How does Keats appeal to the senses in Ode to a Nightingale?
Robbie Morrison™ 11MCM
“I have been half in love with easeful death”. In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, John Keats writes his first person perspective on the pain and pleasures experienced by humanity, and their inextricable connection to the concepts of immortality and death.
The key source of inspiration in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ lies in the Nightingale’s song; the poem itself explores the metacognitive introspection which follows Keats’ experience with the bird.
Keats appeals to the senses in Ode to a Nightingale through his use of personification and metaphor to convey his surreal state of mind, Dramatic irony in his choice of sensory imagery including touch, logic and sight, which underlines the conflicted emotions Keats feels and Keats’ juxtaposition of conflicting images of wines and flowers to appeal to the reader’s sense of sight, taste and sound and underline the themes of death and beauty in Ode to a Nightingale.
Keats uses personification and metaphor to convey his surreal state of mind and convey his own senses to the reader.
In stanza one Keats expresses that his senses are “dulled as though of hemlock I had drunk” This use of simile helps the reader to understand that Keats' perspicacity, or sense of awareness, is not sharp enough to appreciate the full beauty emitted by the Nightingale. Thus the poet effectively appeals to the sense of alertness of the reader, and conveys his own lack of it. Keats’ describes that he feels that his “heart aches”. The heart is traditionally connotated with abstract feeling. Keats effectively plays on the senses of pain of the reader because they can associate that the pleasure of listening to a bird’s song is so rich in feeling that it overwhelms and causes physical pain to the heart of the poet, the hyperbole of this beauty makes it far more incredible than anything the reader could have experienced. Hence the reader understands the magnitude of what Keats feels and the vividness of the senses experienced. To free his mind from its natural constraints and to further enjoy the pleasure to the senses that the birdsong brings. Keats longs for alcohol that he does not have; “O, for a draught of vintage”. Keats’ objective is not to become intoxicated but to feel the song in a romantic sense; to have logic dulled and senses increased is a property that alcohol can offer. This is shown in his personification of alcohol where he speaks as though pleasurable aspects of life are an ingredient; “Dance, and provincial song, and sunburnt mirth”.
