John Keats

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Hello. In eighteen nineteen John Keats wrote some of the most loved poems in English, among them Odes to a Nightingale and On Melancholy. Boyed up by enthusiastic friends, he'd left his medical career for poetry roughly two years earlier, though some published reviews called him an uncouth cockney who should have stuck to medicine. Two years later, Keats was dead from TB before his work found wider glory, and some who knew him, including Shelley, believed his true killer was the critic.

With me to discuss John Keats, a Fiona Stafford, Professor of English Language and Literature, and Tutorial Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford, Mako O'Halloran, Senior Lecturer in Romantic Literature at the University of Newcastle, and Nicholas Rowe, Wardlaw Professor of English Literature at the University of St. Andrews.

Nick Rowe, can I start with you? Tell us something about Keats' family background and and where that Cockney epithet may have come from. Yes, his family background was based in the city of London. He was born there in late October of seventeen ninety five At the Swann and Hoop, livery stable, or near to there, on the city road at Moorfields. This was a busy livery stable. His parents were Thomas Keats and Francis Jennings. Thomas was a helper in the livery stable.

Francis Jennings was the daughter of the leaseholder of the stable and his wife, John Jennings and Alice Wallie, and John Jennings was a wealthy man. He was also the master of the Inholders Guild. Besides John, Thomas and Francis had four other children. There was George, the second son, then Thomas and then Edward, who didn't last very long. And their daughter Frances was born in eighteen oh three. That's a momentous year because John and George

went off to school to the north of London at Clark's Academy uh at Enfield. eighteen oh three is also significant because it was the year before their father, Thomas, died in a a tragic riding accident. It left the Francis Jennings without a husband and and the Keats children without a father. Presumably the financial stability came from the fact that Keats's mother was the daughter of a r relatively wealthy leaseholder.

That that's exactly right. But there were problems and Thomas' death initiated the breakup of the family and a long running struggle between Francis Jennings

her parents and her brother who was called Midgley John Jennings. John Jennings left the majority of his fortune, which was over twelve thousand pounds, a very substantial sum at the time, to his wife Alice, He left a very considerable sum to his son Midgley John, but he left only an annuity of fifty pounds per year to his daughter Frances Jennings. So there was going to be financial instability a recurring theme during Keats's live.

Fiona Stafford, where did Keats go to school? It wasn't Eaton or Harrow, was it? But they were clearly able to afford a decent education. Yes, he was at the Enfield Academy which was run by a man called John Clark who was a liberal an inspiring teacher I think. Um and so Keats

by our standards had a good education. He's often caricatured as being uneducated because as you say, he didn't go to Eton like Shelley, he didn't go to Harrow like Byron. Uh but he did have a good education and and it was also an education which wasn't just bookish he was also encouraged to

look up at the stars and look at the natural world, uh have a curiosity about the world around him. But it was also I mean, he was taught Latin, uh so when he was at school he translated the whole of Virgil's Enid. which is quite a feat. I think we can be quite impressed by that. Um so this this idea of him somehow being working class and not educated is just really

Far from the truth. He goes on to study medicine. But he gives up his medical career in eighteen sixteen. Why does he do that? Um well he gives it up, I think, because he realizes what a good poet he is and he's meeting other poets and he's just incredibly excited by the whole idea of poetry. I mean he's a very passionate reader of poetry. I think I can't think of I can't think of anyone in the canon who is so excited about reading. Um so so it keeps us a real

lover of poetry and he has a real gift for it. But I mean he he did work hard as a medic as well. I think that's another thing that people often don't realise. He passed his medical exams, a lot was involved with that. So he could have practiced as an apothecary or a surgeon, but instead he decides he's going to be a poet. Uh and what does he take from those medical studies into his poetry?

Well I think quite a lot, especially um his well for example, his pharmaceutical training, uh which byddai wedi bod yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r amser. a part of the training was to take walks on Hampstead Heath and go and look at the flowers, which seems a bit odd to us until we remember that at this time they had no penicillin.

So most of the remedies that were being kind of prescribed by the apothecaries, uh, were basically dried flowers. So you really had to know your flowers. There were some awful cases where yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n ac yn ymwneud hyn, ac yn ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn sy'n ymwneud hyn

So that would be one example of what he took from his medical training. And you find it informing his poetry. He's very good on poisonous plants.

