Conflict between Transience and Permanence in Keats' Odes

 

Keats’ Dramatic Quality: Odes Show Inner Conflict between Art & Life, Pain & Pleasure, Reality & Imagination, Transience & Permanence

 

John Keats was a great poet of Romantic age in English literature. It is evident from his poetry that he was an ardent lover of beauty and beautiful objects of nature. Particularly, when we study his odes, the first thing which allures the readers is their dramatic quality. By drama, we essentially mean tension or conflict. Nevertheless, Keats’ odes are a running commentary on his poetic state of mind which always suffered from the pulls of reality on one side and those of imagination from the other. He seems to linger between the bitter realities of life (Where but to think is to be full of sorrows) and the happy world of the nightingale which has remained absolutely untainted by the fever and fret of the real world. Hence, we may proclaim unhesitatingly that Keats’ odes are a record of dramatic quality.

 

A look at Keats’ history shows that his life has been a succession of conflicts and tensions which finds expression in his poetry. One type of conflict was a matter of choice between the real world and the ideal world which he had created with the help of his imagination. A similar type of conflict mirrors through his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ which revolves around the temporal and eternal. We find that he has immortalized (eternalized) the mortals (temporal) e.g., the piper, bold lover, willing men, unwilling women, trees, town and the Spring season that have been carved on the surface of the urn. In order to strengthen his concept of permanence and eternity, he calls the urn;

 

“Thou foster child of silence and slow time.”

 

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, same drama of pulls and strain seems to run through different sections of the poem. On one hand, he shows his dissatisfaction with the world of reality;

 

“Where men sit and hear each-others’ groans,

Where but to think is to be full of sorrows.”

 

On the other hand, he goes to admire the beautiful and amazing world of the nightingale who;

 

“…… among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret.”

 

She sings sweet songs of summer happily;

 

“In full throated ease.”

 

When he compares the immortal bird with the mortal man, the drama of his inner conflict takes place. Keats’ philosophy of life is also a manifesto of a similar contradiction in his mind;

 

“I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of heart’s affection and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth whether it existed before or not.”

 

It is a matter of common observation that Keats’ odes exhibit a variety of moods which he expresses with same competency and equal technical success. Hence, each ode is a complement of the other. They are like a well-knit structure of different ideas and moods which are taken together to present the unifying force of Keats’ inner feelings, emotions, passions and conflicts altogether.

 

Keats seems to harp on the same string in each and every poem that life in reality is transient and this conception gives birth to pangs of pain, suffering, plight and sorrow whereas art is the product of imagination which gives pleasure because of its quality of being permanent. This perception is everywhere in his poems which results in the production of conflicting ideas and thoughts in Keats’ mind and memory. In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, he says;

 

“Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve,

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!”

 

No doubt bold lover, beautiful beloved and their passion of love belong to this natural world. They are subject to dissolve ultimately. But now that they have become a part art (Poem), they will never die. Even, the beauty of the beloved will remain intact for ever and ever. Their passion of love will enjoy the same intensity just because these abstract things have become a part of art.

 

But the drama of his inner conflicts ended in a very romantic way. Mortal Keats died but his poetry (= Literature is also an art) made him immortal.

 

To conclude, we may say that Keats poetry is a record of opposites i.e., pleasure and pain, imagination and reality and transience and permanence. He is still alive in art and hearts.