Raphael wrote:Wow! I would love that! I'm saving up now! I love his handwriting!
I know! His handwriting is actually legible!![]()
Seriously tho', I like seeing how the poems came together. The canceled out parts can tall you a lot.
Raphael wrote:I have to say I struggle with reading some of it as I have always had problems reading what I call joined up writing as my own is printed.
And it is true, the more you look at his handwriting, the easier it is to understand.
One of the things that makes reading Keats's manuscripts interesting (and invaluable) is that you get to read his quirks, intentional misspellings and capitalizations (he tended to capitalize words he felt were important or that he had respect for). Also, there are times you can "read" how fast his mind is working through dashes and haphazard punctuation. Sometimes, you can almost palpably feel his emotional state. I remember reading the actual letter Keats wrote to the Brawnes from on board the Maria Crowther. He writes in a fairly steady hand all the way until the end when he scribbles, in a crampt script that almost tapers off with despair at the end "Good bye Fanny! God bless you."
Credo Buffa wrote:One of the great things about having things like hand-written copies of Keats' poetry, as well as his letters, is that it humanizes him all the more. It's so easy to think of great figures we admire as something other than ourselves. But then you read something Gittings' edition of Keats' letters, where spelling and punctuation are preserved from the original, and see that he seems pathologically unable to spell "Shakespeare" correctly, all of a sudden you see the person behind the art. You literally see in front of you the mistakes and the second thoughts and the jokes and the everyday things that make us all human and connect us in all our imperfections. It's a lovely gift that we are able to have those things even after hundreds of years.
I love how he can be profoundly philosophical one minute and a complete gossip the next![]()
We are privy to his prejudices and also to how wide his heart could be. We see how deeply intuitive he was, shaping his letters to the ear of each recipient.
Can you imagine having been one of the actual recipients of his letters? It is easy to see why more than one of his friends had "the friend of Keats" written (in some form or another) on their gravestones.
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