0:00:02 > 0:00:06I'm going to take you on a journey into the human imagination...
0:00:08 > 0:00:14..back to a time when the values and ideas and dreams of the modern world were born.
0:00:18 > 0:00:25200 years ago, monarchy was falling to the power of people's revolutions.
0:00:25 > 0:00:30Industry and commerce were becoming the driving forces of existence,
0:00:30 > 0:00:32and advances in science
0:00:32 > 0:00:38were changing the way life itself was understood.
0:00:38 > 0:00:40Artists all over the world
0:00:40 > 0:00:45were inspired by these times of dramatic change.
0:00:45 > 0:00:48In Britain, a group of poets and novelists pioneered
0:00:48 > 0:00:55an alternative way of living and of looking at the world.
0:00:55 > 0:00:58Among them were John Keats,
0:00:58 > 0:01:00Lord Byron
0:01:00 > 0:01:05and Percy Bysshe Shelley.
0:01:05 > 0:01:10The enduring power of their writing haunts us to this day,
0:01:10 > 0:01:14and inspires us still with visions of eternity.
0:01:40 > 0:01:47In Oxford during the winter of 1811, an anonymous pamphlet was posted to
0:01:47 > 0:01:52all the bishops and heads of the colleges at the university.
0:01:52 > 0:01:58The pamphlet was entitled The Necessity Of Atheism.
0:01:58 > 0:02:03It proclaimed that, without proof of the existence of God,
0:02:03 > 0:02:06it was nonsense to believe in him.
0:02:12 > 0:02:17Within 20 minutes of a copy of the pamphlet being placed in the window
0:02:17 > 0:02:20of a bookshop on the high street,
0:02:20 > 0:02:24a clergyman entered and demanded that all copies be burned.
0:02:29 > 0:02:35The writer was committing blasphemy, a crime punishable with imprisonment.
0:02:37 > 0:02:41He was attacking the very foundations
0:02:41 > 0:02:43of European civilisation.
0:02:51 > 0:02:56This is the story of a search for meaning in a world without God.
0:02:56 > 0:02:59Around the turn of the 18th century,
0:02:59 > 0:03:04revolutions had broken open the conventional social order.
0:03:04 > 0:03:07Everything seemed possible,
0:03:07 > 0:03:11and in the way they lived, the way they loved
0:03:11 > 0:03:17and the way they died, the Romantics were to define the way we live now.
0:03:31 > 0:03:37In the autumn of 1797, the writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge
0:03:37 > 0:03:42was exploring the wild coastline of North Devon.
0:03:44 > 0:03:50He came upon this enchanted vale around the tiny Culbone Church.
0:03:59 > 0:04:01But he was in ill health,
0:04:01 > 0:04:03suffering from dysentery.
0:04:06 > 0:04:11He rested here at this farmhouse known as Ash Farm.
0:04:13 > 0:04:19And here he took a remedy for his pains.
0:04:29 > 0:04:32This drug was to be the source
0:04:32 > 0:04:37of some of the most remarkable lines of poetry in the English language.
0:04:39 > 0:04:41The drug was opium.
0:04:54 > 0:05:00As he sat in the warm sunshine outside this farmhouse, Coleridge lapsed into sleep.
0:05:00 > 0:05:05The drug took hold of him and lifted him to a different level of consciousness.
0:05:05 > 0:05:12He was beginning a voyage of discovery to the limits of the human imagination.
0:05:43 > 0:05:49In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree
0:05:49 > 0:05:51Where Alph the sacred river ran
0:05:51 > 0:05:56Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
0:05:56 > 0:06:02So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round
0:06:02 > 0:06:06And there were gardens bright With sinuous rills
0:06:06 > 0:06:10Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree
0:06:10 > 0:06:13And here were forests ancient as the hills
0:06:13 > 0:06:17Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
0:06:31 > 0:06:37On waking, Coleridge vividly remembered his strange oriental vision.
0:06:37 > 0:06:42He instinctively put pen to paper to recount it in a poem.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47Caverns measureless to man down to a sunless sea
0:06:47 > 0:06:50So twice five miles of fertile ground
0:06:50 > 0:06:52With walls and towers were girdled round...
0:06:54 > 0:06:57And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills...
0:06:59 > 0:07:01Where blossomed...
0:07:04 > 0:07:08So twice five miles of fertile ground...
0:07:08 > 0:07:13But after writing down a few lines, he was interrupted
0:07:13 > 0:07:17by a visitor from the local village of Porlock.
0:07:17 > 0:07:22Later, when he sat down to write, he had lost the vision.
0:07:22 > 0:07:28I still retained some vague recollection of the general purport of the vision.
0:07:28 > 0:07:33Yet with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images,
0:07:33 > 0:07:36all the rest have passed away,
0:07:36 > 0:07:41like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast.
