John Keats as an Escapist

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 cannot 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
mens 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 ones love for another does not last
long that is, he remembers his beloved Fanny Brownes 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 forever (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 nightingales
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.

John Keats use of imagery in Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the odes of

Keats which is full of imagery to describe an urn. Keats is called
an escapist- he has a tendency to escape from reality into an
imaginary world for the sake of being free from the bitter real life.
Keats is a man experienced from practically cruel world, from
various sources. Whenever he saw in British museum an urn on
whose surface were depicted or carved many nice pictures, he fell
into his desired imaginary world for sometimes, and thought that
imagination was better than the reality. Later, in order to describe
the urn, lives of beings, and the surroundings, Keats uses a
number of images that depict some vivid pictures in our mind. At
this moment, we are suitable to look into the imagery in Ode on a
Grecian Urn.

Before going to detailed discussion, at first, we are to

know what is imagery?. The answer is that images, plural of
image, are collectively called imagery, and image is a picture in
mind created by description in words, just after listening or
reading.

At the very first, Keats uses an excellent image by a

metaphor in Ode on a Grecian Urn to reveal the exact nature of
the urn-
Thou still unravishd bride of quietness.
Just reading this unravishd bride, a picture of a bride,
sitting and waiting for her wedding, wearing the marriage-dress
with her nicety, purity and beauty is depicted in our mind. This
image has been used to utter the purity and beauty of the urn on
the earth through ages.

We find another image indicating the urn-

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.
It means that the urn can express tales with the depiction on
its surface better than the historians can do with their writings.

The leaf fringed legend is also an image which

indicates that the urn is decorated with various scenes, especially
with trees of woods-
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape.

Again, at the end of the first stanza, the poet

creates some imagesfor the pictures on the urn with some
rhetorical questions which are vivid and passionate-
What men of gods are these? What maidens loth?
 What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

There is another image of a lover stooping to kiss his

beloved-
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal-

Seeing the boughs full of leaves, and melodist piping songs,

Keats thinks that the spring of the boughs will be and the melodist
will pipe songs forever, but he himself is suffering the distress,
misery and frustration, and will also continue to suffer. He says-
Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;

In another image, a continuing vivid picture is

depicted in our mind. There is a procession going towards a
place of worship led by an unknown (mysterious) priest who leads
a young calf for the sacrifice. The calf of up-raised head is
decorated with garlands of flowers. He says-
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

There is another image of a town of empty people situated

by a river or a sea shore or a mountain in a haste morning. There
is no soul to tell why the streets are silent, because all have gone
to a distant altar to worship. Keats says-
What little town by river or sea shore
Or mountain built with peaceful citadel,
However the silence of the town will be forever, because it is
a work of art and imagination. Thus Ode on a Grecian Urn also
expresses the difference between imagination and reality,
between art and reality.

At the last stanza of the poem, the poet addresses

the urn as Fair attitude that contains marble men and over-
excited maidens, and cold pastoral because, the urn is not alive,
and about the rural.

In conclusion, we may say that John Keats use of

imagery is very brilliant, and it has a great effect on the main
theme. By imagery, he wants to show the superiority of
imagination and art rather than reality. For this reason, his use of
imagery has been more effective.