The Life of Poet William Blake (NIVEL AVANZADO)

Edgar Allan Poe, poeta irremediable

—Edgar Allan Poe, según la Historia Universal de la Literatura de Léon Thoorens:

El poeta irremediable

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), el "poeta irremediable", busca una luz fatídica y misteriosa para iluminar sus portentosas experiencias y para profundizar en los abismos del alma humana.

En 1842 publicaba uno de sus poemas, en que figuraba este fragmento:

En el cielo habita un espíritu
las fibras de cuyo corazón forman un laúd.
Nadie canta tan asombrosamente bien
como el ángel Israfel
y las indecisas estrellas —según dicen—
cesan en sus himnos, presas por el encanto
de su voz, enmudecidas....
...Si yo pudiera residir
donde Israfel
reside y se personifica en mí,
quizá no cantase tan singularmente bien
una melodía humana,
y una nota más intensa que ésta
 volara de mi lira hasta el cielo.

En este poema se reconoce en el acto un tono y una vibración espirituales ausentes en toda la versificación americana anterior.

Poe escribió, además, otros poemas, una novela, Las aventuras de Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), y numerosos cuentos y relatos, reunidos ahora bajo el título de Historias Extraordinarias, que Baudelaire comenzó a traducir a partir de 1848, aunque los críticos americanos seguían y siguen permaneciendo indiferentes a ellas. "Es un mal escritor, que debe su popularidad a un accidente pasajero", dice Yvor Winters, comentario que sólo concierne a Poe como poeta. Sus historias no son más que relatos populares. En cuanto al hombre en sí...  Dos días después de su muerte, el New York Tribune publicaba un artículo bilioso que decía: "pocos le echarán de menos, pues aunque tenía algunos lectores, contaba con pocos o con ningún amigo". En su opinión, la sociedad sólo estaba compuesta de canallas. No soportaba la contradicción. Ignoraba la delicadeza moral. En resumen, era un vulgar ambicioso, un hombre "diferente" y, por lo tanto, peligroso, en doloroso desacuerdo con su país, al que osaba juzgar y condenar.

Baudelaire presentía en Poe a un poeta de vida espiritual intensa en exceso, de una lucidez demasiado grande, para que pudiera acomodarse a "esta inmensa barbarie alumbrada con gas" que era América. En julio de 1856, los hermanos Goncourt descubrían su obra artística y declaraban: "Una literatura nueva, la literatura del siglo XX... Por fin la novela del futuro dedicada a contar más la historia de cuanto ocurre en el cerebro de la humanidad que lo que siente su corazón". Y más tarde, el francés-norteamericano Julien Green escribía unas frases que plantean de modo definitivo el caso trágico de un hombre que se sabía "poeta irremediable" en un país que negaba al poeta el derecho a profetizar.

"Me pregunto por qué su país se ha mostrado tan injusto con él. Los lectores norteamericanos le consideran morboso y a América no le gusta estar representada por tan malsano poeta. Y es rechazado con más ira todavía porque América lleva en su seno ese desequilibrio que el genio de Poe significa como una flor tenebrosa, un grandioso lirio nocturno entre los dedos de la muerte." 

 

Su vida es una novela trágica y desconcertante. Hijo de actores, huérfano a los tres años y adoptado por una familia burguesa de Richmond, recibe una educación distinguida en colegios ingleses y norteamericanos, y rompe al fin sus relaciones con su familia adoptiva. A los dieciocho años de edad se alista en el ejército, es sargento mayor apenas cumplidos veinte años e ingresa en la Academia de West Point, pero al fin es expulsado de allí. Comienza entonces una dolorosa existencia de vagabundo elegante, periodista, poeta y narrador de cuentos, perpetuamente borracho y quizá también entregado a los estupefacientes. Se casa a los veintisiete años de edad con una muchacha que sólo contaba catorce y, cuando ella muere diez años después, debe defenderse de vagas acusaciones de crueldad. Colabora en diversas publicaciones, alcanza el éxito e incluso la fama, pero se arruina, bebe incesantemente y cae en una manía persecutoria, intenta suicidarse, pierde cada vez más su equilibrio mental, si no el juicio, y muere de "delirium tremens" en el hospital de Baltimore el 9 de octubre de 1849.

 

Edgar A. Poe, un escritor maldito

Aun con toda su aridez, los citados datos biográficos señalan un destino: un hombre afectado por circunstancias particulares, pero que no logró hallar en la sociedad en que vivía las respuestas, los valores, el contorno que le hubieran permitido reconstruirse tal como él desearea: feliz y equilibrado, dueño de su vida y de su pensamiento. Se percataba de ello y en toda su obra intenta explicarlo: no deleitándose en la descripción de su infierno, sino poniendo de relieve sus esfuerzos para salir de él.

