Creative Mutability in John Keats's Odes by Afroditi Domasi A

Creative Mutability in John Keats’s Odes By Afroditi Domasi A dissertation submitted to the School of English, at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. MA in English and American Studies Dissertation Supervisor: Dr Maria Schoina Thessaloniki February 2020 Table of Contents Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..1 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………2 I. Pursuing Inspiration: “Ode on Indolence” and “Ode to Psyche”…………………..14 II. Mutability and the Artifact: “Ode on a Grecian Urn”…………………………….30 III. Pain into Creativity: “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Melancholy”………...40 IV. The Limits of the Cycle: “To Autumn”………………………………………….53 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………61 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………..63 Domasi 1 Abstract The notion of mutability according to the pre-Socratic philosophers, subjects everything in the world to constant change, regardless of ethical categories. It also relates to the concepts of fluidity and necessity. For the Romantics, it manifests chiefly in poetry. One can trace its influence in the odes of John Keats, especially when read in a specific sequence. In the “Ode on Indolence,” the poet fluctuates between inactivity and mental stimulation chiefly inspired by thoughts of poetry, while in the “Ode to Psyche” he resolves to restore a forgotten ideal through his poetry. Next in my analysis is the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” in which he temporarily steps back from his role as a poet and becomes a recipient of art, contemplating mutability in the artifact. “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on Melancholy” constitute poems of inner contemplation; in the former Keats contemplates the end of mutability in human mortality while being in a trance-like state; in the latter, this same feeling translates to melancholy in the conscious everyday experience. In the ode “To Autumn” we see a culmination of the tendencies exhibited in the other odes, as the poet assumes a stance of acceptance and reconciliation with the forces of mutability. Through the odes, and especially through “To Autumn,” we see the poet personally affected but also creatively motivated by the certainty of mutability. Domasi 2 Introduction It is the same!—For, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free; Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability. Percy Bysshe Shelley “When I consider everything that grows / Holds in perfection but a little moment,” Shakespeare is contemplating in sonnet 15, and he proceeds to describe a view of the world “[w]here wasteful Time debateth with Decay / To change your day of youth to sullied night”; the antidote to the corrosive time is, simply, “[a]s he takes from you, I engraft you new” (lines 1-2, 11-12, 14). The clear-cut poetic solution suggested here to the final problem – decay, old age and death – is that art and the artist can mend the corrosion of time, turn it back, in a sense. This idea puts art on a pedestal and misconstrues its role in relation to human mortality and mutability. Artistic creation seems to compensate for the frailty of our nature, and art is often professed as a stable antipode, a constant to the ever-changing reality of human experience. I find that this notion of contraries is not only far from Shakespeare’s own but an oversimplified and inaccurate conception of the role of the artifact – the product of artistic creation – as well as the creative process itself. The juxtaposition of art and life to such an extent leads at best to a deification of art akin to idolatry, with the artist assuming a “priestlike task”, to use Keats’s phrase from “Bright Star” (line 5), at worst to a demonisation of art as a scapegoat for an individual’s choices or humanity’s mistakes. The inherent dualism of such notions does injustice to the complicated relations of art and life. Exploring the Romantic poetry of John Keats in the Great Odes, I argue that the answer to a constantly changing world is a more complicated view on art, one that admits change and imperfection and reflects both Domasi 3 evolution and its opposite, assimilating the human element rather than existing in isolation and adoration. As I will discuss, it is a distinctly worldly, rather than divinely inspired artistic composition that arises from Keats’s attitudes in his poems. The presiding human concern, the anxiety or fear of mutability, finds appeasement in art conditioned by the same mutability – art that is weakened or enhanced by the effects of mutability. Inescapable change, a concept with distinctly Romantic undertones, becomes a prerequisite of artistic creation. Before examining it within the context of Romantic thought and Keats’s poetic inspirations, the notion of mutability needs to be more clearly delineated. The very attempt to “delineate” though is ironic, since mutability is not in essence dependent or even co-dependent on human