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SMART MOVES JOURNAL IJELLH VOL. 9, ISSUE 4, APRIL 2021
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Truth is Beauty, Beauty is Truth the Philosophy of John Keats
Selected Odes
Jolly Bhattacharjee
Assistant Professor
Dayanand Brijendra Swarup (P.G.) College
Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India
jollybhattacharjee33@gmail.com
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24113/ijellh.v9i4.10995
Abstract
Life can never be completely free of problems and pain. This is perhaps because no two
people think alike, work alike or have similar taste. Problems and pain will be there when two
persons live. So there are bounds to be differences and judgements born there of and create
disharmony and conflicts. The natural inclination of human mind to get rid of pain and
problems of life wanders for a different world. The romantic poet John Keats philosophically
searched for such a place and wanted to escape. And escaping into the world of imagination
helped him to get rid of pain and problems of life and discovers anything true is beautiful as
beauty dwells in truth. Manifestation of god in all the objects of nature magnetically attracts
Keats’s mind as it serves as a therapy to contemplate in the serene and isolated space he
sought for. Human being and Nature are interrelated, meaning the harmonious unity of Man
and Nature are interrelated as both assume qualities of the other as they born and die, ashes
go into the lap of Mother Nature as the very essence of human being, the structure is made up
of the elements of Nature. The serene, calm and quiet Nature provides a kind of nourishment
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to Keats’ mind to discover the beauty, provides him joy and it is a truth. Longing of every
soul is to be away from the problems of life.
Keywords: Escape, Problem, Life, Beauty, Truth
Introduction:
John Keats is one of the Romantic poets in English Literature who discovered truth in
beauty through imagination. As a romantic poet, his poetry is full of imagination, love, pain,
immortality, escapism. Art is the creation of beauty and romantic poet unveils the art which is
mystic and beautiful.
According to the great critic, Walter Pater, “the romantic element in literature consists
in the addition of the quality of strangeness to the quality of beauty, which is present in all
works of art.”
There is a grain of truth in the idea of the apparent insignificance of mundane life.
Everyday life is a routine, recedes unnoticed into the background of human experience, and it
appears to be trivial. What excitement can be generated in cooking, buying, washing can be
derived from the enjoyment can be derived from drudgery of these chores. With such images
in mind, many philosophers have observed that the everyday work symbolises some of the
most alienating features of human life
The universal fact that something is repeated in everyday in practical life makes it
dull, mundane, boring. Mental happiness is the product of habitual right thinking and it will
cause the flowers of peace, joy and serenity to bloom wherever we go. Therefore, cultivate
the will to be unafraid create own mental sunshine. Those who renounce the fruits of their
actions and submit themselves completely to the divine will, arrive at the final termination of
the cyclical life process to enjoy eternal bliss in perfect union with the god head. The
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tradition of seeking union with god through loving commitment is referred to as bhakti or
devotion. Escaping into the world of imagination is what the natural yearning of the soul to
forget the trivialities, pain and problems of life. John Keats, the romantic poet wants to
escape from the shackles of life and seeks joy, wants to lose his identity and forget himself
and his own existence and discovers a joy in the Nightingale’s song. “Fade far away, dissolve
and quite forget What thou among the leaves lostst never known the weariness, the fever, and
the fret” John Keats like other romantic poets discovers escape in the past. His extraordinary
imaginative power, penetrate deep into Nature and its silence. His writings are loaded by
sensualities, emotions, passion, excitement, love and pain, though he was an escapist of
reality yet he talks concerning reality and for farfetched vision. In his Odes, imagination is
used as a strong mental device to avoid the grievances of life. Most of his poetry deals with
the theme for quest of beauty, but pain, adventure, love, chivalry & joy are also some of his
themes. Therefore this paper tries to focus Keats’s imagination used as a intellectual device
through some of his selected Odes, Keats express his feelings through Ode to a Nightingale.
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness
Ode to a Nightingale is a personal poem that describes Keats’s journey into the state
of negative capability. Keats revealed in his writing an understanding of all things possessed
beauty and he explores this beauty in the middle of pain and suffering and in identifying and
subtly understanding that which is beautiful allows one to become more acquainted with truth
Keats’s journey into the state of negative capability and the wholesome idea of exquisiteness
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are the idiosyncratic characteristics of Keats’s poetry alone. Anything which is beautiful is
discovered as truth by Keats, Nature attracts the poet and his imagination transforms
everything into a serene and a silent aura which is beautiful. The immense pleasure which is
derived from Nature takes him into an exuberant state of mind and he discovers it a beautiful
experience as it has a factor of truth in it, beauty becomes his religion and makes him forget
all the harsh realities of life. Beauty is truth as explored by Keats and is one of the hallmarks
of his poetry. In the poem Ode on a Grecian the feeling is expressed. ‘Beauty is truth, truth
beauty –that is all we know on earth, and all we need to know. If we delve deep into Keats’s
poetry it is revealed that the truth and imagination exists in reality and juxtaposes the
mortality of man with the immortality of art, leads us to understand it is not the way of
escaping from the realities of life, but to seek pleasure among troubles of the world. A critic
Rossetti beautifully explains the philosophy of Keats.