Poe navega contra la corriente literaria de su época. Hace justicia a Cooper y a Irving, aunque no crea en su genio, pero debate contra sus epígonos Cooke, Coob, Southworth, Holmes e Ingraham, simples románticos aficionados, que mezclan lo real, lo novelesco y los convencionalismos. A las "novelas-río" de moda, Poe opone "la literatura de revista", o semanario, cuyo éxito popular, según él, no significa, "como suponen algunos críticos, una decadencia del gusto", sino que es "un genio de nuestro tiempo, de una época en que los hombres sienten necesidad de cosas breves, escuetas y bien digeridas". En este caso no se trata simplemente de una estética de la concisión opuesta a una estética de la incontinencia verbal, sino del papel que debe desempeñar el escritor ante las necesidades del público.

El mundo norteamericano en erupción, creador y destructor, triturador de cuerpos y almas, hace sentir como nunca lo que la vida acarrea consigo de misterio, de desorden y de abismos aparentemente insondables. Describir y amplificar no sirve para nada e incluso perjudica y mixtifica. En lugar de dejarse arrastrar por las olas, es preciso dominarlas, explicar su poder y su pretendida fantasía. No es tarea fácil y el público se resiste a ello. A partir de aquí, lo fantástico, casi el mundo del ocultismo, los prolegómenos de la ciencia-ficción, permiten al autor expresar libremente —aunque esta libertad procura revestirse prudente y púdica de complejos simbolismos— cosas que de otra manera desencadenarían sobre él la reprobación pública y quizá la cárcel. El lector, por su parte, puede no comprender nada o fingir que no lo entiende, al propio tiempo que se divierte con la fantasía y la habilidad asombrosas del prestidigitador.

Siendo tan compleja la realidad y los medios de tener contacto con ella tan difíciles de dominar, el poeta compone "una crónica de sensaciones más que de hechos", como dice el propio Poe en Berenice, renunciando a analizar despiadadamente las sensaciones. En La esfinge, el héroe divisa un monstruo que desciende por la colina: es un insecto deslizándose sobre un cristal. Rasgo que bien pudiera ser una de las claves principales de la obra de Poe. Se le considera, además, acertadamente, como uno de los patriarcas de la novela policíaca clásica: aquella en que el autor expone un enigma aparentemente insoluble que resolverá más tarde, únicamente mediante la inteligencia y la lógica, y demostrando que, de hecho, el lector disponía, desde la exposición de los datos, de todos los elementos necesarios para para solucionarlo por sí mismo.

Su novela Doble asesinato en la calle Morgue encaja perfectamente en esta idea, si bien sus demás relatos lo confirman: Ligeia, El escarabajo de oro, La caída de la casa Usher, El corazón revelador, El gato negro, William Wilson, El descenso al Maëlstrom, La carta robada, citando a propósito los que el propio Poe señaló como mejores. Nada hay en ellos sobrenatural ni fuerzas ocultas o misteriosas al margen del espíritu y la voluntad del ser humano. El hombre es libre y su destino aparece siempre determinado por la calidad de su raciocinio. El El escarabajo de oro, el protagonista razona adecuadamente y es recompensado por el triunfo y la fortuna; en El gato negro no lo hace así y es castigado con la muerte. Poe intenta demostrar y demostrarse a la vez que el destino es un mecanismo; ahora bien, un mecanismo estropeado puede ser reparado. Con una audacia que no excluye el terror, sino que lo incluye, por sentise débil, vulnerable y desarmado. Poe se enfrenta con lo desconocido, se deja fascinar por ello y lo expresa, en consecuencia.

 

 

Se podrá argüir que se trata sólo de símbolos, pero éstos son a veces tan densos y abrumadores que el espíritu del poeta irremediablemente escapa al dominio del "racionalista irremediable" y la lógica matemática ya no basta. Entonces todo aparece blanco como en Gordon Pym. El blanco es el color del vértigo, y Poe explica en vano que es una ilusión óptica y el resultado aparente de la fusión de los demás colores cuando se mueven con mucha rapidez. También procura evadirse: en la poesía que con él deja de ser discurso coherente, versificación y juego lírico, para convertirse en ejecutoria de la locura; evasión en el alcohol y finalmente en aquella muerte tan evocada. Poe muere vencido, o quizá debiera decirse, más exactamente, reducido a la impotencia, aunque sin haber cedido: como lo había escrito simbólicamente en Gordon Pym, convertido en libro de lectura para jóvenes a consecuencia—como en el Gulliver de Swift—de un malentendido:

