Ode to a nightingale for keats
Written in May 1819, many believe Keats? Ode to a Nightingale to have been written at the home of Charles Brown, when Keats sat and listened to the bird for in the garden for some hours. Brown recounts how, ?when he [i.e. Keats] came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand.? These pieces of paper were to contain Keats? poetic feeling on the song of the nightingale, ?a poem which has been the delight of everyone.? The nightingale is particularly apt for the themes Keats wished to explore in his poem. In Classical tradition, the nightingale is associated with love. The influential myth of Philomela, turned into a nightingale after being raped and tortured, stresses melancholy and suffering in association with love. Keats often used Greek and Roman mythology as inspiration for his poetry and he was preoccupied with the symbolic nature of many fables. The nightingale has also been associated with poetry; Keats no doubt knew Coleridge?s two poems To the Nightingale and The Nightingale: A Conversation Poem and according to his letters, only days before had Keats discussed the nature of nightingales and poetical sensation with the older poet. In this contemplation on poetic experience, Keats attempts t
For Keats, these creations would be as real to him as anything found in the material world; as in I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, Keats wishes to emphasise that, ?What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth ? whether it existed before or not?, a preoccupation that is unearthed more fully later in Ode on a Grecian Urn. Keats asks, ?Was it a vision, or a waking dream? // ? Do I wake or sleep?? Now that the nightingale has left him, Keats is unsure as to whether or not he ever had the privileged glimpse of the ideal world. The song of the nightingale reminds the poet of all that he needs to forget; as Coles? Notes informs us, ?the bird ? represents experience unalloyed, untainted by the ?weariness, the fever and the fret? ?. Clearly it would be difficult to explain how anything could literally taste of such things; it is the sense of innocence and carefree pleasure they evoke which Keats is associating with the taste of wine. The nightingale would continue to sing as it ever had, but Keats would ?have ears in vain?. Therefore, Keats?s attempts to mediate between the ?here? of the physical world and the ?there? of the nightingale?s realm are not resolved and the next stanza opens with Keats seemingly believing that it is justifiable to ?desire to escape the human world of sorrow?. This reveals another of Keats?s Romantic preoccupations, that of life and existence. The nightingale has so progresses from being an actual creature to a mythological symbol, the spiritual night singer, until eventually, Keats cannot decipher the real from the illusory. The poet too becomes a night singer. " The language in the first stanza also contrasts strongly, where we can see it being used effectively to create a certain mood. In stanza seven, the focus of mortality shifts from Keats to the nightingale (who has now been capitalised as ?immortal Bird!? in order to show it as a representative of its entire species). o achieve awareness of beauty and permanence through the symbol of the nightingale. The wine is to be all things to the poet at once, ?Cooled a long age? yet tasting of ?the warm South?. Keats ends the poem with another common preoccupation of his, that of dreams.
Common topics in this essay:
Helen Vendler,
Coles Notes,
Keatss Romantic,
Belle Dame,
Bacchus Greek,
Brown Keats,
Conversation Poem,
Ode Nightingale,
Nightingale Keats,
Vendler Keats,
coles notes,
song nightingale,
human suffering,
taste wine,
ode nightingale,
helen vendler,
nightingale nightingale,
experience keats,
drowsy numbness,
world nightingale,
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