KEATS’ SENSUOUSNESS

John Keats is generally known as a poet of senses. All poetry proceeds with sense impression and all poets are more or less sensuous.

Almost every reader of poetry might have read the phrases like ‘White a Lily’, ‘Cool as Evening Air’, ‘Sound of Bells’, Tasting as Honey’ and ‘Smell of Roses’. These similes appeal to our different senses. Keats is pre-eminently the poet of senses and their delights. No one has composed to gratify the five senses to the same extent as does Keats.

Impression of senses are in fact the starting point of poetic process. The emotional and imaginative reaction to poet’s senses generates poetry. Wordsworth’s imagination was stirred up by what he saw or heard in nature. Milton was no less sensitive to the beauty of flowers than Keats. The description of flowers in the Garden of Eden in ‘The Paradise Lost’ bears the witness of Milton’s sensuousness.

There are three levels of human perception e.g., sensuous, intellectual, and intuitive. Sensuous perception means that we perceive things through our five senses. Most of our knowledge, understanding and enjoyment come from our five senses. Sensuousness is the quality that strengthens the imagination and gives colour and beauty to poetry. Though all the poets are endowed with this quality yet Keats remains most outstanding because of his exuberant expression.

SENSE OF HEARING

The music of the nightingale produces pangs of pain in the poet’s heart and he abruptly says;

“Forlorn! the very word is like a bell,

To toll me back from thee to my sole self!”

SENSE OF TOUCH

The opening lines of ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ describes intense cold;

“The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.”

PICTURE OF EYE

Keats is a painter in words. With the help of a mere few words, he paints a solid and concrete picture;

“Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.”

PICTURE OF SMELL

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, the poet cannot see the flowers in darkness. However, there is mingled perfume of many flowers;

“Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves,

And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.”

SENSE OF TASTE

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, Keats gives description of many wines. The idea of their taste is intoxicating;

“O for a beaker full of the warm South,

Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene.”

TECHNI-COLOUR PICTURES

Keats paints coloured pictures. He has painted multi-coloured wines and flowers;

“Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,

With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,

And purple-stained mouth.”

Keats’ epithets are rich in sensuous quality i.e., watery darkness, delicious face, melodious plot, sun burnt mirth and embalmed darkness. His ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ contains a series of sensuous pictures;

“What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

In ‘Ode to Autumn’, the bounty of the season has been depicted with all its sensuous appeal;

“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,

Conspiring with him how to load and bless,

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run,

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core.”

Keats always selects the objects of his description with a keen eye on their sensuous appeal. Keats’ use of sensuousness has achieved the level of Shakespeare’ sensuousness. His famous drama ‘Twelfth Night’ is full of sensuous imagery;

“If music be the food of love,

Play on, give me excess of it.”

We may conclude unhesitatingly in the words that it is his love of beauty which introduces the elements of sensuousness in Keats’ poetry. His poetry is not a mere record of sense impression rather it is a spontaneous overflow of his strong imagination kindled by his senses.