0:07:45 > 0:07:50The importance of this poem lies not only in the enchanted words themselves.
0:07:50 > 0:07:54The poet was most fascinated by the way the vision presented
0:07:54 > 0:08:00itself to him, and tormented by the frustrating nature of its demise.
0:08:00 > 0:08:05The mind was a mystery which Coleridge wished to solve.
0:08:10 > 0:08:14But in his exploration of the imagination,
0:08:14 > 0:08:18Coleridge was to be drawn into deep personal despair.
0:08:18 > 0:08:22Opium had unlocked the door to the inner world,
0:08:22 > 0:08:25but slowly addiction took hold of him.
0:08:25 > 0:08:29He was taking larger and larger quantities of laudanum,
0:08:29 > 0:08:33a solution of opium mixed with alcohol.
0:08:35 > 0:08:39Beware, beware his flashing eyes, his floating hair
0:08:39 > 0:08:43Weave a circle round him thrice And close your eyes with holy dread
0:08:43 > 0:08:49For he on honeydew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise.
0:08:54 > 0:09:00By 1807, Coleridge was paranoid, desperate and without employment...
0:09:01 > 0:09:06..wrecked on the shore of an increasingly unstable life.
0:09:08 > 0:09:14Yet his experiences with opium would transform our understanding of the imagination.
0:09:31 > 0:09:36At the time, though, many suspected that he had gone insane.
0:09:38 > 0:09:42Such strange visions would not be tolerated.
0:09:43 > 0:09:48The world was becoming increasingly reliant
0:09:48 > 0:09:50upon the laws of science.
0:09:50 > 0:09:55In the late 18th century, pioneering anatomists
0:09:55 > 0:09:59looked at the body in order to understand the secrets of life.
0:10:01 > 0:10:07They dissected, noted and charted every bone, organ and muscle,
0:10:07 > 0:10:10every vein, artery and ligament.
0:10:10 > 0:10:16They reduced the human form to the components of a machine.
0:10:23 > 0:10:29For the Romantics, anatomy was an empty and purposeless pursuit.
0:10:29 > 0:10:35They believed that the body was pervaded by a spirit that defied categorisation.
0:10:35 > 0:10:43It was an infinite and eternal power that manifested itself in the form of imagination.
0:10:43 > 0:10:48It could not be charted or understood in scientific terms.
0:10:53 > 0:10:57Samuel Taylor Coleridge argued these theories
0:10:57 > 0:11:00at a great place of scientific learning,
0:11:00 > 0:11:03the Royal Institution of Great Britain.
0:11:15 > 0:11:20The imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent
0:11:20 > 0:11:23of all human perception...
0:11:25 > 0:11:32..and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation.
0:11:38 > 0:11:42A poet described in ideal perfection
0:11:42 > 0:11:46brings the whole soul of man into activity.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56Coleridge saw the imagination as the soul itself,
0:11:56 > 0:12:02and he was suggesting that the key to the identity of all human beings
0:12:02 > 0:12:05lay within the recesses of the mind.
0:12:05 > 0:12:11He was an early exponent of the unconscious before that word even existed.
0:12:11 > 0:12:15He believed that the imagination had the ability
0:12:15 > 0:12:19to create new worlds, and even to change lives.
0:12:25 > 0:12:32New theories of the imagination and of anatomy saw the world in very different ways.
0:12:32 > 0:12:39But they both implied that God and religion were not at the centre of existence.
0:12:39 > 0:12:45Each person had a body and a mind and was in control of them.
0:12:48 > 0:12:51In October 1815, a young Londoner attended
0:12:51 > 0:12:57his first anatomy demonstration as a student at Guy's Hospital.
0:13:02 > 0:13:05His name was John Keats.
0:13:08 > 0:13:14Keats became a trainee surgeon and experienced the full horror
0:13:14 > 0:13:17of conducting operations without anaesthetic.
0:13:23 > 0:13:28On one occasion, as his knife cut through the flesh of a patient
0:13:28 > 0:13:32who was pinned down screaming on the table,
0:13:32 > 0:13:37Keats's sympathetic imagination overwhelmed him.
0:13:37 > 0:13:42The patient's pain became his own pain.
0:13:42 > 0:13:47This experience would change the course of Keats's life.
0:13:55 > 0:13:59My last operation was the opening of a man's temporal artery.
0:14:01 > 0:14:04I did it with the utmost nicety...
0:14:05 > 0:14:09but reflecting on what passed through my mind at the time,
0:14:09 > 0:14:12my dexterity seemed a miracle...
0:14:12 > 0:14:15and I never took up the lancet again.
0:14:20 > 0:14:25Keats had discovered the power of empathy.
0:14:25 > 0:14:27He chose art over science,
0:14:27 > 0:14:33the imagination over the body, and became a poet.
0:14:33 > 0:14:38He wanted to heal through his words and images.
0:14:42 > 0:14:45A poet is a sage,
0:14:45 > 0:14:49a humanist, physician to all men.
0:15:07 > 0:15:13Keats and a new generation of Romantics would study the human soul
0:15:13 > 0:15:17as intensely as the anatomists had studied the human body.
0:15:17 > 0:15:22Their quest was to answer the greatest questions of all,
0:15:22 > 0:15:30to understand the true nature of life, to explain their purpose on the Earth.
0:15:39 > 0:15:44For centuries, people had sought meaning in their lives
0:15:44 > 0:15:48by believing in God, in heaven and in hell.
0:15:48 > 0:15:52But one young Romantic claimed that atheism
0:15:52 > 0:15:58was the necessary foundation of a free and enlightened life.
0:15:58 > 0:16:02He was the author of this anonymous pamphlet,
0:16:02 > 0:16:06a brilliant young Oxford student who claimed that, without
0:16:06 > 0:16:11proof of the existence of God, it made no sense to believe in him.
0:16:22 > 0:16:26The author's name was Percy Bysshe Shelley.
0:16:39 > 0:16:44All religious nations are founded solely on authority.
0:16:44 > 0:16:51All the religions of the world forbid examination and do not want one to reason.
0:16:51 > 0:16:55Authority wants one to believe in God.
0:16:55 > 0:17:00This god is himself founded only on the authority of a few men who
0:17:00 > 0:17:05pretend to know him and to come in his name and announce him on Earth.
0:17:05 > 0:17:10A god made by man undoubtedly has need of man
0:17:10 > 0:17:13to make himself known to man.
0:17:21 > 0:17:27On 25th March, Shelley heard a knock on his door.
0:17:27 > 0:17:33Within moments, he was hauled up in front of a university committee
0:17:33 > 0:17:35and expelled from Oxford.
0:17:38 > 0:17:43Free of God and the moral constraints of religion,
0:17:43 > 0:17:46Shelley was able to recreate himself.
0:17:46 > 0:17:51In pursuit of self-knowledge and self-fulfilment, he became
0:17:51 > 0:17:58a pioneer in new ways of living, not least in the way he loved women.
0:18:06 > 0:18:11After leaving Oxford, Shelley married a young woman named Harriet Westbrook.
0:18:13 > 0:18:15They had a child together.
0:18:17 > 0:18:21But Shelley soon tired of his wife.
0:18:21 > 0:18:28He would disappear to meet another young woman in Old St Pancras Churchyard.
0:18:56 > 0:18:59This new love was called Mary.
0:18:59 > 0:19:04Shelley used to meet her here beside the grave of her mother.
0:19:04 > 0:19:10It was even suggested that Shelley took Mary's virginity on the gravestone itself.
0:19:14 > 0:19:19He wrote a poem about the experience of their union.
0:19:21 > 0:19:24To spend years thus
0:19:24 > 0:19:31and be rewarded as thou, sweet love, requited me when none were near
0:19:31 > 0:19:35Oh, I did wake From torture for a moment's sake
0:19:37 > 0:19:40Thy lips did meet mine tremblingly
0:19:40 > 0:19:45Thy dark eyes threw their soft persuasion on my brain
0:19:45 > 0:19:49Charming away its dream of pain.
0:20:03 > 0:20:09Shelley also wrote a surprising but honest letter to Harriet, his wife.
0:20:14 > 0:20:18I am united to another.
0:20:18 > 0:20:20You are no longer my wife.
0:20:22 > 0:20:26Perhaps I have done you injury, but surely most innocently
0:20:26 > 0:20:30and unintentionally in having commenced any connection with you.
0:20:37 > 0:20:44Shelley's own intensity of feeling was the most important thing to him.
0:20:44 > 0:20:49He was relentless in the pursuit of self-gratification
0:20:49 > 0:20:50and self-knowledge.
0:21:08 > 0:21:13At four o'clock in the morning of 28th July 1814,
0:21:13 > 0:21:20Shelley stood impatiently on the corner of Skinner Street in London, beside a horse and carriage.
0:21:20 > 0:21:26In time, two young women appeared carrying small bundles.
0:21:30 > 0:21:35Shelley's lover Mary and her stepsister Claire Claremont
0:21:35 > 0:21:38were running away with him to the Continent.
0:21:46 > 0:21:50Love withers under constraint.
0:21:50 > 0:21:54Its very essence is liberty.
0:21:54 > 0:22:01It is compatible neither with obedience, jealousy nor fear.
0:22:01 > 0:22:03Love is free.
0:22:05 > 0:22:09To promise forever to love the same woman is not less absurd
0:22:09 > 0:22:12than to promise to believe the same creed.
0:22:12 > 0:22:18Such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry.
0:22:33 > 0:22:37Shelley sought liberty in the way he loved.
0:22:37 > 0:22:41To elope with one woman would have caused scandal enough,
0:22:41 > 0:22:45but he was violating social conventions
0:22:45 > 0:22:49in order to pursue his most intense feelings.
0:22:49 > 0:22:54In doing so, he pioneered the notion of free love.
0:22:58 > 0:23:05The liberty with which we conduct our modern love affairs owes much to Shelley's actions.
0:23:05 > 0:23:11The Romantic movement was reaching its final significant flourish.
0:23:12 > 0:23:17These pioneers were defining a new way of living,
0:23:17 > 0:23:20driven by individual will and feeling.
0:23:20 > 0:23:26And a whole generation of adoring fans was being inspired by a poet
0:23:26 > 0:23:29who became the first modern celebrity.
0:23:33 > 0:23:36His family home was Newstead Abbey.
0:23:38 > 0:23:45This man would pioneer an extreme form of living from within the halls of the aristocracy.
0:23:45 > 0:23:51His name was George Gordon, the sixth Lord Byron.
0:23:51 > 0:23:54The great object of life
0:23:54 > 0:23:56is sensation,
0:23:56 > 0:24:00to feel that we exist,
0:24:00 > 0:24:02even though in pain.
0:24:02 > 0:24:09It is this craving void which drives us to gaining, to battle,
0:24:09 > 0:24:11to travel.
0:24:21 > 0:24:27In 1812, Byron prepared a poem for publication.
0:24:27 > 0:24:30It was about a noble but disaffected wanderer,
0:24:30 > 0:24:33not dissimilar to Byron himself,
0:24:33 > 0:24:38who travelled Europe in search of exotic experience.
0:24:41 > 0:24:46His house, his home, his heritage, his land
0:24:46 > 0:24:49The laughing dames in whom he did delight
0:24:49 > 0:24:54With large blue eyes, fair locks and snowy hands
0:24:54 > 0:24:57Might shake the saintship of an anchorite
0:24:57 > 0:25:00And long and fed his youthful appetite
0:25:00 > 0:25:03His goblets brimm'd with every costly wine
0:25:03 > 0:25:07And all that mote to luxury invite
0:25:07 > 0:25:12Without a sigh he left to cross the brine
0:25:12 > 0:25:20And traverse Paynim shores and pass Earth's central line.
0:25:29 > 0:25:36Childe Harold was a sensation and became an instant bestseller.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42Byron awoke the next morning to find himself famous.
0:25:42 > 0:25:48He was about to make a decision that would help to define our modern world.
0:25:48 > 0:25:52He chose to embrace celebrity, to live his life in public.
0:25:52 > 0:25:57This was his way of giving meaning to his own existence.
0:26:01 > 0:26:07In this new world without God, Byron was worshipped by his fans.
0:26:09 > 0:26:14There is a fire and motion of the soul which will not dwell
0:26:14 > 0:26:21In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire
0:26:21 > 0:26:23And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore
0:26:23 > 0:26:27Preys upon high adventure, nor can fire
0:26:27 > 0:26:32Of aught but rest, a fever at the core.
0:26:32 > 0:26:37Fatal to him who bears, To all whoever born.
0:26:42 > 0:26:48Byron's readers were fascinated by the mystery at the heart of the hero.
0:26:48 > 0:26:53Why was Childe Harold so melancholy, so difficult to satisfy?
0:26:53 > 0:26:56They were more than eager to attribute the unhappiness
0:26:56 > 0:27:04to Byron's turbulent personal life, to his own desire for excess and extreme experience.
0:27:07 > 0:27:12There was a deluge of enthusiastic letters.
0:27:12 > 0:27:16"My dear Lord Byron, I am a poor country girl
0:27:16 > 0:27:19"who has not the happiness of knowing you,
0:27:19 > 0:27:24"but I admire you so very, very much that you must excuse this madness."
0:27:24 > 0:27:29"Should curiosity prompt you and should you not be afraid of gratifying it
0:27:29 > 0:27:33"by trusting yourself alone in the Green Park at seven o'clock..."
0:27:33 > 0:27:37"Upon perusing Childe Harold, I became, as it were, animated
0:27:37 > 0:27:42"by a new soul, alive to wholly novel sensations."
0:27:42 > 0:27:45"When you see anybody in ecstasies,
0:27:45 > 0:27:50"think of your eternally devoted Sophia Louisa McDonald."
0:27:55 > 0:28:00Lord Byron's fans all wanted to be Romantics,
0:28:00 > 0:28:06dissatisfied, yearning for new experience and heightened sensation.
0:28:11 > 0:28:18And Byron could not help but act upon many amorous proposals.
0:28:23 > 0:28:28Scandalous scenes were played out here at his house in Piccadilly.
0:28:34 > 0:28:37On 2nd February 1816,
0:28:37 > 0:28:43Byron received a message from his wife's legal representatives.
0:28:43 > 0:28:48She was asking for an official separation.
0:28:48 > 0:28:53Byron would use the scandal to enhance his theatrical public image.
0:28:55 > 0:29:00The fashionable world was divided into two parties,
0:29:00 > 0:29:04mine, consisting of a very small minority.
0:29:04 > 0:29:07The reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side,
0:29:07 > 0:29:12which happened to be the ladies, as was most proper and polite.
0:29:12 > 0:29:18The press was active and scurrilous.
0:29:26 > 0:29:31London was filled with rumours about Lord Byron.
0:29:35 > 0:29:39Whether they were true or not no longer mattered.
0:29:39 > 0:29:46The myth of the Romantic personality of Byron was much stronger than any reality.
0:29:51 > 0:29:57It was alleged that he was having sexual relations with his half-sister Augusta.
0:29:57 > 0:30:01The charge of incest would have destroyed him,
0:30:01 > 0:30:08but the greatest danger of scandal was that he would be publicly accused of homosexuality.
0:30:08 > 0:30:14Even if it were mentioned in court, it would consign him to utter ruin and degradation.
0:30:19 > 0:30:23I was accused of every monstrous vice
0:30:23 > 0:30:28by public rumour and private rancour.
0:30:28 > 0:30:31My name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers
0:30:31 > 0:30:36helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted.
0:30:40 > 0:30:46Faced with the possibility that he might be publicly accused of incest
0:30:46 > 0:30:51and sodomy, he agreed to sign an official deed of separation
0:30:51 > 0:30:54in the spring of 1816.
0:30:57 > 0:31:02Two days later, on the morning of 23rd April,
0:31:02 > 0:31:06a huge crowd gathered outside Byron's house.
0:31:14 > 0:31:21The crowd was hungry for a glimpse of the celebrated man, and to witness another turn
0:31:21 > 0:31:25in the sensational story that was unfolding.
0:31:25 > 0:31:31Byron was afraid that he might even be lynched when he left the house.
0:31:31 > 0:31:37He fought his way through the crowds to his carriage and fled from England, never to return.
0:31:41 > 0:31:47Byron wandered Europe pursued by scandal, and dispossessed.
0:32:01 > 0:32:04He finally made a home in Venice.
0:32:29 > 0:32:32I felt that if what was whispered
0:32:32 > 0:32:37and muttered and murmured was true, I was unfit for England.
0:32:37 > 0:32:39If false,
0:32:39 > 0:32:42England was unfit for me.
0:32:42 > 0:32:44I withdrew,
0:32:44 > 0:32:46but this was not enough.
0:32:50 > 0:32:53His writing continued to perpetuate
0:32:53 > 0:32:58the Romantic myth that surrounded him.
0:32:58 > 0:33:01In other countries, in Switzerland,
0:33:01 > 0:33:05in the shadow of the Alps and by the blue depths of the lakes,
0:33:05 > 0:33:09I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight.
0:33:10 > 0:33:14I crossed the mountains, but it was the same.
0:33:16 > 0:33:21So I went a little farther and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic...
0:33:23 > 0:33:27..like the stag at bay who betakes him to the waters.
0:33:46 > 0:33:52For the public at large, Lord Byron had redefined the figure of the poet
0:33:52 > 0:33:54as a man of danger and of intrigue.
0:33:54 > 0:34:01He was a living poem, a man of insatiable passion and of infinite experience.
0:34:01 > 0:34:04But this wasn't everybody's idea of a poet.
0:34:15 > 0:34:20A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence,
0:34:20 > 0:34:23because he has no identity,
0:34:23 > 0:34:28he is continually informing and filling in some other body.
0:34:28 > 0:34:32As to the poetical character itself, it is not itself,
0:34:32 > 0:34:35it has no self,
0:34:35 > 0:34:38it is everything and nothing.
0:34:40 > 0:34:42It has no character.
0:34:48 > 0:34:53Keats believed the genius of the poet lay in the transcendence
0:34:53 > 0:34:57of the ordinary self, in the loss of identity.
0:34:57 > 0:35:01This way he could imagine himself
0:35:01 > 0:35:05in a thousand different lives and forms.
0:35:05 > 0:35:11Byron despised the quieter and more sensitive outlook of John Keats,
0:35:11 > 0:35:14calling his work "piss-a-bed poetry"
0:35:14 > 0:35:16and "mental masturbation".
0:35:16 > 0:35:22For him, sensationalised experience was the key to the creative imagination.
0:35:25 > 0:35:29Byron was unpretentious about his own writing.
0:35:32 > 0:35:34It may be bawdy
0:35:34 > 0:35:37but is it not life?
0:35:37 > 0:35:42Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world?
0:35:42 > 0:35:48And tooled in a post-chase, in a Hackney coach, in a gondola,
0:35:48 > 0:35:56against a wall in a court carriage, in a vis a vis, on a table
0:35:56 > 0:35:58or under it?
0:36:02 > 0:36:07Without a god to give purpose to his existence, Byron sought meaning
0:36:07 > 0:36:13through a frantic public life of sensation, the bawdier the better.
0:36:16 > 0:36:21John Keats was a very different kind of romantic.
0:36:21 > 0:36:28From his earliest years he experienced the solitude and emptiness of death.
0:36:28 > 0:36:33But, through them, he reached towards beauty and meaning.
0:36:35 > 0:36:39On 15th April 1804,
0:36:39 > 0:36:43the first in a long line of tragedies that would affect his life
0:36:43 > 0:36:47occurred here on City Road in London.
0:36:47 > 0:36:50Keats was only eight years old.
0:37:00 > 0:37:07At one in the morning a watchman spotted a riderless horse astray on the road.
0:37:11 > 0:37:15This disturbing image meant tragedy.
0:37:38 > 0:37:43The watchman ran up the street and by the doorway of the nearby chapel
0:37:43 > 0:37:48he discovered the body of a man prostrate on the pavement.
0:37:48 > 0:37:52He was covered in blood from a deep wound to the head.
0:37:52 > 0:37:59The man, named Thomas Keats, died the following morning.
0:37:59 > 0:38:04John Keats had lost his father.
0:38:04 > 0:38:11It was the beginning of a pilgrimage through grief that would also be a journey into the soul.
0:38:13 > 0:38:17Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is,
0:38:17 > 0:38:21to school an intelligence and make it a soul?
0:38:30 > 0:38:32By the time Keats was 23
0:38:32 > 0:38:37he had witnessed the deaths of his mother and his brother,
0:38:37 > 0:38:40and he suffered from fits of depression.
0:38:42 > 0:38:48But there were moments here at his house in Hampstead when his experiences of death
0:38:48 > 0:38:52made him more intensely in love with life than ever.
0:39:05 > 0:39:11How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties on us.
0:39:12 > 0:39:17I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy,
0:39:19 > 0:39:25..their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy.
0:39:25 > 0:39:28BIRD CHIRRUPS
0:39:31 > 0:39:34Thou was not born for death, immortal bird,
0:39:34 > 0:39:38no hungry generations tred thee down.
0:39:40 > 0:39:45The voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient days
0:39:45 > 0:39:47by emperor and clown.
0:39:53 > 0:39:57Keats imagines the birdsong echoing through time.
0:39:57 > 0:40:03In hearing the bird he experiences infinity for a fleeting moment.
0:40:03 > 0:40:10His own mortal life felt short, and the sensations of living were all the more intense.
0:40:20 > 0:40:22Adieu.
0:40:22 > 0:40:28Adieu, thy plaintive anthem fades, whilst the near meadows,
0:40:28 > 0:40:32over the still stream, up the hillside
0:40:32 > 0:40:36and now tis buried deep in the next valley glades.
0:40:39 > 0:40:42Was it a vision or a waking dream?
0:40:44 > 0:40:46Fled is that music.
0:40:48 > 0:40:50Do I wake or sleep?
0:40:55 > 0:41:01Images of dream and reality, of life and death haunt this poem,
0:41:01 > 0:41:04as they haunted Keats's being,
0:41:04 > 0:41:07and on Thursday 3rd February 1820,
0:41:07 > 0:41:13he was visited by an image that would pursue him until his own death.
0:41:18 > 0:41:23Keats returned to Hampstead from town on a bitter night.
0:41:23 > 0:41:28Even though he was suffering from a cold he had taken a cheap seat
0:41:28 > 0:41:33exposed to the elements on the top of the coach.
0:41:33 > 0:41:39His friend, Charles Brown, later caught sight of him staggering home.
0:41:42 > 0:41:49Quickly, Brown realised that he was severely ill and rushed him to bed in this room.
0:42:03 > 0:42:06As Keats lay down on his pillow, he coughed.
0:42:17 > 0:42:19I know the colour of that blood.
0:42:23 > 0:42:25It is arterial blood.
0:42:27 > 0:42:31I cannot be deceived in that colour.
0:42:33 > 0:42:37That drop of blood is my death warrant.
0:42:39 > 0:42:41I must die.
0:42:53 > 0:42:57Keats was dying of tuberculosis.
0:42:57 > 0:43:04For centuries, those in his extreme plight would have prepared to meet their god.
0:43:04 > 0:43:06But times had changed.
0:43:06 > 0:43:12This new generation of romantic poets was pioneering a life
0:43:12 > 0:43:18many people choose to live now, guided by individual will and desire,
0:43:18 > 0:43:22without belief or allegiance to any god.
0:43:22 > 0:43:27But this meant that the prospect of death could become terrifying.
0:43:35 > 0:43:43Without the solace of an afterlife Keats needed an alternative assurance of eternity,
0:43:43 > 0:43:46and he would find it in art.
0:43:48 > 0:43:53He made the long journey to spend his last days in Rome
0:43:53 > 0:43:57amid the great ruins of that ancient civilisation.
0:44:06 > 0:44:10What little town by a river or seashore,
0:44:10 > 0:44:13or mountain built with peaceful citadel,
0:44:13 > 0:44:16is emptied of this folk this pious morn.
0:44:16 > 0:44:23And, little town, thy streets forever more will silent be.
0:44:25 > 0:44:30And not a soul to tell why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
0:44:35 > 0:44:41Ancient ruins further intensified Keats's sense of mortality.
0:44:41 > 0:44:47He would be alive for only a fraction of the time that these great works had existed,
0:44:47 > 0:44:52but with this came a sense of liberation.
0:44:52 > 0:44:55Oh, attic shape,
0:44:55 > 0:44:57fair attitude,
0:44:57 > 0:45:03with breed of marble men with maidens overwrought,
0:45:03 > 0:45:06with forest branches and the trodden weed...
0:45:09 > 0:45:16Thou silent form doth tease us out of thought as doth eternity.
0:45:16 > 0:45:18Cold pastoral.
0:45:20 > 0:45:23When old age shall this generation waste,
0:45:23 > 0:45:27thou shalt remain in midst of other woe than ours,
0:45:27 > 0:45:30a friend to man,
0:45:30 > 0:45:32to whom now sayest
0:45:32 > 0:45:35beauty is truth,
0:45:35 > 0:45:38truth beauty.
0:45:38 > 0:45:42That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
0:45:48 > 0:45:54In this poem, Keats sees the prospect of immortality in the art of antiquity.
0:45:55 > 0:46:03Ancient ruins were the only human achievements that could transcend the destructive process of time
0:46:03 > 0:46:07and give eternal fame to their creators.
0:46:07 > 0:46:13If a poet could achieve such works of genius too, he might live forever,
0:46:13 > 0:46:17his emotions enduring within his words.
0:46:27 > 0:46:34Keats spent his last days bedridden in an apartment overlooking the Spanish Steps.
0:46:58 > 0:47:00Darkling, I listen...
0:47:02 > 0:47:08..and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death,
0:47:08 > 0:47:14called him soft names in many amused rhyme, to take into the air my quiet breath.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21Now, more than ever, seems it rich to die,
0:47:21 > 0:47:24to cease upon the midnight
0:47:24 > 0:47:27with no pain.
0:47:45 > 0:47:48Keats feared that in death
0:47:48 > 0:47:50he would be forgotten.
0:47:58 > 0:48:01If I should die,
0:48:01 > 0:48:03I have left no immortal work behind me,
0:48:03 > 0:48:08nothing to make my friends proud of my memory.
0:48:10 > 0:48:15But I have loved the principle of beauty in all things,
0:48:15 > 0:48:17and if I had time
0:48:17 > 0:48:20I would have made myself remembered.
0:48:27 > 0:48:35On 23rd February 1821, he died in this room.
0:48:35 > 0:48:38He was in his 26th year.
0:48:42 > 0:48:49In his last hours, Keats thought that his quest for immortality had failed.
0:48:49 > 0:48:53He was buried in Rome three days after his death.
0:48:57 > 0:49:04For his epitaph he chose an inscription that reflected his final sentiments.
0:49:08 > 0:49:12Yet Keats's memory did not dissolve, as he had predicted.
0:49:17 > 0:49:24As the news of his death spread among the Romantics, his poetry began to be read more intensely.
0:49:28 > 0:49:34His words became monuments to his life and his emotions.
0:49:42 > 0:49:49Two months later, word of Keats's death reached a friend who was travelling along the Italian coast.
0:49:54 > 0:50:01He wrote a poem comparing Keats to Adonis, a character from Greek mythology
0:50:01 > 0:50:05whose scattered blood became beautiful roses.
0:50:06 > 0:50:09I weep for Adonais,
0:50:09 > 0:50:11he is dead.
0:50:12 > 0:50:15Oh, weep for Adonais
0:50:15 > 0:50:20though our tears thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head.
0:50:21 > 0:50:25And thou, sad hour,
0:50:25 > 0:50:29selected from all years to mourn our loss,
0:50:29 > 0:50:35rouse thy obscure compeers and teach them thine own sorrow.
0:50:35 > 0:50:41Say, "With me died Adonais."
0:50:41 > 0:50:45Till the future dares forget the past,
0:50:45 > 0:50:51his fate and fame shall be an echo and a light
0:50:51 > 0:50:53unto eternity.
0:50:54 > 0:50:58For Shelley, Keats was a new Adonis.
0:50:58 > 0:51:02His suffering had inspired sublime poetry.
0:51:04 > 0:51:09In these verses, Shelley suggests that Keats was too sensitive,
0:51:09 > 0:51:13too rare to survive the troubles of the world.
0:51:13 > 0:51:18Death and poetic genius became inseparable.
0:51:18 > 0:51:26But death gave the poet a new kind of divinity in a new kind of heaven.
0:51:30 > 0:51:34Shelley was creating the first secular icon.
0:51:35 > 0:51:42He was pioneering a new kind of worship that continues to this day.
0:51:44 > 0:51:46I am born darkly...
0:51:47 > 0:51:49..fearfully afar.
0:51:49 > 0:51:54Whilst burning through the innermost veil of heaven,
0:51:54 > 0:52:02the soul of Adonais, like a star, beacons from the abode where the eternal are.
0:52:04 > 0:52:08For Shelley, poetry became a substitute for religion.
0:52:12 > 0:52:17I burn with impatience for the moment of Christianity's dissolution.
0:52:20 > 0:52:24There is a great and spiritual force to put in its place.
0:52:27 > 0:52:30Poetry is something divine.
0:52:32 > 0:52:37It is the centre and circumference of all knowledge.
0:52:49 > 0:52:55If poetry was the new religion, then the poet could become God.
0:52:55 > 0:52:59This idea led Shelley into a dark place,
0:52:59 > 0:53:04a place of horror and loneliness, of division and self-estrangement.
0:53:04 > 0:53:09A place where he would come face-to-face with his own self.
0:53:24 > 0:53:31On 27th April 1822, Shelley and Mary, together with some friends,
0:53:31 > 0:53:35had travelled to an isolated villa
0:53:35 > 0:53:39in the fishing village of San Torenzo in the Bay of Lerici.
0:53:39 > 0:53:46Shelley became deluded, seeing visions and phantoms all around him.
0:54:07 > 0:54:10I was walking up on the terrace
0:54:10 > 0:54:15when I quite distinctly saw the image of myself.
0:54:15 > 0:54:18The same in every particular,
0:54:18 > 0:54:20walking towards me.
0:54:29 > 0:54:34I...myself,
0:54:34 > 0:54:40my double, came up to me and asked me,
0:54:40 > 0:54:42"How long do you mean to be content?"
0:54:53 > 0:54:59Shelley was questioning the worth of his own earthly existence.
0:54:59 > 0:55:05He was telling himself that only in death would he become a true immortal, a true poet.
0:55:05 > 0:55:10He was being haunted by his own ideas.
0:55:16 > 0:55:23On 8th July, Shelley went out sailing with a friend in the Gulf of Spezia.
0:55:30 > 0:55:36They were sailing in the boat Don Juan, that had been named after one of Byron's poems.
0:55:40 > 0:55:43That day a storm blew up in the south-west.
0:55:43 > 0:55:46The boat never came back.
0:55:46 > 0:55:52Shelley's body was washed up on a shore some ten days later.
0:55:52 > 0:55:57In his pocket was found the book of Keats's poems.
0:56:08 > 0:56:14The corpse was burned on the beach by Lord Byron and a group of friends.
0:56:17 > 0:56:21A fire was lit underneath the great furnace,
0:56:21 > 0:56:26when Frankincense and salt were scattered upon the flames.
0:56:26 > 0:56:30It was a scandalous and atheistic act,
0:56:30 > 0:56:33but one that befitted the Romantics.
0:56:35 > 0:56:41Byron and the other mourners maintained that the heart was not consumed.
0:56:44 > 0:56:49When one of them snatched it out of the flames it remained intact.
0:56:50 > 0:56:56It was preserved and wrapped in a manuscript of Adonais,
0:56:56 > 0:57:00his great elegy to poetic genius.
0:57:12 > 0:57:18The heart and the manuscript are symbols of what had become of the Romantics.
0:57:18 > 0:57:21As they had argued, the body was of no consequence -
0:57:21 > 0:57:24what mattered was the work itself.
0:57:24 > 0:57:29That work represents the spirit of the Romantics,
0:57:29 > 0:57:33a spirit that endures within all of us.
0:57:33 > 0:57:36In the rebellion of each new generation,
0:57:36 > 0:57:44in their desire for fresh experience, in the celebration of originality and of genius,
0:57:44 > 0:57:49even in the modern veneration of the rock star and the actor,
0:57:49 > 0:57:53we can find traces of that romantic legacy.
0:57:53 > 0:57:58It is all around us, as deeply imbued as the belief in liberty
0:57:58 > 0:58:02and the need for self-determination.
0:58:02 > 0:58:08We have become individuals striving towards an uncertain future.
0:58:10 > 0:58:12We are all romantics.