Chapter two
2.1John Keats as a Romantic Poet
John Keats is known as an English Romantic poet who was born in
London in
1795 and died in 1821 because of tuberculosis (Bloom and
Trilling, 493). Throughout his short life time he achieved to create
many unforgettable and impressive poems and letters. He is one
of the most famous poets of his time, and his poems are still
widely studied. Because he created all his works in the nineteenth
century, it is possible to trace the impact of the Romantic
Movement, which was ubiquitous (Everest, 30), in his works.
Therefore, his works reflect the major characteristics of
Romanticism such as imagination, emotion and nature. Kelvin
Everest argues that:
The theory of Keats has often been interpreted as an
example of a typical Romantic subjective recoil from
the pain, ugliness and transience of actual human
experience. Keats medievalism, his association of
poetry with dreaming, with drugs and alcohol, or even
with peaceful death, all seem to point towards some
intense desire to shelter from reality in a visionary
realm of imagination (49).
What makes Keats a Romantic is his intention to attempt to run
away from the hazards of life by creating a new world in his
imagination, which he hopes will protect him from the pitfalls of
life. He builds a dream world in his poems, like the other
Romantics in order to break away from the actuality. He seeks for
an escape from the hard conditions of life in a realm of beauty
and romance as he says in Ode on a Grecian Urn (which is going
to be interpreted throughout this chapter) What mad pursuit?
What struggle to escape? (9). He mentions the effort that he
puts in to escape from the horrific sides of life such as pain and
ugliness as Everest pointed out, as well as the idea of being
mortal and always being close to the end. He creates avisionary
realm of imagination in order to be able to get away from the
reality. Moreover,
Reiman
(659)
states
that
according
to
Harold Bloom there is an acceptance of death and all mortal
limitations in Keats's late poems such as Ode on a
Grecian
Urn. This idea could be associated with Westlands ideal
beauty mentioned in the previous chapter. Everest emphasizes
the same point by shortly summarizing that everybody refuses
the fact that they are going to lose their ideal beauty one day,
therefore, the acceptance of this change gives pain to the
individual.
However, no matter what they do it is impossible to run away
from death as a result ofmortal limitations.The concept of
change is one of the significant elements in Ode on a Grecian Urn
which should be mentioned. The speaker of the poem states that
the denial of time and change are represented through the trees,
which are portrayed on the Grecian Urn and can never be bare
(16). The speaker assumes that these images on the urn are not
changing despite the passing time as he refers to the frozen
images as being stable by personifying Silence and Time (2).
The speaker refers to Silence with an oxymoronic phrase by
calling it still unravishd bride of quietness (1). Despite the
centuries that passed the urn is still there that is the reason why it
is unravishd. Although he describes the urn as a Sylvan
historian (3), he admits that it canst thus express/ A flowery tale
more sweetly than our rhyme (3-4) because it is just an object
that does not have the ability of talking. He uses the word slow
(2) as an adjective in order to describe Time (2) because the
time that changes living beings frequently cannot do the same
effect to the frozen images on the urn. This also shows that the
Grecian Urn will remain in midst of other woe/ Than ours, a friend
to man (47-8) in order to pass on its story from this generation to
the others. Although time passes the blissful moment of the trees
in the third stanza, the piper and the young lovers in the second
stanza will never fade away; consequently, it will always
represent that very moment of happy young people now and after
decades.
Here, if we interpret the Ideal beauty as youth (15) which
stands at the core of the poem, it can be said it functions as the
key means of trying to prevent change. Keats mentions the loss of
youth by stating that the old age (46) will be waste[d] (46).
Because human beings are mortal, they are going to die one day
or another, and as a result of their mortality as they come closer
to death, they come face to face with old age which causes the
loss of youth. This is the reason why people see themselves
as ugly, and this gives them pain. As Keats himself was ill the fear
of death must have haunted him constantly, and he reflects this
fear in his poetry too, which leads one to think that dreaming
plays an important role in Keats poetry.
Keats also uses his talent of giving meaning to ordinary things to
build his dream world. For instance, in Ode on a Grecian Urn he
puts an ordinary urn in the centre of the poem and writes his
poem according to the images on this simple urn. This vase from
Ancient Greece becomes the central object of the poem which
inspires the speaker throughout the poem. Westland explains this
by asserting that
The great Romantic poets found it [the sense of mystery] not only
in the inspiration of the Middle Ages and Greek art, but also in the
simplicities of everyday life; an ordinary sunset, a walk over the
hills, a cluster of spring flowers, the rain-bearing west wind, the
song of the nightingale, a cottage girl, a simple old dales man
such are a few of the subjects that inspired to supreme
achievement a Wordsworth, a Coleridge, a Shelley, a Keats (19).
Keats is also inspired by the antiquity because he seeks for an
escape into the past too. His imagination is lured by the past,
therefore, he writes a poem on a Grecian Urn which is a
representative of the antiquity as it is an urn from Ancient Greece.
He calls the urn a Sylvan historian (49) which is silent but tells
stories of a pastoral scene from the past. This is also revealed in
the first stanza of the poem when he asks the urn:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? (5-6-7)
The words legend and haunts stand as representatives of the
past too. He also refers to immortality by emphasizing the binary
opposition between the gods and humans. Deities represent the
gods and immortality whereas mortal represents the transience
of human beings. In the seventh line Keats wonders whether the
scene takes place either in Tempe or Arcady. Tempe is a valley in
Greece which can be considered as a representative of rural
beauty of Greece, and the dales of Arcady refers to the valleys of
Arcadia which was a region in ancient Greece and which was as a
representative of the rural ideal. Therefore, one can notice that
Keats puts an emphasis on the progress of the concept of beauty
from the past to the present. This is another reason way he is
lured by the past. According to the famous American modern
critic T.S. Eliot This historical sense, which is a sense of the
timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of
the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it
is at the same time what makes a writer most accurately
conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity (3).
The Grecian Urn helps Keats to make a connection between the
past when it was created and the day when he lives in. The urn
carries the traces of the past with itself and gives inspiration to
Keats in order to contemplate on his poem. Furthermore, this
connection helps him to be both in the past and in the present.
