Thank you Saturn, and Bordesley – that was lovely. I am in agreement with Jane when she says she needs something like this in her life ( the poems and beauty of this love affair)- I do as well. And when she says at first she was afraid of John’s poems- I certainly was back in 1997/8 when I encountered them on a literature course) designed for university entry) aged 29 ½. I was powerfully struck by his genius and intensity and the philosophies of Truth is Beauty and Negative Capability shook me.
What all three interviewees had to say about Keats strikes me profoundly--they hit the nail on the head when it comes to why people are so attracted to him, even after nearly 200 years.
Yes- what John Keats had to say was so profound it stands the test of time.
I think Ben Whishaw is correct in that Keats's love and desire (for both his art and his love) were heightened because of the shadow of death.
Yes- when one is on “borrowed time” every moment I imagine would take on a greater intesity.
People call To Autumn his most "perfect" and "untroubled"poem, and yet, when you read closely, it is the irony of life that makes it so perfect. In To Autumn, we discover the disturbing fact that Death and Life are intricately linked--and that Beauty cannot exist without them together. Not exactly an "untroubling" thought; but the truth of it *is* Beautiful! To paraphrase Keats, we cannot have the light without the shade--the two are powerfully, painfully and perpetually interconnected.
This I think is one of the if not THE most profound truths of human/physical existence- that life and death are two sides of the same coin, that one is part of the other, that we cannot escape them. It makes one realise that suffering is part of life and that although one can enter the Beautiful and to some extent release suffering by one’s reactions and attitudes towards things one cannot escape it. The acceptance of the paradoxes that govern physical existence is hard to accept, but to me, it is the only way to go forward. So when we encounter beauty- we release into it and be fully present with it( or at least try to!)
I think had John lived longer he would have gone onto even more profound philosphies!