Resumo de Ode To Nightingale

IMAGERY IN ODE TO NIGHTINGALE

John Keats was one of the pre-eminent Romantic poets who was influenced by Greek Classical literature and mythology. In his poem 'Ode to a Nightingale', which he writes after the death of his younger brother, he uses imagery to explicate his pain.
Imagery is the use of words to create a picture. In other words we can say that imagery is word picture. It can be done in various manners. But Keats is primarily using images to give expression to the pain and suffering. At the same time, he is using imagery to contrast the magical impact of melodious music of a nightingale.
Here, Keats takes poetic license. While he addresses the nightingale as an individual bird, the implication of 'thou immortal' bird is that he is addressing the species. The poem opens with three heavily accented syllables 'My heart aches', which signify his sense of pain which is benumbed by the images of being poisoned , followed by the IMAGE of having taken a narcotic, when he writes 'as though of hemlock I had drunk'. Here, one is reminded of Shelley's 'To a Skylark': both the poets are listening to an individual bird.
. There is a continuous image of jump from self to bird, and from bird to self. This is followed be an image wherein Keats joins the bird with the help of Bacchus. The classical allusion to Bacchus creates an image of rollicking fun and gaiety. The 'full-throated ease' leads Keats to the dream of an extremely enjoyable summer of 'Dance and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth'. This image of dance, music, rollicking fun is heightened by the contrasting reference to human misery, 'weariness, the fever and the fret'. In this world 'where men sit and hear each other groan' is the exact opposite of dance, song and happiness. The image of human misery is very profound when Keats alludes to his brother's death:
"Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs".
This image, of the youth dying and transient nature of love, is further heightened by the image of Keats' predicting his own death. As the poem progresses, Keats associates his death with the song. The image used by Keats of a human body becoming a clod of earth, the human body becoming one with the earth creates a vision of coffin being lowered into grave and covered by shovels of earth, the human body becoming one with earth and all the time sweet music being produced by the nightingale. But there is a change in the music. It is no longer a happy music. It's become a 'requiem'. And yet the bird is free from the man's condition.
The image of Ruth standing in 'the alien corn' thinking of her past and home visualizes the spirit of mankind in strange lands fighting the heavy odds and yet ready to face challenge.
Hardly is this image digested by the reader that a new image is created and an extremely powerful at that! We see possibly a castle on the rocky shores with the sea waves rising up, and slapping the walls of the castle; and slowly, as if by magic, the windows open. The image of the windows opening on stormy sea is evocative of some fairy princess being imprisoned by some ogre. This image works like a bell and the poet is tossed back to the world of reality. The poet is left wondering at the music that is no longer arresting enough, and Keats is left wondering at his state - 'wake or sleep'. The whole poem can be seen as a movement of images right from the beginning to the end. Each image heightens the feeling that changes from sheer pain and numbness to fairy lands and a bell tolling back to reality. It is as if one is transported to various regions of dream where actuality shifts and the images create and recreate each situation as a frame on the celluloid of human mind. The various images hung together create a feeling of awe as well as a feeling of kinship. Write your abstract here.

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