by Saturn » Sun May 23, 2004 11:17 pm
I think that MonroeDoctrine is unjust and grossly unfair about the poetry of Byron and Wordsworth.
No offence intended, but to me this perhaps smacks of the zealous worshipper, who is blind to the merits of all others. Keats or any other artists do not exist in vacuums!!
This may be a blasphemous remark on these hallowed Keatsian pages, but I am a great admirer of Byron's WORK (his life is always overexposed at it's expense) and many other poets (shock! horror!).
Have you ever read any Byron? The third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold, Beppo, The Vision of Judgement, Darkness, and of course Don Juan; (just to mention some of his most famous works),
are undoubted masterpieces printed with the touch of genius which influenced European poetry for a century and more.
Wordsworth also (by no means a favourite of mine) wrote many fine poems which influenced Keats directly; particularly 'Tintern Abbey' and his lines in 'The Excursion' about the formation of classical mythology greatly coloured Keats own mythological epics. See also his sonnets 'On the Extinction of The Venetian Republic', 'Scorn Not the Sonnet' and, also, his early versions of the Prelude for great self-examination and exploration of the origins of art.
Both poets influenced Keats himself in some way. Although Keats later affected to despise Byron and all his works; at first he cultivated the Byronic dressage and a worldly disdain which was part of the Byronic myth.
Both poets had, to me, distasteful and patronising attitudes to Keats himself and his work (as did Shelley to an extent ). Byron's contempt is well known, but he later softened after reading 'Hyperion' and he came to believe that he was not just another peasant poet (admittedly after his death, and Shelley's reprimands).
Worsdworth too had a somewhat superior view of Keats, once remarking about 'Endymion' (I think) that it was a' pretty piece of paganism'. Also his aloofness and political turncoating disgusted both Byron, Shelley and also Keats.
However we should not see these poets through the eyes of Keats himself and not through actually reading their own work.
It must be understood that at a certain level Keats must have been jealous of the success and noble ancestry of Byron and the patronage and the respect afforded to Wordsworth.
Keats did not want to be famous in the modern sense (the modern pohenomenon would have been impossible for him to comprehend), but he did want to be known and read in the future, 'to be in the mouth of fame', which is a respect afforded to artists throughout the ages by the agency of uncertain Posterity.
Here's some quotes to prove Byron and Worsworth's merits:
Byron -
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think..."
Wordsworth -
"There are in our existence spots of time
Which with distinct preeminence retain
A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed
By trivial occupations and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds -
Especially the imaginative power -
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.
Such moments chiefly seem to have their date
In our first childhood."
These are two very different poets, but not unequal to the laurels which adorn Keats' brow, all three deserve to advance 'gradus ad Parnassum' ( a step to Parnassus).
Sorry for the length of this, I feel very strongly about it!!
Last edited by
Saturn on Mon May 24, 2004 10:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints".