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 K(#E Series on Knots and Everything — Vol. 29

QUANTUM
INVARIANTS
A Study of Knots, 3-Manifolds, and Their Sets

Tomotada Ohtsuki

World Scientific
 QUANTUM
INVARIANTS
This page is intentionally left blank
K(#E Series on Knots and Everything — Vol. 29

QUANTUM
INVARIANTS
A Study of Knots, 3-Manifolds, and Their Sets

Tomotada Ohtsuki
Tokyo Institute of Technology
Japan

Y f e World Scientific
m Singapore • New Jersey • London • Hong Kong
Published by
World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
P O Box 128, Farrer Road, Singapore 912805
USA office: Suite IB, 1060 Main Street, River Edge, NJ 07661
UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

QUANTUM INVARIANTS
A Study of Knots, 3-Manifolds, and Their Sets
Copyright © 2002 by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval
system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.

For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright
Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to
photocopy is not required from the publisher.

ISBN 981-02-4675-7

Printed in Singapore by Mainland Press

 Preface

In the 1980s low-dimensional topology encountered mathematical physics, and their

interactions yielded infinitely many new invariants, called quantum invariants, of
knots and 3-manifolds. This monograph provides an extensive and self-contained
presentation of quantum and related invariants. This wealth of invariants gives
us a new viewpoint in 3-dimensional topology: a study of the sets of knots and
3-manifolds, as well as a study of individual knots and 3-manifolds.

This monograph is addressed to readers with a basic knowledge of topology,

such as homology groups and fundamental groups, as well as some acquaintance
with basic abstract algebra.

When we tie a strand, a knot appears. Since ancient times many knots have
been invented arid contrived for practical and decorative purposes (see [TuGr96]).
Tying strands in different ways, different knot types appear, albeit with significant
redundancy. Thus we are led to ask: how various are the knot types? From the
mathematical viewpoint knots are quite complicated and fascinating objects, even
when we study them with all the mathematical approaches developed so far. The
study of knots and knot types as mathematical objects is called knot theory.
There were attempts, say [Tail898] (see also [TuGr96, Prz92, Epp99] for expo-
sitions of the history of knot theory), to classify knot types in the 19th century,
though the mathematical fundamentals required to proceed with the classification
rigorously were far from sufficiently developed in that age. This situation was
changed by the creation of the discipline of topology at the beginning of the 20th
century. Mathematical fundamentals of topology, such as homology groups, were
established in the early 20th century, and subsequently "classical" knot theory,
based on algebraic topology, developed rapidly (see [CrFo77, Rol90] for expositions
of "classical" knot theory). The Alexander polynomial, discovered in the 1920s, was
one of main achievements in "classical" knot theory. This polynomial is an isotopy

V
VI Preface

invariant of knots, where by an isotopy invariant we mean a map from the set of
knot types to a well-known set, such as a polynomial ring.
A dramatic transformation of the study of knot invariants arose from the dis-
covery of the Jones polynomial in 1984, which was soon followed by a flood of
discoveries of infinitely many new invariants of knots. They were derived from in-
teractions between knot theory and various other fields; the Jones polynomial was
defined by using the theory of operator algebras, some other of the new invariants
were defined by using solutions of the Yang-Baxter equation in statistical mechanics,
and others still were introduced by using representations of quantum groups and by
using solutions of the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equation, related to quantum field
theory in theoretical physics, which organized them all into quantum invariants of
knots.
*
Another main topic of this monograph is the study of invariants of 3-manifolds.
Until the 19th century 3-dimensional spaces appearing in mathematics and
physics were mainly straight spaces (copies of the Euclidean space), but, since
the beginning of the 20th century, when the theory of relativity disclosed that the
real space is a globally curved space (possibly having a different topological type
than the Euclidean space in the astronomical scale), curved spaces (manifolds) have
become fundamental in the study of mathematics and physics of the 20th century.
Furthermore, from the mid-20th-century solution of the classification problem of
higher-dimensional (dim > 5) manifolds (an historic achievement of differential
topology), up to the present day, the study of low-dimensional manifolds has been
the main stream of manifold theory.
Quantum theory, another great physical theory initiated at the beginning of the
20th century, asserts that an atomic particle moving in a space can be described
in mathematics, not by a moving point, but by a wave function on the whole of
the space. In the 1980s, various marvellous results were yielded to low-dimensional
topology by the new methodology, which studies topological properties of a given
space by analyzing the structure of "the space of wave functions on the underlying
space" in a suitably defined quantum field theory (i.e., the space of solutions of a
certain differential equation, which is canonical in some physical sense). In particu-
lar in the late 1980s Witten considered a quantum field theory which depends only
on the topological type of an underlying 3-manifold, and proposed that the partition
function of the theory provides a "topological invariant" of the 3-manifold, where by
a topological invariant we mean a map of the set of topological types of 3-manifolds
to a well-known set. Motivated by Witten's proposal, infinitely many invariants of
3-manifolds, called quantum invariants, have been constructed rigorously in various
mathematical ways.

*
So, in the 1980s we obtained infinitely many new invariants (quantum invariants)
 Preface vn

of knots and 3-manifolds. For these quantum invariants to be useful they needed to
be organized, which was achieved with the introduction of the Kontsevich invari-
ant (resp. the LMO invariant) and the theory of Vassiliev invariants (resp. finite
type invariants) in the 1990s. Further, the Kontsevich invariant (resp. the LMO
invariant) gives a map of the set of knots (resp. integral homology 3-spheres) into a
lattice of infinite rank. It is now conjectured that the image under the map classifies
knots (resp. integral homology 3-spheres). The set of knots (resp. integral homol-
ogy 3-spheres) would be identified with a subset of the lattice if this conjecture was
true.

In "classical" topology, where the study focuses, in the main, on individual knots
(resp. 3-manifolds), an invariant was often regarded just as a tool to distinguish
knots (resp. 3-manifolds). This situation has changed since the discoveries of these
many new invariants in the 1980-90s. In the sense that an invariant of knots (resp.
3-manifolds) gives a partition (i.e., a rough classification) of the set of knots (resp.
3-manifolds), the study of such a wealth of invariants is, in effect, a study of these
sets. In this way, we are now ready to study the sets of knots and 3-manifolds.
Number theory has developed, over the course of its long history, from a study
of numbers to be, also, a study of the set of numbers, and in this way has obtained
many profound results on the numbers themselves. Can knots and 3-manifolds be to
topology as numbers are to number theory? That is, we expect future developments
in knot theory (resp. 3-manifold theory) to arise as much from the study of the
set of knots (resp. 3-manifolds) as from the study of the individuals of those sets
themselves. If we could find appropriate structures for those sets, then they could be
studied as the "spaces of knots and 3-manifolds", and invariants (such as quantum
invariants) of knots and 3-manifolds could be studied by analyzing appropriate
functions on those spaces. The author hopes that this monograph will serve as a
first step towards such a future study of the sets of knots and 3-manifolds.

This monograph consists of two parts. The former part (Chapter 1-7) is con-
cerned with invariants of knots and links; see Figure 0.1 for the main knot invariants
discussed in this monograph and the chapters related to them respectively. The lat-
ter part (Chapter 8-11) is concerned with invariants of 3-manifolds; see Figure 0.2
for the main 3-manifold invariants discussed in this monograph and the chapters
related to them respectively.
In Chapters 1-3 the Jones and Alexander polynomials, a modern and a classi-
cal invariant of knots, are constructed from various directions by introducing knot
diagrams in Chapter 1, braids in Chapter 2, and tangles in Chapter 3. The construc-
tions of them discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 reduce the definition of the invariants
of knots into invariants of "elements" (elementary tangle diagrams). In particular,
 Preface

via knot diagrams (Chapter 1)

The Jones polynomial
via braids (Chapter 2)
The Alexander polynomial
via tangles (Chapter 3)

n
via quantum groups (Chapter 4)
via the KZ equation (Chapter 5) (Chapter 7)
(see Chapter 7)
Quantum invariants Vassiliev invariants

universal universal
(see Chapter 6) (see Chapter 7)

The Kontsevich invariant

(Chapter 6)
Figure 0.1 Invariants of knots and related chapters of this monograph. See also Figure 7.4 for a
concrete description of this figure.

an invariant of an elementary tangle diagram with a single crossing is given by an

