I recently had the pleasure of seeing Bright Star, the Jane Campion film about the relationship between John Keats and Fanny Brawne. If you have not seen it, find a way to see it. It is a beautiful, sensuous, lyrical film, and it has been swimming in my imagination since my first viewing of it (I have watched it many times since). The film has also gotten me to start reading Keats, which I am very thankful for. I love the Romantic painters, why have I not read Romantic poetry?
Keats' letters are also worth a read-they are fresh and lively and sensitive and altogether entertaining. I have been going over and over in my head about his idea of 'Negative Capability': “I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...” He wrote in a letter to his brothers. Be open to life, to the mystery of life, and don't reach after thing that are ultimately pointless! Be in it! Ahh I love it. I think much of my own work is about me trying to do this; to be sensitive to life. And here Keats is, explaining it away.
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