theme of indolence explored in 'ode on indolence'

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INDOLENCE

Question: How is the theme of indolence explored in the poem ‘ode on indolence’?

        ‘Ode on indolence’ is the praise of indolence/sluggishness; it makes the claim of the attractions of lethargy being more alluring than the attractions of the more active emotions of love, ambition and poetry. It is the admiration of the state of non-doing and non-feeling. The ode is a simple, straight forward story of a man who spends a lazy summer day in a state of numbness and does not want his visions of love, ambition and poesy to disrupt his indolence. These three figures are strikingly contrasted to the condition of indolence. The poetic persona could be Keats himself.

        The ode begins with the poetic persona seeing ‘three figures’ one summer morning passing him by in a dream/vision, as if on  a ‘marble urn’ they returned with each turn of the vase. Their description resembles that of pilgrims with ‘bowed necks, and joined hands’ wearing ‘placid sandals’ and ‘white robes’, they were seen in profile. The figures are called ‘shades’ and ‘strange’, the narrator is confused and cannot identify them.

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        The narrator’s confusion is shown in the next stanza with the repetition of the questions regarding the identity and the nature of the figures. The word ‘ripe’ is used to describe his time of idleness; this has positive innuendo and gives the impression of richness. The figures were robbing him of his ‘summer-indolence’, they are described as constructing a ‘deep-disguised plot’ and are said to ‘steal’. These terms are negative and show these figures to be menacing or malevolent at least to a slight degree. In contrast indolence is compared to a ‘blissful cloud’ that favourably makes pain numb and ...

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