His Life and Literary Activities
Among such literary giants , one name , not of less significance and creative excellence , is often forgotten . He is John Keats , a perfect expressionist of romantic marvel and wonder , elegance and tenderness .
That Keats was a West Countryman by descent , but a Londoner by birth . His family , unlike Shelley's or Byron's , had no aristocratic bearing nor financial affluence . His father , Thomas Keats , was an ostler in some livery stables and succeeded to the business by marrying his master's daughter Frances Jennings . The couple had four sons - John ( the poet ) , George , Tom and Edward , who died in infancy , and one daughter Fanny . Keats was born in 1795 .
Of course , Keats's parents , though not at all aristocratic , were well - to - do and honourably ambitious . They did , to the best of their means , to educate their sons . Keats , along with his brothers , was sent to a reputed private school at Enfield , kept by the Rev. John Clarke . Here Keats got his first and intimate acquaintance with English literature , particularly English verse .
After his father's death in 1804 , Keat's mother married again in 1805 , rather unhappily . Within a short time , she left her second husband and settled at her mother's house at Edmonton , with her children .
Keats's study , however , continued and thrived . He read a good deal of history , fiction , classics , travel books . He was very much drawn to Homer , Virgil , Spenser and Elizabethan masters . Under their inspiring influences , Keats started writing verses . One of his earliest verses happened to be An Imitation of Spenser . In the meantime , his mother had died of consumption in 1810 and thereafter , he left for London to read medical science , but left that altogether in 1817 and devoted himself fully to verse writing . His first volume of Poems came out in 1817 , followed by Endymion , in the very next year .
But Keats's poetic endeavours received no prompt and favourable response . Critics appeared severe to his Endymion in particular . From that time , Keats's sky began to darken . First , his second brother George and his wife emigrated to America . Sharply offensive reviews of his poetry first in the Blackwood's Magazine and then in the Quarterly deeply hurt Keats . Some days later there fell upon him another much
heavier blow . His brother Tom , dearly loved and nursed by him , died of consumption . His love for Fanny Browne proved ill - fated , as he was the victim of the hereditary enemy in his blood - consumption . Still Keats carried on his poetical vocation earnestly amid the growing gloom of his physical decline and mental depression and wrote some of his immortal odes like Ode to a Nightingale , Ode on a Grecian Urn , Ode to Autumn , Ode to Melancholy , Ode to Psyche , and so on . The last volume of his Poems came in 1820 to establish his credentiality and reputation in the literary circle .
But it was the last flicker before the final darkness . Keats struggled to write on , but his malignant ailment steadily crept in . He was taken to Naples on the doctors ' advice . But no effort of his friends was of any avail , and he passed away on February 23 , 1821 , and was buried three days later in the Protestant cemetery in Rome , not far from the place , where Shelley was to lie a year after . His epitaph was of his own dictate :
" Here lies one whose name was writ in water " .
Keats died , and his tenderness and genius were celebrated by Shelley in his poetic triumph Adonais . The dead poet is made ever alive in the living lines from another warmly living poet . This is the fitting testimony to his triumphant poetry , that shall remain , ' in midst of other woe than ours , a friend to man ' .
His Chief Poetical Works
Poems , Endymion , Lamina and other Poems , Hyperion , Isabella , The Eve of St Agnes , Odes , and a number of shorter lyrics .
1. His Poetry :
Chief Characteristics Keats , the youngest of the romanticists , is in no way least in his originality as a poet , and stands equal to his great poetic comrades , Byron and Shelley . Of course , his poetry has not the high seriousness of Wordsworth's , the prophetic vision of Shelley's , or the impulsive vigour of Byron's . But in the depiction of romance and beauty , in the poetic elegance , he seems to have hardly an equal . What is more , Keats's poetry has a suggestiveness that is enchanting , a sensuousness that is appealing and an aesthetic philosophy that adores beauty above all things . Indeed , Keats occupies a high place in the temple of poetry , along with those great talents of English poetry , who died prematurely - Marlowe , Collins , Shelley and Byron .
The essence of Keatsian poetic originality lies in a number of factors . In the first place , there is his deep love for beauty . The yearning passion for the beautiful , runs all through his poetry . His poetic motto echoes in his assertion- " A thing of beauty is a joy forever .
