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How to Make a Soul: The Wisdom of John Keats
In this innovative hybrid of biography, memoir, and criticism, Eric G. Wilson describes how John Keats gave him solace during a bout of mental illness in spring 2012. While on a tour of the principal sites in Keats’s life—ranging from his London medical school to the small room in Rome where he died—Wilson discovered analogies between the poet’s troubles and his own. He was most struck by Keats’s enlivening vision of the soul. For Keats, we don’t possess but rather make a soul. We do this by imaginatively transforming our suffering into empathy toward humans and nature alike. Tracking this idea in Keats’s tumultuous yet exhilarating life and work, Wilson struggles to envision his depression anew, desperate to overcome the apathy alienating him from his family. How to Make a Soul offers fresh perspectives on Keats’s pragmatism, irony, comedy, ethics, and aesthetics, but is above all a lyrical celebration of those galvanizing instances when life springs into art.
176 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
June 24, 2021
"Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
For the past two weeks, I have been profoundly dissociating. I am hovering somewhere in the recesses of my own brain, watching every action my body performs with mild disinterest. Physical and emotional sensations are muffled, and I feel as if I’ve been covered by an avalanche. I can sort of hear the sounds on the surface, but they don’t have anything to do with me. I’ve become utterly chthonic.
At least I’m floating somewhere in the ether with Keats’s benevolent ghost.
Keats is a totem for many like us, a reminder that it is okay to feel too much or not at all, that inhabiting limitless bodies is part of the Mystery. Wilson begins this combination memoir, literary criticism, and biography with these words: Instead of killing himself, Keats ate a nectarine.
This is a book for those who, so far, have chosen to eat the nectarine.
You can read the rest of this review at The Macabre Librarian:
https://macabrelibrarian.wordpress.co...
For the past two weeks, I have been profoundly dissociating. I am hovering somewhere in the recesses of my own brain, watching every action my body performs with mild disinterest. Physical and emotional sensations are muffled, and I feel as if I’ve been covered by an avalanche. I can sort of hear the sounds on the surface, but they don’t have anything to do with me. I’ve become utterly chthonic.
At least I’m floating somewhere in the ether with Keats’s benevolent ghost.
Keats is a totem for many like us, a reminder that it is okay to feel too much or not at all, that inhabiting limitless bodies is part of the Mystery. Wilson begins this combination memoir, literary criticism, and biography with these words: Instead of killing himself, Keats ate a nectarine.
This is a book for those who, so far, have chosen to eat the nectarine.
You can read the rest of this review at The Macabre Librarian:
https://macabrelibrarian.wordpress.co...
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review