John
Keats’s Portrait
John Keats was an English lyric poet. He
belongs to the second-generation Romantic Period known as the Late Romantic
Period. He
was born on 31st October 1795 and died of Tuberculosis on 23rd February 1821 at
the age of 25. He was a rich and genius poet of the 19th century. Keats is the
most escapist of all among Romantics. Many of his poems deal with sorrow
because of his hard life, but even this pessimistic tone is turned upside down by
his natural references to earth, nature, wildlife, love, and beauty.
His contribution to the Romantic
Period
He belongs to the group of reason and gives a
perspective on life and nature in a unique sense. His poetry has fairytale and
fantastic aspects which see beauty beyond imagination. He focuses on the
complete impression of the individual. Keats senses beauty as an ultimate
source of pleasure. For him, beauty is his religion. According to John
Keats:
“Beauty and truth co-relates with each other”Themes of his poems
- Highly sensual.
- His poetry is subjective.
- His poetry gives pleasure to the senses.
Keats believes in the five senses and the emotions felt by them.
- His poetry has abundant imagery of birds,
flowers, landscapes, and mountains.
- He makes strange things familiar with the
concept of beauty.
- He converts natural objects into beauty
for the sake of pleasure.
- With love for the past, quest for beauty, and
escapism, he is on the front-line in dealing with all these themes.
- He usually creates a contrast of life/death, joy/melancholy, separation/connection, mortality/immortality, the futility of human life/immortal nature of art.
The poetical work of John Keats is tremendous. Here we will discuss the general/thematic meaning of his two famous odes.
1. Ode on a Grecian Urn
2. Ode to a nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Grecian Urn
It is an ode about an engraved urn that has been left eternal to the test of time. The poet expresses his feelings and ideas from the world of art through Grecian Urn. Keats called the Grecian urn “thou’ still unravished bride of quietness” because it has existed for centuries without undergoing any change. He uses the imagery of “bride” and “quietness” claiming that it is beautiful and quiet (lifeless), even though so many people come and see its beauty.
Read also,
John Keats Use of Language Appeal to the All Senses
He contrasts the superiority of art with the vulnerable nature of human beings. The art is always fresh, it is not bound to miseries, but the realities of life are always painful. Poets from his poetic imagination can hear a story from an urn that sculpts on it. The poet looks engraving on the Grecian urn i.e. “leaf-fring'd legend”, “deities or mortals”, “men or gods”, “maidens”, “pipes and tumbrels”, “bold lover”. From the engravings on the Grecian Urn, he learns that death is bound to come but the Urn will remain the same. She cannot fade, “though thou hast not thy bliss For ever wilt thou love, and she is fair!”
The poem ends
with "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is
all; ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”. It gives
us a complex lesson that the body dies but not the soul, beauty is in the soul
of a human being, it is always there just like a Grecian urn. The poet called
Grecian Urn the “cold pastoral” because
the people in the painting are without life, and when people come to see the
Grecian Urn it will give them a universal message that beauty is truth. Its
beauty lies in its eternity. Art is permanent and everlasting, people may fade,
but art will remain forever.
Ode to Nightingale
Ode to a nightingale is another one of the famous odes of Keats. This ode is about expressions or feelings. It allows you to refresh your feelings with the imagery of birds, beauty, imagination, and mortality of human beings, the immortality of the sound of the nightingale, natural beauty, and artificiality.
He makes flight to the nightingale’s world which is full of ideal beauty. He got so deep in his imagination that he sensed that he had taken “Hemlock” or “Opium”. As he returns to his real self he becomes a sod. By using the symbolism of nightingale, the poet struggles to shift his conscience from the transient world to the imaginative world and he returns with the lesson that only death is absolute resentment.
He represents
death as “easeful death” because
for him it is a death that can bring peace. Keeping into consideration his
themes; Keats appeals to all the senses.
“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet”
He creates the contrasts of mortality of human beings with the immortality of a nightingale. “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!” Bird songs are immortal because they were heard before Keats and even after his death. He came back from imagination in a sad mood because you cannot stay here forever; it is a lie. Keats called it a “deceiving elf” because it disdains the reality of the world.
This
ode is an emblem of escapist movement aspects. “Away!
Away! For I will fly to thee”, his poetic imagination helps him
to start his journey to the new world. The poet flies with the “viewless
wings of poesy” with a bird and admires the secret world
of the nightingale.
The poem is analyzed by Avisra Ijaz, one of the writers at the School of Literature.
