self-consciously made thing. On the other hand, this embrace of artifice makes the poem feel more honest than poems that aim to impart a feeling while hiding their poem-ness. Long poems are buildings – sometimes glaringly out of place with the landscape, sometimes meant to blend in almost seamlessly – but never holodecks.

Question 18

Long poems discover themselves.

Answer 18

David Trinidad, who writes long and short poems: “I also remember thinking, in the middle of ‘A Poem Under the Influence,’ that it was like a mural (versus a shorter poem, which is more like a single canvas), so long and wide I couldn’t see what was around the corner, or where it would end.” Just as the essay is a form in which a writer discovers what she believes, the long poem is a form in which the poet discovers herself and the shape of the poem in the writing.

Question 19

“Whose head is not dizzy at the probably speculations of satan in this serpent prison?”

Answer 19

Keats, Marginal note on Paradise Lost, 9.179-91

Question 20

Part I, Stanza 8
Breakdown

Answer 20

Why did she choose to linger by the wayside? Before we get to that, let’s talk about how she mused. And dreamt. When in the serpent’s prison house.

Two triplets in a row, suggests that as a serpent, her spirit went wherever she willed: to Elysium, to see the nymphs braiding Achilles’s mother’s hair on pearl stairs, Bacchus drinking, or underneath a gummy/sappy pine tree, or Mulciber’s palatial columns, or she’d send her dream into cities with feast and rioting.

Once, dreaming like this among the mortals she encountered the young Corinthean Lycius. Had a calm uneager face. Was ‘charioteering’ (rf to the Pheadrus?) Anyways “she fell into a swooning love of him”

One day he decided not to take the normal way home, to veer away from his friends’ and their locker-room “Corinth” talk. After a little solitude, and silence, and thoughtlessness… evening fell, and

“His phantasy was lost, where reason fades, In the calm’d twilight of Platonic shades.”

Lamia beheld him coming near… but his sandals just swept by quietly. She was

“So neighbor’d to him, and yet so unseen / She stood: he pass’d, shut up in mysteries.”

Question 21

Long poems create intimacy.

Answer 21

Marriage or a long-term relationship isn’t a long one-night stand in which one person never goes home. A long poem isn’t just a short poem that the poet forgot to end. Both require and inspire a different mindset, a different pacing, a different way of being, a different kind and level of intimacy with another person and with the self. When reading a good short or mid-length poem, I feel a shock of recognition – like catching a stranger’s eye on the subway – but this fleeting, intense connection underscores the separation between the poem and me, the otherness of the poet and his world from me and mine. Because of the breaks and points of entry, and simply because of how long I “exist” with and within the poem, I am committed to and invested in a long poem in a way that I can never be with a short poem.

Question 22

Part I, Stanza 8 (cont.)
Breakdown

Answer 22

She turned to him and “syllabled thus”:

Ah Lycius bright ! / And will you leave me on the hills alone? / Lycius ook back! and be some pity shone.” / He did, not with cold wonder fearingly, / But Orpheus-like at an Eurydice” [making sure she was following him] / For so delicious were the words she sung / It seem’d he had lov’d them a whole summer long.”

[?…weird rhyme…very stretched slant rhyme between Eurydice + fearingly & sung + long, language breakdown]

Then repetition, couples + internal rhymes/assonance:

“Leave thee alone! Look back! Ah, goddess, see
Whether my eyes can ever turn away from thee!
For pity do not this sad heart belie–
Even as thou vanishest so I shall die.
Stay! Though the greenest woods be thy domain,
Alone they can drink up the morning rain”

He continues:

“So sweetly to these ravish’d ears of mine
Came thy sweet greeting, that if thou shouldst fade
Thy memory will waste me into a shade:–
For pity do not melt!”–

She responds:

“Thou art a scholar, Lycius, and must know
That finer spirits cannot breathe below”

She is immortal and wishes to stay in bliss, rather than step upon the clay, rough flowers, and reminisce about her home

Then a triplet:

