John Keats

John Keats
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John Keats


Born 31 October 1795(1795-10-31)
London, England
Died 23 February 1821 (aged 25)
Rome, Papal States
Occupation Poet
Literary movement Romantic
John Keats (pronounced /ˈkiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet who became one of the key poets of the English Romantic movement during the early nineteenth century. During his very short life, his work received constant critical attacks from periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson and Wilfred Owen has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats' poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats's letters, which expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability",[1] are among the most celebrated by any writer.

Born 31 October 1795(1795-10-31)
London, England
Died 23 February 1821 (aged 25)
Rome, Papal States
Occupation Poet
Literary movement Romanti




[edit] Life
John Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, England, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler. The pub is now called "Keats at the Globe", only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptized at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died of a fractured skull after falling from his horse. A year later, in 1805, Keats' grandfather died. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled a love of literature in him.


Keats' grave in RomeIn 1810 his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother who appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", one of whom was Richard Abbey. The relationship between Keats and Abbey was never a happy one; Abbey thought Keat's dream of becoming a poet was silly, and later on in life Keats and his sister, Fanny, came to look upon him as a monster. These two appointed guardians removed Keats from his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice at Thomas Hammond's apothecary shop in Edmonton[2] (now part of the London Borough of Enfield). This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital (now part of King's College London, University of London). During that year, he devoted more and more of his time to the study of literature. Keats traveled to the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1819, where he spent a week. Later that year he stayed in Winchester. It was here that Keats wrote "Isabella", "St. Agnes' Eve" and "Lamia". Parts of "Hyperion" and the five-act poetic tragedy "Otho the Great" were also written in Winchester.

Following the death of his grandmother, he soon found his brother, Tom Keats, entrusted to his care. Tom was suffering, as his mother had, from tuberculosis. Finishing his epic poem Endymion, Keats left to walk in Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. However, he too began to show signs of tuberculosis infection on that trip, and returned prematurely. When he did, he found that Tom's condition had deteriorated, and that Endymion had, as had Poems before it, been the target of much abuse from the critics. On 1 December 1818, Tom Keats died of his disease, and John Keats moved again, to live in Brown's house in Hampstead, next to Hampstead Heath. There he lived next door to Fanny Brawne, who had been staying there with her mother. He then quickly fell in love with Fanny. However, it was overall an unhappy affair for the poet; Keats's ardour for her seemed to bring him more vexation than comfort. The later (posthumous) publication of their correspondence was to scandalise Victorian society. In the diary of Fanny Brawne was found only one sentence regarding the separation: "Mr. Keats has left Hampstead." Fanny's letters to Keats were, as the poet had requested, destroyed upon his death. However, in 1937, a collection of 31 letters, written by Fanny Brawne to Keats's sister, Frances, was published by Oxford University Press. While these letters revealed the depth of Brawne's feelings toward Keats and in many ways attempted to redeem her rather promiscuous reputation, it is arguable whether or not they succeeded.


Life and Death masks in RomeThis relationship was cut short when, by 1820, Keats began showing serious signs of tuberculosis, the disease that had plagued his family. On the suggestion of his doctors, he left the cold airs of London behind and moved to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. Keats moved into a house, which is now a museum that is dedicated to his life and work, The Keats-Shelley House, on the Spanish Steps, in Rome, where, despite attentive care from Severn and Dr. John Clark, the poet's health rapidly deteriorated.


Portrait, Keats' grave in RomeHe died on 23 February 1821 and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. His last request was to be buried under a tombstone reading, "Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water." His name was not to appear on the stone. Despite these requests, however, Severn and Brown also added the epitaph: "This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone" along with the image of a lyre with broken strings.

Shelley blamed Keats' death on an article published shortly before in the Quarterly Review, with a scathing attack on Keats' Endymion. The offending article was long believed to have been written by William Gifford, though later shown to be the work of John Wilson Croker. Keats's death inspired Shelley to write the poem Adonais. Byron later composed a short poem on this theme using the phrase "snuffed out by an article." However Byron, far less admiring of Keats's poetry than Shelley and generally more cynical in nature, was here probably just as much poking fun at Shelley's interpretation as he was having a dig at his old fencing partners the critics. (see below, Byron's other less than serious poem on the same subject).

