Triveni Journal
1927 | 11,233,916 words
Triveni is a journal dedicated to ancient Indian culture, history, philosophy, art, spirituality, music and all sorts of literature. Triveni was founded at Madras in 1927 and since that time various authors have donated their creativity in the form of articles, covering many aspects of public life....
Fugitive Indeed is Keats!
(A Glimpse)
“When the spirit of man inspires the intellect we have genius...........Put the fire of spirit on any altar, it blazes up to heaven”. These words of Dr. Radhakrishnan rightly apply to Keats who suffered a lot during illness and fought to overcome it like a boxer using his fists’. Occasional expressions of escapism and impermanence were overcome by his perseverance and fiery spirit.
John Keats’s courage made him oppose injustice through his lyrics, the fugitive poems. His first important poems were Endymion, Hyperion in two parts, the Odes and sonnets, reveal his appreciation of Beauty. His famous lines ‘A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever’ at times hint at sweet sorrow hidden within. Lack of public interest for his poems made him doubt his own talents. Then he wrote ‘we hate poetry’ in one of his letters.
Before starting the ode to Isabella, he expresses in his poems, more challenging notes of his future and the pleasure of becoming a fugitive.
“I was at home
And should have been most happy
But I saw too far in the sea”
In ‘La Bella Dame sans Merci’ we can sense his despair and pain
“Think not of it sweet one so.
Give it not a tear
Sigh thou mayst
Bid it go any any where.
Keats’s less famous poems shed brighter light and are considered masterpieces. The fugitive poems help us trace his era of development and his condemning the “Infatuated Britons” who celebrate the anniversary of Charles II’s restoration and mourning the fate of Sydney, Russel and Vane.
He died in his 26th year as a refugee in Rome in 1821. Before his death his agony made him ask not to engrave his name on the tombstone but to say. ‘Here lies the man whose name was written in water.’ He was indeed a Fugitive, whose fame spread because of the advocacy of Arthur Hallen, Tennyson and his biographer Richard Monkton Milns. Consequently his sweet lyrics were read and he gained a place among great poets.
His satire is revealed through the poem Nebuchada nezzar’s dream.
“Before he went to live with owls and bats.
Nebuchad nezzar had an ugly dream
Worse than a house wife’s
When she thinks of her cream....
Keats has not left any field untouched. We can find the culmination of sorrow with beauty which was dear to his heart.