Keatsian Ideas
Page 2
Poetic Beliefs
To John Taylor
Feb 1818
'I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess'
- Poetry should involve the element of surprise, with the use of excessive imagery, but in a refined way; pure yet bold and dazzling.
'The setting of imagery should like the sun come natural to him'
'If poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all'.
- Poetry should be a natural thing, not forced but fluid and inspired.
Vale of Soul Making
To George and Georgiana Keats
April 1819
'The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is 'a vale of tears' from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken into Heaven- What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please 'The Vale of Soul- making. Then you will find out the use of the world'
'I say 'soul making' Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence- There may be intelligences or sparks of divinity in millions- but they are not souls until they acquire identities, till each one is personality itself'
'I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion- or rather it is a system of Spirit Creation'
'I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the hornbook used in that school. And I will call the child able to read, the soul made from that school and its hornbook'.
'Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways'
'As various as the lives of men are- so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls, identical souls of the sparks of his own essence'
(In this same letter was an original of 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci')
The poem is a story that leaves questions unanswered, but in this letter he seems to finding an answer to what his life means, trying to come to terms with his impending death.
- Keats does not deal with conventional religion in his poems.
- States that he does not believe in Christianity, or in any of the other received faiths of his era. 'cosmology' and 'ontology' (cause-belief system)
- As he faced death, it's clear that Keats did struggle to find meaning in life, but in this letter he finds an answer.
- Rejects Christian 'Valley of Tears' and accepts 'Vale of Soul Making'
- The Romantics in general were spiritual rather than religious.
- Says religion is a process by which a soul is made- described as human heart going to school.
-States there are different stages a soul passes through: Copes with experiences, discovers misery and oppression. Compared to chambers in a mansion'
- The final stage the soul passes through recognising the burden of the mystery.
Quotes from Keats:
'I would rather give women a sugar plum than my time'
Suggests that he thinks women are shallow, and that they'll accept something so meaningless instead of attention. 'Sugar plum' is also a sickly reference, and perhaps suggests that women are like this too, sweet but with slightly sinister connotations; we already know that Keats didn't trust women.
About Fanny Brawne in a letter to his brother George, Dec 1818:
'she manages to make her hair look well- her nostrils are fine though a little painful- her mouth is bad and good... Her arms are good and her hands badish- her feet tolerable.. She is ignorant- monstrous in her behaviour flying out in all directions. I am however tired of such style and shall decline any more of it'
Keats' words in this letter make him out to be a 'nitpicker' frequently finding faults and making harsh and unfair judgments about Brawne. It makes one wonder if this letter was meant to be comical, because many of the comments are too ridiculous to be taken seriously. It is ironic that the following year he becomes engaged to the woman he scrutinized so meticulously.
On Keats' grave:
'Here lies one whose name was writ in water'
- Ripples go on forever, he'll always be remembered. Arrogant, or just insecure, depressed.
Link to the poem 'When I have Fears'
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