R matrix (a solution of the Yang-Baxter equation). Such a construction is general
enough to yield, not only the Jones and Alexander polynomials, but also many
other invariants of knots. In fact, this construction associates an invariant of knots
to every R-matrix.
As shown in Chapter 4, many R matrices systematically arise from representa-
tions of ribbon Hopf algebras, whose typical examples are quantum groups. We call
invariants defined by using such R matrices derived from quantum groups quan-
tum invariants. They are reformulated, in Chapter 5, by using monodromy along
solutions of the KZ equation.
In Chapters 6 and 7 we discuss two approaches to control these infinitely many
quantum invariants. One approach is to unify all quantum invariants into the
Kontsevich invariant, which is introduced in Chapter 6 by using monodromy along
solutions of the "universal" KZ equation. By definition the Kontsevich invariant
is universal among quantum invariants. The other approach is to characterize all
quantum invariants with a property. Vassiliev invariants are defined by such a
characteristic property in Chapter 7. With the introduction of the Kontsevich
invariant and the theory of Vassiliev invariants, the quantum invariants become
well-organized. Further, via a descending series of equivalence relations among
 Preface

(Chapter 8)

Quantum invariants

arithmetic expansion
(see Chapter 9)

(Chapter 9) (Chapter 11)

(see Chapter 11)
Perturbative invariants Finite type invariants

universal universal
(see Chapter 10) (see Chapter 11)

The LMO invariant

(Chapter 10)
Figure 0.2 Invariants of 3-manifolds and related chapters of this monograph. See also Figure 11.3
for a concrete description of this figure.

knots given by Vassiliev invariants, the Kontsevich invariant gives a map of the set
of knots into a lattice of infinite rank, which is now conjectured to classify knots.
Quantum invariants of 3-manifolds were originally proposed by Witten by the
Chern-Simons path integral in mathematical physics (see Appendix F). In Chapter
8 we mathematically define quantum invariants of a 3-manifold to be appropriate
linear sums of quantum invariants of a framed link, which gives a surgery presenta-
tion of the 3-manifold; such a definition was predicted by the operator formalism of
the Chern-Simons path integral. Further, motivated by the perturbative expansion
of the Chern-Simons path integral, we define a perturbative invariant to be a certain
number-theoretical limit of quantum invariants in Chapter 9. This is a power series
invariant, while quantum invariants of 3-manifolds are C-valued.
In Chapters 10 and 11 we introduce the LMO invariant and finite type invariants
which play similar roles among the perturbative invariants as the Kontsevich invari-
ant and Vassiliev invariants play among knot invariants. In Chapter 10 we define
the LMO invariant by picking up information in the Kontsevich invariant which is
invariant under the Kirby moves. We also show the universality of the LMO invari-
ant among perturbative invariants. Further, these arguments are reviewed by using
a formal Gaussian integral, called the Aarhus integral. In Chapter 11 we introduce
finite type invariants of integral homology 3-spheres, and show that they satisfy
similar properties as those of Vassiliev invariants. Further, via a descending series
X Preface

of equivalence relations among integral homology 3-spheres given by finite type in-
variants, the LMO invariant gives a map of the set of integral homology 3-spheres
into a lattice of infinite rank, which is now conjectured to classify integral homology
3-spheres.

The author tremendously and deeply appreciates Andrew Kricker, who gave him
many valuable suggestions and comments in each page of the whole of the draft,
which really improved readability of many English and mathematical expressions
in the draft.
The author would like to thank Tatsuya Yagi, Ayumu Inoue, Tatsuhiro Ya-
makawa, Kentarou Kikuchi, Naosuke Okuda, Eri Hatakenaka, and Tomohide Ya-
mada for reading early drafts carefully and pointing out many corrections.
The author is sincerely grateful to many helpful comments given by Hitoshi
Murakami for Chapters 1-6, Kazuo Habiro for Appendix E, and Toru Gocho and
Jorgen Ellegaard Andersen for Appendix F. He also wishes to thank Jun Murakami
and Toshitake Kohno for comments and suggestions, Dylan Paul Thurston for com-
ments on configuration space integrals, and Kouji Kodama for calculations of the
colored Jones polynomials.

Tomotada Ohtsuki
Tokyo, October 2001
 Contents

Preface v

Chapter 1 Knots and polynomial invariants 1

1.1 Knots and their diagrams 2
1.2 The Jones polynomial 8
1.3 The Alexander polynomial 17

Chapter 2 Braids and representations of the braid groups 23

2.1 Braids and braid groups 23
2.2 Representations of the braid groups via R matrices 27
2.3 Burau representation of the braid groups 32

Chapter 3 Operator invariants of tangles via sliced diagrams 41

3.1 Tangles and their sliced diagrams 41
3.2 Operator invariants of unoriented tangles 46
3.3 Operator invariants of oriented tangles 52

Chapter 4 Ribbon Hopf algebras and invariants of links 63

4.1 Ribbon Hopf algebras 64
4.2 Invariants of links in ribbon Hopf algebras 72
4.3 Operator invariants of tangles derived from ribbon Hopf algebras . . . . 76
4.4 The quantum group Uq{sl<2) at a generic q 85
4.5 The quantum group U^(sh) at a root of unity £ 94

Chapter 5 Monodromy representations of the braid groups derived

from the Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equation 99
5.1 Representations of braid groups derived from the KZ equation 100
5.2 Computing monodromies of the KZ equation 109
5.3 Combinatorial reconstruction of the monodromy representations . . . . 115
5.4 Quasi-triangular quasi-bialgebra 123

xi
xii Contents

5.5 Relation to braid representations derived from the quantum group . . . 126

Chapter 6 The Kontsevich invariant 133

6.1 Jacobi diagrams 134
6.2 The Kontsevich invariant derived from the formal KZ equation 139
6.3 Quasi-tangles and their sliced diagrams 144
6.4 Combinatorial definition of the framed Kontsevich invariant 148
6.5 Properties of the framed Kontsevich invariant 153
6.6 Universality of the Kontsevich invariant among quantum invariants . . . 161

Chapter 7 Vassiliev invariants 175

7.1 Definition and fundamental properties of Vassiliev invariants 176
7.2 Universality of the Kontsevich invariant among Vassiliev invariants . . . 182
7.3 A descending series of equivalence relations among knots 185
7.4 Extending the set of knots by Gauss diagrams 189
7.5 Vassiliev invariants as mapping degrees on configuration spaces 200

Chapter 8 Quantum invariants of 3-manifolds 211

8.1 3-manifolds and their surgery presentations 212
8.2 The quantum SU{2) and SO(3) invariants via linear skein 222
8.3 Quantum invariants of 3-manifolds via quantum invariants of links . . . 231

Chapter 9 Perturbative invariants of knots and 3-manifolds 247

9.1 Perturbative invariants of knots 247
9.2 Perturbative invariants of homology 3-spheres 254
9.3 A relation between perturbative invariants of knots and homology 3-
spheres 264

Chapter 10 The LMO invariant 269

10.1 Properties of the framed Kontsevich invariant 270
10.2 Definition of the LMO invariant 272
10.3 Universality of the LMO invariant among perturbative invariants . . . . 288
10.4 Aarhus integral 295

Chapter 11 Finite type invariants of integral homology 3-spheres 305

11.1 Definition of finite type invariants 306
11.2 Universality of the LMO invariant among finite type invariants 320
11.3 A descending series of equivalence relations among homology 3-spheres . 327

Appendix A The quantum group Uq{sl2) 333

A.l Uq(sl2) at a generic q is a ribbon Hopf algebra 333
A.2 U{(sl2) at a root of unity ( is a ribbon Hopf algebra 342
A.3 Exceptional representations of J/^sfo) at £ = — 1 346
 Contents xiii

Appendix B The quantum s/3 invariant via a linear skein 349

B.l The quantum (sl^,V) invariant of framed links 349
B.2 The quantum SU(3) and PSU(3) invariants of 3-manifolds 352

Appendix C Braid representations for the Alexander polynomial 357

C.l Relation between two braid representations 357

Appendix D Associators 365

D.l Drinfel'd series 366
D.2 The Drinfel'd associator 370

Appendix E Claspers 375

E.l Basic properties of claspers 376
E.2 A descending series of equivalence relations among knots 379
E.3 A descending series of equivalence relations among homology 3-spheres . 390
E.4 Computing the Kontsevich and the LMO invariants of tree claspers . . . 399

Appendix F Physical background 405

F.l Chern-Simons field theory 406
F.2 Topological quantum field theory 409
F.3 Perturbative expansion 417
F.4 Conformal field theory by Wess-Zumino-Witten model 424

Appendix G Computations for the perturbative invariant 437

G.l Gaussian sum 437
G.2 The center of the quantum group Uq(sl2) 442
G.3 The quantum (sZ2; ak) invariant is divisible by (q — l)2k 444
G.4 Computation of formal Gaussian integrals 447

Appendix H The quantum sl2 invariant and the Kauffman bracket 457
H.l The quantum (sl2,V) invariant by the Kauffman bracket 457
H.2 The quantum (sl2,Vn) invariant by the linear skein 459
Bibliography 463
Notation 483
Index 485
This page is intentionally left blank
 Chapter 1
Knots and polynomial invariants

