Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL)

A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 2. 2018

Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June)
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RESEARCH ARTICLE

KEATS’ “ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE”: A NOTE OF AN ESCAPIST?

Dr. SUBRATA SAHOO

Assistant Professor, Department of English (UG & PG),
Prabhat Kumar College, Contai, West Bengal
e-mail: ssahoo99@gmail.com

ABSTRACT
John Keats (1795-1821), one of the British Romantic poets, is primarily noted for
being an escapist, who is found time and again to escape the world of actuality with
a view to be in an ideal world, free from dull and depressive affairs of daily life. In
many of his poems, he had been untiring in drawing a contrast between the real
and the ideal. “Ode to a Nightingale” is often cited to prove Keats’ escapism, as the
poem is firmly founded on Keats’ overwhelming passion for the imaginative world
Dr. SUBRATA SAHOO of the nightingale, where he seeks to escape and die a painless death. But if we go
between the lines of the poem, it comes out that Keats’s desire to escape the real
world and to live in an imaginative world is but a process of his close inspection to
reach the conclusion that the human quest for the so called ideal world is always a
vain one because it is ever a will-o'-the-wisp. Hence, the physical world is still the
best with its ever present note of the “weariness, the fever, and the fret”. Then, my
present explication on “Ode to a Nightingale” would concentrate on how and why
Keats disengages himself from the ideal world where he initially escapes from the
actual world and ultimately returns back to accept life what it is.
Key-words: Escapism, Imagination, Fancy, Hope, Despair, Real/Actual, Ideal/Unreal,
Negative capability, self-knowledge, etc.
.
John Keats’s (1795-1821) “Ode to a the despair at the beginning of his journey is
Nightingale” is a poetic journey—a journey from different from the despair at the end of his journey;
despair to hope, and from hope to despair again. whereas the first one is bereft of self-knowledge the
The journey is but a process of his close inspection last is accompanied by it. Said differently, though
of the ideal world, contributing eventually to his Keats with his escapist nature rejected the world of
self-awakening; it leaves a message for Keats as well actuality for its implacable mutability in quest for a
as the readers that the hope of humans has ever Utopian world, the process of his journey involves
been a hallucination because it is utterly impossible the evolution of his intellectual self to prompt him
for us to achieve hope permanently. Moreover, the to realize the vanity of that Utopia, leading
process of self-awakening helps him grow and ultimately to the acceptance of the world of
realize that hope, though an antidote to despair, is a actuality.
kind of placebo because its speculative nature; Cleanth Brooks makes an insightful
hence, he returns back to despair again where he observation so far as the theme of Keats’ present
sets out his journey from. But a significant point to poem is concerned; according to Brooks’
be noted is that whereas he rejected the initial observation, “the world of the imagination offers a
despair, he readily accepts the last. This is because release from the painful world of actuality, yet at

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Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL)
A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 2. 2018
Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June)
Email:editorrjelal@gmail.com ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)
the same time it renders the world of actuality more It cannot be denied that Keats is found to assert the
painful by contrast” (31). Unmistakably, this is no “value of the ideal”. But this is, I consider in counter-
less a persuasive statement of Brooks. It is not only assertion, not the “the primary fact” of the poem.
for Keats but for all the romantic poets as well that The primary and of course “important” fact of the
the imaginative world provides a “release” from the poem is what Fogle considers to be “secondary”—
pains of the real world; it is also obvious and true Keats’s “paying due tribute to the power of the
that Brooks’ observation is based on the theory of actual”. In my opinion, if any value the ideal has is
comparison and contrast. But my opposition can be that it can provide a window for the time being to
stated in a counter-argument that though the distract ourselves from the monotonous affairs of
imaginative world with its ideality of things makes daily life.
the real world more “painful by contrast”, the Keats’s despair is occasioned by the sad
humans come to realize that the world of mutability of the human world; it is no less caused
imagination is nothing but a mere hallucination that by his own life. And here it may not be wrong if I
ever remains unachievable. allow a little bit of digression in reflecting on Keats’s
The imaginative world of the nightingale biographical details which may serve my purpose to
does in fact provide no permanent substitute to the concentrate on Keats’ despair. Towards the end of
fever and fret of the actual world. Rather, the poet is his life in 1818—he died in 1821 at the age of 25—
found to evolve his intellectual self through a Keats set out on a walking tour in Northern England
meaningful tug-of-war between the real and the and Scotland. He returned and devoted himself to
ideal. This point has long before been noted by caring for Tom, his brother who suffered from TB
Richard Harter Fogle in 1953: and died on December 1, 1818. To his utter dismay,
The principal stress of the poem *“Ode to a Keats himself was diagnosed with TB in the autumn
Nightingale”+ is a struggle between ideal of 1819. The present poem was composed in the
and actual: inclusive terms which, however, spring of 1819 in one day when Keats was living in a
contain more particular antitheses of semi-rural town Hampstead with his friend Charles
pleasure and pain, of imagination and Armitage Brown. It was the time when Keats also
common sense reason, of fullness and had fallen in love with Fanny Brawne. No doubt,
privation, of permanence and change, of while Keats was composing the poem he was
nature and the human, of art and life, steeped in despair, caused by the death of his
freedom and bondage, waking and dream. brother Tom and his own physical illness that made
(211) him too conscious of the inevitable mortality of
The conflict between the opposites as noted by human life. But he was filled with hope while he was
Fogle is the essence of the poem. This is true. encountering the sweet song of the nightingale, “his
Another influential figure, Douglas Bush too thinks prime symbol for the imaginative power that will
that “conflict is central in the “Nightingale” (335). take him on his journey” (Wentersdorf 70).
But the statement which Fogle further has made in The song of the nightingale induces in
his paper is my object of dissent: Keats a mood of seventh heaven so much so that he
In the “Nightingale” Keats is both is able to merge his sole self with that of the
interesting as well as well-mannered as a nightingale. In other words, the poem is but a flight
man need be who is expressing his into the state of ‘negative capability’, a state that
convictions. He is affirming the value of the Keats has defined in a letter he wrote from
ideal, and this is the primary fact. He is also Hampstead to his brothers George and Thomas
paying due tribute to the power of the Keats on December 22, 1817: “The excellence of
actual, and this is an important but every art is its intensity, capable of making all
secondary consideration. The stress of the disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close
poem lies in the conflict between value and relationship with Beauty and Truth” (277). Douglas
power. (215) Bush “might accept” it as “an informal and

