"I went the other day into an ironmonger's shop, without any change in my sensations - men and tin kettles are much the same in these days. They do not study like children at five and thirty, but they talk like men at twenty. Conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavour at effect". (1)
__________
Had John Keats been of a different disposition, we might have had something like this, Alexander Pushkin's unique novel, Eugene Onegin. A contemporary of Keats, what makes Pushkin's work special, is that the story is told in verse: in a succession of stanzas, each of fourteen lines, that are structured around a recurring and complex pattern of rhymed line-endings. In the story, the central character (from whom the book takes its name), is variously described as a "dandy" and a "fop": an aspiring poet whose only accomplishment is, "in love"; a point illustrated at the outset, when Pushkin reveals the extent to which Onegin has cultivated the art of seduction:
Conceal his hopes, play jealous swain,
Compel belief, or make her tremble,
Seem cast in gloom or mute with pain,
Appear so proud or so forbearing,
At times attentive then uncaring!
What languor when his lips were sealed,
What fiery art his speech revealed!
What casual letters he would send her!
He lived, he breathed one single dream,
How self-oblivious he could seem!
How keen his glance, how bold and tender;
And when he'd wished, he'd made appear
The quickly summoned, glistening tear!"
_______________
Though the location changes as the story unfolds, it begins in St. Petersburg, where feasting, drinking, gaming, balls, aggrandisement, seduction, and ultimately, (for the young women), the marriage market, are what constitute the social merry-go-round. And it is in this context, a few stanzas further into the story, that we are introduced to Onegin the party goer:
"But look, Onegin's at the gateway;
He's past the porter, up the stair,
Through marble entry rushes straightway,
Then runs his fingers through his hair,
And steps inside. The crush increases,
The droning music never ceases;
A bold mazurka grips the crowd,
The press intense, the hubbub loud;
The guardsman clinks his spurs and dances;
The charming ladies twirl their feet --
Enchanting creatures that entreat
A hot pursuit of flaming glances;
While muffled by the violin
The wives their jealous gossip spin.
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Now to some extent the character of Eugene Onegin mirrors Pushkin, whose nature was wayward, impetuous and tragically flawed, but in the context of Keats's poetry, what intrigues me about this story is, that it represents everything that Keats was not, thereby pointing up the absence in his writing of that wider society that existed beyond his immediate circle of friends. That such a society as described by Pushkin, existed in London in Keats's day, is beyond doubt, and that it should be absent from his poetry, it seems to me, has less to do with his temperament, (in that he didn't have the nature of a Pushkin), but rather, that Keats had an especially elevated view as to the nature and purpose of poetry.
In a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey, written in October 1817, he quotes from an earlier letter to his brother George, (written about the time he was starting work on Endymion). In that letter Keats wrote of the high idea of poetical fame that he saw towering too high above him, after which, he used the metaphor of a ship on the sea to define the attributes required for the writing of great poetry: "Invention", he wrote, is "the Polar Star of Poetry" as "fancy is the Sails and Imagination the Rudder". And in a further philosophical letter to Bailey written in November 1817, (at the point where he had completed Endymion), he dwelt on the subject of "Beauty" and "Truth", a discussion that gave expression to that elevated view that he had of poetry, and from which, this often quoted passage is a part:
"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Hearts affections and the truth of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty..."
At moments like these, Keats's preoccupations were with the metaphysical, as they were in another of his often quoted lines: the opening statement in Endymion:
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
which I have always understood to mean, not just that the essence of something determines what it is, but that essence is an eternal quality, or put another way, something that is truly beautiful because that is the essence or substance of what it is perceived to be, cannot be something else, tomorrow: it is a moment in time that is eternal. That said, it is important to acknowledge that for Keats, "Truth" and "Beauty" were not synonymous, as is apparent in his response to Benjamin West's, Death on the Pale Horse: a painting based on the Four Horse's of the Apocalypse, the pale horse symbolising death:
"I spent Friday evening with Wells & went next morning to see Death on the Pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; But there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality, the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth - Examine King Lear & you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness -"
But, in terms of what Keats was seeking to achieve in poetry, he was reaching for the sublime; and in that same 1817 letter to his brother's George and Tom, he put his finger on that special quality that forms a man of achievement, especially in poetry,what he called Negative Capability: the idea that the creative genius, (my word not Keats's), notwithstanding their heightened perceptions can cope with uncertainty (or what in a later letter he called "halfseeing"), without the need to pursue concepts such as "beauty" and "truth" to the nth degree before they can produce great work; and he was clear as to how poetry should be conceived, so as to benefit the reader, rather than the writer: a view that brings me back to a point touched on in Part 1: the absence of Keats in Keats's poetry:
"Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject - How beautiful are the retired flowers how would they loose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose!..."
