Through the generosity of the late Professor Benedict Anderson and Ajarn Charnvit Kasetsiri, the Thammasat University Library has newly acquired some important books of interest for students of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) studies, political science, literature, and related fields.

They are part of a special bequest of over 2800 books from the personal scholarly library of Professor Benedict Anderson at Cornell University, in addition to the previous donation of books from the library of Professor Anderson at his home in Bangkok. These newly available items will be on the TU Library shelves for the benefit of our students and ajarns. They are shelved in the Charnvit Kasetsiri Room of the Pridi Banomyong Library, Tha Prachan campus.

Among them is a newly acquired book that should be useful to students who are interested in literature, cultural politics, and related subjects.

Thomas Chatterton by John Cranstoun Nevill is about an English poet who lived in the 1700s. Even though Chatterton died when he was only 17 years old, he is still remembered and his works are studied.

In addition to romantic poems, he also created a series of works that he claimed were by a writer from the 1400s, although some readers did not believe they were authentic.

According to some books about Chatterton, he felt so bad about being caught lying about the poems that were supposed to be from the 1400s that he killed himself.

But starting in 2004, Professor Nick Groom, working at the University of Macau as Professor of Literature in English, advanced a different theory.

The TU Library owns a book, Flag, nation and symbolism in Europe and America edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Richard Jenkins with a chapter by Professor Groom about a different subject.

About Chatterton, Professor Groom suggested that Chatterton likely did not kill himself after all. He merely took an overdose of a medication that was too strong and it killed him accidentally.

Professor Groom’s research also contradicted previous views that Chatterton might have ended his life because he was poor. In fact, Chatterton earned an income by publishing poems in different journals.

So Chatterton was not so much the neglected genius whose talents were overlooked, even if this was the image of him created after his death.

This image included The Death of Chatterton, an oil painting on canvas by the English painter Henry Wallis, now in Tate Britain, London, United Kingdom, reproduced on this page.

The artist showed Chatterton as a Romantic hero for young and struggling artists.

Here is a conclusion by another biographer of Chatterton’s, Charles Edward Russell:

In spite of all, the flame he lighted has burned on steadily, year by year, his fame and the recognition of his influence have grown among his own gild. The poets knew at once that wonderful voice and gave heed to a new and supernal message. Coleridge studied Chatterton attentively and repaid part of what he learned in one of the most beautiful poems in the language. Blake yearned over him; Shelley understood and loved a spirit so much akin to his own; Keats sat at his feet, dedicated “Endymion” to his memory, and took from his works one of the most celebrated and beautiful of his pictures; Wordsworth knew what the voice meant and paid it the tribute of his tears and of a deathless sonnet; Robert Buchanan sang again and again in his honor; Rossetti brought wreath after wreath for his unknown shrine. Of all the poets that have sung in English this is most truly the poet for poets; of all the poets that have sung in English, Shakespeare alone excepted, this has had upon what is distinctively the modern structure of the art the most stimulating influence; and of all the poets that have sung in English, Shakespeare alone excepted, this had the greatest gifts and surest inspiration. We shall see what Chatterton did for English poetry if we compare what it was before him with what it became afterward; then the seeds of much of the splendid modern growth appear in his poems, not elsewhere. Taking a large view of modern poetry as an art, and tracing back its basic principles designed melody of expression, designed use of color and form, the spirit of intimate and loving communion with nature, song that aims to transfer a feeling, not to express a sentiment nor to embody a syllogism the evolution of all these things may be traced back from Swinburne to Tennyson, from Tennyson to Shelley and Keats, from Shelley and Keats to Coleridge and Wordsworth, from poet to poet, from generation to generation, back to the charity school boy of Bristol, but no farther.

Here are some examples of Chatterton’s poetry:

Almighty Framer of the Skies!

O let our pure devotion rise,

Like Incense in thy Sight!

Wrapt in impenetrable Shade,

The Texture of our Souls were made,

Till thy Command gave Light.

 

How shall we celebrate the day,

When God appeared in mortal clay,

The mark of worldly scorn;

When the Archangel’s heavenly Lays,

Attempted the Redeemer’s Praise,

And hail’d Salvation’s Morn!

And here are some comments about Chatterton:

He was an instance that a complete genius and a complete rogue can be formed before a man is of age.

• Horace Walpole, letter to William Mason dated July 24, 1778.

I cannot find in Chatterton’s works any thing so extraordinary as the age at which they were written. They have a facility, vigour, and knowledge, which were prodigious in a boy of sixteen, but which would not have been so in a boy of twenty. He did not show extraordinary powers of genius, but extraordinary precocity. Nor do I believe he would have written better, had he lived. He knew this himself, or he would have lived. Great geniuses, like great kings, have too much to think of to kill themselves.

• William Hazlitt Lectures on the English Poets

The finest of the Rowley poems – Eclogues, Ballad of Charity &c rank absolutely with the finest poetry in the language…He was an absolute and untarnished hero.

• Dante Gabriel Rossetti, letter to Hall Caine dated June 13, 1880.

This is the most extraordinary young man that has encountered my knowledge. It is wonderful how the whelp has written such things.

• Samuel Johnson, April 29, 1776; reported by James Boswell, Life of Johnson.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)