In knot theory we study knots and knot types (i.e., isotopy classes of knots) as
mathematical objects. We often deal with knots by depicting them in a plane; the
depicted pictures of knots are called knot diagrams. Further, we describe isotopy
of knots by some moves among knot diagrams, which are called the Reidemeister
moves. Then, the set of isotopy classes of knots can be identified with the quotient
set of knot diagrams modulo the Reidemeister moves. A remarkable advantage of
such identification is that although knots are topological objects in a 3-dimensional
space they can be treated as combinatorial objects, like graphs embedded in a plane.
In this way we can reduce studies of knots to studies of the combinatorics of knot
diagrams.
A main topic in knot theory is the study of invariants of knots. An invariant
is a map from the set of knots to a (well-known) set, such as a polynomial ring,
such that two isotopic knots have the same image by the map. By using invariants
of knots we can distinguish isotopy classes of knots concretely. A typical way of
constructing an invariant is to construct a function of the set of knot diagrams, in
a combinatorial way, such that it is unchanged under the Reidemeister moves. We
introduce the Jones polynomial in such a way in Section 1.2.
The historic discovery of the Jones polynomial took place in the middle of 1980s,
relatively recent in the history of knot theory. In the 1980s many invariants of knots,
what are called quantum invariants, were discovered in active interaction between
low dimensional topology and mathematical physics. The Jones polynomial can be
regarded as the simplest quantum invariant. On the other hand a most classical
invariant of knots is the Alexander polynomial, which was discovered in the 1920s,
relatively early in the history of knot theory. It is defined in a classical way, using the
homology of the infinite cyclic covering space of a knot complement. We introduce
the Alexander polynomial in Section 1.3.

1
2 Knots and polynomial invariants

1.1 Knots and their diagrams

A knot is the image of a smooth (or piecewise smooth) embedding S1 —> M3. We
show some simple examples of knots in Figure 1.1. Further, a link of I components
is the image of a smooth (or piecewise smooth) embedding of the disjoint union of
I circles into R 3 . In particular, a link of 1 component is a knot.
Two knots (or two links) K and K' are called isotopic if there exists a smooth
(or piecewise smooth) family of homeomorphisms ht : R 3 —> M3 for t G [0,1] such
that ho is the identity map of R 3 and hi(K) — K'. Such a family of ht is called an
isotopy of R 3 . In other words, K and K' are isotopic if K is obtained from K' by
a continuous deformation such that there is no self-intersection at any time during
the deformation. For example, K^ and K^ in Figure 1.1 are isotopic; see also
Figure 1.4. In knot theory we study knots as geometric objects, regarding isotopic
knots as the same object.

o
trivial knot K0
<§>
trefoil knot K^
® K^

& ® 8B
figure-eight knot K^ (5,2) torus knot Kc, (7,3) two-bridge knot K$2
Figure 1.1 Some simple knots. The knot KL is isotopic to K^ . For naming of these knots, see,
e.g., [Rol90, BuZi85, Lic97, Kaw+90].

It is rather easy to prove that two knots are isotopic if so; because we can prove
it by showing a step-by-step process of the deformation between the two knots as in
Figure 1.4. Conversely, it is not a simple problem in general to prove that two knots
are not isotopic. Note that this can not be proved with a trial and error search for
the deformation between the two knots. It can, however, be proved clearly by using
an "invariant", as mentioned below.

For a well-known set S we call the map

I: {knots} —> S

an isotopy invariant of knots, if the map satisfies I{K) = I{K') for any two isotopic
 Knots and their diagrams 3

knots K and K'. For example, a trivial invariant is the natural projection on the
set S of isotopy classes of knots, though such an invariant is quite useless. Usually,
it is interesting to construct an invariant for a "well-known" set S such as the set
Z or a polynomial ring. For example, as for the Alexander polynomial A K ( £ ) of a
knot K introduced later in Section 1.3, we have that

^H
AxoW =
KW = t-l+t"1,
- 1
&KL3 (t) = t-l+t ,
i

A* 4 l (i) = —t + 3 — * _ 1 ,
A* B i (i) = t2 -t + 1 -t-1 +t~2,
A* B a (t) = 2 i - 3 + 2£"\

for the knots in Figure 1.1. Note that an invariant always has the same value for
isotopic knots, say K% and K^ as above, while it has different values (in general)
for non-isotopic knots. Since the Alexander polynomial has different values, say for
K% and K\x, we can conclude that K^ and K^x are not isotopic.
A knot diagram is a smooth immersion Sl —> R 2 with at most finitely many
transversal double points such that the two paths at each double point are assigned
to be the over path and the under path respectively. We call a double point of
such an immersion a crossing of the knot diagram. When a knot diagram D is
obtained as the image of a knot by a projection R 3 —> R 2 , we call D a diagram of
the knot; see, for example, Figure 1.2. Note that a knot diagram is a 2-dimensional
geometric object, while a knot is a 3-dimensional geometric object, though they
look similar in pictures. A link diagram is defined similarly as a smooth immersion
of the disjoint union of circles to R 2 . Two knot diagrams (or two link diagrams)
D and D' are called isotopic if there exists a smooth (or piecewise smooth) family
of homeomorphisms ht : R 2 —> R 2 such that ho is the identity map of R 2 and
h±(D) = D'. Such a family of ht is called an isotopy of R 2 .

Theorem 1.1 (see, for example, [BuZi85]). Let K and K' be two knots (or two
links, in general) and D and D' diagrams of them. Then, K is isotopic to K' in R 3
if and only if D is related to D' by a sequence of isotopies of R 2 and the RI, RII,
RIII moves shown in Figure 1.3.

We call the RI, RII and RIII moves the Reidemeister moves.
For example, Figure 1.4 shows a sequence of moves relating K-§ to K^ .

Sketch of the proof of Theorem 1.1. It is trivial to show that, if D and D' are
related by a sequence of the moves, then K and K' are isotopic.
Conversely, suppose that K and K' are isotopic. Then, we have an isotopy
ht between K and K'. Further, the union of ht{K) for t e [0,1] is an immersed
annulus in R 3 whose boundary is the union of K and K'. By taking piecewise linear
4 Knots and polynomial invariants

a knot

a diagram of the knot

Figure 1.2 A knot and a diagram of it

approximation of the immersed annulus we can express the annulus as the union
of linear small triangles in M3 after small perturbation of the annulus. Hence, the
deformation between K and K' can be expressed as the composition of successive
steps such that each of the steps is the move such that one edge (resp. the union of
two edges) of a small triangle is replaced by the union of the other two edges (resp.
the other edge). By classifying the phenomena that can happen at such a move we
obtain the HI, RII and RIII moves and the mirror images of the RI and RIII move.
Further, the mirror images of the RI and RIII moves can be obtained as sequences
of the RII and RIII moves, as below.

RIII RII

Hence, the isotopy can be expressed by a sequence of the Reidemeister moves; for
a detailed proof, see, e.g., [BuZi85]. •
 Knots and their diagrams 5

Figure 1.3 The Reidemeister moves

Figure 1.4 K^ and K'- in Figure 1.1 are isotopic. Their diagrams are related by a sequence of
the Reidemeister moves as in the above picture.

Theorem 1.1 has the following symbolic representation,

{knots} / isotopy of R 3 = {knot diagrams} /RI, RII, RIII and isotopy of R 2 .

(1.1)
This equality allows us to define the notion of a knot to be an equivalence class
of knot diagrams, modulo the Reidemeister moves. For the purpose of studying
the geometry of the set of knots, the equality (1.1) is fundamental; because the left
hand side of (1.1) is topological while we can deal with the right hand side somehow
in a combinatorial way.
An oriented link is the image of an embedding of the disjoint union of oriented
circles into R 3 ; see Figure 1.5 for examples of oriented links. Further, an oriented
diagram is defined similarly as an immersion of oriented circles in R 2 . As a corollary
of Theorem 1.1, we have

Theorem 1.2. Let K and K' be two oriented knots (or two oriented links, in
 Knots and polynomial invariants

Hopf link Whitehead link

Figure 1.5 Examples of oriented links

general) and D and D' oriented diagrams of them. Then, K is isotopic to K' in K 3
if and only if D is related to D' by a sequence of isotopies of R 2 and RI, RII, RIII
moves shown in Figure 1.6.

The RI move:

The RII move:

The RIII move:

Figure 1.6 The Reidemeister moves for oriented diagrams

Proof. By Theorem 1.1 K is isotopic to K' if and only if D is related to D' by

a sequence of isotopies of R 2 and the Reidemeister moves in Figure 1.3, with any
orientation of the strands (such that corresponding strands from opposite sides of
the moves are oriented in the same way). Hence, it is sufficient to verify that each
of the Reidemeister moves with any such orientation can be obtained as a sequence
of the RI, RII and RIII moves.
Since we have 1 strand in the RI move, we have two possible orientations for the
RI move. We have dubbed one the RI move. The other is obtained as a sequence
of the RII and RIII moves as below.
 Knots and their diagrams 7

RI { RII RII <s\ RI

(1.2)
f\y
Since we have 2 strands in the RII move, we have 4 possible orientations for
the RII move. Three of the 4 orientations are given in the RII move. The other is
obtained by the following sequence

(1.2)

where the second move in the sequence is obtained as follows.

RII RIII RII

(1.3)

Since we have 3 strands in the RIII move, we have 8 possible orientations for the
RIII move. Noting that the RIII move has a symmetry with respect to TT rotation,
the 8 orientations are reduced to 4 orientations up to the symmetry. One of the
4 orientations is given in the RIII move. Further, another of the 4 orientations is
obtained as below.

RII, (1.3) RIII RII

It is left to the reader, as an exercise, to verify that the other two of the 4 orientations
are derived from the RII and RIII moves and (1.3). •

As an elementary application of Theorem 1.2 we introduce the linking number as

an
follows. Call the crossings / \ d ,/\. °f a n oriented diagram the positive

and the negative crossings respectively. The linking number of two components L\
and Li of an oriented link is defined by

lk(Li,Z/2) = ^ ((the number of positive crossings of two strands of D\ and D-i)

— (the number of negative crossings of two strands of D\ and £) 2 )),

(1.4)
8 Knots and polynomial invariants

where D\ U D2 is a diagram of L\ U Li- Note that we do not count crossings of two

strands of the same component. From the definition of the linking number lk(Li, L2)
is equal to lk(L2,Li). For example, the linking numbers of the two components of
the links in Figure 1.5 are +1 and 0 respectively.

Proposition 1.3. The linking number lk(£i, L2) is an isotopy invariant of an ori-
ented link L\ U Li-
Proof. It is an elementary exercise (left to the reader) to verify that the right hand
side of (1.4) is invariant under the RI, RII and RIII moves. Hence, the proposition
is obtained from Theorem 1.2. •

The linking number lk(Li, L2) can alternatively be defined to be the intersection
number of F and L2 in K 3 where F is a surface bounded by L\. It is further equal
to the homology class of L2 in Hi(S3 — L\\ Z) = Z, noting that F gives the Poincare
dual of the generator of H1(S3 — L\; Z) = Z. It is left to the reader, as an exercise, to
verify that this alternative definition gives the same linking number as the original
definition above, (1.4).

1.2 The Jones polynomial

In this section we introduce the Jones polynomial of links. To introduce it in an

elementary way we use the Kauffman bracket of link diagrams, though, historically
speaking, it was introduced by Jones using the theory of operator algebras. For a
similar invariant defined by another bracket see Appendix B.l.
For a link diagram D in K2 the Kauffman bracket (D) e Z [ A , J 4 _ 1 ] of D is
defined as follows. We consider the following recursive formulae

+i, <LS)
<XM)0 "<X>'
( ( ) D) = (-A2 - A~2)(D) for any diagram D without crossings, (1.6)

(the empty diagram 0) = 1, (1.7)

where the left hand side of (1.6) implies the diagram obtained from D by adding
a simple closed curve with no intersection with D. The bracket can be evaluated
on a diagram D as follows. Using (1.5) we resolve all crossings of D linearly. For
example, for a trefoil knot diagram, we have that

<(Q)M(Q)>--<(8)>
 The Jones polynomial 9

In general, for a link diagram D with k crossings, we obtain a linear sum of 2k

diagrams without crossings. Note that the linear sum is obtained independently of
the order of expansion of the k crossings. Further, since a diagram without crossings
is the disjoint union of loops, we obtain the value of its bracket recursively by (1.6)
and (1.7), i.e., the bracket of a diagram consisting of I disjoint loops has the value
(—A2 — A~2)1. Hence, we obtain (D) from the above linear sum of 2k diagrams by
replacing each diagram, say, I loops, by {—A2 — A~2)1. For example, for a trefoil
knot diagram, we have that

<e> = A3{-A2
+ A-x{-A2
+ A~\-A2
- A~2)2 + A(-A2
- A~2)2 + A(-A2
- A~2)2 + A~3(-A2
- A'2) + A(-A2 - A~2)
- A~2) + A~\-A2
- ^ 2x3
- A~2)2

= (-A2 - A~2)(-A5 - A~3 + A~7). (1.8)

L e m m a 1.4. The Kauffman bracket satisfies the formulae

<o (-A2 - A 2){D) for any diagram D,

where the three pictures in the first formula imply three diagrams which are identical
outside the dotted circles and differ only inside the dotted circles, as shown in the
pictures.

The first formula of the lemma is called the skein relation of the Kauffman
bracket. It is the same formula as a defining relation (1.5) and they have the
following different sense; the defining relation (1.5) is a recursive formula to expand
all crossings repeatedly to define the Kauffman bracket, while the skein relation is
a relation among the Kauffman bracket of three diagrams which have been already
defined.
10 Knots and polynomial invariants

Proof of Lemma 1.4- From the definition of the Kauffman bracket, we expand
all crossings of the diagram, say k crossings, on the left hand side of the first formula,
to obtain a linear sum of 2k diagrams without crossings. We split the linear sum
into two parts, according to which of the two terms in the expansion of crossing
in the dotted circle each final term arises from. Then, each part is a linear sum of
2 f c _ 1 diagrams without crossings, and each part corresponds to a term on the right
hand side of the first formula. Hence, we obtain the first formula.
We obtain the second formula by a similar argument using (1.6). •

To obtain an isotopy invariant of links from the Kauffman bracket of their dia-
grams, it is sufficient to show the invariance of the Kauffman bracket under the RI,
RII and RIII moves by Theorem 1.1. Let us verify the invariance under each of the
moves.

Firstly, is equal to Here, the two pictures indicate

two diagrams which only differ inside the dotted circles, as shown. By Lemma 1.4
we have that

4
-<!j0)> 1-1 = -Ai (1.9)

In the same way, we find that

(1.10)
1
Hence, unfortunately, (D) does change under the RI move on a diagram D.
For simplicity we omit the dotted circles in the following.

)? By Lemma 1.4 we have that

-<X»-
where we obtain the second equality by (1.10). Hence, {D) is invariant under the
RII move on a diagram D.

