Assignment On “Ode on Indolence” written by John Keats

This assignment has been published for those who are really interested about Keats’ poem. I made this assignment for the course which I finished the 5th semester named romantic literature II.The assignment has been given below.

The Ode on Indolence is one of five odes which are composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819.The other are “Ode on a Grecian Urn”,”Ode on Melancholy”,”Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Psyche”. Here is an attempt to give an interpretation about “the ode on Indolence” In two ways which has been given below.

First Interpretation

Bad health and misfortune harassed John keats’ life from his birth in 1795.Afterwards his parents died his early life and beside his health became worst that assured him an early death. He continued to write poetry throughout his short-lived life to illustrate his inner most anguish that came as a result of unrequited love and his coming death.

In Ode on indolence, the speaker confronts three figures on marble urn which attempt to lure him away from his sprit less life which is full of indolence and the speaker identifies those three figures as love, ambition, and poesy. Later the speaker, abandoning his praise for peaceful indolence, becomes greatly interested by these three figures and before his willingness to follow the three figures, he changes his mind and then rejects these very desires. In the ode, the speaker says,

“Vanish, ye phantoms! From my idle spright,

Into the clouds, and never more return!”

In this ode, Keats utilizes the speaker’s dilemma to convey his agonizing frustration that made reach him the inevitability of death and he is no longer interested to earthly life. Keats’ vivid word choice throughout the poem follows the narrators conflicting desires towards Love, Ambition, and Poesy. These conflicting desires ultimately come to represent keats’ own aspiration to avoid everything because they make the inevitable dying process far more difficult.

Second Stanza

How is it, shadows, that I knew ye not?

How came ye muffled in so hush a masque?

“Was it a silent deep-disguised plot

To steal away, and leave without a task

My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;

Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower.

O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense

Unhaunted quite of all but- nothingness?”

In the second stanza the narrator states “the blissful cloud of summer-indolence benumb’d my eyes; my pulse grew less and less; Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s wreath no flower.” In this line keats’ depicts his own experience in his final years. In this “blissful cloud of indolence” he conveys that the pain and frustration that comes with life can be avoided simply by evading the aspects of life. A life of indolence doesn’t allow for a life of ache because nothing is present to cause pain. In the fourth stanza, the speaker states:

“They faded, and, the forsooth! I wanted wings:

O folly! What is Love? Where is it?

And for that poor Ambition-it springs

From a man’s little heart’s short fever-fit;

For poesy!-no, -she has not a joy, -

At least for me, - so sweet as drowsy noons.

And evening steep’d in honied indolence;

O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,

That I may never know how change the moons,

Or hear the voice of busy common-sence!”

The speaker denounces his earlier desire to follow the love, Ambition, and poesy because he reasons that love is momentary and short-lived, ambition ultimately leaves a man disappointed, and poesy has nothing to offer that compares with an indolent summer day. For example , in the ode the speaker says,

For poesy! –no,-she has not a joy,-

Atleast for me,-so sweet as drowsy noons.

In the end, the speaker bids them adieu and decides to spend his days in indolence. However, if the poem is read as the final poem in the 1819 ode series,” Ode on indolence” suggests that Keats is resigned to giving up his career as a poet because poetry can’t give him the immortality that he wanted from it. Ironically, the poem provided Keats with such immortality.

Another interpretation

Ode on indolence was probably the second ode and it was composed in the spring of 1819 after “Ode on Melancholy” and a few months before “To Autumn”. However, when the odes are grouped together as a sequence, “Indolence” is often placed first in the group. This arrangement makes sense because Indolence raises the glimmering idea which explored more clearly in the other five odes.

Ode on indolence holds that the pleasant numbness of the speaker’s indolence is more preferable state than the more excitable states of love, ambition, and poetry. One of the great themes of Keats’s odes is the anguish of mortality - the pain and frustration caused by the changes and endings inevitable in human life which are contrasted throughout the poem with the permanence of art. In this Ode, the speaker’s indolence seems an attempt to forget this real world so that the “short fever-fit” of life seems no longer so agonizing. The speaker rejects love and ambition simply because they require him to experience his own life too intensely and hold the inevitable promise of ending. In terms of love, the speaker wonders what and where it is and in terms of ambition, he notes that “the pale cheek” and “fatigued eye” and observe that it springs directly from human mortality. On the other hand, poetry is not mortal and changeable. In fact, poesy is a demon. But it is a curse towards indolence and it also demand to the speaker to feel his life too acutely. Thus poetry has no joy for the speaker as sweet as indolence.

For poesy! –no,-she has not a joy,-

Atleast for me,-so sweet as drowsy noons.

Though the poem ends on a note of rejection, once the speaker’s impassioned indicate that he will have to raise his head eventually and confront Love, Ambition, and Poesy more directly.

Then faced, and to follow them I burn’d

And ached for wings, because I knew the three;

The first was a fair Maid, and Love her name;

The second was Ambition, pale of cheek.

And ever watchful with fatigued eye;

The last, whom I love more, the more of blame

I knew to be my demon poesy.

In this ode, we get some idea about odes which are coming eventually. Many of the ideas and images in “ode on indolence” anticipate more developed ideas and images in the later odes. For example: the portrait of summer landscape, with it’s “stirring shades/and baffled beams” anticipates the aesthetic numbness of “ode to a nightingale” and the anguish numbness of “Ode to a Melancholy”; the birdsong of the “throstle’s lay” anticipates the nightingale and the swallows of “To Autumn”. The Grecian dress of the figures and their urn-like procession anticipates the “Ode on a Grecian urn”. So, if we consider this poem as the first of those very five odes, then it is plain to us that this poem is the anticipation of later odes.

However, Interpretation can differ from person to person but it’s true that it’s another wonderful creation of John Keats’ and it’s beyond the question. Many critics praise this poem for its structurally infirm. Such as Walter Event wrote that “it is unlikely that the ‘Ode on Indolence’ has ever been anyone’s favorite poem, but it is repetitious and declamatory and structurally infirm, and these would be reasons enough”