John Keats(济慈)
(1795-1821)
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” ---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
------------“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
• I mean Negative Capability, that is when
man is capable of being in uncertainties,
Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason.
• I am certain of nothing but the holiness
of the Heart‘s affections and the truth of
Imagination - What the imagination
seizes as Beauty must be truth ，
whether it existed before or not；for I
have the same Idea of all our Passions
as of Love they are all in their sublime,
creative of essential Beauty.
- Keats in letter to Benjamin Bailey
Also see
(Saturday 22 November, 1817) p294 and
p299
While still in good health, Keats was
ambitious of doing the world some good,
instead of focusing on his own sensitive
soul. Towards the end of his life he
despaired, believing that he had
accomplished nothing in his life. He
asked that his name not appear on his
epitaph and that it read instead, "Here
lies one whose name was writ in water."
In accordance with his wishes, his friend
Joseph Severn had the following
engraved on his tombstone:
This Grave contains all that was
Mortal of a YOUNG ENGLISH
POET Who, on his Death Bed, in
the Bitterness of his Heart, at the
malicious Power of his Enemies
Desired these Words to be engraven on his Tomb Stone: Here
lies One Whose Name was writ in
Water Feb 24th, 1821.
“Here lies one
whose name
was writ in
water."
The first important poem :
on First looking into chapman's Homer
Some well-known poems:
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•
•
•
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Endymion
Isabella
The Eve of St. Agnes
Lamia
Hyperion
Endymion
Mature Odes
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•
•
•
•
Ode to Autumn
Ode to Melancholy
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to psyche
Appreciation of
Writing of This Poem
The exact date of composition is
uncertain, sometime in the second
half of May 1819. Charles Brown, one
of Keats’s closest companions and in
whose house Keats commonly resided,
recalls the moment when Keats wrote
the poem in a letter to Lord Houghton:
In the spring of 1819 a nightingale
had built her nest near my house.
Keats felt a tranquil and continual
joy in her song; and one morning
he took his chair from the breakfast
table to the grass-plot under a
plum-tree, where he sat for two or
three hours. When he came into
the house, I perceived he had some
scraps of paper in his hand, and
these he was quietly thrusting
behind some books.
On inquiry, I found those
scraps, four or five in number,
contained his poetic feeling on
the song of our nightingale.
The writing was not well legible;
and it was difficult to arrange
the stanzas on so many scraps.
With his assistance I succeeded,
and this was his 'Ode to a
Nightingale', a poem which has
been the delight of every one.
In 1818, Keats's brother Tom was
diagnosed with tuberculosis. Keats
abandoned his faltering medical
studies to care for him. Tom died in
his arms in early 1819. By the late
summer of 1819, Keats himself had
been diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Although he had long hoped to
marry his sweetheart, Fanny
Brawne, he knew by this time he
would not live long enough to
marry her. All his great odes were
written during this period, from May
to September, 1819.
Stanza 1
• What is the speaker's state of
mind in the first stanza?
• How does the nightingale
contribute to this mood?
Stanza 1
• The poet falls into a reverie while listening
to an actual nightingale sing. He feels joy
and pain, an ambivalent response.
夜莺颂
我的心在痛，困顿和麻木
刺进了感官，有如饮过毒鸠，
又象是刚刚把鸦片吞服，
于是向着列斯忘川下沉：
并不是我嫉妒你的好运，
而是你的快乐使我太欢欣－－
因为在林间嘹亮的天地里，
你呵，轻翅的仙灵，
你躲进山毛榉的葱绿和荫影，
放开歌喉，歌唱着夏季。
Stanza 2
What desire is expressed
in the second stanza?
What sort language and
imagery does Keats use
to articulate his desire?
Apollo and Muses on
Mt. Helicon
Keats's Imagery
•
Keats's imagery ranges among all our physical
sensations: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell,
temperature, weight, pressure, hunger, thirst, sexuality,
and movement. Keats repeatedly combines different
senses in one image, that is, he attributes the trait(s) of
one sense to another, a practice called synaesthesia. His
synaesthetic imagery performs two major functions in his
poems: it is part of their sensual effect, and the
combining of senses normally experienced as separate
suggests an underlying unity of dissimilar happenings,
the oneness of all forms of life. Richard H. Fogle calls
these images the product of his "unrivaled ability to
absorb, sympathize with, and humanize natural objects."
