292

The Nation

John Kea-ts: 1821-1921

By MARK VAN DOREN

EATS was so full of poetry, body and soul, that begino r anyotherrightly
ning poets in timeslikethese
return to him for color and momentum, furniture and fire.
Many new- kinds of poetry flourish today, with many new
inspirations, but Keatss kind remains as surely alive as i t
was in the days of Tennyson and Rossetti. Almost a s if to
celebrate the centenary of his death come volumes of verse
from England, by EdwardShanksand
Aldous .Huxley,
packed with the luxuries, even the vulgarities, that notoriously -derivefrom Endymion.Readers
of Rupert Brooke
six years ago, and of his imitators since, canneverhave
been doubtful, if they knew Keats,
as to the model for a
manner so crowded with fine things saidintentionally, so
carefully enriched with catalogues of enjoyable objects.
Keats was full
of poetrybothin
an unhappy and in a
happy sense, and the reason for the distinctionisinteresting. His unhappypoetrywas
his purelypersonalpoetry,
was the poetry of himself turned in upon himself; his happy
poetry was the poetryof the liberating,objective world. This
is a commonplace, but it may decently be directed in any
generation to the ears of poets who would too particularly
indulge and exploit their personalities. Keats, when he was
a good poet, was a personal poet with a vast difference. It
has generally been remembered how saturated he was every
minute with imminent versa I had become all in a tremble from not having written anything of late, he wrote in
a letter once; the sonnet overleaf did me good; I slept the
better last night for it; this morning, however, I am nearly
as badagain.
I feelassured I should writefromthe
mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even
if my nights labors should be burnt every morning, and no
eyeever rest upon them. It is not so generallyappreciated how likely he was in the better moments to be oblivious of hispainfulprivatestate,tobewhat
is called a n
objective artist.
There is his passion f o r scenery, for instance, which at
first, to be sure, in Endymion, was onIy passion for setting hishungry soul among delicious bowers, but which
eventually wasa passion for makingbeauty true. An observer of him as a student in London recorded that in reading poetry then t o his friends he admired more the externaldecorations than felt the
deep emotions of the Muse.
He delighted in Ieading you through the mazes of elaborate
description. Description became histaskand
evoked his
genius, once he wassomething likemature.He
could be
interested only in what had shape and -place; meaning and
motion were not sufficient f o r him as they were for Shelley.
Keats stood still and looked, stationing his imagination by
preference in hushed retreats preternaturallythickened with
it always somewhere. Usingan
frondage,butstationing
etchers cunning inTheEve
of Saint Mark, a glorified
mosaicists conscience in The Eve of St. Agnes, a great and
tranquil painters wisdom in Hyperion, he rendered visible
perfect world, not merely himself within a perfect-world.
A reader, he thought, should see all that he saw, but should
not see him. The rise, the progress, the setting
of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural t o him, shine over
him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him
in the luxury of twilight.

[Vol. 112,No. 2903

For another instance, there is his increasing conviction

that his poetry existed, that poetry in general existed, but
that he did not. With this increased his lucidity, with his
lucidityhis power, andwithhis
power his peace. It is
agreed that a writer must do well if he knows much about
his subject; but Keats, in Endymion, knew too much about
hissubject, which is the same as saying,since he was
young, and the subject was himself, that he h e w too little
about it. He saw clearly enough, both then and later, that
he had to get rid of himself. I feel more and more every
day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do notlivein
this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. A poet-is the
most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no
identity; he is continuallyin, for, and feeling some other
It is a wretched thing to confess, but i t is
body. . .
fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted
asan opinion growingout of my identicalnature.
If
Keats exists in his
poetry, he exists, it maybesaid
once
more, with
difference; the whole of himpassed into it.
Endymion died that Saturn and Hyperion and great Thea
could
born.
be
But any discussion of Keats must sooner or later turn t o
his language. The meaning of certain poets is more important than their language; Keatss language was his meaning.Tonewas
hisfavorite
word, his-most necessary
thought. We shallenjoy
ourselves hereafter by having
what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone.
Let me write down a line of glorious tone. He studied
effects of consonants and vowels, and inquired the values of
a cool pleasurein the
words inspiritualeam.Thereis
very sound of vale, he noted on the margin of his Bfilton.
And so f a r as meter is concerned, i t almost can be said that
he lived from one good cadence to another.
Here,somewhat
as before, a distinction is inescapable
between the language of himself and the language of the
poetry that was in him. Thelanguage of himself was
expression of akind,
but hardly communication. It expressed, in a raw,ineffectual way, hisinstinctivedelight
in slanting verbal curves,
in plunges and dips and quivers
of syntax, but i t failed t o convey much experience of beauty.
The language OP the purer poetry that lay in him, like the
everywhere, communicated
language of all purepoetry
beautythrough cadences so sure that they seemed determined less by him alone than by the abstract Muses. In
a great poet and judge of
reading prose,saidEmerson,
poetry, I am sensitive as soon as sentence drags ; but in
poetry, as soon as one word drags.Even
asthethought
mounts, the expression mounts. . . . The poem is made
up of lines each of which fills the ear of the poet in its turn,
so that mere synthesis produces a work quite superhuman.
Thepassagesand
linesinKeats
which are superhuman,
which belong, that is, not to Keats but to poetry, a r e few,
but,their smooth, slow, richly-runningtide,theirgrave,
sweet movement like descending weights, bear them beyond
the business of enumeration.
th!s passing night was heard
The voice I
In ancientdays by emperor
clown. . . .
Far from the fiery noon, and evesone star,
Sat gray-haird Saturn, quiet
a stone. . . .
Thou foster-child of S~lenceand slow Time. . . .
Toceaseupon the midnight with no pain. . . .
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. . . .
Dream, and
dream all night without a stir.