So in this early stage, Mako, can you tell us who was supporting, encouraging Keats in developing his his poetry? Primarily his friends and his brothers. And I would really want to emphasise his fraternal ties with Tom and George, his two younger brothers who provide a profound emotional and psychological comfort to keep

They had been buffeted about, they'd had a lot of experience of bereavement in their childhood. Because his mother has died as well. That's right. Relatively early on. Yes, his mother dies Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw. And Keats and his brothers rent a lot of lodgings all around London.

And the eighteen seventeen collection of poems, Keats' first published collection, gives us some helpful insights into who else has been supporting Keats up to that point. And they include Charles Cowden Clark, who to whom Keats addresses an important verse epistle. and Cowden Clark was the son of the headmaster John Clark and had encouraged Keats and had introduced him to all sorts of works of literature so in that poem Keats celebrates

the epic poetry that he's been reading with Clark, Milton, Spencer, Tasso. He also recognises Clark's influence in introducing him to the ode, the sonnet, the epic. ac mae'r hyn sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n.

who was a recent supporter of Keats and had published one of his early poems on first looking into Chapman's Homer and really brought Keats into public attention by introducing him as one of three brilliant young poets ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn sy'n ymwneud â'r hyn.

Did that affect Keats's politics, his understanding of London society, British society at the time? Yes, absolutely. So Lee Hunt was the is a kind of hero to Keats in that early stage and represents a radical thinking and independence of thought. He also writes a poem celebrating the day on which Lee Hunt was released from prison and one of the things Keats admires is that Lee Hunt, despite being imprisoned, had

Nick Rowe, uh can you tell us a little bit about his tour of Scotland, a four month tour of Scotland? Yes. He made a a tour of Scotland in the summer of eighteen eighteen with his friend Charles Armitage Brown, who he'd met. in the summer of the previous year.

In the spring of eighteen eighteen Keats had been looking after his brother Tom in Tinmouth, down in Devonshire. Tom was ill with pulmonary tuberculosis, and it seems that over this spring Keats started to have the idea of making a tour of the north. With some thought of gathering imagery and Scenery. yn ymwneud â hyn sy'n ymwneud â hyn sy'n ymwneud â hyn sy'n ymwneud â hyn.

Hyperion. And by coincidence, his um brother George, who had recently married a girl called Georgiana Wiley, was planning to emigrate to America. They were able to combine their trips to the north both George and Georgiana to Liverpool where they were going to take their boat across the Atlantic. And then John and Charles Brown were going to continue up through the Lake District, where they failed to meet Wordsworth.

above Ambleside, he thought improved his ideas of the sublime, and they then went on through the Burns country, a quick dip over to Northern Ireland and back, on up to Burns' birthplace at Alloway. And then out to the Western Isles, to Mull, to Iona, to Staffer, where they went into Fingles Cave, up north towards the Great Glen where they climbed Ben Nevis,

And then on up to Inverness, where, on a doctor's advice, Keats opted to take a coastal ship, a smack, back to London. And it was a tour that was productive in poetic terms. Do you have any of that? The satirical piece, which is upon my life, Sir Nevis, I am piqued, which is a kind of satirical dialogue between Ben Nevis and a Mrs. C.

Uh sweet Nevis, do not quake, for though I love your honest countenance all things above, truly I should not like to be conveyed so far into your bosom. But the sonnet um that he wrote Read me a lesson muse and speak it loud upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist. I look into the chasms and the shroud vaporous doth hide them, just so much I wist mankind do know of hell. I look o'erhead, and there is sullen mist. that even so much mankind can tell of heaven.

Fiona, so he's having this surge of creativity around the the tour to Scotland, but comes home a little prematurely to find his brother Tom dying of T B. What impact does that have? Um he gets back to Hampstead, he finds Tom really in the final stages of tuberculosis consumption, as they would have called it, and he he nurses him and it is an absolutely harrowing part of his life.

Um, but out of that comes an extraordinary surge of creativity. It's very, very strange and you know, lots of people think of different reasons for why this could have occurred and we don't really know, but the following spring, I mean, this this is this is at the december eighteen eighteen. Tom dies on the first of December, and already by pouring out the poems that he's best known for. So we have the Evil Santa Agonist. Then we have this extraordinary sequence of

odes, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode on Agré Chen, the Ode on Melancholy, um La Belle d'homme sans merci, uh plus some stunning uh sonnets as well, and they're just all pouring out of him. So so it is a very ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hyn.

energy, um, and all those new experiences that he he Mae'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud yma. kind of cooped up in this in this sick room in Hempstead and it's all dark and it's terribly unhealthy, it's probably where he contracted the disease that was going to kill him very soon afterwards. Um but some of this seems to just kind of come together in this in this great great explosion.

