Keats Yearned to Transcend the Human Condition Essay

â€Å"Keats yearned to transcend the human condition but could only find a temporary respite from mortality.† Discuss. Keats, through his poetry, has in effect risen above the mortality which was so prominent in his psyche both temporarily and permanently. Much of Keats’s poetry can be seen as an attempt to explore Keats’ acute awareness and musings on the transience of human life. Coloured by his experiences of life and death, and ironically captured in his own sickness and early demise, there is evidence in his poetry which displays moments of visionary understanding of imminent mortality; albeit interspersed within the ambiguous poetry of a man struggling to come to terms with one of life’s most complex mysteries. Keats life experience was of upmost importance in forming this awareness. Contacts with death such as the death of his brother Tom at a young age, as with other members of his family, had a profound impact on the poet. ‘To Autumn’ displays this heightened sense of time and its passing. The vivid description of the transition between the seasons gives the reader an almost snapshot like vision of a moment at the end of autumn with â€Å"all fruit with ripeness to the core;† (I. 6) However we are subtly reminded that this atmosphere of â€Å"fruitfulness† and â€Å"warm days† may soon be destroyed by the â€Å"winnowing wind† of the imminent winter. By the final stanza of the poem, we are given the harrowing reminder of the ready to be slaughtered â€Å"full grown lambs† (III. 30) and the â€Å"gathering swallows† which signify that the new season is pending. At these times it appeared he found a temporary respite through exploring his tortured nature through his poetry. Ward describes poems he wrote in the â€Å"dark months† where he contemplated the subject of death as: â€Å"the only release; poetry itself was a kind of communication with the immortal dead, or of the dead with one another, and the and the poet a birdlike figure who escapes who escapes the bonds of the earth to join them.† (Ward 40) Poetry in a sense provided a method of relief and catharsis for a man surrounded by and near to death. However, Keats yearned to achieve a much more extensive release from the human condition than that gained through the writing of poetry. A letter to George Keats after Tom’s death displayed how this experience congealed John Keats’ belief in immortality: â€Å"The3 last days of poor Tom were of the most distressing nature†¦ yet the common observations of the commonest people on death are as true as their proverbs. I have scare doubt of immortality of some nature or other- neither had Tom† (Walsh 57). A letter to Fanny exposes Keats’ longing to extend his being beyond that of a mortal life: â€Å"how short is the longest Life- I wish to believe in immortality. I wish to live with you forever.† (Ward 359) Keats’ own, soon to be fatal illness surely emphasised the transitory nature of life. The final line of Keats’ Last Sonnet provides additional evidence of this fixation with the capacity for immortality: â€Å"Still to hear her tender- taken breath,/ And so live forever – or else swoon to death† (13– 4). This refusal to accept death and the end of his life is replicated with a powerful allusion to Greek myth at the beginning of ‘Ode to Melancholy’: â€Å"No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist/ Wolf’s- bane, tight- rooted, for its poisonous wine† (1- 2). Keats, immensely aware of his mortality sought to procure an escape, a means of escaping this doom. Where he was to subsequently find this was through the art of poetry. Ode to a Nightingale explores the relationship between arts and immortality. The nightingale’s song is used as a gateway into the immortal world; a world completely removed from the fleeting mortal one. With the song of the nightingale having been heard and admired by the human race for thousands of years, there is a sense of immortality in its melody which Keats envies: â€Å"Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird,/ No hungry generations tread thee down† (VII. 70- 1). Keats’ heartfelt anguish towards the nightingale is based on the belief that while the individual bird is mortal the species’ artform, that is song, lives on. Likewise Ode on a Grecian Urn, based on an intense meditation on art by Keats, further explores Keats’ interest in mortality, and the capacity which some forms of art have to escape it. â€Å"The theme of what is gone before is the arrest of beauty, the fixity given by art to forms in life which are fluid and impertinent, and the appeal of art from the senses to the spirit† (Garrod in Fraser 68). The artefact which has survived and is being admired for 2,200 years in a sense has a mastery over time which Keats as a mortal does not: â€Å"Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought/ As does eternity.† This admiration for art and the artist is furthered at points in his poetry, including in his inferring to ‘Old Meg’ as an, albeit at a more unassuming level, artistic person who â€Å"with her fingers old and brown.. Plaited mats o’rushes.† However, the assumption of Keats holding a steadfast and absolute belief in the capacity for a human to, by some means, achieve a form of immortality may be questioned. Ambiguities and paradoxes in many poems may provide suggest that while there is an obvious interest in the power to retain some form of mortality; this belief is not as unconditional as this. He constantly wrestles with the idea. One critic states that: â€Å"He has found no haven in the world. He is not the fanatic who lives within the mortal security of his safety, which is the security of dogma. Nor is he the dreaming savage who is insecure in his mortality and can thus only guess at heaven† (Pollard 118). This more balanced interpretation of Keats’ opinions can be seen especially in the latter parts of poems which may have begun with a positive emphasis on immortality succeeding over the power of time. In the final stanzas of ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ the whole poem is revealed as effectively a deceit. The nightingale is after all mortal: â€Å"a deceiving elf.† Perhaps Keats’ desire to come in contact with a more sensuous and perpetual world is in fact materialising in a fantasy: â€Å"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music: – Do I wake or sleep?† (VIII 79- 80). Similarly while ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ at first admires the ability of art to have a sense of permanence, this viewpoint transforms in the latter stages. The figures on the urn are, however beautiful, only an artist’s attempt to capture the human nature and event’s portrayed. The paradoxical nature of the poem means that the probing questions asked ultimately have no satisfactory answers. In searching melancholically for synthesis, Keats is conscious of how the concept of eternity is, and always will be, a mystery to us. Ode on Melancholy is another such poem which may substantiate claims that Keats acceptance that art and beauty may not be an essence which has complete immortal qualities. Mayhead (96) argues that this is the case: â€Å"The Melancholy Ode accepts the impermanence of beauty and joy as inevitable†. Keats understands that in a sense â€Å"beauty must die† (III. 21); not all works of art will be able to withstand the test of time. However for Keats art is, if not an actual way to achieve a level of immortality, then the best option he believes he can attempt. This agnostic awareness of the temporary state of human life at this point was heightened by his illness and imminent death. One of his final poems, ‘Sonnet’, perhaps most obviously displays this yearning to transcend the human condition, and an almost prophetic mention of how the poet will find this exemption from mortality: â€Å"When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books† (1. 1- 3). Keats longs that his writing’s and creativity will, as a form of art, carry his existence to higher, almost platonic level. Whilst providing temporary respite the impermanence of the human conditions at points through his art, Keats through his works, has managed to further extend his influence far beyond his life on earth through his writings. Works Cited Fraser, G. S. ‘Part 3: Recent Studies.’ John Keats: Odes. London: MacMillan, 1971. Mayhead, Robin. ‘1: The Odes II.’ John Keats. London: Cambridge University Press, 1967. 95- 101 Pollard, David. The Poetry of Keats: Language and Experience. Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1984. The Complete Poems of John Keats. London: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1994. Ward, Aileen. John Keats: The Making of a Poet . New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986. Walsh, William. ‘3: The Development of Self.’ Introduction to Keats. London: Methuen and Co., 1981.