Q: Keats as an avid reader of Greek civilization – discuss it.

Shelley expressed the opinion that “Keats was a Greek”. But actually Keats was a representative of Greek civilization. The Greek spirit came to Keats through literature, Greek sculpture, mythology etc. that made Keats as an avid reader of Greek civilization.
Keats was born in such a house where the environments were not favorable to be a Greek passionate reader. He was not a Greek by education. His knowledge of Greek literature was come from the English translation only. There was also nothing of Greek culture in his tradition. But he was desperately portrayed everything that was Greek. That shows “Greekness in his mind”.
His famous sonnet “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” Keats said that Homer, the blind epic poet of ancient Greek, came to Keats through Chapman’s translation. He says that his intellectual sphere was widened by Homeric poetry. No poet has been able to capture the spirit of ancient Greek poetry as Keats did.
His famous poem “Ode on Grecian Urn”, is directly inspired by the Greek sculpture which Keats saw in British museum. By giving us the imagery of the carvings on the urn, Keats was not thinking of a single urn but of Greek sculpture in general. Keats had sympathy for the Greek mind. This ode shows the full force of Greek influence in Keats works.
Towards the creations of Greek mythology Keats was attracted by their beauty, and a natural sympathy with the imagination that created them. We find the use of Greek myth in his poem “Ode to Psyche” where he became a great worshiper of Psyche, one of the Goddess in Greek Myth. His other poems such as “Endymion” and “Hyperion” he had borrowed subjects from Greek mythology.
Above all, he was a Greek on account of his passion for beauty. The Greeks were lovers of beauty. The beauty that Keats found through his imagination which was sensuous to him. For Keats to see things in their beauty is to know the whole truth about them. As he says –
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is all,
Ye know no earth, and all ye need to know.”