By Michelle Santillan
November 29, 2017
Many of Keats’s works include imagery that appeals to the senses of sight, touch, taste, hearing, and smell. His descriptions of certain situations or places draw his readers into a space that can create and intimacy between the reader and the work. Keats’ use of language in works such as The Eve of St. Agnes; “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and Isabella: or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio is influenced by his own life experiences, which allows him to create a mental place and space for the reader that transforms the words from the imaginary to the real.
In Isabella (1820), Keats allows the reader to travel with him and experience the different elements of the here and now, and in this way, appeals to all the sense simultaneously:
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber-window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turn’d to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair. (Keats 3.17-24)
This stanza allows the reader to travel with the poem, giving a vision that is so vivid, one can almost place one self in that moment and visualize, part-by-part, what Lorenzo is feeling and going through. His use of the words, like “gentle hand” allows us to imagine a hand that is soft and feminine. The appeal of the physicality is presented when he states, “before the door had given her to his eyes,” creating an unassuming image of a woman before the door. Keats creates a scene that makes the reader tune into the realities of the moment. Visualizing the couple both “turn’d to the same skies” allows the reader to embody the moment and retreat into a world that is beyond the pages but it also gives a feeling of separation from the lovers, similar to his circumstances with Fanny Brawne. Fanny Brawne was Keats’ Fiancé, though he was very much in love with her, he didn’t have enough money to marry her. During the time he wrote Isabella, Keats traveled with Tom and Charles Brown on a tour of England and Scotland. At this time, Tom was very ill with tuberculosis but Keats was told his brother could survive the tour. Though he would have liked to be in the presence of Fanny Brawne he could only watch her from his “chamber-window” or his mind, where he would imagine her “beauty farther than the falcon spies.” He had no choice but to see her from afar, and in his writing, he gives the reader that sense of space that he must have been feeling by being away from Fanny Brawne. There was also a separation from Fanny Brawne due to his financial status, similar to the separation social economical separation that Lorenzo felt towards Isabella. The way Keats’ combines his own reality with the mysteries of his mind, gives the reader a perfect combination of the physicality of the characters in his poem.
While indulging and reveling in the moment, Keats makes it possible “to hear her morning-step upon the stair,” where he appeals to the imagination while creating a sense of sound within it. When he writes, “morning-step,” we can perhaps hear a heavy foot upon the stair, the person not fully awake, and with a heavy step climbing or descending from her “chamber.” He is envisioning his love rising from her sleep and creates a vivid sound that allows the reader to partake in an intimate moment of Keats’s own imaginative realm, where he is able to remain connected to Fanny Brawne.
(John William Waterhouse, “Isabella and the Pot of Basil,” 1907)
Keats is great at mastering this component of poetry and making it a smooth and transitional experience from the real world into the imaginary. In the Journal article “Interior Space and Description in Keats’s Narrative Poetry” by Lasse Gammelgaard, the author argues that Keats’ use of space is a transformation into another realm of reality. She states, “As the women dig up the grave, we get a detailed description of the corpse of Lorenzo. This description, though, is not static, but incorporated into the narrative. Hence, Keats transforms what is coexistent into what is consecutive and converts the painting of an object into an action” (586). By shifting the physicality of objects in his work, Keats is able to transform his words into moving pieces in the imagination by intertwining his real life experiences and thus transferring them to the reader’s own imagination.
There is a never-ending distance between Lorenzo and Isabella; even when they were together, the odds were against them, and the separation weighed heavily on both of them. Keats writes, “If he could hear the lady’s matin-song, / or the light whisper of her footstep soft…” (Keats 25.195-197). Describing the sounds that Lorenzo would hear if Isabella were around, allows us to be present, in that moment, with Lorenzo, but also with Keats and Fanny Brawne. The “whisper” implies that there is something forbidden, a mystery, a secret an event that needs to be hidden which requires her to approach with her “footstep soft.” This gives the reader of an impression of the tentative love between Lorenzo and Isabella, which is reflective of Brawne and Keats.
Keats’s use of language that gives imagery of the “soft” step may come from his own personal experiences. Keats was always around Tom during the time he wrote a lot of his poems, which may have a contributed to him hearing that “soft” step from Tom. He is able to draw upon the experiences he had with tuberculosis and his family members to give the reader a better sense of the real and, what perhaps Tom sounds and felt like when he went through bouts of illnesses. Isabella’s “morning-step” could be a reflection Tom’s steps during his difficult days, which would have been frequently heard by Keats.
