Ode to Psyche (1819) Flashcards
an experiment in the ode genre
-attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a dramatic scene.
-serves as an important departure from Keats’s early poems, which frequently describe an escape into the pleasant realms of one’s imagination
-uses the imagination to show the narrator’s intent to resurrect Psyche and reincarnate himself into Eros (love). Keats attempts this by dedicating an “untrodden region” of his mind to the worship of the neglected goddess
ode serves as an introduction to the other odes by reason of its theme of anticipation
it lauds the pleasures of the mind working in retirement, the desiring mind in the act of creating beautiful things, in anticipation of the repose which follows creation.
Instead of poetic mind animating external object,
the mythological Psyche enters his mind and animates it internally so that it becomes changed into a vast mental landscape
The consequences of the transforming power are great. Before the poet envisioned Psyche and Cupid, he either had no soul or was unaware of her, both amounting to the same idea that ignorance is absence. He “ wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly.”
After Keats has shown that the animating power can and does enter his mind, he re-presents
how the animating power, Psyche, converts an idle mind into a “ working brain,” how she helps him to convert visions into language
O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thy own soft-conched ear.
poem opens with what appears to be a rather standard apostrophe to the goddess, with the traditional apology for daring to bespeak her presence
Immediately after this induction, however, we learn that this poem is retrospective-the speaker is reporting a changeful experience after the fact of the experience, not as if he were originally under-
going the process of events-so we must withhold judgment about an introductory attitude to the whole experience until after the poet has recapitulated the process of the experience which changed him
The poem corresponds to Keats’s famous “ Vale of Soul-Making,” where
“Intelligence” and the “human heart “ are acted upon by the world of circumstance, and which together form an “altered nature [or] soul.” See the journal-letter to George and Georgianna Keats [921 April 1819] in which was enclosed, among others, Ode to Psyche.
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied.
Keats is literally setting the stage for his vision of the mythologic Psyche, for what follows is a classic example of the tableau vivant, a living picture, in which actors in absolute stillness depict a famous painting, statuary group, or allegory. This mimetic device is tactically sound, because Keats is representing the poised wonder he felt just prior to his realization of the identity of the
two lovers
‘Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, 0 happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!
Here the language is purposely delicate, even lush in its daintiness, in order to capture the rococo sensuality of the still sleeping lovers. In naming the goddess, the poet remembers her part in the Olympiad, or rather lack of an important part in that “faded hierarchy.” With his realization too that Psyche lacks the traditional devotees accorded to deity, he begins to find his part as attendant, and the language becomes more energetic, even incantatory, in opposition to the diminutive description of her, and implicitly, of her role in this older age
O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir’d
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d.
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.
Despite his awareness that this is an Iron Age, that nature no longer is holy, in his vision he is inspired by the properties he will gain as her attendant. She will render holy his inward mind, and he can become her priest, building the paradise within. The stanza above has ceased to be descriptive of the vision of Psyche and Cupid and has risen tonally to become a wondrous evaluation of the poet’s new relation with the goddess.
Yes, I will by thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep
Filled with inspiration at the new idea which has entered his mind, he affirms with transcendental fervor, in the this stanza, just how he will achieve a new relationship with Psyche.
Intellectually conceived, this picture is an enormous conceit, more appropriate to the shock tactics of Donne than to Keats. The difference in effect between surprise and acceptance occurs as we realize that the inculcation of Psyche into the poet’s mind has been prepared for us. There is no lasting shock because Psyche’s animating power resides in the mind as a property of the brain.
Once we grasp Psyche’s transforming power, we see and understand why the leafy fane “ In some untrodden region of my mind “expands from an expression of a small covert dell to a vast prospect of indefinable proportions. With Psyche’s presence within, when leaves are thoughts, the mind opens out from subjective center to objective landscape without circumference. It is a picture of the animating power of the mind as depicted in the mind which opens out to embrace all of nature as thought.
Figure and ground, or internal vision and external landscape, are interchangeable.
