John Keats’ life and creativity work

As the poem comes to a close, the narrator once again addresses the urn as a single object. However, his tone becomes sharper as he seeks answers from the work of art that it appears unable to answer. In the final couplet, the poet provides a line for the urn, which complicates the narrative and has generated a multitude of critical responses as to the author's intent: "Beauty is truth—truth beauty / that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know" (lines 49-50).

"Ode on Indolence" comprises six stanzas containing ten lines each. The poem discusses a morning of laziness on the part of the narrator, during which his attention becomes captivated by three figures he sees in a vision. Beginning with an epitaph taken from Matthew 6:28, the poet introduces the theme of indolence through an excerpt of Jesus' suggestion that God provides for the lilies of the field without making them toil. The poem describes the three figures as wearing "placid sandals" and "white robes", which alludes to the Grecian mythology that commonly appears in the 1819 odes. The images pass the narrator three times, which causes him to compare them to images on a spinning urn (line 7). In line 10, the narrator uses the word "Phidian" again as a reference to the Elgin marbles, whose creation was thought to have been overseen by Phidias, a Grecian artist. As the poem progresses, the narrator begins to discuss the intrusion upon his indolence by the figures of Love, Ambition, and Poesy, and he suggests that the images have come to "steal away" his idle days. In the final stanzas, the figure of Poesy is described as a daemon which Helen Vendler suggests poses a direct threat to the idleness the poet wishes to retain. In the final lines, the poet once again rejects the three images: "Vanish, ye phantoms, from my idle spright, / Into the clouds, and never more return!" (lines 39-40) with the intention of once again enjoying the laziness from which the poem obtains its title.

Keats wrote to his friend Sarah Jeffrey: "[T]he thing I have most enjoyed this year has been writing an ode to Indolence." Despite this enjoyment, however, he was not entirely satisfied with "Ode on Indolence", and it remained unpublished until 1848.

"Ode on Melancholy" is the shortest of the 1819 spring odes at three stanzas of 10 lines. Originally, the poem contained four stanzas, but the original first stanza was removed before publication in 1820 for stylistic reasons. The poem describes the narrator's opinions on melancholy and is addressed specifically to the reader, unlike the narrative of many of the other odes. The lyric nature of the poem allows the poet to describe the onset of melancholy and then provides the reader with different methods of dealing with the emotions involved. Using personification, the poem creates characters out of Joy, Pleasure, Delight, and Beauty, and allows them to interact with two other characters which take the shape of a male and his female mistress mentioned (line 17). Keats himself fails to appear as a character in the poem, as there is no mention of the poet himself suffering from melancholy. In the final stanza, the poet describes the mistress as dwelling in Beauty, but modifies the beauty by saying that it "must die" (line 21). Harold Bloom suggests that this provides the poem with a hint of Keats's philosophy of negative capability, as only the beauty that will die meets the poem's standard of true beauty. The image of the bursting of Joy's grape (line 28) gives the poem a theme of sexuality. According to critics, the bursting of the grape alludes to the passing from the moment of ultimate sexual pleasure to the decreased pleasure of a post-orgasmic state.

"Ode to a Nightingale" is the longest of the 1819 odes with 8 stanzas containing 10 lines each. The poem begins by describing the state of the poet, using negative statements to intensify the description of the poet's physical state such as "numbless pains" and "not through envy of thy happy lot" (lines 1-5). While the ode is written "to a Nightingale", the emphasis of the first line is placed upon the narrator rather than the bird, and Helen Vendler suggests that the negation of the reader as a party in the discourse happens just as the song of the nightingale becomes the "voice of pure self-expression". In the third stanza, the poet asks the nightingale to "Fade far away", casting it off just as the narrator in "Ode to Indolence" rejects the Love, Ambition, and Poesy and the poet in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" banishes the figures on the urn to silence. In the fourth stanza, the poet states that he will fly to the nightingale rather than it to him, moving upon the "wings of Poesy", which leaves Walter Jackson Bate to believe that while the poet intends to identify with the bird by describing the poem as being "to" it, the real identification in the narrative exits between the poet and his perceptions of the nightingale's song. In its closing, the poem questions whether the bird's song has been real or part of a dream: "Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?" (lines 79-80), and the theme of imagination once again arises as the poet appears, according to Timothy Hilton, unable to distinguish between his own artistic imagination and the song which he believes to have spurred it into action.

