Keats as a poet of beauty
Keats as a poet of beauty
Discuss Keats as a poet of beauty,
Keats as a poet of beauty – As a true Romantic poet Keats had a deep love for beauty. Generally every poet is a lover of beauty but the speciality of a Romantic poet is that he “adds strangeness to beauty.” Beauty is to be found in all poetry but Romantic poetry imparts strangeness to it. Wordsworth, the leader of romantic poetry, finds the message of eternity even in the simplest flower; thus he reveals something strange and wonderful. Similarly Keats finds beauty in ordinary things of nature. Thus, he finds beauty in flowers, streams and clouds. He finds beauty in the song of a nightingale. Hearing this beautiful song he is transported from the world of reality into the world of eternity.
The poet’s love for beauty results in his love for truth. If the beauty is real it must have truth in it, otherwise it will finish into ugliness and lose all attractions. The beautiful must also be truthful. That is why Keats says:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
If what is beautiful is also truthful, then it is auspicious also. It is beneficial for the whole mankind. Thus, Keats is very close to the Indian ideal of Satyam, Shivam and Sundaram. That is why Keats sings in his ecstasy: “A thing of beauty is joy forever, its loveliness increases…..”
Keats loved beauty not as a preacher who derives from it some message to convey to humanity, but as a genuine poet who is transported into the state of bliss. When there is joy all over, where is the need for any message? He could not reconcile with the view of Wordsworth that a poet should also be a teacher. All Keats’ poems are full of the sensuous appeal of beautiful things.
But all that glitters is not gold. Every beautiful object is not a “thing of beauty” to produce joy for ever. Be witching beauty is very often found to be deceptive. Such beauty is temporal and therefore false. The poet with his own experience cautions us against such beauty in his beautiful poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. It is a story of a bewitching beauty which has everybody in thrall. A brave Knight somehow falls under her charm and loses his happiness finally to become sad and dejected. Had it been true beauty, it would have raised him in an exalted position. But, being a false beauty, it took bhim to ‘her elfin grot’ and lulled him asleep and then deserted him leaving him alone on the cold hill side. “Melancholy”, he know, “dwells with Beauty-beauty that must die”.
But the beauty which is preserved in a work of art shall never die. Keats says :-
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.
From the above description, we now conclude that Keats has been rightly called the poet of beauty.
La Belle Dame sans Merci Poem Summary
Important Links
- John Keats Biography
- Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography
- William Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet
- William Wordsworth as a poet of Nature
- William Wordsworth Biography
- William Collins Biography
- John Dryden Biography
- Alexander Pope Biography
- Metaphysical Poetry: Definition, Characteristics and John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet
- John Donne as a Metaphysical Poet
- Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116: (explained in hindi)
- What is poetry? What are its main characteristics?
- Debate- Meaning, Advantage & Limitations of Debate
- Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) Biography, Quotes, & Poem Indian Weavers
- Charles Mackay: Poems Sympathy, summary & Quotes – Biography
- William Shakespeare – Quotes, Plays & Wife – Biography
- Ralph Waldo Emerson – Poems, Quotes & Books- Biography
- What is a lyric and what are its main forms?
