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Hellenism and
Keats
Hellenism
Hellenism is defined as the study or imitation of Greek culture
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Keats is Hellenist in the sense that he continues to
spread Greek culture through his poetry
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Hellenic Poets
John Keats, Percy B
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Origin
The word Hellenism is derived from the word Hellene which means Greek
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Translation of Greek Classics
One of Keats’ friends lent him a copy of “Chapman’s Translation of Homer”
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He described it’s effect in his famous sonnet
“On first looking into Chapman’s Homer”:
“Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold
Then felt I like some watcher of skies
Where a new planet swims into his ken”
Until he hadn’t heard Chapman’s book, Keats did not know how far could he go into the
dimensions of poetry, imagination, culture and history
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New planet means the hidden truths revealed
upon Keats
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2
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Keats had a very strong grip on
Greek knowledge due to this book
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Hellenism Features
Features of Hellenism include Greek instinct, love for Greek culture and literature, love with
Greek sculpture and art, love for beauty, Greek temperament, touch for fatalism and tragedy,
use of myths and legends, influence of Homer, melancholy attitude, combined romanticism
with Greek culture
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The images painted onto the urn reflect scenes that are
once at particular to Greek culture and yet reflective of broader human experiences
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That maybe when he acquired
the Greek knowledge, it was really sweet for him
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Similarly,
“ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed”
“Cannot shed” can also be taken as a reference to Greek culture
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Since, he has included it in his poetry and he’s telling the world
about it, so his poetry will remind everyone of Greek culture
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“Thou foster child of silence and slow time
Sylvian historian, who canst thus express”
Keats highlights the importance of objects in relation to history by calling the urn a Sylvian
historian, instantly drawing a link between the speaker’s own historical moment and the urn’s
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This starts the contrast since gods, as art, are also immortal
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”
O attic shape refers to Attica, a region of East central ancient Greece in which Athens was a
chief city
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Similarly, Keats has made innumerable references to Greek culture in his Ode to a nightingale
as well
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“One minute past, and Lethe wards had sunk”
Lethe is one of five rivers in Hades, drinking its waters causes forgetfulness
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“Tasting of Flora and the country green,”
Flora is a Roman goddess of flowers and spring; Greek equivalent is Chloris
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“Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene”
Hippocrene is a fountain on Mt
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Its
waters supposedly brought poetic inspiration
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“Away! Away! For I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus8 and his pards”
Bacchus is the Roman god of wine equivalent to Greek Dionysus
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Bacchus has a deep

history rooted in many myths with many connections to other gods and figures
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Moreover, there are countless allusions to Greek legends and stories in poems which are not
directly based on Greek themes
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In Ode on
Melancholy, references are made to the river Lethe, goddess Proserpine and Psyche
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The Greek temper of Keats is also revealed particularly in his joy in the Beauty of nature and
his zest for an out of door life lived in her midst
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The following lines can be cited
in this regard“And haply the Queen –Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays”
Conclusion
This Greek note in Keats’ poetry should not be exaggerated
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As a
matter of fact, he got his knowledge of Greek mythology and literature through the study of
the Elizabethans and in the process also imbibed their romanticism
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As Legoius and Cazamian put it, ‘Keats
affects the rare union of classical discipline, guided by the examples and precepts of the
ancients, with the more intrinsically precious matter, which the artist finds in
romanticism’
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He often tries to penetrate to the real significance and truth which may lie
at the back of formal beauty

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