Keats and Hellenism_ an Essay. 2001. Martin_Aske

8/9/2019 Keats and Hellenism_ an Essay. 2001. Martin_Aske

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Keats and Hellenism

An Essay

M A RT I N A S K ELecturer in the Department of

English Studies and Comparative LiteratureUniversity of Hong Kong

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C A M B R I D G E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

CambridgeLondon New York New Rochelle

Melbourne Sydney


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PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGEThe Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United K ingdom

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Cambridge University Press 1985

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ISBN 0 521 30561 6 hardbackISBN 0 521 60419 2 paperback


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TO MYM O T H E R A N D FAT H E R


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ContentsList of illustrations

Acknowledgements

Note on the text

Introduction

i Fictions old and new

2 Towards Endymion

3 Flowers of speech

4 T he fall of Hyperion

5 Silent forms6 Lamia', or, Antiquity Decomposed

Notes

Select bibliography

Index

page ix

xi

xii

I

8

38

53

73

I O I

1 2 8

H 3

175

187


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Illustrations

Figure i. Henry Fuseli, 'The artist in despairover the magnitude of antique fragments'(c. 1778-80) page 36

Figure 2. The Portland Vase, reproduced

from Henry Moses, A Collection of Vases(London, 1814) 114

Figure 3. Plate xxm, reproduced fromThomas Kirk, Outlines from the Figures andCompositions upon the Greek, Roman andEtruscan Vases of the late Sir WilliamHamilton, second edition (London, 1814) 122

Figure 4. Plate xvn, reproduced from thesame 123


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Acknowledgements

This essay was originally written as a doctoral thesis under thebenign guidance of Dr John Beer, and I hope that it still bearsa trace of his sound wisdom and poetic intelligence. I amindebted to Dr Elinor Shaffer for her continued interest in thework. Her specific criticisms have always been helpful, and her

many aids to reflection I have valued immensely. I shall alwaysremember two stimulating conversations with Dr TheodoreRedpath. The unfailingly brilliant and pithy advice of my goodfriend and colleague, M. A. Abbas, kept me going through theheat of an Oriental summer. An opportunity to attend ProfessorGeoffrey Hartman's seminar at the School of Criticism andTheory helped me clarify some theoretical issues. Several con-structive comments from the Cambridge University Press'sanonymous readers gave me much to think about. I thankTerry Moore and his colleagues for the vigilant care of thetypescript on its way to publication. Finally, I am grateful toDavid Lowe, of Cambridge University Library, for helping tobridge the gap between East and West.

It is with good reason that Patricia, my wife, became my mosttrenchant critic, since she had the misfortune to witness thewriting of the essay almost from its inception. Like the poet, shebelieves that English must be kept up, and I hope that her distrust

of 'isms' and other opacities has purified the work of too manyMiltonic inversions. What follows is, more than anything else,a tribute to both her encouragement and her forbearance.

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IntroductionA good deal has been written on the theme of Keats's Hellenism.For several reasons (the traditional prestige of classical mythology,Keats's obvious relation to Romantic Hellenism as a whole, ourample store of information about the texts at the poet's disposal)Keats's use of classical fictions has been a favourite area of occu-pation for literary historians. Much labour has been expendedon tracing the classical imagery in, say, Endymion, or the 'Od eon a Grecian Urn', to a wealth of verbal and visual sourcesapparently available to the poet. While acknowledging the valueof this kind of study, the following essay proposes a ratherdifferent approach for reading the representation of antiquity inKeats's poetry. Instead of assuming that the classical fictions areincontestably given and present in a specific poem (conveying a

certain meaning determined by the context), this essay begins itsargument at an earlier stage, so to speak, insofar as it explores thevery difficulty and uncertainty of antiquity's representation in amodern text.

Poetic influence, says Geoffrey Hartman, is 'personal, seduc-tive, perverse, imposing'.1 The influence of classical antiquity onKeats plays itself out as a psychic drama in and between the linesof the Keatsian text, as a narrative which is both romance and

elegy. Keats appeals to antiquity as a supreme fiction, that is, anideal space of possibility whose imaginative rehabilitation mightguarantee the authority of modern poetry. Yet an acute awarenessof his own irreversible modernity necessarily engenders in the poeta contrary sense of the alterity of Greece, its difference from, andpossible indifference to, his own moment in the history of poetry.In which case the persistence of the ancient fictions might not beas liberating and benign as the poet w ould like. 'Ro m antic literarypsychology', according to Harold Bloom, is a 'psychology ofbelatedness3? Keats's fear that he had touched the beautifulmythology of Greece 'in too late a day', his lament to RichardWoodhouse that there was no longer anything original to bewritten in poetry, his sense of indolence and oppression at the'overpowering idea' of the dead poets - these anxieties reveal the


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2 Keats and Hellenism

extent to which Keats was aware of the belatedness of his ownsituation vis-a-vis antiquity.3

Bloom suggests that Keats is 'peculiarly and overtly consciousof the anxiety of influence', and I take Bloom's basic thesis -poetic influence is a psychic drama between poet and precursor(s)- as offering a useful theoretical approach to Keats's Hellenism.4

For all its extravagant rhetoric, Bloom's theory has the virtue ofsetting aside older and largely sterile 'source-hunting' notions ofinfluence ('the passing-on of images and ideas from earlier to laterpoets')5 in favour of a more dynamic model which redefines the

problem of influence in terms of a certain view of literary history.Adapting one of Bloom's own precursors, Freud, one might saythat, according to this view of literary history, the whole progressof poetry rests upon the opposition between successive generationsof poets.6 The belated poet's relation to his precursors, like thechild's relation to his parents, involves defiance as well as respect,fear as well as loyalty. The anxiety of influence includes an aware-ness on the part of the poet that the romance with his classicalMuse might pass from idyll to nightmare, from enchantment tothraldom. Hence the necessity for strong misreadings. Bloom citesFreud : 'Protection against stimuli is an almost more importantfunction for the living organism than reception of stimuli.'7

An tiquity m ight be found to press its claims too imp ortun ately, tothe extent that it becomes a compulsive presence which the poetfinally has to exorcize from his imagina tion. T he h istory of Greece'styranny over English p oetry has yet to be writte n; K eats's strugglewith the tyrannical demands of his classical Muse would form a

major cha pter in such a history.Bloom's theory of poetic influence, when applied to Romantic

verse, has been criticized by Marilyn Butler for resting on Verysimple notions of history'. Against the 'vulgar wisdom' aboutRomanticism, to which Bloom apparently subscribes, Butler pre-fers to emphasize the need for 'an awareness of the historicalprocess, and a feel for the community which generated art andprovided its public'.8 But it may be that a poet lives, consciously

or unconsciously, by an idea of history which is different fromthat of the critic. And certainly Bloom has shown that the 'com-munity' which generates art necessarily includes the communityof dead poets, who might be felt by the modern writer to be'outrageously more alive than himself'. 9 Now it may be plausibleto view Romantic Hellenism (what Butler calls the 'cult of the


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Introduction 3

South') as a collective activity, as a response, from the marginsof the social and literary establishment, to a given historical situa-

tion. But within that activity important differences occur, and theprivatization of the response which we find in Keats might beone of the more crucial differences. If Keats can be regarded as a'pagan', his is not the paganism of 'sophisticates' like Peacockand Shelley, whose Hellenism constitutes an 'ideological cult',serving their conscious opposition to prevailing social and politicalmoralities.10 Keats's H ellenism is, precisely, not cultivated, but canbe read, rather, as the site of a problem which has to do with the

mo dern poet's vocation, with the poet's search for a viable identityat a moment in history (in the history, that is, of literature, offictions) which the poet himself knows to be belated. The persis-tent and often compulsive resort to classical mythology in Keats'sverse discloses an essentially psychohistorical problem which,amongst other things, begins to contest T. S. Eliot's influentialproposition, in 'Tradition and the Individual Talent' , that thepast is always somehow gratifyingly present and available to themodern writer.

Although I have made use, where appropriate, of 'background'material, what follows is primarily an essay in practical criticism.If I treat certain poems by Keats as so many stages in a narrative(the story of Keats's romance with ancient Greece), it is because,like Geoffrey Hartman, I take the individual poem as 'recapitulat-ing a vision of literary destiny or constitutive of it'. It should bepossible, as Hartman suggests, to consider how a poem 'tells thetime of history - without accepting a historical determinism'.11

Thus I have endeavoured to read certain poems as they revise orconsolidate one another and as they inscribe themselves as criticalevents in the history of poetic fiction. In this way, perhaps, mightthe demands of close reading, and the need for a larger vision ofliterary history, be reconciled.

Keats's letters testify that the poet's romance with antiquity isalways less obvious and explicit than his encounter with Shake-speare, for example. The poet is more reticent about Homer thanabout Shakespeare. After all, Shakespeare is present as a materialand visible text, an 'object' to which Keats has access and whichhe can possess. The title of Caroline Spurgeon's book, Keats'sShakespeare, implies that Shakespeare could somehow belong toKeats in a way that classical antiquity could never belong to him.Keats read Shakespeare, says Spurgeon, and 'marked him,


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4 Keats an d Hellenism

quoted him, and parodied him; thought of him, brooded overhim, steeped himself in him; the music of his lines haunted

him, stimulated him to write, sustained and delighted him'.12But the ideal space of Greece can never be inhabited in this easyintimate way because it is a supreme fiction which can only bematerialized, as it were, fragmen tarily, or prismatica lly, thro ug hSpenser, Chapman, Milton, and the like. 'Greece' is alwayssomething more than a text or collection of texts; as a fiction itis, finally, unrepresentable, unimaginable.

At the beginning of 1818 Keats was able to say that 'I have

great reason to be content, for thank God I can read and per-haps understand Shakspeare to his depths.' Two months laterhe w rote to J. H . Reynolds : 'I long to feast upon old H om eras we have upon Shakespeare ... If you understood Greek, andwould read me passages, now and then, explaining their mean-ing, 't would be, from its mistiness, perhaps a greater luxurythan reading the thing one's self.' 13 Whereas Shakespeare canbe read and understood (and feasted upon - consumed),Homer can never be literally understood (Keats does not knowGreek) nor can he be enjoyed except through his 'mistiness'.Yet it is precisely this 'mistiness' which renders Homer threaten-ing as well as alluring; the clouds obscure any text with whichthe poet might have been able to familiarize himself. Keats'sanxiety of influence arises from the fact that antiquity is signi-fied by the absence of a material text which the poet can makehis own. According to Freud, anxiety has 'a quality of indefinite-ness and lack of object',1* and it is the indefiniteness, the lack of

stable objective reference, which makes Keats's Hellenism suchan anxious and hazardous affair.

The model of Romantic Hellenism established by Winckel-mann in the latter half of the eighteenth century is a powerfuland compelling one; it comes to be adopted by Goethe andSchiller, Hegel, Arnold and Pater. According to this model, theperfection of Greek art consists in its balance and tranquillity,its consummate adequacy. Schiller contrasts the 'naive' mode of

the Greeks with the 'sentimental' style of modern Christian art.In these terms, modern art might be regarded as 'inadequate',and it is precisely the inadequacy of modern or 'sentimental' artwhich marks its profundity, its constant struggle, as Pater ob-serves, 'to express thoughts beyond itself. Christian forms of art,says Pater, are 'inadequate to the matter they clothe; they


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Introduction 5

remain ever below its level'. A work of Greek art, on the otherhand, suggests nothing 'beyond its own victorious fairness. Themind begins and ends with the finite image.'15

Keats might well have been familiar with Schiller's differentia-tion of the 'naive' from the 'sentimental' through Hazlitt'sreview of August Wilhelm Schlegel's Lectures on DramaticLiterature (translated in 1815). T he contrast between 'naive 'and 'sentimental' modes reappears as a distinction between the'classical' and the 'romantic'. Hazlitt paraphrases Schlegelthus :

The most obvious distinction between the two styles, the classicaland the romantic, is, that the one is conversant with objects thatare grand or beautiful in themselves, or in consequence of obviousand universal associations; the other, with those that are interestingonly by the force of circumstances and imagination. A Greciantemple, for instance, is a classical ob ject: it is beau tiful in itself,and excites immediate admiration. But the ruins of a Gothic castlehave no beauty or symmetry to attract the eye; and yet they excitea more powerful and romantic interest from the ideas with which

they are habitually associated.The great difference between ancient and modern poetry,then, is

that the one more frequently describes things as they are interest-ing in themselves - the other for the sake of the associations ofideas connected with them; that the one dwells more on theimmediate impressions of objects on the sense - the other on theideas which they suggest to the imagination. The one is the poetry

of form, the other of effect... The one seeks to identify the imita-tion with an external object, - clings to it, - is inseparable fromit, - is either that or nothing; the other seeks to identify theoriginal impression with whatever else, within the range of thoughtor feeling, can strengthen, relieve, adorn or elevate it.16

Keats comes closest to invoking the 'naive' style when hespeaks of the 'naked and grecian Manner' intended for Hyperion',in the same sentence he inadvertently echoes Schiller's termi-nology when he writes of Endymion tha t it contains 'man y bitsof the deep and sentimental cast'.17 In fact Keats cannot helpbut produce a modern 'sentimental' art, a discourse whoseessential inadequacy is signified by its inability to represent thedesired object other than in terms of excess or lack. Hence mydiscussion of both Endymion and Hyperion in terms of 'error'


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and 'failure'. This has nothing to do with an unfortunate lapsewhich the writer could have avoided. These texts constitute,

rather, a necessary failure, since they expose the idea of anadequate restoration of ancient modes as an illusion, an impos-sible nostalgia. Their systematic deviancy, as arabesque andfragment, would seem to confirm the radical extent to which theybegin to question some of the assumptions of Winckelmann'sHellenism. Contributing to this indeterminacy of representationis the subversive entry of parerga into the Keatsian text. A fre-quent tendency towards ornamental or 'floral' ('parergonal')

language in Keats's poetry discloses a psychic need, a desire toleave a final embellishment or signature on the ideal Text ofAntiquity, given the impossibility of the modern poet everrecovering that Text in its original plenitude. The language ofKeats's Hellenism, we might say, unfolds as a chain of signifierswhich multiply themselves in the ironic knowledge that they cannever finally stop to produce an ultimate Signified.

A note, lastly, on the function of Hazlitt in this essay. I agreewith David Bromwich that Keats's discovery of Hazlitt amountedto 'the discovery of another self, and that 'no other encounterbetween poet and critic has been so fortunate for literature'. Ialso agree that 'the record of Hazlitt's influence is much fuller,more convincing and more subtly connected with the practiceof Keats's poetry, than anyone has yet shown'.18 I have usuallypreferred, however, to invoke Hazlitt to support matters of detailalong the way, rather than to worry the question of Hazlitt's'influence' on Keats overmuch. I suspect that a similar kind of

essay could have been written, with Hazlitt the protagonistinstead of Keats. If more attention were devoted to his artcriticism, a convincing case could be made for Hazlitt's anxietytowards the past, and for the possibility that he engages in strongmisreadings of poets and painters alike. But that is anotherRomantic story. A more systematic appraisal of the relationbetween Keats and Hazlitt, as well as the relation betweenHazlitt and Hellenism, I reserve for another place, another time.Meanwhile, the frequent intervention of Hazlitt's voice in thefollowing essay should remind us that the line dividing poet andcritic might suddenly become much less well defined than we areoften inclined to think. 'As literary history lengthens, all poetrynecessarily becomes verse-criticism, just as all criticism becomesprose-poetry.'19 Keats's verse-criticism and Hazlitt's prose-poetry


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Introduction 7

belong to that single text which finds itself written in the length-ening shadow cast by the high monument of classical antiquity.


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i Fictions old and new

I should like to begin with a few general observations.In his essay, 'Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and

Sciences' (1742), David Hume remarked that when the arts'come to perfection in any state, from that moment they natur-ally, or rather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revivein that na tion, where they formerly flourished'.1

A few years later, Joseph Warton came to the conclusion that'in no polished nation, after criticism has been much studied,and the rules of writing established, has any very extraordinarywork appeared' .2

Such comments might appear to be abstract formulations. Infact they are critically relevant to the time in which they wereexpressed. They are, one might say, theoretical symptoms of atendency that was to become increasingly marked as the En-lightenment approached the threshold of Romanticism. As anage of criticism which was also heir to a formidable tradition ofliterature, the second half of the eighteenth century seemed toconfirm the apergus of Hume and Warton, insofar as it came towitness a decline in the art of poetry.

