Keats' Conception: Life Through Poetry

John Keats, aside from being a ground-breaking poet, helped to reinvent the concept of imagination. In a letter to his friend Benjamin Bailey [dated Saturday 22 Nov. 1817] he writes, "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination" (Trilling 88). A few of Keats' finest examples of this "truth" can be found in his poems "[Ode] to Autumn" and "Ode on Melancholy." This paper will examine both said poems, building on a number of Keats' other letters, in pursuit of Keats' refined aesthetic.

What makes Keats' aesthetic definitively refined is it's breaking-away from the perspectives of contemporary authors like Wordsworth and Coleridge. In a letter of appreciation written to his friend John H. Reynolds [dated Tuesday 3 Feb. 1818], Keats conveys a youthful edge in regards to poetry, writing, "Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject" (Trilling 108). Whereas other literary figures of the time were calling people to action, through politically and/or emotionally charged writings, Keats' approach can be arguably viewed as somewhat passive.
An example of this passivity occurs in "To Autumn." In the first stanza, Keats writes to the "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," yet never directly addresses its action (l. 1). Although the stanza is punctuated as one encapsulation of Autumn, it simply remains an encapsulation; there is no action being taken by Autumn. With this approach, Keats envelopes the readers with various descriptions of ripening. His imagery is decidedly concrete, unlike poets (like Coleridge) who relied on figurative imagery. By relying on the use of concrete imagery, Keats allows the readers to gauge the progression of Autumn's many effects, which envelope the readers with subtle sights, sounds, and emotions.

Concrete imagery also plays a significant role in "Ode on Melancholy." He connects various opposites throughout the poem, like "wakeful anguish" (l. 11), "emprison her soft hand" (l. 20), and "aching pleasure" (l. 24) to explicate his philosophy: that melancholy can, in fact, lead to delight.

Keats' writings are full of what would seem to be contradictory statements, yet this is how Keats rose to be an author revered-for his insight. In a letter to his brothers George and Thomas Keats [dated 21 Dec. 1817], he writes, "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth" (Trilling 92). To further illuminate his point, he writes, "I mean Negative Capability… when a man is capable of being in uncertainties… without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" (Trilling 92).

Whereas authors like Coleridge and Wordsworth utilized reason and fact to envelope or frame their figurative language (via a mariner's eye, or a viewpoint from Tintern Abbey), Keats frames his in the emotional insights of Negative Capability. "Ode on Melancholy" begins with the author crying out "No, no!" (l. 1), advising readers not to reject melancholy but to embrace it. The poem continues to progress in this direction, instructing the readers to willingly accept the melancholy instead. Keats writes "But when the melancholy fit shall fall/ Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud…then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose" (ll. 12-16). This sudden change represents the fluctuation of the emotional world.
Still, this ebb and flow can be found in the natural world as well and, as Keats writes in "To Autumn," it can also be celebrated. As the Autumn day dies-a death represented by the season-it casts a "rosy hue" over the dried-up countryside (l. 32). Of course, this can be represented by the aforementioned morning rose, but "Ode on Melancholy" progresses to a deeper level within its natural realm; many natural images are short-lived: a "rainbow of the salt sand wave" (l. 16) temporarily appears after a brief rainstorm from a "weeping cloud" (l. 13).
This cloud "hides the green hill in an April shroud" (l. 15). Once again, implicit contradictions come into play. Although the cloud comes to fertilize the hill, it wraps it in a shroud, or a burial cloth. Yet this is a shroud of April-a month that comes at the peak of nature's rebirth. Death, as Keats would have it, can indeed be very prolific.

The Negative Capability of death actually adapts a personality in "To Autumn." A harvester sleeps on "a half-reap'd furrow… Drowsed with the fume of poppies" (ll. 19-20). This harvester has a "hook" (l. 21) and "watchest the last oozings, hours by hours" (ll. 27-28). Therefore, this harvester can easily appear to readers as a death figure, perhaps the Grim Reaper himself. Not only does the reaper allow him/herself to lie down when many things are already dead, he/she takes the time to indulge in some opium, as the poppies imply-another case of finding joy in death.
Another example of death adapting an ambiguous personality can be found in the last stanza of "To Autumn." After a quick reference to Spring, Keats ends with a major contrast, implying that Autumn deserves its own recognition. Gnats and crickets sing their own ode to the dying month, only to be outdone by the "full-grown lambs loud bleat" (l. 37). Keats ambiguously chooses 'full-grown lambs,' despite the assonance that would have resonated between 'sheep' and 'bleat.' Although this choice is somewhat ambiguous by nature, perhaps Keats was implying that sheep being slaughtered for the season by harvesters is a parallel to Christians-or lambs of God-being sought out by the Grim Reaper. Nevertheless, Keats accomplishes the same outcome: painful death resolved by salvation.
Unfortunately, John Keats died 17 months after "To Autumn" was written. He suffered through a long battle with tuberculosis, which he describes to his friend Charles Brown in a letter [dated Wednesday 1 Nov. 1820], "As I have gone thus far into it, I must go on a little; - perhaps it may relieve the load of WRETCHEDNESS which presses upon me." He continues, utilizing his philosophy of Negative Capability (perhaps unwittingly) in his tone while referring to his former lover, Fanny Brawne:

I can bear to die-I cannot bear to leave her. O, God! God! God! Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her… The silk lining in my traveling cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her-I see her-I hear her. (Trilling 278)

Undoubtedly, Keats could find bittersweet moments in his fatal trip through melancholy. As a poet, he elevated himself to identify the hidden emotions at stake and conceived immortality through his writings.

Works Cited

Trilling, Lionel. The Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: Farrar, Straus, and
Young, Inc., 1951.