the immortality of the natural. keats's ode to a nightingale.pdf

8/14/2019 The Immortality of the Natural. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale.pdf

1/15

The Immortality of the Natural: Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"Author(s): Andrew J. KappelReviewed work(s):Source: ELH, Vol. 45, No. 2 (Summer, 1978), pp. 270-284Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2872516.Accessed: 12/12/2011 03:51

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at.http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Johns Hopkins University Pressis collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

ELH.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhuphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2872516?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2872516?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jhup


2/15

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE NATURAL:KEATS' "ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE"BY ANDREW J. KAPPEL

The seventh tanza fKeats'"Ode toa Nightingale,"amous oranunexpectedllusion otheBookofRuth nd for peculiar esis-tance o criticism,eginswith bald assertion f he mmortalityfthenightingale.Thou wast notbornfordeath, mmortal irdNo hungry enerations readthee down.

These ines nitiate hevexed ssueof hebird's mmortalityhichis still, espitemuchdiscussion, stumbling lockto satisfactoryinterpretationf the stanza.Severalcritics peculate hat he im-mortalitysonly elative, hatKeats' ssertionefers ot o an indi-vidualbirdbutto a species,whose ongevity akesnegligible helifetimef ny inglemember.' he chief bjection othis nterpre-tation s thatby the same token, he relative ongevity fthespecies,man swell as thenightingales immortal.his of oursecannot e thecase becausethepoemexploresnd nsists pon hegeneric ifferenceetweenmortal nd immortal.n determiningthebasis ofKeats'claim for he bird's mmortalityhatwe wantis an explanationhatgrounds he mmortalityn an aspectofthebird'snature hat s notsharedbymanand hence thatdoes notqualify im, oo,formmortality.Some ritics ho, orhereasonust ited, ejecthegeneric asisofthebird's mmortality,refer symbolic nterpretationfthenightingale,ocating he basis ofthe claimto immortalitynthatsymbolicignificance.2ccordingoDavidPerkins, homost ullyargues hisposition,hebirdor,more ccurately,tssong s thecomposite yric oiceofpoetry s ithas sounded hroughoutheagesand whose ife xtends eyond hedeaths f uccessive ndi-vidualbards.3 hisexplanations subject othesame objection sthe former.t humanizes he bird and in theprocess rasesthepoem'sraisond'ttre. fthenightingale'song s a symbol f yricpoetry,hewords immortalird"must efero thePoet. nwhichcase, Keats, dentifyinginger ndsong and perhaps nticipating270 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"

ELH 45 (1978) 270-2840013-8304/7810452-027001.00 ? 1978 byThe JohnsHopkinsUniversityress


3/15

Yeats,who ouldn't istinguishancer rom ance), ndsupassert-inga type fhumanmmortality.These two nterpretationsfKeats'nightingale,nthefirstaseas a representativef a species andinthe second s a symbol flyric oetryor morebroadly, f all art),have provided aluablecritical nsightsntothe poem. The latter, or nstance,eads toPerkins' eminal otion fsymbolic ebate.Butwhenwe looktothem o explain he nature f the bird's mmortality,heyproveinadequate. ritics avenaturallyurned oward hem or his ur-pose,however, ecause of he seventh tanza f hepoem.

Thou wast not born fordeath, immortalBirdNo hungrygenerations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing nightwas heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth,when, sick forhome,She stood in tears amid the alien corn;The same thatoft-times athCharm'dmagic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery ands forlorn.Critics erceive note "of strain"4ntheopening ssertion ndthen uess hatnthe ines hat ollow eats stryingoexplainnddefend he tatemente has ustmadeby uggestingbasisforheclaim ofimmortality.ince Keats refers o past nstances f thenightingale'song, o pastgenerationsfnightingaleshat ang opastgenerationsfmen, hegeneric asis seems ntimated.t hesame ime,hevoicereferredo sthat f iteraryightingales;hissuggestshe ymbolicnterpretation.ertainly,hese re mportantdimensionsf henightingale'sdentity;utneitherxplainswhyit s immortalndman s not.We need not uspect eats fwobblythinking,owever, ecause there s, willargue, nother imen-sionof hebird's ignificance,nethat rovides basis formmor-talityhat xcludeshuman laims, ndone, moreover,hat s evi-dent hroughouthe poem.Thiseliminates he supposedneedtojustifyheassertionftert s made andallowsus to see the inesthat ollow t as somethingther han nconvincingvidence orself-consciouslyxtremelaim.

