John Keats and Shiv Kumar Batalvi: A Hair-Thickness Difference inTheir Poetic Thoughts

Abstract

Keats’s poetry was more sensuous than Batalvi’s. Batalvi longed for an early ‘Death', though he would not want to die an ‘Easy Death’ while Keats was passionate about life and wanted to live more, though sadly, it was not to be. His death was so painful that his last sentence was "Thank God, it has come”. Keats did talk philosophically both about the mortal and the immortal deaths, but wished an easy death for himself; perhaps he had already consumed his quota of pains and miseries from the then incurable disease tuberculosis. Keats was a poet of his age, his own social, cultural, and medical milieu.  He was also, more than ever, perhaps, a poet of ours, a poet of frustration,fear, and even of hope, but Batalvi was hell-bent on pain and frustration and always waiting for death; forget about hope. Yes, Keats stands an inch taller than Batalvi as he went through dreadful agonies with threatening symptoms of the disease, and it looked as if the whole universe had conspired to give him pains. However, Keats had borne it with such fortitude and determination as if he had nothing to do with the pain. If Keats had more share of pain in life, Batalvi kept sorrows alive and took them to the last limit in his heart. Batalvi sent a cordial invitation to death, which loved him and kissed him passionately.