Excursions in Criticism
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217832205
Paperback|9780217832205
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: KEATS AND MR COLVIN The poet in Keats (and he was nearly all poet) had reached full maturity before he died?indeed, Mr Colvin, in the excellent biography contributed by him to Mr Morley's series, gives good reasons for thinking that Keats lived to be more than mature, to be actually decadent: witness The Cap and Bells and the strangely ill-judged and uninspired recast of Hyperion long mistaken for a rough first draught?but the residue of Keats's personality, the ten or fifteen per cent, of him that was not poet, but friend, lover, philosophical observer, social critic, was hardly more than adolescent to the very last. The ' marvellous boy' Chatterton was really never a boy at all. Keats was never anything else. Whether, if he had lived, his character, manners, and speech would have ultimately acquired the restraint and reserve, the felicitousand noble reticence, which had just begun to appear in his poetry, is, of course, a hopeless speculation; what is certain is that he died with these qualities undeveloped, and not even rudi- mentarily disclosed, in his nature. The absence of such qualities makes his letters a singularly interesting and valuable self-revelation; but, to the present writer at least (who is forced to acknowledge himself an eccentric person in regard to these matters), it does not make them pleasant reading. Keats is altogether too frank; he is even, if I may say so without provoking an imputation of cynicism, too sincere. In going over his letters we never have the pleasant exercise of divining something that has been left unsaid; there is no space for reading between the lines. He blurts out everything, like the impulsive, transparent, high-spirited, affectionate boy that he was. He is as garrulous, as confidential, as indiscreet as Marie Bashkirtseff, and a ...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217832205 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217832202 |
| Weight | 0.28 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.18 In |
| List Price | $14.14 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 76 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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