IIAccordingoCharles rown's amousccountf hepoem's om-position,herewasa nightingaleinging hileKeatswrote.nfact,AndrewJ. Kappel 271


4/15

according to Brown, Keats had heard the song of the nightingalemany times before the morning of composition; on that particularday, says Brown, Keats moved his chair "from the breakfast tableto the grass-plot under a plum-tree."5To begin with, then, Keats'nightingale is an actual bird in an actual tree, a comfortable nhabit-ant ofthe natural world whose song, heard throughthe poet's sen-sual ear, has drawn him from he human ceremony ofbreakfasttoinfiltrate he natural occasion involving grass-plot,plum-tree andsinging bird.Thou, light-winged ryad of the treesIn somemelodious plotOfbeechen green, nd shadowsnumberless,Singestof summer n full-throatedase.

As Earl Wasserman has pointed out in The Finer Tone, by callingthe bird a "Dryad," a creature whose being "is that of the tree itinhabits" (p. 186), Keats stresses the naturalness of the bird. Thewine,Cool'd for long age in thedeep-delvedearth,TastingofFlora and thecountry reen,

derives from and embodies the natural world and thereforetheforgetfulness tpromises mightwell constitute the desired natural-izing of the human which the poet undertook when he moved hischair fromthe breakfast table into the plum-tree's shade. The tra-jectoryof the bird's withdrawal at the end of the poem is an indica-tion that tsontological statusas a naturalbeing is maintained to theend. As itwithdraws, it moves fromone natural settingto another,never ventures outside nature and seems, indeed, to retreat evermore deeply into the natural world.

Thy plaintive nthem adesPastthe nearmeadows,over the stillstream,Up thehill-side;and now tisburieddeepIn the nextvalley-glades.The movement fromthe breakfast table to the grass-plot is theadvance that balances (and perhaps forces) this retreat.The ontological differencebetween the nightingale and the poetis the differencebetween a purely naturalbeing and a humanbeing.This ontological differencegives rise to the essential experientialdistinctionbetween the twobeings, around which thepoem is built:the bird is oblivious to death, man painfully aware of it. This dis-272 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"


5/15

tinction etweennatural nd human xperience s directlytatedelsewherein Keats' poetry.For instance, n "Drear-NightedDecember" bliviousnessodeath rawarenessf t srevealed sthesole determinantf hequality-whetherappy rwoeful-ofan existence. ike thetree nthefirsttanza f hepoem ndthebrooknthesecond, nd unlike he"gentlegirl ndboy"ofthethird, he nightingaleas no awareness fthe terminationsf tsvariousoysand sthereforehappy." o continue ith he ermi-nology ftheearlier oem, henightingale'song xpresseswhatis humanly nknowablethough umanlymaginable),thefeelofnot o feel t," hat s, theabsenceofthe"writhing"ver passedjoy"that nawarenessf ocaland ultimateerminationsroduces.What hepoet eeks n thedraughtfvintages "numbedensetosteel t," hats anobliviousnessopassed oyorultimatelyeath.To desire nionwith henightingale,hen,stoseek nontologi-cal change.The opening inesofstanzathree haracterizehatchange s in part forgetting,pecificallyf whatthebirdhasneverknown.

