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· Name: Abulhasan H. Aabedi
· Roll no: 01
· Topic: John Keats as a Poet of Sensuousness
· Paper no.6: Romantic Age
· Class: Semester 02
· Enrollment no.:2069108420180001
· Batch: 2017~19
· Submitted to Department of English MK Bhavnagar University.
John Keats as a poet of Sensuousness:-
·
Introduction:
John
Keats(31 October 1795-23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one
of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley,
despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his
death at 25 in the year 1821.
Although his poem were not generally
well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his
death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the
most beloved of all English
poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and
writers. Jorge Luis
Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats’ work was the most
significant literary experience of his life.
·
John Keats as a sensuous poet or sensuousness in
Keats’ poetry:
The poetry of Keats is characterized
by ‘sensuous’ uses of language. The sensuousness of Keats is a striking
characteristic of his entire poetry. All his poems including his great odes
contain rich sensuous appeal. The odes, which represent the highest poetic
achievement of Keats, are replete with sensuous pictures. Now, we will discuss
his sensuousness with examples of his various Odes and poems in detail.
“Ode to Nightingale” is
one of the most remarkable poems of sensuousness. In the second stanza of this
ode, there is a description of the gustatory sensation of drinking wine. There
are references to the visual and auditory senses too. The poet also paints the
picture of a drunken whose mouth is purple stained because of the red wine he
has drunk:
“ With
beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth,”
The descriptions of the wine are so sensuous
that we see the bubbling wine, we also hear the dance and sun-burnt mirth; we also get
an inkling of the taste of the long cooled wine. In the 5th stanza
the poet gives a highly sensuous description of the Nightingale world.
“
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet;
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of
flies onsummereve
The description of the nature alludes
to the sense of sight or its absence(one cannot see); the sense of touch and of
smell(soft incense) and by the end of the verse, with the evocation of “the
coming musk-rose, full of dew wine”, the sense of taste and hearing have also
been incorporated.
“Ode to autumn” is considered
to be the perfect embodiment of concrete sensuous experience. The poem gives a
graphic description of the season with all its variety and richness. The whole
atmosphere and the mood of the season are presented through sensuous imagery
and descriptions:
“with fruits
the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with
apples and moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all
fruits with ripeness to the core.”
“Ode
on Melancholy” again, we have several sensuous pictures. There is the rain
failing from a loud above and reviving the drooping flowers below and covering
the green hill in an “April”. There is the morning rose, there are the colors
produced by the sunlight playing on wet sand; and there is the wealth of “globed
peonies”. And then there is another exquisitely sensuous picture:
“Or if thy mistress some
rich anger shows’
Imprison
her soft hand and let her rave
And
feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes”
Keats saw that life is full of
suffering and he himself was a prey to disease and pain. Where is then, beauty
in life.? He takes up this question in his “Ode On Melancholy”. He finds
melancholy even in the sweetest things of life; even when a man loves most
fondly, when he bursts : joy’s grasp
against his palate fine”, veiled melancholy comes and disillusions him.
Melancholy dwells with beauty, pain and suffering are not to be divorced from
joy for they together make up life like just day and night together make up
time.
The “Ode on
a Grecian Urn” contains a series of sensuous picture-passionate men and Gods
chasing reluctant maidens, the fair
youth trying to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the tree enjoying an
everlasting spring, etc. The ecstasy of the passion of love and of youth is
beautifully depicted in the following lines:
More happy love! More happy
happy love!
Fore ever warm and still
to be enjoy’d,
For ever painting, and for
ever young.
The odes, which represent
the highest poetic achievement of Keats, are replete with sensuous pictures.
The ode to Psyche contains a lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an
embrace in the deep grass, in the midst of flowers of varied colors:
“Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers,
fragrant-eyed.”
The lovers lie with lips that touched
not but which have not at the same time bidden farewell. We have more sensuous
imagery when Keats describes the superior beauty of Psyche as compared with Venus
and Vesper. Venus and Vesper are themselves described in sensuous phrases:
“Phebe’s sapphire region’d star,
Vesper, amorous glowworm of the sky”
A little later in the poem we are
given pictures of a forest, mountains, stream, birds, breezes and Dryads lulled
to sleep on the moss. One of the most exquisitely sensuous pictures comes at
the end where we see a bright torch burning in the casement to make it possible
for cupid to enter the temple in order to make love to Psyche.
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To
let the warm love in!
In “The
Eve of St. Agnes”, the description of the Gothic window is famous for its rich
sensuous appeal. Keats describes the rich colors of the window-panes of ‘quaint
device”, on which were “ stains and splendid dyes as the tiger-mouth’s deep
damask’d wing”. The reference to the music of the instrument in the same poem
appeals to our sense of hearing:
“ The
boisterous, mid-night, festive clarion,
The
kettle-drum, and far heard clarionet.”