The poem was composed at the Hampstead house Keats shared with Brown, possibly while sitting beneath a plum-tree in the garden. According to Keats' friend Brown, Keats finished the Ode in just one morning: "In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house. Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast-table to the grass-plot under a plum-tree, 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 he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feelings on the song of the nightingale." Brown's account is personal as he claimed the poem was directly influenced by his house and preserved by his own doing. However, Keats relied on both his own imagination and other literature for sources for his depiction of the nightingale.

"Ode to Psyche" is a 67-line poem written in stanzas of varying length, which took its form from modification Keats made to the sonnet structure. The ode is written to a Grecian mythological character, displaying a great influence of Classical culture as the poet begins his discourse with "O GODDESS!" (line 1). Psyche, a creature so beautiful that she drew the attention of Cupid himself, draws the attention of the narrator, whose artistic imagination causes him to dream of her: "Surely I dream'd to-day, or did I see / The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes" (lines 5-6). As he relates himself to the mythical character of Cupid, he confuses the god's emotions with his own and imagines that he too has fallen in love with the woman's beauty. The poet does, however, understand the temporal difference between the characters of ancient Greece and his own as he declares, "even in these days [...] I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired" (line 40-43). In line 50, the poet states "Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane", which, Harold Bloom suggests, implies that the poet himself becomes a "prophet of the soul" as he regards the beauty of Psyche and attempts to place himself within Cupid's personage. According to T.S. Eliot, it is the most prominent ode among the six great odes.

Keats sent the poem to his brother on 3 May 1819 with an attached letter saying, "The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains; I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit."

"To Autumn" is a 33 line poem broken into three stanzas of 11. It discusses how autumn is both a force of growth and maturation, and deals with the theme of approaching death. While the earlier 1819 odes perfected techniques and allowed for variations that appear within "To Autumn", Keats dispenses with some aspects of the previous poems (such as the narrator) to focus on the themes of autumn and life. The poem discusses ideas without a progression of the temporal scene, an idea that Keats termed as "stationing". The three stanzas of the poem emphasize this theme by shifting the imagery from summer to early winter and also day turning into dusk.

The poem marks the final moment of his career as a poet. No longer able to afford to devote his time to the composition of poems, he began working on more lucrative projects. Keats's declining health and personal responsibilities also raised obstacles to his continuing poetic efforts.

"The Eve of St. Agnes" is a long poem (42 stanzas), written in 1819 and published in 1820. It is widely considered to be amongst his finest poems and was influential in 19th century literature. The poem is in Spenserian stanzas.

The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes' Eve). St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in fourth century Rome.Keats based his poem on the superstition that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; that is she would go to bed without any supper, undress herself so that she was completely naked and lie on her bed with her hands under the pillow and looking up to the heavens and not to look behind. Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream, kiss her, and feast with her.

In the original version of his poem, Keats emphasized the young lovers' sexuality, but his publishers, who feared public reaction, forced him to tone down the eroticism.

• Letters

Over two hundred and forty of Keats's letters survive. His letters, although often poignant, reveal the sense of enjoyment with which he wrote, and reflect the active searching of a youthful and ever-developing mind. They are filled with vigour, quality, and invididuality, making them essential reading for a deeper understanding of Keats's poetry and poetic thought.

During the 20th century they became almost as admired and studied as his poetry, and are highly regarded within the canon of English literary correspondence. T. S. Eliot described them as "certainly the most notable and most important ever written by any English poet."

 

4. Criticism

The early critical opinion of Keats's poetry was not favorable, with the notable exceptions of his close friends and the exiled Percy Shelley.  It is to Keats's credit that he understood the political purpose of the attacks and continued his work with increasing confidence in his own talent.

“But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write it.” 
Keats in a letter to his publisher John Taylor, 1818

 

About "Ode to a Nightingale"

At the beginning of the 20th century, Rudyard Kipling referred to lines 69 and 70, alongside three lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan, when he claimed of poetry: "In all the millions permitted there are no more than five—five little lines—of which one can say, 'These are the magic. These are the vision. The rest is only Poetry.'”

 In 1906, Alexander Mackie argued: "The nightingale and the lark for long monopolised poetic idolatry--a privilege they enjoyed solely on account of their pre-eminence as song birds. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale and Shelley's Ode to a Skylark are two of the glories of English literature; but both were written by men who had no claim to special or exact knowledge of ornithology as such."

Sidney Colvin, in 1920, argued, "Throughout this ode Keats’s genius is at its height. Imagination cannot be more rich and satisfying, felicity of phrase and cadence cannot be more absolute, than in the several contrasted stanzas calling for the draft of southern vintage […] To praise the art of a passage like that in the fourth stanza […] to praise or comment on a stroke of art like this is to throw doubt on the reader’s power to perceive it for himself."

