from....
The Right of
Aesthetic Realism to Be Known

Excitement, Ourselves, & John Keats 

Dear Unknown Friends: 

     In part 5 of his great 1949 lecture Poetry and Excitement, Eli Siegel speaks about John Keats' poem "The Eve of St. Agnes." And he uses it to show—as he earlier in the lecture used Browning, Byron, and Thackeray to show—what excitement is. 

     The basis of Aesthetic Realism is this principle, stated by Mr. Siegel, which defines what no one before him understood—the relation between art and life: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." Excitement, Mr. Siegel has been explaining, is always a oneness of opposites: for example, of what we expect and what we don't expect; of so much meaning (maybe the meaning of one's whole life) and a single, particular moment. 

     Most of the people of this world go about their hours and years with the feeling that life as such is not exciting. This feeling always has pain with it. The pain can be an ongoing emptiness, an ache that things don't stir one much, don't mean too much. But the pain that things as such seem unexciting can also be a rage, and a despair. And it is always, too—and this fact is beautiful—the pain of shame. People are ashamed of finding life unexciting, because, Aesthetic Realism explains, in being unexcited, they have been unjust—to objects, humanity, facts, the world itself! 

     As persons, young and older, go after excitement, they see it mainly as something which they have to manufacture, or hunt for somewhere apart from their daily lives. They see it as something they might have watching a "thriller" at the movies; or maybe riding very fast in a car; or finally meeting the person of their dreams. 

     Aesthetic Realism gives the most exciting news about excitement itself. It explains that reality as such is exciting—and that art is based on this fact! Art does not tack some manufactured excitement on top of some everyday dull reality. And art does not provide some exciting offset or intermission to what life is. The excitement that is in all art comes from the seeing of what things are. "Art," Mr. Siegel wrote in 1946, "... shows reality as it is, deeply: straight" (Self and World, Definition Press, p. 110). 

     Let's take a line from the poem Mr. Siegel is discussing here, "The Eve of St. Agnes." He is describing the excitement in the poem's narrative, in its fervently and precisely told story, in its suspense as one occurrence follows another. But I'll use a line from that poem to illustrate another excitement—the excitement I've been writing about: the excitement which, Mr. Siegel was the critic to explain, art finds in any object. "The Eve of St. Agnes," of 1819, begins with these beautiful lines: 

St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! 
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; 
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass.

     When we get to its last words, "frozen grass," we hear difficulty still, in the fr, gr, z, and s sounds. Yet we feel wonder too, with that wide o in "frozen"; and the wide, soft sound of "grass" has a delicate mystery. So the difficulty and loveliness of the world are in that line—because Keats felt them in this hare trying to get somewhere on a winter night. 

     And though it is cold, achingly cold, we also feel something warm, because to be intimately within the feelings of another creature is to be warm. We feel the warmth which is the little inner self of that rabbit, through the way the word "trembling" comes at the very center of the line, comes after that word "limp'd." 

     We feel one particular creature of flesh and blood, enduring things; and we hear a structure of great impersonality: a rhythm, the iambic pentameter organization of the line. We feel something so personal and so impersonal at once. 

     When John Keats felt, in a so specific, individual creature, the world itself come to a point—he was poetic. He was also having that deep excitement which any thing, seen truly, makes for. And we have that deep excitement as we read the line. 

     Mr. Siegel identified the thing in everyone which hurts our own mind and which also is the source of every unkindness ever committed: it is contempt, "the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it." Our desire to see meaning in things, be excited by them, is at war with our desire to be disgusted, bored, so we can feel superior. We want to find things unexciting, so as to feel we are the most important thing in the world. That was so even about the beautifully, richly agog John Keats. It had him feel what he described in a letter, November 22, 1817, to his friend Benjamin Bailey: 

I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a Passion or Affection during a whole week—and so long this sometimes continues I begin to suspect myself and the genuineness of my feelings at other times—thinking them a few barren Tragedy-tears.

Nothing seemed to escape him: the motions of the wind—just how it took certain tall flowers ... the features and gestures of the passing tramps, the colour of one woman's hair, the smile on one child's face, ... even the hats, clothes, shoes, wherever these conveyed the remotest hint as to the real self of the wearer.

I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass—the creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along—to what? the Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it.

     What happens is: there is Madeline, who is oh, so wonderful. She is in a medieval castle, and the wrong people are in charge of her: they want to keep away from her her true lover, Porphyro. On the Eve of St. Agnes—that is, January 21—the custom is that a girl can dream happily of her true lover. So she does. Meanwhile, Porphyro comes to the castle. He takes Madeline away, and there is freedom. 

     The poem also has the excitement of two people meeting. Anytime two lovers meet and you don't expect them to—you might as well hold on to your chair. I'll read a few stanzas. Keats manages the Spenserian stanza more in keeping with the softness and grace of Edmund Spenser, the founder of that stanza, than Byron does.—As Madeline is dreaming of Porphyro he comes into the room: 

Awakening up, he took her hollow lute,—  
Tumultuous,—and, in chords that tenderest be, 
He play'd an ancient ditty, long since mute, 
In Provence call'd, "La belle dame sans mercy:" 
Close to her ear touching the melody;—
Wherewith disturb'd, she utter'd a soft moan: 
He ceased—she panted quick—and suddenly 
Her blue affrayed eyes wide open shone: 
Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth-sculptured stone.

When Keats gets in the "blue affrayed eyes wide open shone," there is excitement: she is afraid, but she wonders. 

Her eyes were open, but she still beheld, 
Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep: 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
"Ah, Porphyro!" said she, "but even now 
Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear 
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  
Oh leave me not in this eternal woe, 
For if thou diest, my love, I know not where to go."

Beyond a mortal man impassion'd far 
At these voluptuous accents, he arose, 
Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star 
Seen mid the sapphire heaven's deep repose; 
Into her dream he melted, as the rose 
Blendeth its odor with the violet,—  
Solution sweet.

She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 
For there were sleeping dragons all around, 
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—  
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found ....

    Whenever people are escaping and one sound may wake up the enemy, that is excitement, because it is, again, the presence of what is hidden and what is clear, and what is known and what is unknown. And one little thing can change a life. To bet a whole life on one slight motion—that is the base of the world coming to a point. And that is here. 

     I'm not talking of the whole meaning of this poem, where it has to do with Keats himself. But the point is that he is managing it as narrative; and though he gets in all these delicate touches, this luscious compact richness, still the story goes on. One of the most exciting things is fetters that have been defeated, confinement that has been shown not to confine. Since in all poetry, freedom is made out of restriction, and wherever freedom is made out of restriction there is excitement, that kind of excitement is present in all poetry.

More on John Keats's poetry in TRO 1352, where Mr. Siegel discusses "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer"