Literary Criticism: Keats's “Ode to a Nightingale”.

1. INTRODUCING THE ODE
Comparing to the other odes of Keats, the thought pattern in “Ode to Nightingale” is much more complex. The poem, chiefly, has the character of a meditative dream. But it constitutes four other elements that partly modify the hypnotic effect.
a) The nightingale (or its song) is the dominant symbol in the poem. The chief motif or action in the poem is the poet’s attempt at identification with the bird. Other symbols such as wine, communal life, bower etc. is also taken up in the process of exploration. They show the possibilities of contrary modes of release.
b) States of ecstasy alternate with states of withdrawal (from the ecstasy), affording different perspectives.
c) The poet’s attitude to the ideal and actual changes and the shifts are indicative of doubt, uncertainty and unresolved tension.
d) The hypnotic states and also the troubled states of comparative wakefulness are constantly tasted, and weighed, by a searching consciousness. Thus a symbolic debate is incorporated within a meditative, lyrical structure.
2. STANZA “MY HEART ACHES…”
The immediate impact of the nightingale’s song on the poet is pain. The nature of this pain becomes clearer as we note the deeper interconnections and relate the opening lines to the gradually unfolding patterns of meaning.
The modes of salvation envisaged in the nightingale ode involve self dissolution. Self is projected into a larger reality, or into an intense plane of existence. The poet feels a yearning to participate in the bird’s life. The bird, here, represents the plane of reality. To enter there, he must, first, eliminate his present existence, which is temporary in nature. A new birth presupposes death, and each death has its pangs.
The song effects this agonizing transformation to prepare the human self for the strange felicity. The first four lines record a death like trance, the process of dying into life. The moments overlap, but they are also precisely demarcated. A pain, the poet felt in his heart in the beginning, soon subsides into a sensation of numbness. Here, the effect of the song is equated with that of poison – hemlock and opiate – that deadens consciousness. The next moment shows that the poet is not only dead, but has also forgotten all about his previous existence (‘Lethe-wards has sunk’).
The process seems to be almost completed. But suddenly, the consciousness of the self is partly retained. The qualifying phrase ‘as though implies it.
The next six lines analyze the poet’s own experience and the nature of the bird’s ecstasy. This self-scrutiny again, indicates a partial withdrawal from the trance. The desire to share the bird’s untroubled happiness is attended by the knowledge of the contrast between the two planes of reality.
The identity of the bird, whose song causes the pain, near numbness and partial oblivion, underlines the unearthly character of the music. Here the bird is considered as a “Dryad”, a tree-nymph. Although a nymph is not immortal like the superior deities, the duration of her life is much longer that the brief span of mortals. Her world represents an ideal romantic retreat untouched by human sorrow. The Dryad image, again, suggests the bird’s complete identification with the forest world. Note the point that, the life of each Dryad is associated with that of her own tree.
The light winged creature is free from constraint. Its song is spontaneous and effortless. The summer beauty of which the bird sings is contrasted with the gloom of underworld – the abyss of half consciousness in which the poet finds himself. Yet, it is not the knowledge of the contrast (‘envy’) that causes poet’s pain.
His aspiration to share the bird’s ecstasy leads him inevitably along the dark, a mysterious journey that alone can ensure his accession to the joyous arcadia. Here, the poet’s transformation is not the result of any volitional choice or activity on his part. Mor than aspiration, the magic spell of music is that which leads him. However, the journey remains incomplete. There is a gradual return of consciousness.
As the trance partly removes, the poet feels the need for voluntary effort to retrieve the journey. This explains the relevance of the intoxication in the next stanza.
3. STANZA “O, FOR A DRAUGHT…”
Here, the poet feels a strong desire to the bird’s ecstasy. To achieve this, he wishes for a drink of wine – a stimulant that would lift him out of his own self. The journey to the underworld (‘deep delved earth’) is stressed again. The association gives the literal wine, a new significance.
Time causes decay in mortal life, but time enriches wine, making it more intoxicating. The term ‘vintage’ is quite appropriate here suggesting age and excellence. In wishing for a ‘draught of vintage’, the poet really seeks anchorage in a timeless state of existence. To prolong the trance seems the only means of escaping from awareness. Wine serves as an agent of transformation. It is also the pure essence of the fruits of the earth. These associations develop into two succeeding lines. The place where this rich vintage is produced in precisely located in the next line:
“O for a beaker of full warmsouth”
The fragrance of flowers, the luxuriance of spring (Flora is the goddess of flowers and spring), the warmth of southern climate (the wives of the south of Europe are noted for their excellence), dance and Provencal song (a reference to the medieval troubadours* of southern France) and the conviviality of simple country people who live close to the sun are, as it were, distilled into the rich essence of the wine. Poet prays for such a kind of wine.
According to Wilson Knight, each image in Keats is enjoyed to the full, tasted, before it is let pass. The potentialities of wine-image are exhausted. The elaboration serves a specific function.
In the beginning, the poet seeks to escape from consciousness, to achieve a state of ecstasy. The two stimulants for that were the bird’s song and wine. But there are commitments. The commitment involves a severance of earthly ties. Here, however, a new aspect of earthily reality (opening up the possibilities of an altogether different mode of transcendence) is revealed to him – the richness and the unself conscious character of communal life. The troubadours, unlike the lonely romanticists, had a living contact with life and with people. During the period of troubadours, the link between the poet and his audiences was not snapped. The sun burnt country people, free from self-consciousness live close to nature. Their merry making, dance and song show the beauty of simple, corporate existence that is in sharp opposition to the melancholy generated by the self meditation (the way of Romantics).