This was no eccentric suspicion : by the end of the centuryit had become accepted as a real fact of literary life. A reviewerfor one of the leading journals lamented that poetry 'is almostextinct among us'. The editors of another journal found it neces-sary to draw attention to 'the extraordinary circumstances ofthe time, unfavourable, from various conspiring causes, to literaryefforts'. Surveying the 'poetical creeds' to which the old poetsadhered, another writer concluded that 'the variety is by thistime exhausted, and they pall by repetition; on which accountthe loftier walks of the muse have been gradually abandoned,and the heroic poem and ode have dwindled to the tale andthe song'.3

By the time Hazlitt was lecturing on the English poets, in1818, the notion that 'literature is on the wane in this country'4

8


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Fictions old and new 9

had become an historical commonplace : 'Our poetical literaturehad towards the close of the last century, degenerated into the

most trite, insipid, and mechanical of all things, in the hands ofthe followers of Pope and the old French school of poetry.'5

With Keats's poignant remark, that ' there was nothing originalto be written in poe try; th at its riches were already exhausted -& all its beauties forestalled', the line of feeling initiated byHume reaches, for the purpose of this essay, its most criticalpoint.6

The awareness of a decline in the art of poetry manifested

itself in a recognition of the virtual obsolescence of the ancientfictions. The myths that had nourished writers in the great ageof English poetry had lost their vitality; they were no longeravailable as a source of power and interest. 'Mythologicalmachinery', said John Scott with reference to Lycidas, 'ismanaged with so much difficulty, that in modern composition itseldom fails to disgust.'7 As a gauge of contemporary opinion onthis theme, Samuel Johnson's more famous critique of Milton'spoem is perhaps exemplary :

In this poem there is no nature for there is no truth; there is noart for there is nothing new. Its form is that of a pastoral, easy,vulgar, and therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supplyare long ago exhausted, and its inherent improbability alwaysforces dissatisfaction on the mind .... Among the flocks and copsesand flowers appear the heathen deities, Jove and Phoebus, Nep-tune and Aeolus, with a long train of mythological imagery suchas a college easily su p p li e s .. .. W ith these trifling fictions aremingled the most awful and sacred truths, such as ought neverto be polluted with such irreverent combinations.8

Since it violated doctrinal as well as psychological and aestheticprinciples, classical mythology in its modern guise could nolonger be invoked as a serious and adequate source of poeticlanguage. The essential problem of fiction in poetry, to whichJohnson's polemic draws attention, has been summarized byBasil Willey :

Though Pope and his contemporaries were debarred by theirintellectual climate from using any great system of commonly-accepted symbols, as Dante and Milton could, they could stillemploy mythological material for other purposes . . . . They coulduse it consciously, for technical convenience and for purposes of'delight'. It is in this manner that the mythologies of the ancientworld are generally used by eighteenth century poets. These poets


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To a just taste, and unadulterated feelings, the natural beautiesof the country, the simple manners, rustic occupations, and rural

enjoyments of its inhabitants, brought into view by the mediumof the well-contrived dramatic fable, must afford a much higherdegree of pleasure, than any chimerical fiction, in which Arcadiannymphs and swains had intercourse with Pan and his attendantfauns and sa ty rs .. .. [Ramsay] was familiarly acquainted withrural nature from actual observation; and his own impressionswere not weakened or altered by much acquaintance with theclassical commonplaces, or with those artificial pictures which arepresented by the poets.12

Aikin's claim, that any appeal to the classical commonplaceswould produce 'confused, obscure, incongruous and false deline-ations* of nature,13 is symptomatic of a more general dissatis-faction with the fictions of antiquity. Roger Kedington's CriticalDissertations on the Iliad of Homer (1759) taxed the patience ofat least one reviewer. The enthusiasm which led the author todescribe Homer's epic as 'the purest fountain, a luxuriant garden,a vast treasure, a most rich mine, a most capacious mirror'

elicits the exasperated retort: 'Must the Iliad at this time of daybe the standard of poetical perfection? Must every epic poemsing of bloodthirsty Heroes, and jarring Gods and Goddesses?'The critic notes, however, that changes are taking place, in spiteof what Kedington may claim :

We have the satisfaction to perceive, that their Godships are goingout of fashion; and, to the honour of modern taste, all the paganmechanism of poetry is exploded by the best wr it e r s .. .. In these

days of refinement, it shews great inelegance of taste, and depravityof sentiment, to vindicate and admire all the unnatural images anddescriptions of the Iliad.14

In other words, the poetry of Homer is everything that moderntaste is n o t: unrefined, inelegant, depraved , unnatu ral. SinceHomer appeared to transgress all principles of decorum, andsince the eighteenth century was scarcely equipped to approach aphenomenon such as Homer with sufficient historical objectivity

(the literary ventures of Blackwell and Wood notwithstanding),15

it was perhaps inevitable that a double standard should beapplied : 'Homer, as a Poet, will always command the admira-tion of every R ead er of taste : bu t th at the Iliad is a p rop ermodel for poetry at this day, is what, perhaps, no man ofjudgment will allow.'16


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The 'fabulous absurdities' of classical mythology were certainlynot 'proper entertainments for rational and enlightened minds,

or worth the attention . . . bestowed upon them'.17 Thus, despitea troubled awareness of poetry's decline, it was nevertheless feltthat the text of antiquity was scarcely redeemable, particularlyas a means of restoring the fictions of poetry to their onceexalted status.

There has been a grievous outcry of late in this nation that men'swits are no longer equal to the production of any noble work inPoetry, and that some late poetasters are so much cried up and

read, that the great masters of the art are disregarded. And indeedit is certain that Homer and Virgil are at present less relished thanVoltaire, and Terence's comedies are not so much prized asO'Keefe's.

And yet any attempt to recuperate ancient poetic modes couldbe taken only as a needless betrayal of the triumph witnessed bythe eighteenth century, the conquest of the mythical by thecritical or rational spirit:

It is true, that some have laudably endeavoured to restore thedeclining age of Poetry, by recurring to the usage of simpleballads and legendary tales; yea, and in this way have succeededso well, that men would hardly believe their works to be producedin an age of literary research. But it is surely an overfondness forantique Poesy which makes men admire her swaddling-clouts; andwe may suspect the age of doating, when it returns to the gewgawsand rattles that delighted its infancy.18

Somewhat ironically, it happened to be Coleridge who waspraised as embodying the Enlightenment refusal of myth. 'Toolong', proclaims the critic of one of Coleridge's early publica-tions, 'has the modern copied the antient poet, in decoratingfolly with the elegant attractions of verse. It is time to enthronereason on the summit of Parnassus; and to make poetry thestrengthene r as well as the enlivener of the intellect; - theenergetic instructor as well as the enchanting amuser of man-kind.' In the desire 'to consecrate his lyre to truth, virtue, and

humanity', Coleridge, apparently, 'makes no use of an explodedthough elegant mythology'.19 We may note the full sense of'exploded' here : classical mythology has become not only bank-rupt, through excessive and unoriginal use, but actually shat-tered, irretrievable. Its insubstantiality virtually presupposes its'elegance' - elegant or meretricious in the way, for example, that


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Thomas Moore's verse was later held to be elegant.20 Coleridgehimself was to admit, in the essay 'On Poesy or Art' (1818), that'imitation of the antique may be too exclusive', largely because'it induces an efTort to combine together two incongruous things,that is to say, modern feelings in antique forms'.21 Perception ofthis very incongruity enabled Coleridge and Wordsworth topursue their innovative programme for poetry, while it alsoredefines the problem parenthetically noticed by Willey : how toinscribe the modern in the forms of antiquity? It is a questionwhich the narrative of Keats's encounter with the beautiful

mythology of Greece endeavours ceaselessly to answer.

11

If the period in question is to be considered in its synchroniccomplexity, the preceding remarks need to be placed in a largercontext. The age which began to witness a sharp decline in thestatus of the ancient poetic fictions also witnessed a developmentwhich interrupts or at least modifies that decline. I refer to the

knowledge of the ancient world, Greece in particular, that hadbeen gradually accumulating from non-literary sources. Severalimportant archaeological discoveries, notably at Herculaneum in1738 and Pompeii in 1748, sustained a deep reverence for anti-quity which was quite independent of the poet's distrust ofclassical mythology in its purely literary guise. Joseph Wartonrecorded that 'the ruins of Palmyra, the antiquities of Athensand Spalatro, and the Ionian antiquities, by WOOD, STUART,ADAM and CHANDLER, are such magnificent monuments oflearned curiosity as no country in Europe can equal'.22 T heSociety of Dilettanti, founded in 1732, sponsored an archaeolo-gical expedition to Greece, yielding one of the most compre-hensive publications of its kind.23 The appearance of the firstvolume of The Antiquities of Athens (1762), by Jam es Stua rt andNicholas Revett, invited this comment from one of its readers :

[There is] no part of Europe ... which more deservedly claims theattention and excites the curiosity of the lovers of polite literaturethan the territory of Attica, and its capital Athens; and this notonly on account of the figure it makes in history, from its produc-tion of the greatest men both in arts and arms, but also on accountof the antiquities still remaining there; monuments of the goodsense and elevated genius of the Athenians, as well as the mostperfect models of what is excellent in Sculpture and Architecture.24


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14 Ke ats and Hellenism

That ancient Greece might offer 'the most perfect models'for the modern architect or sculptor is a proposition which,significantly, came to be held in spite of the rejection of Homeras an adequate model for poetry. If it were true, as RobertAdam claimed, that 'the buildings of the antients are in archi-tecture, what the works of nature should be with respect to theother arts; they serve as models which we should imitate, andas standards by which we ought to judge', it may be that theinfluence of antiquity in the plastic arts could be transparentand unproblematical in a way that it could not be for literature.

