Escapism of Keats

Keats’ view of reality and imagination #

Contrast between reality and imagination, between art and reality #

The word escapist is often entitled to the name of Keats because of his
escaping tendency (from the real world to an imaginative world). Having
been experienced from the bitter realities of his life, wherever he sees
some beautiful pictures depicted on an ‘Urn’ or hears the song of a
nightingale, he tries to dip into or to fly to an ideal world of happiness,
beauty, music and imagination (through his ‘viewless wings of Poesy’),
forgetting his reality in the world. But this little moment of pure
happiness does not last long; he is to come back to this world again. ‘Ode
to a Nightingale’ is an excellent example of Keats’ escapism in his
.poetry

Keats’ escape is from his real life to an imaginative and ideal world. But
why is this escape from the inevitable place? – Because, according to
Keats, reality of human life is full of suffering, pain etc; this world is not
a desirable place. He has summed up his individual as well as common
sufferings of life in the following lines of stanza 11 of the poem ‘Ode to a
– ’Nightingale
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
;Here, where men sit and hear each other groan
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs
;Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
;And leaden-eyed despairs
,Where beauty can not keep her lustrous eyes
.Or, new love pine at them beyond tomorrow
Here he remembers the bitterness of his own life and reminds us that of
our life. He considers that life is full of misery, sorrow and disease, of
tiring struggle, of restlessness and pain; that life is nothing but a series of
groans and complaints; that old men’s life is helpless and pitiful, having
lost the control over their limbs and their hair being grey; that even the
young are dying of terrible disease- that is, the poet here thinks of his
young brother Tom, dying just before his eyes; that for thoughtful or
sensitive but thoughtless persons, there is no happiness in reality; that
beauty is short-lived; that one’s love for another does not last long – that
is, he remembers his beloved Fanny Browne’s rejection of his young love
.and turning to others. This is the view of reality by Keats

When does Keats think of escaping from the reality of his life? Is there
any particular time? – Yes. Keats life-long creed is ‘A thing of beauty is a
joy for ever’ (Endymion). So wherever he sees any beautiful picture or
scenery or hears any attractive melody or song, he feels joy, and forgets
his harsh reality, and becomes one with that, and thus he escapes. For
examples, having seen a beautiful Urn in British Museum, he forgets his
– .position, even he talks with the pictures depicted on the Urn, e.g
Ah, happy, happy boughs that cannot shed
.Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu
Again, having heard the song of a nightingale, his sense begins to loose in
,excessive joy as if he has drunk hemlock. As a result, he says
.One minute past, and lathe-wards had sunk“

Here lithe is a river of Greek mythology; he who drinks from it forgets

.all. So, the poet has forgotten all, having heard the song

How does Keats escape from reality? What is his medium or transport? –
– Keats’ own word gives answer to these questions
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards“
”.But on the viewless wings of poesy
That is, his is not any transport of physical existence like Bacchus, the
God of wine. Rather he has poetic imagination for this sake. It is more
.suitable to him than anything else

Hearing the song of the nightingale which is singing, probably, away

from him, Keats forgets his reality. Now, through his poetic imagination,
he depicts in his mind the nightingale’s happy abode, its healing
surroundings which have made him forget all pains of life. Now we can
.look at that imaginative world

Keats imagines the happy nightingale and its happy surroundings in the
– following lines through excellent images and word selection
That thou, light winged Dryad of the trees“
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless
”.Singest of summer in full-throated ease
That is the nightingale, compared as a nymph, is singing, without
hesitation, in such a plot which is full of melody, greenery and dreamy
.shadows and where summer is remaining

Moreover, Keats longs for a draught of long-aged vintage, for a beaker of

warm southern wine, compared with the foundation of the Muses, so the
,poet says
That I might drink, and leave the world‘
And with thee fade away into the unseen forest dim
.But he rejects this way of escaping
Then, through ‘the viewless wings of Poesy’, ‘though the dull brain
perplexes and retards’ his mind, he has already come, as if physically, to
– the imaginative world of the nightingale. He says
,Already with thee! Tender is the night“
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne
”.Clustered around by all her story Fays

In this way, in stanza 5,6 & 7 of the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, Keats leads
us to such a place where he feels the existence of various flowers in the
dank night from their smells; where he feels death better than life, but
again thinks that if he dies he will not be able to listen to the beautiful and
.permanent song

In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Keats, seeing the pictures on the Urn,

dissolves in them through imagination, as if he is with them who seem to
.be alive

But Keats’ world of imagination remains only a short while. When he

thinks that the Urn and the song of the nightingale will remain for ages
but he will not, rather he is ‘forlorn’, he comes back to reality. He says in
– ’the last stanza of ‘Ode to a Nightingale
Forlorn! The very would is like a bell“
.”To toll me back from thee to my sole self

That is the word ‘forlorn’ reminds his position in ‘the weariness, the fever
and the fret’, like the ‘alarm clocks’ of our mobile phones turn us from
our dreamy sleep to the world of bitter reality. He calls ‘fancy’,
‘deceiving elf’. Moreover, “the music which almost succeeded in making
him ‘fade far away’ now itself fades and in a moment is ‘buried deep in
the next valley-glades’(lines:77-78)” (Clearth Brooks and Robert Penn
Warren)

Therefore, we see that Keats is so disgusted with the real life that he
– always tries to escape from it. C.D. Thorpe says
The moment of insight with him was a moment of complete emotion, “
absorption in which the poet lost even his own senses of being in intense
pursuit of his imaginative query. The extreme of this activity was a flight,
far away from the fret and fever of life into a realm of imaginative delight
into a region of abstractions of the poets own creations.”(The Mind of
John Keats)
Even he has no revolutionary concerns of the age in his poems, while
other Romantic poets, e.g. Wordsworth, Shelley have eagerly greeted the
revolutions and Byron deals with social problems. Though Keats’
escapism is individual, it sometimes becomes common, when we seek a
.suitable place to relieve from the bitterness of our life