I can live my life almost alone

Bright Star, Green Light : The Beautiful and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Beauty and desire were not enough for him to write true poetry:
He must also embrace loneliness and pain.”
The literary legend who wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" and "The Great Gatsby"
Ordinary people struggling at the end of their rope: A dual biography of Keats and Fitzgerald. Blake Prize winner Jonathan Bate recounts the parallel lives of two bright stars of Romanticism spanning a century.
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Editor's Recommendation:
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◎Dual biographies of Keats and Fitzgerald.
★ "This is a book that interprets Keats from Fitzgerald's perspective, and also a book that interprets Fitzgerald in Keats's way." - Author Jonathan Bate ★ Keats, a model of romantic poets, was Fitzgerald's favorite writer; Fitzgerald, a model of romantic novelists, regarded himself as the Keats of the novel world.
★The lives of two people are full of coincidences as if by fate: premature death, addiction to alcohol, suffering from lung disease, and the lingering figure of first love.
★ Just as Shakespeare's works were an inexhaustible source of inspiration for Keats, Keats's poetry always inspired Fitzgerald to write novels.
- Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is the Night, the title of which comes from Keats's poem "Ode to a Nightingale";
- His interest in Keats's The Night Before St. Mark inspired his novel This Side of Paradise;
- The lines in The Great Gatsby, “There are only the pursued and the pursuers…”, are also reminiscent of Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” which lingered in Fitzgerald’s mind.
- Just a few months before his death, Fitzgerald wrote to his daughter Scottie: "'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is breathtakingly beautiful, every syllable as essential as the notes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or it's just something you can't understand. It's beautiful because an extraordinary genius stopped at that moment in history and touched it. I think I've read it a hundred times. About the tenth time I begin to understand what it's about and grasp the melody and the subtle inner workings. The same is true of 'Ode to a Nightingale'; I always finish it with tears in my eyes."
★ The two romanticists wrote countless heart-warming poems and chapters, which not only brought pleasure to readers, but also conveyed the aesthetic ideas of romantic creation: life is short, love is short, but beauty can transcend death and time and become eternal.
◎ The romantic legend who wrote "Ode to a Nightingale" and "The Great Gatsby" / An ordinary person struggling at the end of his rope, "beauty and desire are not enough for him to write true poetry: he must also embrace loneliness and pain."
★ Keats: He said, "If I had a free, healthy and durable heart and lung tissue... I could spend my life in almost solitude", but his talent and life were taken away by illness early.
"I habitually feel that my real life is over and I am living in the afterlife." He gradually forgot Fanny and lost the possibility of continuing to write poetry.
"One thought was enough to kill me; I had been healthy, alert, and free from pain... I had walked with her, and now—the knowledge of contrasts, the sense of light and shade, all the information (primitive sensations) necessary for poetry—had become the enemy of recovery from my stomach trouble."
"Day and night I long for death to free me from this pain, and then I hope death will go away, because death will destroy this pain as well, and after all, some pain is better than no pain."
★ Fitzgerald: From a high-spirited, extravagant and indulgent life to a "self-loathing" and "health-destroying" husband and father who was unable to make ends meet and was busy making a living.
Being with Gerald and Sarah was always wonderful, but that group of confident artists only exacerbated Scott's anxiety. He always felt insecure around people who could easily display their talents.
“I may end up being a man of great intelligence, but I am destined to write only mediocre poetry.”
Scott wrote in his ledger: "Futile, shameful, useless, but paid $30,000 for work done in 1924. Self-loathing. Health gone."
Fitzgerald was only in his early forties, but the ravages of alcohol, tuberculosis, a turbulent marriage, and an unstable life made him feel that he was aging and would eventually die.
He lost a fortune in the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but during the boom he lost the things he truly cherished—his wife and daughter. He lost them to his alcoholism. At the end of the story, he is alone in the bar: "Now, he missed only his child; nothing else could make him feel good."
◎ Jonathan Bate, the most prestigious Shakespeare researcher today and winner of the Black Prize for Biography, begins with his inheritance of Shakespeare and narrates the "parallel lives" of two bright stars of romanticism spanning a century.
Why do we still read Keats and Fitzgerald? Bate offers this answer: Because they lived by words, because they wrote masterpieces, creating beautiful words and leaving a mark of beauty in a mortal world. The dream of beauty, rooted in their imaginations and expressed in their works and letters, gave them the hope of spiritual survival, even as their young bodies decayed. Their enduring power of expression in death has made them classics of literature.
Unlike boring biographies that cover every detail, the author draws on the works of the two subjects to gain insight into their lives. Using Plutarch's "parallel lives" technique, he connects two brilliant yet tragic lives from adjacent centuries. He connects fragments of their lives through similarities in creative passion, emotional experiences, aesthetic pursuits, and the projection of their works onto life. His poetic language embodies an ultimate aesthetic.
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Live a life of feeling:
-I love fine weather, for it is the greatest blessing I can have. (Keats)
The wonders of nature are surely beyond any imagination and surpass any memory. I will learn poetry from this, writing more diligently than ever before, striving to add a touch of beauty to the vastness of nature with a spirit of perfection. (Ji)
-So you see, Scott, I'll never accomplish anything because I'm too lazy to care if it's done or not. I don't want to be famous or respected - I just want to stay young and have no responsibilities. I think life is my own - to live as I please and die as I please. (Zelda)
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Loneliness and pain are the norm:
