Keats’s poems, letters and the love story with Fanny Brawne make Keats so special and so available even to our times where letters are now cut short into texts and texts to symbols. He was such a genius that he died at twenty-five, yet he is more beloved on earth than most of us will ever be.
The strong bond of love between the two is to be found elsewhere in English literature (e.g. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”; Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", just to mention a few) and it is the kind of love that most of us long for even today.
The strong bond of love between the two is to be found elsewhere in English literature (e.g. Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility”; Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”, Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", just to mention a few) and it is the kind of love that most of us long for even today.
It is an all-consuming passion that can stupefy you, stun your senses, suspend time and space. It is the strongest of emotions: so strong that it causes both pleasure and pain. All this can be found in Keats’s love letters and in the poems written during his close relationship with Fanny.
In a letter to Fanny, penned in October of 1819 and found in his altogether magnificent Selected Letters (public library), Keats channels this commonest of human passions with uncommon potency and elegance of sentiment:
My dearest Girl,
This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else — The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life — My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you — I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving—I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love — Your note came in just here — I cannot be happier away from you — ’T is richer than an Argosy of Pearls. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder’d at it — I shudder no more. I could be martyr’d for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet — You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great — My Love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.
Yours for ever
John Keats