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Moneta's Temple

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Livingston Lowes
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Extract

What goes into a masterpiece is one thing. The form in which it emerges is another. What happens between, mechanics or miracle, is a third. This note is a summary statement, for a single passage in The Fall of Hyperion, A Vision, of the first of the three alone. It has developed through a series of surprises, as again and again some fact the bearing of which had been unnoticed has proved to be an element in a complex design—a design which has nevertheless achieved the effect of an effortless simplicity. It has to do, in a word, with an extraordinary convergence of impressions which, through their blendings, took form in an imaginative conception of rare beauty—a conception in which five themes interweave, almost as in a great symphonic movement: themes drawn, amazingly, from Greece, Judea, Egypt, the island of Staffa, and the Mount of Purgatory. That, I am well aware, is a statement which may not be lightly made, and warrant for it must be given.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1936 , pp. 1098 - 1113
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 i. 61–107.—The inception of the study will be found in a note, [The Fall of] “Hyperion and the Purgatorio” in LTLS, January 11, 1936, p. 35. That note was no sooner sent off than the Purgatorio was seen to be but a single strand in a complex web—a web of which the present article can do no more than disengage a few more strands, in the hope that the rich complexity of the texture and the consummate skill of its weaving may thereby appear. A similar study of the arbour (Vision, i. 19–54), over against which the temple is set, was to have been included in this paper, but the limits of space have compelled its reservation for separate treatment. Both that and this are preliminary studies for a volume on Keats, in which results first reached through detailed analysis may be more humanely treated. And the deep significance of the Vision in its bearing upon the development of Keats's thought must be reserved for that.

2 Letters, i, 30; ed. 1935, p. 29.—Keats in the same sentence had just quoted Lear, iv. vi. 16—the passage one phrase of which (“do you [not] hear the sea?”) three weeks before had “haunted him intensely” (Letters, i, 20; ed. 1935, p. 20). And now the reference to “mice” is recalled from Lear, iv.vi.19. Keats's gift of recalling what he read, and the greater gift of constantly interweaving his recollections with whatever else at the moment occupied his mind, finds apt illustrations in this phrase. And it is precisely that faculty of his, and not mechanical joinery, which underlies the manifold interweavings in the great passage now before us.

3 The number of editions is extraordinary, but this is not the place for a bibliography. In both instances the later editions are essentially reprints of the first.

4 E.g., 1758, ii, 179–180; 1770, ii, 193–194.

5 Ed. 1758, iii, 71; iv, 149, 206, 258; v, 18, 387; vi, 77; ed. 1770, iii, 12; iv, 205, 258; v, 19, 150, 177; vi, 72.

6 Endymion, ii, 22–23.

7 Lives (1758), i, 296. Cf. i, 303: “When he was chosen Admiral by the Athenians.”

8 Epistle to Reynolds, ll. 72–73, and cf. l. 56 (Letters, i, 136–137; ed. 1935, pp. 126–127.

9 Lives (1676), p. 178. In 1595, p. 226, “his flagge.”

10 North's translation could have been known to Keats only in one or the other of the folio editions of 1579, 1595, 1603, 1610–12, 1631, 1657, and 1676—volumes, however, more easily met with in Keats's day than now. The most accessible would probably be the edition of 1676, and for that reason my references are to it. But, in the passages which I shall use, the differences between the texts of the various folios are negligible.

11 Letters, i, 139; ed. 1935, p. 129.

12 North (1676), p. 171; (1758) ii, 107; (1770) ii, 118.

a Common to all three accounts.

b 1758, 1770: lower rank of columns.

c 1758, 1770: upper row of columns.

d 1758, 1770: the dome on the top (cf. Vision, i, 71).

e “Sanctuary” peculiar to North.

f 1758: Seats and rows of pillars; 1770: rows of seats and of pillars.

g 1758: the roof was of a conical figure; 1770: … of a conic figure.

h The phrase “which is somewhat … one point” is peculiar to North. See below, note 15.

i 1758: porch; 1770: vestibule.

j 1758, 1770: statue.

k 1758, 1770: near the altar.

