John Keats (1795-1821)
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aus: www.englishhistory.net |
John Keats was a poet
of the second generation of English Romanticism. His major literary interest
was in the Elizabethan Epoch. It was said that it was
"his first love".
Cowden Clarke, the son of Keat’s teacher and also an important author of English Romanticism, introduced him to the ouvres of Spenser. Spenser was one of the most important poets of the Elizabethan age (1552 – 1599). Like many other poets of Romanticism, Keats picked up the theme of Grecian mythology. All of his poems deal with typical romantic motives like nature, feelings, etc. and the glorification of the Elizabethan age. A typical example is his ode "To Autumn". He describes the "fruitfulness" of the autumn, "the maturing sun" and the prime of the late-flowers. Autumn is personified as a woman whom the speaker is talking to.
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The glorification of nature and the flight from reality, in this case indicated through the speaker's conversation with the personified autumn, are typical of the poems of this time.
Together with the style and the theme which are typical of Romanticism the content and the subjects of his poems make him one of the most striking English poets, although he just wrote in a period of only 6 years (1814 – 1820).
Even Keats himself believed that his poems would be forgotten soon. "Here lies one whose name was writ on water" (quote from one of his letters).
After his death the general interpretation and understanding of his poems were limited in contrast to the way they are seen at present. Keats was seen as a typical representative of his time with one difference. He always referred to real life while others fled into an abstract world. Because of this he was supposed to be "inapt to abstract thinking". His letters supported this judgment. "O life of Sensation rather than of thoughts" (letter, Nov. 22, 1817).
With the beginning of the 20th century new perspectives of the interpretation of his work came up. An expanded understanding was the result.
Keats was now praised for the seriousness and "thoughtfulness" of his poems, making him a striking poet of Romanticism.
Against the public opinion of the 19th century, in which he was seen as just one of the typical Romantic authors, it became now clear that the real meaning of Keat’s poems was linked with the fact that he tried to face his personal problems and those of human life in general.
This is a contrast to the typical Romantic literature, which evaded reality.
Keats handled various themes. His common method is to deal with controversial ones in one poem. Examples are dream/reality, joy/melancholy, ideal/reality, life/death.
As a result one can say that Keats seems to be a typical representative of Romanticism at first sight. But in opposition to many other poets of his time he faced reality and its problems in a personal (love/joy) as well as in a social (ideal/reality) way and tried to face them instead of fleeing into a dream-world.
John Keats, To Autumn (1819)
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies
Literatur:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Boulevard/1805/biography.html
http://portio.bl.uk/exibitions/Keats/overview.html
O. Springer (Hrsg.): Langenscheidts Enzyklopädisches Wörterbuch der Englischen und Deutschen Sprache. Berlin 1963
W. Benton (Publisher): Encyclopaedia Britannica. Chicago 1971
Wright, David The Penguin Book of English Romantic Verse. Harmondsworth, Middlessex, England: 1972;
Verfasser: Jan Müller