Critical note on John Keats concept of beauty and truth.

  P-103 Assignment

Name-Kishan Jadav

 Paper 103: Literature of the Romantics

Topic :- Write a critical note on John Keats concept of beauty and truth.

Roll no-11

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-1)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,
                Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Critical note on John Keats  concept of beauty and truth.

Introduction:-

                   Keats is of the view that everything which touches the senses is beautiful. Besides the poet of nature, John Keats is also called poet of beauty and sensousness. Art, birds’ songs, forests, clouds, skies, seasons, in fact every element either natural or unnatural, is beautiful in his eyes. He finds it even in truth, song of nightingale and also in Grecian urn.Beauty was his pole star, beauty in nature, in woman and in art. For him, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’. Keats always admired Spenser and Boccaccio and his imagination was always influenced after reading both the poets’ poetry. Keats poetry showed the romance of three worlds: the antique; the medieval and the modern where his poetry had rich and pictorial expressions.

                    The Romantic element in Keats appears less in his choice of subjects than in his manner of treating them. ‘Hyperion’, ‘Endymion’, ‘Lamia’ are old classical in story but at the same time they have romantic element too. On the other hand, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, ‘Isabelle’, ‘La Belle Dams Sans Merci’ are drawn from the Middle of ages in which romance breathes more freely.Keats had no interest in men. In the passion and struggle of ordinary human life he discussed his feelings for poetry. To him poetry was the world of the imagination only, realm of enchantment where only those might dwell who saw visions and dreamed dreams- a land of voluptuous languor, where magic filled the air and life passed like a dream, measured only by the exquisiteness of its sensations and the intensity of its delights.

                   When we think of Keats, ‘Beauty’ comes to our mind. Keats and Beauty have become almost synonymous. We cannot think of Keats without thinking of Beauty. Beauty is an abstraction, it does not give out its meaning easily. For Keats, it is not so. He sees Beauty everywhere. Keats made Beauty his object of wonder and admiration and he became the greatest poet of Beauty. All the Romantic poets had a passion for one thing or the other. Wordsworth was the worshipper of Nature and Coleridge was a poet of the supernatural. Shelley stood for ideals and Byron loved liberty. With Keats the passion for Beauty was the greatest, rather the only consideration. In the letters of Keats, we frequently read about his own ideas about Beauty.  Keats’ principle was “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty”. He was passionate about beautiful things in an intellectual manner not in a sentimental way. Keats had intense romantic fervor. His Romanticism had an outlook different from that of his colleagues Byron looked around and criticized; Shelly looked forward and aspired; and Keats looked backward into the romantic past and sighed.

                 He hated didacticism in poetry. For the poetry itself was beauty so he wrote, “We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.”  ’The lines of his poem ‘Endymion’ have become a maxim:

            “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

            Its loveliness increases; it will never

            Pass into nothingness”

               He even disapproved Shelley for subordinating the true end of poetry to the object of social reform. He dedicated his brief life to the expression of beauty as For Keats the world of beauty was an escape from the dreary and painful life or experience. He escaped from the political and social problems of the world into the realm of imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley, he remained untouched by revolutionary theories for the regression of mankind. His later poems such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Hyperion” show an increasing interest in human problems and humanity and if he had lived he would have established a closer contact with reality. Keats is the poet of sensations. His intellectual work includes working on notions, images and qualities. His balance between perfect classicism and romantic intensity is remarkable,  The favorite themes in Keats’s Romanticism are set in the ‘Odes’ in short and elaborate forms, constructed with harmonious skill, sculptural grace of Greek attitudes, the nostalgia of the charming myths of Hellas, the changing seasons and the joys of the earth English Romanticism attains in Keats the final stage of its progress, and this pessimism is deeper and more significant. It has not its secret source of any Tragic Mystery and it is thus much more inevitable. It springs from the satiety of a soul which yet has made no demands upon the more common joys of life; it is made up of the unconquerable feeling of the fragility of beautiful forms, as of the vanity of the effort through which desire seeks to transcend itself .

Different types of Beauty :-

1] BEAUTY IN THE ALL THINGS: Keats acts of conceiving or an idea of beauty and his behave towards beauty underwent a change with the passage of time. Though at all conditions of his considerable for beauty he feels it absolutely necessary to stay as devote and lover of beauty.

2] SENSUOUS AND PHYSICAL BEAUTY: Keats’ consideration of pleasing appearance was clearly (that can be) seen. He was interested in the pleasing appearance of woman and the pleasing appearance of nature. in “Endymion” he presented his joy in the beauty of nature in its varied aspects and come out with the assertion.