“…Alas! Poor youth,
What taste of purer air hast thou to soothe /
My essence? What serener palaces /
Where I may all my senses please, /
And by mysterious sleights a hundred thirsts appease?”

sleight = artifice, deceitful stratagem

the “cruel lady” leaves with no show of sorrow for her tender favorite’s woe

They kiss (another triplet)

As he from one trance was wakening / Into another, she began to sing, / Happy in beauty, life, and love, and every thing”

song too sweet for earthly lyres

“And to every word she spake entic’d him on, To unperplexed delight and pleasure known”

“Let the mad poets say whate’er they please
Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses
There is not such a treat among them all,
Haunters of cavern, lake and waterfall,
As a real woman, lineal indeed

Question 23

Long poems look at the “big picture,” develop ideas and are “about” something; long poems are about nothing but themselves.

Answer 23

D. A. Powell: long poems make “a much bolder claim on the temporal field of poetry, sacrificing individual moments for the sake of broader ideas.” There is an inevitable “storyness,” an “aboutness” in long poems. Motifs accrue; themes that sound like or are “broader ideas” develop.

Question 24

Part I, Stanza 9
Breakdown

Answer 24

So she judged that Lycius could not love in half a fright, and “threw the goddess off” and won his heart, more pleasantly by playing a woman’s part…

“With no more awe than what her beauty gave / That, while it smote, still garaunted to save.
Lycius to all made eloquent reply
Marrying to every word a twinborn sight”

Question 25

Long poems are muralistic or kaleidoscopic rather than overarching.

Answer 25

they resist “aboutness.” Long poems can sometimes do a better job of salvaging and preserving individual moments than short poems can. In the short poem, individual moments are often used in the service of an idea or to illustrate an argument.

Long poems, on the other hand, tend to resist rhetoric, and I find that what the long poem is most often “about” is itself: the process of extended curiosity, noticing, thinking, and being aware. Individual moments in a long poem are so numerous that they seem to be emblematic only of the writer’s consciousness, of the authorial presence, or of the poem-making process. “Life, it seems, explains nothing about itself. In the / Garden now daffodils stand full unfolded and / to see them is enough,” writes Schuyler.

Question 26

Part I, Stanza 10
Breakdown

Answer 26

As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all

describes a sort of muttering, like a tempest in the distance brew’d
the people, all of them, are shifting around, shuffling their sandals in the cool hours

Question 27

Part I, Stanza 11
Breakdown

Answer 27

Muffling his face, of greeting friends in fear, they brush past a man with a curly gray beard. Lamia trembles, and Lycius asks why her tender palm dissolves into a dew?”

She asks who is that old man, and he says Apollonius sage, my trusty guide and instructor, but tonight he seems “The ghost of folly, haunting my sweet dreams”

So basically, Lamia recognizes the guy’s features to some degree, sees Lycius & Apollonius know each other. Her palms start sweating, her past probably is coming back to haunt her. Lycius just says he is dear but tonight I’m in a dream and he’s haunting it. What a romantic.

Question 28

Part I, Stanza 12
Breakdown

Answer 28

Lamia and Lycius arrive before a pillar’d porch, with a “portal door” where a silver lamp reflected the slabbed steps like a mild star in water…. they had a clear marble hue: crystal polish + dark veins = untarnished by normal feet, only divine feet have touch’d there.

The doors led to a “place unknown” to most but Lycius and Lamia. Most people were baffled, since the only people who knew their house were mute Persians.

“And but the flitter-winged verse must tell,
For truth’s sake, what woe afterwards befel,
‘Twould humour many a heart to leave them thus,
Shut from the busy world of more incredulous.”

Question 29

Part II, Stanza 1
Breakdown

Answer 29

“Love in a hut, with water and a crust / Is–Love, forgive us!–cinders, ashes dust.”

There is something cutting about the internal rhyme. It seems like an echo of someone sobbing. A hut is a simple shelter. Love in a palace is worse torment.

Those who are non-elect, who have never really loved, have a hard time understanding this.

If Lycius liv’d to his hand his story down. He might have given the moral a fresh frown. = Lycius doesn’t live long enough to tell this story.

