<<

The Recurrent Theme of “Self-Transformation” in ’s

Yong Chen, Ph.D.

Department of English National Pingtung University of Education

Abstract

The major purpose of this paper is to explore further the theme of “self-transformation” seen so often in some of John Keats’s major . As observed by many critics, there are two seemingly opposite impulses embodied as “skepticism” and “” in Keats’s works; yet, the would attempt to “redefine” the above two essential impulses in Keats in a more accurate way, and demonstrate that these two impulses are so compatible that they are incorporated to produce a sort of “self-transformation” in Keats himself; in other words, realizing that the essential unity within these two impulses, Keats has thus transcended the world of opposites through that realization. More important, the writer will add that the best way to understand the real nature of these two central impulses and the real relationship between them is to see them through the thoughts or philosophies manifested in the works of some ancient Chinese philosophers.

Key words: John Keats, self-transformation, skepticism, aestheticism, impulses.

78

Introduction When reading through some of Keats’s major poems, critics have had to come to terms with these contraries, which has been formulated in numerous ways: i.e., “the real versus the ideal, the mortal versus the immortal, the earthly versus the transcendent, and the naturalistic versus the visionary, etc,” ever since Mathew Arnold

(1865, p.112) pointed out a tough-minded “flint and iron” in Keats’s works along with his more obvious tenderheartedness. Leal (2005, p.1) also adds that in Keats’s works, there always exists a state of suspension between “certainty and ignorance,” “doubt and assurance,” in which the artist can make a “wild surmise” with an engaged imagination. All of these discussions reflect the fact that it is rather difficult to characterize these phenomena successfully; yet, there has been a widespread agreement that they really are two central impulses in Keats. To understand their exact nature and relationship is to bring deeper perspectives to Keats’s individual works and, most important, to perceive a special unity in his .

When attempting to solve this mystery, critics, more often than not, tend to view these two impulses as conflicting. Wassil (2000, p.423), for example, claims that

Keats is perpetuating dualistic paradigms of “dispossession and recreation of otherness.” Douglas Bush (1959, p.233) sees at the center of Keats’s works a “tension between the ideal and actual that takes a variety of related forms,” and he adds that

“even in his ripest maturity, Keats … was divided against himself.” Jack Stillinger

(1971, pp.91-93), moreover, suggests that the tenderheartedness that predominates in

Keats’s early poetry finally “gives way to a genuine tough-mindedness as Keats moves away from his earlier trust in the visionary imagination..” Forest Pyle (2003) even in his termed “radical aestheticism” claimed that Keats’s aestheticism, with the experience of a sheer and repeated negation, confronts us with the material sites of culture's own unredeemability and achieves, if it achieves anything at all. What these

79

critics share here is the most popular assumption that these two impulses are incompatible, and that they are fundamentally conflicting.

Some other critics (e.g. Belitt, 1991; Leal, 2005; Wassil, 2000; Williams,

1998), on the contrary, will see these two impulses in Keats’s works as a sort of

“coexistence” of interacting oppositions, or contradictions, which, as they move from the polar extremities of their spectra to a center of interpenetration, or collision, no longer cancel each other out as incompatibles, but reinforces each other. Of them,

Belitt (1991, p.5) summarily proposes the termed “Contrariety Principle” to explain the above phenomenon. What is more, the poetics of “duality” is also inherently evident in many of other Romantic works. For example, it can be seen in ’s

(1978) famous affirmation: “The contraries are positives” and “Without contraries, there is no Progression,” and in Wordsworth’s work, The Prelude, in which its thesis, as a whole, is centered upon the idea that “transcendence” is indicated by a dialectic between temporality and the moment that is out of time (45, 53), and also in

Coleridge’s well-know description of the “imagination” in his Biographia Literaria

(1817) as a “repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I

AM.” Amazingly, the idea cited above that suggests that the two seemingly opposing forces will eventually lead to an essential unity is strikingly similar to some ancient

Chinese philosophies, especially the notions of “Ying” and “Yang” (the negative force and the positive force, so to speak) in “Tai-Ji.”

The major purpose of this paper, therefore, is to “redefine” these two essential impulses in a more accurate way, and, furthermore, demonstrate that they are actually perfectly compatible, and that these two seemingly opposite impulses, embodied as

“skepticism” and “aestheticism” in Keats’s works, are ultimately incorporated to produce a sort of “self-transformation” in Keats himself; that is, realizing that the essential unity within these two impulses, Keats has, therefore, transcended the world 80

of opposites through that realization.. More important, the writer will add that the best way to understand the real nature of these two central impulses and the real relationship between them is to see them through the works of some ancient Chinese philosophers.

