John Keats

Keats is one of the greatest member of the second generation of Romantic poets. He was
able to fuse romantic passion and cold Neoclassicism, just as Ugo Foscolo.
He was born il London in 1795 from an humble but comfortable family.
He immediately show his early passion for reading and poetry and in 1816 he announced
his decision to devote his life to writing verse in a beautiful sonnet called “On first looking
into Chapman’s Homer”.
The 1818 was a difficult year for Keats because of the health problems of his mother and
brother.
He fall in love with Fanny Browne but he wasn’t able to marry her because of his poverty.
Notwithstanding these difficulties he wrote a series of poems:
- The eve of S.Agnes, characterized by romantic features that recreate an
atmosphere of superstition, art, ritual and luxury.
- The greatest odes: One of the Nightingale, ode on a greek urn, to autumn, on
melancholy, to psyche, where the poet explores relations between pleasure
and pain, happens anche melancholy, art and life, reality and imagination.
- The ballad “La belle dam sans merci”, which displays a taste for medieval
themes.
- Hyperion, which shows the influence of Milton.
When Keats died he was hardly known outside his literally circus and even there he was
taken for granted because his works were full of neglect and obscurity.
Many years later there was a revolution. Matthew Arnold, an important victorian critic,
said of Keats that he was as important as Shakespeare and so there was a total reverse of
judgment.
Unlike some romantic poet the poems of Keats are not fragments of a continual
autobiography because he only consider the story of his like like a sort of inspiration for his
poetry, non the substance.
Poetry: the common romantic tendency to identify scenes and landscape with subjective
moods and emotions is rejected by him (poetical personal pronoun “I” isn’t use) so his
lyrical poems are not autobiographic like Shelly and experience are not the substance of
the odes but is “behind”. Another departure with Romanticism is summarized in his
speech: “scenery is fine but human nature is finer”.
-The imagination to Keats has two forms: in the first place the world of his poetry is
predominantly artificial and he imagines it rather than reflect from direct experiences. In
the second place keat’s poetry are a vision of what he would like human life to be like,
stimulated by his own experience of pain and misery.
-The central theme of his poetry is beauty that made him a sort of precursor of the
decadents or pre-Raphaelites in Victorian age who saw in his cult of beauty the expression
of “Art for art’s sake”. In fact he is the forerunner of the aesthetic movement and this
aspect move him away to the romantic movement.
Beauty is the ideal of all art. The classical Greek world inspires Keats in his works. In fact in
his verse he re-interpreted with the eyes of a romantic movement the Greek beliefs.
He talks about two kind of beauty: physical beauty is mutable and spiritual one that is
immortal, “Spiritual beauty is a joy for ever”.
-Poet need to negative capability: in fact poet must deny his rational filter to identify
himself with the object which is the source of his inspiration and the place where Truth
resides.
Negative capability is the ability to experience “uncertainties ,mysteries, doubts without
any irritable reaching after fact and reason” therefore to accept that it can not be a
solution to the pressing problems is important for artists.
-poet “is everything and nothing ,has no character”, is a Cameliom. Poet is the most
unpoetical, the sun, the moon, the man are poetical have unchangeable attribute but poet
has none, no identity, the certainly the most unpoetical of all God’s Creature.
Ode on a Grecian urn: In the writing of this ode he was inspired by the scenes painted on a
Greek urn who he saw in a museum and he described it perfectly . The Ode celebrates the
immortality of the urn so of the art in general. On the urn was painted on one side a scene
which represent the sacred love and one the other side a scene of profane love. He talks
about a pure and idyllic love between a boy and girls and the urn, which was a material
thing and symbol of something who have to “die” in this ode became a symbol of the life.
The scene represented a Platonic ,spiritual, ideal and eternal love and is a scene who
remain the same in the time and will never change.
The aim of his work stayed in this word: “ Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.. that is all we
know on earth and all we need to know”.
Jane Austen
She was born in 1775 and was educated at home. She loved reading but she was rather
indifferent to Romantic poets. Her life was quite and she loved the English countryside.
She was a great novelist of manners, who lived in the romantic age without sharing its
problems and characteristics.
Novels
Her best works were “Sense and sensibility” which portrays the striking contrast between
two sisters, Pride and Prejudice, a faithful description of life and manners of the upper
middle-class in the English countryside; Emma, the story of a young woman, representative
of the rich rural gentry. Other novels are Mansfiled Park, Northanger Abbey and
Persuasion.
She is a realistic writer. Her novels are all love stories which takes place in the little world
of a village.
Jane Austen makes a deep psychological analysis and describes her characters with
objectivity and often ironic wit.
All novels are set in the provincial world of England and characters come up from the
middle class.
The novels are focused on everyday and real domestic life, and we seldom can find
author’s comments.
Jane Austen is not sentimental, as a matter of fact she doesn’t like a marriage founded only
on a violent passion; a good marriage is to be based on mutual understanding.
(The main element is the love, but not passionate and tragic love, but a polite exchanges
between the two sexes.)
The dialogues are witty and simple, and she often uses the irony. She also gives great
importance to moral rules: good manners, sense of duty, generosity.
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN: TRADUZIONE
Tu ancora intatta sposa della quiete,
Tu figlia adottiva del silenzio e del tempo lento,
Narratrice silvestre, che puoi così esprimere
Un racconto fiorito più dolce della nostra rima:
Quale leggenda ornata di foglie sovrasta la tua forma,
Di divinità o di mortali, o di entrambi,
A Tempe o sulle vallette dell'Arcadia?
Quali uomini o dèi sono questi? Quali vergini restìe?
Quale folle inseguimento? Quale lotta per fuggire?
Quali flauti e tamburelli? Quali estasi selvagge?
Le melodie udite sono dolci, ma quelle non udite
Sono più dolci: dunque, voi, flauti lievi suonate ancora:
Non per l’orecchio sensuale, ma, più preziosi
Suonate canti senza toni allo spirito:
Bel giovane, sotto gli alberi, tu non puoi abbandonare
La tua canzone, né mai possono quegli alberi esser spogli;
Sfrontato amante, mai, mai puoi tu baciare,
Benché vincente, quasi alla mèta - ma, non affliggerti;
Lei non può svanire, pur non avendo tu la tua beatitudine,
Per sempre l’amerai e lei sarà bella!
Ah felici, felici rami! incapaci di perdere
Le vostre foglie, né mai di dire addio alla Primavera;
E, felice musico, instancabile,
Che suoni per sempre canzoni eternamente nuove;
Amore più felice! più felice, felice amore!
Per sempre ardente e ancora da godere,
Per sempre ansante e per sempre giovane;
Ad ogni passione umana che respira superiore,
Che lascia un cuore afflitto e saziato,
Una fronte in fiamme, e una lingua inaridita.
Chi sono questi che vengono al sacrificio?
A quale verde altare, o sacerdote misterioso,
Tu conduci quella giovenca mugghiante verso il cielo,
E tutti i suoi fiocchi di seta coperti di ghirlande?
Quale piccola città sul fiume o sulla spiaggia,
Quale monte eretto con serena cittadella,
È pieno di questa gente questo mattino devoto?
E, piccola città, le tue strade per sempre
Saranno silenziose; e nessun'anima a dirti
Perché tu sei deserta, può mai tornare.