Adam rehearses his argument in a later publication :Architecture has not, like some other arts, an immediate standardin Nature, to which the artist can always refer, and which wouldenable the skilful instantly to decide, with respect to the degreeof excellence in any work. In architecture, it must be formed andimproved by a correct taste, and diligent study of the beautiesexhibited by great masters in their productions; and it is only byprofound meditation upon these, that one becomes capable ofdistinguishing between what is graceful and what is inelegant;

between that which possesses and that which is destitute ofharmony.25

Whether or not Adam's distinction, between the principles ofarchitecture and the 'immediate standard in Nature' applicableto 'some other arts', be criticized as specious, it was for suchreasons that publications like The Antiquities of Athens would,it was hoped, 'contribute much toward improving and fixing ournational taste in architecture, by directing it to those admirable

models furnished by ancient Greece and Rome'.2 6

Thus the plastic arts, unlike literature, might enjoy an un-troubled, univocal relation to the past. Pope's famous alliance of'Nature and Homer' (Essay on Criticism) had become restrictingrather than liberating for the writer; it was precisely due to theelision of 'Nature' that architects and sculptors could return toantiquity with a confidence denied to the poet. Or rather, it wasless difficult for the architect or sculptor to subsume 'Nature' ina reverence for antiquity, confronted as he was with the rela-tively intelligible, determinate and mensurable forms of actualbuildings and statues, than it was for the poet, burdened by themore importunate demands of language itself. In response to aplan for a National Gallery, which would 'take in Originals bothof Painting & Sculpture by considering every valuable original


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Fictions old an d new 15

that is brought into England or can be purchased Abroad as itsobjects of Acquisition', Blake wrote to George Cumberland that

'the immense flood of Grecian light & glory which is coming onEurope will more than realize our warmest wishes'.27 And it wasleft to that failed visionary, Benjamin Robert Haydon, to recordin 1816 the climax, not only of decades of archaeological activityin Greece and Italy, but also of the kind of hope expressed inBlake's letter : 'Th is year the Elgin M arbles were bought, andproduced an Aera in public feeling.'28 But it is significant thatthe source of a radical transformation and improvement in taste,

whereby 'England might one day rival Greece', would be foundnot in Homer, or Pindar, or Sophocles, but in the realm of thenon-verbal : 'Any comparison that will establish the superiorityof the Elgin Marbles above all other works of art, will essentiallycontribute to refine and advance the taste of the country.'29

It was Ha y don's conviction tha t

great works, and great works only, pregnant with sublimity ofconception and Greek design, a r e . . . the only means of enablingus, with a firm step, to take our station between Italy and Greece;for let us not be content while our country is entitled only to beput on the right or left of them.30

Haydon's belief in ancient Greece as a model promising theadvancement of English art expands into a vision of the destinyof the nation as a whole.31 His idea of progress is rendered notin temporal but in spatial, geographical terms: cour stationbetween Italy and Greece'. According to Geoffrey Hartman, thisfusion of historical and geographical progress had already be-come the 'largest of Enlightenment cliches'; for Thomson, Grayand Collins, as well as for the Romantic poets, 'the idea of aProgress of Poetry from Greece or the Holy Land to Britain isessential'.32 But perhaps it remained essential, as an 'idea' orrather an ideal, precisely because such progress could never befinally realized for the modern poet; it was something thatcould only ever be imagined or desired. To Haydon in 1816 it

certainly seemed that the migration of the spirit of Greece to thehomeland had become a reality :

Thank Go d the remains of Athens have fled for protection toEngland; the genius of Greece still hovers near them; may she,with her inspiring touch, give new vigour to British Art, and cause


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new beauties to spring from British exertions May their essencemingle with our blood and circulate through our being.33

But we shall find that Haydon's sense of closeness to 'the geniusof Greece', inspired by the monumental presence of the ElginMarbles, is missing in Keats. The ambiguous feelings registeredin the two early sonnets, 'On First Looking into Chapman'sHomer' and 'On Seeing the Elgin Marbles', suggest that thepoet is rather more sensitive than Haydon to the problemsarising from the collision of antique and modern. He is also lessglib in his response to 'Grecian grandeur' : 'Forgive me, Haydon,

that I cannot speak/Definitively on these mighty things' ('ToHaydon with a Sonnet Written on Seeing the Elgin Marbles').Moreover, 'Chapman's Homer' announces the centrality ofthe text If it is Chapm an's Elizabethan translation of Hom erwhich is compared to 'a new planet', the 'Pacific', what, then,of the original, the primary, unmediated text of antiquity itself?The remains of Grecian grandeur may produce in the poet a'dizzy pain', but they also bracket the main problem, the questionof writing itself. Perhaps the Elgin Marbles could speak defini-tively to the modern artist in a way that the language of theancient fictions could no longer speak to the poet: the non-verbal fragment is more eloquent than the verbal.34 Keats'ssonnet turns on the irony that it is not Homer but Chapman'sHomer whom the poet hears 'speak out loud and bold'.35

It would seem, then, that the dwindling prestige of classicalantiquity became a problem which was specific to poetry ratherthan to other forms of art. As a recent critic has observed, itwas a problem of finding a discourse adequate to poetry'sdemand for supreme and signifying fictions : the classical canon'could no longer surcharge language with references or bindthese references into a significant whole'. Traditional mythology

had degenerated very nearly to the condition of mere language,limited in referential capacity and lacking the power to proliferateinto complex systems of articulation. At best... [it] could providean occasional limited metaphor, but not an organizing principle

as it did, say, for Spenser.36

In other words, the ancient fictions could no longer be expectedto contribute towards the production of content or meaning inpoetry. Yet this formulation does not, perhaps, go far enough.For prior to the need for 'meaning' was the problem of reinvest-ing English poetry with, precisely, the 'mere language' of fiction.


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in

The conflicting responses to antiquity, characteristic of thelate Enlightenment and the beginnings of Romanticism, can berelated to the emergence of what we are accustomed to call'historicism'. 37 Although the present essay can do no more thanbriefly skirt the margins of this important development, it seemsappropriate to note some of the ways in which the new historicalconsciousness impinged upon the fate of the classical fictions inthe decades prior to Keats.

Vico, Rousseau and Herder were the major initiators andexponents of historicism. Opposed to the belief in the continuingtriumph of Reason, the ideal of 'perfectibility' expounded by theFrench philosophes, they revealed the manifold possibilities ofthe past, the values enshrined in the history of different cultures.They exposed the fallacy of adopting contemporary civilizationas necessarily the most perfect paradigm in the evaluation ofman's previous achievements. As previous epochs in historyacquired new and autonomous significance, the hitherto un-broken line of historical development became radically fractured.Once past cultures came to be accepted as possessing an irre-ducible value of their own, they became involved in a processof differentiation and discontinuity. Whereas the classic En-lightenment idea of Natural Law subsumed the individualitiesof the past in a diachronic uniformity, historicism shed light onthe synchronic layers of the past, on the indivisible selfhood ofa work of art, or a whole culture, in the context of its own

particular time.Although it was not until 1800 that one of the major texts

of historicism, Herder's Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte derMenschheit (1784-91), was translated into English, 38 the perspec-tives fostered by historicism had already been slowly evolving inEngland, in a less theoretical form. I am thinking in particularof the activity of antiquarians, who were concerned not so muchwith the ruins of Greece but rather with the antiquity of Britain

itself. A reader of the first volume of a publication by the newly

founded Society of Antiquaries, entitled Archaeologia: or Mis-cellaneous Tracts, relating to Antiquity (1770), observed that'there is no study from which more information may be derived,or which offers to the curious a larger field for research andamusement, than that of the antiquities of different ages and


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18 Ke ats an d Hellenism

nations'. This type of publication was intended to supply aparticular deficiency, as we can see from a remark prompted bythe appearance of Mallet's influential Introduction a VHistoirede Dannemarc (1755-6) : T h e learned on this side of the Alpshave long laboured at the Antiquities of Greece and Rome, butalmost totally neglected their own; like Conquerors who, whilethey have made inroads into the territories of their neighbours,have left their own natural dominions to deso lation.'39 T hepoint, extravagantly made, had substance nevertheless.

It was perhaps inevitable that the antiquary often came to be

treated with indulgence and even exasperation. In a curt noticeof La Sauvagere's Recueil d'Antiquites dans les Gau les (1770),one critic grants that the author has brought 'uncommon exact-ness and erudition' to his work, and yet:

to what purpose, it may be asked, has he employed so much careand time in exhibiting the remains of a distant age? No reasoningsare made from them with regard to arts, manners, or science. Thedepartment in the republic of letters, the most ridiculous andfrivolous, is that surely, which is filled by the mere Antiquary. Heweeps over ruins, which other men behold with indifference.40

an im-

V * - * V* k / U V-* v X^J- J. V * 1 1 1 ^ ^ f f X J L J . V X J L \^ V . X X V A I X l V l l V l l \ / A \ A Tf 1 V X 1 X AX VI -A AI .V X V.