Thirdly, is equal to By Lemma 1.4 we have the

 Another Random Document on
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sense of squareness that is always in me;” nor did they at any time
belie his expectation.
From Margate, where he had already made good progress with
Endymion, Keats went with his brother Tom to spend some time at
Canterbury. Thence they moved early in the summer to lodgings
kept by a Mr and Mrs Bentley in Well Walk, Hampstead, where the
three brothers had decided to take up their abode together. Here he
continued through the summer to work steadily at Endymion, being
now well advanced with the second book; and some of his friends,
as Haydon, Cowden Clarke, and Severn, remembered all their lives
afterwards the occasions when they walked with him on the heath,
while he repeated to them, in his rich and tremulous, half-chanting
tone, the newly-written passages which best pleased him. From his
poetical absorption and Elysian dreams they were accustomed to see
him at a touch come back to daily life; sometimes to sympathize
heart and soul with their affairs, sometimes in a burst of laughter,
nonsense, and puns, (it was a punning age, and the Keats’s were a
very punning family), sometimes with a sudden flash of his old
schoolboy pugnacity and fierceness of righteous indignation. To this
summer or the following winter, it is not quite certain which, belongs
the well-known story of his thrashing in stand-up fight a stalwart
young butcher whom he had found tormenting a cat (a ‘ruffian in
livery’ according to one account, but the butcher version is the best
attested).
For the rest, the choice of Hampstead as a place of residence had
much to recommend it to Keats: the freshness of the air for the
benefit of the invalid Tom: for his own walks and meditations those
beauties of heath, field, and wood, interspersed with picturesque
embosomed habitations, which his imagination could transmute at
will into the landscapes of Arcadia, or into those, ‘with high
romances blent,’ of an earlier England or of fable-land. For society
there was the convenient proximity to, and yet seclusion from,
London, together with the immediate neighbourhood of one or two
intimate friends. Among these, Keats frequented as familiarly as ever
the cottage in the Vale of Health where Leigh Hunt was still living—a
kind of self-appointed poet-laureate of Hampstead, the features of
which he was for ever celebrating, now in sonnets, and now in the
cheerful singsong of his familiar Epistles:—
“And yet how can I touch, and not linger awhile
On the spot that has haunted my youth like a smile?
On its fine breathing prospects, its clump-wooded glades,
Dark pines, and white houses, and long-alley’d shades,
With fields going down, where the bard lies and sees
The hills up above him with roofs in the trees.”
Several effusions of this kind, with three sonnets addressed to Keats
himself, some translations from the Greek, and a not ungraceful
mythological poem, the Nymphs, were published early in the
following year by Leigh Hunt in a volume called Foliage, which
helped to draw down on him and his friends the lash of Tory
criticism.
Near the foot of the heath, in the opposite direction from Hunt’s
cottage, lived two new friends of Keats who had been introduced to
him by Reynolds, and with whom he was soon to become extremely
intimate. These were Charles Wentworth Dilke and Charles Armitage
Brown (or plain Charles Brown as he at this time styled himself).
Dilke was a young man of twenty-nine, by birth belonging to a
younger branch of the Dilkes of Maxstoke Castle, by profession a
clerk in the Navy Pay office, and by opinions at this time a firm
disciple of Godwin. He soon gave himself up altogether to literary
and antiquarian studies, and lived, as every one knows, to be one of
the most accomplished and influential of English critics and
journalists, and for many years editor and chief owner of the
Athenæum. No two men could well be more unlike in mind than
Dilke and Keats: Dilke positive, bent on certainty, and unable, as
Keats says, “to feel he has a personal identity unless he has made
up his mind about everything:” while Keats on his part held that “the
only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind
about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.”
Nevertheless the two took to each other and became fast friends.
Dilke had married young, and built himself, a year or two before
Keats knew him, a modest semi-detached house in a good-sized
garden near the lower end of Hampstead Heath, at the bottom of
what is now John Street; the other part of the same block being
built and inhabited by his friend Charles Brown. This Brown was the
son of a Scotch stockbroker living in Lambeth. He was born in 1786,
and while almost a boy went out to join one of his brothers in a
merchant’s business at St Petersburg; but the business failing, he
returned to England in 1808, and lived as he could for the next few
years, until the death of another brother put him in possession of a
small competency. He had a taste, and some degree of talent for
literature, and held strongly Radical opinions. In 1810 he wrote an
opera on a Russian subject, called Narensky, which was brought out
at the Lyceum with Braham in the principal part; and at intervals
during the next twenty years many criticisms, tales, and translations
from the Italian, chiefly printed in the various periodicals edited by
Leigh Hunt. When Keats first knew him, Brown was a young man
already of somewhat middle-aged appearance, stout, bald, and
spectacled,—a kindly companion, and jovial, somewhat free liver,
with a good measure both of obstinacy and caution lying in reserve,
more Scotico, under his pleasant and convivial outside. It is clear by
his relations with Keats that his heart was warm, and that when
once attached, he was capable not only of appreciation but of
devotion. After the poet’s death Brown went to Italy, and became
the friend of Trelawney, whom he helped with the composition of the
Adventures of a Younger Son, and of Landor, at whose villa near
Florence Lord Houghton first met him in 1832. Two years later he
returned to England, and settled at Plymouth, where he continued to
occupy himself with literature and journalism, and particularly with
his chief work, an essay, ingenious and in part sound, on the
autobiographical poems of Shakspere. Thoughts of Keats, and a wish
to be his biographer, never left him, until in 1841 he resolved
suddenly to emigrate to New Zealand, and departed leaving his
materials in Lord Houghton’s hands. A year afterwards he died of
apoplexy at the settlement of New Plymouth, now called
Taranaki[27].
Yet another friend of Reynolds who in these months attached himself
with a warm affection to Keats was Benjamin Bailey, an Oxford
undergraduate reading for the Church, afterwards Archdeacon of
Colombo. Bailey was a great lover of books, devoted especially to
Milton among past and to Wordsworth among present poets. For his
earnestness and integrity of character Keats conceived a strong
respect, and a hearty liking for his person, and much of what was
best in his own nature, and deepest in his mind and cogitations, was
called out in the intercourse that ensued between them. In the
course of this summer, 1817, Keats had been invited by Shelley to
stay with him at Great Marlow, and Hunt, ever anxious that the two
young poets should be friends, pressed him strongly to accept the
invitation. It is said by Medwin, but the statement is not confirmed
by other evidence, that Shelley and Keats had set about their
respective ‘summer tasks,’ the composition of Laon and Cythna and
of Endymion, by mutual agreement and in a spirit of friendly rivalry.
Keats at any rate declined his brother poet’s invitation, in order, as
he said, that he might have his own unfettered scope. Later in the
same summer, while his brothers were away on a trip to Paris, he
accepted an invitation of Bailey to come to Oxford, and stayed there
during the last five or six weeks of the Long Vacation. Here he wrote
the third book of Endymion, working steadily every morning, and
composing with great facility his regular average of fifty lines a day.
The afternoons they would spend in walking or boating on the Isis,
and Bailey has feelingly recorded the pleasantness of their days, and
of their discussions on life, literature, and the mysteries of things. He
tells of the sweetness of Keats’s temper and charm of his
conversation, and of the gentleness and respect with which the hot
young liberal and free-thinker would listen to his host’s exposition of
his own orthodox convictions: describes his enthusiasm in quoting
Chatterton and in dwelling on passages of Wordsworth’s poetry,
particularly from the Tintern Abbey and the Ode on Immortality: and
recalls his disquisitions on the harmony of numbers and other
technicalities of his art, the power of his thrilling looks and low-
voiced recitations, his vividness of inner life, and intensity of quiet
enjoyment during their field and river rambles and excursions[28].
One special occasion of pleasure was a pilgrimage they made
together to Stratford-on-Avon. From Oxford are some of the letters
written by Keats in his happiest vein; to Reynolds and his sister Miss
Jane Reynolds, afterwards Mrs Tom Hood; to Haydon; and to his
young sister Frances Mary, or Fanny as she was always called (now
Mrs Llanos). George Keats, writing to this sister after John’s death,
speaks of the times “when we lived with our grandmother at
Edmonton, and John, Tom, and myself were always devising plans to
amuse you, jealous lest you should prefer either of us to the others.”
Since those times Keats had seen little of her, Mr Abbey having put
her to a boarding-school before her grandmother’s death, and
afterwards taken her into his own house at Walthamstow, where the
visits of her poet brother were not encouraged. “He often,” writes
Bailey, “spoke to me of his sister, who was somehow withholden
from him, with great delicacy and tenderness of affection:” and from
this time forward we find him maintaining with her a correspondence
which shows his character in its most attractive light. He bids her
keep all his letters and he will keep hers—“and thus in the course of
time we shall each of us have a good bundle—which hereafter, when
things may have strangely altered and God knows what happened,
we may read over together and look with pleasure on times past—
that now are to come.” He tells her about Oxford and about his
work, and gives her a sketch of the story of Endymion—“but I
daresay you have read this and all other beautiful tales which have
come down to us from the ancient times of that beautiful Greece.”
Early in October Keats returned to Hampstead, whence he writes to
Bailey noticing with natural indignation the ruffianly first article of
the Cockney School series, which had just appeared in Blackwood’s
Magazine for that month. In this the special object of attack was
Leigh Hunt, but there were allusions to Keats which seemed to
indicate that his own turn was coming. What made him more
seriously uneasy were signs of discord springing up among his
friends, and of attempts on the part of some of them to set him
against others. Haydon had now given up his studio in Great
Marlborough Street for one in Lisson Grove; and Hunt, having left
the Vale of Health, was living close by him at a lodging in the same
street. “I know nothing of anything in this part of the world,” writes
Keats: “everybody seems at loggerheads.” And he goes on to say