La cima de la catarata se perdía por entero en la oscuridad y en el espacio. Sin embargo, era evidente que nos aproximábamos a ella con espantosa velocidad. Podían verse, a intervalos, sobre aquella sabana, enormes grietas abiertas, aunque sólo momentáneas, y a través de estas grietas, tras de las cuales se agitaba un caos de imágenes flotantes e indistintas, se precipitaban poderosas y silenciosas corrientes de aire que surcaban en su vuelo el océano inflamado.

Podría considerarse a Poe como un "caso" literario y patológico, si fuera el único en navegar en esta misteriosa embarcación arrastrada por una misteriosa corriente hacia la inmensa figura blanca que no sabemos si representa a Dios o a algún abominable cero matemático. Pero Poe tenía otros compañeros: prácticamente, todos los grandes escritores de su época.

El Big Bang de Poe

 

Wordsworth (Oxford Companion)

 

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble:

WORDSWORTH, William (1770-1850), born at Cockermouth, Cumbria, the son of an attorney; he attended (with Mary Hutchinson, his future wife) the infants' school in Penrith and, from 1779 to 1787, Hawkshead Grammar School. His mother died in 1778, his father in 1783, losses recorded in *The Prelude, which describes the mixed joys and terrors of his country boyhood with a peculiar intensity. He attended St John's College, Cambridge, but disliked the academic course. In 1790 he went on a walking tour of France, the Alps, and Italy, and returned to France late in 1791, to spend a year there; during this period he was fired by a passionate belief in the French Revolution and republican ideals, and also fell in love with the daughter of a surgeon at Blois, Annette Vallon, who bore him a daughter (See E. Legouis, William Wordsworth and Annette Vallon, 1922). (This love affair is reflected in 'Vaudracour and Julia', composed ?1804, published 1820, and incorporated somewhat anomalously in Book IX of The Prelude.) After his return to England he published in 1793 two poems in heroic couplets, An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches, both conventional attempts at the *picturesque and the *sublime, the latter describing the Alps. In this year he also wrote (but did not publish) a Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff (see WATSON, R.) in support of the French Republic. England's declaration of war against France shocked him deeply, but the institution of the Terror marked the beginning of his disillusion with the French Revolution, a period of depression reflected in his verse drama *The Borderers (composed 1796-7, pub. 1842) and in 'Guilt and Sorrow' (composed 1791-4, pub in part in 1798 as 'The Female Vagrant'). In 1795 he received a legacy of £900 from his friend Raisley Calvert, intended to enable him to pursue his vocation as a poet, which also allowed him to be reunited with his sister Dorothy (above); they settled first at Racedown in Dorset, then at Alfoxden in Somerset, where they had charge of the son of their friend Basil *Montagu. The latter move (aided by T. *Poole) was influenced by a desire to be near *Coleridge, then living at Nether Stowey, whom Wordsworth had met in 1795. This was a period of intense creativity for both poets, which produced the *Lyrical Ballads (1798), a landmark in the history of English *Romanticism (See ANCIENT MARINER; IDIOT BOY, THE; TINTERN ABBEY.) The winter of 1798-9 was spent in Goslar in Germany, where Wordsworth wrote sections of what was to be The Prelude and the enigmatic *'Lucy' poems. In 1799 he and Dorothy settled in Dove Cottage, Grasmere; to the next year belong 'The Recluse', Book I (later *The Excursion), 'The Brothers', *'Michael', and many of the poems included in the 1800 edition of the Lyrical Ballads (which, with its provocative preface on *poetic diction, aroused much criticism). In 1802 Wordsworth and Dorothy visited Annette Vallon in France, and later that year William married Mary Hutchison, his financial position having been improved by the repayment of a debt on the death of Lord Lonsdale. In the same year he composed *'Resolution and Independence', and began his ode on *'Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood', both of which appeared in Poems in Two Volumes (1807), along with many of his most celebrated lyrics. To the same period belong the birth of five children (of whom the eldest, John, was born in 1803), travels with Dorothy and Coleridge, and new friendships, notably with Sir W. *Scott, Sir G. *Beaumont, and *De Quincey. Wordsworth's domestic happiness was overcast by the death of his sailor brother John in 1805 (which inspired several poems, including 'Elegiac Stanzas Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle', 1807), the early deaths of two of his children (one of which inspired his sonnet 'Surprised by joy', 1815), and the physical deterioration of Coleridge, from whom he was for some time estranged, and with whom he was never entirely reconciled. But his productivity continued, and his popularity gradually increased. The Excursion was published in 1814, The White Doe of Rylstone and two volumes of Miscellaneous Poems in 1815, and *Peter Bell and *The Waggoner in 1819. In 1813 he had been appointed stamp distributor for Westmorland, a post which brought him some £400 a year, and in the same year moved from Allan Bank (where he had lived from 1808) to Rydal Mount, Ambleside, where he lived the rest of his life. The great work of his early and middle years was now over, and Wordsworth slowly settled into the role of patriotic, conservative public man, abandoning the radical politics and idealism of his youth. Much of the best of his later work was mildly topographical, inspired by his love of travel; it records journeys to Scotland, along the river Duddon, to the Continent, etc. He was left a legacy by Sir George Beaumont in 1827, and in 1842 received a Civil List pension of £300 a year; in 1843 he succeeded *Southey as *poet Laureate. He died at Rydal Mount, after the publication of a finally revised text of his works (6 vols, 1849-50), and The Prelude was published posthumously in 1850. His prose works include an essay, Concerning the Relations of Great Britain, Spain and Portugal . . . as Affected by the Convention of Cintra (1809), castigating the supine English policy, and A Description of the Scenery of the Lakes in the North of England, written in 1810 as an introduction to Wilkinson's Select Views of Cumberland.

