John Keats's poetry :

Beautiful, brilliant but squeamish

by Gwen Heart

[Part 1 ]

John Keats’ Endymion, Lamia and Isabella stand out from the rest of his creations. He was unmatched among the male Romantics who opted to represent an erotic feel with a female as a visionary experience. Many men go through this experience when a woman they desire is unattainable. But where Keats was concerned, it was different owing to his feminine character that dominated his poetry.

Sad to say, his brilliance was one-sided, more feminine-connected. It revealed his weak personality that prevented or clashed with the beauty of words that made his poetry to scale dizzy heights.

A striking feat towards the discourse of Keats both in the 19th and 20th centuries is the frequency with which his gender was an issue not on a matter of biology but his ideology in this context. A profound division of judgement that he agitated was of interest not only to his colleagues but the critics of his time who lost no time surfacing his effeminate character in the language he used.

Many were to question or provoke this type of obsessive vocabulary in his letters about the character differences and poetic existence. However, Keats did not fit conventional theory that made him a convenience focus for ideology.

He had his own literary style and sensibility which was the signature that made him highly accessible to social and psychological influences.

Criticism

Byron was the first poet to come out openly and criticise Keats's feminist bearing and together with John Lockhart forced a rhetoric that puerilised to exclude Keats from adult male company from a serious consideration as a poet.

They tabbed him as one from the Cockney School. Though it hurt Keat's ego, he was aware that he was born in the city of London. ‘Cockney’ implies being a mother's darling, a child brought up tenderly.

All poets of his generation found Keats spoilt by Cockneyfying but Byron was different and thought Keats was spoilt by sexual immaturity. But Keats had his own charm that drew women to him with elegance. This made it worse as he plunged into their admiration and affection that unwittingly ended up in his poems. He was never the spirited man women thought him to be.

But no poet attracted so many literary biographers as Keats among Romantic poets. He blazed a trail full of then and new readers will find Keat's aura especially in poetry of Keats by Brian Stone in the Penguin series published in 1992. All writers have criss-crossed his poems and keep rediscovering his amazing virtuosity. Keats was a consistent writer. Criticism has been more traditional with literary scope and method. In recent times critics tend to concentrate on matters of style and artistic purpose.

There is always a story or a legend in his long poems. A fine example is Isabella, a stunning story that lifted the imagination of composers.

One of them was the story in musical lyrics at the spacious ornate auditorium of the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Orchestra conducted by Sir Harrison Birtwistle. The original score was by Franck Bridge (179-1941) in Concerto for Violin and Orchestra 25 and it was such a marvellous hypnotic performance, I still feel it ringing in my ears. A wide full orchestra three times over with so many harps, may have been around 100 musicians that I had never seen even with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It was so amazing and such a wonderful tribute to Keyts's Isabella. Sir Harrison being one of the magnificent conductors of the day, rose in full stature bringing so many violins to the fore. It was really a string affair presented by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

‘In poetry, his was the woman's part’ was the comment of a woman critic on Keats.

Effeminacy

Inspite of many writings on Keats into the feminine sphere throughout the century, he displayed such effeminacy of mind in The Eve of St. Agnes and described a dress with more gust and beauty so much so that it condescended appreciatively to Keats's poems to be marketed for female audiences.

A critic described it as mere entertainment for women. Charles Brown prefaced his biographical sketch which image Keats's absorption into feminine afterlife. It eulogised Keats's genius as delicate and fragile than it was beautiful.

Perhaps, he died on the promise that took root in hostile as well as on fertile soil. It indicated a sensibility lacking sufficient masculine vigour and resilience to bear the insulting arrows slung at him. Byron was incredulous when he learnt from Shelly that the young Keats died in Rome bursting a blood vessel and in despair and anguish at the contemptuous attack on his book in the Quarterly.

‘I did not think that criticism could be killing in a world of bustle, especially in the career of writing! Byron was sad but had no remorse for him. The image of Keats helped draw into orbit of a cultural preoccupation of the widely circulated reports that dominated the 19th century. The efforts to secure distinctions between the genders and stabilise the conduct was liable to sudden excesses but Keats may have not been aware when it was taking a toll on his life and works that resulted in death.

‘Roseates and pained as a ravish'd nymph

into a hue more roseate than sweet pain,

Gives to a ravish'd Nymph when her warm tears Gush lucsious with no snob’

To be continued