Ovidius University, Constanta Faculty of Letters

The Romantic fascination with suffering in "Ode on Melancholy"

Student: Ganea Diana

Year II, Romanian - English

English Romanticism emerged as an expression of complex frames of mind, that aimed for the primacy of feeling towards the artistic work and to get rid of defunct stereotype standards and beliefs of the previous perriods. In its essence, the romantic thinking has as dominant deep emotional states and intensity of inner feeling, which is often a fanciful, melancholic, tender, sentimental, sad or a bizzare one. Among the themes and fascinations that the English Romantic poetry develops concerning human frames of mind and feelings, the main ones are nature, love and suffering. In his poem, Ode on melancholy, John Keats illustrates suffering as the expression of an inner torment, fear, pain and despair of the individual in front of the indissolubility between joy and grief. This ode expresses Keats's view wholeheartedly: one must fully experience the heavy pain and sadness in order to reach joy and live it at its climax. From a formal point of view, it is structured in 3 stanzas. The first of them potentiates the imagery of mental suffering and torments that delusion and despair might have upon the human, which Keats urges us not to give in, nor try to escape them. The poet's passionate outcry not to reject melancholy is presented negatively: "no", "not", "neither", "nor". The repetition of the negator, "No, no" are both accented, emphasized; their forcefulness expresses convincingly the speaker's passionate state. The degree of pain that melancholy may cause is implied by the "remedies" or ways to avoid it, either oblivion or death. In order to potentiate the somber, deadly sentiment, and the impression of unescapable, Keats makes references to mythology symbols, such as the river of Lethe, Proserpine, Psyche, as well as using words refering to death are the poisoneous wolf-bane, the death-moth, the ruby grape, the downy owl. The poem also abound in fine methaphors, personifications : "(...) thy pale forehead to be kiss'd/ By nightshade", "Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be/ Your mournful Psyche, And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips/ Bidding adieu", "Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine", etc. In the last two lines of stanza I, Keats specifies the consequences of seeking escape from pain - a deadening ("drowning") of the soul or consciousness. The anguish is "wakeful," because the sufferer still feels, and so still has the capacity to experience joy, though this fact will not become clear till later in the poem. Stanza II suggests what should be done: embrace the transient beauty and joy of both nature and human experience, which contain pain and death. Lines 1-4 describe the physical circumstances literally and the emotional circumstances figuratively. There appear clouds that are "weeping", causing the peonies to be "droop-headed", that can be interpreted in two ways: on a literal level, the rain has caused them to droop; on a figurative level, "droop-headed" connotes sadness, grief. The rain temporarily hides the view or hill ( the hill seen as a romantic motive, connoting melancholy), which is green, connoting fertility, beauty, aliveness, and it retains these qualities whether we can see them at a particular moment or not. The rain which cuts visibility is called a "shroud", an obvious death reference, but the month is April, a time when nature renews itself, comes alive after winter's barrenness and harshness ( in relation to stanza I). The last four lines turn from nature to humans. The imagery of wealth (her anger is "rich") and eating intently ("feed deep") tie the natural and the human worlds and the two divisions of the stanza together. The words "glut", "feed deep" and "emprison" imply passionate involvement in experience; also the eating imagery suggests that melancholy is incorporated into, becomes part of and nourishes the individual. The food imagery is continued in stanza III. The lover, while the object of her angry raving, also enjoys her beauty ("peerless eyes").

In stanza III, "She" refers both to the beloved in stanza II and to melancholy. Lines 1-3 explain the basis for the advice of stanza II; beauty dies, joy is brief: while we are experiencing joy, it is waving "bidding adieu" to us. As well, pleasure is painful: Keats uses a very original and full of meaning oxymoron "aching pleasure". Line 4 offers a specific example of the abstractions of lines 1-3; as the bee sips nectar, the nectar turns to poison. Having shown the inextricably mixed nature of life, excitment and suffering, Keats moves on to talk about melancholy explicitly. He implies that it is found in pleasure, in delight. Melancholy is "veil'd" because it is hidden from us during pleasure, which is generally what we are aware of and are absorbed in. However there are those who see melancholy-in-delight. They live intensely, vigorously; the language reflects their exuberance and power, "strenuous" and "burst". Their sensitivity to life is of the highest quality, "palate fine". In the end of this poem, we see the reward of the "wakeful anguish of the soul" of stanza I. The possessor of the wakeful soul shall taste melancholy's sadness. The change of tense, from present pleasure to future melancholy, expresses their relationship: one is part of and inevitably follows the other. Keats concludes that the wakeful soul will be the "trophy" gained or won from melancholy. Trophy is described as "cloudy," which has negative overtones. "Ode on melancholy" brings forward the fascination for suffering in English Romantic literature, which is illustrated in this poem as a mental one, but which Keats manages, due to his aestetic finesse and remarkably art and original stylistic means, to imprime the valence of phisical suffering, as well. The nature of the poem is to state the inseparable nature of opposites in life: joy, spiritual consummance and excellence, ecstasy cannot be reached unless suffering, grief and melancholy have been experienced as well.

Bibliography: 1. Bloom, Harold, "John Keats", Blooms Major Poets 2. "A Guide to the Study of Literature: A Companion Text for Core Studies 6, Landmarks of Literature, English Department, Brooklyn College