Praised by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Hyperion is the unfinished work of John Keats that begun in 1818 pictured as the original manuscript of Keats handwriting below. This poem then began to evolve as a the preface to Endymion but was abandoned in the year of 1820. Its contents are full of allegory between Olympians and Titans, and the fall with the sorrow that accompanies it thereafter when the Olympians were defeated. The epic is a tale of the gods; Hyperion of the sun, Apollo of both the sun and the gift of poetry. The mythological nature gives its verse mysticism and even gods are knocked off their throne and given lesser or human qualities "...gray haired Saturn quiet as a stone" so one can relate to them, and invoke the feeling of powerlessness.
Keats never wanted Hyperion to be published at all; in his 1820 volume of collected works, Keats inserted the following statement:
Keats never wanted Hyperion to be published at all; in his 1820 volume of collected works, Keats inserted the following statement:
'[I]t was printed at [the publisher's] request, and contrary to the wish of the author.'
Much to his surprise (and others, by the way) Hyperion was praised.
Interestingly, Keats had asked his friend Benjamin Robert Haydon to paint the frontispiece for the work. In the letter to Haydon, he compared 'Hyperion' to his other work, 'Endymion': '[....] in Endymion I think you may have many bits of the deep and sentimental cast - the nature of Hyperion will lead me to treat it in a more naked and grecian Manner - and the march of passion and endeavour will be undeviating - and one great contrast between them will be - that the Hero of the written tale being mortal is led on, like Buonoparte, by circumstance; whereas the Apollo in Hyperion being a fore-seeing God will shape his actions like one.
There are quite a few critiques and analyses of Hyperion, the poem which has an allegory vision in which the poet is dreaming and the goddess Moneta reveals the knowledge of Hyperion to him.
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