國立中山大學外國語文學系 碩士論文 濟慈一八一九年頌詩中的憂鬱或憂思

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1 外 國 語 文 學 系 國 立 中 山 大 學 碩 士 論 文 國立中山大學外國語文學系 濟 慈 一 八 一 九 年 頌 詩 中 的 憂 鬱 及 憂 思 Department of Foreign Languages and Literature 碩士論文 National Sun Yat-sen University Master Thesis 濟慈一八一九年頌詩中的憂鬱或憂思 Melancholy or the Melancholic Mood in John Keats's 1819 Odes 研究生 徐葆權 Pao-chuan Hsu 研 究 生 徐 葆 權 指導教授 陳福仁 博士 Dr. Fu-jen Chen 中華民國 103 年 7 月 102 學 年 度 July 2014

2 國立中山大學外國語文學系 碩士論文 Department of Foreign Languages and Literature National Sun Yat-sen University Master Thesis 濟慈一八一九年頌詩中的憂鬱或憂思 Melancholy or the Melancholic Mood in John Keats's 1819 Odes 研究生 徐葆權 Pao-chuan Hsu 指導教授 陳福仁 博士 Dr. Fu-jen Chen 中華民國 103 年 7 月 July 2014

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4 摘 要 憂鬱或憂思乃濟慈一八一九年六首頌詩中的重要主題之一 前人研究多著重 於濟慈憂鬱美學之討論 然少有對其頌詩中憂鬱機制之發展及詩人與失物之和解 的討論 本論文以精神分析方法切入 探討文本中憂思如何影響詩人 在五首春 季頌詩中 濟慈開展對其失落的閒散之追尋 受其夢般幻象影響 濟慈於 賽姬 頌 夜鶯頌 及 希臘古甕頌 中追索相對應之夢中形象 愛情 詩歌 野 心 最後卻失敗 且更受古甕之為詩人分身之死亡威脅 詩人無法處理古甕 故 而在 憂鬱頌 中建立一隱喻之話語系統 以隱喻對抗死亡 然該隱喻系統卻又 令詩人耽於永生之幻象中 於 閒散頌 中 詩人依然無法逃離夢中的三位形象 因其已成為詩人與失落的閒散和自在的憂思之間的唯一聯繫 最終 在 致秋天 中 詩人從憂思下解放自我 藉由將秋天擬人化 詩人最終以語言面對謎般的大 他者 重得慾望之動機 並克服半年以來影響其甚巨的憂鬱 關鍵詞 濟慈 精神分析 憂鬱 佛洛伊德 克里斯德娃 ii

5 Abstract Melancholy, or the melancholic mood, is one of the major themes in John Keats's 1819 odes. Many studies focus on the aesthetics of Keats's melancholy, but the development of the poet's self-melancholizing mechanism in the odes and the reconciliation between the poet and his lost object are less discussed. This thesis approaches Keats's melancholy in psychoanalytic methods, probing into the texts to investigate how the melancholic mood arrests the poet. Indeed, The poet, disturbed by his dream-like vision with the three figures Love, Poesy, and Ambition begins his quest for the lost indolence in the spring odes. From "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," to "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats pursues the three figures in their corresponding odes, but in vain. The poet then even faces a death threat from his imaginary urn-doppelganger. Unable to deal with the urn, the poet develops a metaphorical language structure to defend himself against death with a series of metaphors in "Ode on Melancholy." The metaphorical language, soon, overwhelms the poet and drowns him in the illusions of eternal life. And therefore, in "Ode on Indolence," the poet has failed to escape from the three figures, for they are the only connections to the lost indolence and the easeful melancholic mood. However, in "To Autumn," the poet frees himself from the melancholic mood. By personifying Autumn, Keats confronts the enigmatic Other with his language, recovers the cause of desire, and finally redeems himself from his melancholic mood that troubles him in the first half year of Keywords: Keats, psychoanalysis, melancholy, melancholia, Freud, Kristeva iii

6 Table of Contents 論文審定書..... i 中文摘要 ii Abstract iii Chapter 1: Introduction... 1 Chapter 2: "Away! Away! For I Will Fly to Thee": Keats's Quest for Melancholy in the Spring Odes Chapter 3: "No, No, Go not to Lethe": Keats's Suicidal Behaviors and the Desire for Eternity Chapter 4: "Where Are the Songs of Spring? Ay, Where Are They?": "To Autumn" and the Spring Odes Chapter 5: Conclusion: Keats's Resolutions to Melancholy Works Cited iv

7 Chapter 1: Introduction John Keats's odes of 1819 span almost half of the year. According to the dates of composing and the relationships between the odes, the 1819 odes are generally divided into two separate groups. One is the Spring Odes, including "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode on Indolence," which are written across the whole spring of year 1819 with short intervals; the other is "To Autumn," which is written in Fall. Besides, the emotions in the two ode groups are distinctively different. The Spring Odes mostly present strong passions, painful struggles, and a melancholic mood while "To Autumn" replaces the agony of the other odes with a light-hearted tone. For such differences, which further imply the resolution of the a melancholic mood in the Spring Odes, "To Autumn" by itself has earned a whole chapter in this thesis as the Spring Odes are discussed twice in two separate chapters due to their close relations. Speaking of the relationships between the six odes, this thesis indeed greatly owes Helen Vendler. Vendler in her The Odes of John Keats maps the cross-referral relationship of the odes: My context for the odes is consequently all of Keats's previous works; but I believe that the most important context for each of the odes is the totality of the other odes, that the odes enjoy a special relation to each other, and that Keats, whenever he returned to the form of the ode, recalled his previous efforts and used every new ode as a way of commenting on earlier ones. We may say that each ode both deconstructs its predecessor(s) and consolidates it (or them). Each is a disavowal of a previous "solution"; but none could achieve its own momentary stability without the support of the antecedently constructed style which we now call "Keatsian." (6) 1

