KEATS AS AN ESCAPIST

 

John Keats was an ardent lover of beauty. He had an extra-ordinary visionary sensibility for beautiful objects of nature. Therefore, he cried;

 

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

 

This was the life long creed of Keats. But, did his love and pursuit of beauty make him ignore the actualities of life? let’s evaluate his poetry to decide whether he was an escapist or not. In one of his early poems, ‘Sleep and Poetry’, he says that he will plunge into the realm of Flora and Pan. It was the world of beauty free from pain and ugliness. Then Keats himself puts the question in the next lines;

 

“Can I ever bid these joys farewell?”

 

Then comes the answer in the proceeding lines;

 

“Yes! I must bid these joys farewell,

Yes! I must pass them for a nobler life,

Where I must find the agonies, the strife of human hearts.”

 

These are not the words of an escapist. Now, another question haunts our mind i.e., did Keats follow this ideal of life. In one of his letters, he wrote;

 

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

 

Now, the question arises whether Keats really escapes from the harsh and bitter realities of life and seeks refuge in his imagination. To evaluate this, let us look at his background.

 

Keats was born at a time when the whole of Europe was shaken by the ideas of revolution. He grew up in this atmosphere. But in his poetry, these ideas never found expression. Actually, Keats was a pure poet. He never allowed politics to disturb the pure water of his poetry. His mental development was very rapid and he was seeking and searching for truth in his soul.

 

Now, his early hankering after the world of Flora and Pan seems a tale of his past. He has subjected himself to the actualities of life. He has started facing life with all its uncertainties, contradictions, joys and sorrows. Keats says;

 

“Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.”

 

In ‘Ode on Melancholy’, he points out how sadness is connected with joy and beauty. The rose id beautiful indeed. But, we cannot think of the rose without its thorns. It is therefore, impossible to escape from the inevitable pain in life.

 

At the same time, the poem also means that man must enjoy the pleasure of life to their full intensity because these pleasures can be over any moment rather one must prepare oneself for the gloomy period of one’s life well in advance.

 

‘Ode to Nightingale’ relates Keats’ experience with the bird. He loses his identity and enters the very soul of the bird.

 

“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,

But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.”

 

But he is also aware of the miseries of the world;

 

“Where youth grows pale, and specter-thin, and dies,

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

 

The ‘Ode to Autumn’ is the last and the matures of Keats’ odes. In other odes, we see a romantic poet searching for truth. But in this ode, Keats becomes able to communicate the feelings of fulfilment by resolving dream and reality.

 

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom friend of the maturing sun.”

 

One thing is else clear and evident that Keats has expressed ever his joy in beauty;

 

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that’s all,

Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.”

 

Stopford Brook says;

 

“Keats was so preoccupied with beauty that he turned a blind eye to the actualities of life around him.”

 

But the fact is that Keats was not an escapist. Although he wants to escape from the realities of life but he is aware of the sorrows and sufferings of the real life. He wants to embrace this world with all its miseries and sufferings with an openness of mind.

 

In a nutshell, Keats was not an escapist as he is sometimes considered to be.