John Keats Biography
John Keats Biography
Life and Works
John Keats was one of the greatest Romantic poets of the early 19th century. He was born on the 29th October (or 31st) 1795 at the Swan and Hoop. Finsbury Pavement, London. His father, Thomas Keats, was a livery stable-keeper who married his master’s daughter. Miss Francis Jennings and acquired the business of his father-in-law. The birth of an immoral poetic geniusm, such as Keats, in such a family is really a matter of great surprise. The family had no artistic tradition and surroundings to arouse and awaken poetic talents. It is certainly an example of the inscrutable laws of nature. Keats was the eldest of four sons and one daughter.
Keats was sent to a private school kept by the Rev. J. Clarke at Enfield at the age of eight. In 1804, Keats was berett of his father. Though his father engaged in a not a very respectable occupation, he was ambitious to give his children the best education. A few years later, Keat’s mother also died of consumption in the year 1810. She was a woman of uncommon talents and was extremely fond of her eldest son, John Keats.
Keats was very happy in the private school of Rey. Clarke who took lively interest in imparting a very valuable liberal education to this students. Though Keats did not earn any reputation for scholarship, the teacher sitimulated in him great passion for reading. However, in order to earn his own livelihood. Keats was withdrawn from school and was apprenticed to a surgeon named Dr. Hammond. But Keats continued to pay frequent visits to his teachers and borrowed books from them. He also finished his maiden literary production, a translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. Keats was also initiated by Clarke into reading Spenser’s “Faerie Queen” which left an indelible impression on the mind of the young poet.
Keats had his first acquaintance with Sponsor at the age of seventeen. It was an epochal event in his life. The romantic realms of Sponsor deeply captivated the fancy of Keats and subsequently in 1812, he composed the “Imitation of Spenser’s. Though still attached to medicine, Keats took great intrest in Virgil. Shakespeare, Milton and other poets. In most of these readings. Cowden Clarke had been his companion, mentor and guide. Clarke had also introduced Keats to Homer’s poems Leigh Hunt who was then a recognised personality in the world of literature. Keat’s poetic zeal was also deeply fed by Haydon a painter, who was highly enthusiastic and exuberant. The magical effect of the friends and cricumstances on the sensitive and young Keats created an insatiate third for poetry and in a letter to his friend John Reynolds Keats wrote.
“I find I cannot exist without poetry-without eternal poetry-I began with a little, but habit has made me a leviathan.”
Keats met Fanny Brawne in 1818 and his infaturation for that maiden increased everyday. The same year, Keat’s brother Thomas succumbed to that fatal family disease of consumption. In 1818, there also came a savage and unmerited attack on Keat’s poems by the influential magazines. “Blackwood’s” and “Quarterly”. In September 1820, Keats started for Naples under medical advice. On the 23rd Feb. 1821 at the young age of hardly twenty six, Keats yielded to the stubborn disease and was buried in Rome on the 27th Feb. 1821. Keats was no doubt one of the greatest poets of England and had he been spared a few years more he might have excelled the greatest of the poets. Shelley has rightly remarked that Keats was one of “the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.”
Keat’s poetical works
John Keats the great poet of the Romantic period produced all his great work from 1871 to 1820, Keats died very young at the tender age of twenty six. His death was the greatest loss that English poetry sustained. But whatever Keats has left behind is so beautiful and charming that posterity is much indebted to him for his poetic heritage. The first volume of his poems’ was published in the year 1817. It contained about seventeen sonnets, ‘I stood tip-top upon a little hill’. Three rhymed epistles and a few other poems. Then “Endymian” was published in the year 1818 and finally came “Lamia Isabella. The Eve of St. Agnes’ and other peoms in 1820. It also contained the Odes, ‘Hyperion’ and several other poems. There is also
a considerable body of miscellaneous collected after Keat’s death which includes “The Eve of St. Mark” “La Belle Dain Sans Merci” and some of his finest sonnets.
Despite his growing ill-health, he continued to work for another year which produced his great ‘Odes’, all written during 1819. The doctors advised him to go to South for a warmer climate in September 1820. His loving friend and artist, Sever, accompanied and nursed him tenderly in whose arms he breathed his last in February 1821. Of the Romantics, he was the last to be born and the first to die. He died at the age of 26. He was buried in Rome and his epitaph, as he had wished, bore the words : “Here lies one whose name was write in water.”
He wrote several beautiful poems; ‘Endymion’, Isabella, Hyperion. The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and Lamia are his immortal poems. Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, Ode to Melancholy, Ode to Autumn, and Ode to Indolence, are his great Odes.