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Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL)
A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 2. 2018
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Email:editorrjelal@gmail.com ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)
incomplete” aesthetic theory but affirmed that the colours to completely identify himself with the
statement is “incontrovertible” (331). To be sure, it attributes of the nightingale. Moreover, his minute
is indisputable that the intensity of Keats’ contemplation on colours of wine is but an evidence
contemplation on the song of the nightingale makes of his frantic attempt to forget the world of blacks
him capable to at least temporarily forget ‘all and whites where he had bitter experience of Tom’s
disagreeables’. Further, Keats continues the letter: “I death of tuberculosis which he inscribed in the third
mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is stanza of the poem:
capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
1
without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” What thou among the leaves hast never
(277). In “Ode to a Nightingale”, Keats certainly known,
attains the state of what he himself terms “Negative The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Capability” and for the time being identifies himself Here, where men sit and hear each other
with the self of the nightingale in a mood of groan. (21-24)
intoxication. This intoxication is not certainly to be The most significant point in this stanza is that
identified with the literal intoxication, but with a though the poet is ready to undertake a journey in
state of the mind being in poetic frenzy. the magical realm of the nightingale with which he
The poet in the opening stanza of the poem has identified himself, he cannot become
is found in an almost intoxicated frame of mind; he completely forgetful of the ills of the mundane
is drowsy and numb, as if he had drunk hemlock or world; rather, he realizes that the nightingale, like
opiates or been immersed in the mythical water of Shelley’s skylark and unlike that of Wordsworth’s, is
Lethe, the river of forgetfulness: quite unaware of the vinegary disappointments of
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness day to day reality. Thus, the song of the bird has no
pains trace of ‘The weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of
My sense, as though of hemlock I had the world—
drunk, Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains hairs,
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin,
sunk. (1-4) and dies;
This state of inebriation continues in the second Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
stanza: And leaden-eyed despairs,
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth, eyes,
Tasting of Flora and the country green, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt morrow. (25-30)
mirth. Nevertheless, the poet in the stanzas 4 and
O for a beaker full of the warm South, 5 looks untiring in his journey to the region of the
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, imaginative world. Hence, he rejects the power of
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim wine and relies on the value of “the viewless wings
And purple-stained mouth; of Poesy” (33) to find himself in nightingale’s world
That I might drink, and leave the world where “the Queen-Moon is on her throne,/ Cluster'd
unseen, around by all her starry Fays” (36-37) and where he
And with thee fade away into the forest finds many unseen flowers he recognizes with their
dim. (11-20) “soft incense” (42). Subsequently, the poet is utterly
Here Keats is found to celebrate the power of wine overwhelmed by the nightingale’s song and appears
to temporarily release him from the shocking to become victorious in his journey with no return.
actualities life. Probably, the poet desires for the But his sole self does not allow him to be in unmixed
magical powers of wine with graphically described pleasures that the nightingale offers. Contrarily, it

