Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur: Keats
Literatur: Brief
Literatur: Keats-Rezeption
[Post-mark, Hampstead, 27 Oct. 1818.]
MY DEAR WOODHOUSE,
Your letter gave me great satisfaction, more on account of its friendliness than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted so acceptable in the "genus irritabile." The best answer I can give you is in a clerklike manner to make some observations on two principal points which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con about genius, and views, and achievements, and ambition, et cætera. 1st. As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort, of which, if I am anything, 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 gusts, 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 [222] things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything 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 it 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 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, [so] 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 to let you see that no dependence is to be placed on what I said that day.
[223] 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 future 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 bring 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 friendship, in the highest degree, and am
Yours most sincerely,
JOHN KEATS.
Erstdruck und Druckvorlage
Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats.
Edited by Richard Monckton Milnes.
Vol. I. London: Edward Moxon 1848, S. 221-223.
Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck
(Editionsrichtlinien).
URL: https://archive.org/details/lifelettersliter00keat
PURL: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nc01.ark:/13960/t87h1rm1c
URL: https://books.google.de/books?id=NioEAAAAQAAJ
Kommentierte und kritische Ausgaben
Literatur: Keats
Brandmeyer, Rudolf: Poetiken der Lyrik: Von der Normpoetik zur Autorenpoetik.
In: Handbuch Lyrik. Theorie, Analyse, Geschichte.
Hrsg. von Dieter Lamping.
2. Aufl. Stuttgart 2016, S. 2-15.
Callaghan, Madeleine: Letters.
In: John Keats in Context. Hrsg. von Michael O'Neill.
Cambridge 2017, S. 66-74.
Chai, Leon: Romantic Theory.
Forms of Reflexivity in the Revolutionary Era.
Baltimore, Md. 2006.
Crinquand, Sylvie: Les Lettres de John Keats: D'un poète épistolier.
In: Mosaic. An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal 50.3 (2017), S. 125-140.
Duff, David: Romanticism and the Uses of Genre.
Oxford 2009.
Mahoney, Charles (Hrsg.): A Companion to Romantic Poetry.
Oxford u.a. 2011.
Marx, William: How to Become a Comparatist.
In: Comparative Critical Studies 21.1 (2024), S. 77-91.
O'Halloran, Meiko: Sage, Humanist, and Physician to All Men:
Keats and Romantic Conceptualisations of the Poet.
In: Romanticism.
The Journal of Romantic Culture and Criticism 22.2 (2016), S. 177-190.
Pott, Sandra: Poetiken.
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Berlin u.a. 2004.
Vgl. S. 306-332.
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Liverpool 2019.
Robinson, Jeffrey C.: 1820: Poetics "In the Spirit of Outlawry".
In: European Romantic Review 33.2 (2022), S. 157-174.
Wolfson, Susan J.: The new poetries.
In: The Cambridge History of English Romantic Literature.
Hrsg. von James Chandler. Cambridge 2009, S. 403-426.
Literatur: Keats-Rezeption
Christensen, Allan C. u.a. (Hrsg.): The Challenge of Keats.
Bicentenary Essays, 1795-1995.
Amsterdam u.a. 2000.
Eisner, Eric: Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Literary Celebrity.
Basingstoke u.a. 2009.
Hanke, Michael: John Keats in Deutschland.
In: Die Rezeption europäischer und amerikanischer Lyrik in Deutschland.
Hrsg. von Christine Fischer u. Ulrich Steltner.
Frankfurt am Main u.a. 1997, S. 33-52.
Matthews, Geoffrey M. (Hrsg.): Keats.
The Critical Heritage.
London 1971 (= The Critical Heritage Series).
Najarian, James: Victorian Keats.
Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire.
Basingstoke, Hampshire u.a. 2002.
O'Neill, Michael (Hrsg.): John Keats in Context.
Cambridge u. New York 2017.
Roux, Pascale: Éthos et style chez les traducteurs de poésie.
Keats, Leopardi et Heine en français.
Paris 2024.
Simonis, Linda: Die Heteronomie des l'art pour l'art.
John Keats und Théophile Gautier.
In: Heteronomieästhetik der Moderne.
Hrsg. von Irene Albers u.a.
Berlin 2022, S. 103-124.
Watson, Alex: "Truth in Beauty and Beauty in Truth":
Rabindranath Tagore's Appropriation of John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (1819).
In: British Romanticism in Asia.
The Reception, Translation, and Transformation of Romantic Literature
in India and East Asia;
Hrsg. von Alex Watson, Laurence Williams.
Singapore 2019, S. 169-190.
Wootton, Sarah: Consuming Keats.
Nineteenth-Century Representations in Art and Literature.
Basingstoke u.a. 2006.
Edition
Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer