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1450-1945

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Record 17375

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 2, lines 546-61]: Keats underlines the following: the lines from 'Others, more mild, /Retreated in a silent valley' to 'By doom of battle'; 'Their song was partial, but the harmony'; 'Suspended Hell'; 'in discourse more sweet/ (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)/ Others apart sat on a hill retired'. He writes: 'Milton is godlike in the sublime pathetic. In Demons, fallen Angels, and Monsters the delicacies of passion, living in and from their immortality, is of the most softening and dissolving nature. It is carried to the utmost here - "Others more mild" - nothing can express the sensation one feels at "Their song was partial" etc. Examples of this nature are divine to the utmost in other poets - in Caliban "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments" etc. In Theocritus, Polyphemus, and Homer's Hymn to Pan where Mercury is represented as taking his "homely fac'd" to heaven. There are numerous other instances in Milton - where Satan's progeny is called his "daughter dear", and where this same Sin, a female, and with a feminine instinct for the showy and martial is in pain lest death should sully his bright arms, "nor vainly hope to be invulnerable in those bright arms." Another instance is "pensive I sat alone". We need not mention "Tears such as Angels weep."'
Century: 1800-1849
Date: unknown
Country: unknown
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:John Keats
Age Unknown
Gender Male
Date of Birth 31 Oct 1795
Socio-economic group: n/a
Occupation: poet
Religion: atheist
Country of origin: England
Country of experience: unknown
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: John Milton
Title: Paradise Lost
Genre: Poetry
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: owned

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 17375  
Source - Print  
  Author: John Keats
  Editor: John Barnard
  Title: John Keats: The Complete Poems
  Place of Publication: London
  Date of Publication: 1988
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 522
  Additional comments: The marginalia is transcribed in Appendix 4 of this edition.

Citation: John Keats, John Barnard (ed.), John Keats: The Complete Poems (London, 1988), p. 522, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=17375, accessed: 28 March 2024

Additional comments:

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)