Hyperion: A Fragment 1818 (1820)

Notes on Hyperion by John Keats

The Titans, usurped by the new Olympian Gods, mourn their lost empire. The still unfallen Hyperion continues his struggle, but must eventually accept defeat. He is replaces by Apollo, whose emergence into godhead is presided by Mnemosyne.

This unfinished poem in three books is based on the Greek myth of the defeat of the Titans. Under Saturn, the Titans, including Hyperion, a sun God, ruled the Universe. They were overthrown by the Olympians, led by three sons of Saturn: Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto. Hyperion was replaces by Apollo, who was also a sun God but had, in addition, particular associations with music and poetry. Keats sees in the myth a means to express faith in the idea of progress. Even the old gods must admit that their successors are more beautiful and therefore better fitted to rule.

Book 1 opens in media res with the deposed god Saturn mourning the loss of his empire to Jupiter. Thea, another of the Titans and sister/wife to Hyperion, attempts to comfort him, but, also despairing, she can only weep at his feet. Saturn rouses himself to renewed resistance and is led by Thea to where the other fallen Titans are assembled. The second part of Book 1 focuses on Hyperion, still unvanquished and defiant but apprehensive and suffering from premonitions of death and disaster, preparing to go to the aid of Saturn.

Book 2 describes the council of the deposed Titans, as they attempt to come to terms with their new powerlessness, Saturn arrives, guided by Thea, and opens the debate. The speech given by Oceanus is the most positive; he urges his fellow Titans to come to terms with change as an inevitable part of the natual process, and ends by praising the beauty of his own supplanter, the new god of the seas, Neptune, Clymene, a sea nymph, supports Oceanus. Her lament declares the uselessness of philosophical arguments in dispelling grief, but also comforts Oceanus's wisdom when she describes the beautiful music with which the earth greeted the arival of Apollo, the new god of song. Enceladus does not agree and urges them all to challenge the enemy, reminding them that Hyperion is still unfallen. Hyperion himself arrives, but he has now accepted defeat.

The brief, fragmentary Book 3 describes the valley where Apollo, who will be the new sun god, is coming into his powers. Mnemosyne, herself a Titan, the goddess of memory and mother of the nine Muses, presides over the initiation ceremony. Apollo, whose poetic associations are emphasised by his possession of a lyre, reads a 'wondrous lesson' (book 3, line 112) in her face, and 'Knowledge enormous' (Book 3, line 113) transforms him into a god. Book 3 breaks off with his assumption of godhead. Hyperion invites comparisons with Paradise Lost by presenting another epic version of the Fall in Miltonic blank verse. Similarities can be seen in both the epic theme and the structure - including the opening in media res, with the Titans already fallen - and in specific scenes: the council of the defeated Titans in Book 1, for example, echoes Milton's description of the fallan angels in Hell. But while Milton is concerned with the fall and redemption of humankind, Keats is more interested in a cyclic process in improvement prompted by aesthetic vision, the replacement of a somewhat rigid divine dispensation by a more natural and humane order.

Compare the style of Hyperion with the earlier Endymion, and consider how the new, leaner, harder language is more appropriate for Keats's engagement with the world of power struggles. The luxuriant diction and pleasurable sense of wandering in Endymion is replaced by terse and disciplined language in Hyperion, by grand and forceful diction, an emphatic sense of action, of movement towards a particular climactic moment. Numerous action verbs drive the narrative onwards, suggesting the relentless movement from old to new order, from Hyperion to Apollo.

Compare the way in which these old and new orders are represented. Analyse the effect of the numerous negatives and the emphasis on deathly silence and stillness with which Hyperion begins. How often, throughout the poem, are negatives and stillness associated with the Titans? Although the poem is generally written in lofty and grave verse, there is an abrupt change in the tone at the beginning of Book 3 with the introduction of Apollo. Epic stateliness is replaced with the return to the lusher style and imagery of Endymion. The contrast between the old gods and the new is emphasised by the differences in landscape and style between the austere scene where the Titans gather in Book 2, and the valley in which Apollo becomes immortal in Book 3. The dark, craggy, barren landscape and the sonorous, weighty cadences of the former are replaces by a luxuriant, sensuous, glowing world and much lighter, lilting rhythms before the more measured, grander style returns with Apollo's assumption of godhead.

The poem is full of images of measure, unease and diminishment, rising and falling. Keats uses, for example, varying intensities of light to suggest dynastic revolution. What happens to the radiance and brilliance of the 'bright Titan' (Book 1, line 299) Hyperion? What are the main changes in the world now the Olympians are in ascendance? It has been said that Hyperion is both a gigantic elegy and a hymn to the future, that although Keats is primarily concerned with evolutionary progress, his sympathies are still engaged by the spectacle of fallen greatness. Is there any specific evidence that the poem is both elegiac and forward looking?

Hyperion has also been described as a poem which seeks to assert the authority of a poet and explores the role of the poet in relation to history. How is Apollo associated with poetic power and in what way does he become a type of the negatively capable poet? What is the lesson he reads in Mnemosyne's face? It is through 'knowledge enormous' that Apollo becomes a god, and this knowledge seems to be primarily of suffering. How might the aquisition of such knowledge be related to both a widened and deepened human consciousness and to poetic power? If Apollo represents some kind of new creative force, why is Saturn now rendered impotent? 'But cannot I create? / Cannot I form?' (Book 1, lines 141-2)