“To Fanny Brawne”

John Keats knew of death and heartbreak at a very young age. By the time he was in his late teens, he had lost both parents and knew his own health was not good. Perhaps this series of events led to his heightened senses which are so evident in his work. Without question, Keats’ work is filled with raw emotion. The Norton Anthology says Keats’ work has a “concreteness of description in which all the senses – tactile, gustatory, kinetic, visceral, as well as visual and auditory – combine to give the total apprehension of an experience” (Keats 902). His letter “To Fanny Brawne” clearly shows the longing he felt to be with Fanny. Keats says “You cannot conceive how I ache to be with you: how I would die for one hour” (Keats 978). Keats was very aware of his own mortality and while he would have loved to have spent his days with Fanny he knew what would bring him pleasure would ultimately lead to more pain for Fanny.

miniature portrait of Fanny Brawne

When Keats and Fanny met there was an instant love connection. They became engaged, but Keats felt he could not afford to support a wife, so they kept their engagement a secret from everyone but those in their closest circle of friends. While Keats was clearly in love with Fanny, he was also in love with the idea of his death. In his letter to Fanny, Keats says “I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.” (Keats 978).
There are two themes that surface throughout this letter; passion and death. It is evident that thoughts of both love and death consume Keats. What Keats thinks and feels, he feels with great passion. In his letter to Fanny, Keats says “I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it.” (Keats 978). Keats’ writing is often thought to have a very morbid tone. While he writes of death often, Keats never leaves his reader feeling a lack of emotion.
These themes are evident, not only in Keats’ letter to Fanny, but also in his poetry. In “On Seeing The Elgin Marbles” Keats, once again, speaks of death. “My spirit is too weak – mortality / weighs heavily on me” (Keats 906). Knowing that his life would likely be taken at an early age by tuberculosis was a recurring theme in many of Keats’ work. It is evident in “When I have fears that I may cease to be” not only is death his focus, but he writes of his concern for not being able to accomplish all he desires. “When I have fears that I may cease to be / Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain” (Keats 911).

This emotional connection with the reader certainly connects him to the Romantic period. The Romantic Period was associated with thoughts and feelings, two things Keats poured into his work. Through his work, the reader is able to sense the emotional turmoil he lives in. He uses words like “ache”, “deep love”, “hate”, “absorb” and “burns”. The work of John Keats was initially very harshly criticized. Near the end of his death, and more particularly after, he was considered one of the biggest inspirations and most studied poets of the 19th Century. (Keats 902-903).

Watercolour of Fanny Brawne, 1833.
(9 August 1800 – 4 December 1865)

Wentworth Place (left), now the Keats House museum, Hampstead

Click here to return to the Keats letter introduction page.

Citation:
Keats, John. “John Keats.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 901-903. Print
Keats, John. “When I have fears that I may cease to be.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 911. Print
Keats, John. “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 906. Print
Keats, John. “To Fanny Brawne.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012. 978. Print.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00134/84594985_Fanny_Brawne_134490c.jpg. Digital Image. Web.
https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/FileKeats_House.jpg. Digital Image. Web.