"The "Fears" of John Keats"

      "The "Fears" of John Keats", written by M.A. Goldberg, analyzes Keats' poem, "When I Have Fears."  Goldberg starts by pointing out that Keats' poem is broken into three quadrants, each with metaphorical meaning.  In the first quadrant, Goldberg acknowledges a few of Keats' fears, such as dying "Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain", meaning he fears of not reaching poetic fulfillment, which may be related to the "fame" he mentions in the last line.  His fears of not reaching poetic maturity can also be seen in line four, when Keats' mentions "full ripen'd grain", metaphorically speaking of his ideas, and how he fears of death before he can reap his grain (ideas) from his mature fields (his brain).  This reference to a ripened field of grain relates to the autumnal season, and this measure of time is held all throughout the first quadrant.  The first quadrant is also a "passive realm", meaning the protagonist is not doing the action; he is being acted upon, such as "...my pen has glean'd my teeming brain".  It is not the protagonist doing the thinking or writing, it is the pen doing the action.   The first quadrant also contains "concrete imagery", such as the pen and the "high-piled books."  Into the second quadrant, the concrete imagery changes to symbols that are cloudy, such as the "magic hand of chance" and "shadows".  Into the second quadrant, the autumnal season is also reduced to one night, when Keats looks "upon the night's starr'd face".  There is a decrease in the amount of time, and the tangible ideas from the first to the second quadrant.  However, there is an increase in the internal force, or individual power Keats' seams to suggest.  Keats goes from "my pen has glean'd my teeming brain", to "the magic hand of chance", which is not completely active and only shows a slight change, but it is "potentially active" whereas in the first quadrant, the protagonist has no active part in the pen gleaning his teeming brain.  In the third quadrant, Time is reduced to "a fair creature of an hour", and ideas are reduced to "faery" powers, and become intangible objects such as love.  The protagonist's individual power also becomes more distinct, as the protagonist stands alone, and thinks, which shows protagonist doing the action, and not being acted upon.  In line fourteen, time is reduced to nothing, when Keats says “to nothingness do sink.”  The last two lines in Keats’ poem hold a lot of meaning, because of the ways the protagonist’s standing alone and thinking can be interpreted, and how the sinking to nothingness can be interpreted.  Goldberg says the reduction to nothingness could be a mathematical zero, or could mean insignificance.  Goldberg focuses more on the opinion of insignificance, because he believes it agrees more with what Keats' other works seem to say.  It is not the protagonist sinking, however.  Goldberg says it is love and fame that sink, and the protagonist is rising above his fears, and rising toward value.  Goldberg describes this as a “stepping of the imagination”, from poetry to love, to a “fellowship with essence”.  The essence of love and fame are not eliminated by sinking to nothingness, but Goldberg says the space and time element that restricts love and fame are removed.  What is left is the unchanging and permanent experience of love and fame.  Goldberg also says that self-annihilation is not an awful thing to Keats; he says Keats achieves his identity, greatness, and dignity “to the degree he annihilates the ego…projects individuality into the totality of the experience”, meaning Keats has put everything into his identity, and no longer has an ego.
            The first time I read this article, I was extremely confused.  I had not read the poem Goldberg is talking about, and all the references he had made the article really hard to understand if you had not read the poem.  I read the poem for one of my posts, and made my own interpretation of it, then the second time I read the article, I actually thought it was really interesting.  It was much easier to follow when I knew what he was talking about, and he had very many things to say and point out that I had not noticed in the poem, like the decrease in time from the autumnal season, to one night, to one hour, then to nothing.  I thought it was really interesting to see all the things Goldberg could pick apart in Keats’ poem.  In my interpretation, I thought Keats was talking about his fears of dying before he has reached his goals of writing everything he has to say, and of falling in love.  Goldberg goes into much more depth, and finds patterns that I would have never thought of looking for.  I was really dreading this project of reading the interpretation of a poem, but I found it interesting and it didn’t turn out as painful as I originally thought.