paper no.5.romantic age - "Critical note on john Keats’s odes"

department of english maharajah krishnakumarsinhji bhavnagar university

Topic:-Critical note on john Keats’s odes

                     paper no.5:-romantic age 

                            Semester:-M.A SEM 2

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TOPIC: -Critical note on john Keats’s odes.

John Keats 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 work having been in publication for only four years before his death.

Born: October 31, 1795, Moorgate, City of London, United Kingdom

John Keats

Died: February 23, 1821, Rome, Italy

Poems: Ode on a Grecian Urn, nightingale, psyche, autumn.

¨     What is ode?

Keats belonged to a literary movement called romanticism. Romantic poets, because of their theories of literature and life, were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a new form of ode, often called the romantic meditative ode. 

Odes were one of the classical verse forms reintroduced and experimented with in the Romantic period. This ode consists of five 10-line stanzas, each composed of a quatrain followed by a sestet. The quatrains have an ABAB rhyme scheme, sometimes employing off-rhymes. The base meter of Ode is iambic pentameter.

¨   Characteristics of the Ode

Ø A single, unified strain of exalted lyrical verse

Ø Tends to focus on one purpose and theme

Ø Its tone and manner is typically elaborate, dignified, and imaginative

There are three types of Odes in English: 

 1) The Pindaric or Regular ode

 2) The Horatian or Homostrophic

 3) The Irregular.

Keats' odes tend to be ten-line stanzas in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ababcdecde.  On the basis of this, one could argue that Keats is broadly Horatian.

Keats poem with explanation

1)  In the ode to psyche,

                          The poet tries to retreat from the realities of life by building a temple or a shrine in his mind dedicated to the worship of psyche. By implication Keats also expresses the idea that love, poetry, and indolence are the nature medicines of the soul against the living death it must accept from cold philosophy. In the last stanza of this ode, the poet declares that the paradise for that soul is to be built by the poet’s imagination within the poets own consciousness. Psyche’s temple will be built in “some untroddenregion” of Keats mind. To build psyche’s temple is to widen consciousness. But an increase and consciousness carries with it the dual capacity for pleasure and for pain. The thoughts that will grow in that untrodden region will be new grown with “pleasant pain”. To psyche is neither flawless nor the best of Keats ode but, it has been said, it illustrate better than any other Keats’s possession of poetic power combined with an unusual artistic detachment. It is the most architectural of his odes, and it is certainly the one that culminates most dramatically.

          

“And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rose sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name”

2)  In the ode on a Grecian urn,

                      Keats gives us a contrast between the permanence of the urn and the transience of life but we are also made conscious of deficiencies in the value of art as represented by the urn. art alone can never satisfy us completely, because the urn is a cold pastoral. This ode contains one of Keats’s most famous lines:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”   which most probably means that beauty is total reality properly understood or that beauty is the true significance of things in our world and in the ideal world. This ode represents an exquisite fusion of the imaginative, emotional, and intellectual elements.

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, yet soft pipes, play on”

3)  The ode to a nightingale,

Is remarkable for its note of reflection and meditation though at the same time it shows the splendor of Keats’s imagination on its purely romantic side. The central idea here is the contrast of joy and beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrow of human life and the transistorizes of beauty and love in the human world. Keats’s profusion and prodigality, we must recognize, is here modified by a principal of sobriety. Wholeness, intensity, and naturalness are the qualities of this ode.

“The same those oft-times hath

Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn”

4)  To autumn is,

by general agreement , flawless In stricture texture and rhythm it is purely impulsive in personal objective description if we think of the conflicts that constitute the theme of the nightingale, Grecian urn , this ode may at first seem beautiful but shallow, a poem of a unquestioning surrender sensuous luxury. But such a view would be in inadequate. Even this poem conveys to us sense of impermanence which is to be found in the foregoing odes. The summer has done work it’s works and departing it is autumn now but the gathering swallows imply that winter. Cannot be far behind where in the first stanza fruit as well as bees seem almost conscious of fulfillment, in the last stanza every item carries and elegiac node the day is dying and gnats an labs and cricket and birds all seem to be aware of approaching darkness thus Keats here accepts life as it is perpetual process of repining decay, and death.

“Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft”

¨   Themes in Keats's Major Poems

Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important poems are related to, or grow directly out of...inner conflicts." For example, pain and pleasure are intertwined in "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; love is intertwined with pain, and pleasure is intertwined with death in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil."

Other conflicts appear in Keats's poetry:

Þ   Transient sensation or passion / enduring art

Þ   Dream or vision / reality

Þ   Joy / melancholy

Þ   The ideal / the real

Þ   Mortal / immortal

Þ   Life / death

Þ   Separation / connection

Þ   Being immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion

Keats' Theory of Negative Capability

'The concept of Negative Capability is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational systems.’

“Negative Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, lives with mystery, and makes peace with ambiguity.

John Keats (along with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron) is referred to as a “second generation” Romantic poet. (Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge make up the so-called “first generation.”)

The second generation writers tend to be more skeptical and philosophically ironic. They are more dubious, for example, about a Wordsworthian “spirit that rolls through all things.” In Keats’s case, this second-generation skepticism also applies to the poet’s ego. Keats felt that Wordsworth was too “self focused,” too consumed by the quest of the subjective self trying to wed with Nature and the “spirit that rolls through all things.” For Keats, any “epiphany” or visionary “spot of time” could only come about by way of what he called “negative capability,” which involves the erasure of self to experience the potent otherness of the world.

That is what Keats means by “negative capability.” We do need philosophies, codes, world views—we have to have those things to survive. But we also have to be able to suspend them, because they are filtering models. They can only tell us what we put into them to begin with. They can therefore keep us, according to Keats, from seeing something new.

So Keats’s ideal of “negative capability” has to do with suspending the ego, the subjective identity, and becoming something else. That’s a process, and process is a watchword for the Romantics.

. For Keats, we have to suspend whatever it is that makes us a self or an ego. That’s why, for Keats, the poet is the most “unpoetical” of all things. He has no self. He is always becoming another being—a nightingale, a Grecian urn.

Conclusion:-

                               In short, john Keats’s remarkable or invaluable contribution in English literature .he was started second romantic age and reintroduced odes, with using Greek myths and theory of negative capability. His odes or poems are abstract and beyond the understanding of human sometime it seems philosophical elements. In this way he described pain and pleasure equally. We should never forget his remarkable contribution and it remains source of inspiration for new comer and provides aesthetic delight. 

Maa - Mother

Maaan 

Koi Hath Ha Mere Hath Mein

Koi Hath Ha Mere Hath Mein

Zindagi Tera Falsafa

Zindagi Tera Falsafa

Forward

Magic happens when one begins to follow their heart.

That's how these poems have come.

ACIM says that Miracles are natural, and when they don't happen, something has gone wrong.

A journey towards Miracles is a journey away from worry, and away from regret. It's a path that leads to no particular place, yet one that takes one just where one needs to go. It's a path of gentleness and acceptance, where one finds themselves not complaining any more, not finding fault with everything around, not trying to blame everyone for their own failings.

Poetry is just an outlet, a side dish of the journey.

These poems were inspired by A Course in Miracles. (ACIM) They use ACIM terminology, and were written as part of my own imaginary journey back to God. I started studying ACIM in 1994 as part of my own search for meaning. I never thought I'd be writing poetry. Nevertheless, it seems to come, so I guess I'll write it. Maybe you'll find it helpful, or at least entertaining.


If you are new to ACIM, the poems reflect various themes in A Course In Miracles, but in rhyme. At times, they have adult content, but then so does the six-O'clock news. If they shock you, you can simply forgive me and use them in your journey helping you to learn to forgive. They after all are written for me, from my journey & my experience.

When I began to write these, I had no idea where they will go, or how they will end. I simply started with an idea or a question, and watched how the poem would answer it.

I offer them to you, as they are, and wish you the best in everything

D. Chandonnet

“Sense of an Ending” by Julian barnes

           As we study about to new literature in very famous and also psychological thriller novel “Sense of an Ending” by Julian Barnes published in 2011.  It is first person narration.  It is talked about to literary fiction, psychology of character, memory novel etc.  So now we explain how narrator talks about his memory and we have doubt of them. It may be say that Novelist himself deconstructed idea of his own narratives.

•         We read novel that when Veronica replayed “Blood Money” means from someone’s spilled blood the money is given Antony.  Tony has helped them to Mrs. Sarah Ford. At End of her life, she gave that money to Tony because of that she was happy in relationship with Adrian. One day Tony Suggested to Adrian that Met to Mrs. Sarah Ford. Later one Mrs. Sarah ford Die at that time she was happy them. But in later on Adrian committed suicide. So may be Veronica not happy of them. That’s why she tells that this money was not pure and that is why she just replayed “Blood Money”. 

•         In this decipher the Education that when Adrian committed suicide several things come out to Tony’s life. He noted down in his dairy. And Tony has tells that to Veronica that given Adrian dairy. But she given Pages of that dairy. There is one Equations that b= s – v *+ a1. Later on resolved by Tony.  B = Baby, S = Sarah, V = Veronica, A1 = Anthony or Adrian. We know that Adrian call to tony as Anthony.  When he talked about to any formula in His dairy that he remembered them.  It is that Veronica’s mother Mrs. Sarah and Adrian son as baby (Adrian). This equation as to be put relationship to Mrs. Sarah Ford, Adrian and Anthony as Tony.

•         Adrian’s Dairy owned by Sarah Ford because of that she was wife of Adrian. At dying last days both are happy. But at Adrian and Sarah Ford Die that his child Adrian as desist. Adrian has brother of Veronica. At that time she was caring and possession of society. And how Veronica has Burdon of that Adrian care and his diseases. 

•         It may be that Adrian has no father and Mother. As we see that this only for Tony’s memory that Adrian has Trauma. The death spot Arian’s death body was found.  Adrian death was First class Suicide. And He was Philosophical ideas and Mentally Strong person. Adrian death has to be true that Possibilities not lie there. And there is the clarification of Suicide note. Adrian believes that there is nothing wrong in suicide. That’s why there are not possibilities of Adrian living with hidden identity.

•          As we see that Tony point out that it is seems like that because of the curse of Tony. Tony thinks that Veronica’s child Adrian suffering from mental disease. Veronica as mother suffering in care in the community. But in later on time passes that Veronica was not mother of Adrian but she is sister of Adrian. Adrian mother Sarah Ford die that as a sister she carries her brother Adrian.

•          As we know that this book “Sense of an Ending” falls under category of Psychological thriller novel. There is not a single missing scenes or some dot which is not connected with the whole narration. It is only for Narrator Tony Webster’s memory. It may be that whole narration as falsified in the end. So My observation and point of views that no any some dot which is not getting whole novel.  

•         As we read Novel no any clear cut reason for Adrian committed suicide. It is not in narration because of that Tony as Novelist not given reason. Why Adrian Finn committed suicide. As we minutely observes that  there are multiple reason like he suffering from Trauma, Father & Mother die, Love & Relationship with Sarah Ford, Fear of Sarah ford’s Husband, Burden of Dieses child born, Society accepted or not etc. So these are the reasons. But it is not clear that Adrian die only for this reason. 

•         The Novel in we find that Tony as Narrator and is point of view we look at every characters. But we see that Veronica characters definition as different.  Veronica emerges in our mind as instructive, Manipulative, Calculative, stubborn and haughty but as time passé in the story unfold in front of our eyes she emerges as sacrificial, intelligent, trustworthily and Good Samaritan. It is all about to narrator Tony’s point of views. It may be that these types of Veronica not in real one but narrator talk as their limitations.  Tony can’t thought about beyond the boundaries that she is real that or not. Or maybe something Good and humble Veronica.   

