Random Thoughts.....What Are You Thinking?

Damn, you don't softball the questions.

I bet you'd think I was going to say Shakespeare. Yes, I have a soft spot in my heart for the guy - when it comes to literature the man knew more about human beings than any anthropologist or psychologist. The way he was able to spin a story and do so as thoroughly as he did was a feat still unchallenged, today; not to mention his mark on the English vocabulary. I guess you could say I have a crush on the man and his work.

But when it comes to literature and being a visionary, I honestly think that falls on the shoulders of one of my favorite poets from the Romantic era of literature: John Keats. Keats was beyond his time. He was dealing with ideas and poetic visions long before modernism, and he did it all within a few years.

If you're unfamiliar with John Keats, his family was riddled with tuberculosis including his mother and his brother who both died from the disease. Mind you, this was untreatable in the early 1800s, so it was basically an indicator that he was a ticking timebomb.

In the short amount of time he was alive (he died at 26), he created some of the greatest and most lauded poems in the English canon, including the now famous "Ode on a Grecian Urn". Keats was known for his foray into the imagination and this was at the heart of all of his work. For instance, in "Ode" he wrote in great detail about what he saw on a piece from Greece that was on display in a museum and the lives/relationships these individuals had with each other. It's in this poem that has my all-time favorite quote: "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

He had his critics and was even called a "cockney" which at the time wasn't about a dialect but instead is referred to a low-brow, low-class individual. People claim that criticism of his work was what caused his demise (as is seen in Percy Shelley's "Adonais"), but it was the tuberculosis that did him in.

It's said that if he hadn't passed away when he did, he could have easily created an entirely new way to approach literature altogether and he would have been the great game changer while others argue that if he hadn't realized his mortality that he would never have pushed himself to write the great pieces that he did. One thing is certain, though. He is an inspiration to authors and poets and his imaginative optimism is unprecedented in anything before or since.

As to your second question, to me a visionary is someone who can tear down the walls of what has been considered the norm and do something wholly new that changes everyone's aspect of what they thought they knew. Keats was a visionary. So was Shakespeare. So was Einstein and Newton. We'll always have these people, although sometimes we don't hear of them or see their work until after they've done it (as is typical with most artists). It's when all vision is gone that we are truly at a loss.