stills from hereI think it's excessively clear to you all that i am a real romantic. Like poetry-reading, Jane Austen following, couture-loving romantic. Beautiful things, wild feelings, heart-beating life... I love emotions, i love really feeling things, if that makes sense. There's a great quote that i used to write all over notebooks and school notes by that great romantic (oh, how he did love) lord byron, 'the great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist'. I truly believe that, sometimes you can muddle through life lurking somewhere in the middle, but its at the spectrum's ends that you really feel your existence, whether it tugs at your heartstrings or leaps you into the air.
I haven't done a poetry post in quite a while, and i sort feel like doing one now. I saw Bright Star the other day, a special preview screening with a great friend of mine, and i have to tell you, it was truly marvelous. I know i am completely biased towards the film for the following reasons 1. Ben Whishaw is my future husband (one of many, i know, but he is rather gorgeous). 2. i actually know Abbie Cornish, so i'm always predisposed to like her films. 3. I am obsessed, like really obsessed with those romantic poets, of whom Keats was the exemplar and 4. anything that even slightly involves accents, period films, beautiful costumes and the hint of a tears will capture my heart forever. For the same reason that Becoming Jane is one of my favourite films even though it wasn't really considered any good by critics. I sobbed my heart out in that film. And i will continue to do so as long as I have eyes to cry.
Anyway, Bright Star is the story of John Keats and Fanny Brawne, star-crossed lovers if ever i saw a pair. Opposites from the beginning (she thought his poetry and literature impotent and he thought her high-fashion efforts and studies were humorous) they learn to love each other (as all star-crossed lovers do). I don't want to give too much away to those who want to see the movie, and i really recommend that you do, especially if you are even one iota of the romantic that i am. The story is incredible, Keats and Fanny are skilfully realised by these two competent actor and actresses as well as amazing cinematography and Jane Campion's ability to translate the kind of raw, vivid, pulsating frenzy that Keats purported in his poems. Keats was one of the greatest poets of not only his time, but all of history. Reviewers likened him to the first Rock star, that the way he spoke about emotions, experiences, love, life - legitimised discourse within society on those topics and catapulted him to bright stardom (see what i did there? heh) in the same way that rock stars and their heartfelt lyrics find themselves surrounded by hopeful groupies.
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon in death.
John Keats
Their love is one of quiet passion, if ever that could be possible. The constraints of their society and of personal situations keep them apart, and the most climactic, overpowering scene in the film (I was sobbing at this point hysterically) is one where the two lovers lie on a bed together, looking, touching chastely, but not actually doing anything. Not because they don't want to, but because they can't. This film is PG, and yet i found it more passionate and overwhelming than any of the movies featuring explicit sex scenes and overt sexualisation. There is something to be said for that kind of passion that you find in love letters, in hands brushing briefly as you walk down flights of stairs, of averted gazes and the tucking of curls away from faces with a tender caress, where the clothes are high-necked and long sleeved and the glimpse of flesh at the wrists or the sternum could be overpowering (ridiculed constantly, i know, but tightly laced societies have to have their release somehow)...
Keats is the kind of poet that i always pictured Marianne Dashwood reading. He is not hot-blooded in the way that Byron was, not rafish or playboy in any sense of the word. But he is full, quite brimming actually, with feeling. This sonnet of his is supposedly written for Fanny, reminiscing on times past, on love lost. I love how the poem flows so well, how you want to read it all in one breath, how you don't want it to end, how when you read it aloud it all just sort of moves seamlessly ever onward. So many poems have this stilted, truncated feel to the sentences, but never Keats.
And how marvelous is the repetition of that 'still' in the last couplet? It's almost as if the second 'still' is meant to be whispered, a quiet exclamation of joy, disbelief, ecstasy, overwhelming happiness. The kind of feelings that seeing your lover lying on the pillow sleeping next to you can elicit in you.
The ending is what i love best about this poem. Throughout the sonnet you get all this star imagery as Keats explores the idea of the Bright Star, ever steadfast. Watching over the world, constant forever. The ending seems to show a romantic sensibility but also realism in regards to love and death - Keats wants love to power his life forever, but he sees that even if he does die he will do so filled with passion and sensuality - 'swoon in death' is a lovely turn of phrase, don't you think? - which he sees as an acceptable fate. Should he die, perhaps he will become the bright star, constant and steadfast, watching the world with eyes eternally open.
And i think that's enough romance for today... who am i kidding, i'm off to watch atonement. love, all!
X
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