JOHN KEATS

(1795 - 1821)

• Keats: strong and enduring influence on the subsequent generations of English poets
• His poetry: the image of an extreme sensitivity constantly challenged by tragedies
• All his poetry is traversed by the consciousness that in this life, which he called “the vale of soul-making,” pain and trouble
are necessary to “school an intelligence and make it a soul”
• In compensation: a focus on sensation and emotion that makes his work unique – Keats: the poetry of sensation (“O
for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts”)
• Born in a lower middle class family in London – he lacked the opportunities for education that his fellow Romantics
had – e.g. he had not access to the Greek classics except in translation
• voracious reader – became acquainted with the work of Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden, Dante,
Boccaccio, Ariosto and Tasso
• His Letters: impressions of these readings – they reveal a subtle critical mind
• Tragic death by consumption, the “family disease,” at less than 26
• No English poet achieved so much within such a short interval – his masterpieces: all written in the interval of one year,
at the age of 23-4

• 1818: Endymion – his first major poetic attempt – the mythological tale of the love between the beautiful shepherd
Endymion and Cynthia, the Moon Goddess – theme of the pursuit of love
• Not very well received by the critics – Keats admitted that it was a test of his powers of imagination, the work of a stage
in life in which “the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted.”
• Flaws: insecure style and weakness in narrative
• Merits: richness of descriptive detail, the luxuriance of colour and music, the enchanted atmosphere and the sudden
moments of vision – a revelation of Keats’s remarkable poetic sensitivity and his worship of Beauty
• Opening lines:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.

KEATS’S MAIN POETIC WORKS:

A. Poems of medieval inspiration
 The Eve of St. Agnes
 Lamia
 La Belle Dame Sans Merci
 Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil
B. The Odes
 Ode to a Nightingale
 Ode on a Grecian Urn
 Ode to Psyche
 Ode on Melancholy
 Ode on Indolence
C. The unfinished philosophical poems Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion

1820: the volume which demonstrates Keats’s incredible maturation as a poet, containing his best poetry: Lamia, Isabella,
The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (it included the Odes on Melancholy, on a Grecian Urn, and to a
Nightingale)
 IRONIC CONSCIOUSNESS in Keats’s Odes.
The concept of NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

• All Keats’s odes: written within a few months, in 1819

• They explore, each in its own terms, the relationship between pleasure and pain, art and life, imagination and
reality
• The theme of the relation between art and life, between vision and reality, is present in all Keats' major work – all
Keats’ significant poetry is about poetry or art
• His deepest concern, both in his poetic work and in his Letters, was to define the nature of poetry and the condition of
the poet
• His best poems never offer a resolution to his uncertainties and doubts – this unresolved thematic tension confers his
poetry a peculiarly modern character
• Many critics agree on the fact that Keats is "our contemporary" (e.g. Douglas Bush) because his Romantic faith in the
Imagination is always counterbalanced by scepticism – he was able "to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same
time" (Anne K. Mellor)

Ode to a Nightingale

• Hearing the song of the nightingale, the poet experiences an ecstatic mixture of pain and pleasure
• The consciousness that the paradisiac realm of art cannot entirely remove the acute sense of the finitude and
transience of our actual life, where beauty and love are subject to change and decay.
• The bird’s song stands for immortal beauty, offering an escape from “the weariness, the fever and the fret” of this world
• However, the end of the poem admits almost ironically that Fancy, this “deceiving elf,” “cannot cheat so well / As she is famed
to do”
• The poet returns sadly to the consciousness of having a mortal human self, of never being able to fully identify himself
with the nightingale
[Stanza 6] Darkling I listen; and, for many a time,
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

• An example of ekphrastic poetry (a poem describing a work of art)

• The poet meditates on the arresting of life by art, which is considered as both profit and loss.
• The urn: classical elegance and balance – a self-contained world, in which “all breathing human passions” are “far above”,
distilled and transmuted into an eternal “fair attitude”
• It also invites association with death.
• As an art object, the urn represents a spiritual consolation
• Contrast between the impassioned tone of the poet and the urn’s motionlessness and coldness
• Enigmatic final lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” – they do not seem
to solve the poet’s conflicting thoughts
As in Ode to a Nightingale, Art represents the escape from change and decay into eternity, but at the cost of eternal
unfulfilment.
 [Stanza 2] Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; [ye = you]
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave [canst = can, 2nd person sg.]
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, [thou hast = you have, sg.]
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

• Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn: perfect illustration of Keats' IRONIC CONSCIOUSNESS
• Tension between his confident assertion of the principle of "beauty in all things" and his doubts concerning the power
of the Imagination to offer compensation in a world "full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and Oppression", in a world
"Where but to think is to be full of sorrow" (Ode to a Nightingale)
• Both the nightingale's song and the urn: symbols of the eternity of art
• They, succeed in “teasing” the poet "out of thought" momentarily, i.e. in suspending the painful consciousness of his
mortal finitude
• For the poet, the realm of art is deathless ("all breathing human passions far above"), but this belief only increases the poet's
awareness of the contradictions of human experience
• The painful sense of life as flux, as a process in which pleasure and pain alternate or cannot be "unperplexed" [i.e.
disentangled, kept separated] from each other

• These two odes illustrate Keats‘s struggle to achieve "a vision that would comprehend all experience, joy and suffering,
the natural and the ideal, the transient and the eternal" (Douglas Bush)
• His achievement consists precisely in avoiding making a final claim – he holds together romantic enthusiasm and
philosophical irony.
• Keats’s great odes display that quality which he found necessary "to form a man of achievement, especially in literature":
NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
• In one of his letters (1817), Keats explains Negative Capability as that state in which "a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries and doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason"
• Actually, all Keats’s important poems are examples of the poet’s “Negative Capability”
• Among his poems of mediaeval inspiration, Lamia and La Belle Dame sans Merci, for instance, may also be read as
allegories of the relationship between reality and imagination, as unresolved debates on the power of poetry to
compete with ordinary vision