8 Vendler, in her own words, intends to perform a "conjectural reconstruction of the odes as they are invented, imagined, put in sequence, and revised" (1), associating all the odes together with a deconstructive-consolidating structure. Vendler here sheds a new light for reading Keats's odes of Although reading the poems individually may grant a view of the poet's melancholy, Vendler's method further offers one extra temporal dimension. By interpreting the odes in sequence, it is possible to trace and to map out the development of the poet's melancholy in each period of the odes. But, as Robert Kaufman criticizes, Vendler risks to "dissolve a previously foregrounded sense of expressive selfhood" (364). Arguing the context for each ode to be "the totality of the other odes" (6), Vendler indeed reinforces the relationship between an individual ode and the other ones, manifesting the sense of "expressive selfhood" (Kaufman 364) for the odes, but simultaneously represses such sense for she reads the odes as a whole constructive structure "in sequence" (1) which hardly allows any space for each of the odes to expend their selfhoods. To Kaufman, Vendler's "formalist defense" (356) for both Keats's formalism and her "reconstruction of the odes" (Vendler 1) just exposes how the Frankfurt analyses of (Neo-)Marxism deal with nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, aesthetics, and the dialectical tradition (356). In addition, Vendler, in her own words, tends to narrate the tale of "a brief seven months in Keats's artistic life a period extending from March to September 1819, from his first conception of the Ode on Indolence to his completion of the ode To Autumn" (6) in her book. Her interpretations of the odes, according to herself then, are oriented toward the understanding of the poet. Another setback of Vendler's method is hence self-evident. Vendler's structure and her readings of the odes close onto a certain pre-determined person the poet, especially the formalist Keats. To use Vendler's method on interpreting Keats's melancholy thus may cause three problems which I admit may still be evident in this thesis. First, the structure itself undermines 2

9 the significance of individual odes, emphasizing the sequence as a "totality" (6). Second, the structure assumes the odes are totally related to one another, and therefore in the process of the "reconstruction" (1), which involves deconstruction and consolidating, the structure may repress possible excessive, unrelated elements for consistency. Third, the structure focuses on the poet. Inevitably, to comprehend the odes in sequence touches the poet himself, for the temporal axis in the structure of odes overlaps with the poet's life in the year of Today, thanks to numberless Keatsian predecessors who have worked on the texts, letters, and biographies of the poet, to have a genuine picture of Keats's life and thoughts in 1819 is no more an issue. Like Vendler who accounts her knowledge of the poet himself for biographies (7), my understanding of Keats's life depends on several reliable resources: Robert Gittings, who insists on finding "the true origins of even the most often-repeated events and the most familiar story" (19) of the poet in his John Keats; Aileen Ward, who in her John Keats: The Making of a Poet offers some psychological view on the poet's thoughts; and Albert Elmer Hancock, who in his John Keats: A Literary Biography presents Keats according to the sequence of the poet's works. However, this thesis is not for understanding the poet himself through the odes, but for analyzing his melancholy. Although it is impossible to totally separate the poet's life from his works due to the temporal dimension of the structure, to keep the poet is to expose him to the analytic examination, especially when the methodology of the analysis is psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis serves as the critical framework of this thesis for the investigation of the poet's melancholy or a melancholic mood in the odes. In the field of psychoanalysis, to discuss melancholy will inevitably encounter two of the greatest psychoanalysts: Freud and Kristeva. In 1916, Sigmund Freud, in a short essay "On Transience," has first mentioned mourning, stating that mourning occurs when "libido 3

10 clings to its objects and will not renounce those that are lost even when a substitute lies ready to hand" (3096), and when it has "renounced everything that has been lost," the libido is freed from the lost object, and mourning respectively ends (3097). Later, in 1917, Freud further divided melancholia from mourning in his "Mourning and Melancholia": The correlation of melancholia and mourning seems justified by the general picture of the two conditions. Moreover, the exciting causes due to environmental influences are, so far as we can discern them at all, the same for both conditions. Mourning is regularly the reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one's country, liberty, an ideal, and so on. In some people the same influences produce melancholia instead of mourning and we consequently suspect them of a pathological disposition. It is also well worth notice that, although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude to life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to medical treatment. We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful. (243-44) For Freud, melancholia is rather pathological in comparison to mourning. But since both conditions are generated from the same source the lost object of love, and the "environmental influences" (243) are all the same, whether a person should develop melancholia or mourning seems to be very case-dependent. Symptomatically, the melancholic present several distinguishing mental features: The distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a 4