Despite such misgivings, however, the antiquarians hadportant role, as Arnaldo Momigliano has pointed out:

In the eighteenth century a new humanism competed with thetraditional one. I t was organized in learned societies instead ofbeing centred in the universities; it was fostered by gentlemenrather than by schoolmasters. They preferred travel to the emen-dation of texts and altogether subordinated literary texts to coins,statues, vases and in sc rip tio ns. ... In the formation of the newhistorical method and consequently in the creation of modernhistorical writing on the ancient world - the so-called antiquariesplayed a conspicuous par t and posed essential problems. Theyshowed how to use non-literary evidence, but they also made peoplereflect on the difference between collecting facts and interpretingfacts.41

As a supp lement to this exemp lary account I would quote the

following :In reconstructions of ancient texts and archaeological interests...humanist culture set out to create antiquity as a physical presence.The ancients were not to be abstract symbols or a repertory ofdebating points, but whole men in the fullness of another space.The space they inhabited served as a demanding model and critique


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for the modern world; seen in perspective, it might provide order-ing principles and finish for modern forms.42

I have already alluded to the problematic aspect of antiquity'srestoration as a 'physical presence', but it is tempting to specu-late how the role of the antiquaries in such a venture mightimpinge on the writing of poetry. Following the new investiga-tions of northern European history in general and British historyin particular, there began to emerge other fictions, other sourcesof myth besides those of Greece and Rome. The tendency was'to give new life to those poetical Mythologists our ancestors; we

should consult them, and attend, in the frightful gloom of theirforests, to those mysterious incantations, in which is concealedthe whole system of their religion and morality'.43

As this kind of writing testifies, it was inevitable that historyshould emerge not only as a method of acquiring objectiveknowledge about the past, but as a realm of imaginative experi-ence, as a revelation of new origins and myths (of new mythsabout origins). If 'machinery' were indispensable to the 'higherforms of metrical composition',44 it was natural for the writer,embarrassed by the failing machinery of classical mythology, tosearch the origins of other European traditions, to contemplatethe various possibilities that new historical insights into the pastmight uncover. History and literature converged, as the 'new'mythologies were evaluated against those of Greece and Rome.Discussing the history of English theatre, Joseph Warton ad-mitted that he could not 'forbear wishing that our writers wouldmore frequently search for subjects in the annals of England,

which afford many striking and pathetic events for the stage'.He continues :We have been too long attached to Grecian and Roman stories ....I have frequently wondered that our modern writers have made solittle use of the druidical times, and the traditions of the old bards,which afford subjects fruitful of the most genuine poetry.... Theancients constantly availed themselves of the mention of particularmountains, rivers, and other objects of natu re; and, indeed, almostconfine themselves to the tales and traditions of their respective

countries: whereas we have been strangely neglectful in celebratingour own SEVERN, THAMES, or MALVERN, and have thereforefallen into trite repetitions of classical images, as well as classicalnames.45

It is, then, the ground of myth and romance which must bechanged.46


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20 Ke ats an d Hellenism

A powerful symptom of this desire for a specifically Englishgenius loci is the growing interest in mediaeval, or Gothic,romance. Writers turned to Gothic romance for several reasons.It posed an alternative to classical mythology, and it offered anescape from the potential tyranny of Rationalism. Joseph Wartonremarked that

since the time that poetry has been forced to assume a more sober,and, perhaps, a more rational air, it scarcely ventures to enter thesefairy regions. The re are some . . . who think that it has suffered bydeserting these fields of fancy, and by totally laying aside the

descriptions of magic and enchantment.47

Thomas Warton was more explicit in regretting that, as a resultof the Reformation and the disappearance of the Gothic MiddleAges,

we have lost a set of manners, and a system of machinery, moresuitable to the purposes of poetry, than those which have beenadopted in their place. We have parted with extravagancies thatare above propriety, with incredibilities that are more acceptablethan truth, and with fictions that are more valuable than reality.48

By the turn of the century this feeling had become common-place, but still continued pertinent, insofar as it tended to recapi-tulate the more general awareness of a decline in poetry.According to one writer, mythology had

added the brightest plumes to pagan writers, and enabled them tosoar to empyrean heights on the wings of superstition. But a purer

religion, and a more refined taste, have restrained the flight ofmodern bards; and reason and truth, the best guides of the oratorand the historian, have been found to damp the ardour of poeticenthusiasm.49

Friedrich Schlegel actually took this 'dampening' to constitutethe history of poetry itself, a 'progress' that might, indeed, beironically interpreted as its opposite, a regression :

In all countries it has been the fate and progress of poetry to beginwith the wonderful and the sublime, with the mysterious majestyof the gods, and the elevated character of the heroic times - andever afterwards to descend lower and lower from this lofty flight -to approach nearer and nearer to the earth - till at last it sinks- never to rise again - into the common life and citizenship ofordinary men.50


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One of the most eloquent advocates of romance had beenRichard Hurd, who asked : 'May there not be something in the

Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the views of a genius, andto the ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic modernshave gone too far, in their perpetual ridicule and contempt of it?'And again the demise of romance is regretted. Not only has theAge of Reason lost 'a world of fine fabling', but even Spenserand Tasso, the acknowledged masters of romance, 'came toolate, and it was impossible for them to paint truly and perfectlywhat was no longer seen or believed'.51 Nevertheless Hurd insists

upon 'the preeminence of the Gothic manners and fictions, asadapted to the ends of poetry, above the classic', arguing that

the current popular tales of Elves and Fairies were even fitter totake the credulous mind, and charm it into a willing admirationof the specious miracles, which wayward fancy deligh ts in, thanthose of the old traditionary rabble of pagan d iv in iti es ... . T hemummeries of the pagan priests were childish, but the GothicEnchanters shook and alarmed all n a t u r e . . . . You w ill readilyapprehend that the fancies of our modern bards are not only more

gallant, but, on a change of the scene, more sublime, more terrible,more alarming, than those they paint, and the superstitions theyadopt, are the more poetical for being Gothic.52

This polemical opposition of Gothic romance to classical anti-quity eventuated as a commonplace in critical thought:

It is observable that sublimity of genius has been generally attendedwith a strong affection for the daemonry of the ancient northernfable. Milton was particularly fond of i t . . . . This passion seems

natural. There is something sublime in the Celtic mythology, in theidea of ancient hardyhood, and the feats of former times, that ispeculiarly adapted to a natural grandeur of imagination. In themythology of the Greeks, every thing seems little, seems puerile bycomparison.53

The reference to Milton (incongruous if we recall Johnson'scritique of Lycidas) should remind us, somewhat belatedly, thatthe debate on myth was closely related to another argument,concerned with the possibility of a modern epic poetry. Sincethe verse of Homer and Virgil was the most famous repositoryof classical mythology, it was natural to associate epic and myth- each form as it were constituting the other. It is noticeablethat from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, as thedebate on myth became more intense, translations and editions


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of the modern European epic poets (Spenser, Milton, Ariosto,Tasso) were published in abundance.54 Since they were held to

embody the most inspired imaginative use of romance, the worksof these poets provided an opportunity for a revaluation ofmyth. Moreover, it was in the realm of epic that criticism wasboldly put into practice.55 And if the attempts by Hole, Sayers,Gottle, Pye and Southey to recreate the epic visions of theirgreat precursors resulted in failure, this does not detract fromthe audacity of their enterprise. That the critical justification ofsuch exercises was utterly serious is evident from a review of

Richard Hole's 'Northern Enchantment ' , Arthur (1789). In con-trast to the poetry of the ancient Greeks, says the critic, thepoetry of 'our northern ancestors' was 'obliged to have recourse,for its machinery, to new superstitions, and to substitute Gothicdemons in the place of Grecian deities'. Yet poetry 'sustainedno loss' because of this :

Nothing is, perhaps, more truly adapted to its genius, than theGothic fictions and manners. The military institutions and customsof chivalry, united with the gloomy theology and fables of theNorth, which included a system of magic, enchantment, andprodigy, opened a spacious field to the epic adventurer. The oldromancers, though they wanted powers to cultivate it to perfection,serve to d em onst ra te ... its extensive capabilities. Ariosto, Tasso,and our Spenser, have employed them to singular advantages; andhad Homer flourished in the Gothic age, the supposition is notextravagant, that he might have produced a work superior to theIliad itself, as he would certainly have found greater scope for hisgenius. In the refined gallantry and military fanaticism of this

period, there was more of the tender as well as of the terrific; andmore to engage the softer affections of the heart, as well as toharrow up the soul, than the civil and religious state of ancientGreece presented to his observation or to his fancy.56

It is, of course, precisely the extrav aga nce of the supposition -'had Hom er flourished in the Gothic a g e . . . he might havepro duced a work superior to the Iliad itself - wh ich is of interesthere, since it betrays the extent to which classical mythology had

by this time become subsumed in the general fascination forGothic romance.Frank Sayers's Dram atic Sketches of the Ancient Northern

Mythology (1790) elicited a similar respo nse : 'T he mythologyof Greece and Rome is become trite and insipid; we requiresome substitute for it, particularly in heroic and epic composi-


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at the origin and development of the 'feudal tale'. The 'oriental',however, requires some comment. On the one hand, Orientalism,

as it emerged during the latter half of the eighteenth century,may be considered as one aspect of a broader kind of Hellen-ism.62 On the other hand, it is precisely the Oriental tale which,since it 'constitutes a different order of poetic architecture fromthat of the classical Epic',63 might offer the modern poet anotherpossibility for a new language of fictions.

Romanticism inherited from the Enlightenment a vision ofthe O rient which did not need to obey geograph ical precision :

'Asia' included Asia Minor, Egypt, Arabia. Nor was it confinedto the didactic 'Eastern Tale', which, by the time of its culmina-tion in Johnson's Rasselas (1759), had been 'familiar for half acentury'.64 Displacement of the classical tradition involved agradual association of the Orient with the mystique of origins.This was largely due to radical innovations in biblical scholar-ship, as practised by Lowth, Herder, Michaelis and Eichhorn,which came to recognize the Old Testament, the most famousdocument of origins, 'simply as literature, as Oriental litera-ture ' .6 5 The 'utility of Oriental learning in the interpretation ofScripture' soon became a commonplace, and it was not surpris-ing that the new insights fostered by the higher criticism im-pinged on a more secular level; it was scarcely a matter ofpolemic to admit that 'the connections among Oriental scholar-ship, Biblical criticism, and poetry were close indeed'.66 Para-doxically, however, as the interpretation of biblical literaturebecame more historical and critical, the desire to locate the

beginnings of poetry in an ideal space of origins involved amore imaginative and indeed 'mythopoeic' activity. 'Specifyingpoints of departure', writes Edward Said, 'grew increasinglyproblematical during the eighteenth century', and it is temptingto consider the later Enlightenment as unprecedented in itsconcern with the subject of origins.67 Rousseau's primitivismmay be seen as a symptom of the imaginative and ideologicalappeal to origins, while the prevailing notion of 'original genius'is a complex manifestation of the same interest. And formythographers like Jacob Bryant and William Jones, the im-aginative power of origins was essential to their speculations onthe archaeology of myth.

'The" most philosophic m inds', observed Ed ward Gibbon , 'canseldom refrain from investigating the infancy of great nations.'68


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nation. Not only did every people invent its own origin, but itinvented also the origin of the whole world.'71 The modern age,

it would seem, had released itself from the need to indulge insuch vain imaginings.

At the same time, however, other writers were becomingconscious of the psychological and aesthetic motives of retracinghistory's furthest limits. A review of John Brown's Dissertationon the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, andCorruptions, of Poetry and Music (1763) opens with a usefulformulation :

The mind of man is led by an irresistable desire to investigate theorigin and first principles of things. His eye, repelled by thoseimpenetrable barriers which shut up futurity, looks towards thepast for entertainment; and travels, under the guidance of historicinformation, to the remotest aeras that man has recorded of hisown existence. When history and tradition drop the directing line,conjecture takes it up; and, calling analogy and probability to heraid, leads the credulous traveller through ideal ages and worlds ofher own creation.72

Again the obvious importance of 'historic information' is noted.But with the suggestion that history and tradition might yield to'conjecture', whereby the mind loses itself in 'ideal ages andworlds of her own creation', the dividing line between fact andfiction seems to disappear. The further the historian or poetretreats into the past, towards the beginning of things, the moreactively must the imagination come into play.

We can see, then, that the fiction of an original site becomes

privileged with an essential authority, and for this reason aloneit was inevitable that the association of the Orient with poetry'sorigins should help displace the traditional primacy of classicalantiquity. The editor of a volume of Collins opens his 'Observa-tions on the Oriental Eclogues' by noting that

the genius of the Pastoral, as well as of every other respectablespecies of poetry, had its origin in the East, and from thence wastransplanted by the Muses of Greece; but whether from the conti-

nen t of the Lesser Asia, or from E g y p t . .. it is not easy to deter-mine . . . . However, though it should still remain a doubt throughwhat channel the Pastoral travelled westward, there is not the leastshadow of uncertainty concerning its oriental origin.

The ancient Greeks, apparently, were but imitators or mediatorsof fictions more ancient than themselves :


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Those ingenious Greeks, whom we call the Parents of Pastoralpoetry, were probably no more than imitators of imitators, that

derived their harmony from higher and higher sources, and kindledtheir poetical fires at those then unextinguished lamps whichburned within the tombs of oriental genius.73

What emerges is the rudimentary beginning of a theory ofcomparative literary history and influence. Richard Hole thoughtthat the study and translation of the Arabian Nights

might lead to interesting discoveries relative to the progress ofideas from one nation to another. A scientific translator would not

only be induced to trace many of these stories to a classic origin;but likewise to retrace some of the classic fictions to their primitiveeastern derivation.

Literary history seems to comprise a series of gradual temporaland geog raphical displacements : 'I n the m iddle ages theArabians borrowed largely from the Greeks; and they, in muchearlier times, derived from the banks of the Ganges, and notunfrequently through the medium of Egypt, the greater part of

their literature and mythology.'74

Thomas Warton had supposedthat the 'fiction of the Fairies' had been 'brought, with otherfantastic extravagancies of the like nature from the easternnations, while the European Christians were engaged in the HolyWar ' .75 Observing that 'the imagination of this story consists inArabian fiction engrafted on Gothic chivalry', Warton citesChaucer 's Squire's Tale as an example of 'one of the manyfables which the Arabians imported into Europe', and he con-cludes that the fictions of both Chaucer and Spenser are often'fraught with Oriental fancy'.76

By shifting attention away from the exclusively classical tra-dition in English poetry, Warton, Hole and other writers contri-buted to the growing prestige of Oriental literature as origin orprototype. And the historian too, the 'votary of history' as wellas the literary critic, aware that 'our knowledge of antiquityextends little beyond the shores of the Mediterranean', must nowbe 'curious to pierce the veil which has hitherto enveloped the

antiquities of the East, and the origin of nations'.77

But within the development of Orientalism an interesting turnoccurs. On the one hand, the exotic fictions of 'Oriental fancy'were invoked as an alternative to classical mythology, as we cansee from the comment prompted by Joseph Champion's transla-tion of The Poems of Ferdosi (1785) :


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In poetry, we sigh for some kind of novelty. What Mr. Gibbon callsthe elegant mythology of the Greeks, is so hackneyed and thread-

bare, that it rather fatigues than amuses. How delightful, then, isthe prospect of a new poetic world.78

Yet the conception of a 'new poe tic world' as radica lly differentand separate from the old world of classical antiquity was alreadybeing qualified by the syncretist studies of ancient mythologyundertaken by Jones, D'Hancarville, Bryant and others.79

Though purporting to be scientifically accurate in their un-covering of the different layers of myth's ancient archaeology, the

mythographers adopted a procedure that was essentially andnecessarily imaginative. Most of their shared assumptions wereelaborate fictions. And by a strange paradox they helped tore-establish the high status of the classical fictions. If much ofthe activity of Enlightenment thought was dedicated to findingout what men had in common, this was particularly reflectedin the mythographers' repeated conviction that apparently dis-parate mythologies shared a common origin, that they inhabitedan ideal, primal space in which historical differences unravelledthemselves into a purity of exact and original resemblance. AsElton observed,

the clue of the Grecian mythology is its connexion with othermythologies. The light of oriental erudition has discovered anaffinity between the religions of Egypt, India, and Greece; a factwhich demonstrably proves the high antiquity of the system. Thesource of it must necessarily be explored in those remote ageswhen some point of connexion subsisted between these different

nations.80

The motive behind this desire to imagine a common centre,an original and originating 'point of connexion', was partlydevotional : one way of reconciling pagan and Christian versionsof history was to view the former as an obscure allegoricalmutation of the latter. Thus Jacob Bryant, wishing to 'divesttradition of fable' and thereby 'reduce the truth to its originalpurity', claimed that his researches might lead to 'a more inti-

mate acquaintance with the Scriptures', since 'our faith dependsupon historical experience'. But the 'truth' had hitherto beenconcealed by the 'chaotic state' of ancient mythology, and it wasnecessary to realign the 'vast chasms and interruptions' of history,to 'reduce . . . the scattered fragments to order'.81 At the sametime, of course, the 'connexion' between mythologies was not a


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thesis confined to Christian apologetics. Although it has beenproposed that his Asiatic Researches 'culminate in a defence of

the traditional valuation of the Bible as superior in antiquity, inwisdom, and in literary value to the sacred writings of any othernation', the pioneering scholarship of William Jones had impli-cations outside the domain of theology.82 Jones was profoundlyaffected by the possibility of an original centre of civilization.83

In an essay, 'On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India' (1784),he endeavoured to trace 'a resemblance between the popularworship of the old Greeks and Italians and that of the Hindus',

in order to support the 'grand hypothesis' that 'there was origin-ally some central country, from which not only the principalnations of Asia, Africa, and Europe were derived, but whenceAmerica was peopled'.84 Jones rehearses the same theory in his'Third Anniversary Discourse, on the Hindus' (1786), and hisconclusion is notable for the eloquent ease with which he dis-poses of the various nations in his purview. The Hindus, hesuggests, had

an immemorial affinity with the old Persians, Ethiopians, andEgyptians, the Phenecians, Greeks, and Tuscans, the Scythians orGoths, and Celts, the Chinese, Japanese, and Peruvians', whence,as no reason appears for believing, that they were a colony fromany one of those nations, or any of those nations from them, wemay fairly conclude that they all proceeded from some centralcountry.85

The elegant felicity with which Jones embraces different culturesis characteristic of the mythographers' imaginative procedures.

