John Keats met an untimely death at the age of 26, cutting his life extremely short and stealing away one of the Romantic Movement’s greatest poets. It is no wonder that Keats, diagnosed with tuberculosis and suffering from other health issues, would write Ode on Melancholy. Our book includes the original opening stanza for the ode, which, although much darker, is in no way as beautifully written as the revision. He starts off, in the original, with “[t]hough you should build a bark of dead men’s bone, / And rear a phantom gibbet with a mast” (1-2). While not as beautiful as the revision, this is still quite the intro to a poem. The imagination (ding ding ding!) taken to write something like this is astronomical. He uses this stanza to open up the ode as if he were on a quest to find the goddess Melancholy (442). The switch to the revision, however, is much more Keatsian. He uses several allusions to Greek mythology with the inclusion of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness, and Proserpine. Keats enjoyed using Greek mythology in his writings because they could greatly support his ideas brought though his poetry. His readers were aware of what these allusions meant, so they were not lost when these poems were first published. For today’s current readers, these anthologies must include side notes in order for us to understand what exactly is going on. The texts are so rich with these mythical allusions that it can be difficult to get a grip on what Keats is saying now-a-days. Keats continues to make these mythical allusions in the first stanza in order to set up his stance on Melancholy.
The revised first stanza is full of images of death and sadness. Keats would seem to be writing to postpone death, yet the ode is to one of deaths major friends, melancholy. The first half of the stanza seems to deal with death coming out for him, fearing his “pale forehead to be kiss’d, / by nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine” (3-4). These lines continue to describe various ways that life can be taken, until he eventually comes to the conclusion that “shade to shade will come too drowsily, / And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul” (9-10). It does not matter how much you ask death not to come after you, whether it a kiss from nightshades poisoned lips or by being taken to Lethe, in the end, death is eventual and will come, albeit “drowsily.” Perhaps his melancholy is brought on due to the insights made through his poetry. Or maybe these insights he as made have brought on these bouts of melancholy. It could just be his current health just makes him look towards the end. Keats moves on in his next stanza to talk about how and when these melancholies fall.
Keats next stanza pleads with whatever higher power there may be out there to help compose him “when the melancholy fit shall fall, / Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud” (11-12). When it rains, Keats can feel the sadness of the earth. The flowers droop from the weight of the rain, and the green hills are all shrouded by the April showers. The “weeping cloud,” which too, is sad, acts as another element meant to bring sadness to the world. He asks that he may “glut thy sorrow on a morning rose” (15). His sorrow will overbear the beautiful things in the world like the roses, peonies, and rainbows. He describes the power that melancholy has over his body whenever it strikes or falls on him. But there is nothing that can stop him, for if his mistress rises up with anger because of his beating of beauty, then she will be restrained and her anger cannot affect him as he feeds “upon her peerless eyes” (20).
Keats ends the poem with the goddess of Melancholy eventually taking his life and joining “her cloudy trophies” (30). His look on sadness and the eventual demise of the human body are not very pleasant or uplifting, which lead to this ode on Melancholy. The fear and uncertainty that Keats was feeling around this time due to his illness contributed a lot to this poem. The transition between the stanzas are fascinating. Keats logical journey through melancholy and death serves as a great insight into his life and how he actually felt about dieing. Keats seems to lose interest in life and living for these brief three stanzas. As brief as these stanzas are, so are our lives. He no longer has time to think of the living, especially when he is sad due to his current situations. For a lot of Keats’ poems, he seems to say “so much for pleasure in poetry.”
2 comments:
Corbin,
I also wrote on Ode to Melancholy, but interpreted it much differently than you (your interpretations make more sense than mine do though :)) I thought the first stanza was more of a "how to" deal with sadness, whereas you saw it as the inevitably of death coming for us.
Also, I really enjoyed your obvious enthusiasm as you approach you blog...It made it alot more fun to read about your blog on death knowing that you found appreciation in Keat's artwork of his odes.
-Alex
Corbin,
Very good focus on and explication of Keat's ode. You do a nice job of selecting and presenting examples of his melancholy imagery, and of analyzing how it fits in with the theme and meaning of the poem. You also discuss his heavy use of classical (especially Greek) mythological allusions. While it is true that such allusions would have been familiar to the classically-trained gentlemen who would read his poem, it is also a sign, perhaps, about his own insecurities of class and education. He was not classically-trained in a private boarding school or university, like a gentleman. (He could not read Homer in the original Greek, for instance, but had to make do with Chapman's translation.) I think he tends to overcompensate a bit to cover or make up for his lower class origins.
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