Synaesthetic imagery or
sensuousness is the paramount quality in Keats’ poetry. Keats’ synaesthetic
powers are unrivalled: nothing in the world is abstract to him, abstractions
weary him. Keats admits, “My
imagination is a monastery and I am its monk.” And that aesthetic dream-life
which is separated so sharply from the reality is more desireable.
Keats has crowned every line of
his poetry with beautiful colouring of synaesthetic imagery. Richard H. Fogle
calls his synaesthesia as the product of his “unrivalled ability to absorb, sympathise, and humanise natural
objects”. Synaesthesia in Keats, according to him, is a “natural concomitant of other qualities of
his poetry”.
Sensuousness is that quality of
poetry that appeals to our five senses of taste, touch, smell, vision and
hearing. Keats’ sensuousness was unbounded: the song of a bird, the changing
pattern of wind, the rustling of an animal, the smile on the child’s face—nothing escaped from her watchful
eyes. G.K Chesterton rightly remarks:
“The record of taste, touch and smell crown every line of his poetry.”
The following lines from ‘The Eve
of St. Agnes’ appeal directly to our five senses.
“Of all her wreathed pearls her hair she frees
Unclasps her warmed jewels one
by one
Loosens her fragrant bodice; by
degrees
Her rich attire creeps rustling
to her knees
Half-hidden like a mermaid in
sea-weed.”
In the sonnet, ‘Bright
Star’, Keats spreads fantastic colours of synaesthetic imagery.
“Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast
To feel for ever its soft fall
and swell
Awake forever in a state of
sweet unrest
Still, still to hear tender
taken breath
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.”
The quality of
sensuousness is so deeply infused in Keats’ poetry that Louis McNiece calls him
‘a sensuous mystic’. Keats is mystic of senses and not of thoughts as he sought
to apprehend the ultimate truth of the universe through his aesthetic
sensations and not through intellectual or philosophical ideas.
Regarding Keats’ sensuousness
Mathew Arnold very aptly remarks:
“No one can question the eminency in Keats’ poetry of the quality of
sensuousness. Keats as a poet is eminently and enchantingly sensuous.”
Keats’ sensuousness is seen
at his very best in his odes. Keats is primarily and pre-eminently is a poet of
sensations and not of intellect. In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, for example, Keats
produces a series of sensuous pictures by his powerful imagination.
“Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft
pipes play on
Not to the sensual ear but more
endeared
Pipes to the spirit ditties of no tone.”
In ‘Ode to Autumn’,
Keats produces a feast of colourful images.
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of maturing
sun
Conspiring with him how to load
and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run
To bend with apples moss’d cottage-trees.”
Perhaps the best
illustration of Keats’ synaesthetic imagery is in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.
Here Keats’ imaginative powers are seen at the very best.
“O for a draught of vintage! That hath been
Cooled a long in deep delved
earth
Tasting of flora and country
green
Dance, Provencal song and sunburnt mirth.”
Owing to dense foliage of beach
trees the poet cannot see the flowers but still can differentiate them from
their fragrance:
“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs
But in embalmed darkness guess each sweet.”
In Keats’ late poetry we see that
it underwent a change. There is increasing concern of human problems and
longing for death. Nevertheless sensuousness is still wearing its fairy pattern
though colouring is different: it is touched with “still sad music of humanity”:
“Then in a wailful choir small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows born
aloft
Or sinking as light wind lives
or dies.”
In the final stanza of ‘Ode to
Autumn’, Keats enthusiastically presents universal and all-embracing sensuous
images which enthrall and enchant us:
“Hedge-cricket sings and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistle from a
garden croft
And gathering swallows
twittering in the skies.”
The above lines are so beautiful
in rhythm and composition that Compton Rickett finds a ‘symphony of sounds’ in these lines.