Poetry, Poet, And Salvation

In the beginning of 19th century, young John Keats came to the critical Herculesian crossroad: how to live a worth life in this era, to be an apothecary or a poet? Meanwhile, he found himself standing at another crossroad of the Romanticism: whether to restore the lost mythology or to welcome the impending modern era as martyr? The two crossroads gradually became obscured and blended with each other before Keats, and then vanished into the dark woods of time. Keats chose not to be an aesthetic poet who abandoned himself to sensory pleasure, but an poet philosopher who walked on the little misty road of life seeking the redemption of soul, with every step suggesting his anxiety, inquietude and confusion.This dissertation, while analyzing the materials like Keats's poetry and letters, centers about explaining and preliminarily evaluating Keats's belief system from the perspective of philosophy of life. The whole dissertation consists of four chapters.The first chapter first introduces Keats's life and a general survey of his belief system. He put forth a new grander system of salvation, or a system of spirit-creation than Christianity: individual necessarily need a world of pains and troubles to school an intelligence and make it a soul? It is more like aesthetic humanism with a tinge of religion, and initially aims to reach self-redemption. The materials of this world are indispensable and serve both humanist and spiritual ends. Meanwhile, this spirit-creation requires poeticizing the life experiences, which apparently make the importance of poesy understood.The second chapter specifically explains the mission of poesy and the function of poetic imagination according Keats's belief system. Poetry fundamentally is an expression by which poet endues this world with meaning. Poetry characterizes the interchange between the contraries of life and the fusion of the material and spiritual through the medium of sensation and imagination. So Poesy should penetrate into the dark passages of human life, soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of human. Hence, poetry belongs to those who feel anxiety in this world but still unwilling to abandon it.The third chapter analyses the characteristics and the missions of Keatsian poet and his differences from the dreamer. The characters that enable Keatsian poet to stand out are that he is the poet of no self or no identity, and more importantly, the poet of"negative capability", just like the Christ and Socrates with their hearts completely disinterested. In this world, poet should serve as a sage, humanist and physician, and bear the burden of the mystery. The poet is the dreamer's sheer opposite. The dreamer venoms all his days while the poet pours out a balm upon the world by aesthetic spirit.The forth chapter evaluates the predicament that vexes Keats's belief system in the context of the revival of Hellenism. On the one hand, Keats seems an artist in anxiety and despair over the magnitude of antique fragments. On the other hand, he expects the reviving of Hellenism so that the mythology can be the illuminant of poetry and help reveal the value of aesthetics. With the rational metaphysics driving away the mythos, the glory of mythology in Keats's poems turns out to be"cold pastoral"and"silent marble". Despair and vain can best describe the indistinct tone of his mythological poetry. His late lyrics reveal the mood of meaninglessness and nihility. The poet of no identity becomes more and more self-possessed.The conclusion reaffirms Keats's new system of salvation by evaluating his philosophy of death, which, to his mind, is not an end or relief but a life's high meed because it has superior intensity so as to transcend the briefness of this world and merge into the permanence.