Most critics couldn’t help noticing that there was a kind of literal and metaphorical excursion between the ideal and the actual world in the structure of some of Keats’s masterpieces. The contradictions are exactly the focus of our discussion in this paper. In line with Sharp’s (1979, p.8) observations, we claim that it is the synthesis of these two central impulses, which begins with his ever-increasing

“skepticism” and ends with his total absorption in “aestheticism,” leads Keats to undergo a sort of self-transformation in himself. Referring to the concepts of duality being discussed, we might claim that “aestheticism” actually functions as the solution to “skepticism,” the problem.

Skepticism: The Problem

Like some other romantics, Keats does not alienate himself from the skepticism, which was popular in the age of . However, what distinguishes him from the first generation Romantics in this regard is his significantly greater skepticism. For example, Keats tells Bailey, “You have all your life I think so) believed everybody ... I have suspected everybody.” (Letters: 1:292).

Again, Keats writes to Bailey, “I must once for all tells you I have not one idea of the truth of any of my speculations …. I shall never be a Reasoner.” (Letters, 1:243).

“Things cannot to the will / Be settled,” Keats said in the epistle “To J.H.

Reynolds…,” “but they tease us out of thought” (Lines 76-77). Since a truly radical skeptic like Keats can never rest with the established church, Keats writes to Bailey in

1818, “…nothing in this world is provable.’ (Letters, 1:242). 81

It should not come as a surprise that young Keats is such a radical skeptic if we know a little more of his life, short but full of sufferings and despairs. Keats had tow brothers and one sister early deprived of both father and mother, so ties of intimate and passionate affection bound them to each other. Tom, the youngest, was fatally ill with . George, the middle one, had to emigrate to America to gain independence. Keats felt:

“Now I am never alone without rejoicing that there is such a thing as

death – without placing my ultimate in the glory of dying for a great

human purpose …. My love for my brothers, from the early loss of our

parents, and even from earlier misfortunes, has grown into an affection

of “passing the Love of Women.” I have been ill – tempered with them,

I have vexed them – but the thought of them has always stifled the

impression that any woman might otherwise have made upon me. I

have a sister too, and may not follow them either to America or to the

grave – Life must be undergone …”

(Letters, 1:293)

That was John Keats at the age of twenty-two. Later on, Tom dies; almost immediately, Keats fell into love with . At that time, the disease began in his throat, and he came to realize that he would never marry Fanny. In another letter to his friend, Keats writes:

“Circumstances are like Clouds continually gathering—while we are

laughing the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of

events—while we are laughing, it sprouts, it grows, and suddenly bears

a poison—fruit which we must pluck. Even so, we have leisure to

reason on the misfortunes of our friends: our own touch us too nearly

for words. Very few men have arrived for words. Very few men have 82

arrived at a complete disinterestedness of mind …”

(Letters, 2:78).

Suffering the agony, both emotionally and physically, Keats begins to dream of the ideal state of “a complete disinterestedness of mind.” In 1980, Keats writes to Browne:

“Is there another Life? Shall I awake and find all of this ?” (Letters, 2:346).

This can be seen as the culminating statement of Keats’s skepticism when he begins to doubt the whole existence of his is nothing but a dream.

Aestheticism: The Solution

Keats writes in a letter, “I must take my stand upon some vantage ground and begin to fight …. I must choose between despair and Energy—I choose the latter”

(Letters, 2:113). The choice of energy, to Keats, is to choose that which dissipates despair and enhances life—which is exactly what beauty does. Here, beauty, in a way, is the human truth for man, and it must be an intensity of his own making, and that is the reason why Keats says, “What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not” (Letters, 1:184). Notably, the idea of intensity is most valuable for Keats’s resolution of the problems posed by both suffering and skepticism, since it is only through intense perception or experience that human reality becomes spiritualized. Keats’s famous conception of is grounded on the premise:

“ ….. I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being

in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after

fact and reason … This is pursued through Volumes and would perhaps

take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty

overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterate all

consideration.” 83

(Letters, 1:193-194)

The intense perception of beauty allows one to remain content with and even to relish the “uncertainties, mysteries and doubts;” likewise, the intense experience of skepticism can help one deepen his attachment to life. There, to Keats, the principle of beauty is in all things, even suffering. These ideas are manifested in many of his poems. In “ on Melancholy,” for example, the relationship between beauty and transience inevitably involves melancholy, but he rejects death as the proper response:

“No, no, go to Lethe, neither twists

Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;

Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d

By nightshade, ruby grape of Porserphine;

Make not your rosary of yew-berries,

Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be

Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;

For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.”

