Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art... / Blog / Untitled Books

Issue 40 / January 2012

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art...

Clerkenwell Tales attended a very special event at the Free Word Centre in Farringdon on Monday night: 'Bright Star - an intimate evening of Keats' poetry', which featured one of the stars of the recent Jane Campion film, Ben Whishaw. By candlelight, three actors including Whishaw read from a selection of Keats' poems and letters; and between readings, music from the film was performed by a small troupe of talented musicians under the direction of the composer, Mark Bradshaw.

The readings were in a loosely chronological order that added special poignancy to the final readings of the evening as the playfully clever and charming tone of letters to his family, friends and to Fanny Brawne become more unhappy and desperate, and where the obsession with death of his early poetry is replaced by the heavy shadow cast by knowledge his imminent demise.

Whishaw read a letter to Fanny from 13^th October 1819 in which Keats wrote: 'I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving - I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of seeing you', and tells her he can no longer try and reason with his love, that 'I cannot breathe without you'. Whishaw then read 'Ode to a Nightingale', which heard straight afterwards made the poem's themes of the infinite nature of Beauty and conversely, that Death is growing ever nearer even more poignant,

Darkling I listen, and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death,

Called him soft names in many a muséd rhyme,

To take into the air my quiet breath,

Now more than ever seems it rich to die.

The evening also reminded me that Keats is incredibly accessible - his exquisite turn of phrase and use of language naturally catch your ear and there is never a sense of superiority or obliqueness, instead there is vulnerability, a generous openness in his work that makes it utterly engaging.

Keats' letters are fascinating to read alongside the poems as they are full of his thoughts on poetry, writers of the day, his ardent belief in Beauty... but they are useful for another reason. Keats the Romantic hero, the ardent lover and idealist, etc, is the poet we know best, but it is as well to remember that he was funny, a warm, witty, at times cutting, correspondent who also had a young man's confidence as he endlessly discussed his ideas, his own and other poets' work.

He stated in one letter to his siblings in 1818 in response to some poor criticism of his work in literary journals, 'I think I shall be among the English poets after my death'; and in another letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey in 1817 he writes, 'O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thought!' A sentiment entirely relevant to his work, but also applicable to many twenty-two-year-olds...

This is another appealing aspect of Keats - the combination of genius and youth; of intellectual maturity and naïve exuberance. I love the letter, again to his siblings George and Georgiana in 1818 where he quotes a long passage from The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (a text that influenced Keats a great deal) concerning the inability of lovers to see their mistresses' faults once they have selected them and provides a funny and very lengthy list of examples of unappealing qualities remaining undetected by the lover, such as a 'vile gait', 'a vast virago', 'a fat fustilip', 'she looks like a squis'd cat' etc, etc, and coming to the end of this very long list Keats writes, 'I would give my favourite leg to have written this as a speech in a Play'!

Not that this knowledge detracts from the reality of Keats as one of the key Romantic poets concerned with Beauty, Truth, Death and the desire to escape from mortal pain and constraint. As the scholar Cleanth Brooks succinctly wrote regarding the 'Ode to a Nightingale', '... the world of the imagination offers a release from the painful world of actuality, yet at the same time it renders the world of actuality more painful by contrast.'

We still have a few copies of So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne signed by Ben Whishaw in the shop, so pop in before Christmas if you would like one.

What's hot

EVERYTHING! The Christmas rush is officially on... !

Who did we spot?

Nick Hornby

Ben Whishaw

Stella Tillyard

Sir Peter Stothard - who brought us a preview copy of his fascinating new book, to be published in January, On the Spartacus Road: A Spectacular Journey Through Ancient Italy (Harper Press)

Michael Alcock

Wednesday, 30 December, 2009

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Issue 40 / January 2012