A brief study of the classical & Hellenic elements in Keat's poetry

Nirmala Dangi, Lecturer

Janata College, Dang, Nepal

Keats is among the greatest poets of the Romantic Revival in English. His poetry possesses the salient features of romantic poetry. Such as love of Nature, medievalism, lyricism, subjectivity, a melancholy note and the treatment of the supernatural. However a classical strain runs through almost the whole body of his verse, and his poetry possesses several traits of classical poetry, According to his friend J.H. Reynolds, "The genius of Mr. Keats is peculiarly classcial'1 and his opinion may be confirmed by Keat's love of classical mythology and adoption of the classical meaner of writing.

Not a Neo-Classical poet:

However, the term 'Classical' as applied to Keats, must be distinguished from the term 'neo-classical applied to the poets of the Augustan Age in Eng. Literature such as Dryden and pope. In the Neo-Classical poetry greater attention was paid to the perfection of form & style than to the imaginative treatment of the subject. It was a poetry of reason & intellect whore in emotion & imagination played little past. The heroic couplet was the chief verse-fore adopted by the neo-classical poets. Keats has discarded the artificiality of much of the neo-classical verse and has restarted to Greek simplicity. He has employed other verse forms such as the ode, the sonnet, the balled and the like. His poetry gloms with emotion and spackles with imagination. Thus, it marks a break from the neo-classical poetry of the 18th century.

A classical poet-He has loved classical literature, are and mythology, classical mode of writing. As a student he made a prose translation of Virgil's Aimed. A little later he read Homer's epic Iliad & was thrilled by it 'His excitement are expressed in the sonnet 'on first Looking Chapmen's Homer.' Three books which Keats possess as a student and enjoyed deeply, Viz, Took's pantheon, Lempira's Classical Dictionary and Spence's polymeric, provided him with further insights into classical art & literature, He got especially interested in the classical art & literature of ancient Greece, Elizabethan like Spenser and Shakespeare are his models. He inherited the Greek spirit from the Elizabethans as well as his own reading of various Greek authors & enjoyment of the Greek art Classical Traits in his poetry.

Keat's classicism consists mainly in his love of Greek Classics, his treatment of the classical myths, his emulation of the Greek ideal of a proper balance between form and content, his attempts at writing an epic in the classical tradition and his adherence to the classical rules of literary composition, such as objectivity, restraint, poise sublimity and clarity. At also comprises his tendency to return, after his sojourn in the medieval world to the world of classical antiquity to derive his inspiration, His poetry possesses 'That quality of order in beauty' Which  Walter patter considers to be the essentially classical element. 

Hellenism or the Greek Spirit in his poetry.

The classical traits and elements of his poetry have their chief source in Greek literature and mythology. His classical spirit finds nourishment in the mythology & poetry of ancient Greece, Moreover, The works of Greek art and literature serve as classical models of his own work. Keats was a Greek in the sense of possessing a Greek spirit, a love of all that belonged to Greece-it life, legends, myth, art & literature. He shared with them a delight in the beauty of the external world and pagan worship of nature, What in most surprising is the fact that he imbibed this Greek spirit without ever having seen Greece or learnt the Greek language. As a poet he has taken subjects from there and treated them in a novel manner. Several of his longer poems such as Endymion, Hyperion and Lamia are based on Greek myths. A few of his sonnets like 'To Homer', 'On first Looking into Chapmen's Homer' and 'On seeing the Elgin Marble's are inspired by Greek art and literature. The great odes 'To psyche' , 'On a Grecian Urn, 'On Indolence' and 'To Maia' also our Their origin to Greek mythology and art. There are several references to Greek mythology in other poems as well. Endymion' deals  with the legend of the love of the Moon Goddess for the shepherd Endymion', Hyperion treats the ancient Greek legend of the Over throw of the Old gods (Titans) by the new gods (Olympians)', Lamia Presents the story of the love of the serpent –Goddess (Lamia) and a human being (Lycius). The "Ode on a Grecian Urn' and ode on Indolence' are inspired by pieces of Greek sculpture, the decorated marble urn's the fragmentary 'Ode to Maia' is related to the ancient worship of the Greek Gooddess Maia', The 'Ode ot psyche' is based on the legend related to the love of the Greek God Cupid  and the goddess psyche or the Human soul. All these poems show low deeply keats imagination was steeped in the classical mythology and art of ancient Greece.