(Lines 1-10)

In the second stanza, beauty was born in melancholy and becomes the healing power to make us embrace life even in our sorrow.

“But when the melancholy fit shall fall

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed all,

And hides the green hill in an April shroud;

Then glut thy sorrow on a morning ,

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, 84

Or on the wealth of globed peonies;

Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.”

(Lines 11-20)

To Keats, even the intense perception of beauty will overcome every other consideration;” yet, it is still subordinated to “human limitation.” In Keats’s “,” the “Poesy” we first meet in the poem has the characteristics of the sublime:

“But what is higher beyond thought than thee?

Fresher than berries of a mountain tree?

More strange, more beautiful, more smooth, more

Regal,

Than wings of swans, than doves, than dim-seen

Eagle?

What is it? And to what shall I compare it?

It has a glory and naught else can share it:

The thought thereof is awful, sweet, and holy,

Chasing away all worldliness and folly.”

(Line 19-26)

Just after contemplating the visionary rewards of an encounter with ,

Keats projects the vocational consequence:

“Also imaginings will hover

Round my fire-side, and haply there discover

Vistas of solemn beauty, where I’d wander 85

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 loveliness,

Write on my tablets all that was permitted,

All that was for our human senses fitted.”

(Lines 75-80)

Ironically, the same “green hill” side that the charioteer will lead upon is now suffused with the “awfuller shadow” and the “enchanted grot.” The poet is made fearful when he is seeking for the “loveliness,” and his fear prevents his entering the scene further deeper. Keats here probably follows the examples set by Wordsworth—a model for adjusting the sublime to human size, as seen in “The excursion.” In

“Endymions,” we see the same pattern as that in “Sleep and Poetry”:

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full sweet dreams, and health, and quiet

Breathing.

Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

A flowery band to bind us to the earth.

Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days.”

(Lines 1-9)

In this poem, Keats claims “beauty” is an unchanging joy that “will never pass 86

into nothingness,” and thus will keep us from fear of death. The permanence of beauty will make sleep possible, and sleep in return will bind us to the earth. However, even if we are bound to the earth, we are still in contact with the heavens:

“And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;

All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

An endless fountain of immortal drink,

Pouring unto us the heaven’s brink.”

(Lines 20-24)

Keats, like Wordsworth in “Tintern Abbey,” connects the with the sublime endlessness of the sky and consequent feelings of continuity. The ability of a natural object to become an infinite world in the mind’s eye of the poet reminds us of

Blake, the poet who wrote his famous lyrics:

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild ,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.”

(: 1-4)

Philosophies Embodied in “Tai-Ji” of “I-Jing”

The mentioned two central impulses in Keats’s works might be understood better in the light of “I-Jing” (the “Book of Changes”), especially on the part of

“Tai-Ji,” of

which the dualistic nature of “Ying” and “Yang” forms as the major thesis of its argument. As we know, “I-Jing,” dated from ancient time, has provided the Chinese 87

with a method of studying life from the point of view of the continual flux and changes of things, and the concept of “Tai-Ji” is centered upon the idea that the essence of “Dao” (i.e., “Way,” literally) is manifested as the result of an interaction of two forces—the negative force and the positive force, functioning as “problem” or

“solution” in a more “down-to-earth” sense. Clearly, these concepts embedded in the ancient “Tai-Ji” symbol (the Great One) (as seen below) can explain the phenomena of these dualities rather successfully. The figure of “Tai-Ji” itself reveals that the essential unity is presented as a circle (or globe): a sinuous changing line divide the sphere into a light half and a dark half, and in each half, there is an “eye” or “nucleus”, which represents its activating principle. As each half develops, the one now becomes two, the “Ying” and the “Yang,” and out of them develop “the ten thousand of things.” It is quite noteworthy that the concepts of “Tai-Ji,” in a broader sense, has influenced not only Dao-Jia, but it has equally produced great impacts on

Buddhism, especially in the “Sect of Zen”.

Here, the oppositions or contradictions move according to what Hegel would say: “Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis” is formulated as the total pattern of the dialectical way to knowledge. Initially, among all things there are no oppositions or contradictions of any sort within themselves, and later on the oppositions or contradictions begin to arise from within and the state of harmony is being shattered, and finally the final stage of essential harmony is reached, as seen in the notable phenomenon: a coexistence of interacting polarities; therefore, the existence of

“Ying” and “Yang” is no longer viewed as two forces that cancel each other out as incompatibles, but as something being incorporated to form the essential unity.

Rather interestingly, Jhuang-Ze (Jhang-Zou, alias), the Taoist master, shares this uncertainty with Keats:

“Once I, Jhuang-Zou, dreamed that I was a butterfly and was happy as 88

a butterfly. I was conscious that I was quite pleased with myself, but I

did not know that I was Zou. Suddenly I awoke, and there I was,

visibly Zou. I do not know whether it was Zou dreaming that he was a

butterfly or the butterfly dreaming that it was Zou.”

(Jhuang-Ze, Chi-Wu

Pian)

Process of Self-Transformation

All the ideas discussed above demonstrate that the two impulses in Keats are perfectly compatible, and that these two seemingly opposite impulses are in fact ultimately incorporated to function as a sort of “self-transformation” in Keats himself; that is, realizing that there is an essential unity that exists in these two impulses, Keats has thus transcended the world of opposites.

The notion of “self-transformation” is in fact based upon the Daoist

“decreative-creative dialectic,” which is one of the key concepts in Daoism, and the process of “self-transformation” in Keats himself, in a way, is so much like what the famous Gong-An in the Zen Buddhist Transmission of the Lamp purposefully informs:

“Thirty years ago before I was initiated into Chan, I saw mountains as

mountains, rivers as rivers. Later, when I got an entrance into knowledge, I

saw mountains not as mountains, rivers not as rivers. Now that I have

achieved understanding of the substance, then mountains are still mountains,

rivers still rivers.”

Similar to Hegel’s dialectics (formulated as “Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis), the

Zen master of the above Gong-An proposes three stages for the perception of reality.

During the first stage, i.e., “seeing mountains as mountains, rivers as rivers” is 89

comparable to the innocent or native mode of apprehending reality. This stage can well be used to represent Keats’s innocent state before he has indulged in skepticism.

Then, we move on to the second stage of perception, “i.e., mountains not as mountains, rivers not as rivers.” This stage can be seen as the peak of Keats’s mounting skepticism. Finally, the third stage, “i.e., seeing mountains still as mountains, rivers still rivers,” must then be considered as the transcendent state of

Keats, who has moved much beyond the world of opposites with his absorbing and all-embracing aestheticism.

The uncertainty about whether life is a dream also leads one to doubt that whether life is the ultimate goal, or whether death is lamentable. Paradoxically, here the dreamer is one who is fully awakened, and the one who realizes the “totality of things.” Realizing that everything is in a state of flux, continually being transformed,

Jhuang-Ze, therefore, stresses (as below) that only the one with this “great awakening” can keep calmness in his or her mind, rising above antinomies like life and death, good and evil, and ugliness and beauty:

“When we dream, we do not know that we are dreaming. In our dreams, we

may even interpret our dreams. Only after we are awake do we know we have

dreamed. Finally, there comes a great awakening, and then we know life is a

great dream. However, the stupid think that they are awake all the time, and

believe that they known it distinctly. Are we (honorable) shepherds? How

vulgar we are! …. When I say you were dreaming, I am also dreaming.

Keats, like Jhuang-Ze, is awakened from his deepest dreams by sloughing off the dead skin of self-consciousness, and becomes like the butterfly fluttering its wings and flying leisurely in the sun among flowers. The cycle of human life is like the cycle of seasons, as the “Ying” of winter gives way to the “Yang” of summer, and then their positions reverse. It is noteworthy that the idea of “great awakening” is 90

manifested in Buddhism as one of its major teachings, and traditionally the term

“Buddhism” is translated literally as the “Philosophy of Awakening,” and “Buddha,” on the other hand, “The Awakened.”

Interestingly, Stillinger’s (1971) diagram (as seen below) might help us understand more about the process of “self-transformation” in Keats himself. The diagram is originally designated to interpret the structure of the literal or metaphorical excursion often seen in the work of English Romantic period, but it seems equally fit to interpret the phenomenon under discussion:

B

A

A’

The horizontal line stands for a boundary separating the actual world (below) and the ideal (above). Characteristically, the speaker begins in the real world (A), takes off in mental flight to visit the ideal (B), and then—for a variety of reasons—returns 91

home to the real (A’). However he has not simply arrived back where he began (hence

“A’” rather than “A” at the descent), for he has acquired something—a better understanding of a situation, a change in attitude toward it—from the experience of the flight, and he is never again quite the same person who spoke at the beginning of the poem. Here, amazingly, so many striking similarities or affinities are found in the diagram’s descriptions about the above “mental flight,” when compared with our previous discussions concerning the process of “self-transformation” in Keats himself.