By the time Keats writes The Eve of St. Agnes (1820), his brother has died, but he beings to experience very early symptoms of tuberculosis. Keats writes “He followed through a lowly arched way, / Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume” (Keats 13.109-110), here he appeals to the sense of touch, producing in the reader a feel for “the cobwebs” but again, he doesn’t forget to include the “soft” with “his lofty plume,” giving us a sense of frailty and tenderness that is amalgamated with his own experiences of failing health. His rich imagery is extremely clear, yet simple, allowing for an easier transitional position between the reader and their imagination. He describes the hallway as a “lowly” one filled with “cobwebs” giving the mental ability to produce a room that is of gloom and darkness, as well as passages unused. In the journal article “Keats and the language of love: Amanda Naylor considers Keats’ presentation of love in four of his best-known poems.” By Amanda Naylor, she writes “Keats’ use of synesthesia is remarkable here–the poet makes touch and sight almost indistinguishable, just as people with this condition often find it difficult to distinguish between touch, sound, taste and smell, all merging into a vivid sensory overload” (29). Keats ability to combine the senses allows the reader to produce lively images of the text.
Keats’s choice of words is highly meaningful in creating an appeal to the senses. His use of metaphors and personification in his work help produce a deeper meaning and visualization that appeals to all the senses. His characters often express different moods that allow the reader to feel those moods and indulge the psyche into a deeper state when reading Keats work. In Reading John Keats, Susan Wolfson states about The Eve of St. Agnes, “Keats’s romance is a complex production: camelion-immersed in sensuous intensity, coyly (sometimes puzzlingly) allusive, ironic, meta-fictive, light and dark, sophisticated and enchanted, sentimental and skeptical, comic and thrilling” (Wolfson 73). Keats’s intricate use of the “complex” appeals to the senses of readers far and wide. There is no feeling, visualization, experiences, or sounds left untouched in his writings. His ability to fuse his own personal experiences to create poetry of sophisticated simplicity is extraordinary.
The appeal of Keats’s work is that it surreptitiously brings forth an experience of the real realm of life into the written language of life experiences. His detailed oriented descriptions of life allows for a deeper perception of the imaginary, converting it into a life-like experience. The essence of his work is in the surreal, yet it illuminates the mind in such a way, that it becomes the real. Wolfson conveys, “Keats means to make his readers partners in Porphyro’s purple riot, a striptease out of thought” (Wolfson 78), by his verbiage of the physicality and concepts of space, Keats is able to give the readers an experience with the text that is beyond the pages.
Upon examining the original manuscripts of The Eve of St. Agnes; La Belle Dame located in the Harvard University Library archive, it is clear to see the passion in which Keats wrestled with language, with a devotion to make the experience as realistic and perfect as possible for the reader. He pressed the pen hard on the paper when writing this poem, as the writings behind the page are visible through the front. Keats left a lot of free space in the paper, possibly for revisions, evident by all the markings found on the page. He decides to change “her sweet attire falls light creeps down by” (MS Keats 2.21) to “Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees” (Keats 26.230), the meaning of the line transforms into a more vivid and experience for the reader. The change from “sweet” to “rich” gives it a different sense entirely and produces a more dramatic effect on the moment. The choice of “rich” is also indicative of Fanny Brawne’s financial status when compared to his. Keats wrestles with the wording of stanza 26, determined to ensure the reader is companion in the sensual experience between Madeline and Porphyro. His masterful election of the perfect word shows how he prefers to serve the reader with an experience that captures the senses and allows the mind to wander into the world of Porphyro and Madeline, but also, that it captures his own sentiments about the work.
Throughout his life, Keats was surrounded by devastation, illness, losses, and poverty. He never really had a steady home and moved from place to place. This instability of life combined with his passion for poetry, allowed him to place his sentiments about his life and his circumstances on paper. His creativity allowed his readers to get a glimpse into his mind and take part in a place in his thoughts that appeals to the reader’s senses. His expressive poems become vivid imprints in his readers’ minds.
Works Cited
Gammelgaard, Lasse. “Interior Space and Description in Keats’s Narrative Poetry.” Style: A Quarterly Journal of Aesthetics, Poetics, Stylistics, and Literary Criticism, vol. 48, no. 4, 2014, pp. 577-592. MLA International Bibliography, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/N2812926129/MLA?u=lehman_main&sid=MLA&xid=d18bdd6b. Accessed 29 Nov. 2017.
Keats, John. Edited by Susan J. Wolfson. “Isabella: or, The Pot of Basil. A Story from Boccaccio.” John Keats: A Longman Cultural Edition. Princeton University. 2007.
Keats, John. Edited by Susan J. Wolfson. “The Eve of St. Agnes; La Belle Dame.” John Keats: A Longman Cultural Edition. Princeton University. 2007.
Keats, John, 1795-1821. St. Agnes’ Eve–Ah, bitter chill it was (“The Eve of St. Agnes”) : A.MS. early draft. MS Keats 2.21. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL.HOUGH:2562136
Naylor, Amanda. “Keats and the language of love: Amanda Naylor considers Keats’ presentation of love in four of his best-known poems.” The English Review, vol. 21, no. 1, 2010, p. 29+. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A236567714/GLS?u=lehman_main&sid=GLS&xid=824c0f42. Accessed 13 Dec. 2017.
Wolfson, Susan J. Reading John Keats. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2015.
This entry is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.
