The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George by Denise Gigante

Abstract

Denise Gigante. The Keats Brothers: The Life of and George. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011. PP. 499+illus. $35. Collective biography begins with premise that no one lives alone. Living happens in physical and emotional spaces between people, and individual takes shape in and through his or her relationships with others. When those others are absent, they are, in many ways, all present. Denise Gigante probes and tests such notions in her new biography, The Keats Brothers: The Life of and George. Presenting as a central and guiding influence on both life and work of poet, Gigante traces intensity of Keats's emotional involvement with both his brothers, making case that their absence and loss, in particular--through death in case of Tom, through emigration to America in case of George--had a profound impact on poetry Keats wrote in his short career. said goodbye to and his new wife Georgiana in port of Liverpool in June of 1818; by end of August, at Tom's bedside, nursing him through painful last days of illness until his death came on December 1. Five short months brought loss of both brothers, although Keats had already registered his depression and sense of bereavement back in May as getting married and making plans for America: have two Brothers one is driven by 'burden of Society' to America other, with an exquisite love of Life, is in a lingering state. [I] may not follow them, Keats adds, either to America or to Grave--Life must be undergone, and I certainly derive a consolation from of writing one or two Poems before it ceases. Keats avows in this letter to Benjamin Bailey (10 June 1818) that love for my Brothers from early loss of our parents and even for earlier Misfortunes has grown into a [sic] affection 'passing Love of Women,' it is his deep tie to in particular that Gigante emphasizes, using pairing of and to elucidate aspects of poet's character and writings, as well as of Romantic period generally. The more sociable according to Gigante, was alter ego to his brother, poet (3). Yet John's sublimity had a real need for George's sociability, something, as Gigante suggests, Keats acknowledges in closing couplet of his 1816 sonnet, To My Brother written while two brothers were apart: But what, without of thee, / Would be of sky and sea? Gigante picks up on subtleties of relationship implied here. Is it George, himself, who is necessary to poet, or of enabled by his absence? Whenever at a distance, Gigante suggests, John discovered thoughts and feelings inside himself that he might not otherwise have known (14). The turn in sonnet from sublimities and wonders of sun, sky, and ocean to social thought of his brother is both a turn from ethereal to mundane matters, as well as a necessary check and constraint, like those of sonnet form itself, on sublime isolation always so tempting to Keats. Comparing to Dorothy Wordsworth, and To My Brother George to Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, Gigante finds same vital sibling relationship propping up and making possible poetry of Keats: in both poems the speaker communicates experience to a sibling, a mirror of poet's own, best self (15). If represents sociability to John's sublimity, for Gigante he also stands as Cockney Pioneer to John's Cockney Poet. John's psychological explorations in search of poetry are matched with George's geographical explorations in search of enterprise: While delved into dark ravines of human consciousness ... made his way past wolves, black bears, wild pigs, and catfish weighing as much as humans (2). …