John Keats Love Death Fame

Love, Death, Beauty & Fame : Life experiences and feelings of John Keats as they influenced his writing.

John Keats was born in 1979, the son of Horse-stable keeper. Keats was an orphan by the age of fourteen; he was an apprentice of a surgeon for certain time but decided to move on to poetry instead. His early works were famously savaged by the critics, but Keats remained assured in "drive" that eventually be "among the English poets". Keats 's longed for marriage to Fanny Brawne was prevented by the tuberculosis that eventually was the cause of his death at the age of twenty-six, in 1821.#
What are the experiences and feelings Keats felt in life and how they influenced his poetry?
Keats 's letters to Frances 'Fanny ' Brawne, his fiancée, are among the most famous love letters ever written. Keats was deeply in love with Fanny; however he was often unsettled by her behaviour and flirty nature and uncertain of her loyalty to him. In collection of the letter written to Fanny in February 1820 , at the time when Keats 's illness got worse, he mentions his feelings towards his own death and how unsettled he feels by the thought it self. "If i should die,” said I to myself “I have left no immortal work behind me - nothing to make my friends proud of my memory." #
Shortly after he wrote one of his poems that is connected to this thought , When i have fears that i may cease to be which describes Keats fears that after his death he will not leave "high pile&grav 'd books" behind for his family and friends to remember him by. He also writes in his letter "- but i have lov 'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had time I would made my self remembered# this describes that if he just had more time to write more poetry so he would be remembered by his 'immortal ' works. John Keats knew that his fate was sealed when he found out he has tuberculosis but never gave up in writing poetry until his last breath. . In his poem When i have fears he mentions” And when i feel fair creature of the hour! That is hall never look upon thee more" This line can be interpreted as that 'fair creature ' is Fanny Brawne and Keats is telling her how he will never be able to gaze upon her face after his death or simply "fair creature of the hour" is death it self, as most younger generations may picture it. The subject of love and death has often seen in many Keats 's poems such as La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Bright Star where often love is clashed with death. Miss Brawne was a clear source of inspiration that led Keats to write poetry about her, and her actions.

Another poem by Keats that show his feelings towards Fanny is Bright Star. Keats opens up the poem with ‘Bright star‘ , the aim of his direct address symbolizes the everlasting nature of a heavenly body, which hangs in the sky through all eternity, and by its very nature burns forever just as his love for Fanny will. This poem relates to Keats ' preparation to receive death too. Again contrast with death is seen. Keats was counting the last days of life as the then, fatal disease; tuberculosis, was getting hold over his body.

Poem was written after Fanny Browne had already given him a goodbye through the letter. The image of the pole-star evokes in him the desire of getting lost in the 'breast ' of his lady. In "The Life of John Keats" by Sydney Colvin , it states that Keats was unable to contact Miss Brawne personally but they exchanged letters through glass window, Keats compares his love towards Fanny Browne as unable to touch it him self as he can only admire it from afar. #Again the idea of purification and getting purified find display in the emission of light of the bright star. The bright-star is also the symbol of beauty. Keats has commented in many letters, found in collection, about sole beauty of his fiancée. The sadness towards his death, but also way of finding his immortality in beauty of Miss Browne, Keats found the inspiration to write this poem.
In the biography of Mr Colvin, he comments about poem written by Keats The Eve of St.Agnes “His own experiences under the stings of love and jealousy had led him, during those spring months of 1819 when he could write nothing, to pore much over the treatise of that prodigiously read, satiric old commentator on the maladies of the human mind and body, and especially over those sections of it which deal with the cause and cure of love-melancholy”.# St Agnes was a Roman virgin and martyr during the reign of Diocletian (early 4th century.) At first condemned to debauchery in a public brothel before her execution, her virginity was preserved by thunder and lightning from Heaven.# Keats uses two lovers to describe the danger of love and how one may go to the unimaginative lengths to make sure to be with the loved one. This poem is a descriptive passage of his life. Keats is the knight who is willing to go any lengths to be with the woman he loves very much. As mentioned before Keats was unable to be with Fanny Brawne, but he never gave up on the thought of loving her. However Mrs.Browne had a very flirty nature and that often displeased and frustrated Keats as he mentioned that in his letter to her
“I wish you to see how unhappy I am for love of you.” in May 1820.#

Keats was often made fun off by magazines such as ‘The Quarterly‘, they often misread and misinterpreted his poems and would write comments that brought big amounts of disappointment him. The Quarterly Review wrote: “[Mr Keats] is a copyist of Mr Hunt; but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd than his prototype”. # Leigh Hunt was the owner of the “The Examiner” . It was believed that he introduced the world two most influential writers Keats and Shelly.# We see that Quarterly Review disliked the way Keats expressed him self but as much as they wrote mockery about it Keats acted as it was a mere challenge to get better. Even though he was called a ’copyist’ (cheat) he still didn’t bow under the pressure of the critics 'Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what the Quarterly could possibly inflict. ' # Keats comments on how his own love for the poetry has made him critic of his own work and he often disliked what he wrote. La Belle Dame Sans Merci is a pure example. Even though it was one of his famous poems he dismissed his work through a joke in the letter to his brother George Keats. # The criticism he received on his work as well as the “Hyperion”, which he left unfinished on purpose due to critics, he still kept on working on it ignoring the criticism and using it as the drive to keep him going. Keats said he will become “among the English poets” and so he did, unfortunately his recognition came after his death in 1821 and even today he is seen as one of the most influential poets of the Romantic Poets of 1800’s.#

How does poetry Keats wrote reflect to his own life?