Synaesthes
ia
Mixing of sensations. It is the
response through several senses to
the stimulation of one. For instance,
“hearing” a “colour,” or “seeing” a
“smell”.
Examples of Synaesthetic Images
• In some MELODIOUS plot / Of BEECHEN GREEN
(stanza I)
Combines sound ("melodious") and sight ("beechen green")
• TASTING of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker of the warm South, (stanza II)
Here the poet TASTES the visual ("Flora and the country
green"), activity ("Dance"), sound ("Provencal song"), and
mood or pleasure ("mirth"); also the visual ("sunburnt") is
combined with a pleasurable emotional state ("mirth"). With
the beaker there is finally something to taste, but what is being
tasted is temperature ("warm") and a location ("South").
Stanza 2
• Wanting to escape from the pain of a joypain reality, the poet begins to move into a
world of imagination or fantasy. He calls for
wine. His purpose is clearly not to
get drunk. Rather he associates
wine with some quality or state he
is seeking. The description of
drinking and of the world
associated with wine is idealized.
哎，要是有一口酒！那冷藏
在地下多年的清醇饮料，
一尝就令人想起绿色之邦，
想起花神，恋歌，阳光和舞蹈！
要是有一杯南国的温暖
充满了鲜红的灵感之泉，
杯沿明灭着珍珠的泡沫，
给嘴唇染上紫斑；
哦，我要一饮而离开尘寰，
和你同去幽暗的林中隐没：
Stanza 3
How does the third stanza define
unhappiness?
远远地、远远隐没，让我忘掉
你在树叶间从不知道的一切，忘
记这疲劳、热病、和焦躁，
这使人对坐而悲叹的世界；
在这里，青春苍白、消瘦、死亡，
而“瘫痪”有几根白发在摇摆；
在这里，稍一思索就充满了
忧伤和灰色的绝望，
而“美”保持不住明眸的光彩，
新生的爱情活不到明天就枯凋。
Stanza 3
• His awareness of the real world pulls him
back from the imagined world of drink-joy. He
explains his desire to fade away, saying he
would like to forget the troubles the
nightingale has never known: "the weariness,
the fever, and the fret" of human life, with its
consciousness that everything is mortal and
nothing lasts. Youth "grows pale, and spectrethin, and dies," and "beauty cannot keep her
lustrous eyes."
Stanza 4
• What does the speaker claim will
enable him to achieve what he has
wished for in the two previous
stanzas? Why does it fly with
“viewless wings”? What sort of
escape does poetry appear to offer?
How does the problem of “not
seeing” carry over into the next
stanza?
Synaesthetic Image
• But here here is no LIGHT,
Save what from heaven is with the
BREEZES BLOWN
Combines sight ("light") with touch/movement
("breezes blown"). This image describes light
filtering through leaves moved by the wind.
去吧！去吧！我要朝你飞去，
不用和酒神坐文豹的车驾，
我要展开诗歌底无形羽翼，
尽管这头脑已经困顿、疲乏；
去了！呵，我已经和你同往！
夜这般温柔，月后正登上宝座，
周围是侍卫她的一群星星；
但这儿却不甚明亮，
除了有一线天光，被微风带过，
葱绿的幽暗，和苔藓的曲径。
Stanza 4
• The speaker tells the nightingale to fly away,
and he will follow, not through alcohol ("Not
charioted by Bacchus and his pards"), but
through poetry, which will give him
"viewless wings." He says he is already
with the nightingale and describes the
forest glade, where even the moonlight is
hidden by the trees, except the light that
breaks through when the breezes blow the
branches.
Stanza 5
• What does the speaker experience
in stanza 5?
Synaesthetic Image
• Nor what SOFT INCENSE HANGS upon
the boughs
Combines touch ("soft"), weight ("hangs"), and
smell ("incense).