Again, the description of the feast
arranged by prophyro is highly sensuous:
“While he from
forth the closet brought a heap,
Of candied apple, quince,
and plum, and fourd;
With jellies
soother than the creamy curd,
And lucent
syrops, tinct with cinnamon;
The apple, quince, plum, gourd,
jellies and dates make our mouths water. This passage of the spread feast of
dainties is, indeed, sumptuous and inviting.
Our senses of sight and smell are
also gratified when the poet described the wintry moon throwing its light on
madeline’s fair breast and the rose-bloom falling on her hands. We have a
delightful combination of colors in these lines, as in the stanza describing
the Gothic window:
“Full on
this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on
madeline’s fair breast,
As down
she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom
fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross
soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory , like a saint.”
Even more sensuous is the picture of
Madeline undressing herself. As Madeline removes the pearls from her hair,
unclaps the jewels one by one, and loosen her fragrant bodice, she looks like a
mermaid in sea-weed, and porphyro thinks himself to be in paradise. The phrases
“Warmed jewels”, “Fragrant bodice”, and “rich attire” are particularly
noteworthy here. The stanza on which the poet describes the passionate
love-making of porphyro and Madeline, again, has a richly sensuous appeal.
Porphyro is represented as “beyond a mortal man impassioned far”; he is like “a
throbbing star seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose:; and the rose blends
its odour with the violet- “solution sweet”.
The short masterpiece, “La Bella Dam Sans Merci”, has its own sensuous
appeal. The lady is described as “full beautiful, a fairy’s child”, with long
hair, light foot, and wild eyes. The knight makes “a garland for her head, and
bracelets too, and fragrant zone”. She finds him roots of sweet relish, wild
honey, and manna dew.
“She
took me to her elfin grot,
And
there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
And
there I shut her wild wild eyes with kiss four”.
In the ‘Ode to fancy”,
we have a series of pictures which please our senses. The fruits of autumn,
buds and bells of may, the sweet singing of the birds, the various flowers, the
daisy, the marigold, the lily, the primrose are a kind of feast which we enjoy
as we go through the poem.
The poet give the impressions receive
by their eyes only. Wordsworth’s imagination is stirred by what he sees and
hears in nature. Milton is no less sensitive to the beauty of nature, of the
flowers in “Paradise Lost” in a sensuous manner. But keats’ poetry appeals to
our sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch and sense of hot and cold.
He exclaims in one of his letters “O for a life of sensation than of thoughts”.
He is a pure poet in sense of seeking not sensual but sensuous delight.
·
Five types of sense in Keats’ poetry:-
1. Sense
of sight
2. Sense
of Hearing
3. Sense
of Taste
4. Sense
of Touch
5. Sense
of Smell
· Sense of Sight:-
Keats is painter of words. In a few words he presents a concrete and
solid picture of sensuous beauty.
“Her hair was
long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.”
And
in “Ode on Grecian Urn” again the sense of sight is active.
“O attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede,
Of marble men and maidens
overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed”;
· Sense of Hearing:-
The music of Nightingale
produces pangs of pain in poet’s heart:
“The voice I
hear this passing night was heard,
In
ancient days, by emperor and clown:
“ Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard,
Are
sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
· Sense of Touch:-
The opening lines of “La Bella
Dame Sans Merci” describe extreme cold:
“ The sedge is withered from the lake and no birds sing”
· Sense of Taste:-
In “Ode to Nightingale”, Keats describes
different kinds of wine and the ideas of their tastes in intoxication.
“O for a breaker full of the warm south,
Full of the true the blushful
Hippocrene
· Sense of Smell:-
In “Ode to Nightingale”, the
poet cannot see the flowers in darkness. There is mingled perfume of many flowers.
“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor
what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.”
·
Conclusion:-
Thus, Keats always selects the
objects of his description and imagery with a keen eye on their sensuous
appeal. This sensuousness is the principal charm of his poetry. A general
recognition of this quality leads to the consensus that Keats’s poetry is
particularly successful in depicting, representing or conveying ‘reality’ or
experience that his poetic language displays a kind of ‘solidity’ or
concreteness capable or convincing the reader of the reality of what it
communicate and persuading him, almost, to imagine that he is literally perceiving
the objects and the experience that the verse describe.
- Words-1,977
Bibliography
Gillani, S.N. Keats' sensuousness. 12
september 2008. 2 March 2018
<http://www.engliterarium.com/2008/09/keats-sensuousness.html>.
John Keats as
sensuous writer. 2 March 2018
<http://www.academia.edu/10434043/john_keats_as_a_sensuous_writer>.
Keats as a poet of
sensuousness. 2 march 2018
<http://www.josbd.com/discuss-keats-as-a-poet-of-sensuousness/>.
