"I Read Keats’s Love Letters to Fanny Brawne When I Was Quite Young"

February 26, 2023 12:51 PM

There is often a demand made on women, on people of color, on anybody who comes from a population that is not historically given a large or highly visible cultural platform, to produce their biography as an authentication of their right to speak, and preferably to give as much detail as they can about an experience, particularly if the experience has been hard or traumatic. I hadn’t thought about my own tendency to be elliptical or obscure when it comes to talking about myself as a feminist choice, but I did feel as though I wanted to refuse to be forced to say more than I wanted to say. I wanted to refuse to be forced to describe my life in the terms of a certain kind of literary realism. To me, it actually feels far more revealing to describe an emotion with precision than to tell you who said what at what time on what day. To me, that work of description is much more raw and much more uncomfortable. from “I Speak Only For Myself”: Anahid Nersessian on Keats, Feminism, and Poetry
posted by chavenet (4 comments total)

Interesting distinction between truth and honesty (truth personal, honesty interpersonal, if I’ve got it right).
posted by Phanx at 2:04 PM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Although I have pretty strong opinions about most things and will give them if pressed, I’m most comfortable listening—perhaps because (like you, Hannah!) I was raised by psychoanalysts.

Raised by a pair of Iranian psychoanalysts!

Even in a world of 8 billion, I might have guessed there would be no such person.
posted by jamjam at 2:13 PM on February 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Good interview, thanks for posting!

Here's another interview with Anahid Nersessian and a review of her book Keats's Odes.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 5:21 PM on February 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Keat's love letters to Fanny Brawne. This is, of course, off topic, but Fanny Brawne is either the most Victorian name I could imagine, but surely the pole dancer name, of all time. Sorry.
posted by Oyéah at 6:45 PM on February 26, 2023 [2 favorites]