how Hunt and Haydon are on uncomfortable terms, and “live, pour
ainsi dire, jealous neighbours. Haydon says to me, ‘Keats, don’t
show your lines to Hunt on any account, or he will have done half
for you’—so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought.” With more
accounts of warnings he had received from common friends that
Hunt was not feeling or speaking cordially about Endymion. “Now is
not all this a most paltry thing to think about?... This is, to be sure,
but the vexation of a day, nor would I say so much about it to any
but those whom I know to have my welfare and reputation at
heart[29].” When three months later Keats showed Hunt the first
book of his poem in proof, the latter found many faults. It is clear he
was to some extent honestly disappointed in the work itself. He may
also have been chagrined at not having been taken more fully into
confidence during its composition; and what he said to others was
probably due partly to such chagrin, partly to nervousness on behalf
of his friend’s reputation: for of double-facedness or insincerity in
friendship we know by a hundred evidences that Hunt was
incapable. Keats, however, after what he had heard, was by no
means without excuse when he wrote to his brothers concerning
Hunt,—not unkindly, or making much of the matter,—“the fact is, he
and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed
them the affair officiously; and from several hints I have had, they
appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I
may have made. But who’s afraid?” Keats was not the man to let this
kind of thing disturb seriously his relations with a friend: and writing
about the same time to Bailey, still concerning the dissensions in the
circle, he expounds the practical philosophy of friendship with truly
admirable good sense and feeling:—
 “Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must have
heard of them; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating,
and parting for ever. The same thing has happened between
Haydon and Hunt. It is unfortunate: men should bear with each
other; there lives not the man who may not be cut up, aye,
lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have but
a portion of good in them—a kind of spiritual yeast in their
frames, which creates the ferment of existence—by which a man
is propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with circumstance. The
sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man’s faults, and then be
passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, then
you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in
either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well-read in their faults; yet
knowing them both I have been cementing gradually with both. I
have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite;
and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the
hope that when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me
more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together.
This time must come, because they have both hearts; and they
will recollect the best parts of each other when this gust is
overblown.”
Keats had in the meantime been away on another autumn excursion
into the country: this time to Burford Bridge near Dorking. Here he
passed pleasantly the latter part of November, much absorbed in the
study of Shakspere’s minor poems and sonnets, and in the task of
finishing Endymion. He had thus all but succeeded in carrying out
the hope which he had expressed in the opening passage of the
poem:—
“Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimm’d and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
 See it half finished; but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end.”
Returning to Hampstead, Keats spent the first part of the winter in
comparative rest from literary work. His chief occupation was in
revising and seeing Endymion through the press, with much help
from the publisher, Mr Taylor; varied by occasional essays in
dramatic criticism, and as the spring began, by the composition of a
number of minor incidental poems. In December he lost the
companionship of his brothers, who went to winter in Devonshire for
the sake of Tom’s health. But in other company he was at this time
mixing freely. The convivial gatherings of the young men of his own
circle were frequent, the fun high, the discussions on art and
literature boisterous, and varied with a moderate, evidently never a
very serious, amount of card-playing, drinking, and dissipation. From
these gatherings Keats was indispensable, and more than welcome
in the sedater literary circle of his publishers, Messrs Taylor and
Hessey, men as strict in conduct and opinion as they were good-
hearted. His social relations began, indeed, in the course of this
winter to extend themselves more than he much cared about, or
thought consistent with proper industry. We find him dining with
Horace Smith in company with some fashionable wits, concerning
whom he reflects:—“They only served to convince me how superior
humour is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things
which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike;
their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a
mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling a
decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. ‘Would I were
with that company instead of yours’, said I to myself.” Men of ardent
and deep natures, whether absorbed in the realities of experience,
or in the ideals of art and imagination, are apt to be affected in this
way by the conventional social sparkle which is only struck from and
only illuminates the surface. Hear, on the other hand, with what
pleasure and insight, what sympathy of genius for genius, Keats
writes after seeing the great tragedian last mentioned interpret the
inner and true passions of the soul:—
“The sensual life of verse springs warm from the lips of Kean ...
his tongue must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and left
them honeyless! There is an indescribable gusto in his voice, by
which we feel that the utterer is thinking of the past and future
while speaking of the instant. When he says in Othello, ‘Put up
your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,’ we feel that his
throat had commanded where swords were as thick as reeds.
From eternal risk, he speaks as though his body were
unassailable. Again, his exclamation of ‘blood! blood! blood!’ is
direful and slaughterous to the last degree; the very words
appear stained and gory. His nature hangs over them, making a
prophetic repast. The voice is loosed on them, like the wild dogs
on the savage relics of an eastern conflict; and we can distinctly
hear it ‘gorging and growling o’er carcase and limb.’ In Richard,
‘Be stirring with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk!’ came from
him, as through the morning atmosphere towards which he
yearns.”
It was in the Christmas weeks of 1817-18 that Keats undertook the
office of theatrical critic for the Champion newspaper in place of
Reynolds, who was away at Exeter. Early in January he writes to his
brothers of the pleasure he has had in seeing their sister, who had
been brought to London for the Christmas holidays; and tells them
how he has called on and been asked to dine by Wordsworth, whom
he had met on the 28th of December at a supper given by Haydon.
This is the famous Sunday supper, or ‘immortal dinner’ as Haydon
calls it, which is described at length in one of the most characteristic
passages of the painter’s Autobiography. Besides Wordsworth and
Keats and the host, there were present Charles Lamb and
Monkhouse. “Wordsworth’s fine intonation as he quoted Milton and
Virgil, Keats’s eager inspired look, Lamb’s quaint sparkle of lambent
humour, so speeded the stream of conversation,” says Haydon, “that
I never passed a more delightful time.” Later in the evening came in
Ritchie the African traveller, just about to start on the journey to
Fezzan on which he died, besides a self-invited guest in the person
of one Kingston, Comptroller of Stamps, a foolish good-natured
gentleman, recommended only by his admiration for Wordsworth.
Presently Lamb getting fuddled, lost patience with the platitudes of
Mr Kingston, and began making fun of him, with pranks and
personalities which to Haydon appeared hugely funny, but which
Keats in his letter to his brothers mentions with less relish, saying,
“Lamb got tipsy and blew up Kingston, proceeding so far as to take
the candle across the room, hold it to his face, and show us what a
soft fellow he was[30].” Keats saw Wordsworth often in the next few
weeks after their introduction at Haydon’s, but has left us no
personal impressions of the elder poet, except a passing one of
surprise at finding him one day preparing to dine, in a stiff collar and
his smartest clothes, with his aforesaid unlucky admirer Mr
Comptroller Kingston. We know from other sources that he was once
persuaded to recite to Wordsworth the Hymn to Pan from Endymion.
“A pretty piece of Paganism,” remarked Wordsworth, according to his
usual encouraging way with a brother poet; and Keats was thought
to have winced under the frigidity. Independently of their personal
relations, the letters of Keats show that Wordsworth’s poetry
continued to be much in his thoughts throughout these months;
what he has to say of it varying according to the frame of mind in
which he writes. In the enthusiastic mood he declares, and within a
few days again insists, that there are three things to rejoice at in the
present age, “The Excursion, Haydon’s Pictures, and Hazlitt’s depth
of Taste.” This mention of the name of Hazlitt brings us to another
intellectual influence which somewhat powerfully affected Keats at
this time. On the liberal side in politics and criticism there was no
more effective or more uncertain free lance than that eloquent and
splenetic writer, with his rich, singular, contradictory gifts, his
intellect equally acute and fervid, his temperament both enthusiastic
and morose, his style at once rich and incisive. The reader
acquainted with Hazlitt’s manner will easily recognize its influence on
Keats in the fragment of stage criticism above quoted. Hazlitt was at
this time delivering his course of lectures on the English poets at the
Surrey Institution, and Keats was among his regular attendants.
With Hazlitt personally, as with Lamb, his intercourse at Haydon’s
and elsewhere seems to have been frequent and friendly, but not
intimate: and Haydon complains that it was only after the death of
Keats that he could get Hazlitt to acknowledge his genius.
Of Haydon himself, and of his powers as a painter, we see by the
words above quoted that Keats continued to think as highly as ever.
He had, as Severn assures us, a keen natural instinct for the arts
both of painting and music. Cowden Clarke’s piano-playing had been
a delight to him at school, and he tells us himself how from a boy he
had in his mind’s eye visions of pictures:—“when a schoolboy the
abstract idea I had of an heroic painting was what I cannot describe.
I saw it somewhat sideways, large, prominent, round, and coloured
with magnificence—somewhat like the feel I have of Anthony and
Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades leaning on his crimson couch in his galley,
his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the sea.” In Haydon’s
pictures Keats continued to see, as the friends and companions of
every ardent and persuasive worker in the arts are apt to see, not so