De Quincey wrote of Wordsworth in 1835, 'Up to 1820 the name of Wordsworth was trampled underfoot; from 1820 to 1830 it was militant; from 1830 to 1835 it has been triumphant.' Early attacks in the *Edinburgh Review and by the anonymous author of a parody, The Simpliciad (1808), were followed by criticism and satire by the second generation of Romantics; *Byron and *Shelley mocked him as 'simple' and 'dull', *Keats distrusted what he called the *'egotistical sublime', and *Hazlitt, and later *Browning, deplored him as *'The Lost Leader', who had abandoned his early radical faith. But these doubts were counterbalanced by the enormous and lasting popularity of much of his work, which was regarded by writers such as M. *Arnold and J. S. *Mill with almost religious veneration, as an expression in an age of doubt of the transcendent in nature and the good in man. A great innovator, he permanently enlarged the range of English poetry, both in subject matter and in treatment (a distinction he would not himself have accepted).

Wordsworth's Poetical and Prose Works, together with Dorothy Wordsworth's Journals, ed. W. Knight, appeared in 1896, and his Poetical Works (ed. E. de Selincourt and H. Darbishire, 5 vols.) in 1930-9 and 1952-4. Letters of the Wordsworth Family 1787-1855 were edited by W. Knight in 1907, and Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth (ed. de Selincourt) appeared in 1935-9. His biography by M. Moorman was published in 1968 (2 vols), and a long-lost collection of letters between Mary and William appeared as The Love Letters of William and Mary Wordsworth, ed. B. Darlington (1982). See also Stephen Gill, William Wordsworth (1989).

—oOo—

John Keats (Oxford Companion) - NIVEL AVANZADO

 

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble.

Keats, John (1795-1821), the son of the manager of a livery stables in Moorfields, who died when he was 8; his mother remarried, but died of tuberculosis when he was 14. 

The oldest of the family, he remained deeeply attached to his brothers George and Tom and to his sister Fanny. He was well educated at Clarke's school, Enfield, where he began a translation of the Aeneid, and in 1810 was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon. 

His first efforts at writing poetry appear to date from 1814, and include an 'Imitation of Spenser'; his school friend Cowden-*Clarke recorded the profound effect of early reading of *Spenser. In 1815 Keats cancelled his fifth year of apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital; to the same year belong 'Ode to Apollo' and 'Hymn to Apollo'. 

In 1816 he was licensed to practise as an apothecary, but in spite of precarious finances abandoned the profession for poetry. In 1816 he also met Leigh *Hunt, who published in the same year in the *Examiner Keats's poem, 'O Solitude', and in the course of a survey of young poets in the same journal he included Keats's sonnet 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer'. Keats met *Shelley and *Haydon, began to plan *Endymion, and wrote 'I stood tiptoe upon a little hill' as a first effort towards that poem. 

