JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)

Theme of beauty as the key to perfection and immortality (theme dealt by Oscar Wilde). Main representative of the
second generation of Romantic poets and the forerunner of the Aesthetic movement (Aestheticism).

Biography

★ He was born in London in 1795 in a modest well-off family, the first of five children, he attended a private
school in Enfield.
★ His short life was marked by tragedy and frail health: his father was killed in a riding accident, his mother
died from tuberculosis. These tragedies and his financial difficulties all contributed to his melancholic view
which is mirrored in his writings.
★ Following the early deaths of his father and of his mother, when he was 14 years old, he decided he wanted
to become a surgeon, he worked for 7 years as an apprentice but he gave up medicine for poetry.
★ He was supported by Leigh Hunt, poet and radical editor of The Examiner.
★ In 1818 he published Endymion. In his early works he drew inspiration from the Greek mythology:
Endymion (a long poem about a shepherd in love with the moon goddess Selene), Hyperion (unfinished
work, it is about the fall of the Greek gods and the rise of the Olympians).
★ This was a difficult time for Keats as his brother died from tuberculosis and his frail health deteriorated
quickly.
★ In the same year he fell in love with Fanny Brawne, they never got married due to Keats’ bad health and
economic problems.
★ 1819: Annus Mirabilis, when he composed the majority of his works: Masterful Poems, like the ballads
(where he adopted medieval forms and themes to explore the supernatural world)
➔ The Eve of Saint Agnes
➔ La Belle Dame Sans Merci
➔ The Great Odes (where he investigated the classic art and life. Opposition reality/imagination,
pleasure/pain, happiness/melancholy):
➢ Ode to a Nightingale
➢ Ode on a Grecian Urn
➢ Ode to Autumn
➢ Ode on Melancholy
➢ Ode to Psyche
➢ Ode on Indolence
★ In 1820 the first symptoms of tuberculosis started to manifest. He moved to Italy to recover, he stopped in
Naples and Rome, where he died in 1821 at the age of 25. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery in
Rome (like Shelley), no name was engraved on his tombstone, but the words “here lays one whose name
was written in water” (sense of the fleetingness of life, he feared the fatality of existence and he was aware
he was about to die, he wanted to be remembered).
★ Although today he stands out as the greatest member of the second generation of Romantic poets, he was
unacclaimed during his time. It was only thanks to Matthew Arnold, the most important Victorian critic of
English literature, that Keats’ genius was recognized, as Arnold compared him to Shakespeare.
★ He can be considered an atypical romantic because he did not investigate the relationship between men
and nature (like the first generation did).

● Beauty

The central theme of his works is: the contemplation of beauty as a source of truth and everlasting joy.

In the first verse of Endymion he wrote: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”. Beauty is the only consolation to the
soul, the answer to men desire for power and eternity.
Two forms.

1 Physical beauty: related to the sensory perceptions (colours, perfumes, shapes). This kind of beauty is
transitory, subject to decay and death.
2 Spiritual beauty: linked to art, love and friendship. It is eternal and immortal, the key to happiness and
perfection.

● Keats and the first generation of Romantic poets (Wordsworth and Coleridge)

Unlike the poets from the first generation, Keats’ poetic world did not draw from personal experience, it was the
artificial and ideal product of imagination, the supreme faculty which creates beauty and makes it last forever.

● The role of the poet

He is the creator of beautiful things, he is endowed with negative capability: the poet’s capability to deny his
personality, to identify himself completely with the object of inspiration through the senses. He can access truth
with the aid of imagination to produce poetry. He mainly writes about imaginary landscapes in which he rarely
elevates subjective moods and emotions. His use of the pronoun “I” isn’t linked to an individual, instead it’s a
universal “I”.

● Ode on a Grecian Urn

➔ An ode praises something, in this case it celebrates the immortality of the urn, seen as a perfect
work of art, and the immortality to be acquired through art.
➔ The Grecian urn is the pretext for the poet’s reflexions on art and life. The figures on the urn
inspire the imaginary journey of the poet.
➔ 5 ten-lined stanzas
➔ Divided into two parts each: one quatrain and one sestet
➔ Quatrain: defines the subject
➔ Sestet: explains the subject
➔ Regular rhyme scheme: ABAB CDE and variations in the last 3 lines
➔ Elevated language, solemn tone: archaisms, complex metaphors, alliterations (secondo la
paribello: the repetition of the same consonant sound, in verità: the repetition of the same letter or
sound) and assonances (the repetition of the same vowel sound)
● First stanza

In this stanza the imaginary journey begins, the author addresses the urn as a living creature (“Thou”). 3
metaphors: Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian:
the urn is a peaceful and timeless witness of a remote past. “Sylvan historian”: the urn expresses a story better
than poetry. Arcadian landscape: ideal realm where gods and humans live happily together, there is a group of
men pursuing a group of maidens, there are also musicians. Atmosphere of wild ecstasy.

Rhetorical questions: the poet wonders what the figures on the urn are and what they evoke.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd 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?

● Second stanza

Paradox: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter (they appeal to spiritual beauty). Two
oppositions:

1 The opposition of sensation and imagination

2 The clash between expectation and fulfilment: real pleasure comes from the expectation, the unconsumed
passion, while fulfilment immediately fades away: Leopardi “Il sabato del Villaggio”. The poet invites the
piper to enjoy life.

There is the celebration of the immortalising power of art (the girl’s beauty will never fade; the lovers will never
kiss: the image is frozen through art).

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

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

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,

 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

● Third stanza

Eternal spring. /Clash between the fleetingness of life and the immortality of art. /In the sestet opposition:

- Love in art: happy for ever warm, idea of unconsumed passion, perfect, for ever young, eternal.
- Love in life: human passions cause pain and sorrow; they are subject to decay. All breathing human passion
far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

● Fourth stanza

Note of sadness and desolation. Religious procession of villagers guided by a priest to sacrifice a cow. The streets
will remain for ever silent as nobody will ever return:

1 The moment of the procession has been frozen through art

2 Suggestion: the ritual procession to an unknown destination gives the idea of death as a one way journey.

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 this 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.

● Fifth stanza

The imaginary journey ends. The poet comes back to reality, the urn appears as it truly is. Opposition:

1st Stanza: the urn is a living creature, it is a peaceful and timeless witness of a remote past

5th Stanza: the urn is a marble artifact, motionless, cold, almost impassive to men's fate and sufferings.

The urn is a “friend to man” (line 48) because it will offer men consolation from the sufferings of life with its
message of eternal beauty.

The 5th stanza sums up the main subject of Keats’ poetry: art is the answer to man’s desire for permanence, it
celebrates spiritual beauty, it survives death and it preserves beauty forever.

Art immortalizes beauty, it fixes moments of beauty, perfection and happiness: music, spring, unconsumed
passions, youth, love, beauty. The work of art is a storyteller, future generations can escape pain and sorrow
through art. (es 13 p 313 che non so se chiede imagination, work of art, eternity, beauty: truth and knowledge).

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!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."