Death and Escapism in John Keats Poem Ode to a Nightingale

A Seminar Paper Presented to the

Department of English

COTTON UNIVERSITY , GHY , 2017

Submitted By

1. Name: SANTOSH CHOUHAN

Roll No.: 52
Enrollment No. ENG1761055

2. Name: HEMANTA SAIKIA

Roll No.: 61
Enrollment No: ENG1761063

3. Name: SHAHJAHAN ALI

Roll No.: 44
Enrollment No.: ENG1761046
 Death and Escapism in John Keats Poem Ode to a Nightingale

Abstract
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This paper is an attempt to explore the theme of Death and Escapism in John Keats
poem , Ode to a Nightingale .The paper also deals with Keats imagination and creativity
as a Romantic Poet .One the factor that helps the poet to transform himself and reached
the level of the Nightingale which embodies imagination in escaping from his familiar
reality .Belonging to the Romantic era of English literature the poet is able to go beyond
the reality to the peaceful natural destiny with the Nightingale.
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Keywords : Imagination, Escape , Death, Poetic Creativity , Beauty

Ode to a Nightingale is the most passionately human and personal poem.

Keats wrote it soon after the death of his brother Tom. He was feeling keenly the
tragedy of the world Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies. The song of
the nightingale heard in a friends garden at Hampstead , made him long to escape with
it from this world of realities and sorrows to the ideal beauty .As Charles Brown writes ,
Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song and one morning he took his chair
from his table to the grassplot under a plum where he sat for two or three hours .When
he came into the house I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand and these
was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry ,I found those scraps ,four or five in
numbers contained his poetic feeling on the song of our Nightingale.(1)
Escapism in Ode to A Nightingale

In English Romantic Movement John Keats and many other poets uses Escapism
in their works . Escapism is an immensely a major element of Keats poetry, through his
poetry he tries to escape from undesired situation and worries into the world of eternal
beauty and nature. The repetition escape in his poems is not only a part of romanticism,
but also greatly a result of his personal unfortunate experiences in life.
No the whole poem appears escapism. There is rather an eagerness of the escape theme.

He thinks that the sweet song of the nightingale is a evidence of the perfectly happy
world of the bird. Failure in the poetic career and in love and loss of younger brother seek
shelter in the forest world of the nightingale. The nightingales song give him a
environment which have made him forget all pains of life. Now we can have a glance of
his fancy world.

...Fade far away, dissolve and quite forget

...The weariness, the fever and the fret... (Stanza 3,
line 1-3)

Keats escape is from his real life to an imaginative and ideal world. But according to
Keats this escape from the unavoiding place is , reality of human life is full of suffering,
pain etc; this world is not a desirable place. He has accumulated up his personals as well
as common sufferings of life in the following lines of poem.

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs
Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or, new love pine at them beyond tomorrow (Stanza
3, line 24-30)

He reminds us that life is full of grief , sickness, sorrows, and tiring struggle, of
restlessness and pain; here life is nothing but a sequence of moan and objection ,the poet
here remembers of his young brother Tom, dying in presence of him; that for thoughtful
or sensitive but thoughtless persons, there is no happiness in reality; that beauty of
anything in the nature is temporary; that ones love for another does not eternal that is,
the rejection of his love from Fanny Brownes frustrated him.

Keats asserts for death without any pain in order to escape continually from painful life
with the song of nightingale. In his imagination he wishes the state of death also. He
declares that simultaneously nightingale as not born for death and immortal bird.
Keats tries to escape from this world, which is threatened by death, to capture the world
of beauty and immortality aroused by the song of the nightingale. We should take care
that Keats' escape is not in the bad sense but is rather an escape that is necessary for the
poet to achieve his goals. The poet tries to achieve permanence and overcome the
shortness of his life by escaping from the world of reality to a creative life, that is, from
his world to the world of the nightingale.

Moreover, the poetic imagination symbolized by the song of the nightingale is the poet's
refuge and escape from all problems, particularly the existential problem of the shortness
of life, which seems to haunt Keats .

The poem shows that the poet manages to escape from the window of this "charmed"
world when opened and the nightingale is free to experience flying over the open ocean
of this fantastic, "faery land", which is completely different from the world of realities
known to us:

The same that oft-times hath

Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. (stanza VII , Lines 68-70)

These lines of poetry refer to the dangerous sea within man, and for the poet, it is his
experience of voyaging on the sea of imagination.

He delves into his fears about his own mortality. Throughout the poem
he tries to escape his fears, but keeps bouncing back into anxiety. He tries
alcohol, pain killers, escaping in nature and finally finds that death is the
only escape from the pretty melancholy. The poet therefore eagerly wants to escape from
the life of reality, which has given him a surfeit of torment and misery in the form of ill
health, failure in the poetic career and in love, and bereavement of a younger brother, and
seek refuge in the forest world of the nightingale.

Keats admits that he cannot permanently escape the everyday world and remains in the
world of imagination: "Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well" (stanza7, Line73). Thus,
he bids good-bye to the bird and then describes his imagination as being a "deceiving
elf". As a result of the end and the fulfillment of creativity, it is natural that the
nightingale escapes by flying away and disappearing. Keats bids farewell to the world of
imagination, symbolized by the nightingale, using the French word "adieu", which
means, "good-bye for a long time".

Theme of Death in Ode to a Nightingale

Death was a constant theme that permeated aspects of Keats poetry because he
was exposed to death of his family members throughout his life . Within the poem there
are many images of death .In stanza six

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful Death
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain
To thy high requiem become a sod. (Lines 51-60)

In this stanza the poet is so much feel with ecstatic delight by the song of the nightingale
that he thinks it to be the most appropriate moment to die. Keats says he has an
instinctive attraction for death, because death would end all his troubles. Death would
soothe him . Therefore often in his thoughts he called upon death and appealed it to put a
stop to his life .Now at this moment he is in his happiest mood, so that I believe this is the
best time to embrace death.

The six stanza of the poem offers readers a somewhat an unsettling revelation .The
reason for this desire ,however are more complex than misery .The speaker notes that the
nightingales song would continue long after his death- Still wouldst thou sing, and I
have ears in vainTo thy high requiem become a sod. Which means the speaker
imagines his death and uses musical composition called requiem that is performed after
someones death . Downer calls Keats feelings as the sensuous in the highest degree and
at the same time sentimental and reflective (2)

Towards the end of the poem Ode to Nightingale , Keats realizes the song of nightingale
even if it is mortal ,will not always within his range of hearing .

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades

Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side;(Stanza VIII Lines75-77)

This is a crucial insight for the speaker who until this moment has wanted nothing more
than to leave the physical world and follow the nightingale into a different , higher realm.
And finally The last two stanza that the speaker cannot decide what is real and what is
not .He asked rhetorical question to express his confusion

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music:Do I wake or sleep? ( Stanza VIII ,Lines79-80)

At the end of the poem he wakes up from his indolent dream to face actual life on its
terms. Thus Ode to a Nightingale may truly be described as a wonderful poetic record of
the poet's reflection of human experience.
References :

O Neil ,Judhith .Critics on Keats . Ed. London ,George Allen and Vnwin Ltd. Pub 1970

Bloom .Harold , Blooms Modern Critical View John Keats Updated Edition. Pub:
Chelsea House Publishers.

Arnold . T. William . Poetical Works Of John Keats , London . Paternoster Squre

Work Cited :

1.Robertson. M. Keats Poems Published in 1820. Ed. Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1909

2.Agarwal,Lakshmi Narayan. John Keats Selected Poems. Ed. Educational Publishers.