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"SLEEP & POETRY" (JOHN KEATS).
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Analyzes poem's romantic view of human nature & imaginative living.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Analyzes poem's romantic view of human nature & imaginative living.
Paper Introduction:
This study will analyze the romantic view of human nature as expressed in the excerpt from John Keats' "Sleep and Poetry" beginning with the line "O for Ten Years" and ending with the line "The thought of that same chariot, and the strange/ Journey it went." The study will argue that Keats' view of human nature is indeed thoroughly romantic in this excerpt, focusing as he does on the intimate, even mystical connection between man--or at least the voice of the poet--and the idyllic world of nature. Keats expanded the Romantic tradition in poetry in that he gloried in the ability of a human being not only to face his own mortality but also to rise above it through his poetic imagination. As Harold Bloom writes,
What Keats so greatly gives to the Romantic tradition
. . . is what no poet before him had the capability of
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That career was comprised of a decade ofwriting about nature and then "climb[ing] up to the level of poetry dealingwith 'the agonies, the strife/ Of human hearts'" (Abrams 769). Bothconcerns--with nature and with the passions of human existence--areincluded in the general purview of the Romantic poet. Whether he did in fact follow thatblueprint, in this poem Keats certainly expresses the Romantic view ofhuman nature, at least insofar as it applies to the ideal poet in Keats'vision, if not to the average human being. Thereader assumes that the obscurities of the vision will be spelled out inthe later sections of the poem, but the section as it stands does not trulyprovide a clear picture of Keats' understanding of human nature. The human nature of which Keats writes in the poem,then, is a special one, defined not only by the Romantic tradition but alsoby the ideal evolution of the soul of the poet as prescribed in the poem,or at least in this "first movement" of the poem, as John Middleton Murryputs it. . Keats is suggestingas well that if the poet were to attempt to write about more serious issuesof human existence before going through this luxurious immersion in nature,he would simply be trying to perform a task for which he was not yetprepared by age or experience. Soon "the visions are all fled," along with the "car," and"in their stead/ A sense of real things comes doubly strong." What those"real things" are is not revealed in this section of the poem, but thereader is told that those things "would bear along/ My soul to nothingness"if it were not for the poet's determination to resist "all doubtings" andto remember the "chariot and the strange/ Journey it went" (Keats 771). Fordargues that in "Sleep and Poetry" as in "almost the entire body of hisverse" Keats "illustrates his conviction that systematized thought has noplace in poetry" (Ford 34). . Bloom sees this poem and its blueprint for the evolution of apoetic career as an "austere program" which led to the best of Keats'poetry when he returned to follow it after "the subjectivizing disorders"of intervening poems (Bloom 1 6-1 7). As Harold Bloom writes, What Keats so greatly gives to the Romantic tradition . Keats and the Victorians. New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1944.Keats, John. Unable to endure the lifelessness, the ugliness, the meanness of his time, he turned his back on it and sought the glory that he needed in the storied days of old Romance. Although George Ford expresses the view that Keats was far more thanthe Romantic child described by Brooke, Ford nevertheless acknowledges thatKeats is a strongly Romantic poet in his view that the highest realizationof human beings is emotional rather than rational or intellectual. to a concourse of "shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear" . The poem is meant by Keats to be a blueprint for the poet's idealcareer as envisioned by Keats and as practiced by earlier poets such asVirgil, Spenser and Milton. Studies in Poetry. I see . If the title of the poem can be said to apply to this excerpt fromthe work, the "sleep" clearly applies to the earlier phase of the poet'scareer in which he loses himself in nature and the pleasures of the naturalworld, while the "poetry" refers to the later phase in which the poetaddresses himself to, and at the same time transcends, human sufferingthrough the Romantic imagination and the contemplation and experience ofbeauty. a car." He has a vision of a chariot and a charioteer, who drives from the sky to the mountains . New York: Chelsea, 