Romanticism and Synaesthesia: A Comparative Study of Sense Transfer in Keats and Byron

Abstract

In his correspondence, Keats refers more than once to the difference between himself and Byron. In a letter to Charles Wentworth Dilke, dated September 21, 1818, he distinguishes jokingly between: “1. superfine rich or noble poets—ut Byron. 2. common ut egomet—.” A few months later, on February 18th, 1819, he tells George and Georgiana Keats: “Lord Byron cuts a figure—but he is not figurative—Shakspeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it—.” Perhaps one might better read “Keats,” or at least “Keats as he liked to picture himself,” instead of “Shakespeare.” Just seven months later, in a letter written on September 18th of the same year to the same recipients, there occurs the celebrated, and utterly unconvincing, axiom: “You speak of Lord Byron and me—There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees—I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task. You see the immense difference.”