The thing that I love about Keats' poetry is its negative compatibility. Negative compatibility is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or to fit it into closed rational symbols. This is something that Keats' discussed in many of his letters with the second wave of Romantics (usually in regard to Shakespeare). But this theme is also seen in his own poetry. For our purposes, When I Have Fears is the best example of negative compatibility.
The narrator of the poem admits that he has fears of death, and that he will never have the opportunity to fully live. But, he still takes comfort in the "night's starr'd face", beauty within his "fair creature of an hour", and "unreflecting love." It is key, however, that the narrator does not try to rectify his fears; he does not attempt to reconcile contradictory aspects such as love and death and beauty into neat little boxes. He merely accepts his fate, the fate of humanity, which is to die just as surely as you have lived. For if there is one thing that we know, it's that whomever is born must also die. I feel that the couplet is the epitome of being human,
"Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink."
I can't help but see the blatant tonal shift between this poem and his later poem, "This Living Hand." In this poem, Keats takes on a fairly humble tone, as you say. He comes to terms with death and realizes the inevitability of that event. Keats's fears have been soothed by the end, but that is only the case for Keats as shown in "This Living Hand."
ReplyDeleteIn this second poem, Keats almost threatens the reader that they will be the one afraid if Keats were to die. He thinks of all the things he's done as well as all the things he couldn't do if he were to die prematurely, and that should frighten the reader in his mind. Though this can be regarded as arrogant on Keats's part, this can also be read as the narrator being the placeholder for anyone. With any death, history from that point forward is irreversibly changed as the dead can no longer contribute to society. That each individual person can come to terms with their own death as depicted in "When I Have Fears, the prospect of any one person's death should be terrifying to the rest of the world as shown in "This Living Hand."
I totally agree that in this poem Keats is expressing his fears of never having the opportunity to fully live and accomplish the things that he desires to accomplish. However, I don’t think that Keats is afraid of death itself. He is afraid of what he will never be able to experience because of death, as he mentions in the poem. You listed these things (the night’s starr’d face, beauty in the fair creature of an hour, and unreflecting love), and said that these were the things that he takes comfort in despite all his fears. I, however, feel that he doesn’t take comfort in these things. If anything, these things remind him of all that he will never get to do before he dies, and that strikes the crippling fear within him. He writes about how the thought of never getting the chance to live long enough to trace the stars’ shadows scares him, and how never being able to look upon the face of the fair creature also puts him in an uneasy state of mind. The unreflecting love he mentions is also nothing that he can take comfort in. It is an unreflecting love, meaning it doesn’t return the love that it is given. That must be exhaustingly devastating for the one who is giving the love. These things are actually the reasons why he feels that he stands alone in this world.
ReplyDeleteI think that Keats does not fear death as much as he appreciates the value it gives to all things. As a poet, he praises natural things such as the sky and human passion because of how fleeting the unavoidable coming of death makes them. Like most everyone on here, I too believe that Keats is afraid that he will die before creating something great but I also think that Keats is leaving behind this message of appreciating the temporary in hopes that his readers and critics will reevaluate his work both before and after his death.
ReplyDeleteHere's what Keats said about negative capability in the famous letter of 21 Dec. 1817 to his brothers George and Tom Keats: "it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason—" Keats goes on to suggest that Coleridge was "incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge."
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to the full text of the letter:
http://classweb.gmu.edu/rnanian/Keats-NegativeCapability.html