Psyche of Keats

[Starlight]

From the very childhood keats was a thinking soul
always trying to find out the answers of unknown
But when he fell in love with fanny
he was totally disturbed
this was the feeling he was not aware of previously
Oh! intensity of pain that is gifted by Love
Keats my mentor in poetry,
was blessed with it.

Do u have any opinions about the way keats took his love & other perspectives of his life?

[MonroeDoctrine]

I think Keats loved mankind and had a real profound sense of love for the people he knew. Read his poetry and you'll know what sense of love he had for his brother, Fanny, as well as his other friends.

[Starlight]

Keats was melancholic personality finding the way out from his depression & tensions of life, in his poetry. Surviving in Reality expressing fantasy is life story of keats.

[Wickers_Poet]

That's so true. It reminds me of 'When I have fears that I may cease to be.' Another poem along the same lines springs to mind but I'm not sure which one to be precise. The 'Ode on a Grecian urn' also takes up a literary/cultural trophy to explicate the difficulty of self-expression via self-exenoration in poetry (shade of Eliot)!

I believe Keats was the greatest English poet after Shakespeare.

[Saturn]

I believe Keats was the greatest English poet after Shakespeare.

Quite possibly - had Milton never lived

[Starlight]

you are right Stephen, Milton was a very fantastic poet, also the most creative & imaginative one. I like the way he expressed love in his poems but it is also true that keats had expressed these things in very less time (as he died very early)

So it would be unfair that we compare poets & give any verdict without thinking that poets are the most sensitive souls on this earth.

(It is just my opinion & anyone is free to have their own point of view)

Love for all.

[Wickers_Poet]

I'm a poet and I HATE being compared to other poets although I know that that is the lot of us minor rhymesters. I agree, I was generalising overmuch in my above statement.

[Saturn]

It is always difficult comparing poets, but there is a historical continuum where Vergil cannot have existed without Homer, Dante without Vergil and Shakespeare without Ovid.

It is always a fruitless exercise - the greatest poet should be YOUR favourite - that's all that should concern you.

[Wickers_Poet]

Of course, but English literature is strand of sources - A continuum of precedents - Inj medieval times writers right upto the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries writers were proud of being comapred of having sources rooted in other classical writers of antiquity.

[Saturn]

Yes, you're right - that is part of the problem in assessing English poets - that long stretch of time and influence back to ancient Greece makes it hard to judge which is the "better" poet as they all influenced each other in many ways.

[Starlight]

i started this topic to discuss what the real thinking of keats behind his poetry try to concentrate on that topic.
I hope most of you people have read Ode to Nightingale, what you feel about that poem? What keats was trying to say in that poem?

Love for all.

[MonroeDoctrine]

To understand what Keats thought read his letters and read Shelly's IN DEFENSE OF POETRY, and his poem about Keats' death; Adonais. I think Shelly understood what it meant that the world lost Keats.

Anyone who thinks he's just some guy in pain doesn't know anything about Keats!

[Starlight]

Monroe, you are very right that Adonais do exhibit some hidden personality traits of Keats. But again i'm confused because whenever i am unable to undrstand the true psyche of Keats i start wishing that Had I born in era of Keats I would have got a chance to be in his company, to learn the art of expressing true feelings, to sense his real thinking.

Love for all.

[Saturn]

But, as Keats said himself:


“…recollect that no Man can live but in one society at a time—his enjoyment in the different states of human society must depend upon the Powers of his Mind—that is you can imagine a roman triumph, or an olympic game as well as I can. We with our bodily eyes see but the fashion and Manners of one country for one age—and then we die—Now to me manners and customs long since passed whether among the Babylonians or the Bactrians are as real, or eveven more real than those among which I now live—My thoughts have turned lately this way—The more we know the more inadequacy we discover in the world to satisfy us—this is an old observation; but I have made up my Mind never to take anything for granted—but to examine the truth of the commonest proverbs…”
To George & Georgina Keats, Dec 1818- Jan 1819.

[Becky]

Wishing life was more like the past is healthy, as it proves you're aware of what must be changed today...you create your own era, even if you don't actually change what concerns you. Over-do it, though, and you miss out on the greatness of your own time. To live life to the full, you must be aware of a full range of human experience, past and present, on which to base your decisions. Sorry, I'm just rambling, but ive eaten too many tunes.