11 degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment. (244) Indeed, except for the "disturbance of self-regard," most of the symptoms are the same as the symptoms of mourning. In other words, the decisive difference between mourning and melancholia falls here on the disturbed self-regard, or ego. For Freud, the melancholic fails to redirect the libido from the lost object onto a new one, but instead "served to establish an identification of the ego with the abandoned object," and hence object-loss is transformed into an ego-loss (249). However, the Freudian analysis on melancholia remains problematic when applied onto Keats's odes. Clearly, Freud has labeled melancholia as "pathological" (243) and mourning as non-pathological, or in other words, "healthy." The binary opposition of melancholia the illness and mourning the healthy, as Freud constructs in the essay, allows no space for ambiguity or dialectics. To distinguish whether the subject of diagnose is ill or healthy relies on the observation of the subject's symptoms and self-representations. What Freud offers in "Mourning and Melancholia," hence, is a diagnostic structure in which the subject is examined for the illness named melancholia. Exposing Keats to such a diagnosis is obviously unnecessary and improper. The aim of this thesis is never to discover whether Keats is sick or not, but to explore the relation of the poet's melancholy and his odes. Also, since the "Keats" this thesis may refer to is just the "Keats" during March to September in 1819 and mainly the "Keats" presented in the odes, no matter in terms of time span or the amount of data, to diagnose the poet as having an illness is never a proper analysis. Julia Kristeva in her Soleil Noir, or Black Sun, basically applies Freudian view on melancholia with several modifications. Unlike Freud, whose discussion of 5

12 melancholia focuses on the binary opposition of melancholia and mourning, Kristeva investigates more into the relation between melancholia and art: A written melancholia surely has little in common with the institutionalized stupor that bears the same name. Beyond the confusion in terminology that I have kept alive up to now (What is melancholia? What is depression?), we are confronted with an enigmatic paradox that will not cease questioning us: if loss, bereavement, and absence trigger the work of the imagination and nourish it permanently as much as they threaten it and spoil it, it is also noteworthy that the work of art as fetish emerges when the activating sorrow has been repudiated. The artist consumed by melancholia is at the same time the most relentless in his struggle against the symbolic abdication that blankets him... [until] death strikes or suicide becomes imperative for those who view it as final triumph over the void of the lost object.... (8-9) In terms of "loss, bereavement, and absence" (9), Kristeva states that melancholia, or depression, both drains and enriches artistic imaginations. But for Kristeva, what is lost, bereaved, or absent is not a Freudian object of love, but rather the "Thing" as "the real that does not lend itself to signification, the center of attraction and repulsion, seat of the sexuality from which the object of desire will become separated" (13): Ever since that archaic attachment the depressed person has the impression of having been deprived of an unnamable, supreme good, of something unrepresentable, that perhaps only devouring might represent, or an invocation might point out, but no word could signify. Consequently, for such a person, no erotic object could replace the irreplaceable perception of a place or preobject confining the libido or severing the bonds of desire. Knowingly disinherited of the Thing, the depressed person wanders in pursuit 6

13 of continuously disappointing adventures and loves; or else retreats, disconsolate and aphasic, alone with the unnamed Thing. (13) Kristeva indeed echoes Freud's observation on the melancholic patients' senses about what they have lost. Freud states that, in some cases, the patients feel "justified in maintaining the belief that a loss of this kind has occurred," but is unable to see what has been lost, and Freud supposes that the patient "cannot consciously perceive what he has lost either" ("Mourning and Melancholia" 245). Freud explains that the patients are unable to sense what they have lost because the loss in melancholia is "an object-loss which is withdrawn from consciousness" into the unconscious (245). The Freudian unconscious object-loss, actually, still attaches the subject to certain supreme lost objects; Kristeva, on the other hand, with the "Thing" frees the subject from a fixed subject-object relation but further emphasizes more on the subject's feeling of loss and the inability to reach the lost "Thing" as the real. The subject in melancholic relation to the "Thing," in Kristeva's own words, is the "depressed narcissist" (13). Kristeva points out that the sadness of the depressed narcissists points to a "primitive self" which is incomplete and empty, and therefore the narcissists will only find themselves suffering from a "fundamental flaw" or a "congenital deficiency." Hence the depressed narcissists' sadness is "the most archaic expression of an unsymbolizable, unnamable narcissistic wound" (12-13). Kristeva further suggests that, for these narcissistic depressed persons, sadness itself is the object that they attach to: For such narcissistic depressed persons, sadness is really the sole object; more precisely it is a substitute object they become attached to, an object they tame and cherish for lack of another. In such a case, suicide is not a disguised act of war but a merging with sadness and, beyond it, with that impossible 7

14 love, never reached, always elsewhere, such as the promises of nothingness, of death. (13) Unable to reach the "Thing" that they lost, the depressed narcissists instead attach to their sadness as a substitute; in other words, they are in love with their own sadness. Comparing to that of Freud, Kristeva's understandings on melancholia fits better as a critical framework. Unlike Freud who directly states that melancholia is pathological, Kristeva avoids the binary opposition of illness and health by intentionally blurring the boundary between melancholia and depression and not "distinguishing the particularities of the two ailments but keeping in mind their common structure" (11). Even when the analysis of the work cannot but touches the author, Kristeva can still prevent herself from improperly accusing the author of having melancholia as an illness. In addition, the "Thing" not only frees the subject of analysis from a subject-object relation, but also saves the analysts from locating the lost object for the subject. The Freudian way lures the analysts to find the origin of the patient's melancholia the repressed lost object, but even if there were such an origin, several works of the patient and a short period of the patient's life is indeed insufficient to reach it; besides, it also simplifies the complexity of a person to find a transcendental object from which all the patient's writings and life is originated. Kristeva's way, on the other hand, does not intend to find the ultimate object but focuses on the feeling of loss the subject presented or represented in the work, and therefore is better for inspecting the melancholic mood in Keats's odes. However, Kristeva's method has its own problems: the most distinct one is its highly feminine tendency. At the very beginning of her discussion on feminine depression, Kristeva states: Being caught in woman's speech is not merely a matter of chance that could be explained by the greater frequency of feminine depression a 8

15 sociologically proven fact. This may also reveal an aspect of feminine sexuality: its addiction to the maternal Thing and its lesser aptitude for restorative perversion. (71) For Kristeva, the "Thing" seems to be maternal, on which feminine sexuality is attached, as Janice L. Doane and Devon L. Hodges in their "Kristeva's Death-Bearing Mother" further explain: Yet [the different problems men and women might have with separation from the maternal object] is an important question for Kristeva, who asserts that whole "matricide is a vital necessity" for the psychic health of both men and women, women find it enormously difficult to murder the mother. They remain enthralled by the "Thing," suffering from what is obviously the "dead mother complex".... Because women identify with the mother that they have encrypted within themselves, they too feel dead. (61-62) The two critics comment that Kristeva has "gendered" a neutral system of interpretation (61) for dealing with the daughter-mother relation, which Kristeva in Black Sun provides both theoretical and clinical evidence to prove it pathogenic (62). Besides, even though she uses the melancholy/depression composite to avoid emphasizing pathological implication, by proving the daughter-mother relation pathogenic, Kristeva still exposes her assumption that melancholy/depression is rather related to illness. To analyze Keats's melancholy with both Freud's and Kristeva's methods, this thesis must avoid the problems in them. In this thesis, Freud's interpretation of melancholia still serves as a diagnosis, but the subject to be diagnosed is not Keats himself. Instead, this thesis only probes into the odes to locate the symptoms of melancholia. Upon discovering the symptoms in the text, this thesis will then seek the help of Kristeva's melancholia/depression for a structural support. This methodology, 9

16 indeed, could be rather arbitrary and subjective to judge whether the poet is in a melancholic mood, but with this Freudian-Kristeva compound, the analysis may only refer to the "Keats" persona which speaks for the poet in the odes, rather than the actual John Keats. In addition, for avoiding the Freudian pathological accusation of melancholia, this thesis, in terminology, uses rather "melancholic mood" to define melancholy as an emotion or feeling of loss to be resolved rather than an illness to be cured. Besides, although borrowing Kristeva's understandings on depression and melancholy, this thesis aims only to discover the melancholic tendency in Keats's odes. Since Kristeva in combination of feminism or gender may trigger discussions upon the maternal function in a mother-child relation, this thesis refrains from including both feminist or gender arguments in case of distraction. Except for Freud and Kristeva, this thesis also uses Slavoj Žižek's works to supplement the discussion on melancholy. According to Žižek, desire and melancholy are structurally the same: both are about "the awareness that no positive object is 'it,' its proper object, that no positive object can ever fill out its constitutive lack" (The Plague of Fantasies 81). Žižek also in his "Melancholy and the Act," briefly discusses his concepts on melancholy: From this [Lacanian] perspective, the melancholic is not primarily the subject fixated on the lost object, unable to perform the work of mourning, but rather the subject who possesses the object but has lost his desire for it because the cause that made him desire this object has withdrawn, lost its efficiency. Far from accentuating to the extreme the situation of the frustrated desire, of the desire deprived of its object, melancholy rather stands for the presence of the object itself deprived of the desire for itself. Melancholy occurs when we finally get the desired object, but are disappointed in it. In this precise sense, melancholy (disappointment at all 10

17 positive, observable objects, none of which can satisfy our desire) effectively is the beginning of philosophy. (662) Žižek, like Kristeva, suggests that what is lost for the melancholic is not the object of desire but rather the cause of desire (662). Though Kristeva associates melancholy with the deprived "archaic attachment" and the "Thing" (Kristeva 13), Žižek emphasizes more on the loss of the cause of desire. There are still other works that investigate Keats's melancholia or melancholy with psychoanalytic method. However, most of the study focuses on only one or several odes rather than deal with the whole sequence, such as Thomas Pfau, who in his Romantic Moods: Paranoia, Trauma, and Melancholy , maps the conceptual development of melancholy in great detail and discusses the poet's earlier works. However, Pfau hardly investigates into the odes that this thesis chooses to be the primary texts, except for "To Autumn": Much ingenuity may and has indeed been expended to discern "iconographical details" (Keach 194) in "To Autumn" from which to draw conclusions about its author's likely preoccupation with and disgust at the recent Peterloo massacre in Manchester on 16 August Yet, however momentous and disconcerting in its day, it is the very particularity of that calamitous event that also renders it ill suited as a semantic framework for the carefully stylized, melancholic imagism of "To Autumn" with its insistent juxtaposition of sensual plenitude and barren emotions, a pungent material world encoding a denatured psyche. (341) Clearly, Pfau is against the popular concept that "To Autumn" is in relation to Peterloo massacre. Besides, Pfau highly values "To Autumn" for the ode's "carefully stylized, melancholic imagism" and "insistent juxtaposition of sensual plenitude and barren emotions" (341). However, Pfau does not give any explanation for his 11

