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Art V S Reality in The Odes of Keats Wit PDF
Art V S Reality in The Odes of Keats Wit PDF
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ABSTRACT:
John Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of romantics. He had the
noble idea that poetry exits for its own sake and suffers a cross by being devoted to
philosophy or politics or to any other however great or small. John Keats is perhaps
most famous for his Odes. For Keats, small, slow acts of death occurred and he
chronicled these small mortal occurrences. The end of a cover embrace, the image
of ancient Urn, the reaping of grains in Autumn– all of these are not only symbols of
death but instances of it. In his poetry Keats proposed the contemplating of beauty
as a way of delaying the inevitability of death. In many of keats’s poems, the speaker
leaves the real world to explore a transcendent , mythical or aesthetic realm. At the
end of the poem the speaker returns to his ordinary life transformed in some way
and armed with a new understanding. In his poems, Keats seems to be telling us
an inevitable element in life. The poet himself seems to dominate the poems with his
longing to escape from the world of human suffering to an infinitely superior domain
in his own imagination. Many of his poems deals with sorrows but even these are
John Keats was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poet. But his
work only having been in publication for four years before his death . His poems were not
generally well received by the critics during his time. But by the end of the 19th century he
had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He drew his inspiration from some
of his best predecessors, Spenser ,Milton, and Dryden and his influence has been profound
Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of romantics. While Scott was
merely telling stories and Wordsworth was reforming poetry or moral laws and
Shelly, advocating moral reforms, Keats lived apart from men and from political
measures , worshiping beauty like a devotee , perfectly contempt to write what was in
his own heart. He had the noble idea that poetry exits for its own sake and suffers a
small. Keats volume of poetry is unequalled by the work of any his contemporaries .
the poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery , most notably in the series of
odes.
2. ODE:
An English ode is a lyrical stanza in praise of , or dedicated to someone or something that
captures the poet’s interest or serves as an inspiration for the ode . An ode is a long poem
serious in subject and treatment , elevated in style and elaborate in its stanza structure .
The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict
century, the most important original odes in English are by Abraham Cowley.
The first and foremost quality of his odes are their unity of impression. John Keats tried his
pen at various forms of writing , but none of them yielded him as great success as the ode
form . The odes of Keats are highly subjective and personal in character. The conflict of odes
were on the choice between the real world and the ideal world which he created by his
imagination. The other conflict of odes are art and life , pleasure and pain , happiness and
melancholy. Most of the odes of Keats are a manifestations of these inner conflict of his mind
His poem “ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in the spring of 1819. The Grecian urn is a
relic of antiquity and a chronicler of ancient Greek pastoral life . The sight of the urn sets the
poet’s imagination in motion. Then he addresses the Urn as an unrevised bride of quietness
and a foster child of silence. He also calls the Urn a “sylvan historians” because of the rural
and forest scenes covered on its surface. He also refers the human beings and God depicted
on the Urn in the beautiful walls of temple and arcadia. He also watches the men in a
passionate mood chasing madly after their beloveds who are struggling to escape from their
clutches. All these sights fill the poet’s mind with wonder.
After the opening invocation follows a stream of questions which flash their own
answers upon us out of the darkness of antiquity. Questions which are at the same
time pictures :
The sight immediately fills the poet’s mind with a sense of wonder and he speculates what
might be the theme of Urn. The life-like attitude of the figures depicted on the urn strike the
poet with astonishment. Men are mistaken for God, there are blushful maidens struggling to
escape from lovers and there are pipers playing on with tireless zest. These pictures
naturally made the poet conscious of the superiority of art over life. The unheard music
suggested by the figure of the piper, gives ample scope to the imagination and is therefore
sweeter. Because in life the sweetest music must come to an end. Hence, he writes:
immortalized. True, the painted cover can’t kiss the beloved but at the same time the beloved
can’t fade away from the cover as it could be done in the real life. Nor can the trees and the
urn shed their leaves. The pictures of the sacrificial scene are the climax of the poet’s
imagination. Keats speculates that the people of the urn must have left a town and the town
must have been emptied. The inhabitants presented on the urn are ever fixed. Though the
picture of the town is not presented before the eyes, but the poet’s imagination can see it in a
realistic manner.