It is again evident, for example, when D'Hancarville observesthat the edifices described in Gough's Com parative View of theAncient Monuments of India (1785) are

connected with theological principles formerly common to theGreeks , Ta r tars , Ind ians , and Japanese . Th ese p r in ci p l es . . . a ll goback to the symbolic worship of the Scythians, which in the Westbecame changed into Hellenism, was destroyed by Christ iani ty,and in the East assumed the form which it st i l l retains among theJapanese , Tar tars , and Ind ians .8 6

The swift, flowing relationships and transitions ('connected with',cgo back to', 'became changed into', 'destroyed by', 'assumed theform', 'still retains among') not only express the dialectic betweensynthesis and dispersal, unity and separation, which operates asa common metaphor in pre-Romantic historiography, but also


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suggest a new freedom in the exploration of history and, im-plicitly, of the myths 'beyond' history. The assumption that the

destinies of nations originally overlapped or coalesced wouldclear the way for the possibility of a syncretism of ancient fic-tions, a mythological 'doubling5.87

One of the consequences of all this semi-mythopoeic specula-tion is that 'Greece' itself becomes infinitely expanded in its scopeas an imaginative locale. Indeed, the actual history of Greecebears witness to this, as Gibbon pointed out: 'The territories ofAthens, Sparta, and their allies, do not exceed a moderate

province of France or England : but after the trophies of Salamisand Plataea, they expand in our fancy to the gigantic size ofAsia, which had been trampled under the feet of the victoriousGreeks.'88 John Gillies observed that 'the history of Greece, thecountry to which we are indebted for our general acquaintancewith antiquity, will naturally expand into the history of theEastern world'.89 Consider these two sentences : 'The powers ofthe Greek are vastly beyond those of any other tongue. What-ever the Asiatics describe is always felt and almost seen : motionand music are in every tone.'90 The 'Greek' and the 'Asiatic'blend here imperceptibly; the simple geographical relation be-speaks not only a more general awareness of the Oriental natureof ancient Greek, but also the possibility of that overlappingwhich seems at once to fulfil and transcend the late Enlighten-me nt critique of classical mythology. W illiam Ouseley argued tha t

a knowledge of the Grecian language, ancient history, and myth-ology, is indispensably necessary to him who would aspire toperfection in the Persian, either as a linguist or an antiquary.Mutually reflecting light upon each other, these languages willrightly guide the etymologist through many a wearisome and intri-cate derivation, and enable the curious Orientalist to explore thedark recesses of Antiquity.91

Thus Greece acquires new significance as a kind of threshold tothe Orient. According to William Gell, 'there is no part of theworld' like Greece, which

offers an opportunity of witnessing and comparing with so muchease the opposite customs of Europe and Asia; or of changing thescene with such rapidity : for when the classic traveller is satisfiedwith the simplicity of the heroic ages in the mountains of Arcadia... he may descend in the course of one hour into the plain, and,drinking coffee in a cup set with rubies, realize the splendid


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visions of the Arabian Nights in the court of the Pacha ofTripolizza.92

And though Greece is not actually mentioned by name in hisaccount, it is surely implied by Hazlitt as the site of a confluenceof the fictions of mediaeval romance and Orientalism. Of theheroes of mediaeval romance Hazlitt writes thatthe Holy Land was the grand object of their pilgrimage: but byit they entered into communication with the fine and rich countriesof the East. Their geography was as confused as all their otherknow ledge. .. bu t these fanciful voyages afforded the romancewriters the means of embellishing their recitals with the mostbrilliant colours. All the softness and the perfumes of the countries,the most favoured by nature, were at their disposal: All the pompand magnificence of Damascus, of Bagdad, and Constantinople,might be made use of to adorn the triumph of their heroes; andan acquisition more precious still, was the imagination itself of thepeople of the East and South; that imagination so brilliant, sovarious, which was employed to give life to the sombre mythologyof the North.**

This form of geographical 'doubling' is repeated in the fluidlandscapes imagined by the romantic poets. Thomas Wartonhad noted precisely this quality in Spenser's model, Ariosto'sOrlando Furioso :This spirited Italian passes from one incident to another, and fromregion to region, with such incredible expedition and rapidity, thatone would think he was mounted upon his winged steed Ippogrifo.Within the compass of ten stanzas, he is in England and theHesperides, in the earth and the moon. He begins the history of a

knight in Europe, and suddenly breaks it off to resume the un-finished catastrophe of another in Asia.94

If it seems but a short step from Warton's Ariosto to the modeof Endymion, it is because the intervening period ha d witnesseda growing synthesis of disparate mythologies and fictions, en-abling a Romantic poet like Keats to site his narrative in 'asyncretic geography which covers immense distances in time andspace'.95 Whereas the traditional images within the classicalcanon had been in danger of becoming reduced to fixed, in-alienable types, mere paraphernalia on the surface of language,the new syncretist context re-established the classical fictionswithin a broader field of imaginative possibility, an ideal spacein which antiquity once more promised to exert its authorityover the modern.


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The preceding excursions into literary history are intended toplace Keats's romance with antiquity in as wide a perspective aspossible. One of the reasons why previous critics have tended toproduce rather lame conclusions on the subject is that they havefailed to take into account the profoundly overdetermined imageof ancient Greece which Keats inherited from the Enlighten-ment. Far from being a transparently available source of mean-ing, classical antiquity became, rather, a cluster of potentialities,a maze of fictions, a frame of reference whose edges (limits)remain unstable and blurred.96 Wasserman has argued thatthe entire eighteenth-century syncretic study of myths was neces-sary before classical mythology, now reinterpreted, was again vitaland rich enough as a poetic syntax and vocabulary. Only after themany quests for the key to all mythologies could classical mythologyagain be felt as a kind of universal truth and conceived of as acomplex whole, rather than a set of discrete inherited terms.97

But the notions of 'universal truth' and 'complex whole' are asinadequate as Kathleen Raine's proposition that Romanticismwitnessed the redemption of classical polytheism as 'a languageof qualitative and metaphysical discourse'.98 Such formulationsmiss the crucial problem of Romantic Hellenism, which centreson the ambivalent and opaque relation between ancient andmodern, the difficulties encountered by the poet as he en-deavours to retrieve the past.

Stephen A. Larrabee has drawn attention to the discourse ofnaive and nostalgic impressionism traditionally expended on thetheme of Keats's Hellenism. He cites Arnold, Palgrave, andde Selincourt;99 but others are not lacking. John ChurtonCollins believed that Keats's appeal to antiquity was simply 'theresult of natural temper and sympathy'.100 Another critic invitesus to read 'the Greek element in Keats' as 'the instinctive answerof deep to deep'. In the early poetry 'the Greek element isslight'; Endymion 'in mood and style is distinctly Spenserian, not

Homeric; but its subject matter is wholly Attic and is regardedthrough a loving though uncritical eye'. As for the later poems*Hyperion, Lamia, the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and 'Ode toPsyche', these are 'classic in the noblest sense of the word, and asnobly Grecian as anything in our language'.101 'For Keats Greecewas a beautiful paradise', rhapsodizes one critic.102 And Douglas


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Bush concludes that 'in his classical moments Keats is a sculptorwhose marble becomes flesh5.10 3

The common assumption of post-Romantic and moderncriticism, as Larrabee points out, is that Keats was 'the most"classical" and presumably the most "Greek" of the EnglishRomantic poets' . And Larrabee is undoubtedly right to warnthat although Keats's major poems 'reveal his fondness forclassical themes . . . the idea that Keats possessed a G recian spiritis more difficult to maintain'.104 To speculate whether Keatspossessed a Grecian spirit is as futile as to speculate whether he

wrote 'like a Greek'.105

Yet Larrabee himself, despite realizingthat cto class Keats as a "Greek" may encourage unprofitablecriticism', succumbs to the language of what Leavis might havecalled ejaculatory criticism : 'Frequently, under the influence ofthat living spirit of Greece, calm thoughts and epic shapes cameround him. The poet then sang, for a time, in full-throatedease.'106 Such writing, one suspects, is far more nostalgic andidealizing than the poetry which it seeks to explain.

