Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine.
"You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour - for what is in the world? I say you cannot conceive; it is impossible you should look with such eyes upon me as I have upon you: it cannot be.
Forgive me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day employed in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with you - two things which must excuse me." - John Keats, letter to Fanny Brawne
There were lots of old men in grey suits with white wires tucked into their collars wandering around campus today.
Church security.
Soul Force came to BYU today for a peaceful protest. Soul Force is an activist group that peacefully promotes Gay/Lesbian Tolerance. They congregated in little clusters in the courtyard wearing nice tan shirts, slacks, and sensible shoes. They were very pleasant people, though I could tell most of the students weren't as stoked as I was to see them there. I noticed one skinny young man with shaggy brown hair and a neat goatee leaning against a post listening to one of his fellow activists explain something to some BYUers with small, careful hand motions. I was just ducking into the Wilk to pick up some lunch for Jessie and myself.
I caught his eye to give him a look of approval.
He winked at me.
Guh.
All the good-looking ones are gay.
I overheard a conversation between a young man and a Soul Force representative. The man from Soul Force had said something along the lines of, "I don't see myself as strange or different than you - I don't see why I should be treated differently. I'm not a strange guy. Do I seem strange to you?"
The young BYU student had responded with a 'no' and wandered off after breaking small talk. He was nearby when he ran into two girlfriends so I overheard him recount the encounter to them.
"And he was like, 'I don't really think I'm strange, am I a strange guy?' and I wanted to be like, 'yeah, yeah you're as strange as it gets"
The girl nodded intelligently with a, "Yeah, yeah, sorry, Sweetie, you are strange!"
I walked off feeling sick.
So on my way to class I caught a whiff of banjo strummings on the edge of the air. There was a bluegrass band camped out on one of the grass patches next to the Hummanities building. An upright bass, two fiddles, an accoustic guitar, and a banjo. The banjo player was amazing. I almost skipped class to hear them duke it out on their tight little strings. But we were studying Keats today, so I knew I needed to go to class.
Keats is beautiful, complex, and luscious. Reading "Eve of St. Agnes" or "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy" makes me want to eat fruit. A plump, tight plum that dribbles down your chin when you take the first bite. Then you have to suck the juice off your fingers and sip the pulp out of the middle of your palm when you're done. Your fingers smell like sugar for hours and you never quite get all the sticky off.
That's very much like John Keats.
We talked about "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy" today. I must boast a little - I get Keats. I get Keats like no other writer. Oscar Wilde is beautiful and untouchably clever, but Keats is brilliant without intimidating me. I love his words and his beautiful ideas. He's the aesthete's Apollo, illuminating all the earth's dullness with glittery charm and flourishing detail. The self-trained master of words and theory. I find no one better expresses the aims and aspects of art, beauty, and truth.
He's brilliant.
And charming.
"La Belle Dame Sans Mercy" is about poetic creation. It's allegorical - the rise and fall of creative impulses, the exhiliration, the climax, the loss, the emptiness, the "painful loitering" for just one more beautiful sensation. It's delicious and ripe with lovers' imagery - the fair maiden, the wandering wight - grassy knolls and sleepy sunlight. Then she leaves - vanishes as the man lays sleeping. The muse has gone.
That was the reading I offered my professor after a few moments of wary silence. He had asked the class what we got out of reading the poem - what it all meant. I offered mine tenatively but articulately. After I was done he stared at me for a second.
I felt a nervous flutter in my throat.
Had the literary Gods rejected my offering?
He stared, blinked, and said, "Exactly right. I think what Becca has offered is the most constructive and best possible reading of this poem"
Throughout the rest of our analytical discussion he referred to these ideas as "Becca's reading" or "the reading suggested by Becca."
Me: 1
The rest of the class: 0
It was wonderful to talk about John Keats. I've been so excited all semester - biting my lip every time I flipped past it in the syllabus.
I would be friends with John Keats if I'd lived in his time. I'd seek him out and watch and listen and learn from him. I've never wanted to talk to a writer more keenly than I want to talk to Keats.
He's simply brilliant.
I would sit in his bedroom and talk to him as he sat up in his bed drinking tea or tapping his fingers on a volume of Milton. I'd let him rest every now and again, but he's so worried he won't live long enough to develop and impart all of his poetic theory that I wouldn't let him rest as much as I probably should. I'd sit with him and read Homer or excerpts from Oscar Wilde (because in this fantasy, I come from the future where Oscar Wilde already wrote all his plays and poems and stories and critical expositions). In fact, let Oscar come and sit in, too. I'll share the couch and we'll talk our little aesthete hearts to the dust. I'd dare each of them to write me a poem - they both would look up at the ceiling for a moment, then spill out the most beautiful sonnets the air has ever held. But we wouldn't write them down, because that would take away the beauty of the moment - the luster of spontaneous sensation - the charm of momentary truth.
We'd lean back in our seats and the laughs would dim into soft chuckles. John might cough a few times into his handkercheif and Oscar would perhaps adjust the carnation tucked into his lapel. We'd sit there quietly for a second
then I'd wake up.
Because nothing would really be that beautiful.
Instead I charmed myself with Keats's old letters as I rode the bus to school. He talks critical theory in every one - sometimes so complex that you have to take your eyes off the page and stare into the air right above your forehead to reason it out. A young man saw me doing this and kept staring at me from the front of the bus. Just before the stop at the Wilk he got up, walked to the back of the bus, and sat down next to me. He didn't say anything, but he kept smiling and blushing at me. I smiled back briefly and tucked myself deeper into my book.
I guess he just wanted to sit by a pretty girl and smile at her.
Just for the moment, take in one sensation and smile in it.
It's beautiful.
You know, I've been listening to one song over and over today.
In one part it talks about the girl missing her train. Instead of going home she stays up all night talking to the boy.
The words have been running over each other in my mind all day.
Right now I can think of nothing more charming.
"Men which snub brunettes with meeting eyebrows - they are trash to me.
You absorb me in spite of myself - you alone.
I am indeed astonished to find myself so careless of all charms but yours - remembering as I do the time when even a bit of ribband was a matter of interest with me. What softer words can I find for you after this -
for I am distracted with a thousand thoughts." - John Keats