The Joy I Seek

Endymion: A Poetic Romance was the long poem John Keats wrote at the age of 21 in what he describes as a feverish attempt to write 4,000 lines in something like nine months. Although written at such an early age, it is recognized as one of Keat’s greatest poems. According to Matthew Arnold there ＂blows through it the breath of genius.＂ This poem has been a lifelong inspiration to David Finn, who carried a copy of it with him during his service in the U.S. Army during World War II. He has now produced a series of 44 paintings inspired by different passages in this long poem, and he has arranged them in a new sequence that has special meaning for him. As he writes in the introduction, his paintings do not follow the story ＂of a god seeking the mythical object of his love through a long and circuitous route. It is a song of love that soars into the heavens as two lovers embrace and feel the joy of their flesh joined together in a supreme and immortal embrace.＂