Themes and images in the sonnets of John Keats E-Book

Luisa Conti Camaiora

• Herausgeber: EDUCatt
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Of the sixty-seven sonnets composed by John Keats fifty are commented here. The number sixty-seven is inclusive of ‘Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies’, Keats’s unfinished translation of Ronsard’s sonnet ‘Nature ornant Cassandre qui devoyt’, and of The Poet, that is not universally acknowledged as composed by Keats. The sonnets proposed thus present an ample spectrum of Keats’s sonnet writing and cover the span of his writing career, from 1814 to 1819. The sonnets are commented in chronological order: two belong to the year 1814, three to 1815, seventeen to 1816, six to 1817, thirteen to 1818 and nine to 1819. For each sonnet, the text is presented, followed by the date of composition and of the first publication. An indication of the typology to which the sonnet belongs and of its rhyme scheme is also furnished. The text is based on the editions of Miriam Allott, The Poems of John Keats, Longman, London, 1972 [1970], Jack Stillinger, John Keats: Complete Poems, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1982 [1978], John Barnard, John Keats: The Complete Poems, Penguin Books, London, 1988 [1973], Nicholas Roe, John Keats: Selected Poems, Dent, London, 2000 [1995], and Paul Wright, The Poems of John Keats, Wordsworth Poetry Library, Ware, 2001. For the dating, that proposed by Miriam Allott has been followed. For each sonnet the circumstances of its composition, when known, are referred. The letters of Keats are cited to provide information on the date and on the events surrounding the writing of the poems, to furnish the poet’s own comments concerning the sonnets, and to document parallels in wording, images and thoughts, useful for the analysis on hand, as well as other more general observations and reflections of the poet retained to be pertinent for a better understanding of the poems. The edition from which the citations of the letters are taken is that of Grant F. Scott, Selected Letters of John Keats, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2002, integrated, when necessary, by that of Hyder Edward Rollins, The Letters of John Keats 1814-1821, 2 vols., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1958. Other important sources of information regarding the sonnets that have here been used are Richard Monckton Milnes’s edition of the life of Keats, Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats, 2 vols., London, 1848, the recollections of Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (1878), Centaur Press, Fontwell, 1969, and the literary remains of the Keats Circle, collected by Hyder Edward Rollins, The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers 1816-1879, 2 vols., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965 [1948]. For the meanings and significations of specific words, reference has been made to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. on CD-ROM (v. 4.0), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009. Some of the sonnets have been commented in previous articles and books of the author, in particular in her Il primo Keats: lettura della poesia 1814-1818, Milella, Lecce, 1978, The Letters and Poems of John Keats’s Northern Tour, Europrint Publications, Milan, 1997 and John Keats and the Creative Process, Europrint Publications, Milan, 2001, but here the analyses are re-visited, integrated and modified. Tratto dall'Introduzione dell'Autrice

Leseprobe

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isbn edizione cartacea: 978-88-8311-729-9

isbn edizione ePub: 978-88-6780-896-0

Contents

Introduction

On Peace

To Lord Byron

To Chatterton

Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison

‘O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell’

To – [‘Had I a man’s fair form’]

‘Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain’

‘Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair’

‘Ah, who can e’er forget so fair a being’

‘To one who has been long in city pent’

‘Oh, how I love, on a fair summer’s eve’

To my Brother George

‘How many bards gild the lapses of time’

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

‘Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there’

On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour

To my Brothers

Addressed to Haydon

Addressed to the Same [‘Great Spirits’]

On the Grasshopper and Cricket

To Georgiana Augusta Wylie

‘Happy is England! I could be content’

‘After dark vapours have oppressed our plains’

To Leigh Hunt, Esq.

Written on a blank space at the end of Chaucer’s tale ‘The Floure and the Leafe’

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

To B.R. Haydon, with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles

On The Story of Rimini

On the Sea

On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

‘When I have fears that I may cease to be’

To – [‘Time’s sea’]

To the Nile

‘Spenser! A jealous honourer of thine’

‘O thou whose face hath felt the winter’s wind’

‘Four seasons fill the measure of the year’

To Homer

On Visiting the Tomb of Burns

To Ailsa Rock

‘This mortal body of a thousand days’

‘Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud’

‘Why did I laugh to-night?’

