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In reimagining texts, authors are able to reveal truths about human nature that extend beyond the values and experiences of any one context. How does Campion in Bright Star reveal the tension between passion and mortality in Keats’ The Complete Poems?

In reimagining a text, the illumination of a wider scope of values and experiences stemming from multiple contexts allows us to gain insight into the truth of human nature. As such, Jane Campion’s 2009 film Bright  Star, reimagines the poetry of John Keats and thus reveals the universal human tension with mortality that afflicts all individual’s pursuit for romance and their passion for creative expression, coaxing our desire for them further. This reimagination is achieved through Campion’s incorporation of her postmodernist values, presenting conflict between passion and mortality through the alternative view of a female, revealing truths of human nature that extends beyond Keats’ Romantic outlook.

Keats reveals the true human nature of love by underlining the inaccessibility of romantic stability in our world of flux by virtue of death, influencing us to idealise and yearn for it more. In ‘When I have fears’. Keats’ personal experiences with the premature deaths of multiple family members is the root of his preoccupation with death. The metaphor, “relish in the faery power/of unreflecting love”, utilises the sense of elusiveness created through the magical imagery to portray the tension of mortality in human romance. In ‘Bright Star’, the values stem from his personal struggle with tuberculosis. We see this manifest in the conflict between eternity and romantic passion in the negation “Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night”, indicating that loneliness is inevitably associated with permanence, a quality of the star. Keats attempts to reconcile this tension by accepting the paradoxical dilemma of the human condition. This is exemplified in the caesura, “And so live ever—or else swoon to death”, wherein death is seen as an alternative for eternal union with his beloved. Thus, by accepting his commitment to an authentic but unstable romantic relationship to his lover, he accepts his human fate. As such, through Keats’ emphasis of the true nature of love from his personal experiences and contextual values, he reveals the tension between romantic passion and mortality, and his attempt to reconcile with it.

By reimagining this tension portrayed in Keats’ poems through a female lens, Campion provides truth into the human nature of love by incorporating her postmodernist context and in doing so widening our scope of the experience. However, instead of accepting the inevitability of death as Keats does, Fanny is depicted as constantly rejecting the acceptance of death’s permanence and the loss of her lover, as her idealised view depicts their love as inseparable. However, Campion resonates with Keats’ depiction of human ephemerality in the symbolism of the butterflies, and therefore the tension between passion and mortality, as everlasting love between Keats and Fanny is rendered impossible due to their temporary human nature. This is signified by the capture of the butterflies into jars, which connotes Keats’s finite mortal life, trapped in the bounds of his sickly body. The final scene that is encompassed by a wide tracking shot of the snowy forest exemplifies the female’s experience with mortality and loss, as the lack of sound or music signifies the loneliness and isolation an individual experiences upon losing a loved one. This collides with Keats’ depiction of love from a male perspective. In doing so, she reveals the true conflict within an individual, who struggles to comprehend or accept the tension between passion and mortality through her own context.

In addition to romantic passion, Keats also portrays the encroachment of mortality on an individual's creative passion. As such, his personal anxiety that his passion for poetry will be unfulfilled is encapsulated in his poem, ‘When I Have Fears’. The metaphor, “Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain” is a self-reflexive exemplification of his Romantic tension that the finitude of his life will limit his passion for creative expression. This stems from his cultural climate of change amidst the industrial revolution of 19th century London and personal illness. Moreover, the metaphor connoting uncertainty in, “Huge cloudy symbols”, represents his doubt that he will be able to completely experience all his passions, especially his anxiety that he “may never live to trace/their shadows”. Through the recurring motif of writing and art, Keats underlines his preoccupation with mortality that may preclude the poet from doing everything that he wants to do such as writing and creativity. Keats’ yearn for permanence and hence ability to enjoy his passion is exemplified in the metaphor of the grecian urn, as it is a “Foster-child of silence and slow time”. This paradox further signifies the intrusion of mortality into our creative passion as the artworks and creativity we aspire to produce are able transcend time, yet we cannot. Thus, Keats illuminates the experiences of his context, thereby revealing the tension between his impending mortality and his passion for poetry and creativity.

While Campion resonates with Keats’ depiction of mortality as a hindrance in creative pursuits, she furthers this notion of death by revealing its inspirational qualities within his works.