But Keats treats these mythological figures in novel and different manner, for instance, Greek poets like Hesiod, Homer and Orpheus have supplied pompous epithets to the Greek gods and goddesses. Presented by them. But Keats makes the mythological figures of his poems such as Satrun, Apploo or Oceanus in Hyperion speak like human beings.

Classical Allusious in his poetry

Keats classicism in also related in the frequent classical allusions in his poems. In a  majority of his poems we find carnal references to Greed gods & goddesses and to Greek, myths, literature, art & sculpture. In the Ode to a Nightingale  reference in made to 'the blushful Hippocrene' and 'Bachhus and his pards.' The Ode on a Grecian Urn' alludes to the ancient sacrificial sense with its 'mysterious priest' and the sacrificial 'heifer lowing to the skies.' In the 'Ode to psyche' keats has dealt with the story of the love of cupid and psyche also referred to phoebe and 'the moss lain Dryads.'

Greek Atmosphere and Approach to nature.'

Through his treatment of Greek myths and allusious to Greek characters, Keats creates a Greek atmosphere in his poetry. For this, he presents typically Greek objects, ceremonies, rentals and customs, shrines altars, pipes, processions & sacrifices. In the very beginning of the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', such atmosphere in created up by his various questions related to these things:

What leaf-fringid  legend haunts about the shape

Of duties or mortals, or of both.

 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What man or gods are these? What maindens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and tumbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Endymion contains a fine description of a Bachhic procession. And as I sat, over the light blue hills

There came a noise of revelers: the rills

Into the wide stream came of purple hue

'twas Bachhus and his crew!

Descriptions such as this combine the beauties of the scenes of Nature and the charm of Greek like of ancient times. In fact, Keats portrays scenes from Nature in such a way as to illustrate the Greek myths and modes of life. Though he doesn't have any spiritual approach to Nature,he discovers and presents the relation between Greek goods and natural phenomena. He hardly finds any object of Nature unconnected, in some way or the other, with Greek mythology. For example, when he describes the nightingale in his 'ode to a Nightingale', he refers to is as 'the light-winged Dryad of the trees.' In ' I stood tip toe' he makes us look into the wide forest.

To catch a glimpse of fauns, and Dryads

coming with softest rustle through the trees,

Keats's treatment of Greek mythology is novel in the sense that he has maintained a close relationship between nature and mythology and given a human significance to mythological characters and situations. He does not attach any spiritual or intellectual significance to Nature, but revels in its external beauty. The Greek concepts of the identify of beauty and truth appealed to him and is expressed in the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' through the urn's message.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

Keats is thus a classicist because he has dealt with themes, subjects and situation related to ancient Greek mythology and literature, The world of classical Greece has become alive in his poems. However, it would be wrong to regard Keats manner entirely Greek. He was mainly a romantic poet and wrote in a manner differing from that of the classical poets. The perfection of form, the beauty of shape, the purity and preciseness of outline, a restraint and reserve in expression these qualities that are generally associated  with Greek art & poetry are found only in a few of Keats poems. In place of these traits of the classical manner Keats poetry often exhibits romantic traits such as richness of imagination, ornateness of design exuberance of imagery & luxuriance of style that we find in poems like Endymion and that are opposed to the Greek qualities of restraint and discipline. In fact, he adopts a romantic style and English manner for dealing with classical themes and legends of Greece.

Conclusion:

It may be concluded that Keats was a Greek in spirit but romantic in form. He treated the themes and myths of Greece in the romantic manner of the Elizabethans. His early poetry employs a romantic style and expression even in the treatment of classical Greek subjects as in Endymion, but in his mature works like Hyperion and the odes his manner has close affinities with the classical manner. By and large, however, he can be regarded a Greek in spirit but an Elizabethan in from, a classicist in the choice of subjects but a romanticist in their treatment. He may be said to have thus brought a fusion of the romantic and the classical.

Reverences:

1.           H.J.C. Grierson & J.C. Smith.

A critical History of Eng poetry.

2.           John Middleton Murry: Keats & Shakespeare

3.           Aubrey de selincourt: "John Keat's seven Great writers

4.           G.M.Matthews. 'Introduction, Keats; The Critical Heritage

5.           Stuart M. Sperry: Keats the poet.

6.           Robert Gittings: John keats

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