John Keats : 医師として詩人として
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概要
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Keats was trained as a medical doctor for six years. During the first five years he was apprenticed to the surgeon Thomas Hammond, and then he spent one year as a surgeon dresser at Guy's Hospital. As a poet he had several years' career from the composition of his first poem "Imitation of Spenser" (1814) to his death in 1821. In his short span of life, the length of his career as a doctor and that of his career as a poet are roughly the same. However, Keats does not use his medical experiences directly as the subject matter of his poems, which has caused the aspect of his doctor's life to be neglected until recently. But some recent critics discuss Keats's medical profession in relation to his poems and letters; for example, Donald C. Goellnicht: The Poet-Physician: Keats and Medical Science (1984) and Hermione de Almeida: Romantic Medicine and John Keats (1991). In Japan very little scholarship appears on this subject, and no one to my knowledge has discussed the influence of the medical profession on his poetry. This essay will discuss Keats both as doctor and poet. First of all, Keats learned from Astley Cooper, a surgeon and professor at Guy's Hospital, who insisted that knowledge could be gained only by observation and experience. This idea remained in Keats's mind throughout his life. He declared that "Axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses." Also he wrote that "Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced." This attitude further led him to form his principle of Negative Capability. Another important thing is that, while practicing medicine, he formulated an idea that medicine and poetry were parallel to him in "doing the world some good." Some of his early verse already shows that both poetry and medicine have the mission of healing people's sufferings. "On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies" (1815) and "Calidore" (1816) are the examples. "I Stood Tip-toe" (1816) is a work which shows Keats as a doctor in two ways: first, he expresses the healing mission of natural beauties; second, he employs some words in the scientific connotation. For example, he uses "ethereal" as a derivative of "ether," a medicine then used, whose nature is volatile, ignitable, and aromatic, a very appropriate image to describe the stimulation of the poetic imagination. As Keats's poetic career developed, his humanistic view of poetry matured. In "Sleep and Poetry" (1816), he says true poetry "should be a friend/To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man." This idea of poet-physician reaches its culmination in The Fall of Hyperion (1819). Here Keats himself confesses his dream, in which he proclaims what a poet should be: "Sure a poet is a sage; /A humanist, physician to all men." To Keats a poet is a physician who understands human sufferings and cures them. Although Keats does not use his medical experiences directly as the source of the subject matter in his poems, there are many things which show his medical training. In a general way, it taught him the importance of acute observation. More specifically, it provided him with some images and metaphors. Of most importance, his humanistic view of poetry was reached through his medical experiences.
- 1995-07-20