Titel: Keats's Life Untertitel: An Essay kat: Hintergrund subkat: Literatur subsubkat: englisch aufmacher:   text: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness... These are the words of John Keats (1795-1821). They are undoubtedly among the most cited words in the world. Anyone who listens to them is obliged to marvel at their beauty and truth. Indeed, the first time I heard them was in a classroom and I must admit that I did not pay much attention to hem. But as my habit prescribed I scribbled them on a piece of paper right next to the names Wordsworth and Shelley. A few days later when I was studying at home I went through my notes and when I actually read them it was (a line by Col. Kurtz in Coppolas film Apocalypse Now explains the exact feeling) 'as if I had been shot with a diamond bullet, right between the eyes'. I am exaggerating a bit but the clarity of the words immediately touched me. The next day at school I went to the library and looked up a few of Keats's poems. But much to my disappointment, Keats's English was to complicated for me (and in many cases still is). But I knew that I would try again sometime. And so I did. Since I am writing a little bit of poetry myself (at an extremely low level) I have found Keats's humble beginnings interesting. The story about how Keats made his way into being a poet is astonishing. It gives me some faint hope of one day being able to publish something myself. So first of all, I am doing a examination of how Keats grew up and how he became a poet. Then a rather short briefing on his further life. After that I thought it might be a good idea to analyze some of his poetry. For this purpose I have chosen 'Ode to Psyche' and 'To Autumn', which is also an ode. Intellectual Background At the time when John Keats was born it was said that 'poets are born, not made`. Poets at that time were either gentlemen from the upper classes where incomes were unearned, or well educated with broad intellectual backgrounds that gave them the ability to make a living from writing. Keats's background was, at the time, definitely of the 'lower' classes. He didn't have any of the cultural and social advantages that many of his contemporary poets took for granted. Also, in Keats's early life there was nothing to indicate a poetic talent. He had to be a self made poet or none at all. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to understand what an incredible amount of energy he needed to become a poet. The fact that he grew to become a poet whose writing has lived for one and a half centuries, is almost unbelievable. The odds against him were incredible. This is why Keats's poetry becomes much more meaningful with a little knowledge of the facts of his life. Thomas Keats, John's father was an employee of a livery stable and an inn near Moorgate in London. When he married his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings in 1794, his circumstances improved. John was born the next year. The father's job seems to have been secure and well paid. Soon other children followed: George in 1797, Thomas Jnr. in 1799, Edward (who died in infancy), and the only daughter, Frances, in 1803. Not much is known about those early years and about their family life. But it is clear that it was a loving family since John had a close relationship with his brothers and sister throughout his life. Young John also doted on his attractive and affectionate mother. His love for her never died. The Keats family's circumstances improved again in 1802. John's grandfather and grandmother retired and put their son-in-law in charge of the stables and inn. This meant that the father could choose a good school for his boys. He chose a school in Enfield, near the grandparents. For John's purposes this school was an excellent choice. The headmaster of the school, John Clarke, was an enlightened and liberal minded teacher. His curriculum held many other subjects than Latin and Greek that took such a big place in more typical schools. Clarke's students were able to study French, history, geography and much more. Clarke also rejected any form of caning or whipping in his disciplinary methods. John Keats began at Clarke's school when he was seven, and continued his ordinary, happy childhood there. He was a likable boy, good looking and always had a lot of friends. Still he gained some notoriety at school for his aggressive temper. Young Keats was a fighter. In spite of his fierceness, his boyhood remained sunny. But when he was nearly ten the first of many tragedies that would change his personality for ever took place on a London street. His father was thrown off his horse and died of his injuries. As if this wasn't enough; his mother's mourning didn't last for long. Because of her inheritance of John's father, she became the "victim" of a fortune hunter. Within two months of John's father's death she had remarried a bank clerk named Rawlings. John must have seen this as something of a betrayal. Almost immediately afterwards came a third catastrophe. Mr. Jennings, John's maternal grandfather, died early in 1805. He left his family well provided for, but inclarities in his will left openings that would make John's finances suffer later in life. Shortly after his death, Rawlings and his new wife ran into money difficulties. In the legal and family upsets that followed, John and the other children were taken to live with their grandmother in Enfield. John's liveliness was now being interrupted by depressed moods that would plague him all his life. Yet the days in Enfield were not totally black. The school with its gentle atmosphere, was a safe haven for John whose world had been shattered. His grandmother gave the children a pleasant home. He might have returned to normality soon if it wouldn't have been for his mother's strange actions. She shortly deserted Rawlings - it isn't known why - and disappeared for a while. Rumours said that she was living with another man in East London, and that she had started to drink heavily. But John drew no conclusions. To him she had simply vanished. Then in 1809 she reappeared, ill and wretched, and came to live with the children and their grandmother. John's devotion to his mother, however, didn't budge. But his whole attitude to the world suddenly changed. Probably he wanted to be a worthy son of his beloved mother. He probably also realised his coming responsibilities to her and the other children, for he was the oldest male member of the family. That year he hurled himself into his studies with the energy that was to become one of his most remarkable traits. John Keats was temperamentally incapable of doing things by halves. He studied day and night and carried off with that year's school prize for best literary work. By then he had read nearly every book in the school library and he begged his master for more. Of course he won his mother's approval. But he wouldn't enjoy it for long. Her illness had become a 'decline' which was another term for the disease called 'consumption', or tuberculosis. The disease was, as it always was in those days, fatal. And John who was fourteen had become aware of the fact that she would die. As his mother's illness worsened, John's devotion deepened. He took care of his mother. He made her meals, kept her company, sat up with her, read to her and allowed no one else to tend to her. But he had to get back to school. While he was there the news of his mother's death came. John took his family's burdens very seriously. He knew that he had to train himself to make a living. In the end he chose the profession of medicine. Arguably his choice was influenced by his recent misery, his helplessness in the face of his mother's fatal illness. Keats entered a placid period as an apprentice to a apothecary-surgeon named Hammond. This meant he was a slightly glorified servant. However he had some free time which he used to develop his love of books. In his search of books he was aided by an older friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the son of Keats's former headmaster. With Clarke's encouragement, Keats devoured history, geography, a little science, a great deal of popular fiction, classics and English literature. And of course he also read a good deal of poetry. Another turning point in Keats's life came when Clarke one day gave him the Faire Queene by Edmund Spenser. This is a long unfinished, sixteenth century masterwork. Young Keats was delighted. And more: it sparked his first poem: 'Imitation of Spenser'. Keats had fallen in love with poetry. That love contained the same fervent intensity as all the other loves of his life. But at the same time he was a medical student, working hard towards earning a proper living. Keats remained reasonably devoted to medicine at least through 1815. Given the horrifying nature of much medical practice then, a man needed much dedication. But Keats continued and in 1816 he passed his examination and became a licensed apothecary. But his mind turned away from his earlier ambition of becoming a surgeon. He had other ideas. The previous year he had worked up the courage, or confidence, to reveal to Clarke that he had started writing poetry. He had shown Clarke an early sonnet and he had been impressed. Encouraged, Keats had gone on showing him and others his work. He might not have been surrounded by experts of poetry. But he turned to his books. So he had full awareness of the exciting upheavals poetry was undergoing: Romanticism was underway. It was a time of upheaval in every way, a time of new political thinking, of social and humanitarian reform, a revolutionary time that had earlier spawned the French Revolution which in turned had strengthened the will to change everywhere in the early nineteenth