In the Ode the axiom is ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ which pairs with and even
transcends ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’. It is put forward as the message of the
sculptured Grecian Urn to man thus propounded as being of universal application. It amounts
to saying – Any beauty which is not truthful (if any such there be), and any truth which is not
beautiful (if any such there be) are of no practical importance to mankind in their mundane
conditions, but in fact there are none such; for, to the humans mind and truth are one and the
same thing. Keats’s perception and ‘thought’ is crystallised into this axiom as the sum and
substance of wisdom for man, and he has bequeathed into us to ponder over itself and to lay
to heart as the secret of his writings.
Ode to a Nightingale is an extraordinary composition of John Keats. It wonderfully
reveals how brilliantly he deals with the opposite aspects of life e.g. pleasure and pain, the
imaginary and the real, mortal and immortal etc. The Ode is an expression of spontaneous
feelings rising in the heart of the poet listens to the singing of the Nightingale. The immense
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joy which was felt by the poet transports him into a state of sleep and numbness as is created
by the drinking of hemlock. The poet imagines that the bird lives in a beautiful place and is
spell bounded by its melodious song, but suddenly his pleasure turns into a kind of pain. He
yearns to escape from the mundane world into the heavenly world of the bird. The poet is
desperate to escape the world of people getting old, dying and a never ending chain of
miseries into the enchanting world of the Nightingale. The poet’s soul doesn’t want beauty to
fade away and flew into the world of his imagination. Keats flies into the world of infinity
through the song of the bird and explores the deeper philosophy of human soul which dwells
in this world of miseries in realty, but seeks for an escape into the beautiful world of
imagination which has a factor of truth in it according to Keats. This mystical and amazing
experience of Keats is so similar with Tagore and has a universal appeal.
You came sometime at dawn
You touched me and left smiling
Someone pushed aside my door of
Sleep and left that message
Waking up
I saw
That my eyes filled with tears
It seemed to me
That the sky whispered in my ear
It seemed to me
That my whole body was filled with songs
It seemed to me
Bent low with dew
Had blossomed out like a worship flower
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That my heart had left the life river shore
And had gone off to a boundless land.
The everyday is whatever form is all that mortal world have. It is its very
inescapability, its ability to suck human into a daily grind, to deny them virtually everything,
they need or want, to turn them into a bundle of frustrations and problems that might compel
them to rebel against, a war or revolt is not needed here to imagine the relief we might
experience when released from the pain of everyday living in this materialistic mortal world
and seeks a free immortal world which is explored by Keats in the song of the Nightingale. In
the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ immortality is glimpsed in the birds effortless singing and the
charismatic song had a deep impact on the poet’s mind and stimulated with immense pleasure
and aspiration of a blissful eternal life, the poet’s exquisite craving to get rid of the
frustrations, problems of mortal world to the immortal life of tranquillity and excellence has a
universal appeal and is also seen in the works of William Wordsworth, too a worshipper of
Nature, too, who explores the spiritual dimensions of beauty through his poems, In his poem
Tintern Abbey, expresses the similar painful ordeal that he has passed through a painful
ordeal, of mental crisis in the absence of Nature, but after years revisiting the Wye gives
relief to his mind and it provides a close communion with Nature. He experiences a spiritual
exaltation in all the objects of Nature and explores them as symbols of eternity that is
beautiful and has a factor of truth in his exploration. The experience which impresses his
mind is expressed:
Five years have past; five summers, with the length
of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from then mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur-once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs
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That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect.
A factor of beauty is joy forever, the moving principle of life and loved beauty in
myriad forms and shapes, in the song, in the flower, in the sky or in a work of art. His
aesthetic vision grows intellectually and his imagination transforms the world of senses into
the world of eternity, and brings a confluence of spiritual exaltation. In the poem Ode on a
Grecian Urn the poet’s exploration of the relationship between imagined beauty and the
harsh reality of everyday experience is depicted aesthetically. Immortality is to be discovered
in the stillness and silence of classical Greek art and sculpture, Keats praises the Urn as a
‘Unravish’d’ bride of quietness; and the imagination created must be true as its beautiful for
him:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but more endeare’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
The pictorial narratives are beautiful than words and the urn is depicted as a beautiful
piece of art and a mystery to a casual observer, but Keats might had an insight to explore the
beauty which is true to him. Keats’s imagination reveals Urn is a mystic art and is superior to
reality, which soothes the mind and soul. The silent scenes in the Urn are timeless, and speak
across generations and protect the scenes of the Urn from the impermanence of mortal life.
Art is permanent and human life is temporary, the Urn will be as it is forever, the poet cannot
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hear the music, but he could imagine and feel that music and enjoy. Imagination transports
him into the divine enjoyment of music.
Keats tries to explore beauty in the natural world, providing a relief from the miseries
of mundane life. His intense human sense explores the beauties of the external world, is
transformed into poetry by his wonderful imagination. According to Keats, whatever is
beautiful must be true. Beauty and truth are inseparable and sides of the same coin. Keats
conveys the message living in this mortal life, we can enjoy beauty accepting life in all forms.
As famous conclusion of his poem: Beauty is truth, truth beauty- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
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Works Cited
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Tagore Rabindranath.Gitimalya (Garland of songs) Translated by BrotherJames. The
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Pvt. Ltd. ISBN: 978-81-8357-593-5, Code: 1:16
S.Sen. John Keats. Odes, Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion and other poems. A Critical
Evaluation. New Delhi: Unique Publishers. 1976. ISBN: 978-81-8357-599-7
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