Keats presents two worlds in the ode – the world of life and the world of art. The former
The same idea has been expressed in Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”. In other words eternal
peace is found in a noble work of art. Hence , the poet wishes to fly away from the world of
“reality to the world of art”. What he gains and what he loses in a matter of debate. But we
know that behind every art , there is life and without life , the concept of art is impossible.
Perhaps for that reason ,Keats calls the urn “A Gold pastoral”. In this poem ,Keats makes it
clear that , human emotion and happiness are brief , but art can enshrine them with an ideal
In this ode Keats contemplates the essence of the Nightingale and contrasts it with his own
worldly state and the nature of mortal life. The Nightingale’s song in the first part of the
poem manifests the joyful moments that stir and move the individual like a drug. The bird
lives in harmony with nature. The Nightingale ,”among the leaves,” has never experienced
It seems painful and much the same as death. many death images are notable. It is when the
nightingale seems to experience a kindof death and also the god Apollo undergoes death
experience, although his deathdiscloses his own divinity. Inthis ode, Keats pictures the loss of
actual and real world and considers himself dead asasod which the nightingale sings for.The
poet here passes from the world of time into the world of eternity as in the “ode to A Gracian
Urn”. The song of that bard is the voice of eternity heard by emperors and clowns of ages:
The world of eternity into which the poet was transport by the wings of poesy is replaced by
the world of time .Within the ode ,Keats moves from his contemplation of the bird to a
contemplation of his own feelings.The mime of the ode has been beautifully summed up by
truth he sees joy and pain are inseparable and to experience joy fully we must experience
sadness or melancholy fully. This ode has a logical stricter or progression. This ode makes
the whole theme on a clear paradox where the pleasure and pain are closely related and grief
stays at the heart of joy. The poem is about pleasure and pain, and the ode starts its first
stanza with pain. In this stanza there is a lot of diction to do with depression like the word
“Lethe”, “wolf’s bane” etc. The basic thought of this ode is that “true melancholy doesn’t lie
in sad and ugly things of life , but in joyous and beautiful objects of our earthly existence”. It
is in vain, if we try to find true melancholy in dark and somber aspects of things because :
Again the poet concentrates on the world of realities where he emphasizes how sadness
inevitable accompanies joy and beauty. The rose ids beautiful indeed, but we can’t think of
rose without its thorn. It is therefore impossible to escape from inevitable pain in life.
Melancholy arises from the transience of joy and joy is transient by its nature. The sorrow
and pain take away in the eyes of beloved. Some cases we found the sufferer instead
At the end part of the poem speaker says,true melancholy lives with the beauty and joy. We
realize that both beauty and joy are short-lived. Through apparently delight and melancholy
are quite opposite to each other, yet one who tastes delights and tastes melancholy also.
she and the goddess of beauty dwell in the same temple. So when a pleasure seeker is testing
the sweetness of physical delights, he doesn’t forget that he will reach a stage when satiety
and exhaustion which are the natural effect of pleasure will fall which fills him with
melancholy.
Thus the haunting thought of the transitoriness of beauty and joy makes any flight to
remote ideal world impossible. Keats feels that only those who experience, pleasure will
suffer from melancholy. The line “His soul shall taste the sadness of her might” shows that
But the critics say: only that person who has tasted the sweetness of joy can
appreciate the bitterness of melancholy. The perception of this Ode; as Robert Bridges
admires, “This Ode is profound and no doubt experienced”. In this ode, Keats emphasizes the
Keats last ode “Ode to Autumn” is one of the most thematically rich of
Keats ode . The theme indicates that Autumn is a season of bringing fulfilling and fruition,
yet the theme ending the pictures of Autumn as a season of dying. The three stanza poem
seems to generate three different stages of Autumn growth, harvest, and death. Autumn is a
season of “mellow fruitfulness”. Ode to autumn is a poem of untroubled serenity. Where the
poet describes autumn is the bosom friend of the maturing sun. Autumn depicts the theme of
ripeness, decay and death in describing the natural cycle of seasons: Autumn , spring and
winter. The poem depicting an entirely different mood of Keats, a mood of complete calm
and serenity, a mood that sets his mind at rest .he enjoys the “season of mists and mellow
In the opening stanza of the poem we find sun at its height of maturity prepared,
“ To load and bless
The ode gives a graphic description of the season of autumn with all its richness.But as the
poem progresses it gives an authentic images of autumn through living personifications like
………
As the poem progress, the day starts dawning and towards the close of poem. But when the
Immediately the questions is stilled , and the momentary regret gives place to contentment:
Thus the hidden meaning in the poem is the ups and downs to which human life is always so
prone. This joy in the present, the isolation of the beauty of the hour, the making of it a divine
possession and losing in its loveliness the pain of life. It’s the power of isolation the present
hour from the past or the future which gives to the poem a unique charm.
