The World is a Vale of Soul-Making
Photo by Missy Kim
““The common cognomen of this world among the misguided and superstitious is ‘a vale of tears’ from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven – What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please, “The vale of Soul-making.””
John Keats is one of the early 19th century English Romantic poets, but, as a post-20th century reader of his letters, I see Keats, the thinker, in the intersection of a two-set Venn diagram, with Romantics in one circle and Existentialists in the other. Of course, no one’s weltanschauung emerges out of thin air. Consider the quote above in the context of his life. He died two years after writing it. From tuberculosis. At the age of 25. And that was just the culmination of his suffering. His father died when Keats was only nine, and his mother left him and his siblings when she remarried. His poetry was harshly rejected by the literary establishment, all the while he was enduring horrific early 19th century “medical” treatments for his tuberculosis and watching his young life ebb away. As far as credentials go—as far as seeking out those who have something to say about life that isn’t some trite soundbite cheaply earned—I’m paying attention.
The world as a vale of soul-making. Pondering Keats’ words and life calls to mind a funeral I attended recently for a remarkable woman who died in her forties after a decade-long battle with cancer. Hundreds of people turned out in a snowstorm to attend. We all listened, jaws quivering or tears running down our cheeks, as her brother gave a brief eulogy. He talked about her strong and beautiful spirit. Gave examples. Concluded by saying that she didn’t lose her battle with cancer—she won it. The preacher got up afterwards and said many words about salvation and giving your life to Jesus etc., but it was unnecessary. Diluting, actually, of the power of her brother’s simple summation of her life. We all knew what sort of human being was lying in that coffin, and, even while we mourned her passing, our hearts were stirred to the possibility of our own transcendence, the strength and beauty of her spirit inspiring us to live as she did in all the dark and difficult places in our own lives.
The world as a vale of soul-making. I think the carpenter from Nazareth would agree with Keats’ appraisal of things. I mean, why go through the bother of an incarnation if redemption isn’t existential? If you think there’s an omnipotent being who has all the resources of the universe at his/her/its disposal trying to save an infant species with nascent consciousness from destroying itself and or even just from missing the whole point of its existence, wouldn’t there be an infinite number of other, better ways that it could be accomplished? Like some sort of definitive and ongoing demonstration of transcendent reality? Something that doesn’t involve the betrayal and torture and death of an innocent man—a choice which, in light of the vast array of revelatory possibilities ostensibly at the disposal of the divine, doesn’t make any sense at all.
Unless, of course, it was the whole point.
You can read more about John Keats and find a selection of his poems and letters at the Poetry Foundation. For more on Keats’ idea of the world as a “vale of soul-making,” check out the rest of his letter (excerpted above) to his brother and sister-in-law, George and Georgiana Keats, written April 12, 1819. Source: The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821, edited by Hyder Edward Rollins (Harvard U.P., Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958), pp. 100-104.
John Keats life mask by Benjamin Robert Haydon (1816) Photograph by Daniel Hass
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