"Keats' Odes are obsessed by the imagination's possibilities and limits." Discuss.

There are, however, signs of a struggle between the powers of imagination and reality within the poem. Although Keats recreates within himself the rites and worship that Psyche has been denied by history there appears to be a conflict between the wild, sensory, pastoral depiction of the lovers’ bower in the first part of the poem and the controlled, contrived and limited garden that the speaker creates. The “deepest grass” and “tremblèd blossoms” of natural forest is replaced with a “rosy sanctuary,” still filled with “buds and bells and stars without a name” (P 61) but confined within its proscribed limits.  If we accept this interpretation then, rather than a celebration of the powers of “fancy,” Ode to Psyche becomes an exploration of its inadequacies in comparison with the wild variety of reality. Consequently “If the teeming garden of the ode’s final stanza is Keats’ metaphor for the modern psyche one can say the possibilities for cultivation are either limitless or depressingly circumscribed.” Keats is deliberately ambiguous, drawing back from any clear solution to these issues. The final image of the poem the “casement ope at night, /To let the warm love in,” (P 66-7) returns to the legend of Cupid and Psyche and the bright torch and the openness of the window seem to indicate a at least partially positive conclusion; the imagination, thought it might be confined to the room of the mind, is open to the world outside.

Ode to a Nightingale develops many of these concerns about the possible extent of the power of the imagination. Keats again fashions a complex imaginary world, building the metaphoric importance of the bird until it becomes a symbol of immortality. The imagination in Nightingale is presented as a form of escapism, a way to reduce the pains of human existence. At first the nightingale seems to tease the speaker, it “singest of summer in full-throated ease” (N 10) in contrast to the speakers melancholy state: “My heart aches.”(N 1) In the second stanza Keats employs powerful descriptive imagery, longing for “a beaker of the warm South” (N 15) to engender an escape from human suffering. The speaker however rejects this artificial escapism in favour of the powers of the imagination to create a world “not charioted by Bacchus and his pards/ but on the viewless wings of Poesy.” (N 32-3) The image of the nightingale that is created is one made entirely of the imagination. The intense beauty of the bird  which is “too happy in thine happiness”(N 6) convinces the speaker that the bird cannot be mortal or have ever experienced suffering and so compares this imagined immortality with the transience and pain of human existence:

“Where Youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies.”(N 37-9) Keats develops the power of the imagination by removing the sense of sight from the speaker: “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,” (N 41) creating a world of sounds and smells in which the nightingale’s song dominates. The bird becomes an eternal, constant symbol of beauty and perfection as Keats places it in history, drawing on the biblical figure of Ruth to emphasise the longevity of the nightingales “self-same song.”(N 65) The bird becomes a mythical creature, inhabiting both the far off historical world of the ancients and of romance and legend in “faery lands forlorn.”(N 70) Keats therefore again develops a powerful demonstration of the possibilities of the imagination. Despite confining himself to one, unseen, object he is able to confer a symbolic importance to the bird and reaffirm the powers of the imagination to allow an escape from the self and the pain of existence.

Despite this the imaginative powers in Nightingale are not sufficient. The escapist fantasy cannot be sustained and the speaker must return “back from thee to my sole self!”(N 72) “‘Forlorn’ concedes that fancy’s quest has failed…Visionary imagination shuts down.” The speaker cannot sustain his imaginative fallacy, the imagination is not powerful enough to counteract life’s harsh realities: “The fancy cannot cheat so well/ As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.” (N 73-4) The nightingale loses the mythical quality that the speaker has invested it with and becomes simply a bird again. The limits of the imagination are therefore shown. Although they can provide an escapist fantasy, a break from the pain and suffering of reality, this cannot be sustained and the vision must fade. Despite this failing in the strength of the imagination the vision is still vitally important. Although the speaker cannot sustain his escape, the imaginative act of creating has allowed him to reconcile himself to reality and strengthen him in his resolve to go on living. Having rejected alcohol induced escape from life in favour of the powers of the imagination he is then able to reject death as an escape by contemplating the pleasures he would miss when he died; “Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain” (N 59) The imagination in Ode to a Nightingale therefore performs a vital purpose for the speaker. In escaping, however briefly, from the pain and suffering of human existence he is strengthened in his resolve to continue the human experience.  

 Ode on a Grecian Urn is perhaps Keats finest imaginary construct following “The fine curve of Keats imagination as it enters the surface of the urn to bring its scenes to life only to slowly withdraw.” He describes and interrogates the urn, demanding answers from the “foster child of silence” (GU 2). When the urn will not answer his frantic questions he turns to the imagination for answers, ascribing motives and histories to the figures portrayed. The figures on the urn are trapped in a perfect moment and Keats contrasts this with the transience of the temporal world:

 “She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

        Forever wilt thou love and she be fair!”(GU 19-20)

In the still perfection of the world of the urn there is no pain or death but equally “all human passion” is “far above.” (GU 28) The price for immortality therefore is the passionate pleasure of humanity.

In the fourth stanza the speaker describes another panel of the urn, a festival scene of townspeople going to a sacrifice. He then creates an imaginative world outside the panel depicting the “little town” whose streets forever more/ Will silent be.”(GU 38-39) Keats endows this imaginative town with a sense of reality: “the poet has created in his own imagination the town implied by the procession of worshippers, has given it a special character of desolation and loneliness, and then gone on to treat it as if it were a real town.” The reader is drawn into this fiction, moving from the sculptured stone of the urn to this imaginary emptiness. However Keats imaginative powers are even greater than this fiction, we must remember that the seemingly solid urn is in itself a construct of the imagination for “Keats is observer and creator of the urn.” He has fashioned an imaginary speaker meditating on an imaginary urn, and using his imaginative powers to create further worlds beyond it.

