Keats Love Of Beauty Analysis

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With Keats a miracle was born. In 1821 Keats the man to dust returned, but the miracle that Keats was, lives on. I do not know of a student of English poetry whose heart does not ‘leap up’ at the very mention of this High Priest of Beauty.

I want to make a single point in the present essay: the feeling of beauty ­ like all other aesthetic feelings ­ has its being in the moment of perception. Cosmic time rolls into that blessed moment impregnating it with a divine thrill, the very quintessence of an epiphanic experience. It is of course true that beauty lies in the eye of the experiencer (the proverbial eye of the beholder) ; Its non­perception does not put its ontology in doubt, but only highlights perceptual opacity and experiential turbidity. …show more content…

It may even be said that what distinguishes Keats from some of the fellow romantic poets is his disinterested and inclusive love of beauty ­ both inner and outer, or else he would not have emphasised the essential oneness of beauty and truth. His passionate plea is “Seek ye first” the ideal of beauty “and all other things shall be added unto you”. His ideal of beauty was akin to that of the Greeks, a perfect blending of the inward and the outward:

‘...or thy smiles

Seek as they were once sought, in Grecian isles, By bards who died content on pleasant sward’

Coming back to my earlier theme that for Keats beauty inheres in the moment, I venture to further propose that Keatsian aesthetics was, far from being an aberration, a deeply felt conviction which was itself premised on a profound insight into life ­ very surprisingly so, considering his young age. The moment ­ life as a microcosm ­ is compounded of the twin elements of joy and sorrow, each owing its being to the other. The truth of the above analysis is best exemplified in Ode to Melancholy, the refrain of which is that fullness of joys is dependent on their sharpening into pains

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