Fade far way,dissolve, ndquite forgetWhat thou amongthe leaves hast neverknown,The weariness, hefever,ndthefretHere, where men sit,beside sick-beds r atbreakfastables. Notethat he nightingaleis addressed s "thou mong he eaves,"which tressestsnativenaturalness, at the point at which its obliviousness to transcienceis asserted.) To accompany the forgetting nd further he approxi-mationofthe nightingale's ontology, he poet seeks intensificationof the senses. A draught of vintage promises to turn this doubletrick, llowing the poet "


6/15

a metaphor forpoetrythroughoutKeats' work6) and patent in thereferencetoHippocrene (the fountainoftheMuses on Mt. Helicon).He still seeks the same two-foldexperience, a forgettingnd quick-ening at once: the sorrows ofstanza three fade as the sensual plea-sures of stanza five accumulate.The only "sense" that is to be numbed by either wine or poesyis thatreferredto in "Drear-Nighted December": "numbed senseto steel it," the sense, that is, that perceives the passage of oys.Man can approach the natural only through the senses whoseheightened activation as the mind fades can establish for the hu-man consciousness theynow direct a local temporal focus, an infi-nitely narrow, instantaneous temporal perspective that an activemind,rememberingand anticipating ncessantly,can never achieve.Instances of this effect run throughout Keats' poetry. Two famousones thatcome to mind are both pieces ofadvice, Endymion's "fold/A rose leaf round thyfinger's taperness, / And soothe thy lips"(1.781-83) and thatfrom he "Ode on Melancholy," "if thy mistresssome rich anger shows, /Emprison her softhand, and let her rave,/And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes." In both cases theexhortation s to engage the senses directly, ntimately, nd exclu-sively withtheirobject and in that act to create a closed impenetra-ble node of attentiveness and intensity. Lips and finger taste andtouch) locked to rose leaf and lovers' locked hands and eyes definetwo self-contained configurations, two universes, each of whichknows nothing but itself.One sense, however, is relinquished as the imagination comesalive: eyes close and in the poem day turnsto night.Poetic conven-tion may explain this anomaly: as attentive a student of Milton asKeats would naturallyassociate the loss of sightwith the invigora-tion and exercise ofthe imagination. But there may be a more rele-vant explanation. Sight is the one sense greatly given to panoramicperception, at least in Keats' poetry where the eye characteristical-ly positions itselfso as to enjoy the widest possible focus, prefera-bly encompassing infinity.This occurs in the early sonnet "OnFirst Looking Into Chapman's Homer":

Felt I like somewatcher fthe skiesWhena new planet swims ntohis ken;Or like stoutCortez whenwitheagle eyesHe star'd tthePacific-and all his menLook'd ateach otherwith wild surmise-Silent,upona peak in Darien.

274 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale""


7/15

The oceans, a practical near-infinityn 1817, are a favoriteobjectof visual contemplation n the early poetry, he seashore a favoritepoetic haunt.7 Because of this proclivity toward the panoramic,sight might well be unwelcome at this point in the poem.I cannot ee whatflowers re at myfeet,Nor what oft ncensehangsupon the boughs,But, n embalmeddarkness, uess each sweetWherewithheseasonablemonth ndowsThe grass, hethicket,ndthe fruit-treeild;Whitehawthorn,nd thepastoral glantine;Fastfading iolets over'dup in leaves;Andmid-May's ldest child,The comingmusk-rose,ullof dewywine,The murmurous aunt f flieson summer ves.

Sight aside, the imagination seeks through the senses of taste("


8/15

point nthe poem death omestothe poet'smind s thepossiblepreserverfFancy'sgarden, s a wayofmaking he ransformationirreversible.t is, recalling arlier erminology,n ultimate ndirrevocable orgetfulness,ar reaterhan nebriationrnight, ndit eems rich o die" because thismore ecure orgetfulnessrom-ises a freer ieldforFancy nd a richer arden f delights. hesethoughtsass quickly hough ecause,only peculations,hey reeasilydispelledbythe hard act hat eath,whatever lse itmightbe, is, as Keats said in a letter oCharlesBrown September 0,1820), the great ivorcer or ver";more ertain han ranslationto a deathless ntologys unredeemable,nending orpidity. n-like wine,death s a denial ofthesenses, oo crude, oo thorougha forgetter.sBatesays p. 508),death s "thereverse funionwiththebird"; henightingales a living reature hose song s heardonlyby living ars. I shouldnoteat thispoint hat lthoughhisstanza nds with convictionfdeath's nadequacy s anagent fontologicalhange, eatshas taken heother osition lsewherenhis poetry,n "WhyDid I LaughTonight?" nd "Bright tar"forexample,nd nhiswork s a whole hequestionsleft nresolved.Deathis either door o anotherealm r t snot.)The stanza ourting eath sdirectlyollowed y the postropheassertinghenightingale'smmortality"Thouwast not bornfordeath, mmortal ird ").This apostrophechoestheexclamatoryopening f tanza our"Away way for willfly othee")whichalso follows erses hat well ondeath nddying. heseareparal-lel turning ointsnthepoemwhere ppressive houghtsfdeathand thedyingworld fmennaturallyring othe poet'smind, smore oignantlyesirablehan ver, hedeathless ntologicaltateof henightingale.t s deathwhichhauntshepoet hroughouthepoem, death whichhis mind,yearningorforgetfulness,annotforget.he nightingale,s thebeing "not bornfordeath,"whodoesnotknowdeath, s the object f mulation.tsimmortalityssimply nd exactlyts ignorance fdeath; t is notan ultimatelongevity,as, nfact, othingo do with uration ut nsteadwithquality fexistence. ived inFancy'sgarden, ach momentfthebird's ife s an eternity:t contains ll time'seventualities. ogenerationsread hebirddownbecausethere reno suchthingsinthat ealm. tsunregulatedelf-enactmentrfull ivingnessit"singest f ummernfull-throatedase" and"pours orthits] oulabroad/ n such an ecstasy") s not, urely,n accelerationf tslife nfear fdeath's mminence ecause forhebird heres, na276 Keats'"Ode toa Nightingale"


9/15

stricter ense than usual, no tomorrow,only a series oftodays, andthe easy esctasy of tssinging can seem wasteful onlyto an ontologyfor which there is a tomorrow and which, hoping to live in it,invents conservation.III

With the basis forthe immortality larified, we maynow turn tothe promised discussion ofthe lines following themisjudged asser-tion ofstanza seven. The basis of the bird's immortality,ts natural-ness, is, as we have seen, manifest n many details throughout hefirst ix stanzas of the poem. The assertion, therefore, s well pre-pared forand needs no justification after t has been made. By thispoint in the poem, the bird's immortality s a given. And the franticrhetorical gesture with which the assertion is made betrays no"strain" of belief on the poet's part in what he says but rather astrainofacceptance, a resistance to a painful knowledge, specifical-ly,thatthe bird enjoys a peculiar but real immortality romwhichthe mortalpoet is excluded. The opening lines of the stanza are asmuch a recognition of the poet's mortality s an assertion of thebird's immortality. Thou wast not born fordeath, immortalBird,"as I was. "No hungrygenerations treadthee down" as theydo me.With his own predicament acutely in mind, then, Keats gathersinto the rest ofthe stanza three situationsanalogous to his own. Inthe second ofthe three,he imagines the simple sensual pleasure ofthe bird's song cheering Ruth amid sorrow. Similarly,the birdsongthe poet himselfhears carries him from he woes of stanza three tothe sensual delights ofstanza five.Or, Keats mayhave a more elab-orateparallel in mind. Accordingto the Biblical account, one voiceRuth hears amid the alien corn is that of the man Boaz. She findsherself in his cornfield because she has, like the poet, chosen toforsakeher native land for a foreignrealm. Boaz' words, like thenightingale's song, promote and sanction that movement to a newworld. In the last of the analogues, the bird is heard charminganopen casement; it is poised near and presides over a beckoningthreshold. Like Keats' hidden bird, heard at the interface of thenatural and the human, this bird, heard but not seen, also poursforth ts soul "abroad," that s, beyond itsnative land, seeking alienears.Because the three analogous situations Keats presents read, one-hundred-and-fifty ears later,with a certain inevitability,we mayAndrewJ. Kappel 277