His first volume of poems was published in March 1817. It included, among sonnets, epistles, and miscellaneous poems, 'I stood tiptoe upon a little hill' and 'Sleep and Poetry'. There were at first some pleasing reviews, but public interest was not aroused and sales were meagre; and in the autumn came the first of *Lockhart's harsh attacks in *Blackwood's, labelling Keats and his associates as members of the so-called *Cockney School. 

He finished the first draft of Endymion and during the winter of 1817-18 saw something of *Wordsworth and *Hazlitt, both of whom much influenced his thought and practice. In December Haydon gave his 'immortal dinner' whose guests included Wordsworth, *Lamb, and Keats. Endymion, dedicated to *Chatterton, whom Keats greatly admired, was published in the spring of 1818, and *'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil' finished in May. 

With his friend Charles Armitage Brown (1786-1842) Keats then toured the Lakes, spent July and August in Scotland, and included a brief visit to Northern Ireland. He had travelled frequently in southern England but he had never before seen scenery of rugged grandeur. It moved him deeply and he made full use of it when he came to write *Hyperion. Bitter attacks on Endymion came in the autumn from Lockhart in Blackwood's and from the *Quarterly Review. For the time being Keats concealed his pain and wrote to his brother George that, in spite of the review, 'I think I shall be among the English poets after my death', but his friends believe the wound was very deep. Meanwhile his brother Tom was very ill and Keats spent much time with him. 

When Tom died in December Keats moved into his friend Brown's house in Hampstead, now known as Keats House. There, in the early winter, he met Fanny *Brawne, with whom he fell deeply in love, and with whom he remained in love until his death. During the course of the summer and autumn of 1818 his sore throats had become more frequent and persistent. Nevertheless September 1818 marked the beginning of what is sometimes referred to as the Great Year; he began Hyperion in its first version, abandoning it a year later; he wrote, consecutively, *'The Eve of St Agnes', 'The Eve of St Mark', the 'Ode to Psyche', *'La Belle Dame sans Merci', *'Ode to a Nightingale', and probably at about the same time the *'Ode on a Grecian Urn', 'Ode on Melancholy', and 'Ode on Indolence'; *'Lamia Part I', *'Otho the Great' (in collaboration with Brown); the second version of Hyperion, called The Fall of Hyperion, *'To Autumn', and 'Lamia Part II'. During this year he was beset with financial problems, both his own and those of his friends and relations, and intensely preoccupied with his love for Fanny, to whom he became engaged. 

In the winter of 1819 he began the unfinished 'The Cap and Bells', but he became increasingly ill with tuberculosis and his great creative work was now over. His second volume of poems, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems, was published in July 1820, and included, as well as the title poems, the odes, Hyperion, 'Fancy', and other works. The volume was generally well received, gaining much praise in some quarters, with criticism from Blackwood's much muted, but the sales were very slow. 

Shelley invited Keats to Italy and in September, after sorting out his copyrights and financial affairs, Keats set off with his friend *Severn. They did not go to the Shelleys, but settled in Rome, where Keats died the following February.

Keats has always been regarded as one of the principal figures in the *Romantic movement, and his stature as a poet has grown steadily through all changes of fashion. *Tennyson considered him the greatest poet of the 19th cent., and Matthew *Arnold commended his 'intellectual and spiritual passion' for beauty; in the 20th cent. he has been discussed and reconsidered by critics from T. S. *Eliot and *Leavis to *Trilling (The Opposing Self, 1955) and Christopher Ricks (Keats and Embarrassment, 1974).

His letters, published in 1848 and 1878, have come to be regarded with almost the admiration given to his poetry, to which many of them act as a valuable commentary. He wrote fully and revealingly to Fanny Brawne, to his brothers and sister, to Shelley, Leigh Hunt, Haydon, Severn, and many others, mixing the everyday events of his own life with a lively and delicate interest in that of his correspondents, and displaying wit and high spirits as well as his profoundest thoughts on love, poetry, and the nature of man. T. S. Eliot described the letters as 'certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet' (The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 1933). The major biographies are by W. J. Bate (1963), R. *Gittings (1968), and Andrew *Motion (1997).

___________


Endymion, a poem in four books, by *Keats, written 1817, published 1818. The poem tells, with a wealth of epithet and invention, the story of Endymion, 'the brain-sick shepherd-prince' of Mount Latmos, who falls in love with Cynthia, the moon, and descends to the depths of the earth to find her. There he encounters a real woman, Phoebe, and giving up his pursuit of the ideal he falls in love with her. She, however, turns out to be none other than Cynthia, who, after luring him, weary and perplexed, through 'cloudy phantasms', bears him away to eternal life. With the main story are woven the legends of Venus and Adonis, of Glaucus and Scylla, and of Arethusa. The poem includes in Bk I the well-known 'Hymn to Pan', and in Bk IV the roundelay 'O Sorrow'.