18 comments, and he does not linger on "To Autumn" anymore, despite the time that he discusses Chatterton with Keats. Except for the critical framework, there is still another framework in this thesis. Helen Vendler, in her The Odes of John Keats discusses the odes in the sequence of "Ode on Indolence," "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "To Autumn." Other critics, like Beachy-Quick Dan, also follows this sequence. Fundamentally, I agree that the odes should be discussed in this sequence. However, in this thesis, I modify the sequence to be "Indolence," "Psyche," "Nightingale," "Urn," "Melancholy," and "Indolence." Since Keats himself states that "Ode on Indolence" represents his "1819 temper" (Letters 116), I believe that the ode itself may serve to be the framework of the other odes, and hence it deserves to be discussed in this thesis. "Ode on Indolence," written as late as in June, concludes the history of the poet's melancholic mood during earlier months in the same year. In Keats's letter to Sarah Jeffrey on June 8, the poet writes that "you will judge of my 1819 temper when I tell you that the thing I have most enjoyed this year has been writing an ode to Indolence" (Letters 116). The ode, for Keats himself, represents his mood in the first half year of 1819, and the writing process of the ode is enjoyable. The writing process of "Ode on Indolence" takes perhaps the whole 1819 Spring. In the poet's letter to George Keatses on March 19, Keats mentioned that three masked figures, which he recognized as Love, Poesy, and Ambition, had bothered him in his vision: This morning I am in a sort of temper indolent and supremely careless: I long after a stanza or two of Thompson's Castle of indolence. My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fibre all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this 12

19 side of faintness.... In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have an alterness of countenance as they pass by me: they seem rather like three figures on a Greek vase a Man and two women whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness; and is a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind. (Letters 78-79) With Keats's letter to Sarah Jeffrey, this letter in March suggests that the poet had had the stimuli for the ode as early as in March, but he finished the poem in June. In addition, while writing "Ode on Indolence," the poet also composed the other Spring Odes. "Ode on Indolence," then, in the ode sequence serves as the background that underlies the other Spring Odes. However, in the poet's 1820 volume, "Ode on Indolence" was not included; in fact, the poem remained unpublished until 1848 years after the poet's death. If the ode can represent his "1819 temper" (116), if the poet really enjoyed writing it (ibid.), if the ode is indeed the Alpha and the Omega of the Spring Odes, it is rather paradoxical that the poet had never published it but, instead, hidden it from other people. Furthermore, the poet even left the ode on several loose sheets without transcribing it into a complete poem so that its first published version was in a wrong stanza order (Vendler 20). The poet had never revealed his reason for leaving the ode undone and unpublished. However, investigating the development of "Ode on Indolence" with other odes may offer some clues for resolving the mystery. In his letter dated March 19, Keats seemed quite serene, when the three figures Poetry, Ambition, and Love cannot even disturb his happiness. In contrast, the poet in "Ode on Indolence" complains about the annoying figures: 13

20 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 seal away, and leave without a task My idle days?... O why did ye not melt, and leave my sense Unhaunted quite of all but nothingness? (11-20)1 Even though the poet desires indolence, which promises him bodily happiness, he is always haunted by the shadowy figures. In other words the thoughts related to Poetry, Ambition, and Love roam around the indolent poet's mind, and Keats aches for wings to follow them (23-24). In the letter, however, Keats claims that his indolent experience is a "rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind" (Letters 79), indicating that his desire for indolence has finally overcome his mind's non-stop merry-go-a-round, though in the ode he bids the figures farewell several times till the end but never mentions if he has finally freed himself from them. Keats's indolence, then, according to the poet himself, may even overpower the poet's desire for Love, Ambition, and Poetry. As "Ode on Indolence" reveals, for the poet, indolence is both barren and rich. It dulls the poet's senses by benumbing his eyes (17) and preventing him from hearing "the voice of busy common-sense" (40); in addition, the poet's temporal feeling is also affected, for his unawareness of "how change the moons" (39) suggests that he won't notice the passing of time. Indolence also influences the poet's self-perceptions and even implies death, for it slows down the poet's pulses (17). Moreover, Indolence desensitizes Keats to emotions because in 1 All Keats's poems cited hereafter is from: John Keats, Keats's Poetry and Prose, Ed. Jeffery N. Cox (New York: Norton, 2009) 14

