“I can read/A wondrous lesson in thy silent face:/Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.”

Posted by goodthinkingbatgirl on March 23, 2010 · Leave a Comment 

Haven’t updated in a while (silly me) and just HAD to say how amazing our Romanticism course has been this term. I already loved Byron (a GCSE English teacher lit that fire many a year ago) but I didn’t really appreciate him as I do now. I also knew very little about Shelley and barely anything about Keats, but now… now they are in my mind, my soul, my self. I could waffle about all of them but instead I will focus on the subject of my current minor/major obsession, young Mr Keats.

The thing with John is, that after reading his work and comparing it to Shelley and Byron, he rather puts them in the shade for me. This is no mean feat, seeing as I had sworn my allegiance to George a long time ago… and I do still adore Byron, it’s just that my new-found love and respect for Keats has brought my love and respect for Byron a little closer to the ground; and his flaws are all the more visible for it.

One thing I particularly love about Keats is that he goes against the egotistical sublime of Byron, Shelley & Wordsworth and instead involves the reader, goes outside of himself to create a work that is engaging and moving, profound and spirited. The egotistical sublime is a wonderful thing to study but it does what it says on the tin – it is egotistical, to a sometimes maniacal degree. The focus is entirely on the poet’s own mind, on his own sense of self and of his own genius… it is much too interior, it does not fully connect with the outside world; rather it seeks to elevate the poet and the reader above our lowly empirical, temporal existence and for the mind to inhabit the higher, sublime, frankly rather elitist plane that Shelley (to me, at least, not really in fact) is the Lord of. Sublime, idealistic, genius, poetic – yes; relatable, likeable, tangible, attainable – no. I do not mean to reject the Sublime entirely as a concept, rather to say that love it as I do, I prefer John’s way of things. He often went outside to write, weather permitting, and the influence of nature and what he physically experienced in the temporal world is often evident in his work. This is what I adhere to, that we should engage with our world and feel its beauty and power, not reject it and just sit and stare at mountains. We should feel, experience, know, love and appreciate the beauty that exists around us. This all sounds a bit hippy-dippy, but read a bit of Keats and you’ll see what I mean; especially “Ode to a Nightingale”, I’m a bit nuts about that one at the moment.

Essentials for any decent Keats obsession: Penguin Classics Complete Poems; Andrew Motion’s wonderful biography, “Keats”; good pencils (and a sharpener) for marginalia; and a copy of “Bright Star” on DVD (with tissues, weeping guaranteed).

Batgirl.xx.

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Filed under Studies · Tagged with Andrew Motion, John Keats, Lord Byron, Ode to a Nightingale, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth