Book review: So Bright and Delicate by John Keats, introduced by Jane Campion
A record of an inspiring romance
Anyone has ever experienced the joyous tumult of falling in love for the first time will recognise a hint of their younger selves in this exquisite collection of emotional and deeply personal letters and poems.
Aged 23, John Keats fell headlong for Fanny Brawne and never fully recovered.
With an insightful foreword from Jane Campion, the award-winning director and writer of the recent film release Bright Star, this slim volume is the ideal gift for the love of your life, or even a wedding present for those who have made it further than John and Fanny ever did.
John’s lack of financial success prevented them being together, but his ill-health and subsequent death at the age of 25, is what finally separated them.
Some of his sentences speak with such simple clarity that it is impossible not to be moved. As a writer I was intrigued by his mentions of his work. At one point he says of a promise to visit Fanny: “I will stay very little while, for as I am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it - let it have its course good or bad.”
Later in the same letter he mentions as passion for silence that reminded me of Sara Mailand’s A Book of Silence, saying: “I had got in a dream among my Books - really luxuriating in a solitude and silence you alone should have disturb’d.”
This, to me, seems one of the most romantic statements he makes - less flowery than talk of butterflies and summer days, yet uniquely indicative of his deep love of a woman who understood him.
“I am living today in yesterday: I was in a complete fascination all day. I feel myself at your mercy. [...] You dazzled me.”
The fact that the letters are published in chronological order, many written only days apart, allows us to see his feelings develop as his health gradually fails, till, as he so striking puts it, he will “exit like a frog in a frost.”
We’re given hints of a relationship where the written word has become the strongest bond, as Keats is confined to convalescence and treated only to glimpses of his beloved as she comes into the garden to “show herself to him.”
Likewise we are treated to glimpses of the young poet’s preoccupations and aspirations, from his desire to not to “die without being remember’d” to his annoyance with a poorly made quill that diminished his penmanship. He insecurities about his writing are offset by moments of exuberance when the words flow onto the page. At the same time he continually questions his right to Fanny’s love, stating early on: “Upon my soul I cannot say what you could like me for”, and later, as his illness took hold, asking: “Do not I see a heart naturally furnish’d with wings imprison itself with me?”
These passages reveal an endearing vulnerability that makes us wish he could have both his love for Fanny and his love of words vindicated in his lifetime, but failing that, that he should at least know his was not a life lived in vain.
All that is missing from these pages is Fanny’s side of the conversation, as her letters have not survived, indeed, Jane Campion tells us in the introduction that “the ones she wrote to him in Italy were buried with him, unopened.”
Yet in Keats’ letters we hear echoes of Fanny’s words through his responses to her concerns and reactions to her actions. It is enough to let us know their love was reciprocal, and therefore complete.
Following the letters, Jane has selected some of John’s most intriguing poems, written for and inspired by Fanny.
Keats’ final letter to Fanny ends: “I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.”
Sadly for John and Fanny it was the thunderbolt that struck, though their love survives for ever after in literary form. Reading his letters alongside his poems presents us with fascinating story of a love that did not get the chance to run its course in the space of the two lovers’ life times, but enriched those two lives beyond compare.
So Bright and Delicate: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne is published by Penguin Classics (RRP £7.99) on December 3rd 2009 and is available from Amazon.
To submit a review of a book, course, film, magazine or website, please email judy@EssentialWriters.com
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