Endymion : king of Elis; Selene, goddess of Moon, bore him 50 daughters.
... Talks on Poetry TALK NINE The critic of Keats's Endymion in the Quarterly Review, for all his show of learning, might as well have been the young lady who has become memorable with the question: "What are Keats?" The ignorance displayed of the world of poetry could have been com-pared also to that of the old lady who went to a lecture on Burns and came... the subject and, instead of giving advice on how to treat the effects of flame-heat or of boiling water on the skin, kept talking of some Scottish poet. Today we look far more appre-ciatively at Endymion than did the eye of the notorious Jeffrey. It is a wonder how the very first touch of the poem with its glorious opening line — A thing of beauty is a joy for ever — did not stir his imagination... and out among the immaturities of that lushly lovely allegory. If Jeffrey had possessed the slightest discrimination he would hardly have picked out for ridicule some of the finest things in Endymion together with its several lapses of poetic taste — splen-did things like the "Hymn to Pan" in which we find the Forest-Spirit addressed: Be thou the unimaginable lodge Of solitary thinkings ...
... lyrical form. But the real soul of Keats, his inner genius, the thing he was striving to bring out of himself is not to be altogether found even here; it lay in that attempt which, first failing in Endymion , was again resumed in Hyperion . It was the discovery of the divine Idea, Power and living norm of Beauty which by its breath of delight has created the universe, supports it and moves towards a... harmonies of inward sight and outward form, yearns and strives towards the fullness of its own self-discovery by love and delight. Not yet in possession of his idea, he tries to find and to figure it in Endymion by sensuous images of a rich and dim moonlit dream with a sort of allegory or weft of symbols behind the words and thoughts, but his hand is still inexpert and fails in the execution. In Hyperion ...
... Talks on Poetry TALK THIRTY-SEVEN It was Keats's friend Henry Stephens who, on seeing the first draft of Endymion, remarked that its opening line — A thing of beauty is a constant joy — was good but still "wanting something". Keats pondered the criticism a little, then cried out, "I have it", and wrote: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever... meaning in the line. And if Bremond does not see it he has not responded with the right alertness of mind. But, while such a hint may strike us as right and also as more in tune with the rest of the Endymion- passage, we shall mislead ourselves if we believe that the sheer Page 340 meaning has metamorphosed Keat's line. Apart from the context of a line, the r ightness or wrongness of ...
... 1933), and wasn't anxious to save it from oblivion; but happily he was persuaded to include it in the Collected Edition of his Poems and Plays in 1942. 22 Urvasie is Sri Aurobindo's Endymion, but an Endymion transferred, by sleight of hand, to Aryasthan and presented in terms of immemorial Hindu thought. By rendering the age-long Urvasie legend on an epic (at least mini-epic) scale, Sri Aurobindo ...
... there is peace between us and we can look back calmly on wounds given or taken. But is it really a fact that you felt the Quarterly Examination as Keats had felt the Quarterly Review in which his Endymion had been attacked? Surely you can't picture me as a sort of Jeffreys exulting at the sight of your discomfiture? Besides, I was not solely responsible for the paper. The second question asking you ...
... ion is a suspension of thought. So the rational or reflective or logopoeic part of poetry is not the true spellbinder, the pure poetic essence. Bremond tells us that Keats originally started his Endymion with the line: A thing of beauty is a constant joy — but later changed it to: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. I shall postpone at the moment my own opinion on the nature of the ...
... " 2 Not in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, not even in the great Odes does Sri Aurobindo see the real soul of Keats: this "inner genius... lay in that attempt which, first failing in Endymion , was again resumed in Hyperion . It was the discovery of the divine Idea, Power and living norm of Beauty which by its breath of delight has created the universe, supports it and moves towards ...
... false facility has got an outlet. A corrected version is not bound to be "sophisticated", it may be the very soul of simplicity and Page 35 sincerity. Keats originally began his Endymion with the line: A thing of beauty is a constant joy. Only later, when a friend found it lacking something, he rewrote: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. The ...
... about the hushed mind. This line exceeds the range Keats has accepted here but it is not something alien to his own imagination, as he shows in that snatch in the Ode to Pan woven into his early Endymion: ... solitary thinkings such as dodge Conception to the very bourn of heaven, Then leave the naked brain... Hood has a weak moment which is almost unforgivable: "Alone, ...
... mean? he said. — A simple thing enough, which I will illustrate by the case of sleep, he-replied. You know that if there were no alternation of sleeping and waking, the tale of the sleeping Endymion would in the end have no meaning, because all other things would be asleep too, and he would not be distinguishable from the rest. Or if there were composition only, and no division of substances ...
... Celt in the other—but the world did not then and Page 82 does not now appreciate the value of genealogies to philosophy. We are vexed and are sceptical of harmony in nature, when we find Endymion a Londoner, but look back a step and learn that his parents were Devonshire Celts and recover our faith in the Cosmos. And why should we exclaim at the Julian emperors as strange products for stoical ...
... vitality, but it is, for the purposes of poetry, a real and important difference. The spirit of delightful weakness swooning with excessive beauty gives a peculiar charm of soft laxness to poems like the Endymion, but it is a weakening charm to which no virile temperament will trust itself. The poetry of Kalidasa satisfies the sensuous imagination without enervating the virile chords of character; for virile ...
... a man with a fund of humour and great power of endurance and even pugnacious physical courage. His early sentimental vein has nothing essentially to do with the mysticism of Beauty with which his Endymion is sensuously a-wash. Two of the celebrated Odes, with their stronger fibre, have the same mystical tinge and the unfinished Hyperion , where the discovery of the divine Idea, Power and living ...
... feeling aroused by the idea of eternity dumbs and numbs the brain. Keats has another moment too of Eternity's teasing, though without the actual term being employed. In an Ode to Pan woven into his Endymion, Pan's temple is addressed: Be thou the unimaginable lodge Of solitary thinkings such as dodge Page 40 Conception to the very bourne of heaven, Then leave the naked ...
... source of that totality? As answering these questions, I cannot do better than consider in some detail a well-known example of the poetic art in action. When Keats made the first draft of his Endymion, his friend Henry Stephens remarked about the opening line - A thing of beauty is a constant joy - that it was good but still "wanting something". Evidently the fine sentiment correctly ...
... created the new taste by which he and Coleridge subsequently came to be enjoyed. Many, however, were the battles the enemies waged, and one of the fiercest was against the young John Keats. Keats's Endymion was torn into ribbons. Not that this poem was blameless. It had immaturities, and Keats was fully aware of them, but the imma-turities were closely intertwined with genuine poetic expression, and ...
... through all this earthly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. In Wordsworth's own time of the so-called Romantic Revival we get in the middle of Keats's hymn to Pan in the course of Endymion a snatch of ancient Indian Yoga and a clear Aurobindonian experience when the poet invokes the genius of the place: Be thou the unimaginable lodge Of solitary thinkings such as dodge ...
... really believe that I would just goggle at a God-man and never seek to ascertain aesthetically whether "the current passes" through, for example, a line like Keats's original draft of the beginning of Endymion - A thing of beauty is a constant joy - Page 89 or like his later version: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. In 1936 Sri Aurobindo, in response to an appeal ...
... feeling, all the time, one with us. Isn't that wonderful? Here, in this case, identity of consciousness happened through love. 65 Referring to "A thing of beauty is a joy forever" from "Endymion" (1818) by John Keats. Page 35 Love brought about that identity, and love is a great, powerful means of bringing it about. But mind you, my friends, it is a special, rare kind of ...
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