John Keats’s Odes: A Balm to a Tired some Soul: With Reference to Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn

Hari Shankar Mukherjee

doi:10.22161/ijels.62.2

Abstract

John Keats’s Odes: A Balm to a Tired some Soul: With Reference to Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode on Melancholy and Ode to Autumn

Highlights

Keats, like Horace of the antiquity and Shakespeare among the Elizabethans,was deeply concerned with the problem of beauty and mutability
Horace treats the theme with considerable variations.Shakespeare in his sonnets shows an unusual awareness about the beauteous forms and the transience.The most passionate appreciation of beauty is qualified by a painful awareness that “Everything that grows/Hold imperfection but a little moment.”
The poet knows that before the ‘devouring time’that ‘blunt’ the ‘lions paws’ beauty is too tender to hold its plea.Keats,as we know,wanted to “approximate” the English poets” by which he meant mainly Spenser,Shakespeare, and Milton.Keats took human life as an adventure,a journey through the dark chambers in search of truth and beauty, [ his letter to Reynolds.] As he was navigating along the shores of darkness he was progressing very fast towards maturity, perfection, and the tragic vision which he found in Shakespeare.His odes in various keys try to present the theme with a sensibility unmatched by any poet save Shakespeare

Summary

Hari Shankar Mukherjee

Master in English (Pursuing), Department of English and Culture Studies, The University of BURDWAN, West Bengal, India. Abstract— The odes show a journey towards the meaning of existence through actual human experience as well as the intense experience to be found in art. In his letter to Reynolds,Keats clearly stated his purpose by comparing life to “a large Manson of many apartments” in which he describes his journey from the infant or thoughtless chamber to dark passages through the delightful chamber of the maiden thought.In these poems, we find a dialogue between transience and eternity,climaxing not in the beauty- truth equation but the mood of acceptance.From the romantic anguish, he moves on to what Arnold said the ability to see life in its wholeness which is so characteristic of Hellenism. Keywords— existence, eternity,transience,wholeness, Hellenism. I.

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