An observation in this context, that lead to criticism of the notion that the standards to be applied in the new dispensation, were those as set by Wordsworth and others. For Keats there were still higher possibilities. Here again, Keats was dealing with essence, and what defined poetry for him, was a level of creativity in the writer that had the power to transfix the reader, and from which, the writer is absent; a process that was cumulative, but, that the "Many" who "have original Minds" allow themselves to be "led away by Custom".
But temperament alone is not sufficient to explain Keats's approach to poetry; a further contributing factor was that he was born at a time of change. At its most simplistic, a sense of the scale of that change is encompassed in the idea of the French Revolution, (1789-1799), and in poetic terms, in Williams Blake's preoccupation with industrialization and the emerging cities. What was happening in literature and poetry in particular, was a move away from the rational, towards the experimental: the creative power of the imagination and to feeling. And in this definition of the Romantic Era, it is important to remember that poets such as: Blake, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, (Shelley is a separate case), were not rejecting the past, hence Keats's abiding interest in Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton, (who, in their turn, had experimented with things new). Nor were the Romantics offering a clearly defined view of life. A feature of Romantic poetry was the tension that existed between the creative world of the imagination and the realities of every-day life. As one commentator put it, there had to be "experience" before Blake could write his "Songs of Innocence". And it was in the context of this movement away from the rational and towards the experimental, that Keats was able to say: "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Hearts affections and the truth of Imagination...etc.", and reject the notion, that the standards for poetry in this new era, had been conclusively defined by Wordsworth.
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Now in the context of these observations, it is worth taking a look at the poem, Sleep and Poetry. A work of the imagination. At one and the same time it is aspirational, and a statement of beliefs; and the "voice" is that of Keats. A long poem, begun in October 1816, it was published the following year, and was well received by Keats's friends. The opening section is speculative, posing a series of questions addressed to "Sleep", before "Thought" takes centre stage. But as yet, we don't know what it is that is making its presence felt, until, in the context of the wonders of nature, we are told that it is "Poesy", at which point the poem is transformed, and the language and images are those associated with religious conversion: adoration, supplication, abandonment; a spiritual uplift that Keats links, (among other things), to the idea of the moving of heaven and earth: "thunder" and the movement of "regions under" are intended to convey a sense of the power in this spiritual experience:
"O Posy ! for thee I hold my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven - should I rather kneel
Upon some mountain-top until I feel
A glowing splendour round about me hung,
And echo back the voice of thine own tongue?
O Poesy ! for thee I grasp my pen
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer,
Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,
Smoothed for intoxication by the breath
Of flowering bays, that I may die a death
Of luxury, and my young spirit follow
The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo
Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear
The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me the fair
Vision of all places: a bowery nook
Will be elysium - an eternal book
Whence I may copy many a lovely saying
About the leaves, and flowers - about the playing
Of Nymphs in woods, and fountains; and the shade
Keeping a silence round a sleeping maid;
And many a verse from so strange influence
That we must ever wonder how, and whence
It came. Alas imaginings will hover
Round my fire-side, and haply there discover
Vistas of solemn beauty, where I'd wander
In happy silence, like the clear Meander
Through its lone vales; and where I found a spot
Of awfuller shade, or an enchanted grot,
Or a green hill, o'erspread with chequered dress
Of flowers, and fearful from its loneliness,
Write on my tablets all that was permitted,
All that was for our human sense fitted.
_______________
For me, at least, in this passage, there is an echo of the Transfiguration of Christ, as described in the gospels of St's Matthew and Mark. But in the context of the tension that exists in Romantic poetry between the world of the imagination and the actual, Keats acknowledges that he will have to come down from this ivory tower, but not before he has recorded a vision of the gods descending to earth to gaze in awe at this other world. And when he does come down from his ivory tower, the image that he uses to describe the every day, is no less purposeful:
The visions all are fled - the car [chariot] is fled
Into the light of heaven, and in their stead
A sense of real things comes doubly strong,
And, like a muddy stream, would bear along
My soul to nothingness; but I will strive
Against all doubtings, and will keep alive
The thought of that same chariot, and the strange
Journey it went.
_______________
At this Keats ponders the present, and the capacity among poets to allow the "high imagination" to fly "freely", after which there comes an overview of the history of the poetic craft and some trenchant criticism of the consequences of the rational in poetry, to which the Romantics were opposed, but not before he had acknowledged the past achievements of those who had laboured at the poetic craft, nor for personal gain, but for the love of Poesy. And as we read the criticism, the meaning is clear: that the raw ingredients that inspired great poetry had remained unchanged through time, instead, it was poetry that had lost its way:
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
Men were thought wise who could not understand
His glories: with a puling infant's force
They swayed about upon a rocking horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal souled!
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled
Its gathering waves - ye felt it not. The blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: beauty was awake!
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of - were closely wed
To musty laws line out with wretched rule
And compass vile: so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen were the mask
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!
