{"id":1617,"date":"2021-04-21T15:25:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T14:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/?post_type=phernalia&p=1617"},"modified":"2021-05-25T15:35:53","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T14:35:53","slug":"new-phoenix-wings","status":"publish","type":"phernalia","link":"https:\/\/folio400.com\/phernalia\/new-phoenix-wings\/","title":{"rendered":"Give me new Phoenix Wings to fly at my desire"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
When John Keats was feeling lonely and unwell in rented accommodation on the Isle of Wight, he was delighted to find an engraved portrait of Shakespeare in the hallway. His landlady kindly let him take it away when he left. You can just make it out on the wall of his Hampstead home in his friend Joseph Severn\u2019s portrait of the poet reading, with the door to the garden ajar, as if to let in the song of the nightingale. I am sure that he is imagined to be reading Shakespeare.<\/p>
In one of his letters from the Isle of Wight, Keats wrote to another friend, the manic depressive painter Benjamin Robert Haydon:<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tI remember your saying that you had notions of a good Genius presiding over you. I have of late had the same thought, for things which I do half at Random are afterwards confirmed by my judgment in a dozen features of Propriety. Is it too daring to fancy Shakspeare this Presider?\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKeats went on to hope that the landlady giving him the portrait of Shakespeare was a good omen. Then he dipped into gloom: I am glad you say every man of great views is at times tormented as I am. <\/i>But Shakespeare was his solace in such times of torment. A little earlier, he had written to his brothers: I felt rather lonely this Morning at breakfast so I went and unbox\u2019d a Shakspeare\u2014\u2018there\u2019s my Comfort\u2019.<\/i> The quotation is from Caliban in The Tempest<\/i>; his comfort was alcohol, whereas for Keats it was Shakespeare.<\/p>
One day when I was a graduate student at Harvard, I went into the Houghton Library and unboxed the very Shakespeare to which Keats was referring. His own copy of a multi-volume pocket edition, printed in Chiswick in 1814. I traced my hand over his underlinings and marginal annotations. I especially liked the last page of the text of A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i>. Fie<\/i>, he had written, as he inked out Dr Johnson\u2019s lukewarm comment on the play. And Such tricks hath <\/i>weak<\/i><\/span> imagination<\/i>. At that moment, I saw the theme of my doctoral dissertation: a riposte to Harold Bloom\u2019s idea of the \u2018anxiety of influence\u2019, with working title Strong Imagination: The Consolation of Influence in Romantic Shakespeare<\/i>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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