As in Nightingale, however, Keats imaginative world seems to be inadequate in the way that it cannot experience human emotions, pleasure or pain. He rejects the urn as “Cold Pastoral!” devoid of the emotions that are a necessary experience for man. In light of this the much debated final lines of the poem:

        ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’- That is all

        Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (GU 59-50)

Seem to provide an inadequate conclusion no matter how they are punctuated. If, however one takes it as I do, that the urn speaks only the first part, then the final line and a half can both reinforce and undermine the urn’s statement. The maxim: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” is real in the immortal but sterile world of the urn but this world is cold and desolate compared to human passions. If Keats is addressing the urn then the statement “That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know” can imply that the urn’s statement is simultaneously true but inadequate. Whilst it is all the urn knows on earth and all the urn needs to know it is, perhaps, an inadequate conclusion for both the speaker and the reader, who exist in the world of passionate reality. Ode on a Grecian Urn therefore is both an exercise in the complex creative powers of the imagination to create worlds within worlds and, at the same time, a critique of the powers of the artistic imagination which, though compelling and powerful, is cold compared to the human possibilities of reality.

 Ode on Melancholy reiterates many of the ideas found in the earlier odes but it also represents a movement away from, or even a rejection of, the powers of the imagination: “The Ode on Melancholy eschews any flight into imaginative realms, keeping its focus steadily on the real… world of objects.” Like Ode to a Nightingale the poem opens by rejecting artificial modes of escaping from the pain of life: “No, no, go not to Lethe,” (M 1) his rejection of death or unconscious oblivion, however, is not performed, as in Nightingale, in favour of the power of the imagination. Instead Keats offers a human solution to human suffering, advocating an acceptance, even indulgence of melancholy as experiencing great pain allows us to experience great pleasure:

        Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose…

        Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,

        Emprison her soft hand and let her rave. (M 14, 18-19)

Keats therefore moves away from a conception of the imagination as a means of escape from the problems of life and instead advocates a communion with the natural world and human interaction as a means of coping with mortality.

The final stanza acknowledges this temporal nature of life: “She dwells with Beauty- Beauty that must die;” (M 21) but also links darker side of the human condition with the intenseness of positive emotions; only those who “can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine” (M 28) can “taste the sadness” of Melancholy's might. Consequently Keats’ solution to the experiences of both pleasure and pain in Melancholy is to indulge both emotions as they are inextricably linked, both to each other and to the full experience of “human passion.”(GU 18)  Ode on Melancholy is not, like the earlier odes, a debate or meditation on a subject that draws ambiguous or unclear solutions. It offers a definite solution to the problems discussed in the earlier odes and this solution is a rejection of the imagination, of the “deceiving elf” fancy, in favour of the world of reality.

The Ode to Melancholy therefore acts as a rejection of the powers of the imagination that have consumed Keats in his earlier odes. However in his final ode To Autumn Keats reconciles the imaginative and natural worlds finding equilibrium between the demands of reality and the possibilities of the imagination. In the first stanza Keats powerfully evokes the “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (A 1) in a glorious depiction of the ripeness of the season. The poem glories in the joys of the season, the plenteousness of the harvest and the beauty of the “sweet kernels” (A 8) and “mossed cottage-trees.”(A 5) This natural depiction mirrors the beauty to be found in the natural world that Keats advocates in Melancholy, representing nature’s ability to heal and uplift the observer. In the second stanza however Keats moves back into the world of the imagination, creating an elusive, androgynous personification of Autumn “sitting carelessly on a granary floor/ thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.”(A 13-14) Here the power of the imagination is clearly aligned with the power of nature but again the transience of the natural world is emphasised. The figure of Autumn, reaping with a hook, carries inescapable connotations of the traditional depiction of Death with a scythe. Although the action is stalled in the stanza, Autumn is “sound asleep,” (A 15) and winter has not yet encroached on the glorious Indian summer  still the “last oozings”(A 22) of the cider press indicate that the change in seasons is approaching. The “Songs of Spring” (A 23) have passed and as “gathering swallows twitter in the skies.”(A 33) the reader is reminded of the inevitability of the death that winter will bring.  The imaginative figure of Autumn “drowsed with the fumes of poppies” (A 17) can, through inactivity, prolong the ripeness of life but ultimately the season must change and the death that winter represents must be given sway. In understanding the poem in this way the figure of Autumn can be said to represent Keats final conclusion on the power of the imagination and the extent to which imaginative escape can be endorsed. While imagination, like Autumn, can allow a temporary escape from the realities of human suffering and death it cannot, nor should not, provide a permanent escape. Instead the natural rhythm of life, like the rhythm of the seasons must eventually prevail and, while the imagination is a powerful tool and a necessary part of human existence, it is still subordinate to the laws of nature.

 Keats odes’ therefore are deeply concerned with the power and limits of the imagination and as a collection they offer an insight into Keats’ changing ideas on the role the imagination should play, both in poetry and in human life. Despite this while the imagination is definitely a prevailing theme in the odes I would hesitate to use the term ‘obsession’ to describe the treatment of these ideas. The odes as a group also powerfully consider the relationships between pain and pleasure, life and death, poetry and other art forms, dreams and waking and Keats own artistic legacy. Although many of these other ideas are inextricably intertwined with the concept of the imagination they are equally important ideas in their own right and deserve consideration on their own terms. Although Keats in the odes demonstrates a great interest in the role of the imagination, exploring both its power and its limits and ultimately reconciling the roles of fantasy and reality, the imagination is neither his only concern, nor is it given especial prominence over his other themes. Consequently the concepts of reality and the imagination become vital components in Keats’ wider obsession; the exploration of oppositions in life, nature and art.  

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