SHELLEY AND KEATS FROM THE LOOKING GLASS
OF ‘ADONAIS’
Manchikanti Krishnaiah
When ‘the
golden nest of singing birds’, i.e. the Elizabethan period withered and coarse
classic rules prevailed, to lift literature from the thorns of classic rules,
the wave of Romanticism was revived.
The glory of this age is in the poetry of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats
and Shelley. They all believed in the
natural goodness of man, the idea that man in a state of nature would behave
well. From this springs out the
empathy. The young radical enthusiasts
turned to poetry as naturally as a happy man to singing. To deviate from the practical, rough road of
prose they took the rustic and grassy road of poetry. The later romantic poets namely Keats, Shelley, Byron, Moore,
though were of the same goal, were on different paths. Prominent among them were Shelley and Keats.
Where Shelley
finds optimism, prophecy, and a positivistic mood, Keats is in gloom. Though there is much contrast between these,
Shelley was of the view that “Keats is one of the grand pillars of Romantic
Mansion”. To Keats, poetry is not at
all “a criticism of life” but the very child of it. He loathed criticism of anything but sought the eternal
beauty. When the bud of Keat’s life was
clipped by the reviewers, Shelley felt the pain, as a natural romantic and
‘Adonais’ came out as his ‘tears’.
After the
fashion of Greek Pastoral Elegies, Shelley mourns the untimely death of Adonais
or Keats. He invokes the spirit of time
and the whole earth to join the mourning.
Urania, the mighty mother of all poetry, is also called upon to join the
lament for the death of her youngest, most promising child so unexpectedly cut
off in his prime.
Since the
loss of the blind, old, lonely Milton, sire of an immortal strain, this is the
saddest loss English poetry has had to bear.
It is given
only to a few to rise to such eminence in peotry, those who try to do so are
often struck by the envious wrath of man or “God”. But, when an especially promising career, like that of Keats, is
cut short so suddenly, lament is both natural and necessary. All this lamentation clearly shows the
influence of the Greek models which Shelley was following. (Theocritus, Bion, Moschus).
Various
Abstractions, like splendours, Adorationks desires and Winged personalities
come to mourn the death of Adonais.
All things
that he had loved in Nature also join the lament, Mourning, the pale of Ocean,
the wild winds and even echo [Literature in particular “Poetry”]. Spring and Autumn and Nightingale join the
band of mourners. The poet’s personal grief for the death of Adonais is
contrasted with the coming of spring in Italy.
Spring comes back to life from year to year, but not to the dead. What is, then, the source of life and its
goal?. Shelley thus falls into
spirituality that was brought upon him by the death of Keats.
Grief now
becomes all the keener on this account and a fresh outburst of grief
follows. Incidentally, Shelley laments
the evil days on which poetry had fallen in his own times, in England. Urania’s lament follows and she condemns the
Reviewers whose hatred had brought it about.
The Mountain shepherds, i.e., Byron, Leigh Hunt, Moore and lastly Shelley
himself come to pay their last tribute to the dead. [A Phantom among men].
The vile
Reviewer is again condemned for his crime.
The pagan idea of death, which is the theme of the poem so far, is now
discarded in favour of the Pantheistic idea.
He is not
dead, he lives. The Christian doctrine
of personal survival after the death of the body is now subtly introduced. Keat’s soul has now become an all-pervading
influence for good throughout Nature.
He is now a star and occupies a sphere like Chaucer, Chatterton, Sidney
and Lucas, the inheritors of unfulfilled renown.
The Reviewer is
finally asked to visit the Protestant Cemetery, where the remains of Keats were
buried, and pay homage to the poet whom he had wronged.
All in all,
Shelley thus glorifies the greatness of the Poet of Beauty, Keats, in his grief
towards the irrecoverable loss.