logic and conception. Its manifestations are not constrained by time as we experience it, and therefore often cannot be observed firsthand, since they exceed the human lifespan. A being’s existence is a testament to mutability, although a being’s birth and death do not constitute mutability’s beginning and end, only of that being. In this respect it can be linked to P.B. Shelley’s doctrine of necessity, which is conceived to rule over the actions and decisions of all beings (Gingerich 447-448).1 Shelley upholds that “everything is animation”, and necessity itself adheres to the laws of “continual change” (446).2 Shelley admits that even powerful Necessity has its limitations; as S.F. Gingerich 1 Paraphrasing here from Shelley’s notes in the poem “Queen Mab”. I quote Shelley’s prose and letters relevant to Necessity from S.F. Gingerich’s article. Despite the central part the doctrine of Necessity plays in Shelley’s poetry, little has been written since Gingerich’s 1918 essay on how Necessity fits with the poet’s other philosophical beliefs. 2 Shelley. “Letter to Miss Hitchener,” Jan. 2, 1812. Shelley discusses his view on religion he expressed in a conversation with Robert Southey. Quoted again from Gingerich. Domasi 4 explains, the poet recognises the agency of “a living and animating Spirit pervading the frame of things” (449). Given that Shelley ardently argued against deism and organised religious institutions, he cannot but mean mutability or some condition in the world with similar effect. As for the concept of necessity, it originates in the ancient world, known as destiny, in the poetic works of Greek tragedians as much as in philosophy. And unfortunately for the purposes of this thesis, the idea of mutability, that is, the conception of it as a condition of existence and its systematisation into a coherent set of philosophic principles, is, like necessity, not a Romantic one in itself. We need to give humanity credit for an earlier discovery. While one cannot profess to have placed the beginning of it, the conceptualisation of mutability makes a prominent and lasting appearance in the pre- Socratic philosophers, especially in the fragments we have of Heraclitus. It is most memorably, and poetically, expressed in the famous river (mis)quotation, originally “[π]οταμοῖσι δὶς τοῖσι αὐτοῖσι οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης· ἕτερα γὰρ <καὶ ἕτερα> ἐπιρρέει ὕδατα” (Heraclitus 26), that is, you could not step twice into the same rivers; for other [and other] waters are ever flowing on. This single aphorism which both puzzles and resonates with us today represents the ancient thinker’s outlook on a Gordian issue which can be neither untangled nor cut. As Apostolos L. Pierris explains, the pre- Socratic philosophers, despite their differences, circumnavigate the idea that “the World presents itself as change”; whatever philosophical observations we make about the world arise within the conditions set by “cosmic diversity, variability and mutability” (“First Principles and the Beginning of Philosophy” 6). Constant change rules the world and determines our philosophical principles, while it sets the focus on motion rather than existence. Instead of stably defining what mutability “is”, we focus Domasi 5 on what “is being”, what is in the process of becoming, “γίγνεσθαι” for the ancient Greeks (Pierris, “The Beginning of Being” 16). Mutability can indeed be understood to function the way a liquid does. Pierris connects the physical and the abstract aspect of mutability by expanding on the Heraclitean water metaphor; he associates mutability to the flow of liquids, a property which by analogy makes them more resistant to pressure than solid matter (“The Beginning of Being” 9). Elsewhere, he states that the world functions in a series of flows, “everything is a series of flows […] the world presents the abominable image of chaotic mutability”3 (“The Heraclitean World” 13). For our purposes, I argue that such a unifying approach towards the physical and the conceptual world, an overarching principle that does not undervalue differences but underlines the connections between the two, is one very much utilised by Romantic poets. M.H. Abrams explores the concepts and problematisations the Romantics inherited from pagan philosophers in Natural Supernaturalism (141-154). He argues that the cultural traditions of these very different ages share the fundamental idea that fragmentation, the separation of nature and mind, is at the heart of the world’s malaise (Abrams 145). The idea that “[t]he [philosophical] system is an organic one”4 (Pierris, “The Beginning of Being” 13), one in which mind and nature cooperate organically – an idea preceding and in radical contrast to the Platonic priority of the mind over the 3 My translation. Originally, “Τα πάντα είναι ροές. Συνεχές, παντοειδές γίγνεσθαι αποτελεί τον Κόσμο. […] Ο Κόσμος φαίνεται να παύει να είναι «Κόσμος» και να παρουσιάζει την ειδεχθή εικόνα της χαοτικής μεταβλητικότητας”.

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