21 the indolent status the poet is less sensible to either pain or pleasure (18). Hence, indolence voidifies the poet and haunts him with barren "nothingness" (20). On the other hand, for the poet, indolence is full of richness as the sweet Spring: My sleep had been embroider'd with dim dreams; My soul had been a lawn besprinkled o'er With flowers, and stirring shades, and baffled beams: The morn was clouded, but no shower fell, Tho' in her lids hung the sweet tears of May; The open casement press'd a new-leaved vine, Let in the budding warmth and throstle's lay; (42-48) Suggesting that Keats in these two explorations of indolence borrows the language of "death" and "birth," Helen Vendler reveals that two indolent Keatses are presented in the ode: The first indolent one wishes to obliterate sensation and the sense, removing at one gesture both the sting of pain (and even the writing of death, whence he draws the phrase "pain's sting," we might guess, given the ode's biblical epigraph) and the flower of pleasure. But the second indolent Keats is overbrimmed with inner and outer sensations of the most exquisite sort, mixing the apprehension of May's tears with the luxuriating in flowers, budding warmth, light and shade, and the poetry of birdsong. (26-27) I agree with Vendler that the gradual muting of both inner and outer senses implies death, and it is true that the richness of the poet's indolence is related to the joy of new birth. However, the two "Keatses," which are of death and of birth, are rather not opposite to each other. As Bernard Backstone states that Keats "presents sound and silence not in opposition, but as complementary:... for silence is the 'ground' of sound and above all music" (58), death, for the poet, is perhaps not in opposition to 15

22 birth, but is rather the locus of birth. The poet situates both himself and his language in the indolent state of death so that he can experience the joy and richness of birth. Indolence, therefore, is not just "a matter of listening to silence" (58), but also a matter of dying for birth. There is indeed an in-betweeness: the poet, in his indolence, shuts down all his senses, floating in the "dim dreams" ("Indolence" 42) that grants him a warm, sweet illusion of Spring. No doubt that, during the whole ode, the indolent poet refuses to be mobilized. Although he declares that he craves to follow the three figures, he still remains in his indolence and eventually says that they "cannot raise / [His] head cool-bedded in the flowery grass" (51-52) of rich indolence. But is this indolence really the "indolence" that the poet praises in the ode? Clearly, the title of the ode marks that the poem is dedicated to "indolence," but the content focuses rather less on indolence but the three ghostly figures that keep walking around an urn. According to Vendler, the urn in "Ode on Indolence" is indeed the poet's doppelganger. The poet, even still in his chrysalis, projects his internalized ambition, love, and poetry onto the urn (24). Vendler further suggests that, in the ode, three Keatses are presented: one is the Keats of death, another is the Keats of birth, and the other is the urn doppelganger (26). The three Keatses, then, strives to maintain a triangular balance with one another (26). However, I argue that here are only two Keates: one is the indolent pupal Keats which has two faces death and birth at the same time, and the other is the urn that the poet (mis-)recognizes as his mirror reflection that accumulates Love, Ambition, and Poesy around it. The internal struggle of the indolent poet in "Ode on Indolence" is not that of a dialectic between death and birth; instead, the two aspects of indolence work together in response to the threat of the poet's Doppelganger. The urn, or the Doppelganger of the poet, has disturbed the indolent poet. Since the figures are like "figures on a marble urn" ("Indolence" 5), for the poet, the figures belong to the 16

23 urn rather than to him. Seeing the urn, the poet will be reminded that his love, ambition, and poetry are not yet included in his serene paradise. Keats's sweet indolence is therefore flawed or, as the poet himself states, becomes an "uneasy indolence," in which the poet has nothing to do but is "surrounded with unpleasant human identities" who "press upon on just enough to prevent one getting into a lazy position" but "not enough to interest or rouse one" (Letters 77). The imperfect indolence in "Ode on Indolence" may inflict symptoms of melancholia, which feature: a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that finds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment (Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia" 244) Indeed, most of the symptoms can be observed on the poet in the ode; moreover, even the poet's attempt to retreat into his indolence is rather melancholic. When the threat of the urn Doppelganger as well as the three figures emerges, the intimate relation which the poet builds with his indolence is shattered and broken. However, instead of shifting to another status that may relieve him from his sufferings, the poet still stays in his indolent chrysalis and tries to cast the annoying phantoms away. The poet thus cannot love his Doppelganger, and nor can he love indolence again, for the indolence is disturbed and may never return to its former status. In the ode, even when the figures fade away, the poet, rather than enjoying the short undisturbed indolence, cries for "wings" (23-24; 31) to chase after the figures. For the poet, then, the "indolence" in the ode is ever out of his reach, and the ghosts serve as the very lack for the "indolence" that troubles the poet. When the ghostly figures are present, the poet finds the indolence flawed; when the figures fade, the poet cannot but wants them back 17

