Keats Yearned to Transcend the Human Condition Essay

Keats yearned to transcend the world condition but could exactly grow a temporary fracture from pestilentity.Discuss.Keats, through his poetry, has in effect risen above the fatality rate which was so prominent in his psyche both temporarily and permanently. Much of Keatss poetry can be seen as an attempt to explore Keats penetrating aw beness and musings on the transience of gracious disembodied spirit. Coloured by his sires of behavior and close, and ironically captured in his own sickness and early demise, there is try in his poetry which displays moments of visionary understanding of imminent fatality rate albeit interspersed inwardly the ambiguous poetry of a man struggling to come to hurt with one of lifes most complex mysteries.Keats life experience was of upmost importance in pathing this aw atomic number 18ness. Contacts with nett stage such as the death of his br different Tom at a young age, as with other members of his family, had a pro show impact on t he poet. To Autumn displays this heightened sense of clipping and its passing. The vivid description of the transition between the seasons gives the reader an almost guess like vision of a moment at the end of autumn with all fruit with ripeness to the core (I. 6) However we are subtly reminded that this nimbus of fruitfulness and warm days may soon be undone by the winnowing wind of the imminent winter. By the closing stanza of the poem, we are given over the harrowing reminder of the ready to be slaughtered full openhanded lambs (III. 30) and the gathering swallows which signify that the new season is pending.At these seasons it appeared he found a temporary respite through exploring his tortured disposition through his poetry. Ward describes poems he wrote in the dark months where he contemplated the keep overmaster of death as the only throw out poetry itself was a benevolent of communication with the ever-living dead, or of the dead with one a nonher, and the and the poet a birdlike rule who escapes who escapes the bonds of the e nontextual matterh 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 procure a much more extensive release from the benevolent condition than that gained through the paper of poetry. A earn to George Keats later on Toms death displayed how this experience congealed earth-closet Keats spirit in immortality The3 last days of poor Tom were of the most drab nature yet the common observations of the commonest people on death are as true as their proverbs. I invite 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 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 unwellness surely emphasised the transitory na ture of life. The final line of Keats lead Sonnet provides additional evidence of this fixation with the qualification for immortality Still to list 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 classic myth at the beginning of Ode to black bile No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist/ Wolfs- 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 liberal arts and immortality. The nightingales song is used as a gateway into the immortal world a world completely removed from the flying mortal one. With the song of the nightingale having been heard and admired by the human race for thousands of eld, there is a sense of immortality in its m elody which Keats envies constant of gravitation 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 composition the individual bird is mortal the species artform, that is song, lives on.Likewise Ode on a Hellenic 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. 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 collecting 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 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 i n his inferring to Old Meg as an, albeit at a more unassuming level, artistic person who with her fingers old and brown..Plaited mats orushes. However, the boldness 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 mention that while there is an obvious interest in the power to obtain some form of mortality this belief is not as unconditional as this. He constantly wrestles with the idea. One critic states that He has found no haven in the world. He is not the fanatic who lives deep down 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 particularly in the latter parts of poems which may have begun with a positive emphasis on immortality succe eding 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 a deceiving elf. Perhaps Keats liking to come in contact with a more sensuous and complete(a) world is in fact materialising in a fantasy 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 artists attempt to capture the human nature and proceedss 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 K eats acceptance that art and beauty may not be an essence which has complete immortal qualities. Mayhead (96) argues that this is the case The Melancholy Ode accepts the impermanence of beauty and joy as undeniable. Keats understands that in a sense beauty must die (III. 21) not all works of art will be able to jib 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 When I have fears that I may cease to be in front my pen has gleand my teeming brain,Before high piled books (1. 1- 3).Keats longs that his writings and creativity will, as a form of art, carry his humans 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 CitedFraser, G. S. Part 3 Recent Studies. John Keats Odes. capital of the United Kingdom MacMillan, 1971. Mayhead, Robin. 1 The Odes II. John Keats. London Cambridge University Press, 1967. 95- hundred and one 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.