Reviews for John Keats - Life And Letters (1795-1821)

The average rating for John Keats - Life And Letters (1795-1821) based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-04-25 00:00:00 Markus Buri He is gone; he died with the most perfect ease--he seemed to go to sleep. On the twenty-third, about four, the approaches of death came on (...) I lift him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sunk into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept. Keep still, my weak heart. I thought for a moment, as I approached the end of this book, that I would cry. I was close to it but I didn't. I don't usually cry with books (I've found only two so far powerful enough to bring me to tears) but it felt like a close call. Nobody can blame me for it. What else is expected from one after spending a week reading about his life, immersing oneself in his mind, sensing what he sensed and feeling all his insecurities and lofty feelings like you were another personal friend? What other words can tell the story like his own? What fiction could colour more deeply this picture of all that is most precious in existence becoming most painful and destructive? What profounder pathos can the world of tragedy exhibit than this expression of all that is good and great in nature writhing impotent in the grasp of an implacable destiny? You think to yourself, this is a biography. Biographies are not written about ordinary people, about people who had not left a mark in the world somehow. And, of course, Keats left a significant shadow in the history of English literature. Of course, he was beyond ordinary. Of course, we read about his life because he matters at some level still today. Yet, all things considered, he never felt like a creature out of reach you could not comprehend, like an inexplicable being beyond our common sense. He was as normal and simple as you and me and that is how you watch him. You read as he tells you his life and his most personal ideas while he ignores you from the past at the same time. How fascinated he felt by his readings (Shakespeare, Milton, Spencer, Wordsworth.) How he was learning Italian and wished to know Greek to read Homer's originals. How accomplished he felt (like a proud little boy) of all the work he had got done in one day. How he was feeling: how he felt sorrow for his brothers, how wonderful his life could be on one day, how he wished to have done something else with his life another one. How happy he was, how sad he felt. All in less than three-hundred pages. Time is encapsulated in this small pocket-size book, an entire life summed up for your enjoyment. And it breaks your heart because you know the ending that will come, inevitably. I think more people should read this book, not only if they enjoy his poetry, but also as to get a taste of how once there was a human being called John. The thought of leaving Miss -- is beyond everything horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see her figure eternally vanishing; some of the phrases she was in the habit of using druing my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there another life? Shall I wake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering. The only flaw I could find with his book is the absence of Fanny Brawne in it and their correspondence. If you have read a book, or know the least about their relationship, you will know what a tremendous void this means for the narrative that is Keats' life. But Houghton was a proper contemporary of him and the people involved with him, too; he did not wish to bring her in his story while she was still around and he never doubted of the nobility of their acquaintance while it so briefly lasted. That is an editorial decision I can respect. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance Keep still my weak heart once more.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-19 00:00:00 Timothy Howard John Keats, my darling, my tragic hero, caught in the throes of madness and genius, my love of poetry in person. His letters are as beautiful and affecting as his poems; he works with words as one would with a musical instrument. His prose is delicious, affecting, intoxicating. You uttered a half complaint once that I only lov'd your Beauty. Have I nothing else then to love in you but that? Do not I see a heart naturally furnish'd with wings imprison itself with me? No ill prospect has been able to turn your thoughts a moment from me. This perhaps should be as much a subject of sorrow as joy'but I will not talk of that. Even if you did not love me I could not help an entire devotion to you: how much more deeply then must I feel for you knowing you love me. My Mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it. I never felt my Mind repose upon anything with complete and undistracted enjoyment'upon no person but you. When you are in the room my thoughts never fly out of window: you always concentrate my whole senses. The anxiety shown about our Loves in your last note is an immense pleasure to me: however you must not suffer such speculations to molest you any more: nor will I any more believe you can have the least pique against me.