" In the second place , there is his sensuous portrayal of nature . He has not sublimated or humanised nature , but is basically a painter of nature and seems to anticipate the Pre - Raphaelites . In fact , in his poetry , nature is all alive and graceful with external charms and appeals .
The third important feature in Keats is his subjectivity , which is deep and , at the same time , bears , like Shelley's lyrics , a melancholy strain . His personal agony , depression and despondency are all echoed in his odes in particular . The mark of his originality is found in his curious felicity of expressions . For the magic of compound words , for wonderful phrases and for memorable lines , Keats stands out uniquely .
The next quality , in which his poetry excels , is music - sonorous music . The luxuriance of his poetical sensation is well matched with the luxuriance of his poetical experession . Keats is usually taken as the most musical of the English poets . His verses have a continous flow of melody that enchants and captures . The musical effects of Keats's great odes are hardly surpassable .
2. Keats's Concept of Beauty as Expressed in his Odes .
Keats is acknowledged as a poet of beauty . Of course , his is no appraisement of gross , physical beauty , but of beauty in the absolute sense , that touches the mind and impels the heart , His creed of beauty is the essence of his poetic philosophy . This is well borne out in his celebrated odes , of which Ode to a Nightingale , Ode to Autumn and Ode on a Grecian Urn deserve a specific mention .
As a poet of beauty , Keats is found to immortalise beauty in its ever appealing and never perishing effect . ' A thing of beauty ' is to him ' a joy for ever . This is the essence of his contention both in his Ode to a Nightingale and in his Ode on a Grecian
Urn . To the poet's romantic imagination , the song of the nightingale is a thing of beauty , and , therefore , it has no change , decay , or death- " Thou wast not born for death , O Immortal Bird " . The sculptural art on a marble vase of ancient Greece is equally deathless . It has remained a joy to the generation of men and women amid the changes of the world
" Thou shalt remain , in midst of other woe
Than ours , a friend to man , to whom thou say'st ,
Beauty is truth , truth beauty , "
Of course , Keats has a different approach in the other ode , Ode to Autumn . The poet is concerned here with natural beauty and serenity in the season of autumn . The emphasis here is on the sensuousness of beauty , the effect that the loveliness even of the decadent season of .autumn produces .
The appeal of beauty , as conceived by Keats , endures , but man , subjected to transcience , is unable to relish this beauty for long . The sordid , tragic earthly life hardly allows human beings to have the taste of eternal beauty . This painful experience of human life is expressed , very powerfully no doubt , in the concluding stanza of Ode to a Nightingale .
It may be noted here that Keats's beauty is not limited to any purely physical or sensuous element . As already implied , his beauty has an absolute conception , and is not confined to any particular thing or idea . What specifically draws him is the appeal of beauty , and this may be in nature , or in man , or in man's creation of art . The central point is the imperishable appeal of beauty that is beyond the frailty or fatality of the mortal world . The nightingale , as an individual bird , is perishable , but its song , representing ' absolute beauty ' , is imperishable , just as the beauty of autumn has an unforgettable appeal in its sights , spirits and songs .
This philosophy of the immortality of beauty , no doubt , forms a cardinal aspect of Keats's concept of beauty . But this is not all , and , as seen in Ode On a Grecian Urn , the poet probes deeper into the aesthetic effect of the whole issue . He is no more content with the assertion that ' a thing of beauty is a joy for ever ' , but goes to attribute to it a , moral force , an ethical grandeur . He assimilates truth and beauty not as two distinct things , nor even as twin elements , but as one and the same thing , looked only from different angles . What is truth is beauty , just as beauty is nothing but truth . A thing of beauty must have its foundation on truth , and when there is no such foundation , this is false , and cannot stand long . Similarly , when there is no beauty , it is presumed that truth is lacking .
Indeed , Keats's concept of and approach to beauty is quite original , though not all simple to all . He takes truth and beauty as intimately connected , rather interfused , and may be interpreted differently , only from different points of view . The sculptural art on the marble vase of ancient Greece is a specimen of beauty , but this beauty , in his view , is nothing but truth , and as such lives for ever , as truth can never die . There is perceived a fine fusion of aesthetics and ethics in the poet's triumphant clarion call in the concluding lines of his poem :
" Beauty is truth , truth beauty - that is all
Ye know on earth , and all ye need to know . "
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