10/15

lose sight of the peculiarity of the second and third.Certainly,wewould not expect the figureof Ruth to appear in any compilationofsinging nightingales done in ignorance of Keats' poem. There is nobird in the Book of Ruth to persuade us otherwise. For the samereason, the third nstance is also anomalous in such a context. nall the commonly cited sources-Claude Lorrain's EnchantedCastle; sea imagery n Diodorus, Book III, Chapter 3; any of theseveral casements and tumultuous seascapes in Radcliffe'sMyster-ies of Udolpho; Coleridge's "Fears in Solitude," 1. 87; or Cary'stranslation f the Inferno, .22-23-no nightingale appears. This ishardly he way to go about establishingthe universality nd change-lessness of the nightingale s the supposed basis of its immortality.To cite precedents which are such only because the poet has addedthe qualifyingelement, the birdsong, s to beg the question hope-lessly. Clearly, Keats is notout to prove anything ut seeks instead,as the speculative nature ofhis analogues suggests,to explore thenature of the experience those analogues image, his own experi-ence has recorded so far n the poem. Through them,he seeks tocomprehendand validate that experience, to confirmhis suspicionthat he imagination an so invigorate he senses as to allow a mortalman to share the immortalityf the natural.

Though at the end of the poem he can straddle the fencenicely,neitherdenying nor confirming,n stanza seven his analogues tracea stepwise approach to an awareness of the experience's possiblefraudulence and his own delusion. David Perkinsand WalterEvert,two criticswho see Keats' poetic career as a gradual rejectionofthevisionary imagination (and approve that rejection), acknowledgethis tendency in stanza seven. The emperor and clown, to beginwith, are "figures presumably out of the historicalpast.">8Keatscould have read of Theophilus and his golden birds, a possiblesource of the allusion, in Gibbon, Chapter 53.) The image ofRuthmarks a shift oward the fictive; the Biblical legend mediates be-tween the historically-based emperor and the fanciful"magic"casements offaeryland r what Evert calls the "never-never and ofthe imagination,'9 an illusion akin to Lamia's fabrications.Thismovementfrom he historicalto the legendaryto thepurelyfictiveis a critical speculation worthentertaining ecause it suggests thelogic and inevitability of the final turn of the poem. The poet'sexperience, his uneasy union withthenightingale,finally naps atthe end of an analogical comprehension of thatexperience that al-lows itvalidity onlyon a level of reality, he supernaturalrealmof278 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"


11/15

magic ndcharms,hat sfar emoved romheone on which twasachieved nthe firstlace,the natural.I have saidnothing,nmy onsiderationfsources, fthemythof Philomela, the nightingale storyfromwhich all others derive.Obviously, Keats sought no direct or detailed correspondence withthe mythand all discussion is perforce speculative. There is, how-ever, in the case of the thirdanalogue, a possible connection withLempriere's account of the myth in his Classical Dictionary, towhich Keats regularly referred.Lempriere describes Philomela'splace ofconcealment as "a lonely castle." This is a departure fromGolding's "pelting graunge that peakishly did stand / In woodsforgrowen" 11.663-64) and fromSandys' "Lodge ... Obscur'd withwoods" (11. 520-21). Lempriere's phrase may have suggested toKeats the possibility ofholding Ovid, Claude, and Radcliffe togeth-er in a single allusion.Another possible correspondence, one particularlypertinent tothis essay, is with Golding's and Sandys' translations. In both,when Philomela first ppears, she is described in termsremarkablysimilarto those Keats uses inthe first escription of his nightingale.In Golding's version she comes "in raiment very rich, /And yetin beautie farremore rich,even like the Fairies which /Reportedare the pleasant woods and water springs to haunt" (11.578-80); inSandys', "in rich array;/More rich in beauty. So they use to say /The statelyNaiades, and Dryad's goe / In Sylvan shades" (11.451-54). In comparison, Keats' first escriptive phrase is "light-wingedDryad ofthe trees." Additionally in this regard, both Golding andSandys are carefulto retain Ovid's distinctionbetween the respec-tive haunts of Philomela and Procne after their transformations.According to Sandys, Philomela, now a nightingale, "sings / Inwoods" (11. 669-70) while Procne, a swallow "neare the houseremaines" (1. 670); or, n Golding's words, "the one away /To wood-ward flies, the other still about the house doth stay" (11.845-46).Keats' association of the nightingale with nature is not withoutprecedent.That Keats noticed these details when he read Lempriere,Golding, and Sandys is certainly possible; that he rememberedthem on a certainMay morning s perhaps less likely and, ofcourse,hardlycrucial. The best argument ofthe nightingale's naturalnesslay elsewhere, not in Lempriere, Sandys, Golding, Gibbon or theBible but close-by, within earshot, in the tree above the poet'shead.AndrewJ.Kappel 279