Keats’s poems of mediaeval inspiration

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES – based on a folk superstition: if on Saint Agnes’ eve (the 20th of January) young girls should
observe certain ceremonies on going to bed, they would “soft adorings from their loves receive / Upon the honey’d middle of the
night.”
• The action: modelled on one of the archetypal incidents of folklore – a young lover stealing away his bride from a
hostile environment
• The accompanying idea that love is always threatened by death and destruction.
• It prompts meditation on the relationship between ideal, dream happiness and the possibility of happiness in
the real world.

Madeline decides to respect this ritual – while she dreams of her lover, he comes out of hiding and tries to awaken her by
playing the lute. As she opens her eyes, she experiences a momentary disappointment at the juxtaposition of his pale
 figure and her dream of him.
The pain of awakening is however dispelled, and love reaches its fulfilment, but the two lovers, like another Romeo and
Juliet, have to face the chill hostility of their relatives. They elope to a new home, through a wintry wind and an icy
sleet – an illustration of the medieval heroic concept of passion successfully braving danger.

LAMIA – the same subject of reality and illusion in love

• The protagonist, Lycius, is bewitched by a supernatural creature, which has been transformed by Hermes from a
fascinating serpent into a beautiful woman.
• The two lovers retire to her secret palace, where Lycius organises, against Lamia’s wish, a sumptuous wedding feast.
• The uninvited guest Apollonius, the hero’s sage mentor, discloses Lamia’s secret and breaks the spell, and Lycius dies
of grief.
• The poem suggests the tension between philosophy and imagination – the sage’s cold piercing gaze destroys the
illusion of perfect beauty and love.

Critical disagreement in regard to the poem’s theme and intention – it has been interpreted as:
 a condemnation of "cold philosophy", which "will clip an Angel's wings, /Conquer all mysteries by rule and line",
and "unweave a rainbow“
 a condemnation of passion, of all-absorbing feeling and of the irresponsible plunging into sensation
 a condemnation of the split between reason and feeling.
All these divergent opinions confirm Keats’s idea of “Negative Capability” – what looks like confusion in the
poem's message should be read in fact as the poet's effort to encompass in his story a range of contradictory
attitudes without reconciling them

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI – published posthumously – the folk theme of the bewitching woman whose love
brings destruction
• Inspired by a mediaeval verse romance and, later, ballad: Thomas the Rhymer
• The title: borrowed from a medieval French courtly romance by Alain Chartier (15th century)
• A knight is enthralled by a strange lady and taken to her “elfin grot,” where he has a dream vision of a long procession
of pale kings, princes and warriors brought to ruin by the “merciless lady.”
• When he wakes up, the knight finds himself alone on “the cold hill’s side”, and ever since he has been wandering alone
and dejected in a desolate autumnal landscape.
• The poem creates with a remarkable economy of means the sense of loss, mystery and terror
• It may be read as another inquiry into the “truth” of ideal visions, or as a questioning of the powers of poetry to
offer a rewarding alternative to the reality of pain.
• There are ambiguities in Keats’s poem which prevent us from deciding whether the Knight's nightmare is caused by
the lady's rejection of him or by his own emotional inability to greet the presence of Spirit in his life.

1. “O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 4. “I met a lady in the meads,

Alone and palely loitering? Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
The sedge has withered from the lake, Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And no birds sing. And her eyes were wild.

2. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 5. I made a garland for her head,
So haggard and so woe-begone? And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
The squirrel’s granary is full, She looked at me as she did love,
And the harvest’s done. And made sweet moan

3. I see a lily on thy brow, 6. I set her on my pacing steed,

With anguish moist and fever-dew, And nothing else saw all day long,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose For sidelong would she bend, and sing
Fast withereth too.” A faery’s song.
 7. She found me roots of relish sweet, 10. I saw pale kings and princes too,
And honey wild, and manna-dew, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
And sure in language strange she said— They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
‘I love thee true’. Hath thee in thrall!

8. She took me to her Elfin grot, 11. I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
And there she wept and sighed full sore, With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes And I awoke and found me here,
With kisses four. On the cold hill’s side.

9. And there she lullèd me asleep, 12. And this is why I sojourn here,
And there I dreamed—Ah! Woe betide!— Alone and palely loitering,
The latest dream I ever dreamt Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
On the cold hill side. And no birds sing.”

Excerpts from Keats’s Letters

Keats’ Letters to his friends and brothers reveal a very personal philosophy of poetry – a glimpse into his thoughts about the
nature of poetry and the creative process – highly influential for later poets
Some of the concepts and ideas in these letters have had a long-standing critical importance
 The principle of intensity in art
"The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty
and truth" (1817)
 The truth of Imagination and the beauty of passions – the principle of sincerity in art
“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination. What the Imagination seized as
Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love: they are all in their sublime,
creative of essential Beauty.”
 Men of genius vs. men of power
“Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect – but they have not any individuality, any
determined Character - I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self Men of Power.” (1817)

 The Poetic Character

[The true Poet] "has no self – it is everything and nothing. It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in
gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving a Iago as an
Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark
side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one (...). A Poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence;
because it has no identity – he is continually informing and filling some other body – the sun, the moon, the sea; and men
and women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is
certainly the most unpoetical of God's creatures". (1818)