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The Personality Op John Keats As Revealed in His Letters

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The Personality Op John Keats As Revealed in His Letters THE PERSONALITY OP JOHN KEATS AS REVEALED IN HIS LETTERS APPROVED: Major #rofess( Minorc ProfessoProfessorr ' ^ / f-s Director of vhe Department of English Deanl of the Graduate School THE PERSONALITY OP JOHN KEATS AS REVEALED IN HIS LETTERS THESIS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of MAST® OF ARTS By 'illie Sue Pas BRIO re, B. A Denton, Texas January., 1970 TABLE OF-CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION "l II. "... I STRIVE—TO KNOW MYSELF" . 5 III. "FIVE FEET HIGHT" 11 IV. "THE TRUMPET OF FAME" 15 V. "A HORRID MORBIDITY OF TEMPERAMENT" 20 VI. "THE BRUTE WORLD" 30 VII. "THE LOVE OF MY FRIENDS" 36 VIII. "NOT A RIGHT FEELING TOWARDS WOMEN" ..... 43 IX. "MY FANCY WAS AFFRA1D OF IT" }\-9 X. "MY IMAGINATION IS A MONASTRY" ........ 57 APPENDIX . 69 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 73 111 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Innumerable pages have been written about John Keats, whose death at twenty-six silenced one of the most promising poets of all eras. That one so young could make such an indelible mark on literary history is by modern standards, when one is usually expected to complete his formal education in his early twenties and then begin a career, an almost unbelievable achievement. This very attainment has created much of the interest in Keats as a poet and as a, man, and specifically it has created much conjecture as to his further achievement had he lived out a normal life span. Frequently, the only concept of John Keats's personality is the one conceived through a study of his poetry. This is especially true in the limited introduction the majority of students receive in an English survey course in secondary schools. As a result Keats usually appears as a namby-pamby, a man much more concerned with the artistic and aesthetic realm than with the reality of life as it is lived from day to day. But Keats the man constitutes much more than Keats the poet. To recognize and to understand the personality of Keats requires a study of more than his most popxilar poems, for 1 "he was a man of wider interests, a poet of greater scope than is generally realized,"-*- It 3s unfair to judge Keats the man by only the work of Keats the poet. And it is much more rewarding to read, to study,, to understand and to know Keats the poet when one better understands Keats the man. Keats reveals the complexity of his personality in his i/" letters. They tell the brief and troubling story of his life better than any of his biograx^hers. There is perhaps no body of correspondence of equal magnitude of such strange interest. They alone would have secured him a permanent place in the history of literature. Certainly no man of his years has spoken with greater charm or greater wisdom.^ As one reads the letters of Keats, he begins to realize that in some ways this is a man very much like the man who lives next door. Keats is not only the romantic poet who is admired and revered by countless readers; he is also the plain neighbor or friend who is concerned about his bills, thoughtful of bis health, and eager to be accepted as an individxial, as a man. Conveyed throughout the letters is the presence of a human identity.3 The complexity of this identity becomes apparent as one reads through the letters, recognizing the turmoil and the strife of a man in search of himself and his place in his ^Raymond D. Havens, ''Unreconciled Opposites in Keats," Philol ogical Quarterly, XIV (October, 1933)? 300. '"Leonard Bicon, "A Poet Steadfast as His Star," The_ Saturday Rev 3 ew of Literature, XI (September I, 193'07 '7'~* •%. S. Merwin, "The Identity of Keats," Nation, CLXXVII (September 6, 1933), .114. world. The mind of this man is not always among the clouds; more frequently, it is in the world of reality and its many perplexing problems. The letters reveal Keats to be a man who is as prone as his neighbors to become impatient with the existing universe. \ He is acid and grating in a few of the letters to Fanny Brawne, when his jealousy has been roused or when he feels she has rebuffed him. He ca.n be ungenerous, as in his answer to Shelley's touching and magnanimous invitation to him to spend the winter ^f 1819-20 at Shelley's house in Italy for the sake of his health. He was sensitive about his small stature, and though often gay, he was . often uneasy in society and in the company of women. Keats's search for identity is not an easy one, but it is a believable