much the actual performance, as the idea he had pre-conceived of it
in the light of his friend’s intentions and enthusiasm. At this time
Haydon, who had already made several drawings of Keats’s head in
order to introduce it in his picture of Christ entering Jerusalem,
proposed to make another more finished, “to be engraved,” writes
Keats, “in the first style, and put at the head of my poem, saying, at
the same time, he had never done the thing for any human being,
and that it must have considerable effect, as he will put his name to
it.” Both poet and publisher were delighted with this condescension
on the part of the sublime Haydon; who failed, however, to carry out
his promise. “My neglect,” said Haydon long afterwards, “really gave
him a pang, as it now does me.”
With Hunt also Keats’s intercourse continued frequent, while with
Reynolds his intimacy grew daily closer. Both of these friendships
had a stimulating influence on his poetic powers. “The Wednesday
before last Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river
Nile,” he tells his brothers on the 16th of February, 1818. “I have
been writing, at intervals, many songs and sonnets, and I long to be
at Teignmouth to read them over to you.” With the help of Keats’s
manuscripts or of the transcripts made from them by his friends, it is
possible to retrace the actual order of many of these fugitive pieces.
On the 16th of January was written the humorous sonnet on Mrs
Reynolds’s cat; on the 21st, after seeing in Leigh Hunt’s possession a
lock of hair reputed to be Milton’s, the address to that poet
beginning ‘Chief of organic numbers!’—and on the 22nd the sonnet,
‘O golden tongued Romance with serene lute,’ in which Keats
describes himself as laying aside (apparently) his Spenser, in order
to read again the more rousing and human-passionate pages of
Lear. On the 31st he sends in a letter to Reynolds the lines to Apollo
beginning ‘Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,’ and in the same letter
the sonnet beginning ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be,’
which he calls his last. On the 3rd of February he wrote the spirited
lines to Robin Hood, suggested by a set of sonnets by Reynolds on
Sherwood Forest; on the 4th, the sonnet beginning ‘Time’s sea has
been five years at its slow ebb,’ in which he recalls the memory of an
old, otherwise unrecorded love-fancy, and also the well-known
sonnet on the Nile, written at Hunt’s in competition with that friend
and with Shelley; on the 5th, another sonnet postponing compliance
for the present with an invitation of Leigh Hunt’s to compose
something in honour, or in emulation of Spenser; and on the 8th, the
sonnet in praise of the colour blue composed by way of protest
against one of Reynolds. About the same time Keats agreed with
Reynolds that they should each write some metrical tales from
Boccaccio, and publish them in a joint volume; and began at once
for his own part with Isabella or the Pot of Basil. A little later in this
so prolific month of February we find him rejoicing in the song of the
thrush and blackbird, and melted into feelings of indolent pleasure
and receptivity under the influence of spring winds and dissolving
rain. He theorizes pleasantly in a letter to Reynolds on the virtues
and benefits of this state of mind, translating the thrush’s music into
some blank-verse lines of a singular and haunting melody. In the
course of the next fortnight we find him in correspondence with
Taylor about the corrections to Endymion; and soon afterwards
making a clearance of borrowed books, and otherwise preparing to
flit. His brother George, who had been taking care of Tom at
Teignmouth since December, was now obliged to come to town, bent
on a scheme of marriage and emigration; and Tom’s health having
made a momentary rally, Keats was unwilling that he should leave
Teignmouth, and determined to join him there. He started in the
second week of March, and stayed almost two months. It was an
unlucky season for weather—the soft-buffeting sheets and misty
drifts of Devonshire rain renewing themselves, in the inexhaustible
way all lovers of that country know, throughout almost the whole
spring, and preventing him from getting more than occasional
tantalizing snatches of enjoyment in the beauty of the scenery, the
walks, and flowers. His letters are full of objurgations against the
climate, conceived in a spirit which seems hardly compatible, in one
of his strong family feeling, with the tradition which represents his
father to have been a Devonshire man:—
“You may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a
splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod
county. The hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of ’em;
the primroses are out,—but then you are in; the cliffs are of a
fine deep colour, but then the clouds are continually vieing with
them.”... “I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy
the flowers, all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them; I
feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soap-froth. I think
it well for the honour of Britain, that Julius Caesar did not first
land in this county: A Devonshirer, standing on his native hills, is
not a distinct object; he does not show against the light; a wolf
or two would dispossess him[31].”
Besides his constant occupation in watching and cheering his invalid
brother, who had a relapse just after he came down, Keats was busy
during these Devonshire days seeing through the press the last
sheets of Endymion. He also composed, with the exception of the
few verses he had begun at Hampstead, the whole of Isabella, the
first of his longer poems written with real maturity of art and
certainty of touch. At the same time he was reading and
appreciating Milton as he had never done before. With the minor
poems he had been familiar from a boy, but had not been attracted
by Paradise Lost, until first Severn, and then more energetically
Bailey, had insisted that this was a reproach to him: and he now
turned to that poem, and penetrated with the grasp and swiftness of
genius, as his marginal criticisms show, into the very essence of its
power and beauty. His correspondence with his friends, particularly
Bailey and Reynolds, is during this same time unusually sustained
and full. It was in all senses manifestly a time with Keats of rapidly
maturing power, and in some degree also of threatening gloom. The
mysteries of existence and of suffering, and the ‘deeps of good and
evil,’ were beginning for the first time to press habitually on his
thoughts. In that beautiful and interesting letter to Reynolds, in
which he makes the comparison of human life to a mansion of many
apartments, it is his own present state which he thus describes:—
“We no sooner get into the second chamber, which I shall call the
Chamber of Maiden-thought, than we become intoxicated with
the light and the atmosphere. We see nothing but pleasant
wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight.
However, among the effects this breathing is father of, is that
tremendous one of sharpening one’s vision into the heart and
nature of man, of convincing one’s nerves that the world is full of
misery and heartbreak, pain, sickness, and oppression; whereby
this Chamber of Maiden-thought becomes gradually darkened,
and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open
—but all dark—all leading to dark passages. We see not the
balance of good and evil; we are in a mist, we are in that state,
we feel the ‘Burden of the Mystery.’”
A few weeks earlier, addressing to the same friend the last of his
rhymed Epistles, Keats had thus expressed the mood which came
upon him as he sat taking the beauty of the evening on a rock at the
sea’s edge:—
 “twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat brown sand; I was at home
And should have been most happy,—but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater or the less feeds evermore:—
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
Still am I sick of it, and tho’ to-day,
I’ve gathered young spring leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,—
The Shark at savage prey,—the Hawk at pounce,—
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,
Ravening a worm,—Away, ye horrid moods!
Moods of one’s mind!”—
In a like vein, recalling to Bailey a chance saying of his “Why should
woman suffer?”—“Aye, why should she?” writes Keats: “‘By heavens,
I’d coin my very soul, and drop my blood for drachmas.’ These
things are, and he who feels how incompetent the most skyey
knight-errantry is to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf
on the hot hand of thought.” And again, “were it in my choice, I
would reject a Petrarchal coronation—on account of my dying day,
and because women have cancers. I should not by rights speak in
this tone to you, for it is an incendiary spirit that would do so.”
Not the general tribulations of the race only, but particular private
anxieties, were pressing in these days on Keats’s thoughts. The
shadow of illness, though it had hitherto scarcely touched himself,
hung menacingly not only over his brother but his best friends. He
speaks of it in a tone of courage and gaiety which his real
apprehensions, we can feel, belie. “Banish money”—he had written
in Falstaff’s vein, at starting for the Isle of Wight a year ago
—“Banish sofas—Banish wine—Banish music; but right Jack Health,
honest Jack Health, true Jack Health—Banish Health and banish all
the world.” Writing now from Teignmouth to Reynolds, who was
down during these weeks with rheumatic fever, he complains
laughingly, but with an undercurrent of sad foreboding, how he can
go nowhere but Sickness is of the company, and says his friends will
have to cut that fellow, or he must cut them.
Nearer and more pressing than such apprehensions was the pain of
a family break-up now imminent. George Keats had made up his
mind to emigrate to America, and embark his capital, or as much of
it as he could get possession of, in business there. Besides the wish
to push his own fortunes, a main motive of this resolve on George’s
part was the desire to be in a position as quickly as possible to help,
or if need be support, his poet-brother. He persuaded the girl to
whom he had long been attached, Miss Wylie, to share his fortunes,
and it was settled that they were to be married and sail early in the
summer. Keats came up from Teignmouth in May to see the last of
his brother, and he and Tom settled again in their old lodgings in
Well Walk. He had a warm affection and regard for his new sister-in-
law, and was in so far delighted for George’s sake. But at the same
time he felt life and its prospects overcast. He writes to Bailey, after
his outburst about the sufferings of women, that he is never alone
now without rejoicing that there is such a thing as death—without
placing his ultimate in the glory of dying for a great human purpose.
And after recounting his causes of depression, he recovers himself,
and concludes:—“Life must be undergone; and I certainly derive
some consolation from the thought of writing one or two more
poems before it ceases.”
With reference to his poem then just appearing, and the year’s work
which it represented, Keats was under no illusions whatever. From
an early period in its composition he had fully realised its
imperfections, and had written: “My ideas of it are very low, and I
would write the subject thoroughly again, but I am tired of it, and
think the time would be better spent in writing a new romance,