And this is where he met Fanny Braun. Give us a couple of lines from one of your favourite sonnets or odes from that great year of creativity. Yes, I would have to choose the Ode to a Nightingale and I think the way the poem finishes is so very ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond ond Mako, you wanted to come in there? I think I would have to choose some lines from the end of Ode to Psyche.

Yes, I will be thy priest and build a fan in some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts new grown with pleasant pain, instead of pines shall murmur in the wind. Thank you. And I really liked Ode to Psyche as well. I thought it was a r a a super poem. Really did. Uh it's also really extraordinary the formal spectrum from incredibly complex forms to actually quite simple forms.

And also in terms of the subject matter as well. And he was trying different things, wasn't he? There's that there's a kind of month January 1818, where you look at what he was writing and the change of mood. He's writing a poem to...

Mrs. Reynolds Cat and then he's writer you know, he's writing a sonnet on Sitting Down to Read King Lear again. I mean th they the shift in register and form is extraordinary. Yeah, yeah. Well he starts out with um Spencerian stanzas, a very difficult form to master. he writes an imitation of Spencer, comes back to the form in The Eve of St. Agnes, Writing a narrative romance of In about forty stanzas.

apparently in a very few days. It's an astonishing achievement. They seem to come out in a couple of days. Yeah. Or less than that. I mean Otto Nightingale's supposed to be just sort of sits down and writes in about three hours. I mean I don't know if that's true. at is best in a single effort, a single creative outpouring, for want of a better word. But when, for example, with

h his epic project in Hyperion. He was attempting to write that in the autumn of uh eighteen eighteen and being interrupted, understandably by his poor brother Tom, who was dying. He found it very difficult to pick up the creative momentum again and bring the poem to completion, which arguably is one reason, as well as his sense that he was Too close to Milton's Manor in Paradise Lost. I think it was something much closer as well to his patterns of composition and how he wrote at his best.

in one sustained push of creativity. There's a quite an emphasis on mortality in some of the poems. Is he already considering his own mortality? Well he was considering it even a year before that. He writes his sonnet when I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain a year before that.

I think if you were a medical student at that time, you saw mortality on a daily basis, as well as his early experiences. He lost one of his little brothers when he was only nine. Mae'n ei wneud yn ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud, mae'n ei wneud. need to pour it out. I mean I think that sonnet which was written

Before he was ill and before Tom died. Which one was then? Oh, when I have fears that I may cease to be that you get this real sense unless you really keep writing, you're not gonna get everything that's in your mind onto paper and into forms that are going to benefit humanity long after you've gone. Um so I think death's really important to him. Thank you.

Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpstrält i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, de hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg typkontain. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI-produkten! Svenska ostklassiker finns med på prickarna du fyller år, på BB efter förlossningen och i vardagen är alltid precis som vanligt. En liten del av det stora och en stor del av det lilla.

Prest och grevé, svenska ostklassiker för små och stora traditioner. Ving firar 70 år av resor, och det gör vi med massor av erbjudanden som är omöjliga att motstå. He's Bästa jubileumserbjudanden på ving.se. De bästa resorna försvinner först. Dej, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpstält i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg.

Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till Adorn.

Um Amiko, uh one of the forms that Keats was fascinated by was epic poetry. Why was that? That's right. Keats had inherited a model of poetic progress from Virgil. yn ymwneud hyn, yn ymwneud hynny'n ymwneud hynny'n ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud ei wneud.

Dyna'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn. Dyna'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn. Dyna'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn o'r hyn. Keats was attempting epic poetry at the age of twenty two, and I think it is because exactly as Fiona says, he feels this compression of time and having lost tom um so uh such a sort of

young age, he's more aware than ever that he may have a limited amount of time in which to compose his epic poetry. So he does leap from Well, his last published work was in Dimmy in a pastoral romance.

into Hyperion, which is an extraordinary attempt at epic. Um he makes two attempts at epic poetry at either they actually kind of bookend Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hyn. actually dates it very precisely to the twenty first of september eighteen eighteen to the twenty first of september eighteen nineteen.

