john keats

Spring Odes: Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode to a Nightingale

-regarded as his best work, best examples of abstract process of suffering to bliss, relationship
between truth and beauty, technical coherence in form

-there are 6 spring odes, some critics claim that establishing the poems chronologically could
help with the interpretation (however the exact dates of writing of the poems is unknown)

-keats dealt with abstract concepts such as indolence, melancholy, psyche as well as concrete
addressees such as the nightingale

-biographical background may be important here, he grew ill very early in his life, grew aware of
his mortality, tried to find a way of finding those moments of eternity and immortality through art

-both of these odes are expressions of private feelings rather than public praise of any phenomena

-keats was more familiar with Latin than Greek, was more familiar with Horace and influenced
by him

-horation odes have equal length stanzas (homostrophic), emotionally restrained but keats' odes
were not restrained, however he was not pathetic in his expression of feelings

-may be described as typical meditative romantic odes, we should revisit the structure of
wordsworth's immortality ode

-romantic meditative ode has 3 major parts: first one is the description of an outer natural scene,
second one is the extended meditation stimulated by the scene and which may be focused on a
private problem or/and universal situation, third one is the occurrence of an insight, vision,
resolution or decision which signals a return to the original scene described but with a new
perspective created by the meditation

-ode to a nightingale deals with poet's ambition in general in which the three stages promise a
fulfillment of this ambition but in the end this does not happen which creates a sense of
disappointment

-these odes have different addressees, they have one similarity which offer a possible
interpretation

-ode to an nightingale is similar to 'to a skylark' by shelley, the poem starts with something
typical of keats, from the beginning of the poem the speaker is situated in a state between dream
and reality. a state of numbness, losing your senses, falling asleep or even dying. the parallel
between these two poems is the distinction between the speaker/the lyrical subject and the
addressee, in this case: the nightingale. keats and shelley make the difference very obvious to the
reader

-the speaker is falling asleep, bound to the earth unlike the nightingale who can fly, the speaker is
very obviously distinguished from the object of the poem (the bird), subject vs. object is
something established at the very beginning. there are attempts by the subject to identify with the
object, the idea is to free himself from earthly bounds and human boundaries and fly higher to
become one with the nightingale (marriage) in its sublime existence. at the end of both poems we
have to return to the third stage where the subject is treated differently from the object but with a
new perspective/wisdom. the subject tries 3 ways to identify with the nightingale: alcohol,
poesy/poerty and third is death.

tries to lose all his senses through alcohol but it is not enough, poetry doesn't help either and
death is the third thing the speaker tries to resort to

-in stanza 2 he addresses his attempt to lose senses through alcohol, its the most easily available
instrument but it doesn't work, it doesn't last long enough to leave the world with the nightingale,
the marriage between subject and object does not happen with alcohol

-poetry also doesn't last long enough, death is the last attempt but it's not good enough for him to
fade away with the nightingale, it's not good enough because human death does not help the
human identify/marry with the nightingale

-stanza 7: the central message when it comes to praising the nightingale "thou was not born for
death...." the bird is immortal so that's why death doesn't work, it's not how you become one with
something that is immortal. whatever we do there is some essential difference which stops the
identification with the bird

-"no hungry generations..." hungry implies incompleteness because physical hunger is one aspect
of human incompleteness

-the last part of to a skylark shows that the skylark is also perceived in a similar ways, song of the
bird is enjoyed by both the emperor and the clown, the song makes no distinction between classes
of people, it is democratic which takes us back to origins of romanticism

-the art and the beauty of the nightingale is timeless, mentions Ruth, a biblical figure, so the
nightingale does not belong to the category of time

-finally, this song could be heard in fairylands, it is not about here, now in this world, but also in
other worlds, timeless and placeless, moves across the human boundaries, these are all things
humans are not, we can only attempt to do so

-the last stanza makes the last third stage very obvious, the separation takes place because it has
to, no matter how hard he tries, so he wakes up in a way, returns back to his lonely self, the tone
of this last stanza: there is a combination of suffering and wisdom, a sense of disappointment
(suffer because separation has to take place), but at the same time wisdom is presented to us, the
understanding that unity is not possible

-the last two lines are one of the most confusing endings in English literature, he asks what is
dream and what is reality and that is essential Keatsian question, how do we distinguish between
them, the speaker is not certain and we can’t be certain what is imagination, what is dream and
what is reality

-by the end of the poem he is not sure what is what, where the dream end and where the reality
ends and where dream starts

Ode on a Grecian Urn

-similar to Ode to a Nightingale, but the main difference is the addressee; one obvious difference
is that it doesn't talk to a living creature, and unlike the nightingale, the Grecian urn is a human
artifact/product; so it’s not just the difference between the living and non-living but also this is
the fisrt time that the romantic poet celebrates human artifact

