In the history of literature, he is in the same group as Byron and Shelley. The last two elders, whose lives are similar to their poems, lived a romantic and unrestrained life, and have left their traces all over the United States and Europe. Keats was very different: he never owned a lasting mansion, elegant house, monastery, villa or famous school, leaving it to future generations to watch and pay homage to. As the eldest son of a stable owner who served rich people's horses in Salzac, London, he was born in He lived in an ordinary house next to a stable and worked as an apprentice in a hospital in the same district during his youth. It was not until he moved to Hampstead and left the medical practice that he disliked that his career as a professional poet came to fruition; after his death, his Only then did the traces fall into place.
Hampstead Heath is a suburb in the north of London. It still retains many of the original natural features of British grassland hills. The environment is secluded, the air is fresh, and yet it is close to the bustling city. It is exactly the "cultural district" that poets and writers at home and abroad longed for in ancient and modern times. Keats lost his parents at a young age and shouldered the heavy responsibility of raising his younger brothers and sisters early on. His younger brother suffered from tuberculosis, which was passed down from his family, so he moved to this area and was cared for by Keats himself. After his brother's death, Keats, who was physically and mentally exhausted, was invited by his poet friend Braun to move to Wentworth House in the south end of "The Waste Land". This place has now become Keats's only museum in the UK.
Wentworth House
This is a two-story building with a courtyard and a basement. It is semi-detached and contains two units for two people. It was designed by Braun It was built jointly with the literary friend Diluc. It is small in scale and simple in structure, with hedge courtyard walls, fenced street gates, and white house walls, creating a pastoral atmosphere. The poet's daily utensils are displayed in the room, which are simple and ordinary. Most of them are special items in the exhibitions of celebrity museums. There is only an engagement ring that Keats gave to his fiancée Fanny Brown, which is the testimony of the poet's early love.
Keats moved here at the end of 1818 and shared the east unit with Braun. In the spring of the following year, the widowed Mrs. Brown and her daughters rented a house in the west unit. The eldest daughter Fanny, 17, was pure and beautiful, and immediately captured the heart of the young poet who loves beauty. The hedges in the courtyard are only a tree-lined path that is only 10 to 20 meters long and 1 meter wide. The thick cotton-like lawns around the house and the mountain, forest, grass and poolside a little further away are all places where they quietly drink love honey. This was probably Keats's first and only serious love affair. It inspired the young genius of poetry to grow strong hopes and soar. The most important poems in his life were all completed here and now. On the east side of the courtyard, there is still an isolated plum tree. It is short and thin, with a shriveled fruit hanging on its branch, which glows a ripe purple-red color in the late summer sunshine. It is conceivable that this young and beautiful couple painted a beautiful picture in this beautiful background. Unfortunately, their love was not as mature as that of Li Zi. The gods of plague and death joined forces to intervene and kill them. The two were torn apart alive.
This plum tree is just a substitute for Keats’s plum tree. Braun said in a letter to a friend: "In the spring of 1819, a nightingale built a nest near my apartment. Listening to her cry, Keats felt bursts of comfort and joy. One morning, he moved his chair from the dining table. I went to sit quietly under the plum tree on the grass for two or three hours. When he entered the house, I saw a few pieces of paper in his hand, quietly stuffed into the back of some books. "The musical "Nightingale Song" was written like this in one stroke. The stubborn British critics did not agree with this sudden rise to stardom, and even maliciously ridiculed him as a "London boy" school. This was a fatal blow to the naturally sensitive and self-respecting poet, but as Byron said, It seems an exaggeration to say that criticism killed a poet. At this time, Keats was terminally ill from tuberculosis, which he contracted while taking care of his younger brother. To prevent his emotional agitation from exacerbating hemoptysis, he could not write or even meet Fanny. It's so close to the end of the world. One can imagine the pain of the young poet in such a hopeless situation of career and love. Fortunately, he had real friends who made careful arrangements and was accompanied by Jochenf Severn. Before the damp and cold British winter came, he crossed the channel, took the waterway, passed through Naples, and endured the hardships of boating, wind and frost for a month and a half before arriving. Rome.
