The Barbèd Shafts of Disappointment

Yesterday’s howls reminded me of an illustration that I made when I was at art college. We had to design a book cover, and I chose the Signet Classic edition of The Selected Poetry of Keats.

There was a certain passage in the long poem Endymion that I chose to focus on:

“One morn she left me sleeping: half awake
I sought for her smooth arms and lips, to slake
my greedy thirst with nectarous camel draughts;
but she was gone. Whereat the barbèd shafts
of disappointment struck in me so sore
that out I ran and searched the forest o’er.”

There was such anguished loss and passion in those lines that I wanted to capture. I chose oil pastel as my medium (one of my favourites) and a heavy, almost crude style in an effort to convey that raw emotion – the cry of despair, Endymion clutching at his hair, and the woman’s complete indifference in the background. I suspect not a little is owed to Edvard Munch’s famous painting The Scream, a picture that never fails to strike me in the guts with its power.

This is a scan of a colour photocopy (I kept the mockup of the cover on the original book, which is still on my shelves), and I remember I was disappointed in the quality – there was much more subtlety of shade and tone in the drawing. Just looking at it is making my fingers itch to pick up the oil pastels again!