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| Sunday, June 13, 2004 |
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| Sunday, June 13, 2004 |
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IN one of his later poems, John Keats (1795-1821) struggling to reach down to the Shakespearian depths of his tragedies sings of "the bitter sweet of this Shakespearian fruit". He, himself was, at that time, seeking to climb some of the Shakespearian heights in his great odes and sonnets written at a time when he knew that his death was almost imminent. In this brief essay, I shall be seeking a point of similarity, consanguinity and convergence — a kind of "theory" that suggests the union of imaginations, styles and thoughts between certain great poets separated, as in this case, almost by three centuries of time. Is it any wonder, then, that in his published letters (Keats left no formal critiques or essays) one finds Shakespeare’s overwhelming presence in his consciousness. There are as many as 200 references to Shakespeare in his 241 letters. When, therefore, we gather his scattered comments into a kind of Keatsian canon, we find that the great "Presider", as he describes Shakespeare, had become towards the end, not only "the singing master of his soul," to use a W.B. Yeats line, but also his guru in a priestly sense. Keats, it appears, had "reserved" his Sunday mornings for the study of Shakespeare’s poetry, something that suggests his devotional commitment. Not the Sunday Church for him, only Shakespeare. Even when Keats wrote to his unfaithful love, Fancy Browne, Shakespeare erupted as a driving force in his poetry. A faithless, mercurial beloved, a galloping tuberclosis, nasty comments in literary journals, all made Keats a kind of protagonist in a Shakespeare tragedy, a doomed figure during his last act in grand Shakespearean rhetoric. Nearly all important Keats critics have sought to prove affinities and correspondence through a minute scrutiny of Shakespeare’s work, and of Keats’ poetry. The inescapable conclusion was that Keats of the odes and later sonnets had become a "bright star" hung in "lone splendour" over the literary firmament of the English race. "A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity," remarked Keats. This teasing, enigmatic idea informs, then, the work of both Keats and Shakespeare. In a letter to a friend, Taylor he wrote, ".... I have a great reason to be content, for thank God, I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to the depths". Keats had by now deciphered the hidden code and signature of Shakespeare. Returning to Keats’s concept of "the life of the imagination", it may be observed that Keats had, under Shakespeare’s influence transformed his early romanticism into a search for reality — a reality which was rooted in experience yet kept its romantic flavour in full measure. Having tested of romance and the bitterness of reality, Keats in such odes as Ode to the Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Autumn etc. finds a sort of stillness at the heart of the storm. A word about the Keatsian style of the odes and the final-phase sonnets: we find him approaching the Shakespearian type of richness, fullness, opulence and rotundity. The informing vision is nearly the same in character. And now to his last journey to the other world. In his brief earthly sojourn that lasted for just over 26 years, Keats had become a Shakespearian "double", so to speak. On his voyage to "the Eternal city" of Rome where he died, he carried only one book for perusal on board, the greatest tragedy in the English language, Shakespeare’s King Lear, and on the fly-page of this volume, he copies out for his friend, Joseph Seveen, his immortal sonnet called Bright Star. As he lay dying in Rome, he hoped that after his death he would find "a place" among the great poets of England. Commenting on this death-bed statement, the Victorian poet and critic, Matthew Arnold said: "he is, he is with Shakespeare". A visionary utterance, if you like. |
