Major influences on John Keats throughout his poetic career
The entirety of Keats’ poetic career spanned only a short while, with his works having only been in publication for four years before his death in 1821, causes by progressive tuberculosis. Despite his premature death, Keats has become one of the most impressive and arguably famous poets in English history. However, his talents were only completely recognised post-mortem, and it was only by the late 19th century that other writers acknowledged and took ideas from his works. Most notably, one of the first writers to express their admiration for Keats, was Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine whose works have contributed mostly to philosophical literature. He claimed that, his ‘first encounter with Keats's work was the most significant literary experience of his life.’ This fascination is expressed in one of Borges’ manuscripts, entitled ‘The Nightingale of Keats’, where he claims that the 1819 poem ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is misunderstood by the English as they do not ‘deal in abstractions’, which is a requirement to delve into his poetry. Due to this distinctly negative reception and lack of recognition during his lifetime, Keats had little self confidence in his own works, expressed in some personal letters to his lover, Fanny Browne, where he writes, ‘I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.’ The anguish he felt towards his illness is potent in this quote, with his total isolation expressed in the fact that he has made no single person proud In his lifetime and views himself as a failure. However, his personal inability to appreciate his own works does not detract from the impressiveness of his writing, and his ability to use mature influences such as William Hazlitt, Edmund Spencer, Edmund Kean and Shakespeare from an age as young as 17.
The initial major influence on Keats was Edmund Spenser, a poet named as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English Verse. Spenser developed ‘Spenserian Verse’, whereby each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is "ababbcbcc. Keats used this specific type of verse as a means to help him develop his poetic sensitivity, and even entitled one of his earliest poems, written in 1812, ‘Imitation of Spenser’. Keats' earliest poem was written soon after his tutor, Charles Cowden Clarke, had introduced him to Spenser. Keats was also in adoration of Spenser’s linguistic talent and his capacity to create lucid visions. However, it is easy to see why Spenser would appeal to the young poet, considering Spenser wrote about knights, floating islands and castles of brass. The immediate title embodies the idea that this poem is panegyric, serving as an accolade to the developer of this type of verse, as the title expresses Keats’ lust to use the same style and form as Spenser, almost as if he is holding it paragon. ‘Imitation of Spenser’ reflects the level of detail that Spenser achieved in many of his poems, foremost, ‘Prothalalmion’, and it is abundantly clear that Keats was in love with the level of poetic sensitivity in Spenser’s work. After studying both, there is a particular link between the two, concerning the way in which language is used to describe the sun, and the warmth that it provides. In ‘Imitations of Spenser’, Keats opens with a ‘Spenserian sunrise’, describing the way in which, ‘her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill/Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame’. Even from the immediate opening, the reader can sense that the sunrise is adopting a maternal and comforting characteristic through being personified by the use of ‘her’. Furthermore, the iambic pentameter allows a level of fluidity which reflects the delicacy of these first initial ‘footsteps’, and the royal imagery of the ‘crowning’ allowing a sense of glory upon the rising of this sun. In ‘Prothalamion’, we are presented with a similar opening, depicting ‘A gentle spirit, that lightly did delay/Hot Titan's beams, which then did glister fair.’ Here, the ‘beams’ of sunlight are presented to sparkle off of the surface of the River Thames, creating this beautiful image of a picturesque landscape, and the water being gloriously glossed over by this ‘fair’ light. Critics recognized the similarity in their level of poetic detail, with Mary Russell Mitford quoting, ‘No one since Spenser has possessed a more graphic pen. His processions not only live, they move’. I agree with this statement, with one of my favourite lines of Keats’ poetry coming from ‘Imitations of Spenser’ itself: ‘Whose silken fins, and golden scales' light/Cast upward, through the waves, a ruby glow’. Here, Keats has the ability to create this mellifluous image of a perfectly crafted fish, whose preciously coloured scales, cause an explosion of colour in the still water. From this comparison, it can be concluded that Spenser had a profound influence on Keats, particularly on graphic imagery and the fluidity of his writing.
The greatest influence on Keats’ writing was his friendship with acclaimed essayist, William Hazlitt. I say ‘greatest influence’, evidenced by the fact that the foundations of Keats’ greatest idea, negative capability, were formed on behalf of this friendship. The two met in November 1816, through the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. Soon after their acquaintance, they both began to admire each others works, and Keats began to attend many of Hazlitt’s lectures. The word ‘gusto’ was used by Hazlitt, to describe the power and passion with which an artist creates another form. ‘The infinite quantity of dramatic invention in Shakespeare takes from his gusto’, Hazlitt wrote in the Examiner on 26 May 1816; ‘The power he delights to show is not intense, but discursive. He never insists on any thing as much as he might, except a quibble.’ This was one of Keats’ most loved works by Hazlitt, and was one through which negative capability was essentially formed. The term ‘negative capability’ has been used by poets and philosophers to describe the ability of the individual to perceive, think, and operate beyond any presupposition of a predetermined capacity of the human being, with the word ‘negative’ being used to show the powers possessed not by the poet their self. Here, we see a distinct similarity to the term ‘gusto’, used by Hazlitt. Keats coined this term, and it was used only once in a private letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, on 21 December 1817, that was publicized: ‘and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability’. This appraisal of Shakespeare, most definitely derived from what he would have heard Hazlitt preach in his lectures. Hazlitt was a great admirer of Shakespeare, and portrayed this throughout most of his lectures on poetry, during one of which at the Surrey institution he exclaimed, ‘like Shakespeare, a great poet was nothing in himself: but he was all that others were, or that they could become. . . . When he conceived of a character, whether real or imaginary, he not only entered into all its thoughts and feelings, but seemed instantly, and as if by touching a secret spring, to be surrounded with all the same objects.’ Keats' own meditations on graphic descriptions sprung forth from this lecture, as Hazlitt’s notions of poetic energy, "gusto," and imagination as an intensification of sensory experience had such a profound effect on the young poet. Due to Hazlitt being such an impressionable character upon Keats, Keats developed this newfound ideology that a poet might do their best work as a ‘chameleon poet’, where the poet has no true self, and holds the ability to transcend self and essentially become the character or being they wish to describe.