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Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL)
A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 2. 2018
Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June)
Email:editorrjelal@gmail.com ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)
makes him aware of the inevitable mortality of Immediately the poet returns to his sole self; he will
himself and wishes the nightingale to continue it no more body forth the imaginative realm of the
song even when he himself is no more: nightingale, nor will he remain confined into it.
Darkling I listen; and for many a time Rather, the word “forlorn” sounds like a bell “To toll
I have been half in love with easeful Death, me back from thee to my sole self” (72); it makes
Call'd him soft names in many a mused him aware of the bleak landscape of human
rhyme, existence: “Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well /
To take into the air my quiet breath; As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf” (73-74).
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, Commenting on the “Ode”, Douglas Bush writes:
To cease upon the midnight with no pain, The power of the imagination… offer[s] no
While thou art pouring forth thy soul adequate recompense for either the fleeting
abroad joys or the inescapable pains of mortality.
In such an ecstasy! Keats's early desire to burst our mortal
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in bars, to transcend the limitations of human
vain— understanding, becomes in the
To thy high requiem become a sod. (51-60) “Nightingale” the desire for death, the
Though shortly after the beginning of the poem highest sensation, or an anguished
the poet aspires to identify himself with the awareness of the gulf between life and
nightingale and once he seems to completely merge death. In the end the imagination cannot
his self with that of the nightingale, the “gradual escape from oppressive actuality; far from
disengagement”, to use Walter Jackson Bate’s term, attaining a vision of ultimate truth, it
of the poet from the bird begins here (349). achieves only a momentary illusion. (335;
Subsequently, we see the gradual awakening of emphasis added)
Keats’ sole self that helps him have a realization that Truly, the poet finds “no adequate recompense” for
unlike himself the nightingale is immortal. The the inevitability of human life in “the power of the
immortality of the bird contrasted with the imagination”. Hence, though he concludes the poem
inevitable mortality of the humans prompts him to with an unsettled question, “Was it a vision, or a
subsequently lose his state of ‘negative capability’ waking dream? / Fled is that music:—Do I wake or
with the bird and move effortlessly through the sleep?” (79-80), it does not only record Keats’
passage of time and space with an allusion to the retreat from the ideal realm of the nightingale that
biblical Ruth and distant lands: he created by means of the time machine of poetry
Thou wast not born for death, immortal but helps him voluntarily to embrace reality with its
Bird! ever present note of despair. At the end, he gains
No hungry generations tread thee down; knowledge from the trip that the imaginative faculty
The voice I hear this passing night was can never be a permanent substitute for the
heard depressing realities of life; now he knows the truth
In ancient days by emperor and clown: that man’s hope is eternal but irrational at the same
Perhaps the self-same song that found a time; human beings, how imaginative they be, must
path accept the bleak actualities of life, though always
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick despairing and heart-rending, and reconcile himself
for home, to their inevitable end, death.
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the
foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. (61-
70)

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A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.6.Issue 2. 2018
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Email:editorrjelal@gmail.com ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O)
Grecian Urn” (p.292). The terms by which I
have labelled the five spotted points are
altered. Mauro’s paper is entitled “The
Shape of Despair: Structure and Vision in
Keats’ Ode on a Grecian Urn”, published in
Nineteenth Century Literature, Vol.52, No.3
(Dec. 1997), 289-301. An informed reader
may access the paper in www.
Jstor.org/stable/2933996.
Works Cited
Bate, Walter Jackson. Keats’ Style: “Evolution
Thus, in “Ode to a Nightingale” Keats’s toward Qualities of Permanent Value”.
aesthetic journey can best be understood with the English Romantic Poets. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New York:
2
help of the above figure . The initial despair of the Oxford University Press, 1960. 340-353.
poet as shown in the figure is occasioned by the Web. World eBook Library: Inflibnet.ac.in.
premature death of his brother Tom, his own Brooks, Cleanth. Modern Poetry and Tradition.
ailment of TB and his failure in love with Fanny Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina
Brawne. This despair is devoid of self-knowledge. Press,1939. Print.
Hence, the poet rises from despair to hope; this is Bush, Douglas. “Keats and His Ideas”. English
the poet’s hope for the ideal which he finds in the Romantic Poets. Ed. M.H. Abrams. New
song of the nightingale. But he discovers gradually York: Oxford University Press, 1960. 326-339. Web.
that hope is only hallucinatory and is never found. World eBook Library: Inflibnet.ac.in.
His deeper contemplation further helps him realize Fogle, Richard H. "Keats's Ode to a Nightingale",
that hallucination is but a poison. So, he rises to PMLA, 68.1 (Mar., 1953): 211-222. Print.
embrace despair again and this time his despair is Palgrave, Francis Turner. Ed. The Golden Treasury:
accompanied by self-knowledge. In other words, Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the
Keats comes to the realization through his pleasure English Language (Thirty-third Impression).
trip, which no longer remains a pleasure trip till the New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.
end, that neither is it feasible nor enviable to rise Wentersdorf, Karl P. “The Sub-Texts of Keats’ “Ode
above the world of actuality as the gap between the to a Nightingale”. Keats-Shelley Journal, 33
aspiration and achievement of human beings is (1984): 70-84. Print.
eternal. That is why in my explication of “Ode to a
Nightingale” I have made a modest attempt to show
that Keats’s flight in the imaginative realm of the
nightingale is not to be interpreted form the
traditional perspective of his escapism but from the
perspective of a kind of journey that involves the
evolution of his self leading ultimately himself to
accept life what it is.
End Notes:
1. Scudder, Horace E. (Ed.). The Complete
Poetical Works and Letters of John Keats:
Cambridge Edition. Cambridge: The
Riverside Press, 1899. Web. World eBook
Library, in inflibnet.ac.in.
2. For this figure I am heavily indebted to
Jason Mauro who has used this sign-wave
in his interpretation of Keats’ “Ode on a

265 Dr. SUBRATA SAHOO