Darkling I Listen

Darkling I Listen: The Last Days and Death of John Keats by John Evangelist Walsh

It is not known what exactly killed John Keats at such a young age, though the popular diagnosis is consumption. Reading Darkling I Listen, though, makes me wonder if he didn't die of a passionate heart. Although Walsh focuses on the last 100 days of Keats' life, spent miles and miles away from the love of his life, the most interesting passages focus on Keats' relationship with Fanny Brawne. Many of the 39 surviving love letters he wrote to her are dissected to exhibit a man completely consumed with the best and worst emotions related to love. He was jealous, he was insecure. In one letter he tells Fanny that if his illness doesn't kill him, his love for her will. It was a short love affair in the scheme of things--2 years, but Fanny lived 45 years after Keats' death and somehow managed to keep her relationship with Keats a secret to all--including her husband and three children--until she was on her own deathbed. Although Walsh uncovers some interesting points of history in Keats' life and work, the book probably holds little for anyone but those already interested in Keats. And anyone who has seen the movie Bright Star, which follows the intensity of Keats' and Brawne's intense affair, of course.