an extraordinary outpouring of poems and the first they begin and end with two epic fragments. So Keats intended these works to be longer. And in the first Hyperion fragment, He slows down and he uses blank verse. He had been using rhyming couplets before. hence the what l a lot of the critics say sort of Cockney rhymes, you know, that's what one of the associations

um with Keats's previous poetry. But he uses blank verse which is unrhymed iambic pentameter, the verse form that Milton uses in Paradise Lost. It's what Wordsworth uses in the prelude. and he really um examines suffering. He is working his way towards writing about Apollo the Olympian successor to Hyperion, who becomes the god of the sun and of healing and of poetry, so the poet healer that Keats admires

and taking forward that medical sort of identity. Almost as though he identified with Apollo himself. Yes, he actually really does revere Apollo and writes a lot of y desolat ac bewildrede'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud. that he spends most of the the fragment elucidating their their sorrow.

Uh, Fiona, I was struck in advance of this programme, I read quite a lot of his his poetry. I was struck how some of them are Very, very romantic, with a small R. Uh there was a particular poem to a lady seen for a few moments in Vauxhall, a wonderfully prosaic title. about how he saw somebody five years ago, fell in love with her, f only saw her for five minutes, um, but constantly thinks of her ever since then.

And some of the other poems are extremely intense in his in his affection, yet we don't hear that much. about his personal life. What was his personal life like? His love life. Well, there's still quite a bit of mystery about some aspects of it. Um there there's a woman called Isabella Jones, for example, who he he met and maybe the inspiration for his poem Isabella, but it may just be that he liked reading Boccaccio. Um, it's really quite difficult to tell.

I I he was susceptible to women but I mean he he lets things slip in his letters. He says he sometimes has you know, bad thoughts about about women. So there is quite a mystery. But we do know that he fell in love with Fanny Braun in Hampstead and this was the young woman. She was quite a lot younger than him. She was only eighteen. They became engaged uh towards the end of that Annis Mirabolis and and there are people who think that it was because he fell in love with

Fanny Braun, that he wrote all those wonderful odes. Again, there's lots of discussion about it, but we don't have much evidence. And the woman you're... referring to who he saw in Vauxhall Gardens. We don't know who she is. Um, you know, it's it's a r it's one of those great great mysteries. Um but um

I I mean he did say early on that actually he was so attached to his brothers that he has a a stronger feeling for them than he could ever have for a woman. So that sort of family feeling is really, really deep. But then I think one of the difficulties is that keeps Wrote lots of letters. He had lots of friends who we were hearing about. Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd

don't always have the have the evidence. They are a useful resource, those letters, aren't they?'Cause he was pretty good at keeping letters and

And he wrote a lot of letters. He wrote a lot of letters and other people kept them as well and they are absolutely wonderful letters. I mean I think people who only know his poetry actually really miss out. I think I think he's just a brilliant letter writer and you really get t sense of his personality and his friendships because he has a slightly different tone depending on whether he's writing to his brothers or whether he's writing to John Hamilton.

Rennalds, and it's where a lot of our ideas about what he thought about poetry come from, because a lot of the letters are talking about poetry to fellow poets. And this is where he coins the term negative capability, or when he's talking about Acciums in philosophy are not axioms until you feel them on the pulses. Lots of those things that we think of. as quintessentially Keats and then we read into the poems are coming from his private correspondence so it's a wonderful wonderful resource

So Nick, he has this incredibly productive year. He's only about twenty three, twenty four years old. What does the outside world make of his poetry? The outside world had not made very much of his poetry up to that point because his um eighteen seventeen collection, which he'd put together late in uh eighteen sixteen and over Christmas

of that year only reached a few dozen readers who were his friends, as he put it, and a few dozen readers who weren't his friends and didn't like the book. So lit literally you could count the number of readers perhaps in in terms of dozens. In Dimian, which appeared in April of eighteen eighteen, his poetic romance Certainly reached some readership, but it was very widely criticised and in very hostile terms.

in the the leading journals of the day, particularly Blackwoods magazine, where the Cockney School essays started to appear, and in the Quarterly Review, where Croker admitted to only reading the the first Canto of the poem, no more of the poem, uh he brazenly admitted as much.

and and said he couldn't understand the poem at all. So i it didn't actually reach many readers, although as one might expect, his publishers weren't downcast because they understood that adverse criticism Could also sell the book. So by the time he reaches uh his year of great productivity and great poems, eighteen nineteen, he was certainly known to the public

but as what I suppose you could call a risky prospect. Certainly James Hesse, one of his publishers, thought uh Keats was somewhat unreliable, but um hoped that he would do something eventually. So Fiona, what was the substance of these criticisms of of Keats?

