1795-1821
'Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ in Water'
John Keats is buried in the Protestant Cemetery, Rome, Italy. His grave is in a quiet corner close to the Pyramid. (Shelley is also buried in this cemetery.)
After leaving Clarke's school in Enfield, Keats became apprenticed to Thomas Hammond - an apothecary-surgeon in Edmonton. In 1814 he left Hammond and began studying at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals.
It was at this time that he began to write poetry - influenced, in particular, by
Spenser and Milton. In 1816 he became licensed to practice as an apothecary but abandoned it to take up poetry full time.
Blackwood's Magazine - pejoratively referred to this decision as Keats
joining the Cockney School of poetry. At this time Keats met with many of the leading poets and artist of the day including: Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Benjamin Haydon.
In 1819 he became engaged to Fanny Brawne but by the winter of that year he had started to develop tuberculosis.
Keats left England in 1820, on the advise of his doctors, and headed for Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. By now, he was in the final stages of consumption. He arrived at Naples and then proceeded to Rome where he rented a house on the Spanish Steps. He died on the 23 February, 1821 aged only 25.
Keats requested that only the phrase:
Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water
be inscribed on his headstone. However, his two close friends Joseph Severn and Charles Brown, who cared for him during his illness, decided to add the following:
"This Grave contains all that was mortal, of a YOUNG ENGLISH POET, who on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his heart, at the Malicious Power of his enemies, desired these words to be Engraven on his Tomb Stone"
Severn is buried near Keats and between them lies Severn's son. Shelley wrote a long elegy for Keats entitled Adonais.
Gravestone of John Keats
Graves of Keats and Severn
John Keats
Keats' short life was beset with tragedy. His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was fourteen. In 1818, his younger brother Tom also died.
Keats' letters were not published until 1848 and 1878 but provided a fascinating insight into his everyday life and his thoughts about poetry. In them he makes reference to various theories including the one about negative capability. Eliot regarded them as 'the most important ever written by any English poet'.
October 27th, 1818
My dear Woodhouse,
Your Letter gave me a great satisfaction; more on account of its friendliness, than any relishof that matter in it which is accounted so acceptable in the 'genus irritabile'. The bestanswer I can give you is in a clerklike manner to make some observations on two princple points, which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con, about genius, and views and achievements and ambition and cetera. 1st. As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself it has no self it is every thing and nothing It has no character it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence;because he has no Identity he is continually in for and filling some other Body The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute the poet has none; no identity he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a Poet, where is the Wonder that I should say I would write no more? Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the Characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing to confess; but is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature how can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins so to press upon me that I am in a very little time annihilated not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children: I know not whether I make myself wholly understood: I hope enough so to let you see that no despondence is to be placed on what I said that day.
In the second place I will speak of my views, and of the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some good: if I should be spared that may be the work of maturer years in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in Poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of Poems to come brings the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs that the solitary indifference I feel for applause even from the finest Spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself: but from some character in whose soul I now
live. I am sure however that this next sentence is from myself. I feel your anxiety, good opinion and friendliness in the highest degree, and am
Your's most sincerely
John Keats
Comprehension
1. Read the above letter where Keats makes a distinction between two types of poet.Then consider the two kinds of poet and fill in the notes below.
1st kind
defined as ...................................................................................................................his task is ...................................................................................................................
2nd kind
defined as ...................................................................................................................his main features are ....................................................................................................................
difference from the other creatures .....................................................................................................................
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2. Explain the metaphors used for the two types of poets
1st kind
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2nd kind
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Summing up, what literary theory by Keats can you find explained in his letter?
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