I was first introduced to The Eve of St Agnes by my English teacher, Angus Graham-Campbell. A formidable scholar and theatre director in his own right, ACDG-C, as he was known, had a reputation for his unorthodox and sometimes radical teaching techniques.
He was famous for, early in the school year, not saying a single word for almost a whole lesson. I found out later he was experimenting with a new form of teaching which had shown promising results in other, particularly anarchic schools. He would also give £5 to whoever called him out, correctly, for telling a fake story. If you couldn’t prove the fakery he nonchalantly pocketed your £1 stake, adding it to the no-doubt huge pile testifying disbelief in the truth of the edelweiss pirates, or ACDG-C’s family relationship to Jack the Ripper.
All of this silliness was carefully arranged of course, because he was, and is, nothing if not an exceptional teacher. He has long sat on the committee of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Society and written a number of very-well received pieces such as Writ in Water (which I wrote about in an earlier post) and Rebel Angel.
I remember his lesson on The Eve of St Agnes well. How in the opening stanzas he explained the tapestry-like quality elicited by the matrix of rhyming couplets in the Spenserian stanza form. The poem is made up of a series of static images: the hare limping through the frozen grass while the owl shivers above, the bede’s breath flying up to Heaven, the drunken revelling within the castle, and so on. I remember him telling us how Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (an epic of over 36,000 lines) was the first major literary work written in this form, and how he counted himself as one of the few people on earth who could honestly say they had read the whole thing.
The Eve of St Agnes is not just a series of pretty pictures though; it is very plot-driven. The threat of imminent disembowelment hanging over Porphyro’s head, should he be discovered, prevents us ever becoming bored.
ACDG-C explained how the world of the castle is one where dreams and reality ‘melt’ into one another. How Keats struggled with how to convey the eventual realisation of Porphyro’s desires as “he melted into [Madeleine’s] dream”, as well as with many of the more descriptive images. This struggle created poetry such as the wonderful “chain-droop’d lamp” flickering over each door as Porphyro ascends into the depths of the castle.
ACDG-C also pointed out how extraordinary the depiction of Madeleine, seen from Porphyro’s point of view as he hides in a cupboard, is, how it mingles reverence both religious and passionate. Even as Madeleine devoutly kneels to pray (“she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon”) a rose-tinted window “threw warm gules on [to her] fair breast”. We see her undressing, and watch with Porphyro as she looses her hair and unclasps jewels sensuously warmed by her body. She is both innocent and siren, “Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed”.
All this carefully balanced duality is part of Keats’ ability to communicate through feeling. He makes this explicit in a letter to his friend Reynolds:
O fret not after knowledge — I have none
And yet my song comes native with the warmth,
John Keats, ‘To John Hamilton Reynolds’, 19th February 1818, John Keats: Selected Letters, John Barnard, ed. (London: Penguin, 2014), p.117.
One can also see it in his idea of the chameleon poet and of negative capability. This has been written about extensively elsewhere. If you’re interested, something like Consuming Keats by Sarah Wootton is excellent.
Now, ACDG-C always taught his students not to be too reverential. Strong red lines would appear on our work if we ever wrote something like “this is the best poem ever written” or “this truly excellent image…”. In this mood, here’s a witty summary of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (by Desmond Skirrow) which was quoted to me recently:
Gods chase. Round vase. What say? What play? Don't know. Nice, though.
Thanks for reading!
PS This is the thirteenth in my series of reviews and reflections on the Penguin Little Black Classics series. If you enjoyed this you might like some of the others; click here for the full list of posts.
Rupert Swallow 