The largest collection of Keats's letters, manuscripts, and other papers is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other collections of such material can be found at the British Library; Keats House, Hampstead; The Keats-Shelley House, Rome; and the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.


The Eve of St. Agnes
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This article is about the poem by John Keats. For information on the saint, see Saint Agnes.

Madeleine undressing, painting by John Everett Millais"The Eve of St. Agnes" is a long poem (42 stanzas) by John Keats, written in 1819 and published in 1820. It is widely considered to be amongst his finest poems and was influential in 19th century literature.

The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes' Eve). St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in fourth century Rome. The eve falls on January 20; the feast day on the 21. The divinations referred to by Keats in this poem are referred to by John Aubrey in his Miscellanies (1696) as being associated with St. Agnes' night.


[edit] Background

The flight of Madeline and Porphyro, painting by William Holman HuntKeats based his poem on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; that is she would go to bed without any supper, undress herself so that she was completely naked and lie on her bed with her hands under the pillow and looking up to the heavens and not to look behind. Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream, kiss her, and feast with her.

In the original version of this poem, Keats emphasized the young lovers' sexuality, but his publishers, who feared public reaction, forced him to tone down the eroticism.


[edit] Plot
On a bitterly chill night, an ancient beadsman performs his penances while in the castle of Madeline's warlike family, a bibulous revel has begun. Madeline pines for the love of Porphyro, sworn enemy to her kin. The old dames have told her she may receive sweet dreams of love from him if on this night, St. Agnes' Eve, she retires to bed under the proper ritual of silence and supine receptiveness.

As we might expect, Porphyro makes his way to the castle and braves entry, seeking out Angela, an elderly woman friendly to his family, and importuning her to lead him to Madeline's room at night where he may but gaze upon her sleeping form. Angela is persuaded only with difficulty, saying she fears damnation if Porphyro does not afterward marry the girl.

Concealed in an ornate carven closet in Madeline's room, Porphyro watches as Madeline makes ready for bed, and then, beholding her full beauty in the moonlight, creeps forth to prepare for her a feast of rare delicacies. Madeline wakes and sees before her the same image she has seen in her dream, and thinking Porphyro part of it, receives him into her bed. Awakening in full and realizing her mistake, she tells Porphyro she cannot hate him for his deception since her heart is so much in his, but that if he goes now he leaves behind "A dove forlorn and lost / With sick unpruned wing".

Porphyro declares his love for Madeline and promises her a home with him over the southern moors. They escape the castle past insensate revelers, and flee into the night. The beadsman, "His thousand Aves told / For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold".


Ode on a Grecian Urn
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A Tracing of an Engraving of the Sosibios Vase by John Keats"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem by John Keats written in May 1819 and published in January 1820. It was one of Keats's "Five Great Odes of 1819" which included "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "To Autumn". Its inspiration is partly considered to be a visit by Keats to the exhibition of the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum, and partly to the aesthetic theories of the poet's friend, the painter Benjamin Haydon, and Haydon's collection of Grecian prints.

The lyric poem is divided into five stanzas, each with ten lines, and reflects upon the images of the Ancient Greeks depicted on a Grecian urn to whom the narrator addresses his discourse. The poem transitions from a scene depicting a lover eternally pursuing a beloved without fulfillment to a scene that describes village people about to perform a sacrifice. The final lines of the poem declare that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know", a line which has provoked critical consideration.



Poem
In the first and last stanza of Ode on a Grecian Urn the poet addresses the urn itself from an outward perspective, allowing the narrator to speak directly to the object and to the reader at once. In the middle three stanzas, the poem focuses on the individuals painted on the urn and the relationship between the individual and art. [12]. The narrator silences the urn by describing it as the "bride of quietness", which allows him to speak for it using his own impressions [13] . The narrator addresses the urn by saying:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time (lines 1-2)
because it is born from stone and made by the hand of an artist who does not communicate through words. As stone, it is able to slow time and become an eternal piece of artwork. As eternal, the urn is capable of producing a story that is outside of time, and that "sylvan historian" expresses[14]

A flow'ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? (lines 4-10)
The questions are too ambiguous to create a definite scene, but elements of it are revealed. There is a pursuit and a strong sexual element.[15]

The melody accompanying the pursuit is intensified in the second stanza:[16]