Well the the attacks on Endymion um were really very they're pretty brutal. Um, you know, you read them now and you just think, Oof, it's amazing he ever wrote anything again which I think actually makes that yn 1819, yn ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig ychydig.

Wounded from these awful, awful reviews. But they are, as Mika said, they're attacking his rhymes. They thought it was an incomprehensible poem. I mean, I think one of the very sort of unfortunate... errors he made was to publish a preface with it which was basically saying, Well, I don't think it's actually very good but I'll get better I mean that is not not a very not a very uh strategically sensible thing to do when you've got a very, very hostile press out there.

And so everybody just went for it, really. It was a sort of almost invitation for open season. It's very unfortunate. But they were also attacking the person rather than the poem a lot of the Yeah, well one of the nastiest ones was by John Lockhart, who really should have known better. He's one of the one of the Edinburgh wits and he really goes for keeps being lower class and apothecary.

ac yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, ac yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, yn ysgrifennu, ysgrifennu. So it's very, very unkind, and it is partly politically motivated. It's because they know that Keats is associated with Lee Hunt. They don't like his politics.

Um, so there's a sort of mm, right wingish press having a go at him for those reasons. But I think there are also uh aesthetic reasons as well that they don't like the poem and it and also uh they found it very hard to follow.

Um Meka, has there been a revision of Endymion? Uh do people now regard it actually as uh A a rather good piece of work or d from a literary point of view is it seen as as a bit of a failed attempt on his part? Indimion does have a some admirers, but I would say that they're a fairly niche group. On the whole, Endymion, as Keats himself recognises, is a kind of experiment that fails. So when Keats looks back on Endymion a year after composing it.

He so he composes it in eighteen seventeen and then by the autumn of eighteen eighteen When he thinks about it, he he says that it was like leaping into the sea and discovering where all the rocks are, that it's a an exercise he's set himself. He's always aspired to write long poems, so this he said would be a a test of invention. and i he's feeling his way through this this long poem. But he says that it's better to try and fail than not try at all.

So he recognises that he's maybe it's not his best work and he does want to be taken more seriously, which is why he leaps into Hyperion. I and did uh w with the odes and the sonnets of eighteen eighteen, eighteen nineteen. Was there any recognition at the time that these were truly great works?

Well, the poems of th this extraordinary flourishing in eighteen nineteen, um the fruits of that are all collected in his final collection of poems of eighteen twenty. So that's Lamia, the Eva Santa Agnes and Isabella. and other poems. And the reviews come out quite late, so Keats sadly is not able to who had been very rude about Keats's poetry. And in his private letters, he sort of

saying it's you know, that Endymion is like mental masturbation. Um it's sort of schoolboy fantasy shared in this really inappropriate, embarrassing, nauseating way. Even Lord Byron sort of recognises in the volume of eighteen twenty, which finishes with Hypering a Fragment, that this is a work that

is a monument that will keep keeps his name. Why does he decide to travel to Rome in eighteen twenty, Nick Rowe? What was what were his hopes? He travelled to Rome because he was he was seriously ill. He'd been suffering from tuberculous symptoms. Uh I think we can probably say um throughout eighteen nineteen

And in January eighteen twenty, Fanny Braun tells us Keats experienced his first hemorrhage from his lungs. Uh she dates it to ja late January o of eighteen twenty. And there were other hemorrhages Yn ymwneud â'r hyn ymwneud â'r hyn, mae'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hyn, mae'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hyn.

So that by uh the late summer, August of eighteen twenty, uh it seemed best for him to go to Rome and try to pass the winter there in in the warmer climate, which was thought to be beneficial for tubercular patients. He'd met met a doctor in London, Dr. Clark. who was resident at Rome, and when Keats arrived there, having undertaken the the long sea voyage from London to Naples with his friend Joseph Seven the painter, They arrived at Rome in uh eventually in November and it was Clark

who had arranged uh for apartments next to the Spanish steppes in the Piazza di Spania. And Keats and Seven were resident there throughout the winter, and as I've said already, um their forlorn hope was that Keats would get better, and although he rallied occasionally, the course of his illness was relentlessly for the worst.

