Genre: Letters/Poetry
Page Count: 131
‘The mind is its own place, and in itself/ can make a Heav’n of Hell, and Hell of Heav’n.’ John Milton.
So much of our behaviors and feelings are influenced by things we cannot see. We might feel really happy, buoyant with joy, or filled with bursting rage, ready to smash things up, yet all the while be so involved with the outward events that we could barely go past it to reach its root. Being a symptomatic patient of ‘Borderline Personality Disorder’, also known as ‘Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder’, I’ve been both frequently and closely engaged with the workings of my mind and its dominating effects on how I feel or behave. Brain is a strong organ. Whatever neurotic processes goes on inside the brain has direct effects on how we appear on the outside.
Similarly, our mind, which we could call our consciousness, determines how we are going to be at a certain time or over a period. The dichotomy I’ve come to notice between our behaviors and its causes in the brain, and the dominating effects of the latter on the prior, have really pushed me to be more aware about this relationship between the body and the mind.
Too often we neglect or even discredit the influence of our mind on our actions, for we aren’t fully aware of it. Yet should one pause to notice, whether during an outburst of anger or in its aftermath, they will see resulting the brain impulses are. Our behaviors are just a way of carrying out the brain messages.
Depression is also a good example of the function of the brain has direct effects on the overall well-being of the person. During depression, our whole perspective around life changes and we seem enter into a totally different reality. The brain, there too, is on the driving seat.
Yet what better an example can be than that of love: in love the brain sings and the body ensues to dance. What we usually refer to as ‘heart’ in love, is actually the brain, but a brain that is in love. The romantics showed how men could exist only for love; that how love can grow so essential and fulfilling that one needs not to worry about anything else in the world.
One of those young and unfortunate romantics was Keats. Aged just twenty-five when he died, young Keats was at the prime of his life and his love for Fanny, the girl in his neighborhood. His early letters exhibit the earnestness that love brings in us: to love and have that love returned. Keat’s in these letters radiates in the heat of burning desires and in the urgentness of fulfilling them.
However, once the loneliness ends and the love reciprocates, a scale emerges – one that is painfully out of balance. Keats loves Fanny too passionately to be satisfied by Fanny’s bewildered and, in comparison, timid love for him. The latter letters were a consolation to my heart’s scars of having loved too much as well, and not being returned fairly.
As for Keats’ poems, I didn’t find them to be joyously rhythmic or piercingly descriptive. They were either too long, too ancient, or just out of sync. Too few a lines could I only cherish from one of the great romantic’s poems, and that was disappointing. Aside from a few passages, I found the letters also to be bereft of any significant achievement in either describing the effects of romantic love or by having elevating prose. Especially the last letters, which were just notes on Keats health on that particular day.
But, in saying all this, it’s not meant that this book was an insignificant read for me; Keats’ painful experiences of unreturned love, his world-ignoringly passionate singings of emerging love, and some of his beautifully written poetry did ample enough for me to look merrily upon this book.
Ratings: 3/5 *** March 17, 2022_