13 See, for the steps and degrees, LTLS, January 11, 1936, p. 35, col. 1; and note 33 below.

14 Fall of Hyperion, i, 61–62, 66, 70–71, 81–92.

15 One passage in North, quoted above, has an echo some thirty-odd lines earlier in the poem: “the top of the roof … which is somewhat hanging downward round about of itself”; so, in The Fall of Hyperion i, 25–27: “I saw an arbour with a drooping roof of trellis vines.”

Where (apropos of North's Plutarch) did Keats find access to all the books which he certainly knew? Recognition of the scope of his reading keeps broadening the more searchingly his letters and poems are read. The answer lies in part in his eager quest of libraries—a quest of which the scattered references in his letters give some inkling (for example, Letters, ii, 312, 398, 399, 407, 425, 463, 474, 478; ed. 1935, pp. 292, 366, 375, 390, 423, 432–433, 437). And there were the circulating libraries too (Letters i, 131: ed. 1935, p. 122). Nor may the opportunities of the month spent with Bailey in Oxford (Letters, i, 37–56; ed. 1935, pp. 35–54) be left out of account. And there was also the “cloathe's basket of Books” which Bentley brought him! (Letters, i, 274; ed. 1935, p. 253). See also Letters, ii, 488; ed. 1935, p. 448, for “other peoples Books.”

16 Plutarch, Life of Pericles (1676), p. 138. The sentence immediately precedes the account of the Parthenon. In the edition of 1758: “They have the freshness of a modern work. They seem to be preserved from the injuries of time by a kind of vital principle, which produces a vigour that cannot be impaired, and a bloom that will never fade” (ii, 20). Again, in Langhorne: “A bloom is diffused over them, which preserves their aspect untarnished by time, as if they were animated with a spirit of perpetual youth and unfading elegance” (ii, 20).

17 The Vision of Hyperion, i, 72–77.—The relation between linen (line) and asbestos (amianthus)—a relation strange to us—was long a familiar one. See, in a book which Keats owned, Alexander Adam, Roman Antiquities, (ed. 1792, p. 483), the remarks about “a species of incombustible cloth, made of what the Greeks called Asbestos, Plin. xix, 1, f. 4.” And add, for convenience of reference (the passages are all good reading), NED, s. v. asbestos 3, the quotations from Topsell, 1607, and Phil. Trans., 1667; s. v. amianthus 1, with the quotations; and, especially, s. v. line, sb1, 1. a, the quotations of 1548 and 1611. The articles under the pertinent terms in such books of reference as the Encyclopædia Britannica (1797), etc., will bring us nearer Keats's day. See further, for linen, note 46 below.

The fullest and most fascinating account that Keats could have read—and since he knew at least of the Natural History (Letters, ii, 336; ed. 1935, p. 313), and may well have looked up Adam's reference—is that in the first chapter of Book xix in “The Second Tombe” of the superb folio of Holland's Pliny (1634–35, pp. 2 ff.). It is a translation of Nat. Hist., xix, 1 (2) < 1–6, treating, among other things, “Of Flax and Linnen that will not burne in the fire,” etc. “In Greeke,” says Holland, “they call this Line, Asbestinum” (on p. 624 it is “asbestos”), and the long chapter is rich in historical references of interest to Keats—Alexander's crossing of the Indus (cf. Endymion, ii, 24–25); “the Armada or fleet of K. Alexander the Great,” and “the sailes of that ship … wherein M. Antonius together with Cleopatra came to Actium.” “Lord, what a change,” the chapter goes on, “was here at Rome since the daies of Cato the Censor!” (quantum mutati a moribus Catonis censorii.)

18 Potter, Antiquities, i, 224; Fall of Hyperion, i, 81–82, 85–86.

19 Potter, i, 227.

20 Potter, i, 228.

21 Potter, i, 224.

22 The Fall of Hyperion, i, 87–89.—“Black stone” is associated with the images in Potter, i, 226–227; so, “black gates” in Fall, i, 85.

23 It is called a temple in Vision, i, 221, 285, 300; cf. 180.

24 Miss Darbyshire has apparently overlooked this fact, when, speaking of “the temple of Moneta,” she writes: “It is an immense Gothic cathedral, but it enshrines pagan images and pagan rites” (RES, iii, 9: “Keats and Egypt”). Keats's knowledge of cathedrals—St. Paul's, Chichester, Winchester—needs no argument. Had he meant in The Fall of Hyperion to suggest a cathedral, he would scarcely have gone about it by turning the structure end for end.