‘As Hermes once took to his feathers light’

To Sleep

‘Fame like a wayward girl will still be coy’

‘How fever’d is the man who cannot look’

‘If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d’

‘The day is gone and all its sweets are gone’

‘I cry your mercy, pity, love’

‘Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art’

Conclusion

Selected Bibliography

Introduction

Of the sixty-seven sonnets composed by John Keats fifty are commented here. The number sixty-seven is inclusive of ‘Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies’, Keats’s unfinished translation of Ronsard’s sonnet ‘Nature ornant Cassandre qui devoyt’, and of The Poet, that is not universally acknowledged as composed by Keats. The sonnets proposed thus present an ample spectrum of Keats’s sonnet writing and cover the span of his writing career, from 1814 to 1819. The sonnets are commented in chronological order: two belong to the year 1814, three to 1815, seventeen to 1816, six to 1817, thirteen to 1818 and nine to 1819.

For each sonnet, the text is presented, followed by the date of composition and of the first publication. An indication of the typology to which the sonnet belongs and of its rhyme scheme is also furnished. The text is based on the editions of Miriam Allott, The Poems of John Keats, Longman, London, 1972 [1970], Jack Stillinger, John Keats: Complete Poems, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1982 [1978], John Barnard, John Keats: The Complete Poems, Penguin Books, London, 1988 [1973], Nicholas Roe, John Keats: Selected Poems, Dent, London, 2000 [1995], and Paul Wright, The Poems of John Keats, Wordsworth Poetry Library, Ware, 2001. For the dating, that proposed by Miriam Allott has been followed. For each sonnet the circumstances of its composition, when known, are referred. The letters of Keats are cited to provide information on the date and on the events surrounding the writing of the poems, to furnish the poet’s own comments concerning the sonnets, and to document parallels in wording, images and thoughts, useful for the analysis on hand, as well as other more general observations and reflections of the poet retained to be pertinent for a better understanding of the poems. The edition from which the citations of the letters are taken is that of Grant F. Scott, Selected Letters of John Keats, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London, 2002, integrated, when necessary, by that of Hyder Edward Rollins, The Letters of John Keats 1814-1821, 2 vols., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1958.

Other important sources of information regarding the sonnets that have here been used are Richard Monckton Milnes’s edition of the life of Keats, Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats, 2 vols., London, 1848, the recollections of Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (1878), Centaur Press, Fontwell, 1969, and the literary remains of the Keats Circle, collected by Hyder Edward Rollins, The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers 1816-1879, 2 vols., Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1965 [1948]. For the meanings and significations of specific words, reference has been made to the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. on CD-ROM (v. 4.0), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009.

Some of the sonnets have been commented in previous articles and books of the author, in particular in her Il primo Keats: lettura della poesia 1814-1818, Milella, Lecce, 1978, The Letters and Poems of John Keats’s Northern Tour, Europrint Publications, Milan, 1997 and John Keats and the Creative Process, Europrint Publications, Milan, 2001, but here the analyses are re-visited, integrated and modified.

On Peace

Oh Peace! and dost thou with thy presence bless

The dwellings of this war-surrounded isle;

Soothing with placid brow our late distress,

Making the triple kingdom brightly smile?

Joyful I hail thy presence; and I hail

The sweet companions that await on thee;

Complete my joy – let not my first wish fail,

Let the sweet mountain nymphs thy favourite be,

With England’s happiness proclaim Europa’s liberty.

Oh Europe! let not sceptred tyrants see

That thou must shelter in thy former state;

Keep thy chains burst, and boldly say thou art free;

Give thy kings law – leave not uncurbed the great;

So with the horrors past thou’lt win thy happier fate.

The sonnet was written in April 1814. It was first published in the journal Notes and Queries, on 4 February 1904, and later reprinted in E. de Selincourt’s 1905 edition of Keats’s poems[1].

The poem is an irregular sonnet rhyming abab cdcd ddedee.

The occasion of the poem was the commemoration of the Peace of Paris. With the surrender of Napoleon (11 April 1814) and his exile to Elba, the war with France had come to an end. Keats echoes the sentiments expressed in various articles written by Leigh Hunt in TheExaminer in the period April-May 1814.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), was a poet and the editor of the radical newspaper, The Examiner. In his newspaper, Hunt had given voice to his hopes for a future of constitutional monarchies in Europe, as also to his conviction that the liberated nations would impede the instauration of new tyrannies. Charles Cowden Clarke has testified his conviction that Hunt’s Examiner, “which my father took in, and I used to lend to Keats – no doubt laid the foundation of his [Keats’s] love of civil and religious liberty”[2].

Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877) was the son of the headmaster of Enfield school, that Keats had attended. He was eight years older than the poet and was a very important influence on Keats’s literary formation, reading and commenting texts with him and encouraging him to write poetry. He introduced Keats to Leigh Hunt and formed part of the Hunt circle until 1817 when he moved to Ramsgate. He furnished important information to Keats’s first biographer, Richard Monckton Milnes and published his own “Recollections” of Keats in the Atlantic Monthly in 1861.

