“Isabella; or the Pot of Basil” can be taken in several
different directions, but I would like to focus on Keats’s portrayal of the
“self” throughout this poem. We are
introduced to two lovers, Isabella and Lorenzo.
When Isabella is told that Lorenzo has gone abroad on urgent business
for her brothers, her love for him does not falter but seems to consume
her. One night, she has a vision of
Lorenzo, and he tells her the truth about his murder and burial in the
forest. Isabella exhumes his body,
places his head in a pot, and spends the remainder of her life crying over the
soil and watering the basil with her tears.
What does this say about our perception of the self? Isabella falls in love with a physical being,
and when he ceases to physically exist, her love remains. It is here that we are presented with the
notion that one’s self can live on in the thoughts and memories of loved
ones. When Lorenzo appears to Isabella
in a vision, we are presented with another version of his self: a supernatural
one; it is neither tangible nor intangible.
This Lorenzo exists outside the realm of Isabella’s thoughts but does
not exist in the natural world. When
Isabella exhumes his body, we return to the notion of a physical self; her love is directed towards a physical object.
Finally, when Lorenzo’s head is placed in the pot and basil begins to
grow, we are offered another version of the self: one found in nature. Part of Lorenzo has become part of the plant.
Where, then, does our true identity lie after our
death? In the thoughts of our loved
ones, our physical bodies, or the ground to which our bodies return? Or is it a combination of them all?
I think this speaks to the idea that we are intimately related to the world around us, whether we are aware of it or not. We impact where we live and who we meet which allows our self or our spirit to live on. This is exemplified in this poem with Lorenzo's death; the idea of him lives on withIsabella's love and physically with the plant that grows from his remains. He creates a new life that stems from his body, which allows his "self" to continue.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how much I agree with what I just wrote because memory is questionable and if our identity lives on through our loved ones, how much do they really know about us, what goes on in our minds, and how do their own interpretations of events misrepresent us? Is it truly us who lives on, or is it merely a fictitious representation of our formal self? Saying we live on would also confirm that we have souls and our identity comes from more than just our physical bodies.
Despite all of this, this post, and the basil plany, also reminded me of the Lion King quote wherein Mufasa tells Simba, "You need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connnected in the great Circle of Life."
Isabella's lack of closure, even once she exhumes the corpse of Lorenzo seems to be the driving force of the entire poem.
ReplyDeleteThe artist Banksy, "I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time." If Lorenzo and Isabella had been allowed to say goodbye before his murder, or if they were given any semblance of closure i think we'd have a much shorter, much less interesting poem. But because Isabella is allowed to keep his memory alive, and then finds a totem for her devotion, the story does not end, Lorenzo does not die.
But i think there's something to be said about the different forms of the self that are shown throughout the poem. Maybe Lorenzo is still in some way alive as a ghost, maybe his "self" does still exist in Isabella's memory and in her pot, but these forms of self are in a sense perversions of the memory of Lorenzo. I think its fair to say that Lorenzo's undying remnant is what twists Isabella into such a shadow of her former self, and that holding onto the identities of those who have gone can do more harm then good.
The poem then leaves you with mixed feelings because the way their love goes on thanks to this enduring quality of the "self", is as beautiful and inspiring as it is toxic and foreboding.
I think this idea goes back to Diderot's idea of "sensitive particles." We are all composed of atoms which, at a very fundamental level, make up our identity. But what happens to our identity when our atoms disperse? Isabella seems to approach this question from a very literal sense--by fertilizing plants with Lorenzo's head, the atoms in his brain that once made up his identity are absorbed by the basil. She not only loves Lorenzo as she knew him, that is, with all of his atoms arranged in a particular manner, but she loves all of his atoms individually and when put into a different form. She seems to have a more liberal view of the self than most people. Maybe Keats was trying to make a point about all of us being irrevocably tied to Nature and the world around us?
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that arguments can be made for, and against, the self living on in spirit, in thought, or in the ground in which we are buried. However, I think one would have a more difficult time arguing that one's identity does not live on within his or her offspring. Clearly, every person gets half of their DNA from each of their mother and father, a quarter from each grandparent, and so on. But there is more than this: the way in which children are raised is a medium that parents pass on their identities, as the nurturing of a son or daughter generally has a substantial impact on the adult they become. And even as these marks are obscured and left behind throughout history, the DNA facet is still inarguable.
ReplyDeleteWhile ancestral records can be far from perfect (whether imprecise or inexistent), when they are accurate they provide a much more tangible link to who a person was than the lore surrounding that person or the earth in which they were buried. Being able to point to one specific ancestor and finding historical records about that person is more objective then believing tales passed down through generations that might have been altered or fabricated over time. It's also more fulfilling to identify a specific individual as (at least partly) the embodiment of an earlier relative than trying to isolate which grains of dirt came from a deceased corpse and which were there beforehand or were moved there afterwards.
As far as this poem goes though, it does leave us in a bit of predicament, as Isabella and Lorenzo clearly did not have children. Thus we are only left with the options detailed above, but as we've seen, it's tough to say where the identity lies exactly and where it is absent. I think when it comes down to these choices we're considering, it becomes a matter of personal belief, and changing the mind of someone with a different stance than you would be a tall order.
Similar to what Alison said, I believe that the poem would have us believe that the self can be carried through the circle of life from person, to memory, and even on to the plant; however, I would argue that the memory and plant are more closely tied to Isabella's self.
ReplyDeleteWhile the basil clearly represents Lorenzo to Isabella, all of the value of the plant is imposed upon it by Isabella. Additionally, her vision of him revealing his death is limited by the realm of information about, and perceptions of, Lorenzo that Isabella has. I would argue that while each of these are inspired by Lorenzo, they are more of a reflection on Isabella's self because all aspects of these things, at least as they relate to Lorenzo, are dictated by her.
A close examination of Isabella after Lorenzo's death gives us a sense of the why behind her actions; why does she pine away instead of moving forward? Miles' comments on parts of the self living on in offspring speak to our instinctive drive to reproduce, to pass on ourselves through our genes. A bleak view of human relations might posit love as merely an evolutionary cue to mate and reproduce.
ReplyDeleteHowever, Isabella's actions are evidence against this reductionist stance. Her love for Lorenzo continues undimmed after his death. Her peculiar burial of Lorenzo demonstrates the extent to which he consumed her life. Were purely evolutionary instincts to win out, Isabella would move on and find another man to sire her children.
Her refusal to abandon Lorenzo's memory enables us to conclude that her love is irrational, against an animalistic sense of the need to reproduce. Her love is even selfish. She is unwilling to have children to carry on Lorenzo's story. After she dies, his name will be forgotten. Isabella cannot conceive this fact, consumed by she is with grief. Where does identity lie after our deaths? At least partly in the memories of others. Where will Lorenzo be after Isabella dies? Gone from the world.
The bigger question for me is not what happens to Lorenzo’s self after he dies, but rather, what happens to Isabel’s sense of self as she is alive? As Frey said, Lorenzo’s ghost twists her into a shadow of her former self, which is certainly a valid interpretation. However, I would argue that Isabel is dead even as she lives, and this is reinforced by the narrator’s lines, which mourn Isabel’s death even as she is alive and doting over her Basil-pot.
ReplyDeleteFor me, then, the question becomes: to what extent is an identity tied up in being alive? Here, we have Lorenzo’s spirit, which arguably has more “life” than Isabel’s “live” body. Can we conclude that life and death are intertwined in a manner that is not mutually exclusive? (In case you couldn’t tell, I certainly would. [And so would Schrödinger, for that matter]).
As for the “wormy circumstance,” as a pun, I find it irresistible (think worm as a noun and worm as an adjective). I do think the constant juxtaposition between life and death is important for understanding the cause of the wormy circumstance: if life and death aren’t as mutually exclusive as we previously believe, then the wormy circumstance refers the connection between the two—Isabel can linger at the yawning tomb so long because she is, in a sense, already partially dead. And the worms themselves are metaphorical representations of this juxtaposition, only oppositely mirrored: the worms are a case of the dead being partially alive. Something about the tangled relationship between life and death is indeed wormy.
I think this post questions where we can ultimately derive love from. Emily speaks to Isabella's love of Lorenzo in several different forms from physical love of Lorenzo to the pot of Basil. However, we should consider whether the origin of human love must require an initial love of a human. I also really liked the comments that linked the evolutionary drive of reproduction into the concept of love. Love, as a concept of human connection beyond sexual attraction is often irrational and its irrationality in the story of Isabella only speaks to this point. Yet, what is troubling in this poem is the concept of love continuing undimmed after death. If Isabella's love is eternal, why is the basil pot necessary at all. Why is its loss so damaging if her love for Lorenzo can be nothing more than mental connection. The object is not necessary in this case.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading about the pot of basil and how Isabella's love persisted through it, the first thing that I noticed was some sort of metaphor that loving a human is loving nature. Based on my little knowledge about Romanticism, the fact that Isabella found love in her pot of basil-head seemed to make sense given that Romantic poets are supposed to speak about nature and the human connection to it and how awful it is. But your point that her love for Lorenzo was manifested through these various mediums is interesting and something that I failed to notice. All three senses of "self" are discussed in the poem, and all play a significant role in the progression of this tale. However, I think that the most emphasis is placed on the self in nature, as much of the poem revolves around the pot of basil. Perhaps Keats intentionally ended the poem with the notion of the self being found in nature because that was what he believed to happen. Still, the last line of the poem, "To steal my Basil-pot away from me!" makes me question where Lorenzo's "self" will exist next, if it will exist at all, and whether Isabella will be able to continue to love him.
ReplyDelete