Keats saw a living representation of someone with the ability to do this, in Edmund Kean. Kean was a celebrated Shakespearean actor who had the capability to embody Shakespeare’s characters so perfectly, with praise from poets such as Coleridge saying that, ‘Seeing him act was like reading Shakespeare by flashes of lightning.’ Keats found an ‘indescribable gusto’ in the voice of Kean, who completely inhabited the parts he played. Great poets, argued Keats, had gusto because they were not impeded in their work by an identity of their own, with personal opinions that might affect the independence and freedom of the characters they create. Keats was even quoted to have said that he ‘has no Identity – he is continually informing and filling some other Body’. Keats was heavily influenced by the way Kean acted, and was in awe of his elocution. In a report published by Keats himself, he writes, ‘Amid his numerous excellencies, the one which at this moment most weighs upon us, is the elegance, gracefulness and music of elocution.’ This love for Kean’s effortless ability to act, and project with such graciousness, stems from Keats’ own desire to write beautifully fluid poetry. This idea, coupled with Hazlitt’s idea of ‘gusto’ and a love for Shakespeare, allowed him to write his first Shakespearian sonnet. At the end of January 1818 he wrote his first Shakespearean sonnet, "When I have fears that I may cease to be," a strangely accurate foresight into the future, considering the early onsight symptoms of tuberculosis appeared a year later in 1819, and his actual diagnosis in 1820. This sonnet is arguably one of his finest and best crafted. This is distinguished as a Shakespearean sonnet with its abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme and its division into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. "When I have fears that I may cease to be,’. In this first line one is presented with an invitation to follow on through the poem, with the iambic pentameter creating a pleasing, fluid motion. However, Keats used his poetic prowess to utilise this mellifluous rhythm to address key Shakespearean themes. These themes being: time, death and art. Keats allowed this iambic rhythm to directly reflect how rapidly death approaches and the speed at which time can pass. The fluid rhythm reflects how Keats was misfortunately burdened with a fear of early death, through the death of both his parents from tuberculosis. Keats used these themes as a way of representing a struggle along a borderline of vision ("the shore / Of the wide world") between his aspiration after his acquaintance with Fanny Brawne and his fear of slipping into death and obscurity. Keats abandoned the lexis recommended by Wordsworth through Lyrical Ballads, where a more conversational tone is used to remove the gulf regularly separating the reader from the true understanding of the poem. This was achieved through Keats using his distinct style, and a use of Elizabethan archaisms, such as ‘charact'ry’, and ‘garners’. I believe that Keats did not wish to conform to the style that Wordsworth and Coleridge recommended, due to the idea of a ‘chameleon poet’, mention earlier, which was enforced by his series of intellectual exchanges between the Hazlitt and Keats. For a poet to truly achieve the desires of their mind, they must have the ability to inhabit many different characteristics, therefore, the style of language and register must also be flexible. This is why this sonnet, uses a completely different style of language, to ‘Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art’, for example where no such archaisms are used.
Keats had the misfortune of his brother, mother and father all passing away during a period of seven years in his life, with his brother dying in 1802, and his mother in 1809. Unfortunately, Keats was therefore burdened with the pre-emption that he might also fall victim to an early death. This fear was expressed, as I mentioned earlier, in ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’, where Keats explains that he fears he may die without ‘gleaning [his] teeming brain’. Keats’ fears were proven true, as he developed tuberculosis which was eventually fatal. This anticipation of death was a huge influence on Keats, and I would say, that the knowledge that he was going to die, lit him in a sense of urgency, however, it did not govern all of his poetry, but definitely coloured it. Through reading Keats’ poetry written towards the end of his life, I take the position that many of his poems, especially his 1819 odes, were affected by this. 1819 was labelled as ‘the living year’, or ‘the golden’ year for Keats, for this was the year that he wrote the majority of his odes, and ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. The year was given this title, based on the fact that it was his most productive and fulfilling year. He was not satisfied with the way in which classic odes were written and so wished to revolutionise them. Focusing on the influence of death on his works, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, can be seen to embody the situation that he was stuck in. This ode contains a narrator's discourse on a series of designs on a Grecian urn. The poem focuses on two scenes: one in which a lover eternally pursues a beloved without fulfilment, and another of villagers about to perform a sacrifice. I believe that Keats wished to express his own personal misfortune, through the depictions on the urn. Keats was engaged to Fanny Brawne, however their marriage never succeeded as it was cut short by his prevalent tuberculosis. This idea that he never reached personal satisfaction concerning his love life, tainted this poem as he wished to express his grief that love is fruitless. Keats writes, ‘Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss.’ Here, he asserts the meaning of the definitive, ‘never’, through the use of repetition, where he enforces the eternal meaning of the term. A kiss is regularly used as a seal of love, and a symbol of affection. Therefore, by depriving the lover of this ‘kiss’, they are left vulnerable and unsatisfied. I feel that this reflects the ongoings of Keats’ personal life, as he was never able to fulfil his life with Brawne, hence why he choses the urn to house the image of a failed relationship. To this extent, I feel that the prevalence of death in his life affected his views on time, and love massively, hence why I feel it is a major influence on his poetic career, specifically the final stages.