century. These times brought with them the Romantic Movement. The two lead figures of this genre poetrywise were Wordsworth and Coleridge. Romanticism was a rebellion. It was a reaction against the stiff views of poetry in the previous century, where technique was prized higher than inspiration and common sense higher than passion. The first wave of Romantic poetry swept over England in 1798, when Wordsworth and Coleridge had published their Lyrical Ballads. Keats and Shelley were to dominate the second wave. But when Keats was beginning to write, Wordsworth and Coleridge were still very much in disfavour, as the rebellious vanguard always is until the establishment catches up. At that time the poetical accent was a kind of popular poetry that had grown up in the late eighteenth century. This popular poetry was overdecorated and given to telling uninspired entertaining little tales. This poetic accent wasn't Romantic, it was 'romanticized'. These two different types of poetry share quite a few superficial qualities mainly because the true Romantic poets could not escape being affected by the tendencies of their time. But the cores are completely different. In romanticized poetry the English countryside was a pastoral idyll. It was a place of great oaks looming above soft turf, warm sunlight or soft moonlight, brooks and great flower banks. Handsome shepherds and scantily dressed nymphs enjoying themselves. While in reality it was a place of thigh deep mud, filthy animals, oppressed illiterate workers living no better than their animals and doing gruesome work in all weathers. A good deal of the fashionable romanticized poetry found its way into Keats's poetry too, especially in the early poems. And much of it came there because of his exposure to the work of a minor poet named Leigh Hunt. Keats picked up more of the Huntian style than his immature poetry could carry. For example; in his 'Imitation of Spenser' he over uses adjectives formed by adding '-y' to nouns and verbs; 'lawny crest', 'mossy beds', 'jetty eyes', 'fleecy white', and many more. Indeed Hunt may have been a less memorable poet, but he was a remarkable journalist and propagandist. He edited a magazine called The Examiner ( to which Keats subscribed all his life). It was a fighting, liberal journal, part literary and part political. Keats was never much committed to politically inspired poetry. But his humanism, religious scepticism, and radical principles came directly from The Examiner. Big Steps The collected poems of Wordsworth had come out in 1815, and Keats had been delighted. At the time Wordsworth was still being heavily criticised by most critics (including Hunt), and ignored by the public. In Wordsworth Keats found exactly what he needed. Wordworth's influence eliminated the Huntian influence. The difference in Keats tone is clearly seen in the Worthworthian sonnet 'To Solitude'. O SOLITUDE! If I must with thee dwell, let it not be among the jumbled heap of murky buildings; climb with me the steep, Nature's Observatory... Keats sent Hunt the 'O solitude' sonnet, and Hunt (who then knew nothing of Keats) accepted it for publication in The Examiner. Wordworth had helped turn Keats away from the 'popular romance' fashion, and helped turn him into a real Romantic poet. But not overnight of course. The summer of 1816 he took himself and his brother Tom to Margate for a holiday, and got down to his poetry full time for a while. He failed with some 'romanticized' long poems and started writing sonnets instead. When poets ran short of inspiration they could always work something up in fourteen rhymed lines. But only a few of his sonnets were any good. And it's presumably out of these sonnets and his dilemma at the time - regarding where he was going to be as a poet - that the idea of verse letters, or 'epistles' came. Epistles allowed Keats to make points as well as paint word pictures. One went to Cowden Clarke, a tribute to his friend: Ah! had I never seen, Or known your kindness, what might I have been? Another went to his brother George. It manages to communicate the essence of Keats's deepest doubts about his poetry. Full many a dreary hour have I past, My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought No spherey strains by me could e'er be caught From the blue dome... ...... That I should never hear Apollo's song.... This epistle depicts a Keats still caught up in 'romanticization'. It contains descriptions of poems that Keats planned. Mostly tales of idealised chivalry. After that he goes on to talk more generally about his hopes for himself as a poet. He also hopes for 'posterity's reward' but at the same time fears what that hope might do to him: Ah, my dear friend and brother, Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother, For tasting joys like these, sure I should be Happier, and dearer to society. Keats now faced the