Books and Writers

Northern Advocate, 20 June 1925, Page 9 (Supplement)

Books an d Writers

IN NEW ROLE

KEATS AS PHILOSOPHER,

John Ivcats ; who died almost un-

known io the world, though admired by a small circle of friends, lias steadily mounted in the estimation of critics, and also in the greater popular recognition, writes Arthur Lynch in "T.P.'s

and Cassell's Weekly." On the occasion of 11 e centenary celebration a volume was published cotaining remarkable tributes to his genius; and recently the Borough Council of Ilainpstead iia.s purchased the house in Keat's Grove, :;s it. is now called, where he lived for a time, and where he wrote the wonderful "Ode to the Nightingale." Is not the cup of his recompense fairly full?

To this question I answer, "No." I am even inclined to think that some of the fervid admirers of Keats have rendered him a disservice hardly less than that of his detractors who wounded his f.pirit during his life and hunted him to his grave. They are sincere in their eulogy of Keats, but thev represent him as a poet of marvellous gifts from whose soul bubbled up a stream of bright and beautiful images, but whose mind had little depth, and whose very spontaneity excluded the play of intellect. Most of these errors, as I regard them, arose with the association of Keats with Leigh Hunt, an

association into which Keats entered with ill the warmth of his generous

and affectionate nature, aiid in which Leigh Hunt repaid the devotion of his arlmiv?" with real friendship.

Unfortunately, howe- e'\ ' •.•Wt T T rn + himself, excellent man and cultuied, was rather a shallow character; high]>

as he appreciated Keats, he regarded him from the ctandpoint of his own conception of poetry, and he signalled for special praise those passages in which his own influence is perceptible. Now, we read history backwards, and we remember Leigh Hunt in part for his association with Keats, bnt in his own day Leigh Hunt was the great figure and Keats was regarded as one of the lights of the Cockney school. That was indeed a cause of the animus displayed against him, especially in that article of the Quarterly, which now reads to us so infamous, but which the contemporaries regarded as the brilliant. •ustigp.tion of a pretentious fool whose politics were offensive. Polities? Yes, politics; that influence in literary appreciation and criticism,, which has always been a powerful factor in forming opinion, is no less alive today than in the time of Keats.

Leigh Hunt's opinion of Keats was followed by later friends and admirers of the poet, and I find the same lack of understanding of the real man even in a work showing much research and care — Sydney Colvin's "Life of Keats." These are extraordinary statements, and I must be sure of my ground before I am able to affirm them. Whence, then, do I derive my confidence? From various sources which all concur, but especially from the poems of Keats and from his own sayings.

One phrase of Keats' is decisive: ''I am a philosopher first and a poet afterwards. '' But this is only a declaration in precise terms of what indirectly and implicitly he says again and again, and with so much meaning that—to me at least it seems clear—the intent of his poetry depends upon it.

How has such a statement been ignored? Simply because every new student of Keats has primed himself with the judgments of his predecessors, and one has repeated the other until the combined' force of opinion appears to be averwhelming, but in reality few have added anything derived from a direct study of the writings of Iveats himself.

Even had Keats not uttered the words quoted, my view in this matter would have remained unaffected, for it was after finding in his poems something like a new revelation of thought that I cried aloud, "This man is iirst and last a thinke-r," and it w,is only afterwards that 1 knew that that was the manner in which he regarded himself.

To save time I will now come to

the pith of the matter and speak with dogmatism, but I Leg the reader to believe that this is more apparent than real, for it is possible m a longer exposition to establish what I say. Keats was not a Christian, and by that I mean not that with desperate struggles and high spiritual crises ho had thrown off an acquired belief, but rather that he seemed like one who for good or bad had been untouched by that doctrine. His liking for the Greeks :<nd his absorbed interest, in their mythology was not a literary affectation, it arose .naturally from deep affinitv of his nature with theirs. The religion of Keats more resembled that of Aristotle than any others, including even the majority of Aristotle's contemportries, that is to say, he regarded the gods and

I goddesses, the nymphs and the oreads ' of the mythology, as symbolical, but also as representing something real relater to human wants, and expressed with that harmony and balance which was an :nstinct of the best G-reek character. It is probable that in the days of Aristotle such was the view of most intelligent Greeks, but Keats, and I should be inclined to say Aristotle also, added something of a high spiritual quality which becomes developed in men who think 011 speculative lines.

The ])oem in which, the religion of Ivcats 5 s expressed—for he himself ;!<::! in declares it —is "Endymion." Tii is poem is more abundant in. thoughts, both of artistry and of

jeune imaginings, than anything that Keats has written, and if it were permissible to look only 011 the debit side of the balance these faults afforded some justification for the attacks of the critics; but it is necessary to judge a work of art as a whole, and "Endy-

mion" teems to rise more and more'in

my own appreciation one of the

greatest triumph* of the human mind of .".11 time and of all nations. The theme of "7 ; h-.dymion" is really that of i-Tilton's "Paradise Lost," Carlyie's "Sartor BessarLus.' Byron's "Don Juan," ami Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics." The association of these books so diverse may appear to some at first sight as almost ridiculous, yet I feel sure that for the full understanding of e:ich of these in turn it is necessary to see clearly that guiding principle which will be found to link them all together; that is to say, they are all in different wars autobiographical, and when we lay bare the structural form, whether of poetry or of argument, we Avill find that each is the record of the pil«" of :: soul; and the greatest of these I affirm, and affirm none the less fro'.-lv if I stand exposed to ndi-

eule, is "Endymiou."

The Poet Laureate- lias rendered a real service to students of Keats by showing tlie meaning underlying the allegory in the successive books of "Endymion," but while recognising this to his credit I find myself unable to accept either his interpretation of the allegory or his judgment with regard to Keats' poetry. Briefly I would say that the first book of " Endymiou'" may b? taken to exhibit the soul of youth, lively with the full and immediate appreciations of the beauties of nature. The second book is significant of the influence of the ideal —I might say poetry, or the spirit of love; but there is no real confusion here, for with Keats these conceptions are indissolufcly mingled. The third book may be understood as showing the entrance cf science, that which illuminates and informs the intellect and opens new paths of development. The fourth book fuses all these components. together; it is the expression of Man's destiny in this world. Truth and beauty unite at the spire of things; between earthly love and the high ideal there is no antagonism; one rests upon and grows out of the soil of the other.

If the lover of Keats will return to the reading of "Endvmion,'' and if he will but stop and ponder on curious turns of extpression, he will find in the poem a new meaning, and that meaning will develop the more and more as he comes to recognise clearly the modes of thought that are peculiarly Keatsian.