我看不出是哪种花草在脚旁，
什么清香的花挂在树枝上；
在温馨的幽暗里，我只能猜想
这个时令该把哪种芬芳
赋予这果树，林莽，和草丛，
这白枳花，和田野的玫瑰，
这绿叶堆中易谢的紫罗兰，
还有五月中旬的娇宠，
这缀满了露酒的麝香蔷薇，
它成了夏夜蚊蚋的嗡萦的港湾。
Stanza 5
• Because the poet cannot see in the
darkness, he must rely on his other
senses. He cannot see the flowers in
the glade, but can guess them "in
embalmed darkness": white hawthorne,
eglantine, violets, and the musk-rose,
"the murmurous haunt of flies on
summer eves."
Stanza 6
What is the attitude
toward death in the
sixth stanza? How
does it compare
with Stanza three?
我在黑暗里倾听：呵，多少次
我几乎爱上了静谧的死亡，
我在诗思里用尽了好的言辞，
求他把我的一息散入空茫；
而现在，哦，死更是多么富丽：
在午夜里溘然魂离人间，
当你正倾泻着你的心怀
发出这般的狂喜！
你仍将歌唱，但我却不再听见－
你的葬歌只能唱给泥草一块。
Stanza VI
The poet begins to distance himself from the
nightingale, which he joined in imagination in stanzas IV
and V.
Keats yearns to die, a state which he imagines as only
joyful, as pain-free, and to merge with the bird's song.
The nightingale is characterized as wholly blissful--"fullthroated ease" in stanza I and "pouring forth thy soul
abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (lines 7-8).
In the last two lines, the poet no longer identifies with
the bird. He realizes what death means for him; death is
not release from pain; rather it means non-existence, the
inability to feel the bird's ecstasy.
Stanza 7
• Why does Keats call
the bird immortal? In
what sense does Keats
exclude it from the
experience of death?
• In the beginning the bird is presented as a real bird, but
as the poem progresses, the bird becomes a symbol.
What do you think the bird comes to symbolize?
Possible meanings include
 ---is he saying the bird is a symbol of the continuity of
nature or the bird represents the continuing presence of
joy in life? In such a reading, the poet contrasts the bird's
immortality (and continuing joyful song) with the
condition of human beings, "hungry generations."
 ---Does the bird symbolize ideal beauty, which is
immortal? Or is the bird the visionary or imaginative
realm which inspires poets?
 ---Does this one bird represent the species, which by
continuing generation after generation does achieve a
kind of immortality as a species?
• 永生的鸟呵，你不会死去！
饥饿的世代无法将你蹂躏；
今夜，我偶然听到的歌曲
曾使古代的帝王和村夫喜悦；
或许这同样的歌也曾激荡
露丝忧郁的心，使她不禁落泪，
站在异邦的谷田里想着家；
就是这声音常常
在失掉了的仙域里引动窗扉：
一个美女望着大海险恶的浪花。
Stanza 7
Keats moves from his awareness of his own
mortality in the preceding stanza to the perception of
the bird's immortality. On a literal level, his perception
is wrong; this bird will die. Interpreting the line literally
may be a misreading, because the bird has clearly
become a symbol for the poet. The poet contrasts the
bird's singing and immunity from death and suffering
with human beings, "hungry generations." The stanza
begins in the poet's present (note the present tense verbs
tread and hear in lines 2 and 3).
Keats then makes three references to the bird's
singing in the past; the mixed nature of reality
manifests itself in his imagining the nightingale's
joyous song being heard by in the past in the series
of three images. The story of Ruth is unhappy (what
words indicate her pain?). In the third image, the
"charm'd magic casements" of fairy are "forlorn" and
the seas are "perilous." These words hint at the pain
the poet recognized in the beginning of the poem and
is trying to escape.
Stanza 8
How does the narrator
separate from the
Nightingale? On what
terms? What is his state
of mind? How does it
compare with that
expressed in the
poem’s opening?
