April 02, 2007
Keats and Italy
One of the best things about going to Rome is that it boasts so many of the Romantics as having lived or died there. Shelley, Byron, and Keats all lived there during the Grand Tour of Europe. Keats actually died there, and you can visit the very room in which he passed away right next to the Plaza di Spagna (popularly known as the Spanish Steps). The Wife and I went up to check it out.
It is only three small rooms, but the museum (which has been around since the early 1800s) boasts an impressive collection of first editions of Byron, Shelley, Keats and Leigh Hunt. As well as these, it also contains many original letters to or from Keats and his friends, including many items from Joseph Severn, the artist and Keats roommate up until his death of tuberculosis.
Although none of Keats great works were written in Rome (by the time he got there he was too sick to write much) much of what he wrote stems from what he believed Italy and Rome in particular to be. While there, I purchased a copy of Keats and Italy a publication of the museum which does an excellent job of introducing those of us unfamiliar with Keats to his life and why Italy was such an important place for him. A short biography, a couple of his poems, a history of the Keats-Shelley house and reflections on Keats make the book a well-rounded introduction to a man who died so young and tragically.
I read the book on the way home from Rome, and enjoyed its easy prose and illuminating detail on the Romantic poet "whose name was writ on water". You can read his best known work "Ode on a Grecian Urn" after the jump. In it we get the well known phrase that declares, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
My interest in Keats has been peaked, and through him to the Romantics I think. Keats sought beauty in words and the art and myths of the ancients, much as I did when I was a younger man. I feel akin to the man, even though poetry usually stumps me.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
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Reading this made me think of a Keats poem that linked somehow with sailing, stars, Italy and his death. After scrolling through his "Poetical Works" I decided it was "Bright Star" and after reading Wikipedia I see why I had made such associations. He had inscribed it in one of Severn's books while they were sailing to Italy. It was first considered to be the last poem he wrote before his death, but it has now been dated earlier.
Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task 5
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, 10
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
finis
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