Mm. But but Shelley, um, he does write a uh a kind of kind letter to Keats saying, you know, when you get to Italy come and come and stay with us. I mean Shelley's actually really affected by Keats's success in the Victorian period, actually, I mean rather mixed because Shelley very much sort of takes the line that keeps us being killed by the critics, which Byron is very scornful of. Um, you know, it is strange the mind, that very

Fiery particle should let itself be snuffed out by an article. Byron's not a very sympathetic response to that. But Shelley's horrified by Keats' death, and Byron is as well, actually. when it actually happens he's he's very embarrassed that he's not going to be able to do that. Particularly when the Cambridge Apostles, Hallam, Richard Moncton Milnes, Tennyson, others as well put Adanaeus back into print.

in eighteen twenty nine. And when he dies, how does news of his death spread, or is is his death ignored? He died on the the late in the evening of the twenty third of february, and Joseph Seven had nursed him through the last very harrowing days of his illness. And it took a little while uh for seven to gather himself and write to London, which he did eventually in a letter To Charles Brown Keats' close friends.

with whom he'd been living in the last months of his life in Britain, and the letter arrived there, I think I'm right in saying, on Saturday the tenth of march, certainly around then. Uh Brown, of course, had been expecting the news.

but was devastated when it w when it arrived. He eventually told Fanny Braun and her mother what had happened. Brown also informed Keats's publisher, John Taylor, and asked him to place a notice in the London papers, giving the outline de details of the death of John Keats, the poet, at Rome. And as was the practice at the time, other London newspapers copied the announcements

Uh as did the provincial newspapers, and so the news spread. So that moment of his death enhanced his reputation without people necessarily having read the poems. That I think is true.

Uh Meko Halloran, how important has Keats' vulnerability been to his lasting reputation? Because of course There's the r romantic idea associated with and the early death of the poet, but also he was very open himself. Yes, he was open, I would say, to a fault almost. We heard earlier from Fee about the extraordinary preface to Endymion in which he diagnoses his own condition as being

immature and really undeveloped as a poet. But by the time he comes into his extraordinary flourishing during his living year of of poetry, he's able to use that vulnerability In extraordinary ways to access

states of being and to inhabit characters so unlike his own experience. For example, on the back of what Fee was saying about the letters, a really important idea to emerge who well, see this is Keats' way of defining his own particular kind of poetry and he explains that unlike what he calls the Wordsworthy in egotistical sublime, Mae'n a poet sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n sy'n

He's forever, he says, fulfilling or filling and entering into these different characters and modes of being. And he goes on to say in that letter that it's a quality a creative mode that enables a poet to celebrate high and low, rich and poor, to create an Iago or an Imogen or a villain or a heroine. It's a poetry that has no moral agenda, it's not guided by a particular philosophy. But it also does leave the poet vulnerable as well, because

The comedian poet, and Keats goes on to say that it's an instinctive ability, it's not something that he can control. But in his poetry of 1818 and 1819, we see that gift. used to in extraordinary ways. So there are all sorts of amazing moments in Keats' poetry where he imagines what it's like for it doesn't even have to be human, it's sort of like a little puff of smoke dies in the Eve of St. Agnes or the icy statues seem to be groaning and have this uneasy sense of life.

Uh Nick Rowe, he of course didn't experience recognition much during his lifetime, but over the nineteenth century that changed with the publication of biographies and so on. Can you explain when the turning point was in the recognition of Keats? During the eighteen twenties That's pretty remarkable. That's yeah, uh very prescient in some senses as well, for the the rapid ascent of Keats's fame. There were a lot of tribute poems uh written to him during the eighteen twenties.

In the eighteen thirties, eighteen thirty six at Plymouth Charles Brown gave a lecture on Keats. which was the first section of his projected biography, and also put on an exhibition of what we'd call Kiziana. at the Plymouth Athenaeum, a copy of Seven's miniature the medallion depicting Keats and one or two other things. But Brown never completed his biography and handed the manuscript of it, plus his collection of Keat's transcript to Richard Monkton Milnes.

Poet, politician, who put together such materials as he could gather in the eighteen forties. There was quite a lot. Manuscripts, transcripts, The letters, and he published his Biography and the Life Letters and Literary Remains of John Keat. Giving us a life narrative, some poems hitherto unpublished including the ode to indolence.

