Negative Capability...We Still Talk of Keats’s poetry....After 200 Years

 The late Rishi Kapoor: "...There are times when I think there is nothing new left to be said, not just in India but anywhere in the world. Can you name one good story that has emerged in the last twenty years in world cinema? We still talk of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, of Keats’s poetry, of Picasso and Michelangelo’s paintings. We go and see the Pietà in Rome. We gawk at stuff that’s 500 years old. But there is nothing to wonder at today, no great writers, sculptors or artists, because there is nothing new to narrate or portray. The West has offered us new ideas in animation and futuristic films but there is little else. There is a void everywhere, not just in RK..."

Maria Popova: "...In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas, found in Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends (public library; public domain) and dated December 21, 1817, Keats uses the phrase that has come to be the single most emblematic phrase of his entire surviving correspondence, even though he only makes mention of it once: “Negative Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. Triggered by Keats’s disagreement with English poet and philosopher Coleridge, whose quest for definitive answers over beauty laid the foundations for modern-day reductionism, the concept is a beautiful articulation of a familiar sentiment — that life is about living the questions, that the unknown is what drives science, that the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious..."

 Amy Wilcockson, History Today, February 2021: "... Since the 1930s Keats has continued to epitomise our ideal of the Romantic poet, with his beautiful verses, tragic life and early death. His writings are beloved by generations and his life continues to be scrutinised in the 21st century perhaps to a greater extent than ever before. Despite believing that he had ‘left nothing to make [his] friends proud of [his] memory’, it is ultimately owing to the work of those very friends and fans that his memory did live on. Thanks to them, on the bicentenary of his death, Keats is still read, studied and remembered."

 Artist:  John Buckland Wright (1897–1954) , illustration for The Collected Sonnets of John Keats 1930

तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;...Still the Dogs Go On With Their Doggy Life: W. H. Auden@114

Today February 21 2021 is 114th birth anniversary of W. H. Auden
 
"...How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree...." 

('Musée des Beaux Arts', December 1938)

John Sutherland writes of the poem:

“...‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ is not, in itself, a difficult poem but it is baffling if one does not know where it is coming from. Auden was a much travelled poet. In 1938 he spent several months in Belgium. They were ominous months: war was looming.

The ‘Musee’ in the poem is the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in Brussels. It has a magnificent collection of the 16th-century artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s paintings. We should picture the poet sauntering, on a quiet summer afternoon, through the galleries, savouring Bruegel’s masterpieces. The poem has no rhyme scheme – it’s a stream of unstructured consciousness.

The first painting the poet sees is that of Herod’s census – the sinister search for the unborn Jesus narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Mary and Joseph flee to Bethlehem. In the gospels ‘the miraculous birth’ is an all-important event. But in the painting it is no big thing. Not as important, for example, as unloading a cart is to the carter, or skating is to children on their ‘pond at the edge of the wood’. A baby is born in a barn? So what. It happens every day in Bethlehem. The census-taking is going on at an improvised office window. The painting is all detail, as is everyday life...”

Has this poem influenced B S Mardhekar's (बा सी मर्ढेकर) following poem?

"अजून येतो वास फुलांना

अजून माती लाल चमकते;

खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून 

अजून बकरी पाला खाते.

... 

भूकंपाचा इकडे  धक्का 

पलीकडे अन्  युद्ध-नगारे;

चहूंकडे अन् एकच गिल्ला,

जुन्या शवांवर नवे निखारे.

 ...

तरीहि येतो वास फुलांना,
तरीहि माती लाल चमकते;
खुरट्या बुंध्यावरी चढून
तरीहि बकरी पाला खाते;

..."

'The Census at Bethlehem', 1566

Artist: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525-1569)

courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

‘Bismillah! Here comes her highness, Shahzaadi Jahanara Begum! Bismillah!’...

Ira Mukhoty, ‘Daughters of the Sun: Empresses, Queens and Begums of the Mughal Empire’, 2018:

“....It is a glittering spring day in Shahjahanabad in 1654 and the usually raucous crowds at the stalls lining the Chandni Chowk have fallen silent, beguiled by the magnificence of the procession moving down the wide, tree-lined street. In front of the slow-moving elephants, liveried men sprinkle water on the street so that no dust rises off the ground. Cavalry and infantry follow, the horses tripping and impatient, the soldiers fierce and sombre. Eunuchs walk behind the soldiers, surrounding the imperial elephant on all sides. ‘Hoshiyaar!’ they shout, and make a great show of keeping back the crowds. They raise their silver sticks, ‘shouting out, pushing and assaulting everyone without the least respect of persons’. The Abyssinian eunuchs are particularly fearsome, their muscles rippling beneath their dark skin like a promise. The traders at the shops stand back respectfully and there are Armenians, Persians, Italians, Turks, Portuguese and French adventurers who will spread the stories of Mughal grandeur throughout the world. While the procession passes by, the merchants forget to haggle over the Chinese eye glasses, the jewellery, the perfumes, the gemstones, the slaves, the eunuchs and the caged cheetahs. The elegant white-robed men at the coffee houses drinking the dark brew made from imported beans from Persia set down their tumblers and stand to watch the commotion. Servants walk next to the imperial elephant, driving away flies with peacock feathers stuck into handles of enamelled gold. Others hold perfumes and incense as they walk next to the elephant, so that no offensive smell reaches the exalted passenger. A woman-servant walks in front of the elephant, swinging an incense holder in her hands and shouting out at each step: ‘Bismillah! Here comes her highness, Shahzaadi Jahanara Begum! Bismillah!’...”

'The Queen of Sheba', 1911

Artist: Edmund Dulac (1882-1953)

Lola Montez@200

#LolaMontez200

Gene Tierney as Lola Montez 

Cover for The American Weekly Nov 17, 1946 

Artist: Henry Clive 1882–1960