Moenia 14 (2008), 181-195. ISSN: 1137-2346. A Perfect Poem?: History, Meaning and Influences in John Keats’s “To Autumn” Yago RODRÍGUEZ YÁÑEZ IES de Monterroso (Lugo) ABSTRACT: This article seeks to consider different interpretations and meanings of Keats’s “To Autumn”, the last of the great odes, written on 19th September 1819. Among English Romantic poetry texts, this composition offers a serene description, although there are critics who have highlighted its ideological overtones. We intend to analyze the sense of each stanza, identifying the influences on the text. In spite of the fact that the reader can see that the word ‘ode’ is not present explicitly in the title, this is not a problem, since there can be no doubt that we must understand this composition as such, and it has even been considered to be a perfect work. Having studied the structure and the relationship between “To Autumn” and Keats’s Spring Odes, especially “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, it seems necessary to resolve the ambiguity that is documented throughout the poem. Recalling that the composition suggests, or at least tries to show, a revival of nature, there is some degree of frustration, as Winter symbolizes death, while the ‘poetic ego’ desires to believe in a season that is still remote. KEY WORDS: “To Autumn”, Keats, great odes, English Romantic poetry, influences, Spring Odes, frustration, Winter, death. To my mother, because she is the spring So summer went and so the autumn goes John Clare To Autumn SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Recibido: 27-11-2008. Aceptado: 22-12-2008. 182 Yago Rodríguez Yáñez Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, Drowsed with the fumes of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers; And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cider-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft, And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. When Keats wrote “To Autumn”, he decided to abandon Hyperion. On the one hand, Keats shows his passion for simple and daily routines, but at the same time the composition may offer an ideological meaning, although we must admit that this is hardly detectable at first sight. In fact, despite its limited extension, “To Autumn” comprises many interpretations in a “perfect piece of style” (Tate 1959: 168). Frequently, “To Autumn” is considered as the great poem by Keats’s, but T. S. Eliot states his preference for another poem: “The Odes —especially perhaps the ‘Ode to Psyche’— are enough for his reputation” (Eliot 1964: 100). Precisely Keats was in the zenith of his career from February 1818, that is, the period in which he started Isabella, until September 1819, when he composed “To Autumn”1. This last poem adopts a tripartite model, whereas its development is based on a classic vision. For a long time, Keats’s works were misinterpreted. We must not forget that Endymion was unjustly undervalued in the Quaterly Review, Edinburgh Review and Blackwood’ Magazine2. In any case, we can confirm that ‘sensuousness’ represents one of 1 Arthur Downer (ed.), “The Personal History of John Keats”, The Odes of Keats. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897, 1-6. 2 See, in this regard, Shelley’s letter addressed ‘To the Editor of the Quaterly Review’ (Pisa, 1820). [John Wilson Crocker], “VII. Endymion: A Poetic Romance”. By John Keats. Quaterly Review 19/XXXVII (April/December 1818), 204-8, partially reprinted in “Endymion: A Poetic Romance by John Keats”, Critics on Keats, edited by Judith O’Neill. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1970, 11-2. [John Gibson Lockhart], “1. Endymion: A Poetic Romance. 2. Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. By John Keats, Author of Endymion”. Edinburgh Review XXXIV/LXVII (August/November 1820), 203- 13. A perfect poem?: History, Meaning and Influences in John Keats’s “To Autumn” 183 the archetypical characteristics of Keats’s poetry. If most of the critics repeat Keats’s portrait of Winchester, McGann prefers an ideological perspective. It is true that Keats composed “To Autumn” while he lived in Winchester, and at the same time we know certain indications about its famous walk. However, we will never truly find out for sure where he lived, although Ross thinks that Keats might have lived “in the western part of Colebrook Street” (Ross 1995: 51). In fact, this precision is not important for the analysis of this composition. “To Autumn” seems to show Keats’s tranquillity in Winchester, approximately from 12th August to early October, although this peace was disturbed by St. Peter’s Massacre. Keats’s radicalism is present, for example, in ‘[c]onspiring’ (l. 3), so this term could refer to Henry Hunt’s activities, whereas gleaner’s work (l. 19) constitutes another reference to Keats’s time. It is evident that “To Autumn” germinated because of Keats’s memories of a walk he had once taken in complete solitude (Jones 1969: 226). First, it is curious that Keats chose the ode as a structural model, transmitted throughout English tradition with Pindaric versions, whose apogee happened during the eighteenth-century. If Keats declared a notable classical influence, he used the ode as a romantic instrument, especially in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. With regard to more formal aspects, “To Autumn” has three stanzas, each one consists of eleven lines. In principle it seems that the structure is asymmetric3. Nevertheless, the rhythmical scheme corrects this circumstance, because the poem shows the repetition of the Shakespearean quatrain (abab), followed by a septet in each part (cdedcce, cdecdde, cdecdde), with their corresponding variation. The beginning of “To Autumn” evokes the first line of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, although with a change in its tonality, given that the initial stanza of this last composition constitutes a continual apostrophe, whereas Keats prefers to use the descriptive procedure in the introduction of “To Autumn”, as happens in John Reynolds’s poem: I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like Silence, listening To Silence, for no lonely bird would sing Into his hollow ear from woods forlorn, Nor lowly hedge nor solitary thorn;― (Reynolds 1971: 737, ll. 1-8) Contrary to “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, Keats proposes that time exists in its cyclical demonstration in “To Autumn”, whereas the lovers remember eternity with his expression, because it repeats human suffering; the paradox lies in the fact that the moment is the same forever, since the observer can contemplate an artistic object whose surface is decorated with many scenes. Keats’s letters show that his “To Autumn” is related to nature, as we may appreciate in this extract addressed to J. H. Reynolds: 3 Vid. John A. Minahan, Word like a Bell. John Keats, Music and the Romantic Poet. Kent, Ohio: The Kent University Press, 1992, 181. 184 Yago Rodríguez Yáñez How beautiful the season is now. How fine the air—a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather—Dian skies. I never liked stubble-fields so much as now— aye, better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble field looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it (Keats 1938: 184). It is possible to interpret that the first stanza of Keats’s “To Autumn” contains an apostrophe addressed to Autumn (“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!” Keats 2001: 249, l. 1), whereas we can hold that the second section defines the rural activities. On the other hand, the third stanza increases autumnal qualities. The first stanza supposes the compilation of materials belonging to classical sources, since decline is still not present; the second section embodies a period of transition, where narcotics have effect, because they are necessary to support the truth of life. So we may see some images derived from imagination and fantasy, with a few illustrations that swing between life and death, since there are many words related to unconsciousness. Autumn is magnified and personified, and this season constitutes the central line, because the poem spins on its axis, at the same time that beauty and truth are conceived as the founder qualities of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Spring condenses numerous elements that decorate it, but according to Keats, Autumn has no reason to be envious of it, in spite of the fact that readers are not convinced, because of the melancholy that we can see in the last stanza of “To Autumn”.