In his preface Keats describes the work as 'a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished'. It is a work, rich in luxuriant imagery, of an immature genius, the product of sensation rather than thought. The allegory, which is sometimes obscure, appears to represent the poet pursuing ideal perfection, and distracted from his quest by human beauty. The work was violently attacked in the *Quarterly Review and in *Blackwood's, in which *Lockhart described the poem as one of 'calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy'.


Hyperion: A Fragment and The Fall of Hyperion, fragments of epic poems by *Keats written 1818-19. Hyperion was published 1820, The Fall of Hyperion not until 1856. In 1818 Keats gave up the effort to finish Hyperion, then began to rewrite and recast it as The Fall of Hyperion, but once again the effort was abandoned.

In the first version, written as direct narrative, the tremendous figure of the fallen Saturn, conquered by Jove, mourns the loss of his kingdom, and debates with his fallen fellow Titans, in their craggy lair, how he may regain his kingdom. They conclude that only the magnificent Hyperion, who is still unfallen, will be able to help them. In Bk III the golden Apollo, god of music, poetry, and knowledge, speaks to the goddess Mnemosyne of his inexplicable anguish; then, at the moment of his deification, the fragment ends. In the second version, the poet is in a luxuriant garden, where he drinks an elixir which induces a vision. He finds himself in a vast domed monument, then proceeds with pain and difficulty to climb the stair to the shrine of the priestess Moneta. Together they find the agonizing fallen Saturn, and with Mnemosyne and Thea they speak to him of his pain and loss. In despair he leaves with Thea to comfort his fellow Titans, while the poet and Moneta watch the magnificent, but much troubled, Hyperion blaze into the west. The precise meaning of the allegory is not always clear, but both poems have as their general theme the nature of poetry and the nature and development of the poet. It is not known why Keats abandoned what was to have been his great work, but one of his fears, expressed in a letter to his friend *Reynolds, was that his writing was too Miltonic.


'Isabella, or The Pot of Basil' ["Isabella, o la maceta de albahaca"], a narrative poem by *Keats, written 1818, published 1820.

The poem is based on a story in Boccaccio's *Decameron. The worldly, ambitious brothers of Isabella intend that she shall marry a nobleman. When they discover her love for the humble Lorenzo they lure him away, murder him, and bury his body in a forest. His ghost then appears to Isabella and tells her where he is buried. With the help of her old nurse she finds his body, severs the head, and places it in a pot with a plant of basil over it. Her brothers, observing how she cherishes the plant, steal the pot, discover the mouldering head, and fly, conscience-stricken, into banishment. Pathetically Isabella mourns her loss, pines away, and dies. The poem reflects a contemporary fashion for the macabre, and *Lamb pronounced it the best work in the volume of poems of 1820, but Keats himself very soon came to dislike it.


'The Eve of St Agnes', a narrative poem in Spenserian stanzas by *Keats, written 1819, published 1820.

The poem is set in a remote period of time, in the depths of winter. Madeline has been told the legend that on St Agnes's Eve maidens may have visions of their lovers. Madeline's love, Porphyro, comes from a family hostile to her own, and she is herself surrounded by 'hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords'. Yet he contrives to steal into the house during a ball on St Agnes's Eve, and with the aid of old Angela is secreted in Madeline's room, where he watches his love prepare for sleep. When she wakes from dreams of him, aroused by his soft singing, she finds him by her bedside. Silently they escape from the house, and fly 'away into the storm'. With its rich and vivid imagery, its heightened atmosphere of excitement and passion, the poem is generally regarded as among Keats's most successful works.

'La Belle Dame sans Merci', a ballad by *Keats, written 1819, published 1820, which describes a knight fatally enthralled by an elfin woman. Although Keats himself spoke of it lightly, critics and biographers have written of it at length, many concurring with Robert *Graves (The White Goddess, 1948) that 'the Belle Dame represented Love, Death by Consumption . . . and Poetry all at once'. It was much admired by the *Pre-Raphaelites and William *Morris asserted that 'it was the germ from which all the poetry of his group had sprung.'

La Belle Dame sans mercy is also the title of a poem translated from *Chartier, attributed at one time to *Chaucer, but now thought to be the work of Sir Richard Ros.

'Ode on a Grecian Urn', a poem by *Keats, written 1819, published 1820. 

