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Poetic Maturation of Keats. Keats, unlike most men, had a deep understanding of
his own individuality and mortality, and at a young age had years of wisdom. ...
Submitted by shmoopy on April 9, 2008
Category: English
Words: 2256 | Pages: 10
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Keats, unlike most men, had a deep understanding of his own individuality and mortality, and at a young age had years of wisdom. He described his life metaphorically in the last of his six odes, To Autumn, and delves into a personal history, using the nature and time as his guide, in order to understand and achieve the greatness he so desired. The letter he wrote to J.H. Reynolds on 21, 22 September 1819 surely supports this and shows his mood and the strong sense of calm and understanding that surrounded him and filled him. Keats uses this ode to not only describe his maturation process and to confront his identity, but to also force readers and critics to realize it as well and, for the first time, shows Keats addressing his own death.
The title of Keats ode, To Autumn, immediately symbolizes a specific state of maturity in his own life, past the spring of youth, and the middle years of summer, just before the cold death of winter. In fact, it seems, early on that Keats looks upon the works of his youth with disdain. In his letter to Reynolds he shows this when he writes, “Aye better than the chilly green of Spring” (Keats 271). This is a most interesting statement because green is often used to describe something new or fresh, and yet his use of the word “chilly” shows a feeling of loneliness, perhaps showing where much of the source for the work stemmed from. This contempt for his youth was most likely fueled by the criticism he constantly received, calling his poetry boyish, something he loathed. The contempt he held for his youth most likely lead to his own feelings of uncertainty, something that haunted him throughout his life.
The uncertainty that surrounded him through his years, and the art that it yielded is alluded to in the first line of the ode, “Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness” (Keats 274). The fruit of his labor he now looked upon, in hindsight, as uncaring of the weight of the world. His reference to the mist...
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