-this is not something usual in romantic odes (to a skylark, to the west wind etc)

-even though it's man-made, it is still sublime and piece of art, it is primarily immortal and
timeless unlike humans who cannot last as long as the Grecian urn does and it transcends the
boundaries of an individual human being; it speaks to generations, it spoke to them, it speaks and
it will continue speaking to them

-the way he describes this urn is very significant in terms of presenting all of its qualities to us,
another obvious difference between the nightingale and the urn is that in the Ode to a Nightingale
he makes his presence very obvious, whereas here this "I" seems to be kind of lost and hidden, it
seems only about the addressee/object in this particular ode so it has a more universal tone due to
the use of "we" (universal reference to human experience in general), so we have this implicit
way of the speaker here

-the urn is an "unravished bride", beauty that lasts eternally, the urn is timeless and immortal and
pure, it has survived much but it seems to be unravished, time wastes us, we live and we waste
our bodies but the Grecian urn is in a way being kept by time unlike us; we also learn that the urn
is silent and does not speak yet it does, it tells a tale to us in general/him in this case, so we are
supposed to guess what the story it’s telling is about, which takes us back to the very roots of
romanticism and

the relationship between the subject and object "I see x" where x is there through us, through "I"
and "I" see "x", both are equally important, for example "I see daffodils" both are of equal
importance, it’s not only about one or the other, the poem is about the interaction and exchange
between the I and the x. the speaker looks at the urn, its shape but he is not here to simply accept
the image of the urn, so he is invited to create and participate in creating the story the urn tells,
and that is why we have all of the questions in the next part, and they remain unanswered, he’s
not only going to translate what the urn tells us; just like in the skylark, we can never know what
you are, we can only guess

-we can never really know the real story of the urn, but the idea is to participate in the meaning of
the urn, the meaning of the urn is created through the speaker

-its never enough to make the distinction subject vs. object because the object is presented
through the speaker so the subject and object get married for this relationship to form

-in the second stanza he comments on the silence of the urn and the silence is sweeter, the silence
invites the speaker to participate and create our own individual melodies, the own individual
interpretation is sweeter because of the invitation to participate in the urn's meanings; the subject
gets invited by the object to participate in its story, in its meanings

-then there is a very concise definition of art, what art does to our lives; what we see in art are
actually "moments frozen in time" like here where we have a young lover about to kiss a girl, and
he will never complete his mission but that’s not something to feel sorry about because she will
always remain that beautiful; and the only way for us to experience eternity is through art and
appreciation of art; our human existence isn’t happy with this, if we want something we will go
for it but then again that doesn’t guarantee us that relationship will remain as beautiful as it was at
the beginning; the idea that art captures beautiful moments in time is the immortality and eternal
beauty of art that freezes moments in time and makes them last forever

-this is why the urn is appreciated, although some answers are never given, we are left to guess
how the story goes on, where are the people that left town, etc, but this is what humans can get of
eternity on earth: only through art

-the moment of waking up simply has to happen and this is the last stage that happens in the last
stanza, the seperation between subject and object

-"beauty is truth...." so the speaker wakes up because we have to go back to reality at some point,
he comes back to this world, there is a sense of disappointment and suffering but also a great deal
of knowledge as well that the urn is going to remain here forever and that it will tell its story to
future generations and the message is eternal, it is again the combination of suffering and wisdom

-there is one more thing about this knowledge that is implied between the lines of the last stanza;
the urn teaches us about beauty and truth, the only way for humans to learn this truth is through
pieces of art, we can only experience beauty through things that are beautiful, things that appeal
to our senses which is why keats insisted on involving all of our senses in perceiving beauty,
which is why his imagery is very sensuous (beautiful nature, beautiful art and people, etc)
-we can experience beauty only through senses, and as humans we cannot experience beauty
forever, that is why his imagery is so sensuous and rich. These experiences of beauty do not last
forever, in fact they are very short

-Vampire phenomenon in the romantic poetry: in John Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci and
Lamia; such experiences are very similar to these experiences, romantics were fascinated with
vampires, female vampires who were extremely beautiful and leave young men very disappointed
because they only experience beauty very briefly, it doesn’t matter whether it is a skylark, west
wind, nightingale, etc, objects in romantic literature only come alive through the experience of
the subject, as long as the subject sees the object, humans are doomed to experience these short
moments of bliss and beauty and this has to be part of our wisdom; beauty is to be found in
ordinary, earthly things around us, including art, and these moments of beauty, experiences of
beauty are short