•          Yes, it is Classifiable as Unreliable narration. As we know that At beginning that narrator Tony has tells story and as end of the novel He himself create doubt and falsified his own narration. It is deconstructed ideas of narration and at end reconstructed his story. Also we can say that Tony Webster as Unreliable narrator. In novel First part as story told that in end it falsely in second part by provided documentary. May be we can says that this is Tony memory and he deconstructed his memory. At end of novel we can say that Tony Webster memory totally wrong and may Tony‘s dream. That’s why Tony classifiable as Unreliable Narrator. We doubt to Tony narration, what he told in begin and end.  

                    So it is my point of view about Psychological Thriller novel Sense of An ending. It is talk about to Memory of narrator.

Is Emma Woodhouse a likeable heroine?

Austen once famously remarked that Emma is “a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like,” and her rationale for saying this is obvious: unlike Fanny Price or Anne Elliot, Emma is not a particularly admirable character. Indeed, many of the novel’s greatest disasters (Box Hill, for instance) or near-disasters (Harriet’s near damnation to the fate of being “an old maid at last, like Miss Bates”) are caused by Emma and her famous lack of judgement. Emma, despite being clever, is, in the words of Claire Tomalin, “consistently wrong”. Moreover, she is an arrogant heroine, particularly when it comes to her obsession with class and hierarchy. And yet, despite her flaws, there is a certain appeal and allure in Emma that is perhaps lacking in the somewhat bland Fanny Price. We are attracted to Emma’s desire for excitement and her undeniable charm, and thus, though Emma is not a particularly admirable character, she is certainly a likeable protagonist.

One of Emma’s least attractive traits is her obsession with class, which comes across on a number of occasions in the novel but particularly in her attitudes to Miss Bates and the Coles. Austen emphasises the extreme differences in Emma and Miss Bates’s situation: Emma is “handsome, clever, and rich with a comfortable home,” whilst Miss Bates is “neither young, handsome, rich,” with “no intellectual superiority” and living “in a very small way.” Indeed, it is worth noting that Austen herself was very much like Miss Bates: a relatively poor spinster living on the benevolence of her brother Edward Knight with her mother (as Miss Bates does) and sister Cassandra. Austen’s arguable similarity to Miss Bates perhaps explains Austen’s pity for Miss Bates in Emma’s arrogance (Emma “seldom went near them” because she was afraid of “falling in with the second rate and third rate of Highbury”) and lack of concern (she does not contribute “what she ought” to their comfort), despite the fact that, when Emma does visit, she is “most cordially and even gratefully welcomed.” Emma’s attitude to Miss Bates, the novel’s moral compass, determines our opinion of her, and can be contrasted to Mr Knightley’s benevolence and care towards the Bateses (giving the rest of his apples and lending his carriage). Emma’s attitude towards the Coles is similarly unattractive (and also rather comic): she at first refuses to go to their party because they are “only moderately genteel” (not a “superior family”), preferring to remain in “solitary grandeur”. Again, this is another unattractive perspective on Emma.

Emma also shows her arrogance when it comes to her confidence in her own flawed judgement, which leads her to persuade Harriet to reject Robert Martin and to fall in love with Elton, who “never thought of Miss Smith” in the whole course of his existence. Emma mistakes Elton’s false and excessive gallantry regarding the painting and his charade to be directed at Harriet, when really it was directed at her (despite John’s warning her that Elton has “a great deal of good will” towards her). Emma mocks Martin’s proposal of marriage, despite the fact that he “expressed good sense” and rented “a very large farm” (with espalier apple-trees, indicating wealth), because he is a farmer and “must be coarse and unpolished”. This generalisation is also seen in her attitude to the poor family she visits, who must have no “extraordinary virtue” because of their poverty. Again, we see here Emma’s obsession with class, in this instance exacerbated by her lack of judgement.