John Keats’s poetry was mostly influenced by his own life and what happened around him. In 1800’s the tuberculosis took life’s of many people including John Keats’s mother Frances Keats, his brother Tom Keats, and in 1821 his own. Many poetry written by Keats often had themes of love and death. John Keats also writes about beauty weather its captured in time or untouchable.

Keats’s Ode on a Grecian Urn offers contradictory concept of beauty. It describes the frozen beauty portrayed on the urn as sweeter than reality, as its beauty is a locked in immortality. The lover’s kiss is sweeter when it’s longed for , and her beauty is worth the wait. As in Keats life he was unable to be personal with Fanny Brawne as he was scared of passing on the tuberculosis to her, so he often dreamt about the day he will be able to be with her, and through the art of poetry he is able to describe his longing for her in a same way as lover’s long for that one special moment. Keats favourite subject was Beauty and its relation to Art. As seen in Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to Nightingale. In this ode he refers to beauty to be untouchable by a mere mortal.

“Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,”

However even he is unable to touch the bird personally he can do this through the art of poetry. This reflects to his own life as he was unable to be close to his fiancée due to his illness but he composed many of his poems about her such being a poem Bright Star.

Poem like La Belle Dame Sans Merci has theme like terminal illness relating to life of John Keats. Love and Death are almost certain subjects in time he wrote poems such this one. In the summer of 1818, Keats began exhibiting symptoms of tuberculosis, a disease that had already infected his younger brother, Tom, who died in December of that year. Keats uses the image of beautiful lady as a symbol of life, which was slowly slipping away from him. During this time, he felt like the knight sitting on the cold hill-pale, feverish and alone. Same way he observed his brother. He also mentions in Ode to a Nightingale “ Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”, This also refers to his life, as his brother died in young age, he envies the bird for being unable to feel how death can hurt others.#.

‘Bright Star’ the movie by Jane Campion was made by exact biography details from Andrew Motion’s John Keats : The Biography, and Told from Brawne 's perspective on the romance, the film not only reveals the evolution of their young love, but traces Brawne 's introduction and immersion into Keats 's world of poetry, beginning with apathy and ending with passionate involvement. Movie follows the romance between John Keats and Fanny Brawne, their ups and downs up until his death.

As Andrew Motion notes in his Andrew Motion’s John Keats : The Biography there are two parallels between the poem Bright Star and Brawne: the first is found in one of Keats 's love letters to Brawne “I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray to your star like a Heathen. Your 's ever, fair Star“#, and the second is the fact that in 1819 she transcribed the poem in a book by Dante which Keats had given her.#
Movie shows Keats in person and how he felt with many uneasy feelings towards Browne , however he also showed many moments when love was the only thing keeping him going.

Motions biography of Keats reveals insight of his writing, featuring the very last poem Keats wrote To Fanny, in this poem Keats expresses his suspicions and doubts about Brawne. “To Fanny begins with a desperate challenge to the advice that Keats should stop writing” explains Motion,” describing ‘verse’ as illness which ‘Physician Nature’ must cure by bleeding.”

Motion further explains how the handwritten manuscript of Keats’s final poem offers “touching evidence” of the state the poet was when he wrote it. “Initially large and wild” handwriting of Keats with few letters rather unformed, Keats’s handwriting eventually slackens and splays. He was obviously worn out. The fact it was the last poem he wrote makes it “all the more moving”.

Conclusion

As the final moments of John Keats’s life approached he was left but with one simple quote that will make him remembered on his tomb - :” Here lies one whose name was writ in water”. After everything he had been through, suffering ,love and joy he realises that the end means it is over, everything he tried to achieve will be erased with one hand movement same as the water drowning everything he had done in his lifetime. However with his death his poetry lived up to his name and Keats was accepted as one of the most influential writers of 1800’s. Keats poetry lives on as Art he loved so much, as Grecian Urn, unaffected by time, as Nightingale forever beautiful and untouchable.

“My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. is my religion - I could die for that. “ - John Keats (1795-1821)

Bibliography

Books
1. St. Martin 's Press, August 1993
John Keats : Selected Poems

John Keats: His Life and poetry, His Friends, Critics and After Fame by Sidney Colvin, 1917

Movies
28/6/2010
Jane Campion (2009) Apparition USA
Bright Star

Websites
John Keats Selected Letters/Author Unknown/ January 2010/ Retrieved 17/6/2010 http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/brawnemay1820.html http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/brawnemay1820.html

http://englishhistory.net/keats/critical.html http://englishhistory.net/keats/criticism-croker.html http://englishhistory.net/keats/brownkeats.html http://englishhistory.net/keats/colvinkeats.html

The eve of St Agnes/Lillian Melanie/ January 2009/ Retrieved 17/6/2010 http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/st_agnes.html

Leigh Hunt/Peter Lundry/ August 2008/ 17/6 http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Literary/Hunt1.htm

Bibliography: John Keats : Selected Poems John Keats: His Life and poetry, His Friends, Critics and After Fame by Sidney Colvin, 1917 Jane Campion (2009) Apparition USA Bright Star