Characters or theme of Ode to a nightingale
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Her, where men sit and hear each other groan;
These lines from “ode to
nightingale’’ are quite
significant to authenticate the saying that john Keats is an escapist. Keats
being very torn up with sorrows and sufferings of his existence on earth longed
flee with nightingale
in its melodious plot to get rid of his toiling moments. Riding in the viewless
wings of posy, Keats
competes and contrasts the sad, grim reality of life with the ideal and
pleasant world of the nightingale. Most of his odes are a treasure trove of
conflict, the basic conflict was on the choice between the real world and the ideal world that he created by his imagination, the other points of conflicts
are pleasure and pain, beauty and cruelty, happiness
and melancholy and the transient as well as the permanent.
But his romantic plight gets condolence at the end that earth, though full with
trouble and toil is the just place for living and human being after momentary
escape has to come back to reality.
“Ode to a nightingale’’ shows very clearly
the comparison and contrast between the happiness and immortality of the bird and the
misery and mortality of human life. The poem opens with the melancholic tone of
the poet,
“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and lethe-wards had sunk.’’
The song of the nightingale
is so appealing to the poet that provides him balmy relief to his agonies. It
becomes a symbol of everlasting joy to him and smells him narcotic release from
his pain. The song brings him excessive joy, in its excess, the joy turns into joyous pain the nightingale’s ecstatic song reminded him of the pain that man
has to face in real life. He would like to avoid this pain with the help of his
poetic
imagination. The poet expresses his deep desire to run away with the
viewless wings of poesy from the fever and fret of life and to escape into the trees
where he can forget life’s sorrows and misfortunes from which the nightingale
is quite free. He wishes to forget the fatigue, the depressing and tiresome
conditions of life and the anxieties and cares
of the world.
The imaginative world
of the nightingale
is free from all sorts of agonies. In his imaginative forest where the nightingale
is singing, he finds all the sensual enjoyments of his life. In the darkness of the forest, he could sense the
fragrance and the flowers everywhere. The whole atmosphere is pervaded by the
sweet smells of various pleasant flowers contrasting with the unpleasant
realities. John
Keats was so overwhelmed with the tranquil air of the imaginary world that he wanted to embrace death in
this situation as he is in an ecstatic
mood. As he was surrounded by happiness and beauty.
The association of
ideas lead to poet now to think of immortality; he contrasts his mortal life
with the permanence of the nightingale though nightingale is a mortal bird,
its singing is immortal. The voice of the nightingale that the poet hears today was
heard in the ancient time by Emperors and clowns fairy wizards and captive
maiden.
“ Magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn’’
The word `forlorn’ brings the poet pack from the ideal world to the world of reality. The singing of the nightingale
fades away and becomes inaudible altogether. He then bids farewell to the nightingale
and the world of beauty and realizes the truth of life. His romantic fancy transported
him into this world of beauty. But when he comes back to himself and remembers
the realities of life. Again he realizes that fancy cannot help us long. It can
captivate us and make us forget reality for a short while but it cannot solve the reality of life.
So, in Keats
masterpiece ode to nightingale we
find a dynamic tension between the real world of human beings and the ideal world
of nightingale.
The human world is portrayed as full of cruelty, diseases, unhappiness, unpleasantness,
and mortality, on the other hand, the ideal world of the nightingale is presented as ideal,
floral, pleasant, carefree, and immortal. Instead, the poet could not remain for
a long time to the dreamy world, to the world of fancy. Therefore, imagination
may have some influence to offer momentary relief from the pain of life but it
has no everlasting control over wooing the pain forever.