While he describes the various pastoral scenes of love, beauty, and joy illustrated in the urn, the poet reflects on the eternal quality of art and the fleeting nature of human love and happiness. The last two lines are particularly well known and their meaning much debated:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

'Ode to a Nightingale', a poem by *Keats, written 1819, published 1820.

Keats's friend Charles Brown relates that a nightingale has nested near his house in Hampstead (now known as Keats House), and that on e morning Keats sat under a plum-tree in the garden composing his ode on 'some scraps of paper'. Briefly, the poem is a meditation on the immortal beauty of the nightingale's song and the sadness of the observer, who must in the end accept sorrow and mortality.

 

 

'To Autumn', a poem by *Keats, written Sept. 1819, published 1820. It was his last major poem, and although usually included in a discussion of the Odes (see under ODE), it was not so labelled by Keats himself.

The poem, in three stanzas, is at once a celebration of the fruitfulness of autumn (lightly personified as a figure in various autumnal landscapes) and an elegy for the passing of summer and the transience of life, and its mood has been generally taken to be one of acquiescence. The association of autumn and early death in the mind of Keats is poignantly revealed in a letter to Reynolds (21 Sept. 1819), written immediately after the composition of the poem, in which he says, 'I always somehow associate Chatterton with the autumn'.

Ode on a Grecian Urn: Study Guide

William Blake

 

From The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. Margaret Drabble:

BLAKE, William (1757-1827), the third son of a London hosier. He did not go to school but was apprenticed to James Basire, engraver to the Society of *Antiquaries, and then became a student at the *Royal Academy. From 1779 he was employed as an engraver by the bookseller J. *Johnson, and in 1780 met *Fuseli and *Flaxman, the latter a follower of *Swedenborg, whose mysticism deeply influenced Blake. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market-gardener; their childless marriage was a lasting communion. Flaxman at this period introduced him to the progressive intellectual circle of the Revd A. S. Mathew and his wife (which included Mrs *Barbauld, H. *More, and Mrs. E. *Montagu), and Mathew and Flaxman financed the publication of Blake's first volume, Poetical Sketches (1783). In 1784, with help from Mrs Mathew, he set up a print shop at 27 Broad Street, and about the same period (although not for publication) wrote the satirical *An Island in the Moon. He engraved and published his *Songs of Innocence in 1789, and also The Book of Thel, both works which manifest the early phases of his highly distinctive mystic vision, and in which he embarks on the evolution of his personal mythology; years later (in *Jerusalem) he was to state, through the character Los, 'I must create a System, or be enslaved by another Man's', words which have been taken by some to apply to his own need to escape from the fetters of 18th-cent. versification, as well as from the materialist philosophy (as he conceived it) of the *Enlightenment, and a Puritanical or repressive interpretation of Christianity. The Book of Thel presents the maiden Thel lamenting transience and mutability by the banks of the river of Adona; she is answered by the lily, the cloud, the worm, and the clod who assure her that 'He, who loves the lowly' cherishes even the meanest; but this relatively conventional wisdom is challenged by a final vision in which Thel visits the house of Clay, sees the couches of the dead, and hears 'a voice of sorrow' breathe a characteristically Blakean protest against hypocrisy and restraint—'Why a tender curb upon the youthful, burning boy? Why a tender little curtain of flesh upon the bed of our desire?'—a message which sends Thel back 'with a shriek' to the vales of Har. The ambiguity of this much-interpreted poem heralds the increasing complexity of his other works which include Tiriel (written 1789, pub. 1874), introducing the theme of the blind tyrannic father, 'the king of rotten wood, and of the bones of death', which reappears in different forms in many poems; *The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (engraved c. 1790-3), his principal prose work, a book of paradoxical aphorisms; and the revolutionary works The French Revolution (1791); America: A Prophecy (1793); and Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), in which he develops his attitude of revolt against authority, combining political fervour (he had met *Paine at Johnson's) and visionary ecstasy; Urizen, the deviser of moral codes (described as 'the stony law' of the Decalogue) and *Orc, the Promethean arch-rebel, emerge as principal characters in a cosmology that some scholars have related to that of *Gnosticism. By this time Blake had already established his poetic range; the long, flowing lines and violent energy of the verse combine with phrases of terse and aphoristic clarity and moments of great lyric tenderness, and he was once more to demonstrate his command of the lyric in Songs of Experience (1794) which includes 'Tyger! Tyger! burning bright', 'O Rose thou art sick', and other of his more accessible pieces.