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: (lines 11-14)
There is a hint of a paradox in which indulging causes someone to only want more and a soundless music is desired by the soul. There is also a stasis that prohibits the characters on the urn from ever being fulfilled:[16]

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,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (lines 17-20)
In the third stanza, the narrator begins by speaking to a tree, which will ever hold its leaves and will not “bid the Spring adieu.” The paradox of life versus lifelessness extends beyond the lover and the fair lady and takes a more temporal shape as three of the ten lines begin with the word “forever.” J. W. Myns Carr describes this phenomenon in “The Artistic Spirit of Modern Poetry”

Men and women perfect in the flesh, with their feet on perfect flowers, move across his fancy as in twilight. The poet has reached to their perfection, and returns laden with rich memories of the senses, but, being of his time, he could not cast off the somber uncertain cloud that hid the sun.[17]

The unheard song never ages and the pipes are able to play forever, which leads to the lovers, nature, and all involved to be[16]

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.(lines 28-30)
A new paradox arises in these lines because, according to Harold Bloom, "A mouth that has no moisture and no breath may be able to summon breathless mouths, but it can as easily be called death-in-life as life-in-death".[18]

In order to overcome this merged life and death paradox, the poem shifts to a new scene with a new perspective:[18]. The fourth stanza opens with the sacrifice of a virgin cow, an image that appeared in the Elgin Marbles, and Douglas Bush suggests that Keats could be drawing this image from the "lowing heifer" in the marbles, from Claud's Sacrifice to Apollo, or Raphael's cartoon "The Sacrifice at Lystra", which was also on display at the British Gallery in the spring of 1819 [19].

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.(lines 31-40)
All that exists in the scene is a procession of individuals, and the narrator conjectures on the rest. The altar and town exist as part of a world outside of art, and the poem challenges the limitations of art through describing their possible existence. The questions are unanswered because there is no one who can ever know the true answers, because the locations are not real.[20]

With the final stanza, according to Bloom, "Keats begins... by reminding himself that it is only the artifice of eternity before him" when he says:[21].

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral! (lines 41-45)
There is a limit within the audience to comprehend the eternal scene, but the silent urn is still able to speak. The story it tells is both cold and passionate, and it is able to help mankind:[21]

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (lines 45-50)

[edit] Themes

First Known Copy of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" transcribed by George Keats in 1820Although the poem does not include the subjective involvement of the poet, the urn within the poem requires a human observer, as Walter Jackson Bate puts it: "the very origin of the urn presupposed the hope that it would be rescued into full existence by some later 'greeting of the Spirit'."[22] The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of "Negative Capability", as the reader does not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going. Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet, which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless. The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.

Throughout the poem, other paradoxes emerge as the narrator compares his world with that of the Ancient Grecians on the urn. In the opening line, he refers to the urn as a “bride of quietness”, which causes Cleanth Brooks to argue that Keats contrasts the urn with the structure of the ode, which was originally intended to be sung.[23]. Likewise, he points to another paradox that arises when the narrator finds immortality on the side of an urn meant to carry the ashes of the dead.

In her study of Ode on a Grecian Urn, Lila Melani lists four paradoxes that lead to the ending lines on truth and beauty:

the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and the dynamic life portrayed on the urn
the human and changeable versus the immortal and permanent,
participation versus observation
life versus art [24]
Because the ending couplet is in direct contrast to many of Keats' poems, for example "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" or "Lamia", in which a man is deceived by a woman's beauty, literary critics have begun interpreting it in a new way. Critics such as Sonia Sikka conclude that the narrator, representative of Keats, is criticizing the Urn as he says that all it will ever need to know is that beauty is truth and truth beauty.[25] This reading of the text suggests levels of both jealousy and disdain as the narrator admires the simplicity of the world depicted by the urn but finds it incapable of providing deeper meaning.