In a limited sense, of course, Keats's Hellenism is indeed theresult of 'natural temper and sympathy' insofar as it is not theresult of rigorous scholarship and deep meditation on the textsof antiquity. It is a commonplace that Keats's knowledge ofancient Greek was negligible. In the spring of 1818 he an-nounced to J. H. Reynolds that he 'shall learn Greek', but bythe following year the ambition had come to nothing : CI do notthink of venturing upon Greek.'107 The point is that Keats did notneed to learn Greek - perhaps, in the end, he did not even want

to. 'If you understood Greek,' he says to Reynolds, 'and wouldread me passages, now and then, explaining their meaning, 'twould be, from its mistiness, perhaps a greater luxury thanreading the thing one's self.' 108 Keats evidently desires to mediateor even to displace his relation to antiquity through other voices,other texts, as though a naked encounter were too painful andimportunate. In order to be made manageable, the sublimefictions of antiquity may need to be translated after all, through

Chapman, Spenser, Tooke and Lempriere. Charles CowdenClarke could not remember that Keats 'even commenced learn-ing the Greek language. His uncommon familiarity - almostconsanguinity with the Greek mythology, I suspect is to betraced to his reading.'109 It would seem that the space of Greece,its mythological presence, is produced in the very act of reading.The poet is one of Hazlitt's readers, one of those persons 'who


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are in the habit of reading novels and romances, are compelledto take a deep interest in, and to have their affections stronglyexcited by, fictitious characters and imaginary situations; theirthoughts and feelings are constantly carried out of themselves,to persons they never saw, and things that never existed'.11 0

'You would lift your eyes from Homer,' says Keats, 'only to seeclose before you the real Isle of Tenedos.'111 Thus the landscapeof antiquity emerges, as a purely imaginary space, from thepoet's creative encounter with Chapman's Homer and other texts.

The question of Keats's 'ignorance' of ancient Greek is, then,

a false problem, and it seems misleading to argue, as a recentcritic has done, that Keats was 'impeded by the fact that hehankered after classical legend yet never troubled to masterLatin, Greek and the reading in mythology that should go withit'.112 On another level Keats's small Latin and less Greek issymptomatic of a larger trend :

When we turn from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth weare conscious of a change in the relations between learning andliterature. There is an estrangement between them which hadscarcely existed in the previous century. . . . The scholars went theirway and the poets went theirs, and they had little contact with oneanother. . . . It is true that on bo th sides there is a love of ancientGreece, but it is a long way from the Museum Criticum toEndymion or Hellas.11 3

This separation involved a release of the act of writing fromits obligations to academic classicism. Intent on producingsomething 'original', the modern poet sought to be liberated

from the kind of 'secondariness' that even as great a scholar asPorson had no qualms about expressing :

I doubt if I could produce any original work that would commandthe attention of posterity. I can be known only by my notes; and Iam quite satisfied if, three hundred years hence, it shall be saidthat one Porson lived towards the end of the eighteenth centurywho did a good deal for the text of Euripides.114

For Keats, of course, this would not suffice; his engagement withantiquity would take a different form. Classical Greece does notpresent itself as a language to be mastered, or a text to beedited, but as a supreme fiction, an ideal space that might yielda host of fine poetic imaginings. Yet Keats's romance withantiquity should not be sentimentalized; the ground on whichit occurs is as potentially enchanted and daemonic as one of


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Keats and Hellenism

Figure i. Henry Fuseli, 'The artist in despair over the magnitudeof antique fragments' (c. 1778-80), reproduced from Carolyn Keay,Henry Fuseli (London and New York, 1974), by permission of theSyndics of the Cambridge University Library and of AcademyEditions, London.


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Spenser's magical landscapes. 'Nostalgia' would be a scarcelyadequate term to describe the poet's longing for antiquity's

absent realms, since the longing itself is complicated by othertensions. In spite of the ambiguous status of classical mythology,it was still possible for a writer of the late Enlightenment tocelebrate 'the classical remains of antiquity', which 'supply uswith inexhaustible sources of the most refined enjoyment' andare 'poured forth, without effort, from the memory, to delightthe imagination, and to improve the heart ' .1 15 But as Fuseli'ssketch of 'The artist in despair over the magnitude of antique

fragments' (c. 1778-80) should remind us (Figu re i)3 antiquitymight enter the modern consciousness in more oppressive forms. Itwas the fate of 'Greece' to fragment itself in a deeply ambivalentway, and Keats's poetry traces this ambivalence.


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Towards Endymion 39

Greece 'may be denominated the spring of the world, and itsproductions, even in their decay, retain much of their freshness,

and the bloom, and the beauty, of that delightful season'.4Keats's fiction of beginnings is often conveyed through an im-plied association of Greece and spring - or, by temporal analogy,dawn. In the sonnet 'To Leigh Hunt, Esq.', for example, thepoet's lament for the disappearance of antiquity's 'glory andloveliness' (1) is framed by references to 'early morn' (2) and'early May' (8). In 'I stood tip-toe upon a little hill' we areinvited to attend 'the early sobbing of the morn' (7), while in a

later poem,*the fragment 'M oth er of H er m es and still youthfulM a ia ', the repeated echo of the goddess's nam e in 'M ay Ising' (2) and 'may I woo' (4) suggests that the cspring-like'mythology of ancient Greece is invested with the hope of poeticinspiration.5

Ideally, then, the poet desires a beginning which wouldinvolve not.a break from the past but a restoration of ancientfictions, their repetition in a finer tone. But the return itself isalways already problematic for the modern poet. In 'Sleep andPoetry', for example, Keats prays that his 'young spirit' might'follow/The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo' (59-60) -where 'Apollo', of course, signifies not only the god of the sunbut also the god of poetry and music. It was a commonplacethat 'the language of the Greeks was the language of poetry',6

and Keats appeals to the fiction of melodious Apollo in hisendeavour to rewrite the vanished discourse of antiquity and sorestore the authentic language of Poesy itself. But already in the

early poetry Keats is often to be found voicing a fear that themelodious text of antiquity is now closed to him, that, as hesays in the epistle 'To My Brother George', he should 'neverhear Apollo's song' (9); his 'golden lyre' is only 'dimly seen' (12).In the 'Specimen of an Induction to a Poem', he wonders howhe might 'Revive the dying tones of minstrelsy' (32), a line whichanticipates the image of 'minstrel memories of times gone by' inEndymion (1, 435). Against the po et's desire, then, to hea r onceagain those 'tunes forgotten' sung by antiquity (Endymion, 1,316), arises a suspicion that modern discourse is inadequate tothe rewriting of the ancient fictions - a suspicion betrayed inthis sudden outburst of rhetoric, from Endymion :


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Aye, the countOf mighty poets is made up; the scroll

Is folded by the Muses; the bright rollIs in Apollo's hand: our dazed eyesHave seen a new tinge in the western skies:The world has done its duty. Yet, oh yet,Although the sun of poesy is set,These lovers did embrace, and we must weepThat there is no old power left to steepA quill imm ortal in their joyous tears. (n, 723-35)

As a figure of the belated poet, Endymion himself is a victim

of the disappearance of antiquity's sublime language. He iscondemned to overhear the melodies of the past at the momentof their dying away, at the point of their dissolution into irre-trievable loss and absence. He tunes into the dialogue ofAlpheus and Arethusa : 'What melodies are these?/They soundas thro ug h the w hispering of trees' (11, 933-4). F or a brief whileEndym ion is able to 'give ear ' (11, 935) to the discourse of thesetwo mythical figures. And then, suddenly, silence :

At this, sudden fellThose two sad streams adown a fearful dell.The Latmian listen'd, but he heard no more,Save echo, faint repeating o'er and o'erT he name of Arethusa. (11, 1008-12)

Perhaps the 'two sad streams' falling 'adown a fearful dell'allegorize the disappearance of mythic language into the abyssof history, leaving but the echo of a name, whose faint repetition

mocks the belated poet's desire to restore its original plenitude.

11

The sonnet, 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer',crystallizes some of the problems attending Keats's desired returnto the beautiful mythology of Greece. Its opening quatrain picksup a familiar motif from the early poems :

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. (1-4)

The old poets are imagined as occupying 're

Keats and Hellenism_ an Essay. 2001. Martin_Aske

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