24 even though he himself understand that the figures may harm his indolence. For Keats, indolence is forever disturbed or even lost. Unable to maintain it, the poet intends to be indolence itself. In fact, in "Ode on Indolence," there is a suspicious identity juxtaposition between the poet himself and his indolence. While praising the sweetness of indolence, the poet says that his soul is a lawn full of flowers (43-44); but when uttering his complaints and adieus to the three figures, the poet mentions that his head is now "cool-bedded in the flowery grass" (52). In other words, Keats, trying to reject his urn Doppelganger and the figures, withdraws into his soul, and hence the meaning of the poet's soul shifts from the place that is shaded by indolence to the cool tranquil indolence itself. Just as Freud observes that when identification of the ego with the object occurs, the object-loss may be "transformed into an ego-loss" (249), Keats, upon identifying with the indolence, should then take the loss of indolence to be the loss of his own ego. The poet's indolent gesture is therefore suicidal. He speaks a language of death and retreats into his ego, wishing to be indolence itself. In the end, he would lost his own ego as leaving it barren. Tilottama Rajan suggests that melancholy "is still pure affect: a form of sensation rather than cognition and thus idleness rather than worklessness" (349). Melancholy or, at least, a melancholic mood hence fits well to be the fundamental emotion in "Ode on Indolence." However, since the ode is finished very late as in June, it is quite arbitrary to suggest that the poet had a melancholic emotion when he first wrote the inspirations of the ode in his letters on 17 and 19 March. However, the letters have perhaps betrayed the poet a little bit. When Keats mentioned his encounter with the figures as "a rare instance of advantage in the body overpowering the Mind" (Letters 79), it is quite clear that he is in favor of his indolent body. Unfortunately, the indolence that the poet referred to in the letter should be the 18

25 "uneasy indolence" (77) that he had complained about earlier. With such a disturbed indolence, the poet has perhaps developed a melancholic mood throughout the whole sequence of the Spring Odes. In chapter two, then, I begin with the Spring Odes and focus on how the poet develops his melancholic mood in the odes. Since Keats craves for his lost indolence, in the Spring Odes, he cannot but deal with the three figures: Love, Poesy, and Ambition, in order to recover his indolence. From "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," to "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet intends to immobilize or internalize Love, Poesy, and Ambition. Especially, in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet attempts to integrate the three figures onto the urn, which in the ode is his advocate. However, the poet in the end is rather disappointed. The figures are nevertheless out of his reach, and the attempt to integrate the figures onto the urn enables the urn to overpower the poet himself. Saddened, the poet plunges into a series of infinite extended metaphors in "Ode on Melancholy," arresting himself in both his melancholic mood and the beauty of himself in his mistress' eyes rather than facing the outside world. In "Ode on Indolence," hence, the poet is still unable to handle his fixation to indolence and is paralyzed in the melancholic dilemma that whether he should get rid of the three figures or not. In chapter three, I probe into the relationship between the poet's suicidal behaviors and his desire to live eternally in the Spring Odes. In the odes, the poet always shows intentions to divide himself into pieces: in "Ode to Psyche," the poet divides his senses from his linguistic expressions; in "Ode to a Nightingale," especially, the poet, while pursuing the nightingale, gradually abandons his senses; in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet even gives up his existence. The reason the poet dares to do such suicidal behaviors is that melancholic mood may arouse an illusory sense of self-completion, in which the subjects enjoy their fantasized completeness. 19

26 When the threatening death is trapped in the metaphors in "Ode on Melancholy," the poet drowns himself in the joy of melancholy and hence refuses to move forward in both aspects of language and desire. Chapter four, on the other hand, focuses on "To Autumn." Although the poet in the Spring Odes has been deeply imprisoned in a melancholic mood, in "To Autumn," the poet is rather unaffected. "To Autumn" is different from the Spring Odes in two aspects. First, the poet personifies Autumn and allows it to act and to give away its own music in the ode, while in the Spring Odes the addressees are just objects to the poet's praises. Hence, unlike the addressees in the former odes, the personified season is never trapped, pursued, or even frozen by the poet as the addresser, and therefore it can freely interact with the imageries in "To Autumn." Second, though still applies the metaphorical language like the language in "Ode on Melancholy," the poet does not suffer from melancholy. In other words, the poet may have relieved himself of his melancholy so that "To Autumn" presents no trace of melancholic mood at all. The conclusion, therefore, consists of the poet's resolution to melancholy. The poet's resolution to melancholy relies mostly on personification. The influence of personifying the season in "To Autumn" lies in two related aspects: language and desire. In the aspect of language, personifying the season urges a new language to emerge corresponding to the new poet-autumn discursive structure. With such a new language, personification may further resolve the poet's melancholic stasis. The personification of Autumn actually offers the chance for the poet to confront an enigmatic Other. Losing the language to arbitrarily assign his subjective observations and imaginations to the addressee, the poet's depictions of the personified season may not precisely refer to the season: there are always features of the season that the poet fails to grasp, or the poet's text may generate new meanings that are related to but indeed exceed the season itself. The objet petit a, which is indeed the cause of desire, 20

27 just hides in these lacks and excesses. Personifying Autumn, the poet will then confront the impossibility to fully understand the season; and since Keats does not retreat into his language as he in the Spring Odes, but instead try to depict the season with his words, the sense of lack, or the objet petit a, should again support the movement of his desire. 21

