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The Odes suggest that Keats is inward looking and depressive. How far does your
reading of The Odes lead you to agree with this statement? ...
Submitted by dozzee on December 13, 2005
Category: English
Words: 884 | Pages: 4
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The six Odes written by Keats are deep, thoughtful poems enabling Keats to reflect on certain ideas and processes. There are elements of these works that suggest depression and negativity, yet Keats often uses vivid description and highlights the greatness of the ideas within the Odes. He uses complex thoughts such as immortality; images of depression but surrounds these feelings with uplifting, rich and colourful images. His obsession with ideal beauty and immortality become apparent, and we clearly envision Keats’ strive to find the perfect beauty in art and in nature.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ turns Keats attention to the idea of immense beauty captured in time; Keats uses clever language to portray the image on the urn, and as a method of slowing down time. The double meaning of ‘still’ in the first line creates a frozen image in the readers mind and adds emphasis; the use of sibilance, ‘silence…slow time…sylvan’ creates a quiet stilled peace within the poem. Powerful language is used to create the picture, ‘flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme’ and the idea of an unspoilt, pristine ‘sylvan historian’ is imagined. Yet around these images of perfection comes doubt and negativity, Keats uses questions; ‘In temper the dales of Arcady?’, ‘What wild ecstasy?’ they portray uncertainty and lack happiness, showing a break or lapse within his depiction of the urn. He uses the idea of immortality as a depressing subject for the people and things on the urn, ‘cannot fade’, nor ‘shed your leaves’. The prospect of immortality brings a strong lack of fulfilling desires; ’Bold lover…never canst thou kiss’. Keats looks in on the idea of ideal beauty and immortality in art, which is unattainable by man; yet seems to relish that within life, mortality enables him to experience the imperfect as well as the perfect. This idea of surrounding positive image with negativity is also extremely consistent throughout the other Odes. ‘To Autumn’ uses a personification of autumn,...
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