decision to give himself to poetry or to continue with his medicine studies. Would he throw everything away for the precarious hope of doing something worthwhile in poetry? But when Keats had returned to London that year, the decision was to be virtually forced upon him. Cowden Clarke, highly impressed by the epistle that Keats had addressed to him, he gathered up a few copies that he owned of Keats's poetry, and had taken them with him on a visit to an acquaintance of his - who was Leigh Hunt. Hunt was struck with the unknown youth's potential, and especially liked the sonnet 'How many bards'. Hunt immediately asked Clarke to bring Keats round to meet him. And before the visit to Hunt, good fortune gave him a vital new addition to his collection of early poems. He had gone to visit Clarke where the two of them sat up all night and read a sixteen-century translation of Homer by George Chapman. This evoked his most individual and unified poem so far: 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'. It was a sonnet. In a way he had surpassed himself and it would be quite some time before he could write anything so good again. But he had proved that he could do it. In the fourteen lines you see below. He had all the proof he needed that he was a poet. 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer' Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have i been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then I felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims to his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star's at the Pacific - and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise- Silent upon a peak in Darien Creative Years Keats made friends in Leigh Hunt's circle with the young poet John Hamilton Reynolds, and with the painter Benjamin Haydon. Keats's first book, Poems, was published in 1817 and was largely under 'Huntian' influence. An interesting poem in this volume is 'Sleep and Poetry', the middle section contains a prophetical view of Keats's own poetical progress. He sees himself at the present plunged deep in contemplation of sensous and natural beauty, but realizes that he must leave this for an understanding of 'the agony and strife of human hearts'. In 1817 Keats left London briefly for a trip to the isle of Wight and began work on Endymion, his first long poem. On his return to London he moved in with his brothers in Hamstead. Endymion appeared in 1818. This work is divided into four 1,000-line sections, and its verse is composed in loose rhymed couplets. The poem tells a version of the Greek legend of the moon goddess Diana's love for Endymion, a mortal shepherd. Keats puts the emphasis on Endymion's love for Diana, rather than on her for him. Keats transformed the tale to express the widespread Romantic theme of the attempt to find in actuality an ideal love. But Keats wasn't at all happy with his effort. The Sickness In the summer of 1818 Keats went on a walking tour in the Lake District and Scotland with his friend Charles Brown, and it was here that the first symptoms of the tuberculosis of which he was to die, showed themselves. Keats was understandebly quite upset as he came back to meet withering criticism against both his early Poems and Endymion. Strangely enough he took the criticism with a calm assertion of his own talents and kept on writing despite his sickness. Keats's brother Tom, who had been suffering from tuberculosis for quite some time, was nursed through his last illness in the autumn of 1818 by Keats. About the same time he met Fanny Brawne, a near neighbour in Hampstead, with whom he fell hopelessly and tragically in love. The relation with Fanny had a decisive effect on Keats's development. She seems to have been a woman of firm and generous character, and kindly disposed towards Keats. But he expected more, perhaps more than anyone could give, as is evident from his letters. Both his uncertain material situation and his failing health made it impossible for their relationship to take a normal course. After Tom's death, Keats moved into Wentworth Place with Brown; and in April 1819 Fanny Brawne and her mother became his next door neighbours. In about October 1819 Keats became engaged to Fanny. The Year 1819 Keats had written 'Isabella', an adoption of the story of the 'Pot of Basil' in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron in 1817-18, soon after the comletion of Endymion, and again he was dissatisfied with his work. It was during the year 1819 that all his greatest poetry was written - 'Lamia', 'The Eve of St. Agnes', the great odes ('On Indolence', 'On a Grecian Urn', 'To Psyche', 'To a Nightingale', 'On Melancholy', and 'To Autumn') and the two versions of Hyperion. This poetry was composed under the strain of illness and his growing love for Fanny Brawne. Its indeed an astonishing body of work, marked by careful and considered development, technical, emotional, and intellectual. 