1985.Brooke, Stopford A. This study will analyze the romantic view of human nature asexpressed in the excerpt from John Keats' "Sleep and Poetry" beginningwith the line "O for Ten Years" and ending with the line "The thought ofthat same chariot, and the strange/ Journey it went." The study will arguethat Keats' view of human nature is indeed thoroughly romantic in thisexcerpt, focusing as he does on the intimate, even mystical connectionbetween man--or at least the voice of the poet--and the idyllic world ofnature. Abrams. However, in this section of the poem at least, Keats hardly draws aconvincing picture of his eventual dedication to the study and experienceof human agony and strife. . He will live immersed in natureand write about the pleasurable experiences which result, with no concernfor more profound or painful concerns. The poem begins with Keats' call for his own dedication to poetryabout nature: "First the realm I'll pass/ Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep inthe grass,/ Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,/ And choose eachpleasure that my fancy sees" (Keats 769). . . Certainly part of the message of this section of the poem is that thepoet is a superior being who is destined to rise above the daily concernsof other human beings. . Clearly, at this point in the poem the nature of theRomantic poet markedly departs from the nature of average human being. . M.H. . But the reason he gives is startling--"for lo! This power of seeing all things with a child's amazement and forgetfulness was the temper of Keats. Works CitedAbrams, M.H. . What separates the Romantic poet from the average human being, ofcourse, in Keats' scheme, is that this oats-sowing is consciously pursuedfor ten years, that the corresponding experiences are recorded lyrically inRomantic verse, and that the sowing is deliberately left behind for thepursuit of higher concerns: "And can I ever bid these joys farewell?/ Yes,I must pass them for a nobler life,/ Where I may find the agonies, thestrife/ Of human hearts" (Keats 77 ). This poem provides support for Brooke's view thatKeats at this stage of his career is representative of a Romantic visionwhich alienates the poet from the world of mundane human reality: Keats ignored the whole of the society in which he lived, and set aside all the past. AsMurry notes, the poet according to Keats' Romantic scheme will leave the world of Nature for the world of men and women. In his pursuit ofsuch a career and such concerns, Keats felt himself to be kin to suchcontemporaries as Shelley and, especially, Wordsworth (Abrams 769). Norton, 1993.Bloom, Harold (ed.). The "obscure" but certainly Romantic vision Keats describes includesfear and weeping and gloom, but there is no evidence that the poet hasexperienced anything approaching "the agonies. the charioteer is some strange embodiment of the spirit of Poetry (Murry 159). . . NewYork: W.W. . Ed. . Norton, 1993. of human hearts." The description sounds merely like a fantasy whichquickly comes and goes with no profound emotional or psychologicalreverberations. This message extended from the poet to the average human being wouldhold that every individual must, in effect, sow his or her wild oats beforebuckling down to the more profound concerns of earthly existence: "Another[nymph] will entice me on, and on/ Through almond blossoms and richcinnamon;/ Till in the bosom of a leafy world/ We rest in silence" (Keats77 ). (ed.). Keats expanded the Romantic tradition in poetry in that he gloriedin the ability of a human being not only to face his own mortality but alsoto rise above it through his poetic imagination. is what no poet before him had the capability of giving-- the sense of the human making choice of a human self, aware of its deathly nature, and yet having the will to celebrate the imaginative richness of mortality (Bloom 6). . (Brooke 2 6-2 7; 213). Keats. . The Norton Anthology of English Literature. . 769-771.Murry, John Middleton. New York: Noonday, 1962.----------------------- 6 . New York: G.P. John Keats. Stopford Brooke believes that this poem is representative of aRomantic vision which separated rather than united Keats to his fellowhuman being, a uniting which Keats claims his more mature work will bemeant to bring about. The suggestion is that the humanbeing, or at least the Romantic poet, is fulfilling his youthful destinythrough such a commitment to the "pleasure" of nature. . . The detail of the vision is obscure; but . New York: W.W. To the contrary, it would seem that heimmediately leaves behind such strife for a Romantic trip on a mystical"car" or chariot. "From 'Sleep and Poetry.'" The Norton Anthology of EnglishLiterature. Putnam's Sons,19 7.Ford, George H.
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