A letter...

Dear Mr.Keats,

please allow me to make my apologies for addressing you directly in such a manner, not fitting perhaps a lady towards a gentleman as yourself. However, my reasons are of the purest of nature and aim to nothing but the statement of their verbal companions.

There is nothing as morally debilitating as the belief in the superiority of the past. So it is not your times that I address but yourself and yourself alone, through my times and the eyes that behold them. For your era has been called the most cynical of all the era's of this world, but allow me to differ in opinion. History can only judge but I dare say if your era was the most cynical what, then, can be said of mine? And on to the purpose of my letter.....

You see, dear Mr.Keats, I am in debt to you. A debt I can never hope to make good upon. For it was you who opened my eyes, my soul, my essence even, to what I have now come to recall as Beauty. And not only that, superior of virtues, but also to literally everything, all things consisting this world, in matters of verbal recollection. I was of a very tender age when I came across your Endymion, a work not welcomed as it should be, I know, but a perfect, in its essence and simplicity, ode to Beauty. 'A thing of beauty is a joy forever'. I have with me a first edition of your selected works and letters, one handed down to me through a family of generations, which I hold dearer to any other material thing. Its cover is wasted, its pages tired, but the writtings remain intact. So is the nature of all great things I imagine.

I have been privileged in having an education and a free access to all and any literally works of yourself as well as many others from all four corners of the world. I have also been privileged in traveling, visiting many of the sites where you spent your days and nights as well as the place of your departure. And what the modern world has made of these places, Mr.Keats. Where is Rome, Carthage, Bagdad, Brittagnia, Athens?

It matters not, for I shall always see Rome and indeed the rest of the world through the prism of your words. The isolation of each of our spirits is a characteristic of the human condition, but your ability to live out your experiences and your dreams even in words, your gift of recording them to poetry for the rest of us to see, has been a benefit for which I shall never be able to fully convey my gratitude.

Dear Mr.Keats, so many have used your words and your images again and again, willingly or not, in their attempts at poetry or any other mental image making craft. Your 'Autumn', your 'season of mists and mellow fruitfulness', your Melancholy who '...dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die;', your Bright Star, your Endymion ,finally, have rested with me for as long as the short years of my life have passed, to be called upon in all the dark or happy hours of these mentioned years, to be understood and finally lived and seen through my eyes.

I feel more and more , every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body guard. - Your words Mr.Keats and allow me to borrow them, just this once, to honor and celebrate the joy and grandeur of the Spirit, your Spirit and , if I may, maybe, in a small part, my own as well.

'I am as happy as a Man can be....with the yearning Passion I have for the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect.'

You say 'If I should die I have left no immortal work behind me- nothing to make my friends proud of my memory -but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had time I would have made myself remember'd'. I agonize over what more you would have left behind you if what we already have grant you the title of the greatest romantic poet, one that you never even dared to imagine I am sure.

Dear Mr.Keats, it is in moments of extreme joy or pain that your works find an adjacent place in my soul. And it is in part what makes them bearable, these moments.

I am all and only human. And aware of my limitations as well as the unbearable burden of my human nature. I am grateful that, in times such as these, your words console my soul, whose solidarity is profound and unbreakable, to my own sorrow.

In this hour of late, in the quietness that surrounds me, that always surrounds me no matter the astounding noises of the world, in this hour of sadness of having to leave behind memories not lived out in words but lived nonetheless, let me utter once again, in more humility I can convey through my untrained words, my gratitude for the joy and hope and companionship that your work has provided me.

I remain, hopefully for as long as my Spirit dwells here, always in your debt.

An unwise fool am I.........but with pure motives.


...................................................................................

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills

That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead;
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

.......................................................................


All selections and quotations from :

'Selected Letters and Poems of John Keats, edited with an Introduction and Notes by J.H.Walsh', Chatto and Windus, London 1954

Paintings by John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), English Pre-Raphaelite painter.

1 - Ophelia (by the pond), 1894, oil on canvas, housed currently in a private collection
2 - Miranda - The Tempest, 1916, oil on canvas, housed currently in a private collection