one. His letters reveal him as a whole man, not as a sentimentalist possessed by his poetic endeavors alone. Poetry is frequently mentioned in his letters, and the very vitality with which Keats responds to every encounter with the world is a form of poetry itself, but the actualities of life with whicn Keats employs his mind are what reveal the real man. Through a careful and thorough analysis of Keats's observations, thoughts and feelings as expressed in his letters, the reader can gain an understanding of the poet's hopes, his fears, his ambitions, his true personality. Such an analysis has not been made approaching the scale attempted in this study. Biographers have referred to the letters '^Ib.id., p. 115. 4 extensively, but a study concentrating on the entire corpus of the letters and employing a primarily inductive methodology to determine the lineaments of Keats1s personality has not hitherto been made available. The standard biographies of Keats have been an important but secondary source to this study. Of the numerous biographies, Walter Jackson Bate's John Keats, published in 1963? is the most inclusive. The detail with which Bate relates the story of Keats 1s life is precise; the study is objective and thorough. Aileen Ward's John Keats: The Making of a Poet, also published in 19o3, is a more concise story, more subjective, and, of necessity, not as detailed. As a result of Ward's more subjective L approach and the' inductive method of the ensuing study, the reader will find that Ward's work has been consulted more frequently than Bate's. Other important biographical studies are Amy Lowell's John Keats, ±923, and Robert Gittings1s John Keats., 1968. CHAPTER II . .1 STRIVE--TO KNOW MYSELF" The search and desire to know oneself Is as old as man himself. To be able to define a certain Identity that can explain "Who am I?" becomes the avocation of every individual. With John Keats it was no different. From the time that he was a small boy, he strove to know himself, to understand himself, and the amazing fact revealed by his letters is that he did know himself--the good and the bad qualities—and that T_. he accepted himself on these terms. The early life of Keats has been told many times: his birth in a room above the Swan and Hoop stables on October 31> 1795; his early education under John Clark and his subsequent friendship with the school- master's son, Cowden Clark: the accidental death of his father, •Thomas Keats, on April lo, l8o4; the hasty second marriage of his mother, Frances Jennings Keats, some two months later: and then the breakup of this marriage and the disappearance of his mother for several years. His father's death and his mother's remarriage would be staggering blows to any boy of eight or nine; their effect on John Keats can hardly be exaggerated.' ... Yet the immediate effect of this tragedy was not to plunge Keats into a Hamlet-like paralysis: quite the reverse: Almost overnight, it seems, he changed from an affectionate child into a 5 rebellious schoolboy, protesting against the world by the only means he had--his fists. It was not until after his mother's death in March, l8l0, that Keats began to find his answer to "Who am I?" He became avidly interested in books, reading almost constantly, undoubtedly searching for some purpose, some explanation, some understanding as to why he, a mere boy of some fifteen years, had suddenly assumed the role of the eldest male member of his family with two younger brothers, George and Tom, and a younger sister, Fanny, over whom he must watch, "Almost overnight he seems to have lost his taste for fighting; his battle with the world appears to have turned / «.p in on himself." It was at this time that Keats began to determine his identity. Although several years later he claimed, as a poet, to have no identity-~ It is a wretched thing to confess,; but is a very fact that not one word T. ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature-'-bow can it, when I. have no nature?3 1 "Aileen Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet (New York, 1963}, pp. 10-11. ™ "" " ~~ 2Ibid., p. 17- -The Lebjbers of John Keats, edited by Hyder Edward Rollms"^ 2~"vols7"(Cambridge~ 195$), I, 3^7- All subsequent quotations from the letters are from the Rollins edition, hereafter referred to as Letters, Volume I or II as noted. Throughout this study all of "Keats's peculiarities of spelling a.nd punctuation, as construed (and occasionally annotated) by Rollins, have been retained. See "The Plan of Til3 s Edition1' (I, 16-25), where Rollins sets forth his policy in dealing with textual problems.
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