” too short was their bliss.”

They weren’t together long enough to even experience distrust and hate.

Then a triplet: Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair / Hover’d and buzz’d above the lintel of their chamber door, / And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor.”

Question 30

Part II, Stanza 2
Breakdown

Answer 30

Lamia and Lycius were enthroned, reclining on a couch in the even tide near to a curtain whose airy texture from a golden string floated into the room and let appear / unveil’d the summer heaven…. they were reposing, fighting sleep to see each other while they almost slept

When a deafening thrill of trumpets accosted them… Lycius began to get up but the sounds fled, leaving but a thought, a buzzing in his head.

For the first time since he “harbour’d in / That purple-lined palace of sweet sin” his spirit pass’d beyond its golden bourn into the noisy world almost forsworn/sworn off.

Lamia was watchful, penetrant… saw this with pain…

She sighed. Lycius, knowing a moment’s sigh is a passing bell, asked why she sighs.

She says “Because you deserted me. I am not in your heart… care weighs on your brow. You have dismissed me, I go from your breast houseless.

“He answered, bending to her open eyes / Where he was mirror’d small in paradise.”

My moon “silver planet” ; says he is striving how to fill his heart with a deeper crimson and entangle her soul in his, to “labyrinth you there”= une métonymie pour la coincer, peut-être une allusion à la labyrinthe de Dédale, d’où Thésée avait du mal à d’échapper

“amid the hoarse alarm of Corinth’s voice” alarm, trumpets = images, métaphore pour la foule extérieure du couple ; image crée une contraste entre l’intérieur du couple et tout ce qui est à l’extérieur, ce qui est décrit par des images visuelles = la synesthésie (presque)

The lady’s cheek trembled…

Fine was the mitigated fury, like
Apollo’s presence when in act to strike
The serpent—Ha, the serpent! certes, she
Was none. = simile

She burnt. Loved the tyranny of his passion. Wanting to express his love and frustrated that she cries at his profession of love

He asks who she wants to invite to the marriage, and she says nobody, her parents are dead (their bones [synecdoque] are in their dusty urns / Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns = imagery] and her presence is hardly known in Corinth. She continues:

Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me,
And I neglect the holy rite for thee.
Even as you list invite your many guests;
But if, as now it seems, your vision rests
With any pleasure on me, do not bid
Old Apollonius—from him keep me hid.”
Lycius, perplex’d at words so blind and blank,
Made close inquiry; from whose touch she shrank,
Feigning a sleep; and he to the dull shade
Of deep sleep in a moment was betray’d

Question 31

Part II, Stanza 3
Breakdown

Answer 31

“Regal drest” + paced silently

It was custom to bring the bride home at the blushing shut of day veiled in a chariot heralded by strewn flowers [imagery/ suggests marriage is normally une grande célébration but he didn’t have a friend.

While he went to invite everyone but Apollonius, she–

And knowing surely she could never win
His foolish heart from its mad pompousness,
She set herself, high-thoughted, how to dress
The misery in fit magnificence.

She did so, but ‘tis doubtful how and whence
Came, and who were her subtle servitors.
About the halls, and to and from the doors,
There was a noise of wings, = still magic

Eventually, she was:
Complete and ready for the revels rude,
When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude

Question 32

Part II, Stanza 4
Breakdown

Answer 32

Lycius is a madman, nervous. All the guests were arriving, “with busy brain” “enter’d marveling” had never before seen the royal porch…

[triplet for seen, / demesne,/ and curious and keen”
Save one, who look’d thereon with eye severe,
And with calm-planted steps walk’d in austere;
‘Twas Apollonius: something too he laugh’d,
As though some knotty problem, that had daft
His patient thought, had now begun to thaw,
And solve and melt—’twas just as he foresaw.

Question 33

Part II, Stanza 5
Breakdown

Answer 33

Apollonius meets Lycius in the entryway and says that it’s wrong to attend a part uninvited but this time he must, and Lycius will forgive him.