12/15

IVThe early naive yearningfor mmortality, hatever it mighthavemeant for Keats as he wroteEndymion for nstance, had maturedby 1819, had clarifieditself nto a desire for certain inner experi-

ence of timequite unrelated to the factor imminence of death. Theold desire and this new insight nto its meaning inspire and guidethe action of "Ode to a Nightingale" where Keats explores ways ofachieving the nightingale's sense of things. He discovers that thepoetry-makingFancy is the creator of a world that embodies thedesired temporal perspective-possibly. Thus, "Ode on a GrecianUrn" follows logically from he "'Ode to a Nightingale" as a directexplorationof the possibility suggested there. In the latterpoem,Keats considers the congeniality of the urn-world's experience oftime or the suitability,that is, of Fancy's creations in light of hisnewly-understood desire for mmortality. s opposed to the night-ingale's warm garden, the cold urn-world gives up so much inachieving its temporal perspective that Fancy's fraudulence,suspected in the earlier ode, is confirmedhere. (Lamia dispells anylingering doubts.)In September 1819, with the earlier odes several months old,Keats wrote "To Autumn," and in that act affirmed rocess, aban-doning, it would seem, the quest for nightingale-like experienceof time. The inexorable temporal march abhorred in the earlierodes is affectionately raced here. It is difficult o know how thisbecame possible forKeats though I thinkwe can see two separatepathways leading simultaneously to this position.According to GeoffreyHartman,the important evelopment fromthe earlier odes to "To Autumn" is a shift n style and metaphysicfrom ssertion to surmise.'0 Specifically,the existence of an achiev-able alternate ontologywith a more satisfying xperience of time isno longer asserted but casually surmised.The poetic consciousnessdoes not leap to and fro,boldly assertinga sense ofpresence, thensinking n regret s thatsense dissipates; instead, itslides gently nnon-commitment, uietly courtingpossibility.Hartman argues thatthisis a startling evelopment in the practice of the ode inWesternliterature, s it surely seems, but Keats achieves it naturallyandlogically. It is, to begin with,an application to his poetryof the de-sired negative capability pervading the letters. With regard to anexistence of another ontology of greater ustice than our own, hecan remain,with desire undiminished, "in uncertainties, Myster-ies, doubts, withoutany irritablereaching afterfactand reason.""282 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"


13/15

As Hartman shows, in "To Autumn" this metaphysic finds a com-plementary stylisticpoise: slow, meditative rhythms;flat, matter-of-fact iction; a vocabulary oftentativeness.The new poetic stancederives as well, however, from he poetic of empathy also cherishedin the letters. As Bate intimates (p. 580), the poem is an enteringinto the life of the Winchester countryside about which Keats wan-dered during the days surrounding the composition of the poem.The landscape embodies the serenity the poet adopts. The comple-mentary poetics of negative capability and empathy, then, co-author the "surmise"-metaphysic of the poem.That new stance permits the affirmation fprocess. It is a relaxa-tion of the distractiontoward the other and tomorrow and grantsevery here-and-now integrity. t is a fittingof perceiver to per-ceived: ifthe poetic consciousness can hear the music of autumnhas it is played, deaf to other seasonal songs, singer and listenerwill share the same timeless perspective, the serene lanscape willbe serenely perceived. In the sonnet "On Fame" Keats directlycontraststhe "seasonableness" or poise in the moment of the natu-ral ontology with the characteristic human distractionfrom tselfand the present.

