The Individuality of John Keats

I almost forgot that I had something else to say about John Keats.  One of the aspects of his life that stood out for me as I was reading through the intro information in our textbook about Keats was the fact that he knew himself well enough to know that he was easily influenced by others—as far as writing was concerned.  He wanted to write Hyperion, I think that’s the one (I don’t have my book with me at the moment to double-check), but he struggled because he was worried that he was writing too much in a Miltonian style (like John Milton who wrote Paradise Lost—although, I think the long poem mentioned by Milton is something else).  Plus, Keats met writers like Percy Shelley, who is still considered by many to be THE greatest romantic poet, but Keats refused to hang out with Shelley and get close to him, and others, simply because he was worried that he would be too easily influenced by Shelley, and others, in his writing.  He wanted his own writing to be his own—to be individual.

It’s an aspect of the Romantic Poets we talked about when we discussed the Romantic Period—the fact that the Romantic Poets were the first writers to begin writing as individuals, thinking more from their own personal perspective rather than from an intellectual perspective. 

So to read that Keats was very conscious (aware) and self-aware of the fact that, as a writer, he was easily influenced, it’s incredible!  The reality is that we ARE influenced by everything around us.  It is truly very difficult to write in our own voices if/when we spend too much listening to the voices of others—or we allow others to edit our work too closely.  (It’s my biggest problem with the writing center.  I feel that they edit students’ papers sometimes more than the students and the papers begin to sound more like the folks in the writing center than they do the students writing the papers themselves.  I do know that they try very hard in the writing center to avoid doing that, but with so many students going in to see them, sometimes it’s difficult to keep up that practice.)

I know that I have read certain authors that sound like other authors, but they are the authors I tend to avoid.  My favorite books are the ones that are original in more ways than one.  In spite of the fact that I do believe Rowling has done an incredible job on the Harry Potter series, as I was reading the series, I found myself continuously thinking about other stories that hers sounded like.  A few have been written since hers, but one that stands out more than any other for me is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.  Rowling practically stole some of the details of her story from Tolkien and I have to believe that she had read his books prior to writing hers.  Yet, with that being said, her story is still in her own voice.  Regardless of whether or not there are allusions to The Lord of the Rings, series, the stories themselves sound very much like a new writer with a new voice.

I’m losing my point…..

We each, in our writing, have to find our own voice.  We never want to sound like someone else in our own writing.  I’m sure you’ve noticed I have a very different way of writing than what many of you are used to.  If you know me and have talked to me, my way of writing is typically the way I write.  I like to say that I write in stream of consciousness—that is to say that I write in exactly the way my thoughts come out—I don’t edit out the in-between thoughts that have nothing to do with my point—I just go with the flow.  Since I am so easily distracted, that can be distracting for my audience, too.  At the same time, I think it represents my light-hearted tone that I typically try to get across in my writing. 

I know others who prefer to be more formal, never allowing any outside thoughts interfere with the point.  They stay fully focused on their point, saying only exactly what they feel MUST be said, succinctly and directly. 

Personally, that kind of writing typically bores ME.  I know it has its place because I’ve read quite a few books like that and I DID enjoy them, but I found them tedious to read.

Tolkien preferred to write in a manner that sounds like a Historian.  In the Preface to his books, he said very specifically that he did that on purpose.  He wanted to sound like a historian because he wanted his story to read as a history.  There ARE many people who have read his stories and are so drawn into the story that they feel as if Middle Earth IS real.  Thus, while I did enjoy reading The Lord of the Rings overall, I did find the reading of his works very tedious and time-consuming—just as I do with most true history books I’ve read.

Give me a good historical fiction book to read, though, that intertwines historical fact with a fictional story and…..oh, wow!  I’m in reading heaven!!

But I digress from my original point….back to Keats. 

While I do find it admirable that Keats knew himself well enough to know that he couldn’t let other writer influence him, it seems to me that because of his fear of being easily influenced, he may have missed out on having some really great, positive relationships in his life since he refused to spend any time with other writers of his day. 

So the question is:  did Keats make his writing better because he avoided allowing the writing of other writers (and their physical persons) to influence him and his writing or did he hinder his creativity by avoiding other writers (you know what I mean)????

Personally, as an English teacher, I have a hard time with his sonnets.  Why, you ask?  Because a sonnet is a 14-line love poem and has iambic pentamber (10 syllables per line) with a particular rhyme scheme, depending on whether you’re working with a Shakespearean sonnet (ababcdcdefefgg) or the Italian/Petrarchan sonnet (abba or c d c d c d

c d d c d c
c d e c d e
c d e c e d
c d c e d c)

—and Keats’ sonnets do not follow either style, certainly not as far as rhyme scheme is concerned.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, another British author who wrote around the same time period and one of my favorite poets of all time, also wrote hundreds of poems she called sonnets which, according to the rules of sonnetry, quite often don’t even fit into the sonnet category beyond the fact that the poems are 14 lines and love poems!  Her Sonnets from the Portuguese are beautiful to read and truly incredible love poetry, but she certainly took an awful lot of “poetic license” with her use of the sonnet.  Which, I think, is (at least in part) one of the reasons why her poems are so amazing.  Bottom line, she wanted to write sonnets her way, and she did—very effectively.

So back to Keats….Keats wanted to write in his own voice, and in doing that, he took a poetic form, the sonnet, and made it his own.  So while other critics may praise Keats for his use of imagery, or the way he could turn a phrase, or the poetic meter, etc. in his poetry, I, personally, find his poetry incredible to read for the simple fact that he didn’t let anyone—including the poetic conventions of poetry—tell him how a poem should (or should not) be written.  He found a style—and a voice—that was unique to Keats.

And that uniqueness—that individuality—is what attracts me to Keats’ poetry more than anything else I’ve read about Keats---and that includes the strangely romantic, yet tragic, love story between Keats and Fanny!!!!!

Long live individuality!  Raise your OWN voices high and loud and strong!!!!!  So let it said, so let it done!!!!!!!