In Greek myth,
Psyche was a
Keats described writing this ode
in a letter to his brother and sister,
The following poem, the
last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have
taken even moderate pains; I have, for the most part, dashed off my
lines in a hurry. This one I have done leisurely; I think it
reads the more richly for it, and it will, I hope, encourage me to
write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit. You
must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before
the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the Augustan
Age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or
sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour, and perhaps never
thought of in the old religion. I am more orthodox than to let a
heathen goddess be so neglected. (April 30, 1819).
When Keats
wrote this poem, he
was thinking about the soul and theorized that the soul developed,
became individualized, through suffering (letter, April 21, 1819). It is
characteristic of Keats's thought that he saw the development of the
soul (a positive experience) tied
inextricably
to suffering (a negative experience). The conflicted nature of
life and the effort to unite opposites run through
his poetry, as you have seen.
In Greek myth,
Psyche was a
princess whom Cupid, the son of Venus, fell in love with.
Fearing his mother's jealousy of her beauty, he visited her only at
night, in total darkness. In one
version of the myth she was
overcome by curiosity and in another she was frightened by a rumor that
her lover was a snake; in any
event, to discover who and what he was, she looked at him one night
after he had fallen asleep.
When oil dripping from her lamp awoke him, he fled. Psyche
searched for him, enduring much suffering. As a reward for her
devotion and the hardships she had undergone, she was made immortal and
reunited with Cupid.
"The Ode to
Psyche" is not
universally admired, as are "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a
Grecian Urn," and "To Autumn." It has been called "the least
clearly organized of the odes" and the "least coherent and most
uneven of the later poems." But even its detractors have admired
Keats's skillful combining of nature
and myth and his sensuous
language, as in the description of Cupid and Psyche together.
Psyche
is clearly a symbol:
- In Greek myth, Psyche represented
the soul or mind, meanings that work well in this poem, with its
explicit references to thought and
mental process.
- Psyche is sometimes seen as a particular
quality of mind, imagination. Psyche, like
imagination, crosses the
boundary separating the mortal and the immortal, the transitory and the
eternal, because she has been
both mortal and immortal.
- The critic Harold Bloom suggests that
that Psyche symbolizes the human-soul-in-love; hers is a love story,
her lover Cupid is the god of love, his mother is the goddess of love,
the poet encounters Psyche and Cupid between kisses, and the last line
of the poem welcomes
love.
Whichever of these readings you choose, the main movement and
meaning of the poem remain
essentially the same. The poet feels the loss of faith or source of
inspiration. Though the gods have lost
their power in modern
society, the poet still desires transcendence, that is, to rise
above the limits of everyday reality for a higher reality, one
which engages the higher faculties like imagination and spirit.
The
poet's worship of Psyche is solitary, for several possible
reasons.
The poet-dreamer in this poem
ends with a strong affirmative; he vows to keep a window open "To let
the warm Love in." But is his
affirmation wholehearted, or is it undercut by a hint of doubt or
negativity? Has the mind (or the
imagination or the power of love--depending on how you interpret
Psyche) successfully created the glory, beauty, and love that have been
lost in the disbelief of Keats's age? or has the poet found only a
partial
solution? And how much has the dreamer changed because of his
experience?
The poem
moves from the poet-dreamer coming upon Psyche and Cupid in an
intense moment between kisses, through his description of two ages of
disbelief--
Psyche's and his own--to end with his dedicating himself to Psyche and
what she symbolizes.
Stanzas I-III
At the beginning of this ode,
the poet wonders whether he really saw Psyche or whether he dreamed the
encounter (I, 5-6). Does the
answer to that question affect the validity of his experience? If the
encounter was a vision or waking
dream, would the experience be negated? Think about how vividly he
describes Cupid and Psyche; are
they real for us as we read of them, regardless of their actual
existence?