However, there are a number of reasons that the reader cannot help liking Emma. Firstly, Austen’s use of free indirect discourse forces us to see the happenings of the novel largely from Emma’s own perspective, encouraging us to sympathise with her. As Gard argues, it is free indirect discourse that makes us pity Emma after Box Hill when Austen writes: “How could she have been so brutal, so cruel to Miss Bates?” Thus, the reader forms a connection with Emma, making it almost impossible to dislike her, though we are still more than aware of her faults. Moreover, this free indirect discourse means that, on first reading the novel, very many readers suffer the same ignorance and lack of judgment that Emma does: we may not notice that Mr Elton’s gallantry is in fact directed towards Emma, and we may not realise that Jane and Frank are engaged, although Mr Knightley does suspect Frank of “some indication to trifle with Jane.” Thus, we cannot help pitying Emma and sympathising with her mistakes.

We also pity Emma because she does, in fact, change throughout the novel, and thus the novel can be read as a so-called Bildungsroman. With the help of Mr Knightley, Emma learns to treat others less as objects and generalizations (she begins wanting to befriend Harriet because she will find her “useful”) and more as people (at the end “She wanted to be of use” to Jane, offering her carriage). This development breaks down the reader’s moral distance from Emma, allowing us to warm to her and pity her in her lamentations: “I seem to have been doomed to blindness.” Indeed, she changes her bigoted opinion of Mr Martin completely, telling Knightley “at that time I was a fool” and the narrator says: “It would be a great pleasure to know Robert Martin.” And though it is possible to argue that Emma’s acceptance that her and Harriet’s “intimacy must sink” shows how she is still obsessed with hierarchy, this is perhaps more because Emma and Harriet never were good friends for one another: Knightley was right when he noted that Harriet’s “ignorance is hourly flattery.” Emma also makes amends with Miss Bates, and Austen uses the words “repentance” and “contrition” to emphasise Emma’s moral change. Thus, Emma’s change makes her a more likeable character.

Emma is also not, in fact, an ill-natured person: her mistakes are not caused by malice or cruelty, but by boredom. Her sense of the superiority of her own judgement can in a large sense be put down to the fact that she was, from a young age, “directed chiefly by her own” and was mistress of her house in a town that “afforded her no equals” (though this is not exactly true). Thus, Emma is not entirely to blame, just as Lydia is not entirely to blame for Mr and Mrs Bennett’s bad parenting that leads to her moral transgressions. It is the dullness of Emma’s society and life (she has never been to the sea or to Box Hill, despite its proximity, and her father “was unfit for any acquaintance”) that causes her greatest mistakes, particularly her venturing into match-making and her role as an imaginist.

Moreover, Emma is inherently a good person, as the narrator observes: “There were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her.” For every section devoted to her mischief, Booth argues, “there is a section devoted to her self-reproach,” and it is this that makes Emma such a relatable figure. Despite her relapse (when she considers, after her resolve not to matchmake, whether Harriet could marry one of the Coxes or later Frank Churchill), she eventually learns the dangers of her meddling through her constant cycles of mistake and repentance. Thus, Emma’s unattractive qualities and actions, Box Hill for example, can be put down to her boredom rather than a purposeful cruelty. Unlike Mr and Mrs Elton at the ball, Emma does not purposefully harm anybody, and she always repents her mistakes.

Thus, it is clear that though Emma is a flawed heroine, she is still a likeable one. Austen is often seen as an anti-Jacobin, neo-Classical or Augustan writer, rejecting the obsession with the imagination and fancy that became prominent in the Romantic period. This is most evident in her two novels “Northanger Abbey” and “Sense and Sensibility”, and it is also evident in “Emma” as the heroine gradually realises she must submit to a “subjection of the fancy to the understanding.” Nonetheless, the reality is that Emma’s great attraction lies in her imagination and her “desire to make life vivid” (Morgan). As Gard argues, “she is the victim of her marvellous ideas,” marvellous because of their attempts to enliven a rather dull life. It is Emma’s emphasis on the imagination that, though it leads her astray, we so admire and love. Indeed, we applaud Knightley when he allows for “the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgment,” showing that Emma’s exciting attributes and charm have influenced Knightley (he remarks that he, too, has changed). This exciting charm and obsession with the imagination leads Knightley, and indeed the reader, to view Emma as “the sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults.” Emma’s sin is, as Lionel Trilling observes, the poet’s sin, and it is this that makes her such a likeable heroine.