'
This may he the most convenient place for raising a question of leading
importance to the Argument of _Adonais_--Who is the personage designated
under the name Urania?--a question which, so far as I know, has never
yet been mooted among the students of Shelley. Who is Urania? Why is she
represented as the mother of Adonais (Keats), and the chief mourner for
his untimely death?
In mythology the name Urania is assigned to two divinities wholly
distinct. The first is one of the nine Muses, the Muse of Astronomy: the
second is Aphrodite (Venus). We may without any hesitation assume that
Shelley meant one of these two: but a decision, as to which of the two
becomes on reflection by no means so obvious as one might at first
suppose. We will first examine the question as to the Muse Urania.
To say that the poet Keats, figured as Adonais, was son to one of the
Muses, appears so natural and straightforward a symbolic suggestion as
to command summary assent. But why, out of the nine sisters, should the
Muse of Astronomy be selected? Keats never wrote about astronomy, and
had no qualifications and no faintest inclination for writing about it:
this science, and every other exact or speculative science, were highly
alien from his disposition and turn of mind.
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