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The reverence with which Ms. Miller recognises Keats talent only underlines for me her bravery in choosing the structure she chose. The entire poem and then the chapter. Her own prose is just a tonal shift and a joy to read as well. The contrast is her unsentimental positioning of her subject not only within his time but within all the circumstances of his life against her appreciation of his work. It’s such an honest appraisal in language so precise, but never judgemental, we are left to make our own compromises. Can’t put it down!

Beauty is truth, truth is beauty. I don’t think having 200 years to analyse this statement has been well spent and i don’t agree its an objective truism that Keats wishes to illuminate. I think its simply subjective that giving and receiving the momentary truth between people is more beautiful than the objective chameleon that we experience as truth. The tableau on the Grecian urn is an opportunity to witness the truth of intent we never see, we see the obfuscation and justification from intention completed or abandoned afterwards. Keats ideal to hold in time to scrutinise a purity that unpredictable consequence will unequally distribute makes complete sense in isolation or in the poems entirety in my untrained and malleable opinion.

An historian could not infer even as a biographer what a literary scholar can hold to be self evident about an artists character drawn from his work to sustain or gain fame or even rent and food. In 200 more years new scholars will extrapolate even more abstract interpretations, its only important to notice it will still be Keats and for those readers I hope the language is as precise and wonderful to read as Lucasta Miller. Personally as a 16 year old Keats was my favourite and he still is and it didn’t require an interpreter then or now.