呵，失掉了！这句话好比一声钟
使我猛醒到我站脚的地方！
别了！幻想，这骗人的妖童，
不能老耍弄它盛传的伎俩。
别了！别了！你怨诉的歌声
流过草坪，越过幽静的溪水，
溜上山坡；而此时，它正深深
埋在附近的溪谷中：
噫，这是个幻觉，还是梦寐？
那歌声去了：－－我是睡？是醒？
Stanza 8
• The poet repeats the word "forlorn" from the end of
stanza VII; who or what is now forlorn? In lines 2 and
3, the poet says that "fancy" (imagination) has
cheated him, as has the "elf" (bird). The bird has
ceased to be a symbol and is again the actual bird
the poet heard in stanza I. The poet, like the
nightingale, has returned to the real world. The bird
flies away to another spot to sing. The bird's song
becomes a "plaintive anthem" and fainter. With the
last two lines, the poet wonders whether he has had
a true insight or experience or whether he has been
daydreaming. Of course, the imaginative experience
is by its nature transient or brief.
• A major concern in "Ode to a Nightingale" is
Keats's perception of the conflicted nature of
human life, i.e., the interconnection or mixture
of pain/joy, intensity of feeling/numbness of
feeling, life/death, mortal/immortal, the
actual/the ideal, dream or vision/reality, and
separation/connection.
• So are Keats’s life and his other poems.
Other conflicts appear in Keats's poetry:
transient sensation or passion / enduring art,
being immersed in passion / desiring to
escape passion, etc.
• Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important
poems are related to, or grow directly out
of...inner conflicts." For example, pain and
pleasure are intertwined in "Ode to a
Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn"; love is
intertwined with pain, and pleasure is intertwined
with death in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," "The
Eve of St. Agnes," and "Isabella; or, the Pot of
Basil."
•
Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that is
the theme of "Ode to a Nightingale" somewhat
differently: "the world of imagination offers a
release from the painful world of actuality, yet at
the same time it renders the world of actuality
more painful by contrast."
• All odes grew out of
a persistent kind of experience which dominated Keats's
feelings, attitudes, and thoughts during that time. Each of them
is a unique experience, but each of them is also, as it were, a
facet of a larger experience. This larger experience is an
intense awareness of both the joy and pain, the happiness and
the sorrow, of human life. This awareness is feeling and
becomes also thought, a kind of brooding as the poet sees them
in others and feels them in himself. This awareness is not only
feeling; it becomes also thought, a kind of brooding
contemplation of the lot of human beings, who must satisfy
their desire for happiness in a world where joy and pain are
inevitably and inextricably tied together. This union of joy and
pain is the fundamental fact of human experience that Keats
has observed and accepted as true.
Wright Thomas and Stuart Gerry Brown
A General Analysis
“Ode to a Nightingale” was inspired by the
singing of a nightingale that had built its nest
close to the house of a friend of the poet in
Hampstead. At that time, Keats’ brother Tom
had just died, he himself was threatened with
consumption. In the beginning the bird is
presented as a real bird, but as the poem
progresses, the bird becomes a symbol. The
song of the nightingale symbolized for him a
lasting beauty which lured him temporarily
away from his great misery into an exquisite
desire to the forest with the bird.
The first impression he gets from the
singing of the nightingale involves his
heartache and the drowsy numbness of his
senses coming as if under the effect of
hemlock or dull opiate. The cheerfulness of
the bird is a sharp comparison to the human
miseries. The poet wished he would forget all
the painful memories by the power of wine,
but in vain. Then the nightingale’s song made
him feel that he was flying with it to the
Queen-moon “on summer eves” and further
carried him away to the ancient times and far-off
lands. All this made him forget his painful life on
earth. But the nightingale flew away with its
sweet song, and the poet was left alone to face
The cold reality again.
So in this ode, Keats not only expressed his
raptures upon hearing the beautiful songs of the
nightingale and his desire to go to the
ethereal world of beauty together with the bird,
but he also shows his deep sympathy for and
his keen understanding of human miseries in
the society in which he lived.
The whole poem contains 8 stanzas each
consisting of ten lines of iambic verse and a
rime scheme of ababcdecde. All the lines in
each stanza are in iambic pentameter, with the
exception of the 8th line which has only 3 feet.