The
description of Cupid and
Psyche in stanza II and the poet's praise of her beauty in Stanza III
prepare for his conversion in stanza IV; they help to explain it. Keats
emphasizes the joyful state Psyche has achieved and her beauty, which
deserve to be
worshipped, though her age and the poet's age ignore her. The second
half of stanza III and lines
1-3 of stanza IV describe the failure of the ancients to worship
Psyche. And the poet lives in "days so far retired / From happy
pieties" (IV, 5-6).
Stanzas IV and V
The poet, out of his personal
experience, becomes
her worshipper, i.e., is inspired to write poetry: "I see, and sing, by
my own eyes inspir'd" (IV, 8). He
insists upon the personal, and by implication private, nature of his
inspiration.
Keats uses
religious imagery to indicate how profoundly this experience has
affected the poet-dreamer. In devoting himself to Psyche, he will
become her "priest" (V,
1), priesthood traditionally being the holiest and highest calling in a
community. He will form a
congregation of worshippers (IV, 9-14). He will build a temple and a
"rosy" sanctuary. Why "rosy"?
What does "rosy" connote? Would the effect/meaning change if he used
grey or black instead?
The
poet-dreamer will also serve as the congregation in the religion he has
created (IV, 9-14). He will perform the religious duties that earlier
ages failed to (III, 7-12). The Temple and the flowers Psyche lacked
(III, 5-6), the
poet will provide in the last stanza with the "fane," the "sanctuary,"
the
"wreath'd trellis," "buds," and "breeding flowers." He alone will
replace the disbelief of a previous age
and his own age.
He is and
will remain separate from and inaccessible to his own age and
contemporaries. His temple is in an "untrodden region"; "far, far" the
trees will ring the
mountains, which are "steep by steep"; he imagines a "wide"
silence. Do you find anywhere in this poem references that include or
might allow for the
inclusion of others?
Stanza V
Keats uses concrete nature images to describe
mental processes. The
temple to Psyche is to be built "In some untrodden region of my mind"
(line 2). There "branched thoughts
new grown with pleasant pain" murmur. The sanctuary will be decorated
by his "working brain," with
everything Fancy or imagination can invent. The delight Psyche will
experience comes from his
"shadowy thought." His nature imagery is so vivid that the reader can
easily forget that it exists only
in the poet's mind, as descriptions of his mental processes.
Keats's characterization
of the
poet's mental process needs to be examined closely. Does
Keats's dreamer suggest, however tentatively or unconsciously,
doubts about his inspiration or worship?
Why does the poet propose
building a shrine in an "untrodden
region of my mind" (line 3)? Is it because the age he lives in does not
encourage the use of that area--or of
imagination and other high faculties--or love? Is it necessary to hide
his devotion to a higher reality? Is he expressing a covert desire,
perhaps unconscious, to keep his experience private, for himself?
- The phrase "Branched thoughts" (line 3) describes the way
we
think, with thoughts going off in every direction. That they are grown
with "pleasant pain" is a
characteristic Keatsian oxymoron.
- His "working brain" (line 11) has been stimulated to
activity. This mental activity contrasts with
his wandering "thoughtlessly" before encountering Psyche (I, 7) at the
begining of his poem, when he
lacked inspiration or a faith which draws forth the higher facilities.
- One of the things Fancy devises is "stars without a name"
(line 12). Is Keats suggesting that the
stars are insubstantial, that is, that they don't exist? Or does the
mind or the imagination reveal the
unknown to us?
- Does "feign" (line 13) also carry its more common meaning
of
pretend or dissemble, with its suggestion of falseness?
- His thought is "shadowy" (line 13). Does "shadowy" have
positive, negative, or neutral connotations?
Do you find a trace of disillusionment in any of these phrases?
Stanza V is longer than
the
other four stanzas. Has Keats made a mistake, or is this a
technique for giving importance to the content? Another change in this
stanza is his projecting his
commitment into the future with the future tense verbs "shall" and
"will." Previously his verbs were
either past tense or present tense.
In this poem, do we see
the
genesis or evolution of the poet? Is the poem itself a result of
Psyche's inspiration? Is the poem a tribute to
or an expression of his worship of Psyche? Or are some of my
suggestions getting a little too clever or ingenious?
|