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John Keats( 济慈 )(1795-1821)
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” ---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
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“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
• I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.
• I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart‘s affections and the truth of Imagination - What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth ， whether it existed before or not ； for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty.- Keats in letter to Benjamin Bailey (Saturday 22 November, 1817)
Also see p294 and
p299
While still in good health, Keats was ambitious of doing the world some good, instead of focusing on his own sensitive soul. Towards the end of his life he despaired, believing that he had accomplished nothing in his life. He asked that his name not appear on his epitaph and that it read instead, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." In accordance with his wishes, his friend Joseph Severn had the following engraved on his tombstone:
This Grave contains all that wasMortal of a YOUNG ENGLISHPOET Who, on his Death Bed, inthe Bitterness of his Heart, at themalicious Power of his EnemiesDesired these Words to be en-graven on his Tomb Stone: Herelies One Whose Name was writ inWater Feb 24th, 1821.
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
Some well-known poems:• Endymion• Isabella• The Eve of St. Agnes• Lamia• Hyperion
The first important poem :on First looking into chapman's Homer
Endymion
• Ode to Autumn
• Ode to Melancholy
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Ode to a Nightingale• Ode to psyche
Mature Odes
The exact date of composition is uncertain, sometime in the second half of May 1819. Charles Brown, one of Keats’s closest companions and in whose house Keats commonly resided, recalls the moment when Keats wrote the poem in a letter to Lord Houghton:
Writing of This Poem
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 some books.
On inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well legible; and it was difficult to arrange the stanzas on so many scraps. With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his 'Ode to a Nightingale', a poem which has been the delight of every one.
In 1818, Keats's brother Tom was
diagnosed with tuberculosis. Keats
abandoned his faltering medical
studies to care for him. Tom died in
his arms in early 1819. By the late
summer of 1819, Keats himself had
been diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Although he had long hoped to marry his sweetheart, Fanny Brawne, he knew by this time he would not live long enough to marry her. All his great odes were written during this period, from May to September, 1819.
Stanza 1• What is the speaker's
state of mind in the first stanza?
• How does the nightingale contribute to this mood?
Stanza 1
• The poet falls into a reverie while listening to an actual nightingale sing. He feels joy and pain, an ambivalent response.
夜莺颂 我的心在痛，困顿和麻木 刺进了感官，有如饮过毒鸠， 又象是刚刚把鸦片吞服， 于是向着列斯忘川下沉： 并不是我嫉妒你的好运， 而是你的快乐使我太欢欣－－ 因为在林间嘹亮的天地里， 你呵，轻翅的仙灵， 你躲进山毛榉的葱绿和荫影， 放开歌喉，歌唱着夏季。
Stanza 2 What desire is
expressed in the second stanza? What sort language and imagery does Keats use to articulate his desire?
Apollo and Muses on Mt. Helicon
Keats's Imagery• Keats's imagery ranges among all our physical sensati
ons: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, temperature, weight, pressure, hunger, thirst, sexuality, and movement. Keats repeatedly combines different senses in one image, that is, he attributes the trait(s) of one sense to another, a practice called synaesthesia. His synaesthetic imagery performs two major functions in his poems: it is part of their sensual effect, and the combining of senses normally experienced as separate suggests an underlying unity of dissimilar happenings, the oneness of all forms of life. Richard H. Fogle calls these images the product of his "unrivaled ability to absorb, sympathize with, and humanize natural objects."
Synaesthesia
Mixing of sensations. It is the response through several senses tothe stimulation of one. For instance,“hearing” a “colour,” or “seein
g” a“smell”.
Examples of Synaesthetic Images
• In some MELODIOUS plot / Of BEECHEN GREEN (stanza I)
Combines sound ("melodious") and sight ("beechen green") • TASTING of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker of the warm South, (stanza II)
Here the poet TASTES the visual ("Flora and the country green"), activity ("Dance"), sound ("Provencal song"), and mood or pleasure ("mirth"); also the visual ("sunburnt") is combined with a pleasurable emotional state ("mirth"). With the beaker there is finally something to taste, but what is being tasted is temperature ("warm") and a location ("South").
Stanza 2• Wanting to escape from the pain of a joy-
pain reality, the poet begins to move into a world of imagination or fantasy. He calls for wine. His purpose is clearly not to
get drunk. Rather he associates wine with some quality or state he is seeking. The description of drinking and of the world associated with wine is idealized.
哎，要是有一口酒！那冷藏 在地下多年的清醇饮料， 一尝就令人想起绿色之邦， 想起花神，恋歌，阳光和舞蹈！ 要是有一杯南国的温暖 充满了鲜红的灵感之泉， 杯沿明灭着珍珠的泡沫， 给嘴唇染上紫斑； 哦，我要一饮而离开尘寰， 和你同去幽暗的林中隐没：
Stanza 3How does the third stanza
define unhappiness?