One bit of evidence, however, of his acquaintance at first hand with the interior disposition of a cathedral is too engaging to omit: “Winchester … being a cathedral City I shall have a pleasure always a great one to me when near a Cathedral, of reading them [Fanny Brawne's letters] during the service up and down the Aisle” (Letters, ii, 398; ed. 1935, p. 367). And three sentences later he refers to Winchester as “my Cathedral.”

25 Miss Darbishire, who draws the same inference in RES, iii, 3–4, is chiefly concerned with the influence of the two articles on Hyperion, and touches upon the Vision in two brief passages only (pp. 5–6, 9–10).

26 See also Miss Darbishire, RES, iii, 6, for the stationing “by the side of an altar.”

27 Letters, i, 217–218; ed. 1935, pp. 199–200 (July 26, 1818); cf. Letters, i, 477 ff., ed. 1935, pp. 409–413.

28 Letters, i, 217–218; ed. 1935, pp. 199–200 (July 26, 1818).—The copy of the letter in Letters, ii, 447–451, ed. 1935, pp. 409–413, differs from the original in no detail above, except that “the Giants who rebelled against Jove” have become “the Giants, who came down to the daughters of Men.”

29 The Fall of Hyperion, i, 66–71, 83–86.

30 Hyperion, i, 86.—The fact that Keats unmistakably recalled Fingal's Cave in Hyperion is sound presumptive evidence for its recollection in The Vision.

31 Letters, i, 218, n.; ed. 1935, p. 200, n.

32 After his declaration “—But it is impossible to describe it,” Keats at once goes on:

33 LTLS, January 11, 1936, p. 35.—But to Dante's account of the steps in the Purgatorio must be added the ascent of the steps (degrees, stair, stairs) “up to the wall of Heaven” in Paradise Lost, iii, 502–540. Dante's influence on the passage in the Vision remains unmistakable. But Milton's account as well was clearly in Keats's mind. “Aaron's breastplate” is referred to in P. L. iii, 598, and the phrase “whom John saw” occurs in P. L. iii, 623. And that coalescence of impressions is characteristic of Keats—and of poetry, as is no less the impression of poignant reality communicated by the toiling up the steps.

34 The first chapter of The Revelation of St. John the Divine was actively stirring, at least for the moment, in Keats's mind. The “Candlesticks John saw in Heaven” are “the seven golden candlesticks” of Revelation, i, 12, 20; ii, 1). They, in turn, are identified with the seven churches: “the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches” (Revelation, i, 20). And those are “the churches seven Golden-aisled built up in heaven” (Letters, i, 219; ed. 1935, p. 200) which “St. John in Patmos isle” had seen, and which, in the lines that immediately follow the description of Fingal's Cave, took second place to “the rugged wonder” of Staffa. The Eve of St. Mark and the visit to the island stood in intimate relations to each other.

35 Letters, ed. 1935, p. 290.—The first of the two passages which Keats ascribes to Jeremiah is from Isaiah, and in the quotation from the Psalms “Princes” should be “Rulers.”

36 The Vision, i, 93, 95–96, 102–107.

37 “Sweet savour” from the altar is mentioned in the Pentateuch more than thirty times.

38 Colvin, John Keats, pp. 558 ff.—I am using, however, thanks to the courtesy of the Morgan Library, a photostatic copy of Woodhouse's original list.

39 The description (p. 102) reads: “Bible, with notes, etc., wherein the mistranslations are corrected; by the Rev. Henry Southwell, LL.D.; London, for J. Cooke.” And the date is 1773. Where Keats's own copy is, I do not know.

40 Letters, i, 38; ed. 1935, p. 36—dated 5 September, 1817.

41 Where the name “Kewthon” hails from—unless from Keats's fertile fancy—I wish I knew. The Tower of Babel turns up again five days later (Sept. 10) in a letter to Fanny Keats (Letters, i, 41; ed. 1935, p. 39), and then again, on Sept. 21, in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (Letters, i, 47; ed. 1935, p. 45). See also the allusions to studying Hebrew (Letters, i, 42; ed. 1935, p. 41), and to Nimrod and the Book of Genesis (Letters, i, 44–45; ed. 1935, pp. 42–43).