'The Eve of St. Agnes' is considered to be the perfect culmination of Keats's earlier poetic style. Written in the first rush of his meeting with Fanny Brawne, it conveys an atmosphere of passion and excitement in the description of the elopement of a pair of young lovers. Written in Spensarian stanzas, the poem presents its theme delicately but displays no marked intellectual advance over Keats's earlier efforts. 'Lamia' is another narrative poem and is an attempt to reform some of the technical weaknesses of Endymion. The Odes The odes are Keats's most distinctive poetical achievements and they were all composed between March and June 1819 except 'To Autumn', which is from September. The odes center on the dichotomy of eternal ideals and the always ongoing change of the physical world. This subject was forced on him by his brother's death and his own failing health. In the 'Ode to a Nightingale' a visionary happiness is communing with the nightingale and its song is contrasted with the dead weight of human grief and sickness, and the transience of youth and beauty. The song of the nightingale is seen as a symbol of art that outlasts the individual's mortal life. Hyperion Hyperion exists in two versions, the second one being a revision of the first with the addition of a long prologue in a new style, which makes a different poem. The first version of the poem is concerned, like so much of Keats's writing, with the nature of poetry and the development of the poet, distilled through an allegorical tale of the Greek gods. Although this was planned as Keats's greatest most ambitious work, it was never finished. Hyperion was begun in the Autumn of 1818, and all there is of the first version was finished by April 1819. In September Keats wrote to Reynolds that he had given up Hyperion, but it he appears to have continued working on the revised edition, 'The Fall of Hyperion', during the autumn of 1819. The two versions of 'Hyperion' cover the period of Keats's most intense experience, both poetical and personal. The epic's subject is the supersession of the earlier Greek gods, the Titans, by the later Olympian gods. Keats wanted to write something unlike the luxuriant wandering of Endymion. The poem opens with the Titans already fallen, and Hyperion, the sun god, is their one hope of further resistance. There are numerous imitations of the writer John Milton's style, but these are gone in the revised edition. As Endymion was an allegory of the fate of the lover of beauty in the world, Hyperion was perhaps to be an allegory of the poet as creator. Certainly this theme is taken up in the new prologue to the second version. The Letters The prime authority both for Keats's life and for his poetical achievements is to be found in his letters. His correspondence with his brothers and sister, with his close friends, and with Fanny Brawne, gives the most intimate picture of the admirable integrity of Keats's personal character and enables the reader to closely follow the development of his thoughts about poetry - his own and others. His letters are among the best letters written by any English poet. Apart from their interest as a commentary to his work, they have the right to independent literary status. Summary of events in Keats's Life 1794 Marriage of Thomas Keats to Frances Jennings. 1795 John Keats born. 1797 George born. 1798 Lyrical Ballads published. 1799 Thomas born. Edward born (died in infancy). 1802 Move to Enfield. Enters John Clarke's school at Enfield. 1803 Frances born. 1804 Father dies. Mother remarried to Rawlings and disappears. 1805 Keats grandfather Jennings dies. 1809 Frances Rawlings returns to Enfield. She becomes ill and dies. Keats apprentice to an apothecary. 1814 'Imitation of Spenser' 1815 Collected poems of Wordsworth published. 1816 First poem published: 'O Solitude'. Becomes licensed apothecary. Visits Margate with brother Tom. Oct. 'On first looking into Chapman's Homer'. Meets Leigh Hunt. Late winter. 'Sleep and Poetry'. Begins 'Endymion'. Meets Shelley. Takes lodging in Hampstead. 1817 Spring. Visits Isle of Wight. Meets Wordsworth. Winter. Begins series of letters to friends. 1818 'Isabella' June. George leaves for the USA Keats sets out on walking tour of Scotland. Critics attack. Meets Fanny Brawne. Winter. 'Hyperion'. Dec. Tom Keats dies. Moves into Wentworth Place, Hampstead. 1819 'The Eve of St. Agnes'. Return of his illness. The great odes. July. Visits the Isle of Wight. 'Lamia'. 'To Autumn'. 'The Fall of Hyperion'. Fanny Brawne and Keats become secretly engaged. 1820 Feb. Last illness. Moves in with Leigh Hunt following major haemorrhage. Summer. His third book published, favourable reviews. Sept. Sails for Italy. 1821 Feb. Dies peacefully in Rome. Autor: Robert Morten Datum: Donnerstag, 13.September.2001, 21:50 Nutzer: 0