How fever'd is the man, who cannot lookUpon his mortal days withtemperate blood,Who vexes all the leaves of his life's book,And robs his fair name of itsmaidenhood;It is as ifthe rose should pluck herself,Or the ripe plum finger tsmistybloom,As ifthe Naiad, like a meddling elf,Should darken her pure grotwith muddy gloom;But the rose leaves herself upon the briar,For winds to kiss and gratefulbees to feed,And the ripe plum stillwears its dim attire;

The undisturbed lake has crystalspace;Why then should man, teasing the world forgrace,Spoil his salvation for fierce miscreed?Here the natural ontology of rose, plum, Naiad and lake, poisedwithinthemselves, offer literal "salvation" ormode of mmortality.They affirm rocess as theyenact itand thereinfindan experientialescape fromdeath,which can be knownonlyfrom he outside; fromwithin there is only fulfillment.

In "To Autumn" the poetic consciousness, activating tsnegativecapability and empathic power, achieves the "surmise"-meta-physic and approximates the rose's poise upon the briar,"looks /AndrewJ. Kappel 283


14/15

Upon his mortal days with temperate blood," accepts process("cmortal ays") calmly ("with temperate blood") by enacting it, byhearing spring's song during spring and autumn's in autumn. Theserene affirmation fprocess is not, then, an abandonment of thequest for nightingale's sense of things. t is not,for nstance,theresult of a panoramic perspective on time's eventualities achievedthroughwithdrawal from xperience (as is the case with the China-men in Yeats' poem "Lapis Lazuli"). Instead, it is sort of dramaticdecorumorcomposure, to continue with Yeats' poem in mind,likethatof an actor playingHamlet or Lear who, though he is notHam-let or Lear and so has a consciousness thatperceives beyond them,does not fall out of character to articulate his wider perspective,does not break up his lines toweep.Rice University

FOOTNOTE S1RichardHarterFogle, "Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale',"PMLA, 68, (1953), 211-22; Earl Wasserman,The Finer Tone (Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press,1953),p. 216; Walter JacksonBate, JohnKeats (New York:OxfordUniv. Press, 1966),p. 508.2 In a noteto lines 61 ff.Douglas Bush says "there s no doubta logical confusionhere, incethe singingbird s no less mortal han hehumanpoet,but n Keats'smindthe birdhas become the disembodied and immortal oice ofpoetry."JohnKeats;SelectedPoems and Letters, dited and withan introductionnd notes byDouglasBush, (Boston: HoughtonMifflin o., 1959), p. 348.3 Perkins,The Quest for Permanence (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press,1959), pp. 244 ff. ee also Stuart perry, eats the Poet (Princeton:PrincetonUniv.Press, 1973), p. 262 and Douglas Bush, JohnKeats (New York: The MacmillanCompany,1966), pp. 132, 135.4Bate, p. 508.5 The KeatsCircle, ed. Hyder E. Rollins,2 vols. Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv.Press,1948), II, 65.6 See "To Charles Cowden Clarke," 11. 5-27; Endymion, , 23-24; orHyperion,III, 118-20.7 See, for xample, On Seeing theElgin Marbles,"11. 3-14;"On theSea," 11. -10;or "When I Have Fears," 11.12-13.8 Perkins, . 254.9 WalterH. Evert,Aesthetic nd Myth nthePoetry fKeats (Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1965), p. 267.10The Fate of Reading (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press, 1975), pp. 124-46.1 Letter of 21, 27(?) December to George and ThomasKeats.

284 Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"


15/15

The Immortalityf the Natural:Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"pp. 270-284]Please note: Due to an errornthe printolume, hecontents fpages 280and 281 belong o thefollowingrticle,Self nd Society nTrollope." norder opreserve hecomplete ontent fthefollowingrticle, e haveinserted ages 280 and 281 betweenpages 285 and 286. The articlecontents presentedn ts ntiretynd inthecorrect rder.The truepage rangefor hecurrentrticle,The mmortalityf he Natural:Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale"s 270-279+282-284,with o contentmissing.

Please click on "NextPage" (at thetopof thescreen) to begin viewingthe article.

the immortality of the natural. keats's ode to a nightingale.pdf

Documents