alone to improve
I felt rather lonley this Morning at breakfast so I went and unbox’d a Shak[e]peare;
I find I cannot exist without poetry—without eternal poetry […] I had become all in a Tremble from not having written any thing of late: Endymion begun; publishers Taylor & Hessey will publish his future work; poem: composes On the Sea
Morbidity of Temperament
Bo-Peep: end of May he meets a lady he warms to (and with): Isabella Jones
thought so much about Poetry so long together that I could not get to sleep at night;
I have asked myself so often why I should be a Poet more than other Men,—seeing how great a thing it is,—how great things are to be gained by it—What a thing to be in the Mouth of Fame;
The Trumpet of Fame is as a tower of Strength;
the Cliff of Poesy Towers above me;
I read and write about eight hours a day;
I hope for the support of a High Power while I clime this little eminence; agreeing with Hazlitt,
Shakespeare is enough for us; with Hunt in mind, he believes greatest sin is to
flatter oneself into an idea of being a great Poet;
I have a horrid Morbidity of Temperament which has shown itself at intervals; says he feels
all the effects of a Mental Debauchin struggling to
tend to my ultimate Progression; laments Hunt’s
self delusions; Canterbury visited with younger brother Tom
writing very hard lately even till an utter incapacity came on: perhaps writes The Gothic looks solemn
disgusted with literary Men […] except Wordsworth—no not even Byron; wants to avoid Shelley in order to have
my own unfettered scope; knows that he will have the Reputation as Hunt’s
eleve; ill for about two weeks and takes a
little Mercury—worries that he
shall never be again secure in Robustness; realizes he
shall have the Reputation of Hunt’s eleve; indolence parsed as a complex state;
Health and Spirits can only belong unalloyed to the selfish Man—the Man who much of his fellow can never be in Spirits
virulentand
flamingattack on Hunt in Blackwood’s, Keats believes he will be next and now to be associated with
the Cockney School of Poetry; poem: draft of Endymion completed;
Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect—but they have not any individuality, any determined Character. [. . .] I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of the Imagination—What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth [. . .] The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream—he awoke and found it truth [. . .] I have never yet been able to perceive how any thing can be known for truth by consequitive reasoning—and yet it must be [. . .] O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!;
the simple imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent Working coming continually on the Spirit with a fine Suddenness;
I am continually running away from the subject—sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind—one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits—who would exist partly on sensation partly on thought
I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness;
if a Sparrow come[s] before my Window I take part in its existence; on Shakespeare’s sonnets:
they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally—in the intensity of working out conceits […] He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing; likely writes Think not of it, sweet one; reading Coleridge and Shakespeare
The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from there being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth;
Negative Capability […] when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason;
with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration; Haydon’s so-called
immortal dinner; very social in Dec and into Jan and Feb 1818; writes In drear nighted December
[on pages vii-ix of the original text]
KNOWING within myself the manner in which this Poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.
What manner I mean, will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year’s castigation would do them any good;—it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.
This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look with a zealous eye, to the honour of English literature.
The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.
I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful mythology of Greece and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more, before I bid it farewel [sic].
Teignmouth,
April 10, 1818.
× Cite this page:
Blank, G. Kim. “Select Chronology & Keats’s Key Comments: 1817.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology. Edition 3.27 , University of Victoria, 19 August 2024. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/1817-12.html.
G. Kim Blank, “Select Chronology & Keats’s Key Comments: 1817,” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.27 , last modified 19th August 2024. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/1817-12.html.
Blank, G. Kim. “Select Chronology & Keats’s Key Comments: 1817.” Mapping Keats’s Progress: A Critical Chronology, Edition 3.27 , last modified 19th August 2024. https://johnkeats.uvic.ca/1817-12.html.