Here, the desire to forget earthly realities and live in a state of perpetual trance is replaced by an eagerness to participate in the lives of these simple country folk and to share their merriment. The prayer for self annihilation receives here a new orientation. The passage also implies a new approach to poetry, a return to vitality, amplitude and anonymity of communal songs.
In the next three lines, the poet’s mind moves in yet another direction. Instead of the simple happiness and the high spirit of communal life, he seeks a different kind of intensity to achieve self forgetfulness. The image of a glass of warm, richly coloured, bubbling wine is vividly realized. R.H.Fogle happily suggests, the beaker recalls bleary silences, with winking, drunken eyes and purple stained mouth. The wine, here, also receives a heightening by being linked to the inspirational waters of Hippocrene. Hippocrene, in classical mythology, is a fountain in Mt.Helicon and is sacred to Muses. The phrase, ‘blushful Hippocrene’ does not surely mean that the intoxication induced by wine is equated with poetic inspiration. The parallelism intended to convey here is a state of exultation akin to ecstasy, and this ecstasy is different in kind form both visionary trance and rustic mirth. This exultation is not sustained. This is indicated in the two closing lines of the stanza and the need to complete the Lethe-world journey is reiterated.
The darkness of the forest is in contrast to the bright, sunny world of the country people and also to the colourful richness of wine. It is worth noting that the idea of self-dissolution is associated in the three different contexts with darkness (‘Lethe-wards’, ‘deep-delved earth’, ‘forest dim’)
4. STANZA “FADE FAR AWAY…”
The stanza shows a harsh picture of actuality. The need for an urgency of the mind’s release from the mortal condition is realized. In the two preceding stanzas, the poet was in varying states of trance. In this stanza, he observes closely the actual world (the word ‘here’ in line 4), which is a real distress. The ideal world that he desires is here placed in sharp opposition to the unpleasant situations in the human world. Human world is fickle. It is always subjected to change. Also, here, the nature of the poet’s strong desire to achieve something is more sharply focused. He seeks escape into an eternal present, a release form flux (or continuous change), from the world of process.
In the ‘soul making’ parable, the release from suffering was sought through participation in and assimilation of experience. But here, transcendence is sought through the dissolution of conscious self (note the words ‘fade’, ‘dissolve’, ‘forge’) into the bird’s deathless world.
The two planes – temporal and eternal – are not merely contrasted; they are seen as antithetical. From this perspective, human experience, especially the experience of suffering is considered negative and withering.
Stack statements are concretized by visual and aural images. Thus the terror of the situation is fully conveyed. The line
“The weariness, the fever and the fret”
Is in the nature of a bare statement, but it is followed by
“Here, where men sit and hear each other groan”.
It depicts before us a picture of rows of patients screaming in pain. One sufferer looks to his neighbour for consolation, but discovers that he, too, writhes in agonyl
“Where Palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs”
carries a visual effect. The compound epithet ‘spectre-thin’ reinforces the grim horror of the human condition. Mortality is painful enough; but there is something more dreadful than death. Man is even denied his limited span of existence. A young man turns into a ghost or shade (‘spectre’) even before his death (here, Keats may have recalled Tom’s misery)
The seventh line introduces a new element in the scene – the pain attendant in the human consciousness. Man’s knowledge of decay and death deepens his sorrow.
The coffin or burial image is implicit in ‘leaden eyed despairs’. This image suggests descent into dark abyss, a state of life in death to which man is doomed.
The burial image also occurs in the second line – the bird is covered up by the leaves – but there, it implies that the bird, as a part of nature, is unaware of its separated identity. Indeed, the bird has never known the human miseries – weariness, fever and fret, palsy, paleness, premature decay and death. Here, it is not clear, whether the emphasis is on the bird’s lack of self consciousness or on the Arcadian character of its world.
The two concluding lines underline the dual source of man’s unhappiness. The luster of the eyes fades and human beauty withers too soon. Human response is equally limited. Its intensity wears out in a few hours.
5. STANZA “AWAY! AWAY! FOR…
The terrifying reality of human suffering, which is made more poignant by memory, gives a special urgency to the need for escape. The poet desires escape from both actuality and fretting consciousness. But now he does without external stimulants like wine and relies on the potency of the mind’s inner resources; i.e. on his own imaginative powers (‘on the viewless wings of poesy’)
The old antithesis between reason and imagination reappears
“The dull brain perplexes and retards”
And there is even a momentary doubt about the possibility of completing the transition. But there is a sudden leap. And, identification with the bird is achieved. The line
“Already with thee! Tender is the night”
shows it. The line, especially the second half conveys a calm serenity.
The succeeding lines, however, introduces a new motif. The moment of the time along with the progress of thought is clearly indicated – the day time of the first two stanzas is here succeeded by night. The poet envisions a moon-lit, star spangled sky. (However, the word ‘haply’ brings in an element of uncertainty). But this radiance is contrasted with the darkness of the verdurous lower in which the poet now finds himself. The place is only faintly lit by shafts of light piercing occasionally through the foliages.
The last three lines suggest that after his brief union with the bird, the poet has retreated into a dark thicket. This separation from the bird does not mean any shrinkage in his experience. The poet now achieves a different kind of release. He seeks to escape from time ridden existence, not through complete identification with the bird, but through recognition and realization of the fact of process.