The season and specific route I took from London to Rome were different from those originally taken by Keats. In addition, with the advantages of modern transportation, the journey was convenient and pleasant. It was mid-autumn, but Rome was even hotter than the midsummer in London more than a month ago. The high temperature of the red sun accelerates the heartbeat and urges people to eagerly visit Keats' traces in this ancient city.
Plaza de Espa?a is located to the north of the city center. The contrast between the bustling and quiet atmosphere of Hampstead is like the hot and cold climate. In the center of the square there is a fountain decorated with a huge fish body, which is a masterpiece by the famous artist Bernardine. Between the fountain and the Trinity Church on the high hill just north of the square, there are 138 stone steps connecting it. Keats's house at that time was just east of the starting point of the famous Spanish Steps. It was called the "Little Red Room". It was truly the warm pink color common in southern Europe. It had four floors and was in harmony with the warmth of Hampstead. The pattern of Tevos is also simple, and the color is another contrast.
Piazza di Spagna is one of the important attractions in Rome. Italians who are good at showing off temptations also say that if you drop a coin in the spring pool, you may be able to meet a handsome young Italian man here. Nowadays, places like the Colosseum, Vatican City, ancient city ruins, temples, etc. are full of tourists. On the steps and next to the pool, there were a lot of people sitting on foot. Looking carefully at the bottom of the pool, I found a few coins.
Two local men with unclean clothes, disheveled sideburns, indistinguishable age, and neither handsome nor handsome, were holding spear hooks and carefully moved to the edge of the pool. Every time they fished out a coin, they immediately stuffed it into their pockets ambiguously. This made me have no intention of staying and quickly climbed to the third floor of the "Little Red Room".
Keats traveled thousands of miles to come here due to illness and stayed only three months before passing away. All the utensils he used during his lifetime, including wallpaper and wooden doors and windows, were burned for disinfection. The displays in the memorial hall today are no longer original. Only the living room, the fireplace in the long narrow room that doubled as Severn's bedroom, and where he occasionally cooked for Keats, seems to be clearly visible. In order to refresh Keats and entertain him, Severn temporarily rented a piano and played his favorite Haydn's symphony for him in person. The IOU signed by Severn remains on display. The entire third floor was originally shared by them and the landlady, and has now been turned into a library-style museum that collects a large number of valuable manuscripts, books and relics of writers such as Keats and Shelley. From an old landscape painting on the wall of the exhibition room, it can be seen that this area was originally shaped according to the mountains, with dirt roads and shabby houses, which was quite simple and cold. It gradually prospered after the 18th century and became a gathering place for literati, including George Eliot, Goethe, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron, the Brownings, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Wilde, George Ease and others have all stopped here; but regardless of the length of time, none of them had a life-or-death connection with it like Keats. Another place that is really directly related to Keats's death is the Protestant Cemetery.
The next morning, we set off early and headed to the southern end of the city of Rome. In the cemetery, we were close to the ruins of the ancient Roman city wall and slightly northwest of the tall mausoleum called the Pyramid of Caius Thesestius. , finally found the resting place of Keats! He occupies a corner of the cemetery wall, with a radius of about ten meters. There are two tombstones side by side. The one on the left is slightly older, the tomb of Keats, and the tomb of Severn on the right. Keats's unwavering artist friend, 56 years after Keats was buried with his own hands, came to stay with him forever. After the two tombstones at equal distances, there is a small tombstone, which is the tomb of a baby in Severn who died in infancy. Severn was two years older than Keats. During the period of their acquaintance with Keats, Severn was already a painter favored by the Royal Academy. From his portraits of Keats and Shelley, we can see that he was very skilled, but for the safety of his friends , regardless of self-interest, stay with your friends until death. The letters he wrote in diary style when Keats was dying are plain and simple, but the true feelings and scenes recorded are so sad and touching that they can move people to tears like exquisite lyric poems.