Poem
In the first and last stanza of Ode on a Grecian Urn the poet addresses the urn itself from an outward perspective, allowing the narrator to speak directly to the object and to the reader at once. In the middle three stanzas, the poem focuses on the individuals painted on the urn and the relationship between the individual and art. [12]. The narrator silences the urn by describing it as the "bride of quietness", which allows him to speak for it using his own impressions [13] . The narrator addresses the urn by saying:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time (lines 1-2)
because it is born from stone and made by the hand of an artist who does not communicate through words. As stone, it is able to slow time and become an eternal piece of artwork. As eternal, the urn is capable of producing a story that is outside of time, and that "sylvan historian" expresses[14]

A flow'ry tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? (lines 4-10)
The questions are too ambiguous to create a definite scene, but elements of it are revealed. There is a pursuit and a strong sexual element.[15]

The melody accompanying the pursuit is intensified in the second stanza:[16]

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: (lines 11-14)
There is a hint of a paradox in which indulging causes someone to only want more and a soundless music is desired by the soul. There is also a stasis that prohibits the characters on the urn from ever being fulfilled:[16]

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,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (lines 17-20)
In the third stanza, the narrator begins by speaking to a tree, which will ever hold its leaves and will not “bid the Spring adieu.” The paradox of life versus lifelessness extends beyond the lover and the fair lady and takes a more temporal shape as three of the ten lines begin with the word “forever.” J. W. Myns Carr describes this phenomenon in “The Artistic Spirit of Modern Poetry”

Men and women perfect in the flesh, with their feet on perfect flowers, move across his fancy as in twilight. The poet has reached to their perfection, and returns laden with rich memories of the senses, but, being of his time, he could not cast off the somber uncertain cloud that hid the sun.[17]

The unheard song never ages and the pipes are able to play forever, which leads to the lovers, nature, and all involved to be[16]

For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.(lines 28-30)
A new paradox arises in these lines because, according to Harold Bloom, "A mouth that has no moisture and no breath may be able to summon breathless mouths, but it can as easily be called death-in-life as life-in-death".[18]

In order to overcome this merged life and death paradox, the poem shifts to a new scene with a new perspective:[18]. The fourth stanza opens with the sacrifice of a virgin cow, an image that appeared in the Elgin Marbles, and Douglas Bush suggests that Keats could be drawing this image from the "lowing heifer" in the marbles, from Claud's Sacrifice to Apollo, or Raphael's cartoon "The Sacrifice at Lystra", which was also on display at the British Gallery in the spring of 1819 [19].

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.(lines 31-40)
All that exists in the scene is a procession of individuals, and the narrator conjectures on the rest. The altar and town exist as part of a world outside of art, and the poem challenges the limitations of art through describing their possible existence. The questions are unanswered because there is no one who can ever know the true answers, because the locations are not real.[20]

With the final stanza, according to Bloom, "Keats begins... by reminding himself that it is only the artifice of eternity before him" when he says:[21].

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral! (lines 41-45)
There is a limit within the audience to comprehend the eternal scene, but the silent urn is still able to speak. The story it tells is both cold and passionate, and it is able to help mankind:[21]

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (lines 45-50)

[edit] Themes

First Known Copy of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" transcribed by George Keats in 1820Although the poem does not include the subjective involvement of the poet, the urn within the poem requires a human observer, as Walter Jackson Bate puts it: "the very origin of the urn presupposed the hope that it would be rescued into full existence by some later 'greeting of the Spirit'."[22] The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of "Negative Capability", as the reader does not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing, or where they are going. Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as he does in the final couplet, which does not make immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to have poetic significance nonetheless. The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.

Throughout the poem, other paradoxes emerge as the narrator compares his world with that of the Ancient Grecians on the urn. In the opening line, he refers to the urn as a “bride of quietness”, which causes Cleanth Brooks to argue that Keats contrasts the urn with the structure of the ode, which was originally intended to be sung.[23]. Likewise, he points to another paradox that arises when the narrator finds immortality on the side of an urn meant to carry the ashes of the dead.

In her study of Ode on a Grecian Urn, Lila Melani lists four paradoxes that lead to the ending lines on truth and beauty:

the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and the dynamic life portrayed on the urn
the human and changeable versus the immortal and permanent,
participation versus observation
life versus art [24]
Because the ending couplet is in direct contrast to many of Keats' poems, for example "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" or "Lamia", in which a man is deceived by a woman's beauty, literary critics have begun interpreting it in a new way. Critics such as Sonia Sikka conclude that the narrator, representative of Keats, is criticizing the Urn as he says that all it will ever need to know is that beauty is truth and truth beauty.[25] This reading of the text suggests levels of both jealousy and disdain as the narrator admires the simplicity of the world depicted by the urn but finds it incapable of providing deeper meaning.