The concluding stanzas of the odes express two philosophical ideas. First,the
incomprehensibility of the infinite in art and nature and the ethics of beauty. In the above
odes Keats attains to a higher degree of philosophic thought than in any other of his poem. It
touches the philosophy of art and the ethics of human life. To Keats , beauty is the touch –
stone of truth. In this connection Mathew Arnold says “To see things in their beauty is to see
Keats wants to covey that the joy of life in fact make man melancholic because joy ,by its
nature is something short –lived ,fleeting and something 5that will soon be dead. So, long
run joy causes human sorrows. On the other hand whoever the person may be ,doesnot
matter his/her aesthetics may be derives pleasure from the nature itself. It may be the
pleasure of moment or it may be a long lasting joy, nature is the soul source of all the
pleasure.
The ode to nightingale has two comparisons to make. The first is between the
immortality of the nightingale, the bird that “ wast not born for death” and the
“where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes or new Love/ Pine at them beyond
and the complete joy and serenity of the world of nightingale. The poet wants to
escape to the happy world of the nightingale, but the realities of life are too naked
and hard. He just cannot be with the nightingale for long. A single word ‘ forlorn’
“is like a bell” for him and it tolls him back from the nightingale to his sole self.
His escape is very short lived. His feet are firmly rooted in the world of man to
which, he must return after a brief stay in the world of imagination. In Ode to
Nightingale where Keats shows a deeper concern for the transitoriness of human
values.
Keats Melancholy expresses the joy of human life and the experience
of pain in a parallel mode. Paradoxically enough the poet says that real
melancholy is there in all that is joyful and beautiful. The very idea of joy and
beauty makes one melancholic because the duration of joy and beauty is very
short. They must die one moment or the other. Thus in Ode on Melancholy Keats
presents the realistic world where the poem deals with purely human emotions of
describing the natural cycle of seasons. The poem on the season of mist and
mellow fruitfulness seems to be the results of Keats own maturity of vision. The
transience, and ugliness is all unregreatfully accepted for all parts of permanent
cycle of birth, growth, death and renewal. The poem drew us into the experience,
the other side of the poem is the tragic scene of old age and approaching death.
Here Keats shows the maturity and ripeness as one with old age and decay.
performances, it is dead like a machine. The realization marks the return of Keats
from the world of art to the world of man and the realities of man.
CONCLUSION:
After a study of these above odes we can conclude that the essential features of
Keats’s odes are their dramatic value. The drama revolves around an interaction between the
pains of real world, on the other hand the joy of the world of imagination. Imagination
recognizes beauty in existing things, but also it is creative force of beauty .He relishes the
sensuous joys but at the same time his mind is wide open to man, the pains and the worries of
man. To sum up, it can be noted that Keats in his odes tries to introduce various themes
including paradoxes such as pain/pleasure, death/life, nature, imagination and beauty and
expression of human agonies, which is the main concern of Keats’s odes,seems to be related
to the social unrests and tensions. The odes grow out of a desire to release from an actual
painful life. Nature was a major theme among the Romantics, but Keats turned natural objects
into poetics images. He looked at nature with the eye of the aesthete, recreating the physical
References:
3.Sen,S. ,Raja ram kalpana,(1986), John Keats The Odes, New Delhi: Unique
Publishers