The poem shows the influence of the sonneteers of the late eighteenth century and recalls the manner of Coleridge’s Sonnets to Eminent Characters (1797) and of Wordsworth’s Sonnets dedicated to Liberty in Poems in Two Volumes (1807). In imitation of Milton, it may be retained that this sonnet also testifies to Keats’s use of poetry in the service of politics. The poem consists of two sentences: in the first, verses 1-9, Keats apostrophizes and exalts Peace; in the second, verses 10-14, he addresses Europe, exhorting her to maintain her freedom.

The sonnet opens with an apostrophe to Peace, personified throughout the poem as a female figure. In the first quatrain Keats contrasts the blessing of her presence with the past period of war. Specifically, England is termed “this war-surrounded isle”, alluding to the war with France, but also to the fact that Britain, though not invaded, was metaphorically encircled in Europe by countries that were at war with Napoleon. Britain is also called “the triple kingdom”, alluding to the union, in the United Kingdom, of the three countries of England, Scotland and Ireland. Peace is presented as a figure of calm and tranquillity, endowed with a “placid brow”, able to assuage recent distress and to bring a bright smile back to the nation. After having described the qualities of Peace in the first quatrain, in the next three verses Keats expresses his own personal reaction, acclaiming her return. The verb “hail” is used twice: once to acknowledge Keats’s sentiment of joy for the presence of Peace and once to salute the sweet companions that the poet retains accompany her.

It is one of these companions that is then specifically invoked in verse 7 as a presence necessary for the completion of Keats’s joy, as an ulterior entity essential for the avoidance of the failure of his utmost desire (“first wish”). This longed for and required presence is revealed indirectly, through a personification: “the sweet mountain nymph”, a figure that Keats trusts will be the privileged companion of Peace. It is indicative and suggestive that Keats should not name this identity explicitly, but should prefer to use a turn of phrase taken from the work of a past staunch defender of republicanism, John Milton, L’Allegro, verse 36: “The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty”. Keats expects his reader to remember not only the verse, but also the political sympathies of its writer. It is therefore Liberty that should be the preferred, “favourite”, accompanier of Peace, and this first part of the sonnet ends with a verse that asserts that this double presence assures not only the happiness of England, but the liberty of Europe. This verse is practically a free translation of the inscription which decorated Somerset House in celebration of the peace and victory: “Europa Instaurata, Auspice Britanniae / Tyrannide Subversa, Vindice Libertatis”[3].

The last five verses of the sonnet apostrophize Europe and give voice to a series of aspirations for its future. Keats’s first auspice is that it should not return to its former state, under the dominion of absolute monarchies, “sceptred tyrants”. The second is that it should preserve its liberty, keeping its chains broken and boldly asserting its status of freedom. The third, closely connected with this, is the augury that Europe should submit its kings to the control of a constitution, not leaving monarchic power unchecked. With regard to this specific issue, Miriam Allott, pointing out how the new French constitution was ratified in April 1814 and how Louis XVIII returned to Paris in May 1814, documents the comment of Leigh Hunt in The Examiner, 273, on 1 May 1814: “he [Louis XVIII] will not have power to play the tyrant like some of his predecessors, his subjects will take care, if they remain true to their new charter”[4]. Keats’s final verse expresses the hope that the horrors of the past may be functional in preparing, attaining and preserving a happier future. This desired future is metrically paralleled by the verse itself, longer in length than those of the rest of the sonnet, in that it consists of an alexandrine of twelve syllables instead of the usual iambic pentameter of ten.

To Lord Byron

Byron! how sweetly sad thy melody!

Attuning still the soul to tenderness,

As if soft Pity, with unusual stress,

Had touch’d her plaintive lute, and thou, being by,

Hadst caught her tones, nor suffer’d them to die.

O’ershading sorrow doth not make thee less

Delightful: thou thy griefs dost dress

With a bright halo, shining beamily;

As when a cloud a golden moon doth veil,

Its sides are ting’d with a resplendent glow,

Through the dark robe oft amber rays prevail,

And like fair veins in sable marble flow.

Still warble, dying swan, still tell the tale,

The enchanting tale, the tale of pleasing woe.

The sonnet was written in December 1814. It was first published in Richard Monckton Milnes’s 1848 edition of the life, letters and works of Keats[5].

The poem is a Petrarchan sonnet rhyming abbaabba cdcdcd.

The sonnet is a celebration of the poet Byron, and specifically of his oriental tales in verse, which had been published in 1813-14. These are the poems that Keats here praises; later, in Sleep and Poetry, verses 233-235 (October-December 1816) and in The Fall of Hyperion