3] NATURAL BEAUTY: Keats love for nature is equally well represented in these odes. Keats loved nature in all its objective and beautiful aspects and this love for nature is expressed in the “Ode to Nightingale” as well as the “Ode to Autumn”. The “Ode to Autumn” is a glorification of the beauty of nature, and in the “Ode to Nightingale” we can enjoy the beauty of the flowers and translucent light of the moon making its way through the leaves.

4] TRUTH AND BEAUTY: The greatest gift of his intelligence and his chief contribution to the world is his philosophy of beauty and truth, beauty in female form and nature. Keats advanced to a philosophic concept of beauty. He soon comes out of the kingdom of flora and old fan of sleep and poetry and by the time.

5] HUMANITARIAN CONCEPT: Keats believed that poetry should be written not for any propaganda a moral teaching. There should not be any palpable design is the writing of poetry. He became less aesthetic and more humanitarian and now his whole endeavors were to pass physical appreciation of beauty for deeper and humanitarian understanding of the principle of beauty.

6] BEAUTY, TRUTH AND POWER: “There is something of the inner most soul of beauty in nearly every thing he wrote and perhaps, that is what strike me most, the more one grows to appreciate the finer spirit of poetry at its true worth.” this is the second law of Keats. The first is the truth and beauties are one. “Where there is the highest beauty there is the necessity of greatest power

          Keats when he died, gave promise of becoming the greatest poet of his generation, and one who better than any other, would have united the free inspiration of Romanticism with the formal principle of the schools of the past .

He derived aesthetic delight through his senses. He looked at autumn and says that even autumn has beauty and charm:

            “Where are the song of Spring? Ay, where are they?

            Think not of them, thou hast thy music too”

                      Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romantics while Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating the impossible reforms and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political measure. Worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart or to reflect some splendour of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be, he had the noble idea that poetry exists for its own sake and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics. Disinterested love of beauty is one of the qualities that made Keats great and that distinguished him from his great contemporaries. He grasped the essential oneness of beauty and truth. His creed did not mean beauty of form alone. His ideal was the Greek ideal of beauty inward and outward, the perfect soul of verse and the perfect form. Precisely because he held this ideal, he was free from the wish to preach. Keats’ early sonnets are largely concerned with poets, pictures, sculptures or the rural solitude in which a poet might nurse his fancy. His great odes have for their subjects a storied Grecian Urn; a nightingale; and the season of autumn, to which he turns from the songs of spring. The appreciation of Beauty in Keats is through mind or spirit. The approach becomes intellectual as he endorsees in ‘Ode on Grecian Urn’:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty -that is all

         Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”

                  

               Art has captured Beauty of life and made it a truth for all the ages to be “a friend to man.” It is not the logical reaching after facts that helps in understanding the truth of things. Keats wrote, ‘What the imagination seizes as beauty must be true’ and it is his powerful assertion. His logic is simple: what is beautiful is truthful. What is ugly cannot be truthful. Find truth through beauty and beauty through truth. Beauty is no more a sensuous, physical or sentimental affair. Keats does not think nature as noble as other phases of development but on the other hand he does not challenge nature’s importance. That is why nature imagery is an important element in many of his poetry.

Conclusion :-

                   A true poet, in the words of Keats, enjoys light and shade foul and fair with the same delight. Thus, his concept of beauty encompasses Joy and Sorrow and Melancholy and Happiness which cannot be separated. Imagination reveals a new aspect of beauty, which is ‘sweeter’ than beauty which is perceptible to the senses. The senses perceive only the external aspect of beauty, but imagination apprehends its essence.The odes of Keats are adoration of beauty and is them Keats love for beautiful things of nature and human life art and literature is very well represented, Keats remained great adorer and worshiper of beauty .He took pride in being a votary of beauty. “If I should die”, he wrote, “I have left no immortal work behind me, nothing to make any friends proud of my memory, but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had time, I would have  made myself remembered.

Citation :

Ahmed, Anwaar et al. "John Keats As A Poet Of Beauty | John Keats' Hellenism". Askliterature.Com, 2021, http://www.askliterature.com/poetry/john-keats/john-keats-as-poet-of-beauty-keats-hellenism/.

Albert, Edward. “A History of English Literature.” 2000, Oxford University Press, London, p.664.

Dr. Sen. S. “John Keats: Selected Poems.” 2009. Unique Publishers. New Delhi Goodman, Wr. “History Of English Literature.” Vol. 2. 2007. Doaba House. New Delhi “John, Keats, Romanticism.” n.d. Scribd. Web. “Keats 2, Lamia.” Power Point Slide, 53.

Words :-1800

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