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Keats’ conflict between the world of imagination and the world of reality

John Keats, an escapist, torn by the sufferings of practical life, escapes from the real world into the realm of the imagination. But there is a striking contrast between the world of reality, in which the poet lives, and the world of imagination where he wishes to be. Now we are going to discuss the conflict between these two worlds as we find in his poems especially “Ode to a Greek urn”, “Ode to Nightingale” and “Ode to melancholy”.

In the real world, happiness, beauty, love and youth are transitory, while in the imaginative world everything is beautiful and permanent. “Ode to the nightingale” shows a clear conflict between the happiness and immortality of the species and the misery and mortality of human life. The poem begins with a description of the effect of the song of a nightingale on the body and soul of the poet. As the poet says:

“My heart aches and a numbness aches.

My sense like hemlock that I had drunk “

The song of the nightingale, for the poet, is a symbol of eternal joy. Nightingale’s world is ideal for him. Tiredness, fever and anguish of reality make him unhappy. He wants to vanish to dissolve from the real world where, as the poet says:

“… youth turns pale and thin as a specter, and dies,

Where to think is to be full of pain “

So, to free himself from the most beautiful and painful reality in life, the poet wants to escape to the forest of dreams with the nightingale. As he says;

“Get away! Get away! Because I’ll fly to you”

In his imaginative forest, the poet finds all the sensual enjoyment of his life that he wishes to have in an ideal world. This extreme of joy also reminds him of death. As we see in the poem:

“Now more than ever it seems rich to die.

In such ecstasy. “

The poet now contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the nightingale. The song of the nightingales that the poet hears today was heard in ancient times by emperors and clowns. It was also heard in fairyland where-

“… magic frames, which open on the foam

of dangerous seas, in desolate fairy land “.

The same world ‘helpless’ as a bell returns you from the fencing world to the real world. For the poet, it is like a dream. As he says;

“Was it a vision or a walking dream?

It fled is that music, I wake up or I sleep “.

So in the poem we find a dynamic contrast between an imaginary world and a real world full of pain.

Like an ode to the nightingale, in the poem “Ode to a Greek Urn” we also find a contrast between the permanence of purity, beauty and joy carved in the Urn and the temporal world of the joy of reading. As the poet says;

You, still blameless wife of stillness!

You, adoptive son of silence and slow silence “.

In the imaginative world of art, the bride will remain intact forever, but in the real world it is quite impossible.

Keats also contrasts the permanence of art with the transience of real life. As the poet says,

“She cannot fade … forever with your love, and she be beautiful.”

In real life, beauty and love are short-lived. Here the beloved grows old with the passing of the years and loses his beauty. But the girl represented in the Urn, who is a work of art, will never grow old and will remain young forever.

“Ode to melancholy” is another poem that deals with the strange dilemma of human life. The poet says that melancholy lives in beauty and happiness. When we enjoy them we think they will end soon. The duration of beauty makes us unhappy.

Melancholy, according to the poet –

“Dwell with beauty, beauty that must die.”

For the poet, melancholy lives with the goddess of delight in the same temple. As the poet says;

“… in the very temple of veiled delight Melancholy …”

It shows the interrelation of pain and pleasure, joy and sadness, transience and permanence.

Finally, we can say that the world of imagination can house us for a short time, but it cannot give us a better reality solution. So everyone has to face the contrast between these worlds and finally return to the real world.

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