Lycius blushed and lets him in

Question 34

Part II, Stanza 6
Breakdown

Answer 34

Banquet-room:
Wealthy lustre, brilliance, perfume, myrrh, spiced wood, wreathes of smoke, twelve sphered tables, insphered by seats, gold cups and goblets, wine

Question 35

Part II, Stanza 7
Breakdown

Answer 35

guests were bathed by servants with cold sponges “pleasure perss’d”

their hair was anointed with fragrant oil

they went to feast in white robes

on a silk couches wondered how much all this costs and how lamia and lycius could afford it

Question 36

Part II, Stanza 8
Breakdown

Answer 36

soft music, greek-vowel’d undersong, kept up with guests discoursing low, but when the happy vintage touched their brains, louder they spoke, louder the powerful instruments, as well as the gorgeous dyes, the space, the splndour of the draperies, …and lamia’s self

Question 37

Part II, Stanza 9
Breakdown

Answer 37

What wreath for Lamia? What for Lycius?
What for the sage, old Apollonius?

Upon her aching forehead be there hung
The leaves of willow and of adder’s tongue;

= willow is associated with deserted lovers; adder’s tongue is a fern or violet, both which look like a serpent’s tongue;

 And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him
 The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim
 Into forgetfulness;

=god of wine Bacchus’s want, woven with ivy

and, for the sage,
Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage
War on his temples.

=both troublesome weeds, common, prickly [mauvaises herbes épineuses]

Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an Angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.

= keats commence à établir/déterminer/suggérer les contours d’une allégorie… la philosophie est Apollonius; le vers “a dull catalogue of common things” suggère la description botanique des plantes qui ornent chaque personnage… en soi = une catalogue, mais les plantes sont riche en symbolisme, ce qui indique la présence d’un mystère et d’une incertitude qui sous-tendent les déterminations quotidiennes, parce que celle-ci circonscrit les limites de l’imagination (l’étendue de l’imagination)

Question 38

Part II, Stanza 10
Breakdown

Answer 38

Lycius was at the head of the table. Looks at Apollonius, who is staring at Lamia. He touched her pale hand, “T’was icy” and the cold ran through his veins

then suddently it grew hot, and the shock of unnatural heat est entrée dans son coeur

He asks what this means, if she knows him, and she did not answer

Know’st thou that man?” Poor Lamia answer’d not.
He gaz’d into her eyes, and not a jot
Own’d they the lovelorn piteous appeal:
More, more he gaz’d: his human senses reel:

everything fell silent. he shriek’d her name… but sad echo did the silence break; be gone foul dream he cried, gazing into her face

Question 39

In the bride’s face, where now no azure vein
Wander’d on fair-spaced temples; no soft bloom
Misted the cheek; no passion to illume
The deep-recessed vision—all was blight;
Lamia, no longer fair, there sat a deadly white.

Answer 39

“Shut, shut those juggling eyes, thou ruthless man!
Turn them aside, wretch! or the righteous ban
Of all the Gods, whose dreadful images
Here represent their shadowy presences,

Question 40

“Fool! Fool!” repeated he, while his eyes still
Relented not, nor mov’d; “from every ill
Of life have I preserv’d thee to this day,
And shall I see thee made a serpent’s prey?”

Answer 40

Then Lamia breath’d death breath; the sophist’s eye,
Like a sharp spear, went through her utterly,
Keen, cruel, perceant, stinging: she, as well
As her weak hand could any meaning tell,

Question 41

“A Serpent!” echoed he; no sooner said,
Than with a frightful scream she vanished:
And Lycius’ arms were empty of delight,
As were his limbs of life, from that same night.

Answer 41

On the high couch he lay!—his friends came round
Supported him—no pulse, or breath they found,
And, in its marriage robe, the heavy body wound.

Question 42

Apollonius, by some improbable conjecture, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia. All her furniture was, like Tantalus’s gold, described by Homer, no substance but mere illusion.

Answer 42

When she saw herself descried, she wept. Apollonius would not be moved, and she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant: many thousands took notice, for it was done int he midst of Greece.
Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy