No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Is Endymion Keats's hymn to Platonism or to some related form of idealism? Is Cynthia a symbol of Plato's absolute Beauty or one of its derivatives? Is the shepherd-hero really a poet in disguise, a poet yearning for mystic union with transcendent, intellectual Beauty? With minor qualifications, an affirmative answer can be said to characterize the trend of criticism during the last sixty years.
1 Letter 42, Jan. 30, 1818, in the M. B. Forman edition of The Letters of John Keats (New York, 1935), p. 91. Subsequent references to the letters will assume this edition.
2 E. de Sélincourt, The Poems of Keats, edited with an introduction and notes, 6th ed. (London, 1935), pp. 566-567.
F. M. Owen, John Keats, A Study (London, 1880), p. 85.
4 Ibid., pp. 101-102.
5 Matthew Arnold, “John Keats,” Essays in Criticism, Second Series (London, 1898), p. 115.
6 Sidney Colvin, John Keats (New York, 1917), p. 172.
7 Ibid., p. 180.
8 Ibid., p. 182.
9 De Sélincourt, op. cit., pp. 566-567.
10 Ibid., p. 428.
11 Loc. cit.
12 Robert Bridges, “A Critical Introduction to Keats,” Collected Essays Papers &c. (London, 1929), iv, 87.
13 Ibid., p. 81, pp. 85 ff.
14 Ibid., p. 85.
15 A. W. Crawford, The Genius of Keats (London, 1932).
16 H. I' A. Fausset, Keats, A Study in Development (London, 1922), p. 5.
17 Ibid., p. 7.
18 J. M. Murry, “The Meaning of Endymion,” Studies in Keats, New and Old (London, 1939), p. 50.
19 Ibid., p. 58.
20 Ibid., p. 59.
21 Loc. cit.
22 C. D. Thorpe, The Mind of John Keats (New York, 1926), p. 157.
23 Ibid., p. 151.
24 Ibid., p. 55.
25 Loc. cit.
26 Ibid., p. 107.
27 C. L. Finney, The Evolution of Keats's Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), i, 297.
28 Ibid., i, 301.
29 A. C. Bradley pointed out many years ago that Keats “uses the name of Plato for a rhyme in a jocular poem, but there is no sign that he had read a word of Plato or knew that Plato had written of beauty as well as truth.”—‘Keats and “Philosophy,” ‘ A Miscellany (London, 1929), pp. 191-192.
30 L. 7 seems to be a redundant way of saying that the “essences” are good and fair, rather than that they contain, as subdivisions, “elements of good and fair.” As for the “hush” of l. 5, it implies that to the poet natural objects speak a language. A parallel idea, more lucidly expressed, is found in a later poem on the same subject: Where's the Poet?
31 “Spiritual” does not carry its conventional meaning here, and seldom elsewhere in Keats. Sensuous delight could be “spiritual” if it was intense. See for example Endymion, iii, 38-39.
32 See M. B. Forman, ed., The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats (New York, 1939), v, 303-304.
33 For this meaning, the tabulation and contextual study of “essence” in the works of Keats's favorite authors has often been suggestive but has not revealed a definitive source.
34 This meaning is almost certainly derived from Milton's use of “essence” in his poetry. Seven occurrences of the noun = the being or existence of heavenly creatures or angels. Two occurrences of the adjective have the same reference. “Bright essence,” which Keats echoes in Endymion, iii, 172, occurs in Paradise Lost, iii, 6.
35 The term “empathy” may not seem satisfactory to some readers, for it has been used in a number of senses, not always precise. I use it because I know no single-word label more appropriate. Throughout the imprécisions and variations in usage of “empathy,” there runs one fundamental idea which fits Keats's passage: the percipient has the impression of fusing with and losing his identity in the aesthetic object (being “self-destroyed” during the aesthetic “oneness” or “fellowship,” as Keats said). The term thus describes the semblative, not the real, aspect of such experience, even though the experiencer is often unaware of this.
36 That there is nothing mystic about this aerial elevation of spirit is evident from a similar description (in I stood tip-toe …, Keats's first trial of the Endymion fable) of the pleasure in “things of beauty.” Roses, laurels, jasmine, sweet briar, bloomy grapes, and bubbling brooks cause the poet to
feel uplifted from the world,
Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd.
(ll. 139-140)
37 See Letter 42, p. 91.
38 There are numerous indications in Keats's letters that he was conscious of the empathie aspect of his aesthetic experiences. See esp. Letter 93 on “the poetical character,” and two articles, the first by Richard H. Fogle and the second by myself: “Empathic Imagery in Keats and Shelley,” PMLA, lxi, 163; “Keats, Empathy, and ‘The Poetical Character,‘ ” SP.
39 One vague passage might be pointed to (Endymion's apostrophe to the moon, iii, 142-174), but if it is read scrupulously, it turns out to be another enumeration of “things of beauty,” remarkably like the enumeration at the opening of the poem, even to the occurrence of the word “essence” after the list has been completed, and to the synonymousness of this “essence” with any one of the things of beauty enumerated. (See #8 in the tabulation of “essence” above, noting especially the list of concrete, earthly referents for the term.) Keats is not saying, therefore, that the moon's beauty is mysteriously immanent in these manifold earthly beauties; he is simply saying that they are all associated in his mind because they have all given him pleasure. The moon (and his, or Endymion's love for it) is transcendent only in the empiric, unphilosophic sense of being the source of richest, intensest pleasure. Another “pleasure thermometer” is thus implied.
40 In another article, “Endymion—a Neo-Platonic Allegory?” (ELH, xiv, 64), I have sought to reinterpret the poem as a whole, adducing evidence for which there is not space in this study.