The Socratic Method Game: John Keats

[Ravenwing]

How is this game played? Is it only by means of asking questions about Keats' life and poetry? What answers can be discovered in the questions themselves?

On the day of his death if an angel did offer to Keats a journey to the 21st century, and thus to be quickly and gently cured of the tuberculosis that he was dying from, do you suppose he might hath agreed, even if it meant that he could not return to the 19th century? Is Keats alive and well in today's day and age?

[CasaMagni]

I have this fantasy that advanced technology of the future, say around the year 3000 (originating from this planet or another) will be capable of taking a 19th century photograph and reconstructing the figure therein portrayed, atom by atom. So the Brilliant Boy may not yet be dead.

[Ravenwing]

Did Keats liveth before or after the advent of photography? If photographs steal souls, then do paintings, too? Are the paintings of Keats secretly extra-dimensional portals which the meditative and imaginative viewer can softly stare their soul into? Is the patterned accentuation and syllabication of Keats' formal verse poems which doth charm us but a glimpse of what music doth liveth within the timeless realms that his own soul did envision and grace?

[Cybele]

Wouldn't the reconstructed version of the person be but a shell? With no soul? A facsimile with no one home?
I love the thought of a portrait being a portal. It sounds like a magnificent idea for a poem, a book, an opera, or some other work of art.
A good portrait, in my opinion, reveals the sitter's personality, and tells us a lot about the person. Unfortunately the communication is a little one-sided.

[Ravenwing]

Is each portrait a form of the Platonic idea or soul of its sitter? Doth not the Bible teacheth that man and woman are together made in the Image of God? Is each person but a form of their soul? If Keats and Brawne were soul mates then doth that meaneth when together, they did formeth an Image of God? Is that why Keats' poems are timeless, and thus sacred or divine?