John Keats in Hindi
जीवन परिचय एवं कार्य-
जॉन कीट्स का जन्म 1795 में एक बहुत में हुआ था। उसके पिता अस्तबल के मालिक थे जिनका देहान्त 1805 में हो गया और कीट्स साधारण परिवार की माँ की भी तपेदिक के कारण 1810 में मृत्यु हो गयी। इसके बाद कीट्सको एक सर्जन का सहायक बनना पड़ा। 1813 में स्पेन्सर की फेयरी क्वीन पढ़ने पर उनके हृदय में दवी कविता जाग उठी। 1814 में वे लंदन आए वहाँ अपने मित्र हेडन की प्रति में जार्ज चैपमैन द्वारा अनूदित होकर महाकाव्यों का अध्ययन किया। इसका परिणाम हुआ उसकी पहली सफल कृति चैपमैन के होमर को पढ़ने पर लिखा गया सॉनेट। इसका प्रकाशन 1816 में हुआ।
1817 में उनका प्रथम कविता संग्रह प्रकाशित हुआ। लेकिन इस पर किसी ने विशेष ध्यान नहीं दिया। 1818 में इन्डिमियन के प्रकाशन पर दो प्रमुख टोरी पत्रिकाओं ने कीट्स की कटु आलोचना की कविता में अनेक दोष थे लेकिन उनमें उच्च कोटि की काव्य प्रतिभा की भी झलक यत्र-तत्र थी जिस पर आलोचकों ने ध्यान नहीं दिया।
इस बीच कवि के भाई टॉम की मृत्यु हो चुकी थी कीट्स को स्वयं तपेदिक का असर हो चला था। कटु आलोचना का भी उन पर बुरा प्रभाव पड़ा और उनका रुग्ण शरीर और कमजोर होने लगा। इसके विपरीत उन्होंने अपनी सर्वोत्तम रचनाएँ 1818 तथा 1819 के बीच लिखी इनके नाम हैं- निराशा के प्रति नाइटैगिल के प्रति, ग्रीसियन अर्न पर तथा ऑटम पर। इन कविताओं में उनकी प्रतिभा का अच्छी अभिव्यक्ति हुई है। एक महाकाव्य भी लिखने का प्रयास किया लेकिन स्वास्थ्य तथा मानसिक अवस्था अनुकूल न होने के कारण वे इसे पूरा न कर सके किन्तु अपने खण्डित रूप में भी यह कृति जिसे हाइपीरियन कहा जाता है बड़ी ही सशक्त रचना है।
1818 में स्कॉटलैंड की यात्रा पर उनके स्वास्थ्य पर बड़ा बुरा असर पड़ा। पारिवारिक बीमारी क्षय रोग से वे ग्रस्त हो गए उनका भाई जार्ज अपनी पत्नी के साथ अमेरिका चला गया – टॉम पहले ही मर चुका था अस्वस्थ अवस्था में उन्हें फैनी नामक वॉन नामक लड़की से प्रेम हो गया यह भी उनके लिए कष्ट का कारण बना क्योंकि वह लड़की उनके प्यार का प्रतिपादन न कर सकी। 1820 में उन्हे क्षय के बुखार का आक्रमण हुआ। स्वास्थ लाभ के लिए गर्म जलवायु वाले देश इटली गए जहाँ उनका स्वास्थ शीघ्रता से बिगड़ता गया और फरवरी 1821 में उनकी मृत्यु हो गयी। रोम में उन्हें दफना दिया गया उन्होंने कहा था कि उनके कब्र के पत्थर पर यह वाक्य लिखा जाय- ‘यहाँ वह व्यक्ति रहा है जिसका नाम पानी पर लिखा गया था।
दूसरी पीढ़ी के रोमाण्टिक कवियों में कीट्स सबसे छोटे थे और सबसे पहले मेरा उनकी कविता में अपरिपक्वता के दोष है लेकिन वे बड़ी तेज से परिपक्वता तथा बुद्धिमत्ता की ओर अग्रसर हो रहे थे। रोमेण्टिक कवियों में वे सबसे प्रतिभावान थे उनकी सबसे स्मरणीय कृतियाँ हैं ‘ईव ऑवसेन्ट ऐग्नीज’ आइसा वेला, ईव आव सेन्ट मार्क तथा 6 महान् ओड-ओड टु अ नाइटिंगल, ओड टु मेलाकली, ओड बॉन अ ग्रीसियन अर्न तथा ओड टू ऑटम ये ओड अग्रेजी
साहित्य की महानतम उपलब्धियों में है। उन्होंने अपनी कविता संवेदनाओं के आनन्द से प्रारंभ
की ओर बड़ी द्रुतगति से विचार प्रवणता की ओर बढ़े वे रोमैण्टिक युग के महान् कवि हैं।
Important Links
Percy Bysshe Shelley Biography
William Wordsworth as a Romantic Poet
William Wordsworth as a poet of Nature
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?
