Eli Siegel’s lecture of July 15, 1970:

“What Lives? or What Have I Seen?”

by Ann Richards

On July 15, 1970 Eli Siegel lectured on the life and poetry of the important Romantic poet John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821 and whose poetic career lasted four years, 1816-1820. We had the honor to hear a recording of this profound and moving lecture recently in a class for consultants and associates. Its title, “What Lives?-- or What Have I Seen?” arises from a question that John Keats felt tormented by – Had he done anything that would live? In a letter to the poet Leigh Hunt he wrote, “…I have asked myself so often why I should be a poet more than other men…” Eli Siegel respected John Keats as poet and person – he saw his unsureness with the greatest kindness; he took it seriously and saw it as real and he also respected the beauty of the poetry that he got to in his short life. Today, 184 years after his death, Keats’ work is anthologized and it is studied in colleges everywhere. His “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” and “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” are as famous as any poems in English. He is known as the great poet who wrote the immortal phrase “A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” which in this lecture Eli Siegel said is almost a rival of “To be or not to be.” from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. “Whether he was certain or not,” Mr. Siegel said, “Keats has made it. It is important to see why whenever someone has.”

As he spoke, selecting from letters to family, friends, his solicitors, Eli Siegel had you see John Keats, the man, his deep sense of honor, the times in which he lived, everyday goings-on, historic events—we felt we were within the mind of one of the most important people who has ever lived – and seeing that his questions about how to see the world and people are humanity’s questions – are our questions. About unsureness and doubt Mr. Siegel said, “There are two things that are very bad: To doubt something because you feel like doubting and to go with the current. It’s bad to be a solitary conceited anarchist and to conform. Both are despicable….Keats didn’t have time to ask himself fully, but you can see he asked himself beautifully: What have I seen?”

In 1815, Napoleon was exiled to the island of St. Helena. In a letter of 1817 to his friend, the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon, Keats wrote of his admiration for Marshal Henri-Gratien Bertrand, who had served Napoleon since 1798 and wanted to go with him into exile. Quoting these lines from Shakespeare, whose poetry he loved and which he was reading again at the time, Keats said “The following applies well to Bertrand-” :

yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord

Does conquer him that did his master conquer

And earns a place i' the story

On these lines from Anthony and Cleopatra Mr. Siegel commented, “This is the kind of blank verse that Keats was not able to write. (Great poetry) is an intermingling of the leaf and the bar of bronze….the world as metal and the world as ever-so-dancing and casual.” Shakespeare’s poetry is greater than that of both Keats and Shelley, Mr. Siegel explained, because Shakespeare’s interest in people wasn’t limited; he was interested in so many types of people.

Said Mr. Siegel with critical compassion, “(Keats) could have welcomed people more.” “In this world there is no quiet, --nothing but teasing and snubbing and vexation,” wrote Keats of what he saw amongst his friends and fellow poets. In another letter to Benjamin Bailey from his rented rooms in Hempstead, he wrote this: “Mrs. Bentley’s children are making a horrid row – whereby I regret I cannot be transported to your Room to write to you.” Benjamin Bailey, studying for the clergy at Oxford, Keats considered more of a friend than either Percy Shelley or Leigh Hunt. In letters, he showed himself to Bailey, telling him some of his deepest feelings. Shelley liked to argue and Keats didn’t, Mr. Siegel said. Bailey liked to argue up to a point, but then he grew tired!

Another friend of Bailey’s, also studying for the clergy, George Robert Gleig, had earlier suspended his studies for some years to join the British army. He fought in the war of 1812 and later under the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. He also was a writer of military history and a frequent contributor to Blackwood’s Magazine. Eli Siegel praised Gleig’s writing, saying it had “deep distinction”. This is from his Life of Wellington, on the months preceding the battle of Waterloo:

“While the allies were thus mustering their strength, and preparing for a second inroad into France, Napoleon, with an energy unparalleled in the history of the world, called forth the might of France to resist the invasion. He found on his arrival in the Tuileries, 150,000 men under arms; in the course of little more than two months he raised the strength of the army to 400,000. All the avenues of approach to the capital, from the Pyrenees on one side to the passes of the Jura on the other, were observed; and the principal fortresses guarding the roads which led from them, armed and garrisoned chiefly with National Guards. Not that he omitted to appeal to the sovereigns of Europe in the cause of peace. His letters, especially that addressed to the Prince Regent of England, were masterpieces of eloquence; yet, having no confidence in the result, he never for a moment intermitted his efforts to meet the storm when it should come. The consequence was by the end of May he had, as I have just stated, 400,000 men with their standards, whom he calculated on being able to increase in October to 700,000. But how protract the contest till October came?”

About Gleig’s account of the battle of Saratoga Eli Siegel said, “I still feel that sense of battle and leaves.” Here there is also that relation of the earth and men and motion.

In a letter to Bailey in 1817, Keats mentions him in a brief sentence, “…. I hope Gleig came soon after I left.” And what Eli Siegel saw as he looked at this shows his greatness as critic. In this one sentence, which could so easily be passed by, he saw a mistake in how the important poet John Keats saw people, a snobbish exclusivity in him --which was in other Romantic poets as well-- and he saw a possibility for John Keats in it. Mr. Siegel said:

The fact that Gleig was religious and he also saw something beautiful, as Stendhal did, something of form in occurrences that are military and he saw this deeply, it makes one think. The life of Gleig is so different from that of Keats. It is so large, that if Keats had been interested in meeting him I think that what he was looking for he might have got….There are things to be objected to, but if Keats had talked to Gleig, the torment of Blackwoods might not have been. The romantics could look down their noses and be exclusive...One can say that Keats could have been more interested in this motion of many men in the low countries…I have a notion could he spend a day studying a general’s plans it could have brought something to him.

The compassion, the love of Eli Siegel for John Keats is one of the most beautiful things I ever heard. No one honored the meaning of John Keats’ life as Eli Siegel did. “What did Keats want to feel that he had not felt?” asked Mr. Siegel. He wanted Keats’ life to be even greater than it was. I was deeply moved by Eli Siegel’s thought about the hopes of John Keats, his unsureness, the hell he went through with the cruel review of his long poem Endymion in Blackwoods magazine, what he was looking for, and what would have made his life more complete. Eli Siegel’s good will for John Keats, as it was for every person in the world, was entire. It is embodied in his life work, Aesthetic Realism, which Eli Siegel called on one occasion “the organization of kindness.” It is. Although I never met Eli Siegel, in his thought, Aesthetic Realism, I have met utter good will in this world, and studying its scientific, beautiful principles first in consultations and now in classes taught by Class Chairman Ellen Reiss, makes my life increasingly complete. This education is needed by every person. Eli Siegel brought the same critical, careful looking that he had used to discuss Keats’ life to look at his two long works, saying, “These two works, Endymion and Hyperion should be studied in their relation. The music of both is so different! We get a sense of the contrary parts people can care for…It is a valuable dual taste.”

Endymion begins:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

* * *

Go to Part Two of "What LIves, or, What Have I Seen?" in which Eli Siegel takes up the immortal poetry of John Keats.