远远地、远远隐没，让我忘掉 你在树叶间从不知道的一切，忘记这疲劳、热病、和焦躁， 这使人对坐而悲叹的世界； 在这里，青春苍白、消瘦、死亡， 而“瘫痪”有几根白发在摇摆； 在这里，稍一思索就充满了 忧伤和灰色的绝望， 而“美”保持不住明眸的光彩， 新生的爱情活不到明天就枯凋。
Stanza 3• His awareness of the real world pulls him bac
k from the imagined world of drink-joy. He explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: "the weariness, the fever, and the fret" of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. Youth "grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies," and "beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes."
Stanza 4• What does the speaker claim
will enable him to achieve what he has wished for in the two previous stanzas? Why does it fly with “viewless wings”? What sort of escape does poetry appear to offer? How does the problem of “not seeing” carry over into the next stanza?
Synaesthetic Image
• But here here is no LIGHT,Save what from heaven is with the BREEZES BLOWN
Combines sight ("light") with touch/movement ("breezes blown"). This image describes light filtering through leaves moved by the wind.
去吧！去吧！我要朝你飞去， 不用和酒神坐文豹的车驾， 我要展开诗歌底无形羽翼， 尽管这头脑已经困顿、疲乏； 去了！呵，我已经和你同往！ 夜这般温柔，月后正登上宝座， 周围是侍卫她的一群星星； 但这儿却不甚明亮， 除了有一线天光，被微风带过， 葱绿的幽暗，和苔藓的曲径。
Stanza 4• The speaker tells the nightingale to fly away,
and he will follow, not through alcohol ("Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards"), but through poetry, which will give him "viewless wings." He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches.
Stanza 5• What does the speaker
experience in stanza 5?
Synaesthetic Image
• Nor what SOFT INCENSE HANGS upon the boughs
Combines touch ("soft"), weight ("hangs"), and smell ("incense).
我看不出是哪种花草在脚旁， 什么清香的花挂在树枝上； 在温馨的幽暗里，我只能猜想 这个时令该把哪种芬芳 赋予这果树，林莽，和草丛， 这白枳花，和田野的玫瑰， 这绿叶堆中易谢的紫罗兰， 还有五月中旬的娇宠， 这缀满了露酒的麝香蔷薇， 它成了夏夜蚊蚋的嗡萦的港湾。
Stanza 5• Because the poet cannot see in the dar
kness, he must rely on his other senses. He cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them "in embalmed darkness": white hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose, "the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves."
Stanza 6 What is the
attitude toward death in the sixth stanza? How does it compare with Stanza three?
我在黑暗里倾听：呵，多少次 我几乎爱上了静谧的死亡， 我在诗思里用尽了好的言辞， 求他把我的一息散入空茫； 而现在，哦，死更是多么富丽： 在午夜里溘然魂离人间， 当你正倾泻着你的心怀 发出这般的狂喜！ 你仍将歌唱，但我却不再听见－ 你的葬歌只能唱给泥草一块。
Stanza VI The poet begins to distance himself from the nightingal
e, which he joined in imagination in stanzas IV and V. Keats yearns to die, a state which he imagines as only j
oyful, as pain-free, and to merge with the bird's song. The nightingale is characterized as wholly blissful--"full-throated ease" in stanza I and "pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (lines 7-8).
In the last two lines, the poet no longer identifies with the bird. He realizes what death means for him; death is not release from pain; rather it means non-existence, the inability to feel the bird's ecstasy.
Stanza 7• Why does Keats call
the bird immortal? In what sense does Keats exclude it from the experience of death?
• In the beginning the bird is presented as a real bird, but as the poem progresses, the bird becomes a symbol. What do you think the bird comes to symbolize? Possible meanings include
---is he saying the bird is a symbol of the continuity of nature or the bird represents the continuing presence of joy in life? In such a reading, the poet contrasts the bird's immortality (and continuing joyful song) with the condition of human beings, "hungry generations."
---Does the bird symbolize ideal beauty, which is immortal? Or is the bird the visionary or imaginative realm which inspires poets?
---Does this one bird represent the species, which by continuing generation after generation does achieve a kind of immortality as a species?
•永生的鸟呵，你不会死去！ 饥饿的世代无法将你蹂躏； 今夜，我偶然听到的歌曲 曾使古代的帝王和村夫喜悦； 或许这同样的歌也曾激荡 露丝忧郁的心，使她不禁落泪， 站在异邦的谷田里想着家； 就是这声音常常 在失掉了的仙域里引动窗扉： 一个美女望着大海险恶的浪花。
Stanza 7 Keats moves from his awareness of his own mortalit
y in the preceding stanza to the perception of the bird's immortality. On a literal level, his perception is wrong; this bird will die. Interpreting the line literally may be a misreading, because the bird has clearly become a symbol for the poet. The poet contrasts the bird's singing and immunity from death and suffering with human beings, "hungry generations." The stanza begins in the poet's present (note the present tense verbs tread and hear in lines 2 and 3).
