Keats as a Thinker

 Keats as a Thinker

John Keats was a born genius who followed his own aesthetic bent of mind and pursued truth through beauty. He wrote poetry just for the sake of art without having any palpable design on readers. Unlike Wordsworth and Shelly who had moralistic and idealistic views, Keats abhorred any didacticism in poetry and it is therefore that we call him the Purest Poet. 

In his early period of artistic activity, Keats was deeply influenced by Spenser, Milton, Shakespeare, Leigh Hunt as well as the Old romantic tales of Greek and Medieval origins. But Keats being a genius by birth adopted these influences according to his own mentality. The whole life of Keats may be described as a struggle to harmonize the life of sensation with the life of thought. He was a zestful seeker of truth. He searched for truth in beauty, in art, in nature, in eternal world of Nightingale, in human passion of melancholy and in the lethargy of indolence. In his immature work, we see him hankering after the world of ideal values and he loses reality. This strife between two human expressions; one pertaining to the world of reality and the other to the world of imagination kept John Keats in a perplexity. It is just in odes that we find him balancing a compromise between the two. In the odes, at the refined stage, Keats finds the truth of life; the harmony between the delight and despair, light and shadow. By this time, he is capable to turn unflinchingly to life and by the act of imagination he transmutes the bitterest human experience into beauty which is truth. He is no more escapist as his thoughts about life are changed. He opines that it is the sum of things that is to be viewed, not a few things and this complete view of life reveals the ultimate and universal beauty.

John Keats is basically a romantic poet turning on to the sensuous side of beauty. But we must keep in mind that it is at first the senses which stimulate a poet's imagination. So Keats starts his journey to mental ripeness from sensuous pursuing of beauty. By the clock moves forward, Keats understands experience of human life and evolves a theory of beauty which is spiritual, intellectual and realistic as well. Now he moves from mere poetry to the poetry of social sufferings and this fact vividly explains the continuous evolution of his thought.

Even at this mature stage of life, he is stirred by the beauty of the Grecian urn, but now this beauty is not sensuous as before because it takes him to discover even those beauties which are beyond senses. This beauty depicted by art makes him acquainted with truth. Then in the Ode to a Nightingale, he comes to comprehension that fancy is transitory while Ode to Melancholy discloses the close affinity of pleasure and pathos.

So, at the realistic stage of his thought, his concerns assume philanthropist shape for he is now with his fellow human beings. Keats's aestheticism, the product of romanticism is now blended with spiritual and intellectual approaches towards life and its ingredients.

Sensuousness of Keats

Sensuous poetry can be defined as a kind of poetry which is devoted, not to an idea or philosophical thought but mainly to the task of giving delight to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. All poetry in literature is basically the product of sense impressions. And it is important to keep in mind that sense impressions are the starting point of the poetic process. It shows the poet's capability to feel something around him. He finds his emotions and imagination stirred by his senses and this excitement of emotions result in poetry. A sensuous poet would have an appeal to our eye by presenting beautiful word-pictures, to our ears by musical words, to our nose by arousing a sense of smell and so on.

Keats appeals to our senses as his poetry reflects what he felt upon his pulse. The very first line of Endymion, A thing of beauty is a joy forever confirms his tendency towards sensuousness. Keats's aestheticism sees novelty in everything. He watched beauty renewing itself every day and thus opines O for a life of sensation rather than of thought. His poetry justifies his statement as it is replete with voluptuousness. Being a sensuous poet, he is superb in the handling of word-pictures, musical sounds and other sensuous techniques employed in poetry.

John Keats provides the finest feast to the senses by his pictorial art. His vivid pictures of nature and human life are master pieces. In a few words, he paints a finished picture. His mastery in pictorial art is beyond any cavil in the depiction of purely physical states such as weariness, thirst, languor and drowsiness. The pictures prepared by Keats's poetry carry statue-like quality. Ode to Psyche reveals the sensuousness of Keats in the graphic delineation of the close embrace of Psyche and Cupid. Equally sensuous is the presentation of the mad pursuit of young lovers after maidens in Ode on a Grecian Urn.

    Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

   Though winning near the goal

Our sense of hearing is dazzled by the wonderful fabric of phrases woven by Keats to present various sounds.

An ode to a Nightingale is a precious example in this context. The poet is fascinated by the charming singing of the Nightingale and he is transported to another world_ to the world of eternity. His return from the imaginative world is also associated by the sound of a word forlorn. Keats converts the whole drama in musical phrases.

There are abundant examples in Keats's poetry which haunt our memory on account of their aptness in arousing the sense of taste.

    O for a Beaker full of warm south

    Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene