Sunday, November 8, 2009

Jane Campion's Movie "Bright Star" and John Keats

I just saw Jane Campion's movie Bright Star about "the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats' untimely death at age 25" (quoted from IMDB.com). The movie was romantic yet devoid of sentimentality. The performances were hard to forget.

I must confess that I don't know much about John Keats and his work. I browsed a little bit his poetry and like this one very much:

On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

My Spirit is too weak — mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time — with a billowy main —
A sun — a shadow of a magnitude.

"Like a sick eagle looking at the sky." Perhaps, a painting or a drawing will come out of this?

No comments:

Post a Comment