Conclusion

As evidenced in some of Keats’s works, the immortality seemed to be the last thing in this world that he will ever try to believe. Yet, in contradiction, Keats is also the same person who says in his letter to Fanny Brawne, “I long to believe in immortality.” Therefore, when a person like Keats who rejected even as he lay on his deathbed at claims that he “longs to believe immortality,” we have reason to believe that what he means is most likely not Christian immortality. In the famous “finer tone” letter to Bailey, Keats himself reveals his answer: “We shall enjoy ourselves here after … by having what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone…” (Letters, 1:185). Again, he says that any consolation must be grounded not on metaphysical or other worldly principles but on earthly things, and it must be based on “the beautiful, the poetical in all things.” (Letters, 1:179). Here, it is noteworthy that Keats, a person who is deeply absorbed in aestheticism, characteristically developed his humanized “religion of beauty,” paradoxically rooted and blossomed in Skepticism, and offered as an alternative to the Christian response to the world.

Hence, we might conclude that Keats is seeking synthesis that may apply to life and to art. To him, everything in the world is in a state of flux, continually being 92

transformed, and so is beauty; yet, to Keats, when beauty is perceived through intense perception, its sublimity lights up the darkness. As Wlecke (1973, p.129) declares,

“At any moment in time there can be experienced a sense of the self’s diffusion throughout all moments in time,” and thus, to Keats, the moment of experiencing the sense of self’s diffusion is exactly the moment when beauty is perceived through intense perception, and that is exactly the same reason why Keats would declare:

“Beauty overcomes every other consideration or rather obliterates all consideration.”

(Letters, 1:193-194).

It is clear that the contributions that Keats makes to this world are not only his talents as displayed in the art of his poetry, but his that echoes through his works. Most critics (e.g., Larrissy, 2005; Wassil, 2000) would agree that it is hard to establish a direct linkage between the Orient and these Romantic poets, despite the fact that some oriental motifs are occasionally found in their works, but Keats’s prophetic voice that stresses “an essential unity lies in its bittersweet totality” has transfixed the physical separation of time and space. Most important, with his unique

Keatsian style of reasoning, Keats has successfully led us to see the “Way” for him or all to transcend the world which is always filled with oppositions and contradictions.

References

Arnold, Matthew. (1865). “John Keats.” in Criticism, 112.

Barth, S.J. Robert. (2003). Romanticism and Transcendence: Wordsworth, Coleridge,

and the Religious Imagination. Columbia; University of Missouri Press. ISBN

0- 8262-1453-3.

Belitt, Ben. (1991).Toward a poetics of uncertainty. Southwest Review, Vol.76 issue

2, 164.

Blake, William. (1978). ’s Writing. University Press. 93

Bush, Douglas, ed. (1959). John Keats: Selected Poems and Letters, 233. Houghton

Mifflin Company. ISBN: 0395051401.

Galvin, Rachel. (2004). William Blake visions and verses. Humanities,

May/June2004,

Vol.25, Issue 3, 16-20.

Stillinger, Jack. (1971). The Hoodwinking of Madeline. London: Oxford University

Press.

Larrissy, Edward. (2005). Blake’s orient. Romaticism, Vol.11 Issue 1. 1-13.

Leal, Amy. (2005). Negative capabilities: Keatsian thresholds from “” to

Vampyr. City University of New York.

Pyle, Forest. (2003). Kindling and Ash: Radical Aestheticism in Keats and Shelley.

Studies in Romanticism 42. 4 (Winter 2003): 427-459.

Sharp, Ronald A. (1979). Keats, Skepticism, and the Religion of Beauty. Athen: The

University of Georgia Press.

Wassil, Gregory. (2000). Keats’s orientalism. Studies in Romanticism, Vol.39 Issue 3,

419.

Wilhelm, Richard, trans. (1951). I-Ching (Book of Changes). Routledge and Kegan

Paul

Ltd, 2 vols.

Williams, Nicholas M. (1998). Ideology and Utopia in the Poetry of William Blake.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wlecke, Albert. (1973). Wordsworth and the Sublime. Berkeley: University of

California.

94