John Keats

John Keats had a very short life: he died at the age of 25, yet it is in some of his poems that English romantic poetry shows its best achievements. He has become a symbolic figure in English literature, the figure of the artist who regards poetry as a religion. He once wrote to helley: !"y imagination is a monastery and # am its mon$%. He meant that writing was a restless struggle to render his vision with e&treme purity of form and language, and also a means to escape from a reality he didn't appreciate. He was born in (ondon, on the )*st +ctober *,-5. since he was the eldest son of humble but fairly well/to/do parents, he was sent to school, but couldn't have a university education and in *0** he was apprenticed to a surgeon. 1ut by that time he had made up his mind to devote his life to poetry. #n *0*,, than$s to his friendship with helley, he could publish his first volume of verse: ! Poems%, which was written in a wordsworthian style. but it wasn't a success. However, helley encouraged him and in 2pril *0*0 Keats published ! Endymion%, a romance ta$en from 3ree$ mythology. 2lthough he himself was dissatisfied with it, he deeply resented its blow and could not recover from this delusion. #n the last few years of his life Keats appears as the hero of an obscure but none the less tragic story: seriously ill with consumption, tormented by pecuniary difficulties and his unhappy love for 4anny 1rowne, he shut himself up in !the monastery of imagination% and wrote his best poems. !Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems %, his third volume of poetry, appeared in *025. it is to be placed among the most memorable achievements of English poetry in the nineteenth century. 6he volume contained, besides the tales in verse of the title, the unfinished poem !Hyperion% and all Keats's great odes. 1ut despite the success, he didn't find happiness: by the beginning of *025 he had reali7ed that he was doomed to an early death. despair and agony overcame his creative energies. He sailed for #taly in a desperate attempt to recover his health than$s to the warmer weather, but died on the 2)rd 4ebruary *02*. 6he odes are where Keats gave the fullest e&pression of his poetic genius: there he combines the perfection of form with a deeper and tragic sense of human e&perience. 6. Eliot once said: !Had he written but the odes, these would be enough to ran$ him with the greatest of English poets.

Ode On A Grecian Urn

!+de on a 3recian 8rn% is perhaps the most famous of Keats9s odes. 6he poet ta$es the bas/relief engraved on a 3recian urn as a starting point to deal with the themes he felt as fundamental: :outh, 1eauty, and (ove, seen in the usual romantic contrast between dream and reality. 6he language is e&tremely rich and unusual. it aims at creating a spell around the reader, both by the images it evo$es and by the music of words. #t is a waste of time trying to understand which urn actually inspired Keats: probably he ;ust put together images he had seen <in *0*= sculptures and bas/reliefs from the >artenone were ta$en to the 1ritish "useums? and suggestions of his own fantasy. @hat really matters is that the scene he describes, through its stillness, which cancel the influence of time, becomes a symbol of the dream-world where Youth and Beauty last forever. 6he engraved, immortal world is in comparison with the real one, where everything must finish. 6he central theme of the first A stan7as is then !ideal 1eauty%, which can be seen in concrete forms in the marble ornament of the urn. 6he frie7e represents a moment of life in ancient 3reece: than$s to 2rt, after thousands of years the 1eauty of that world is still fi&ed: the song cannot be left, the trees cannot be bare, the girl cannot fade, and love will last foreverB Even though the sub;ect of this poem is classicist, it is full of romanticism too: in fact the poet loo$s at the ancient world, a lost paradise of 1eauty and harmony, with an attitude of all/consuming nostalgia. 1ut the real life of man is mar$ed by pain, desire, delusion. 2nyway, the ode tries to give a positive conclusion, through the famous message: !1eauty is truth, truth 1eauty%. 6he e&act meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone. @hat does Keats meanC 2re the lines meant to be ta$en literallyC 2re they really that easy to understandC @hat philosophy of life is contained in that epigraphC 6here is no definitive answer, but reading the letter he wrote to 1. 1ailey, emerges a new, comforting idea: 1eauty has an ethical value, it coincides with 3ood and 6ruth. 6hrough all human generations, always dominated by the painful sorrow and the restless time, the urn continues to bear its message of hope: in the contemplation of 1eauty lies the sense of human life.