Keats then makes three references to the bird's
singing in the past; the mixed nature of reality
manifests itself in his imagining the nightingale's
joyous song being heard by in the past in the series
of three images. The story of Ruth is unhappy (what
words indicate her pain?). In the third image, the
"charm'd magic casements" of fairy are "forlorn" and
the seas are "perilous." These words hint at the pain
the poet recognized in the beginning of the poem and
is trying to escape.
Stanza 8 How does the narrator
separate from the Nightingale? On what terms? What is his state of mind? How does it compare with that expressed in the poem’s opening?
呵，失掉了！这句话好比一声钟 使我猛醒到我站脚的地方！ 别了！幻想，这骗人的妖童， 不能老耍弄它盛传的伎俩。 别了！别了！你怨诉的歌声 流过草坪，越过幽静的溪水， 溜上山坡；而此时，它正深深 埋在附近的溪谷中： 噫，这是个幻觉，还是梦寐？ 那歌声去了：－－我是睡？是醒？
Stanza 8• The poet repeats the word "forlorn" from the end of
stanza VII; who or what is now forlorn? In lines 2 and 3, the poet says that "fancy" (imagination) has cheated him, as has the "elf" (bird). The bird has ceased to be a symbol and is again the actual bird the poet heard in stanza I. The poet, like the nightingale, has returned to the real world. The bird flies away to another spot to sing. The bird's song becomes a "plaintive anthem" and fainter. With the last two lines, the poet wonders whether he has had a true insight or experience or whether he has been daydreaming. Of course, the imaginative experience is by its nature transient or brief.
• A major concern in "Ode to a Nightingale" is Keats's perception of the conflicted nature of human life, i.e., the interconnection or mixture of pain/joy, intensity of feeling/numbness of feeling, life/death, mortal/immortal, the actual/the ideal, dream or vision/reality, and separation/connection.
• So are Keats’s life and his other poems. Other conflicts appear in Keats's poetry: transient sensation or passion / enduring art, being immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion, etc.
• Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important poems are related to, or grow directly out of...inner conflicts." For example, pain and pleasure are intertwined in "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; love is intertwined with pain, and pleasure is intertwined with death in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil."
• Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that is the theme of "Ode to a Nightingale" somewhat differently: "the world of imagination offers a release from the painful world of actuality, yet at the same time it renders the world of actuality more painful by contrast."
• All odes grew out of a persistent kind of experience which dominated Keats's
feelings, attitudes, and thoughts during that time. Each of them is a unique experience, but each of them is also, as it were, a facet of a larger experience. This larger experience is an intense awareness of both the joy and pain, the happiness and the sorrow, of human life. This awareness is feeling and becomes also thought, a kind of brooding as the poet sees them in others and feels them in himself. This awareness is not only feeling; it becomes also thought, a kind of brooding contemplation of the lot of human beings, who must satisfy their desire for happiness in a world where joy and pain are inevitably and inextricably tied together. This union of joy and pain is the fundamental fact of human experience that Keats has observed and accepted as true. Wright Thomas and Stuart Gerry Brown
A General Analysis “Ode to a Nightingale” was inspired by the s
inging of a nightingale that had built its nest close to the house of a friend of the poet in Hampstead. At that time, Keats’ brother Tom had just died, he himself was threatened with consumption. In the beginning the bird is presented as a real bird, but as the poem progresses, the bird becomes a symbol. The song of the nightingale symbolized for him a lasting beauty which lured him temporarily away from his great misery into an exquisite desire to the forest with the bird.
The first impression he gets from the singing of the nightingale involves his heartache and the drowsy numbness of his senses coming as if under the effect of hemlock or dull opiate. The cheerfulness of the bird is a sharp comparison to the human miseries. The poet wished he would forget all the painful memories by the power of wine, but in vain. Then the nightingale’s song made him feel that he was flying with it to the Queen-moon “on summer eves” and further
carried him away to the ancient times and far-off
lands. All this made him forget his painful life on
earth. But the nightingale flew away with its
sweet song, and the poet was left alone to face
The cold reality again.
So in this ode, Keats not only expressed his
raptures upon hearing the beautiful songs of the
nightingale and his desire to go to the
ethereal world of beauty together with the bird,
but he also shows his deep sympathy for and
his keen understanding of human miseries in
the society in which he lived.
The whole poem contains 8 stanzas each
consisting of ten lines of iambic verse and a
rime scheme of ababcdecde. All the lines in
each stanza are in iambic pentameter, with the
exception of the 8th line which has only 3 feet.