Meanwhile the Blakes had moved to Lambeth in 1790; there he continued to engrave his own works and to write, evolving his mythology further in The Book of *Urizen (1794); *Europe: A Prophecy (1794); The Song of *Los (1795); The Book of Ahania (1795); The Book of Los (1795); and The Four Zoas (originally entitled Vala, written and revised 1797-1804), and also working for the booksellers. In 1800 he moved to Felpham, Sussex, where he lived for three years, working for his friend and patron *Hayley, and working on *Milton (1804-8); in 1803 he was charged at Chichester with high treason for having 'uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as "D—n the King, d—n all his subjects . . . "', but was acquitted. In the same year he returned to London, to work on Milton and Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (written and etched, 1804-20). In 1805 he was commissioned by Cromek to produce a set of drawings for R. *Blair's poem The Grave, but Cromek defaulted on the contract, and Blake earned neither the money nor the public esteem he had hoped for, and found his designs engraved and weakened by another hand. This was symptomatic of the disappointment of his later years, when he appears to have relinquished expectations of being widely understood, and quarreled even with some of the circle of friends who supported him. Both his poetry and his art had failed to find a sympathetic audience, and a lifetime of hard work had not brought him riches or even much comfort. His last years were passed in obscurity, although he continued to attract the interest and admiration of younger artists, and a commission in 1821 from the painter John Linnell produced his well-known illustrations for the Book of Job, published in 1826. (It was Linnell who introduced Blake to Samuel *Palmer in 1824.) A later poem, 'The Everlasting Gospel', written about 1818, shows undiminished power and attack; it presents Blake's own version of Jesus, in a manner that recalls the paradoxes of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, attacking the conventional 'Creeping Jesus', gentle, humble, and chaste, and stressing his rebellious nature, his forgiveness of the woman taken in adultery, his reversing of the stony law of Moses, praising 'the Naked Human Form divine', and sexuality as the means whereby 'the Soul Expands its wing', and elevating forgiveness above the 'Moral Virtues'.

At Blake's death, general opinion held that he had been, if gifted, insane. *Wordsworth's verdict, according to C. *Robinson, was that 'The was no doubt that this poor man was mad, but there is something in the madness of this man which interests me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott', a view in some measure echoed by *Ruskin, who found his manner 'diseased and wild' but his mind 'great and wise'. It was not until A. *Gilchrist's biography of 1863 (significantly describing Blake as 'Pictor Ignotus') that interest began to grow. This was followed by an appreciation by *Swinburne (1868) and by W. M. *Rossetti's edition of 1874, which added new poems to the canon and established his reputation, at least as a lyric poet; his rediscovered engravings considerably influenced the development of *art nouveau. In 1893 *Yeats, a devoted admirer, produced with E. J. Ellis a three-volume edition, with a memoir and an interpretation of the mythology, and the 20th cent. saw an enormous increase in interest. The bibliographical studies and editions of G. *Keynes, culminating in The Complete Writings of William Blake (1966, 2nd edn), have added greatly to knowledge both of the man and his works, revealing him not only as an apocalyptic visionary but also as a writer of ribald and witty epigrams, a critic of spirit and originality, and an independent thinker who found his own way of resisting the orthodoxies of his age, and whose hostile response to the narrow vision and the materialism (as he conceived it) of his bêtes noires Joshua *Reynolds, *Locke, and Isaac *Newton was far from demented, but in part a prophetic warning of the dangers of a world perceived as mechanism, with man as a  mere cog in an industrial revolution. There have been many interpretative studies, relating his work to traditional Christianity, to the *Neoplatonic and Swedenborgian traditions, to Jungian *archetypes and to *Freudian and *Marxist theory; the Prophetic Books, once dismissed as incoherent, are now claimed by many as works of integrity as well as profundity. Recently, Blake has had a particularly marked influence on the *Beat Generation and the English poets of the *underground movement, hailed by both as a liberator; *Auden earlier acclaimed him ('New Year Letter', 1941) as 'Self-educated Blake . . .' who 'Spoke to Isaiah in the Strand / And heard inside each mortal thing / Its holy emanation sing'.

See also the Blake Books (1977) by G. E. Bentley Jnr, including annotated catalogues of his writings and scholarly books about him; The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. D. V. Erdman (1965, 1988); Blake's Illuminated Books, 6 vols. (1991-5), gen. ed. D. Bindman; and J. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993), an authoritative account of Blake's graphic process; The William Blake Archive: http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/blake (ed. M. Eaves, R. Essick, J. Viscomi). There is a life by Peter *Ackroyd, (1995).

A World in a Grain of Sand —The Cosmic Dimension

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