by Ennis » Thu Jan 17, 2013 4:00 am
Hey, guys!
I've just started Roe's biography from cover-to-cover. As I posted earlier, I have skimmed parts of it, but have realized I need to "get down to business," and read it from beginning to end!
I just want to share some phrases/sentences that affected me when I read them (all underscoring and bold type are my own):
"Few English poets are more widely admired, or more likely to divide opinion."
"Matthew Arnold came to praise a great poet, and found an underbred sensualist." (My underscoring!)
"Yet these consummate portraits of genius do not much resemble the feckless orphan (again, my underscoring), 'five feet hight (sic),' whom
Geoffrey Matthews once claimed was a 'classic case history of a delinquent.' " FECKLESS orphan! I'd say Keats was far from being worthless, and shame
on you, Geoffrey Matthews, for referring to Keats as a "delinquent"!!
". . . and we can sense how those formative deprivations may have shaped the intense ambition and forlorn awareness of his poems." Forlorn
awareness: I like that phrase.
"Poetry for Keats was from the first to last a means of resistance, a way to stand his ground."
". . . there is a very good case for keeping a more traditional narrative structure for a writer like - though there is no one like him - John
Keats."
"Looking at him through others' eyes cannot make silences speak, although the scarcity of personal effects known to have belonged to him tells us of
his rootless, and often homeless, way of life. For Keats, dispossession was what mattered, and his response was not to amass property but to
cultivate supportive circles of brothers and friends who would nurture his rage after fame." We all, I think, would agree with Roe's
comment about Keats's rootlessness, homelessness, and his "rage for fame," but to read it as such makes it more real - to me, anyway.
"We read to know what being Keats felt like . . . ." My God, how true that statement is!
" 'Was I born for this end?' he asked Brown in a letter from Naples. There is nothing that can better explain this remorseless intelligence, . . ."
Thanks for your patience . . . . no one in my home really cares about Keats and his impact on me. They all are aware of my "harmless obsession," but if I mention anything about him, I just know those three pairs of eyeballs roll in those heads. My 6 year old grandson, believe it or not, is the only one who seems to make an effort to understand (he thought for the longest time that Fanny Brawne's name was "Bright Star"!).
"But if you will fully love me, though there may be some fire, 'twill not be more than we can bear when moistened and bedewed with Pleasures." JK to FB 08.07.1819