MOD A -Nice random excerpts from our students. I will add as I go. In terms of the conversation between the texts I think it’s interesting to consider the expansion to the people in Keats life such as Fanny and Charles, a decentering from the solitary Romantic and highly emotive introspection's of Keats, to show the wider emotional effects of a short lived life on those that love you-she utilises traditional filmic techniques with held shots of characters emotional reactions, lighting and wide sweeping landscape settings to emphasise the celebration of the creative imagination and the despair relating to his premature death on his closest friends. Inturn this expansion enhances the emotive qualities of his poetry and provide context to the dichotomous ideas of love and death, that feature in his poetry. Texts are reflections of the world in which they are written, and when studied in tandem, they create a dialogue that gives insight into the resonances and dissonances between universal values such as the ruminations associated withlove and death. In John Keats' (1795-1821) body of work, the poet explores notions of enduring love and mortality through an idealised and deeply imaginative Romantic lens, in response to Enlightenment-era rationalism. Jane Campion echoes and recontextualizes these values in the wider scope of Keats' life in her 2006 speculative bio pic film Bright Star, demonstrating the timeless nature of Romantic values for a 21st century audience through a Feminist lens utilising a traditional filmic style that focuses on held shots of landscapes and character emotions. Therefore, the conversation between Keats' poetry and Bright Star creates a dynamic dialogue that enhances audience understanding of both texts' universal values Campion's Bright Star similarly explores the turbulent values that dictate Keats' frustrated experience of love and desire, but reframes them in the broader context of Regency England as a narrative film for 21st century audiences and from Fanny's perspective. The director expands on Keats poetic vision of love and desire by offerings a realistic perspective of Keats and Fanny's romance by portraying the story from Fanny's viewpoint, aligning with Campion's postmodern feminist values in contrast to Keats' Romantic introspective individualism. Fanny is first humanised through her interest in fashion and sewing, mirroring Keats' own creative pursuits in poetry and his valuing of the artist as seen in When I have fears ” quote”. ; Costumed in exuberant red and white of her own making, Fanny is presented as an individual with personal agency before her love blossoms with Keats love interest, thereby adding a realistic depth to the nameless muse of Keats' Bright Star poem. Keats himself becomes a figure more relatable to Campion's modern audience as she addresses the role of his financial struggles in his life, "Mr. Keats knows he cannot like you. He has no living and no income.", reflecting the underlying social expectations of status and marriage in Regency England which separate Keats and Fanny; this sense of frustration in relation to desire seen in the “pale” knight in La Belle and Bright Star is further emphasised through the symbolism of walls that physically and visually divide the two. In contrast to the idealised imagery of Keats' works, Campion's depiction contextualises the romance in reality, constructing a holistic vision of Keats and Fanny's lives through the exploration of disparate issues in both romanticised and realistic spheres. The postmodern biopic Bright Star therefore enhances the genesis of the emotional angst felt in Keats' poetry, demonstrating the universality of values to influence and move audiences.

Thus, in a critical study of the texts’ conversation, we come to appreciate how Campion’s recontextualisation of Keats biographical context allows present-day responders to understand and question their contemporary subjectivities of love and mortality, through the metatextual discourses of Romanticism. Challenging Enlightenment rationalism, Keats and Campion communicate a metatextual discourse on the metaphysical value and acceptance of human mortality, through a powerful symbiosis between nature and man’s emotional state. Using poetry as a form of escapism from his deeply dullingdistressing experiences of death around him, Keats elevates the natural world within his poetry to a transcendental level of immortalised beauty, through constructing analogies between the cycle of seasons and the cycle of life in ‘Ode to Autumn’.

Despite Autumn being a symbolic precursor of death, the epistolary odal hymn highlightscelebtrates the power of nature to transcend literal existence in the spiritual and Divine personified “friend of the maturing sun” The juxtaposition of the indefinite verb, “may”, and the definite verb, “never”, reinforces Keats’ inner conflict and turmoil, and reflects the Romantic ideal of the uncertainty and unpredictability of life. However, Keats’ eventual acceptance of his premature death is evident in To Autumn, where the values of pantheism and the sublime quality of nature as a response against the scientific rationalism of the Enlightenment are interweaved once again, though this time to connote serene satisfaction and warmth. The Romantic appreciation of nature and life is again illustrated when he portrays the sun to “fill all fruit with ripeness to the core”, the alliteration of ‘f’ and ‘r’ creating a lyrical reflection of contentment and excess. Campion's Bright Star reimaginesdecentres Keats Romantic solitary contemplations to extend to the relationship between Keats and Fanny from Fannys perspective to represent the Romantic value that passion and beauty can transcend temporal concerns. Drawing on Andrew Motions biography which postulates the theory that Fanny Brawne was the muse for Keats’ Bright Star, Campion cinematically represents a broadened depiction of their affair including the contextual restraints, their passion, desire and frustrations as they confront the looming death of Keats. She mirrors the Romantic sublimity in nature through the cinematic aesthetic of the film , a butterfly motif worn in Fanny’s hair further continued in a close up shot in the kitchen, symbolisesing the finitude of life although simultaneously highlights a moment? of beauty. Unlike To Autumn’s acceptance and embracement of seasonal change, Campion characterises Toots to “think warm days will never cease” as she rejects its implications, stating that “There’s no Autumn around here”highlighting the desperation and despair felt by the Brawnes in the face of Keats death. Both Keats and Campion explore the Romantic fascination with the transience of humanity compared to the immortal beauty of the natural world. Keats’, in Romantic fashion, challenges Enlightenment rationalism through his exaltation of nature in Ode to a Nightingale, expressed through the apostrophe of, “thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” where the elevated address of the nightingale conveys the Romanticist belief that nature is an escape from the industrialized world full of human suffering and death Keats upholds the Romanticist notion that poetry wields the creative power to immortalise human experiences, as encapsulated in his poems Ode to a Grecian Urn and Bright Star, Would I Were as Steadfast as Thou. This ideal stems from the Romantic Era that spawned a profound belief in creativity and the didactic role of poetry within society. This enduring value of art is emphasised through the repetition, “More happy love! more happy, happy love!”, elucidating how the piper's escape from temporality and desire for eternal vitality tempts the persona to envision his own immortality. This enduring quality of art is further illuminated through the symbolism of nature in, “that cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.” The inability of the trees to shed their leaves signifies transience, forever engraved within the urn’s surface. This, in turn, reiterates the paradoxical nature of art, depicting an immortalised image that allows humans to transcend their mortality through creative preservation. This is furthered in Keats’ poem Bright Star through fricative alliteration in the persona’s desire to lie upon his lover and, “To feel forever its soft fall and swell.” This mimics the rise and fall of his partner, projecting a palpable sense of the intimate embrace and reveals his aspiration to remain locked in a tender embrace perpetually. -

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