which I have in my eye for next summer. Rome was not built in a
day, and all the good I expect from my employment this summer is
the fruit of experience which I hope to gather in my next poem.” The
habit of close self-observation and self-criticism is in most natures
that possess it allied with vanity and egoism; but it was not so in
Keats, who without a shadow of affectation judges himself, both in
his strength and weakness, as the most clear-sighted and
disinterested friend might judge. He shows himself perfectly aware
that in writing Endymion he has rather been working off a youthful
ferment of the mind than producing a sound or satisfying work of
poetry; and when the time comes to write a preface to the poem,
after a first attempt lacking reticence and simplicity, and abandoned
at the advice of Reynolds, he in the second quietly and beautifully
says of his own work all that can justly be said in its dispraise. He
warns the reader to expect “great inexperience, immaturity, and
every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
accomplished,” and adds most unboastfully:—“it is just that this
youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some
hope that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself
for verses fit to live.”
The apprehensions expressed in these words have not been fulfilled;
and Endymion, so far from having died away, lives to illustrate the
maxim conveyed in its own now proverbial opening line. Immature
as the poem truly is in touch and method, superabundant and
confused as are the sweets which it offers to the mind, still it is a
thing of far too much beauty, or at least of too many beauties, to
perish. Every reader must take pleasure in some of its single
passages and episodes, while to the student of the poetic art the
work is interesting almost as much in its weakness as its strength.
 CHAPTER V.
Endymion.
In the old Grecian world, the myth of Endymion and Selene was one
deeply rooted in various shapes in the popular traditions both of Elis
in the Peloponnese, and of the Ionian cities about the Latmian gulf
in Caria. The central feature of the tale, as originally sung by
Sappho, was the nightly descent of the goddess to kiss her lover
where he lay spell-bound, by the grace of Zeus, in everlasting sleep
and everlasting youth on Mount Latmos. The poem of Sappho is lost,
and the story is not told at length in any of our extant classical
writings, but only by way of allusion in some of the poets, as
Theocritus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Ovid, and of the late prose-
writers, as Lucian, Apollodorus, and Pausanias. Of such ancient
sources Keats of course knew only what he found in his classical
dictionaries. But references to the tale, as every one knows, form
part of the stock repertory of classical allusion in modern literature:
and several modern writers before Keats had attempted to handle
the subject at length. In his own special range of Elizabethan
reading, he was probably acquainted with Lyly’s court comedy of
Endimion, in prose, which had been edited, as it happened, by his
friend Dilke a few years before: but in it he would have found
nothing to his purpose. On the other hand I think he certainly took
hints from the Man in the Moon of Michael Drayton. In this piece
Drayton takes hold of two post-classical notions concerning the
Endymion myth, both in the first instance derived from Lucian,—one
that which identifies its hero with the visible ‘man in the moon’ of
popular fancy,—the other that which rationalises his story, and
explains him away as a personification or mythical representative of
early astronomy. These two distinct notions Drayton weaves
together into a short tale in rhymed heroics, which he puts into the
mouth of a shepherd at a feast of Pan. Like most of his writings, the
Man in the Moon has strong gleams of poetry and fancy amidst
much that is both puerile and pedantic. Critics, so far as I know,
have overlooked Keats’s debt to it: but even granting that he may
well have got elsewhere, or invented for himself, the notion of
introducing his story with a festival in honour of Pan—do not, at any
rate, the following lines of Drayton contain evidently the hint for the
wanderings on which Keats sends his hero (and for which antiquity
affords no warrant) through earth, sea, and air[32]?—
“Endymion now forsakes
All the delights that shepherds do prefer,
And sets his mind so generally on her
That, all neglected, to the groves and springs
He follows Phœbe, that him safely brings
(As their great queen) unto the nymphish bowers,
Where in clear rivers beautified with flowers
The silver Naides bathe them in the bracke.
Sometime with her the sea-horse he doth back
Among the blue Nereides: and when
Weary of waters goddess-like again
She the high mountains actively assays,
And there amongst the light Oriades,
That ride the swift roes, Phœbe doth resort:
Sometime amongst those that with them comport
The Hamadriades, doth the woods frequent;
And there she stays not, but incontinent
Calls down the dragons that her chariot draw,
And with Endymion pleased that she saw,
Mounteth thereon, in twinkling of an eye
Stripping the winds——”
Fletcher again, a writer with whom Keats was very familiar, and
whose inspiration, in the idyllic and lyric parts of his work, is closely
kindred to his own—Fletcher in the Faithful Shepherdess makes
Chloe tell, in lines beautifully paraphrased and amplified from
Theocritus—
 “How the pale Phœbe, hunting in a grove,
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she convey’d him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother’s light,
To kiss her sweetest.”
The subject thus touched by Drayton and Fletcher had been long, as
we have seen already, in Keats’s thoughts. Not only had the charm
of this old pastoral nature-myth of the Greeks interwoven itself in his
being with his natural sensibility to the physical and spiritual spell of
moonlight: but deeper and more abstract meanings than its own had
gathered about the story in his mind. The divine vision which haunts
Endymion in dreams is for Keats symbolical of Beauty itself, and it is
the passion of the human soul for beauty which he attempts, more
or less consciously, to shadow forth in the quest of the shepherd-
prince after his love[33].
The manner in which Keats set about relating the Greek story, as he
had thus conceived it, was as far from being a Greek or ‘classical’
manner as possible. He indeed resembles the Greeks, as we have
seen, in his vivid sense of the joyous and multitudinous life of
nature: and he loved to follow them in dreaming of the powers of
nature as embodied in concrete shapes of supernatural human
activity and grace. Moreover, his intuitions for every kind of beauty
being admirably swift and true, when he sought to conjure up
visions of the classic past, or images from classic fable, he was able
to do so often magically well. To this extent Keats may justly be
called, as he has been so often called, a Greek, but no farther. The
rooted artistic instincts of that race, the instincts which taught them
in all the arts alike, during the years when their genius was most
itself, to select and simplify, rejecting all beauties but the vital and
essential, and paring away their material to the quick that the main
masses might stand out unconfused, in just proportions and with
outlines rigorously clear—these instincts had neither been implanted
in Keats by nature, nor brought home to him by precept and
example. Alike by his aims and his gifts, he was in his workmanship
essentially ‘romantic,’ Gothic, English. A general characteristic of his
favourite Elizabethan poetry is its prodigality of incidental and
superfluous beauties: even in the drama, it takes the powers of a
Shakspere to keep the vital play of character and passion
unsmothered by them, and in most narrative poems of the age the
quality is quite unchecked. To Keats, at the time when he wrote
Endymion, such incidental and secondary luxuriance constituted an
essential, if not the chief, charm of poetry. “I think poetry,” he says,
“should surprise by a fine excess:” and with reference to his own
poem during its progress, “it will be a test, a trial of my powers of
imagination, and chiefly of my invention—which is a rare thing
indeed—by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance,
and fill them with poetry.”
The ‘one bare circumstance’ of the story was in the result expanded
through four long books of intricate and flowery narrative, in the
course of which the young poet pauses continually to linger or
deviate, amplifying every incident into a thousand circumstances,
every passion into a world of subtleties. He interweaves with his
central Endymion myth whatever others pleased him best, as those
of Pan, of Venus and Adonis, of Cybele, of Alpheus and Arethusa, of
Glaucus and Scylla, of Circe, of Neptune, and of Bacchus; leading us
through labyrinthine transformations, and on endless journeyings by
subterranean antres and aërial gulfs and over the floor of ocean. The
scenery of the tale, indeed, is often not merely of a Gothic vastness
and intricacy; there is something of Oriental bewilderment,—an
Arabian Nights jugglery with space and time,—in the vague
suddenness with which its changes are effected. Such organic plan
as the poem has can best be traced by fixing our attention on the
main divisions adopted by the author of his narrative into books, and
by keeping hold at the same time, wherever we can, of the thread of
allegoric thought and purpose that seems to run loosely through the
whole. The first book, then, is entirely introductory, and does no
more than set forth the predicament of the love-sick shepherd-
prince, its hero; who appears at a festival of his people held in
honour of the god Pan, and is afterwards induced by his sister
Peona[34] to confide to her the secret of the passion which consumes
him. The account of the feast of Pan contains passages which in the
quality of direct nature-interpretation are scarcely to be surpassed in
poetry:—
“rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature’s lives and wonders puls’d tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.”
What can be more fresh and stirring?—what happier in rhythmical
movement?—or what more characteristic of the true instinct by
which Keats, in dealing with nature, avoided word-painting and
palette-work, leaving all merely visible beauties, the stationary world
of colours and forms, as they should be left, to the painter, and
dealing, as poetry alone is able to deal, with those delights which
are felt and divined rather than seen, with the living activities and
operant magic of the earth? Not less excellent is the realisation, in
the course of the same episode, of the true spirit of ancient pastoral
life and worship; the hymn to Pan in especial both expressing
perfectly the meaning of the Greek myth to Greeks, and enriching it
with touches of northern feeling that are foreign to, and yet most
harmonious with, the original. Keats having got from Drayton, as I
surmise, his first notion of an introductory feast of Pan, in his hymn
to that divinity borrowed recognizable touches alike from Chapman’s
Homer’s hymn, from the sacrifice to Pan in Browne’s Britannia’s
Pastorals[35], and from the hymns in Ben Jonson’s masque, Pan’s
Anniversary: but borrowed as only genius can, fusing and
refashioning whatever he took from other writers in the strong glow
of an imagination fed from the living sources of nature:—
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