-Her heart was broken, and after many years, she didn't even want to live anymore: but she had to keep living. (Ze)
-The worst things in life are lying awake expecting someone who never comes, and trying to please others and failing to please. (Fitzgerald)
-Can't you see how necessary a world of pain and suffering is for the cultivation of wisdom and the formation of the soul? (Ji)
It is obvious that the world is unfair: leaving aside our responsibility for injustice, some people are rich while many are poor, some die in wars, some never get the chance to prove themselves heroes, some have their careers ended in failure, and many lives are tormented by mental illness. It is unfair. The only comfort, the only hope, is to be gentle.
- He [Keats] enjoyed this solitude... "The whistling wind is my wife, and the stars which come in through the window-pane are my children."
- I was lost and at a loss, like a wandering soul standing on the shore of the Styx, waiting for the ferry to take me away. I was melted into the air by such a delicate sensibility, and this loneliness made me satisfied. (Ji)
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Reading is good medicine:
- This morning at breakfast I felt very lonely... so I unpacked my box and took out my Shakespeare book in translation - "It is my comfort". (Ji)
I have discovered that I cannot live without poetry—without eternal poetry—not even for half a day, much less for a whole day. (Ji)
I am now usually content with reading and thinking, though ambitious ideas often occur to me. My pulse is calmer, my digestion has improved, and I try to control the vexations of my thoughts. It is difficult to remain calm after writing good poems, as they are so intense. (Ji)
- "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is breathtakingly beautiful, every syllable as essential as the notes of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony... I think I've read it a hundred times. The same goes for "Ode to a Nightingale." I always end up crying. (Philippines)
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Heart turmoil:
-Morning is the best time for me to write to the beautiful girl I love so much. (Ji)
-I really wish we were butterflies, living only three days in the summer—in these three days with you, I would pack more happiness into them than I could in fifty years. (Ji)
-Life is a game. As long as I have your love, everything is possible. I am in this land full of ambition and success. My only hope and belief is to be with you soon. (Philippines)
-I love your brilliant writing talent, your generosity and your cheerful nature. Nothing else can save us. (Ze)
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◎ Special binding: Single-cover square spine hardcover, neat narrow 32-page format, with a silver-gray bookmark ribbon inside.
In the last few years of his life, Keats was deeply trapped in his unfinished love for Fanny Brawne and wrote his most famous sonnet "Bright Star" for her. In The Great Gatsby, the bright star representing Fanny becomes the green light on Daisy's dock.
Single-cover, square-spine hardcover, with no redundant parts, and a narrow 32-page format of 130mm*210mm, it is light and neat, can be held in one hand, and is convenient to unfold flat. The cover is dominated by a quiet and cool light gray, combining the images of "bright star" and "green light" that closely link Keats and Fitzgerald. A bookmark ribbon is inserted inside, adding a romantic and sensual atmosphere.
The front and back covers are mounted on textured earth paper, with text hot-stamped black and printed in metallic green ink, creating a rich, layered, and tactile experience. The front endpapers feature a line from "Bright Star," which reads: "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art——." The back endpapers feature the final chapter of "The Great Gatsby," which reads: "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. ...we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
The text is printed on 75g offset paper, with clear printing and soft color, so you won’t feel tired after reading for a long time.
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Introduction:
Keats, the archetypal Romantic poet; Fitzgerald, the archetypal Romantic novelist. Their lives were filled with fateful coincidences: premature death, alcoholism, chronic lung disease, and the haunting presence of their first loves. More importantly, both, to some degree, used their writing to usher in a new era of literature characterized by liberation, experimentation, and sensuality. Throughout their lives, writing and reading served as a balm against loneliness and despair.
In this book, the author uses the technique of "parallel lives" to connect two brilliant and tragic lives in adjacent centuries. Through a series of carefully selected anecdotes, key moments and vivid scenes, he directly gets to the essence of the two people's lives, reveals the source of their artistic creation, and makes people deeply feel that the power of beauty and the power of words can penetrate time, transcend death, and become eternal.
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Celebrity recommendation:
No one in English poetry, except Shakespeare, has ever expressed the enchanting happiness, the perfect loveliness, of Keats.
——Matthew Arnold He is a part of "beauty", and this "beauty" was once embodied by him to be even more lovely.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley When you have read Keats's poetry, all other lines seem but a whistle or a hum.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald If he had been given more years, it is hard to predict what he would have achieved. But it is generally recognized that when he stopped writing at the age of 24, his contribution to poetry had far surpassed that of Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton at the same age.
——Tu An When many famous writers of Fitzgerald's generation are gradually forgotten by people, Fitzgerald will still be a great writer loved by people, because he created a new era and a new generation for people.
- Gertrude Stein I find this [The Great Gatsby] the most interesting and stimulating new novel, either British or American, that I have read in several years.
——TS Eliot Fitzgerald's talent is like the colorful patterns on the wings of a butterfly, it is completely innate.
——Ernest Hemingway Fitzgerald is the American writer I admire most. He is a genius with superb writing skills. His works have strong characteristics of the times, clear narration, elegant style and colorful words and sentences.
——Zhang Ailing

2024-11-01

九州出版社

Houlang, Houlang Literature

496

9787522532684