Friday, September 23, 2022

A great poet’s too soon passing …

Written In Water:Keats’s Final Journey. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Keats wrote no poetry in this period and his own unmediated voice falls silent after 30 November, when he pens his last ever letter, addressed to his friend Charles Brown and containing his poignant envoi:‘I always made an awkward bow.’ But Severn’s on-the-spot correspondence offers a harrowing running commentary on his decline. It was to Severn that Keats dictated his own epitaph, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water’, from which Gallenzi adapts his title.

No comments:

Post a Comment