John Keats and his odes with Sensuousness

Romantic Literature.
Topic: ‘John Keats and his odes with Sensuousness’
Prepared by: Avani N. Dave
M.A. - SEM – 2
Roll No: 02
Date: 18/03/'13
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumar Sinhji
Bhavnagar University

·         Introduction: 

                           John Keats was one of the Trio-younger romantic poets v/s Shelley, Byron and himself. His odes are the most touching. He blossomed early and died young. Keats is noted for the indulging luxuriance of his imagery, but at the same time, he developed self-discipline in both feelings and craftsmanship. Keats believed in the importance of Sensation, but for him, Sensation was the path of the knowledge of reality. All of his odes stand apart as the best of all with its Sensuousness and richness of imagination. It is the most perfect and shortest that is ‘Ode to autumn.’ Other he wrote ode on ‘Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode to Psyche’,And many like ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, and many.

·         Sensuousness :

                         Sensuousness is the unparallel quality of Keats poetic genius. He is the poet of Sense and their delight, He gratified that the five human senses- touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing. He is also a great lover of beauty. His mingling of love with beauty is become universal with this line:

                     “A thing of Beauty is joy forever.”

                                     He shows his strikingness in his entire poetry. ‘The eve of st.Agnes'', the description of the Gothic window is famous for its strong sensuous appeal. Our sense of sight and smellare also gratified when the3 poet describe the wintry moon throwing its lights on Madeline’s fair breast and the rose-bloom falling on her hands. The short masterpiece, a Bella Dame Sans Meric, has its own sensuous appeal.

                                The Odes, which represent the great poetic achievement of Keats. The Ode to Psyche contains a lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an embrance in the deep grass, in the midst of flowers of various colours.

                                The odes, which represent the great sensuous picture like in Ode on Melancholy, Ode on Grecian Urn, Ode to Nightingale, Ode to Fancy, Ode to autumn also contain sensuous picture.

·         Keats, pre-eminently the poet of the senses.

                             Sensuousness is the paramount quality of Keats’s poetical genius. Keats is pre-eminently the poet of the senses and their delights. No one has catered to and gratified the five human senses to the same extent as Keats. He is a great lover of beauty in the concrete. His religion is the adoration of the beautiful. In this respect he is a follower of Spenser. “I have loved the principle of Beauty in all things”, he said. His Endymion begins with the famous line:

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

·         Sensuous Imagery of the Great Odes :

                        The ode to psyche contains replete with sensuous pictures of lover cupid and psyche

“Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragment-eyed.”

                            “Every beauty that flowers have scant form stillness, coolness the next colouring is summed up in the next” the lovers lie with lips that touch not but which have not at the same time bidden forever. We have more sensuous imagery when Keats describes the superior beauty of psyche as compared with Venus and Vesper. A little later in the poem we are given pictures of a forest, mountains, streams, birds, breezes and dryads lulled to sleep on the moss.

                             One of the most exquisitely sensuous pictures comes exquisitely sensuous picture 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 Ode on Melancholy, again, we have several sensuous pictures. There is the rain failing from a cloud above and reviving the drooping flowers below and covering the green hill in an “April shroud”. There is the morning rose; there are the colours 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.

The Ode on a Grecian Urn contains a series of sensuous pictures—passionate men and gods chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players playing their ecstatic music, 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!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,       
For ever panting, and for ever young.

The Ode to a Nightingale is one of the finest examples of Keats’s rich sensuousness. The lines in which the poet expresses of passionate desire for some Provencal wine or the red wine from the fountain of the Muses appeal to both our senses of smell and taste:

        O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
                Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
                Tasting of Flora and the country green,   
                Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth! 
                O for a beaker full of the warm South,       
                Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene…….

These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, merry-making, drinking and dancing. Similarly the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly pleasing. Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars. The rich feast of flowers described in the stanza that follows is one of the outstanding beauties of the poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading violets, the coming musk-rose—all this is a delight for our senses.

In the Ode to Autumn, the charm of the season has been described with all its sensuous appeal. The whole landscape is made to appear fresh and scented. There is great concentration in each line of the opening stanza. There is a rich texture of sensuous awareness in the poem and the poet surrenders himself to the mood of the sense.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun.

 Each line is like the branch of a fruit tree laden with fruit to the breaking point. The scenery, the fruits and flowers and the honey all these appeal to our senses of seeing and the gourds. The hazels with their kernel, the bees suggesting honey all these appeal for our sense of taste and smell.

Sensuality Rather Than Sensuousness in Some of the Poems

              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. Sometimes this sensuousness deteriorates into sensuality. In other words, Keats often shows a tendency to dwell too much upon the charms of the feminine body and refers to the lips, checks, and breasts a little more than is necessary. In Ode to Autumn, the traditional form of address is maintained and the whole ode celebrates the beauty of nature through excellent images. ‘The pictorial quality of the ode is unequalled stop ford. Its beauty and its the consolation of the beauty is of the soul

Keats’ conception of beauty was not merely abstract but beauty personified its the objects of nature. He compares a eulogy of the season autumn with all its peculiar colour, smells, sounds and the tastes. The sensuousness of the poem depends on the minuteness of detail. Keats compares autumn to a gleaner and says,

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dust keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook.

It is his sense impressions that kindled his imagination which makes him realize the great principle that

‘Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.’

Conclusion:

Keats is more poet of sensuousness than a poet of contemplation. It is his senses which revealed him the beauty of things, the beauty of universe from the stars of the sky to the flowers of the wood. Keats’ pictorial senses are not vague or suggestive but made definite with the wealth of artistic details. Every stanza, Every line is full with sensuous beauty. No other poet except Shakespeare could show such a mastery of language and felicity of sensuousness .