Qualities Of #Keats’s Poetry

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  #Qualities Of
#Keats’s Poetry
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A great #Romantic
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Keats was not only the last but also the
most perfect of the romanticists. While Scott
was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth
reforming poetry or upholding the moral law,
and Shelley advocating impossible reforms,
and Byron voicing his own egoism and the
political discontent of the times, Keats lived
apart from men and from all political
measures, worshipping beauty like a devotee,
perfectly content to write what was in his
own heart or to reflect on some splendour of
the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to
be. He had, moreover, the novel idea that
poetry exists for its own sake and suffers a
loss by being devoted to philosophy or
politics, or, indeed, to any cause, great or
small…. Keats’s last little volume of poetry is
unequalled by the work of any of his
contemporaries.
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A #lover of #beauty:
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His sensuousness
Keats was considerably influenced by
Spenser and was, like the latter, a
passionate lover of beauty in all its forms
and manifestations. Beauty, indeed, was his
pole star, beauty in nature, in woman, and in
art. “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”, he
writes and again “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty”. And he does not merely love beauty
in the abstract but in its concrete shapes.
He is a poet of the senses and their delights.
None has catered to the five human senses
(sight, taste, touch, smell and hearing) as he
does. Ode to a Nightingale is a feast for the
senses with its tempting references. La Belle
Dame sans Merci has also highly sensuous
touches. In The Eve of St. Agnes , we have a
most refreshing description of the dainties
laid by Porphyro on the table.
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A #poet of #escape
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Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and
Shelley, Keats remained absolutely
untouched by revolutionary theories for the
regeneration of mankind. He had no political
or social interests. He endeavoured to
escape from reality in order to take refuge in
the life of imagination. His later poems like
the Ode to a Nightingale and Hyperion, no
doubt, show an increasing interest in man
and if he had lived, he would definitely have
established a closer contact with reality.
“With him, poetry existed not as an
instrument of social revolt nor of
philosophical doctrine, but for the
expressions of beauty.”
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His #attitude to nature
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His attitude to nature is also governed by the
passion for beauty which rules him. He reads
no moral or ethical meaning in nature and
attaches no spiritual significance to her. He
loves her purely for her physical charm, her
external beauty. The flowers, the dew, the
moonlight, the green grass are just beautiful
to him. Sometimes, too, he personifies the
objects of nature and calls them by their
mythological names. The moon is Cynthia to
him, the sun is Apollo, there are Dryads in
the woods and Naiads in streams and
springs, the dawn becomes Aurora and so
on. His observation of nature is very keen
and he gives us detailed pictures of nature.
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His #pictorial #quality
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Keats is one of the greatest word-painters in
English poetry. Each picture that he gives is
remarkable for its vividness and minuteness
of details. His images are concrete and are
impressed upon our minds. In the Ode to
Autumn , for instance, Autumn has been
pictured in the concrete figures of the
reaper, the winnower, the gleaner etc. Keats
also has the gift of giving life to inanimate
objects while picturing them. In The Eve of
St. Agnes he represents the statues of kings
and queens as feeling cold, and refers to the
carved angels as eager-eyed” and as staring.
The statues and carvings have been given
life. Again, many of his pictures are
colourful. For sheer colour, the image of the
diamonded window-panes dyed with splendid
colours in The Eve of St. Agnes is
unsurpassed.
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His #medievalism
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More than any other poet, Keats responded
to the spell of the Middle Ages. The Eve of
St. Agnes contains several medieval touches.
There are references to medieval chivalry,
medieval superstitions, and medieval art. A
special feature of Keats’s medievalism is his
stress upon passion rather than action and
adventure. In The Eve of St. Agnes he does
not make Porphyro fight but describes the
passionate desire with which he gazes at the
bodily charms of Madeline and the
voluptuous manner in which Madeline
speaks to him. La Belle Dame sans Merci is
also a medieval story.
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His #Hellenism or love for Greek art,
$literature, culture and #Mythology
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Keats’s beauty-worshipping nature turned
instinctively to the beauties of Greek
mythology. He loved Greek legends purely
for their romantic interest. In addition to this,
his attitude to nature, as indicated above has
something of the Greek in it. He is, too, a
lover of Greek art and has written an Ode on
a Grecian Urn . In the Ode to Autumn , again, he
achieves the perfect objectivity of Greek
writers (i.e. he does not bring personal
feeling into the poem).
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His #odes
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Keats wrote the
following remarkable
odes: Ode to a
Nightingale , Ode on a
Grecian Urn , Ode on
Melancholy , Ode to
Autumn and Ode to
Psyche. These are all
exquisite, and taken
together, they sum up
Keats’s philosophy. In
fact, these odes
represent the ripeness and maturity of
Keats’s poetic-genius and are a foretaste of
the kind of poetry Keats would have written
if he had lived longer. In these odes he
establishes a closer contact with real life.
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His #narrative gift
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Keats’s genius is primarily narrative rather
than lyrical. The Eve of St. Agnes is an
unsurpassed example of romantic and
colourful narrative. There is, of course, little
action in the poem but its merit lies chiefly
in its note of passion, its romantic
atmosphere and scenery, medieval
background, and pictorial quality. He has
written various other narrative poems also—
Endymion , Lamia , La Belle Dame sans Merci .
Keats’s sonnets
He follows both Shakespearean and Miltonic
types of sonnets. On First Looking into
Chapman’s Homer , When I have Fears and
Bright Star are remarkable sonnets. He is an
adept in the art of writing sonnets, too.
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His #craftsmanship
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Keats was a very careful artist. He revised
and remodelled his poems and took the
utmost pains in polishing them. He uses the
choicest and most appropriate diction (words
and phrases). There are many jewelled
phrases in his poems. A beautiful phrase
delighted him with a sense of intoxication. In
the Ode to a Nightingale we have such
phrases as “blushful hippocrene”, purple-
stained mouth” and embalmed darkness’. In
The Eve of St. Agnes , Medeline puts away her
“warmed jewels,” and sleeps “an azure
lidded sleep”. A sweet thought makes a
“purpole riot” in Porphyro’s heart. These are
only a few specimens of his ability to coin
beautiful phrases. There are no traces of
carelessness or slovenly work in his poetry.
He is a very conscientious artist. For the
compactness of his language he is almost
Shakespearean.