That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,
And did not know it ! No, they went about,
Holding a poor, decrepit standard out
Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large
The name of one Boileau!
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Now all of these things said, it is time to turn to the "experts", and in particular to Miriam Allott whose commentaries on Keats's poems, are of incalculable value to those of us who are not academics, but approaching Keats's poetry as lay-persons.
From Miriam Allott research we learn of the setting in which the idea for this poem was conceived. It happened while Keats was on a visit to Leigh Hunt's, where a bed was made up for him in library; and it was here, inspired by the artefacts in the room, that the idea of Sleep and Poetry came to him. And this is also how it came to pass, that the last sixty or seventy lines of the poem, were "an inventory of the art garniture of the room". And she gives added depth to the poem, and added insight in to the mind of Keats, where she makes connections. In what she describes as "the catalogue element in Keats's first tribute to sleep", (he returns to the theme of sleep in the concluding section of the poem), she makes a connection with the Elizabethan era: with sonnet 39, in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella. And she makes known what authoritative sources had to say regarding inference in the poem: as to who, or what, Keats was alluding to, (bearing in mind that the poem was a criticism, as well as a declaration of intent). According to Allott the passage quoted above and beginning, "Could all this be forgiven..." represents a criticism of what were known as the Augustan poets: those of the first half of the eighteenth century. It was an incestuous period, with ambitious poets rivalling and feeding off one another, an era
"when poets were more conversant with each other than were novelists...Their works were written as direct counterpoint and direct expansions of one another, with each poet writing satire when in opposition. There was a great struggle over the nature and role of the pastoral ... primarily between Ambrose Phillips and Alexander Pope and then between their followers..." (2)
And at line 218 where Keats was interrogating, and reference was made to:
....some lone spirits who could proudly sing
Their youth away, and die?
we learn that the "lone spirits" Keats was championing, were poets such as Thomas Chatterton (1752-70), and Henry Kirke White (1785-1806), poets who were neglected by the age and died young. Chatterton at the age of 12, was writing the "Rowley Poems" and passing them off as copies of 15-century manuscripts at the church of St. Mary Ratcliffe in Bristol, but when this was found to be untrue, and as a consequence, he was unable to sell his poems in London, he killed himself. Only afterwards was it appreciated that the poems were, in fact, his own creation, in which he had used the language of the 15-century. (3). Henry Kirke White, was a young man from Nottingham who, apprenticed to a stocking weaver, was without means. But after a good deal of personal endeavour and the publication of some of his poems in 1803 (that were violently attacked by critics), he ended up at St. John's College Cambridge. He aspired to ordination, but the strain of study resulted in his premature death.
These and countless other observations by Miriam Allott, (including links to other poems by Keats), bring a level of understanding to Sleep and Poetry, the goes well beyond the mere reading of it. But, from Keats's own perspective, an ambitious task lay ahead: a clearing away of the undergrowth, so that the forgotten could be unearthed and revived, and poetry restored to to its rightful purpose, which, from his point of view, was:
that it should be a friend
To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.
_______________
Now I don't of course share this limited view of the purpose of poetry; and Keats may not have shared it either, had he lived longer and not been so oppressed by illness; for as we saw in, Death on the Pale Horse, he could accept in Art, truth in all its awfulness. And unlike Keats, I have knowledge, and to some extent, the experience, from an additional two centuries of the continuing evolution of society and poetry as a consequence. So for me, with the horrors of the 20th century in mind, it is wholly acceptable that poetry should, (among other things), seek to prick our consciences to the point where it disturbs and demands a response.
As for the concept of sleep, allied to the image of the "poppy", it was for Keats symbolic of other worlds, and other possibilities, with the power to energise or rejuvenate. And the poem ends on just that note:
And up I rose refreshed, and glad, and gay,
Resolving to begin that very day
These lines; and howsoever they be done,
I leave them as a father does his son.
_______________
© Cormac McCloskey
(1) Letters of John Keats
Ed. Robert Gittings
Oxford University Press (1990)
ISBN 0-19-281081-2
Note: All other quotations attributed to Keats are taken from Gittings.
Eugene Onegin
by Alexander Pushkin
Oxford World's Classics (1995)
ISBN 978-0-19-953864-5
Death on the Pale Horse - here
Keats
The Complete Poems
Ed. Miriom Allott
Longman (1995)
ISBN 0-582-48457-X
Sources used by way of general guidance:
Literary Terms and Criticism
By John Peck and Martin Coyle
Macmillan (1991)
ISBN 0-333-36271-3
The Reign of George III 1760-1815
By J. Steven Watson
Ed. Sir George Clarke
Oxford History of England [Series] (1987)
ISBN 0-19-821713-7
The Age of Reform 1815-1870
By Sir Llewellyn Woodward
Oxford History of England [Series] 1987
ISBN 0 19 821711 0
(2) Wikipedia
(3) Wikipedia