And of course the letters which were a revelation. So this really is the crucial turn. So by the end of the by the second half of the nineteenth century he has become a really major figure in English poetry. Fiona, as a final question, how do we account for Keats' popularity being so enduring? I think that's very easy. The poems are so good. Um th they're absolutely perfect poems. Keats at his best.

is just so astonishing you can read you can read the odes over and over again and just be absolutely have your breath taken away uh by how powerful they are, how beautiful they are. Um so I I think it is, you know, just sheer quality. Well that's a great recommendation to end the programme. My thanks to Mako Halloran, Nick Row and Fiona Stafford.

Next week from potatoes to smallpox, the plants, animals and diseases that spread from continent to continent after fourteen ninety two. That's the Columbian Exchange. Thanks for listening.

And the In Our Time podcast gets some extra time now, with a few minutes of bonus material from Misha and his guests. What did we miss out? I think if we'd had more time, um we could have talked about the impact of the Elgin marbles, for example, on these which is absolutely massive and also quite interesting. Tell us about the listeners now. Um well the Elgin marbles yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r yw'r

marvel at them really. He went with his friend the artist Benjamin Robert Hayden um and he writ Keats writes two sonnets about the Algin marbles and how overwhelming they are. Um but also they then I think They're like kind of frozen figures. They're so lifelike you can't believe it. And they and they inform Hyperion and the Eve St Agnes, I think. I don't know what anyone else thinks about that, but I think the Alky Marbles are are quite important to Keith.

Yes, they they certainly are. And um uh w when he visited them in March of eight eighteen seventeen, um they became a a a kind of ideal of artistic achievement. against which he measured his own possible attainment, and at that moment in his life felt

somewhat lacking and and not up to the kind of pinnacle represented by the art of classical Greece. Yes, I think that it also brings us to thinking about the unfinished ac yn ymwneud â'r ffragment sy'n cael eu bod yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud.

And Keats is fascinated by that sense of brokenness or incompletion. And I think that also invites us to think about Keats' own... life being cut short and his sense of of unfinished business of his never fully achieving the the arc that he the ambitious kind of arc that he sets out for himself Um we need to mention also uh the significance of Tennyson's poetry. Um poems chiefly lyrical, which I think is eighteen thirty, it was certainly around that date.

which is saturated with Keats's language and imagery and rhythms and poetic names, th this kind of thing. And Keats's reputation develops along with Tennyson's during the eighteen thirties and eighteen forties, and it's arguably Tennyson who helps ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud.

Well before we get offered a cup of tea or coffee by the producer Simon, let me ask you one final question that interests me. He was obviously influenced by a range of classical writers and poets. Did he have any engagement with contemporary European poetry and literature or was he very m very English in that sense? I would say he's very English. I was gonna say very English actually. Um I I think you don't get much Reference to

French or German um poets, Italian. I mean it's Dante but but not contemporaries. No that's the first one. I meant contemporary, yeah. Uh he kn he he knew about um composers, he knew about Haydn, he knew about Mozart. But his knowledge of European literature would be from the classics and from the th th the Italian poets of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. Dante obviously is so a real hero. But in translation he's reading Kara's translation of of Dante. On the walking tour. Yes. Yes. Yes.

But then closer to home, I think, you know, one of the poets he thinks a lot about is a near-contemporary, well, from the first generation of romantic poets is Wordsworth, and Wordsworth is so important to Keith. And in his letter of the 3rd of May to Reynolds, in which he's, sorry, 1818, in which he's think into the human heart in the way that Wordsworth does. So I think that sense that Wordsworth is slightly ahead of him in being willing to go into these dark spaces of the human mind.

ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n ymwneud â'r hynny'n the infant chamber of thought to a maiden chamber of dawning awareness of pain and then lots of dark passages and that's where he feels that Wordsworth is ahead of him. Yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol

or reason that he'd been exploring earlier in eighteen seventeen. Some of it's very dark indeed. You know, Ode to a Nightingale, which I thought was, you know, just sort of lyrical. I read it and I thought Yeah he's going in he's going into some really, really strange places here. Yeah. Simon. Tea or coffee, anybody? Tea for me. Tea. Coffee would be lovely. Coffee for me, I should be. Thank you very much. Thank you.

In our Time with Misha Glenny is produced by Simon Tillotson and it's a BBC Studios production. I'm Elanie Jones. And I'm Mark Kermode, and in screenshot we guide you through the ever-changing landscape of the moving image. I really like any story about self-delusion. My intent is to allow the audience to see the shining through these people's eyes. Meeting those on both sides of the camera and uncovering fascinating insights into what we watch. How would you describe it?

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