Behind the left and right sides of this tripartite group of tombstones, there are two towering ancient pines. Directly in front of it is a section of the cemetery wall, covered with vines and flowers, and at the foot of the wall is a row of beautiful and neat flower beds. Another section of the wall on the left is decorated with a relief profile of Keats and verses engraved by later generations:
Keats’s tomb in the Roman Protestant Cemetery
Keats! If your precious name is really "written in water",
The bits and pieces should be dripping from the cheeks of the mourners;
A sacred offering; those heroes pursue
Dazzling campaigns of killing and conquest often lead to nothing.
Sleep! This appropriate inscription is even more glorious.
This corresponds to the inscription on Keats’s tombstone. According to Keats's last wish, there was no name on his tombstone, only "Young English Poet" was engraved on it. The following two main lines of text were: "Here lies a man whose name is written in water." These are the original words of Keats's last words.
A rare genius who died young at the age of 25 is like a falling star from the sky! Keats, with his modest and introverted character, was neither cynical nor complaining about his fate, but he still lamented that his literary fame was not yet achieved, and his life was like morning dew. Neither he nor Severn expected that his posthumous reputation would flourish like that. This is probably because his name is constantly being rewritten with the tears of those who love him.
On the other side of the wall in the same cemetery, close to the foot of the ruins of the ancient Roman wall, is Shelley's tomb. Shelley also chose this beautiful place for himself during his lifetime, and soon became Keats's permanent neighbor. These two British poets who died in a foreign country, together with Byron who died in Greece, can be called the last three masters of British romantic poetry. They were equally handsome and talented, and they died young. In fact, regardless of Keats's family background, The disadvantage he was in was different from his two elders, and his early death was also very different from them. In the world nearly two hundred years ago, due to medical standards and people's lifestyle at that time, human lifespan was far lower than today. Fifty or sixty years old was considered a natural life. Byron died at thirty-six, and Shelley died at thirty. Both of them were well-known and could be said to have died young. Only Keats truly died young. Immediately after his death, Shelley wrote the poem "Adumin" in deep mourning. It is not an exaggeration to compare him to a young and beautiful young man who was pursued by Venus in unrequited love. People usually say that these three poets are good friends, and Byron and Shelley believe it. In fact, Keats and Byron have almost nothing to do with each other, and their poems are not highly praised, although Byron did write an article expressing his opinion. Praise; even Shelley and Keats only met him by chance. In the last days when Keats went to Rome to seek medical treatment and recuperate, the Shelleys who were living in Pisa wholeheartedly invited him to go there in order to receive more beneficial care, but they did not accept it.
The usual explanation is that Keats came from a humble background and had an arrogant personality, but he actually had a group of close friends such as Braun and Severn, and he had close relationships with the representatives and activists of the Romantic literary world at that time, Hunter, Hetzlitt, and Lamb. They are all very happy with each other. Therefore, these three heroes of Romanticism should still be regarded as representing the highest achievements of this literary and artistic movement in the field of poetry, rather than relying on personal relationships.
However, in terms of personal temperament and work style, Keats seems to be quite different from the first two. He does not have those major themes and lacks such grand momentum. With the sincerity of a cuckoo crying, he poured out his true feelings, pursued and completed truth and beauty, turned the ordinary into magic, changed old traces into new life, and refined language into music, thereby transcending trends and eras; in addition, his life was short and he took many things. He gave less and gave more, and future generations will always give him an ordinary love and affection beyond the realm of poetry.
Sitting quietly on the bench next to the tomb for a long time, looking at the groups of colleagues who came and went silently, he couldn't help but have some virtual questions in his mind: What if Jiats died in the year, what would he have experienced? Fame, marriage, later life... His thoughts suddenly derailed, and he suddenly flew to the top of the plum tree in Wentworth's apartment, staring blankly at the shriveled purple-red plum.