Keats' Apollo:
Myth in English Romantic Poetry
The Apollonian Complex: Imagery and Idea in Keats' Poetry
What I term the Apollonian Complex is an interrelated group of ideas and
images in Keats' poetry associated with and meeting in the figure of Apollo--associations
which stem from Keats' personal configuration of the god as well as his
traditional mythological characterization. They oftentimes inhabit Keats'
direct references to and descriptions of Apollo, but are also found apart
from the god and may be meant to recall Apollo even when his name is not
invoked. For instance, the fire and light imagery used to describe Porphyro
in The Eve of St. Agnes compounded with the lute-playing scene may tell
us that he ought to be identified with Apollo, an observation which can
enrich our reading of the poem as we open up Porphyro to the Apollonian
complex of ideas. As Keith White illumines for us in John Keats and the
Loss of Romantic Innocence (1996), perhaps the most prominent species of
Apollonian imagery is that of light or all things bright and fiery. Forms
of the words bright and golden, and many other radiant modifiers like blazing,
brilliant, glisten, gleam and glow, proliferate and cast a splendor over
Keats' poetry (14-5). As the god of the sun, Apollo is traditionally associated
with light and fire, but Keats' heavy emphasis on gold--"God of the golden
bow,/ And of the golden lyre,/ And of the golden hair,/And of the golden
fire"--is Keats' own. He is also the "Charioteer/ Round the patient year"
(God of the golden bow) who occasionally appears in Keats' sky, driving
the sun in its course and bringing the order of time into the complex of
Apollonian associations. Apollo's golden lyre, traditionally silver, and
the "adamantine lyres,/ Whose cords are solid rays, and twinkle radiant
fires" of the great poets in the Ode to Apollo remind us that Apollo is
also the god of poetry and music. The lute-playing of Porphyro, as I mentioned
above, and other signs of musicality can sometimes be read as signs of
the influence or presence of Apollo. Critics often draw parallels between
the role of the poet-hero and that of Apollo, reading Apollo for poet and
poet for Apollo, suggesting the divinity of the poetic imagination. The
presence of laurels, the prize of victors and poets, may also signify the
presence of Apollo in a poem. Because laurels are the sign of prophesy
and medicine as well as poetry in the cult of Apollo, the poetic act may
further be connected to prognosis and diagnosis. Surely, says the poet
in The Fall of Hyperion taking over Apollo's role in Hyperion, "a poet
is a sage;/ A humanist, physician to all men" (l. 189-90). Hermione De
Almeida and Keith White both believe that Keats' statements to the effect
that the true poet should be a physician comes not only from his medical
career but from his knowledge that the god of poets is the god of medicine
as well, that the Apollo complex of his poetry expands to incorporate ideas
of healing. De Almeida further reminds us that Apollo is the god of disease,
something Keats picks up on in The Fall of Hyperion when the true poet-physician
cries, "Apollo!...Where is thy misty pestilence to creep/ Into dwellings.../Of
all mock lyricists" (l. 204-7). This disease is in itself a kind of healing,
a "purging or cauterizing influence" as De Almeida puts it (Romantic Medicine
19), ridding the world of false poets and doctors. Whether these ideas
came first and Apollo was added later or Apollo came first and the ideas
were added later is a bit difficult to tell, but it is not quite a chicken-or-the-egg
question. Keith White believes that Keats began with a fascination for
light and fire imagery as representative of essence, truth and beauty,
and when Apollo came to prominence in Keats' poetry as the god of the sun,
other ideas and imagery such as those concerning poetry and medicine found
shelter under his umbrella-like character. What is more difficult to determine
is when it is these images and ideas remain under the umbrella and when
they come out from under it, that is, when they become detached from the
Apollonian complex and are not meant to recall the god himself or other
ideas met in him. To what extent can we say that light imagery refers to
Apollo, and from Apollo, to poetry, time, healing, et cetera? We must also
examine carefully the extent to which Apollo himself may become detached
from this rather large complex of ideas, and connote something less or
something other than this large conglomerate of ideas. Can he sometimes
simply be an shallow allusion to
Greek mythology?
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created 5/7/98