28 Chapter 2: "Away! Away! For I Will Fly to Thee": Keats's Quest for Melancholy in the Spring Odes During the spring of 1819, John Keats wrote a series of odes including "Ode to Psyche," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Melancholy," and "Ode on Indolence." These odes, sharing concepts and even prepositions ("to" or "on") in the titles, form a fabric that depicts Keats's "1819 temper" (Letters 116). Just before composing these poems, the poet had experienced perhaps one of the most important incidents in his life: the death of his brother, Tom, who passed away in the December of Tom's death continually reminded Keats of the inevitabilities of life and death and perhaps further resulted in Keats's loss of "human passion" (Letters 81) during early The Spring Odes, therefore, are weaved with a background of death and life. Keats seemingly adores death more by announcing that "Death is Life's high meed" ([Why did I laugh tonight] 14), and his desire of being both physically and mentally undisturbed has perhaps forms his thanatosis-like indolence; however, as Aileen Ward puts it, the poet who was troubled by thoughts of death may have also "momentarily paralyzed his drive toward 'Verse, Fame, and Beauty'" (259) and hence might temporarily be blessed by the power of life. The poet's struggle between death and life had then triggered his later suicidal indolence. Disturbed by the imperfect "indolence" that "verse, fame, and beauty" continued to infect, the poet was rather desperate and depressed, and might have developed a melancholic mood or melancholy. In this chapter, I focus on how Keats develops his melancholic mood in the Spring Odes. It seems that the poet has established an intimate relationship with his death-ward indolence, and when such a relation is interrupted by such figures of life as Love, Ambition, and Poetry, the poet cannot but start to deal with them in the odes. The Spring Odes, then, are not just the poet's own mental struggles, but more 22

29 like a circle of melancholization which Keats creates as a secluded prison in which he imprisons himself. The poet's self-melancholizing journey begins with "Ode to Psyche." The ode is usually concerned to be the first in the sequence of Keats's great Spring Odes according to its finalized date. Keats, in "Ode to Psyche" and in later odes, presents his techniques to "petrify" his addressees. The ode starts with a dream-like vision: the poet, while wandering in the forest, finds "two fair creatures" (9), which he believes to be Psyche and her lover Cupid. The couple, however, motionlessly lay "calm-breathing on the bedded grass" (15), as if they are frozen by a "slumber" (18). But the poet, at the discovery of the goddess, gives an ambiguous statement that he sees Psyche "with awaken'd eyes" (6). This statement may suggest that both the poet and the goddess are rather not sleeping or in dream. Hence the slumber is but the poet's poetic vision which seizes Psyche in the eternal scene. The poet then addresses the goddess directly and praises Psyche with two structurally similar stanzas. However, the poet's language in the two stanzas presents irregular repetitions: Fairer than these, though temple thou has none, Nor altar heap'd with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. (28-35) The poet, with a great number of "no," speaks of what Psyche lacks comparing to other Olympian deities. Though the poetic structure remains intact, the usage of language here is rather intriguing. 23

30 With repetitive sentence structures, the poet may intend to outline in the ode "a program of poetry and religion, or poetry as religion" (Hooton 46) and emphasize that the way which Psyche is worshipped is rather different from how the other deities are treated. Clearly, for the poet, Psyche is in lack of many dedications that are related to visual (flowers, shrine, grove), aural (virgin-choir, voice, lute, pipe, oracle), olfactory (flower, incense) and bodily (heat) feelings. The poet separates these feelings and list them out as if he is to show the richness of an ideal place in which Psyche should be praised. Unfortunately, the ideal rich land for the goddess is impossible, for Christianity has dominated the world, allowing no pagan religion, not to mention the rituals and sacrifices that the poet depicted in the ode. Unable to find the dedications and to re-establish the rituals in the outside world, the poet turns inwards for the solution. The final answer that the poet gives, as presented in the ode, is to identify with or even become what the goddess lacks so that he himself can satisfy Psyche alone: So let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming. (44-49) But there is a crucial problem: does the goddess really need all the poet offers in the ode? Indeed, the goddess never speaks of her needs: she is made silent and motionless, sleeping in the poet's fantasy world. All the poet's offerings are perhaps just to trap Psyche forever in his fantasy, for Keats even intends to be her "priest" (50) and build a temple for her "in some untrodden region of [his] mind" (51). Identifying with the priest now, Keats summons the goddess by the worshipping rituals into her 24

31 temple his mind. Moreover, the goddess, in the poet's mind, can never escape from the poet. Since the poet also identifies with the elements in a worshipping ritual, the summoning effect can be rather ever-lasting. In short, Keats not only paralyzes the goddess but also imprisons her in his mind. For the poet, it could have been satisfactory that both his feverish love for Psyche and the fantacized needs of the goddess can be satisfied; however, the poet desires more. Astonishingly, Psyche is but a bait. Having the goddess in mind, the poet obviously has another target, as the last four lines of the ode writes: And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in! (64-67) The speaker, in the very last line of the ode, has exposed that his true target is Love instead of Psyche. Keats summons Psyche into his mind and traps the goddess in her wonderful temple, but then he leaves a "casement" (66) open so that Love may visit Psyche every night according to the original mythological story. In other words, Psyche is but a mediation that associates the poet with Love. It may seem contradictory that the poet writes an ode titled "Ode to Psyche" to praise the goddess but, in the very end, reduces Psyche to an empty signifier that points to Love solely. In fact, in the poem, the poet never frees Psyche from her frozen status, not to mention allowing Psyche to speak of what she wants. The dedications that the poet offers to her, even the ode itself, are rather part of the poet's strategy to mute the voice and desire of the goddess herself and to further deprives Psyche of all discourses underlying her existence but that of the Greek/Latin mythologies which associates her with Love. 25