 

About "Ode to Psyche"

Responding to the poem, Keats's friend Leigh Hunt declared that "When Mr Keats errs in his poetry, it is from the ill management of the good things,--exuberance of ideas. Once or twice, he does so in a taste positively bad, like Marino or Cowley, as in a line in his 'Ode to Psyche'... but it is once or twice only, in his present volume."

Robert Bridges, turn of the 19th-century literary critic, wrote "for the sake of the last section (l. 50 to end), tho' this is open to the objection that the imagery is work'd up to outface the idea—which is characteristic of Keats' manner. Yet the extreme beauty quenches every dissatisfaction. The beginning of this ode is not so good, and the middle part is midway in excellence."

Later, T. S. Eliot thought very highly of Keats's work and wrote "The Odes—especially perhaps the Ode to Psyche—are enough for his reputation."

Kennet Allott, in defending against any possible harsh criticism of "Ode to Psyche", argues that the poem "is the Cinderella of Keats's great odes, but it is hard to see why it should be so neglected, and at least two poets imply that the conventional treatment of the poem is shabby and undeserved".

Allott then cites Bridges and Eliot as views that he sympathizes with, and he believes that the poem "is neither unflawed nor the best of odes, but to me it illustrates better than any other Keats's possession of poetic power in conjunction with what was for him an unusual artistic detachment, besides being a remarkable poem in its own right. This may be another way of saying that it is the most architectural of the odes, as it is certainly the one that culminates most dramatically."

5. Poem dedicated to John Keats

Shelley was introduced to Keats in Hampstead towards the end of 1816 by their mutual friend, Leigh Hunt, who was to transfer his enthusiasm from Keats to Shelley. Shelley's huge admiration of Keats was not entirely reciprocated. Keats had reservations about Shelley's dissolute behaviour, and found some of Shelley's advice patronising (the suggestion, for example, that Keats should not publish his early work). It is also possible that Keats resented Hunt's transferred allegiance. Despite this, the two poets exchanged letters when Shelley and his wife moved to Italy. When Keats fell ill, the Shelleys invited him to stay with them in Pisa but Keats elected to travel with Severn. Despite this rebuff, Shelley's affection for Keats remained undimmed until his death in 1822 when a copy of Keats' works was found in a pocket on his drowned body. Shelley said of Keats, after inviting him to stay with him in Pisa after Keats fell ill: "I am aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an added pleasure." 

Percy Bysshe Shelley composed “Adonaïs” (also spelled Adonaies) in the spring of 1821 immediately after April 11, when Shelley heard of Keats' death (seven weeks earlier). “Adonaïs”  is a pastoral elegy written by Shelley for John Keats and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and most well-known works.  The title of the poem is likely a merging of the Greek "Adonis", the god of fertility, and the Hebrew "Adonai" (meaning "Lord").

 

 

                                               Conclusion

“None but the master shall praise us; and none but the master shall blame” might well be written on the fly leaf of every volume of Keats’ poetry; for never was there a poet more devoted to his ideal, entirely independent of success or failure. Keats lived for poetry alone, and, as Lowell pointed out, a virtue went out of him into everything he wrote. In all his work we have the impression of this intense loyalty to his art; we have the impression also of a profound dissatisfaction that the deed falls so far short of the splendid dream.

Keats’ poetry is distinctive for its unusual physical concreteness and its rich appeal to all of the senses. Keats believed that the poet should subordinate his own identity in order to enable the poem’s subject to emerge fully. His ability to capture his subject’s unique characteristics often allows the reader to experience a feeling of direct identification and participation.

Though Keats is known as a sensuous poet, his greatness also lies in the fact that he was an outstanding philosophical poet whose works portray experience as a complexity of unavoidable, inherent contradictions and opposites.

So, we must judge John Keats to be the most promising figure or the early nineteen century, and one of the most remarkable in the history of literature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography:

Brown, Sue (2009). Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199565023

Colvin, Sidney (1970). John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics, and After-Fame. New York: Octagon Books.

Goslee, Nancy (1985). Uriel's Eye: Miltonic Stationing and Statuary in Blake, Keats and Shelley. University of Alabama Press. ISBN 0-8173-0243-3

G. M. Matthews, ed. (1995). "John Keats: The Critical Heritage". London: Routledge. ISBN 0-4151-3447-1

O'Neill, Michael & Mahoney Charles (ed.s) (2007). Romantic Poetry: An Annotated Anthology. Blackwell. ISBN 0-6312-1317-1

Wolfson, Susan J. (1986). The Questioning Presence. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1909-3