FThose who have died often leave their mark on the memory. John Keats provides a prime example of this with his biography, which is almost predestined by humble origins, fatal illness, frustrated ambitions, unfulfilled love and outstanding talent for romanticization. He was only twenty-five years old when he died in Rome on February 23, 1921.
There the consumptive had, against his better judgment, hoped for a recovery from the milder Mediterranean climate. As a trained medical doctor who had first cared for his mother and then his younger brother during the last stages of their tuberculous illness, Keats knew what he was doing when he saw a bright red stain of blood on his pillow a year before his death. One of countless anecdotes has been passed down from his roommate and close friend at the time, Charles Brown, which heighten the pathos of Keats’s life story, as he calmly explained that he knew the color of this blood. “It’s arterial blood; – I can’t be fooled by this color; – this drop of blood is my death sentence; – I have to die. “
A letter to his lover, Fanny Brawne, also dates from this period, in which he fears that he will not leave an immortal work behind, “nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and when I do Had time, I would have made a lasting impression. ”This uncertainty about his literary legacy contradicts the earlier conviction that after his death he would rank among the“ English poets ”, by which he meant the great lyric poets of the nation. The early twenty-year-old reacted with remarkably relaxed self-confidence to the reception of his epic poem “Endymion” in two Tory magazines as uncouth, childlike outpourings. The caustic condescension towards the son of a stable master, who pretends to be a poet, in the polarized post-revolutionary climate was explained not least by the proximity of Keats to the radical liberal writer Leigh Hunt.
Ridicule for the thin-skinned poet
Keats by no means died unnoticed, as the legend of the misunderstood genius says, which began with the inscription on his nameless grave: “This grave contains all that was mortal of a young English poet who was on his deathbed, bitter in heart for the malevolent Power of his enemies, wishes that these words were carved on his gravestone: Here lies someone whose name is written on water. ”The indictment had a decisive influence on the later reception of the poet.
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John Keats home in Hampstead, London
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Bild: Picture-Alliance
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Shelley promoted this myth with “Adonais”, his exuberant elegy on Keats, as did Byron with the mocking insinuation that the thin-skinned poet had been destroyed by angry criticism. And the descendants continued to refine this picture. The fact that Keats, and a little later also Shelley, found their final resting place far from home in the non-Catholic cemetery confirms the pathetic image of the prophet, who does not count in his own country. It is possible that the neo-romantic Rupert Brooke had the grave in the shadow of the Cestius pyramid in mind when, shortly before his sudden death in World War I, he wrote his own epitaph that if he died there would be “a corner of a strange field that will forever England is “.
He wasn’t a child prodigy
Andrew Motion, one of several recent biographers seeking to save Keats from the sentimental image of a delicate, thin soul, claims that no other writer has “achieved so much in such a short time” as this English romantic poet. It is true that Keats, as soon as he was able to speak, is said to have figured out the last word of a question put to him, but he was not a Mozart prodigy.
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