What a fox right?
I'm holding out for one of the beautiful new editions of Keat's letters to Fanny Brawne for myself, but the one I borrowed from the library is lovely enough for now, even without the pretty movie tie-in cover. Keats would understand the starving artist thing I'm going through even if you lot don't.
Like trillions, the fact of love letters between John Keats and Fanny Brawne exploded to my attention through Jane Campion's beautiful film Bright Star. I weep like crazy when I first watched it, then watched it again and cried even more. I've always liked Keats, he's quite the Romanitc Emo laddie and I adore the fact that he kicks Wordsworth's butt in terms of literary output by 25 (the age when Keats dies and before Wordsworth writes a thing) and general poetical awesomeness. I really dislike Wordsworth. But Bright Star brought Fanny Brawne to life too - and it's their story that I needed to pursue in The Love Letters of John Keats.
I always find it strange reading letters, or texts like diaries or journals which were never intended to be published. And these love letters from Keats to Fanny are just so private I felt like a literary spy. They were exquisite, playful, desperate, loving and occasionally cruel. Keats in love was also in torment. He wanted Fanny but he didn't want to want her and the letters are sort of a battleground where these battling forces play out. It's epic!
In the above letter he starts: "My dearest Girl, / I wish you could invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more concentrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy - the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good."
A bit later: "If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you - I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. "
And signs off - "I wish you could infuse a little confidence in human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any - the world is too brutal for me - I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there... I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me. / God bless you, / J.K"
Poor doomed Keats, he had so many issues. And I love that he just lays them all out there on the table in his letters to Fanny. What I really really wanted was to read Fanny's replies. It's awful they've been lost to history because she is such an enigmatic figure in all this. Snippets can be gleaned about her from Keats' letters, questions and responses to her questions and it's easy to surmise that she'd have to be made of pretty feisty stuff to keep Keats' intensity under wraps and to inspire such ardor in him in the first place, but it would be so great to hear her voice in their love story. That's what was so special about Bright Star, viewers get to see two people in love vs the world, not just the tragedy of the young poet genius.
****/***** (Four out of Five stars) (Because the edition wasn't very nice, not because the letters weren't.)