42 Above the engraving is a reference to Exodus, xl, 22–27.

43 Ll. 97–99.

44 Collected Essays, iv (“A Critical Introduction to Keats”), 113.

45 Cary's translation reads:

As when, to harbinger the dawn, springs up

On freshen'd wing the air of May, and breathes

Of fragrance, all impregn'd with herb and flowers;

E'en such a wind, etc.

There is another most alluring possibility in connection with the lines. Chaucer, who was deeply versed in Dante, read and remembered Purg. xxiii, 31: “Parean l'occhiaie anella senza gemme”; Troilus and Criseyda, v, 549: “O rying, fro which the ruby is out falle.” And he had read and recalled Purg. xx, 106–107: “E la miseria dell' avaro Mida, Che segui alla sua domanda ingorda”; T. and C., iii, 1389: “As hadde Mida, ful of coveytise” (see, more fully, MP, xiv, 711–12). And it is difficult to doubt that Chaucer, who had remembered a line from Purgatorio xxiii, was not recalling, in the opening of the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, the lines from Canto xxiv which Keats also remembered. Chaucer and Keats, each after his kind, were deeply stirred by the Purgatorio.

46 Miss Helen Darbishire (RES, iii, 9–10) makes the interesting suggestion that it was the Egyptian linens, which Keats may have seen in the British Museum in 1818, that suggested Moneta's veils, and adds: “The priests of Isis wore linen garments.” That is true, and to it may be added Pliny, Nat. Hist., xix, 1. (3), concerning linum: “vestes inde sacerdotibus Aegypti gratissimi.” But it is no less true that Keats, from the passages which he was certainly reading, would have learned that the Hebrew priests also wore linen garments: “The priest shall put on his linen garment” (Leviticus, vi, 10): “He [Aaron] shall put on the holy linen coat, and he shall have linen breeches upon his flesh, and he shall be girded with a linen girdle, and with a linen mitre shall he be attired: these are holy garments” (Leviticus xvi, 4; and cf. Exodus, xxviii, 5, 6, 8, 39, 42). It is unnecessary to go to Egypt for the priest's linen. See further my note (“Hyperion and the Purgatorio”) in LTLS, Jan. 11, 1936.

47 Archbishop Potter, of course (Antiquities of Greece, i, 229), has a brief notice of ancient altars “adorned with horns.” And Keats could also have found them elsewhere. But the large context of the term as Keats employs it carries with it in this case the Biblical associations.

48 I submit an incontrovertibly contemporaneous instance, which, with uncanny relevance, a moment of relaxation from the rigor of the game has, within the hour of writing this, supplied: “the chafing-dish in which he was preparing … their simple lunch”; “the contents of the chafing-dish had justified their odour” (P. G. Wodehouse, The Indiscretions of Archie, Chap. ii).

49 In the edition of 1683–86 (“By Several Hands”), iii, 531: “kindled a fire in a caldron”: ed. 1758, iii, 437: “a pan full of live coals”; ed. 1770, iii, 440: “a censer with fire in it.” It was North's word which Keats used.

50 North, Lives (1676), p. 473.—Keats would almost certainly know the term in The Anatomy (where it has come a step nearer its current sense), for it occurs in the great Second Partition, not far from those passages which, in his own copy (see Keats, Complete Works (1900–1901), iii, 266–275), Keats had marked and commented on: “Take a Ram's head … and put these spices to it, Cinnamon, Ginger, Nutmeg, Mace, Cloves … mingle the powder of these spices with it, and heat them in a platter upon a chafing-dish of coals together” (Part. ii, Sect. v, Mem. i, Subs. v). And I also quote, for the charm of the wording, “old-fashioned and choicely good,” a passage from The Compleat Angler (where Keats may or may not have seen it), in which the term occurs: “… put him [the Chub] into a pewter dish, and cover him with another, put into him as much White Wine as wil cover him, or Spring water and Vinegar, and store of Salt, with some branches of Time, and other sweet herbs; let him then be boiled gently over a Chafing-dish with wood coles” (Walton, Compleat Angler (1653), p. 58).

51 Letters, i, 139; ed. 1935, p. 129.—Three months earlier he had written his brothers of how “Several things dove-tailed in [his] mind” (Letters, i, 77; ed. 1935, p. 72).