The Theme of Mortality and Immortality as Found in Selected Poems of Shelley and Keats

The Theme of Mortality and Immortality as Found in Selected Poems of Shelley and Keats
Précis:
This paper will entirely deal with the clashing characteristic of mortality and immortality traced in selected poems of Shelley and Keats and will proceed through discussing this distinctive aspect in these poems. After that there will be an estimation of mortality and immortality depicted throughout the poems. At the end of this paper, the success of both the poets skillful employment of mortality and immortality in the selected poems will be discussed.
Context:
Nineteenth century romantic poetry was enriched with the philosophical ideas of the poets. Philosophy, along with mysticism, was the prominent theme of this era. The then romantic poets were very much influenced by the theme of death. John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley also followed the trend. In many of Keats’ works we find his yearning for attaining immortality. One of his best conceived pieces of poetry “Ode to a Nightingale” is also ripe with the theme of mortality of human being and the immortality of nature. Keats had been living a very unsatisfactory life before the composition of this poem. One of his brothers set off to America and another brother died of tuberculosis. He himself was suffering from tuberculosis too. His personal life was almost shattered and he was in financial crisis. This frustration toward life evoked Keats to write the poem and escape to the immortal world of happiness.
Shelley was a good friend to Keats and one of the greatest admirers of Keats’s work. Shelley could not accept Keats’s death in such an early age. Shelley blamed literary reviewers of Keats for his death. But he strongly believed that Keats will become immortal in the history of English literature through his works. Shelley composed one of his most popular works Adonais keeping Keats in mind. In this poem Shelley gave Keats a mythological name. Shelley believed that Keats may be no more in this mortal world but somewhere he must be happy in the world of permanence far away from the criticism of his reviewers.

Focus: Our main focus in this paper will be on how in a state of drowsiness in “Ode to a Nightingale” Keats went to an imaginary world to escape from his earthly hardships and hearing the sweet voice of Nightingale how he drenched into the flow of emotion. It seemed that the song of Nightingale is being continued from time immemorial. It is something like nature that is immortal. He wondered why human life is with too short duration and so many obstacles. And in Shelley’s Adonais our main focus will be on how Shelley related Keats to a mythical character to make him immortal. We will also focus on the way Shelley projected Keats as a portion of eternal world which is unique with full gratitude towards his poetic genius.

Analysis: All the disappointments toward life seem to be killing Keats’ inner soul. So, Keats wishes to escape from all the hardships and the cruelty he experienced in life and tries to find artistic immortality of happiness in the world of imagination. On the other hand, Shelley was disappointed by the news of Keats’ death and had no better way to cherish Keats’s poetic genius than poetry. Shelley’s great admiration of Keats and hatred for Keats’s literary critic provoked him to write his masterpiece Adonais.
In “Ode to a Nightingale,” Keats chooses the Nightingale as the creative expression of freedom and immortality. In the state of drowsiness, the speaker imagines the Nightingale’s song as an expression of ecstasy that can remove the traces of his worldly sufferings, and the bird as an immortal creature of nature. He wants to transport himself in the world of Nightingale where despair cannot touch anyone and happiness resides forever. Here, through the bird imagery Keats clearly depicts the immortality of poetry through nature. He then enters into the evergreen world of nature and envisioned the heavenly natural world of immortality. The divinity of the Nightingale disturbs the speaker and reminds him of his own mortality. He contrasts the aspects of nature and human life together and eventually informs the bird of its immortality saying, “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”(61).
The speaker then accepts the fact that he cannot live forever and wishes to join the Nightingale’s world of perpetuity, while earlier he has “ been half in love with easeful Death/ call’d him soft names” (52-53). The speaker does not want to die because after his death he would no longer be able to hear the Nightingale’s song. The Nightingale’s song is a continual process which has been playing from ancient times and has no ending. Even after the speaker’s death, the bird will continue singing. This continuation of singing refers to the never ending appeal of poetry, and indicates that Keats will no longer be able to celebrate the poetic serenity. Keats employs several allusions and metaphors to depict his view on mortality and immortality. At the end of the poem the speaker comes over the enchanting song and finds himself back in the real world. At this point we can see an acceptance of death as an inevitable fact of life.
Shelley deeply mourns for Keats’s early death through elegiac form in Adonais. The title of the poem reflects Shelley’s admiration of Keats’s appearance and work. Shelley employs symbolic imagery throughout the poem to justify the immortality of Keats’s spirit. The first symbol used in the poem is a flower that symbolizes Adonais’s constant change into immortality. Here the flower depicts two aspects­­; one refers to beauty of Keats’s poetry and the other refers to the weakness in Keats’s accepting criticism. Shelley mourns for Keats as death has taken the great poet away from this mortal world in an early age. Shelley here compares Keats with flower saying, “was not less delicate and fragile then it was beautiful; and where cankerworms abound, what wonder, if its young flower was blighted in the bud?”(136-37). Shelley explains the idea saying: “The bloom, whose petals nipt before they blew, Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste;” (52-53).
Here he compares the flowerlike nature to the poetic genius. Then Shelley goes with the imagery of sleeping as a token of death. The term “sleeping flower” indicates Keats’ early death. Then Shelley proceeds through the absolute definition of death saying “Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep” Shelley also used water imagery several times to portray the symbol of mortality in the poem and this mortality is represented through Keats’s death. And these imageries hurt the speaker most. But after that the poem takes a major shift and the speaker starts to rejoice as he found Adonais’s spirit immortal. This imagery represents the never ending charm of Keats’ work. The poem ends with a positive note where Shelly accepts the idea that Keats’ memories will remain immortal in this mortal world through his poetry.

Afterward: The second generation of Romantic poets was greatly concerned with the philosophy of death. Keats and Shelley were not so different. Constant theme of death can be traced in the poetries of both Keats and Shelley. Both the poets employed allusion and imagery to explore the mortal aspects of human life. Keats invoked death to set him free from the agony of life in his “Ode to a Nightingale,” but eventually he came up against the idea of his own death. At last he falls for the ever changing aspect of nature’s immortality representing poetry’s ever lasting appeal. Shelley, on the contrary, wished the resurrection of Keats’ spirit in Adonais. He wished the revival of Keats’ talent in the world till eternity. Although the motive of employing death imagery to the poets was different, we can see the theme of mortality and immortality is recurrent in the works of both the poets.
Works Cited
Keats, John. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Print.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. New York: Modern Library, 1994. Print.
Ward, J V. “The Constant. Theme of Death in the Works of Keats And Shelley.” literature-essays.com. 14 Aug. 2003. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.

Cited: Keats, John. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Print. Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley. New York: Modern Library, 1994. Print. Ward, J V. “The Constant. Theme of Death in the Works of Keats And Shelley.” literature-essays.com. 14 Aug. 2003. Web. 6 Feb. 2014.