sensuousness in keats poetry/ keats sensuousness

 

sensuousness in keats poetry/ keats sensuousness 

Keats sensuousness

Keats is first and foremost a sensual poet. Sensuous poetry is a type of poetry that is primarily concerned with providing pleasure to the senses, rather than with any notion or intellectual philosophy.

Sensuality is a poetic quality that influences a man's aural, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory senses. It delights the senses by giving a beautiful and colorful word-picture to the eyes, metrical music and rhythm to the ears, awakening the sense of scent to the nose, and so on. A poet, says to Keats, should create a beautiful and vibrant word image that appeals to the Penta senses.

Keats is a beauty worshipper who seeks it out everywhere, and his senses disclose the beauty of things to him, as well as the beauty of the universe. As a result, it is his sensory impressions that pique his interest.

Milton believes poetry should be "simple, sensuous, and passionate." Only Keats' poetry appeals to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, while others only give the impression they receive through their eyes. Such as Wordsworth's imagination is stirred by what he sees and hears in nature. Shelly's revolutionary idealism colors his words. But Keats' poetry appeals to the senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.

‘’ O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts.’’

Poetry arose from sensory impressions, and all poets are sensual in some way.  Poetry is created through the emotional and creative responses to sensory stimuli.

Keats is a poet who paints with words and of sight. He paints a definite and solid picture of sensuous beauty in only a few words. In ‘’Ode on Grecian Urn’’ the sense of sight is active, he says:

‘’O Attic shape! … branches and the trodden weed;’’

Similarly, Keats' ear picks up every sound, from a grasshopper's tweet in the summer to a cricket's singing in the winter. The poet forgets all of his heart's fever and worry when he hears the nightingale's melodious musical song, and the poet's heart is ruptured by the birds' singing.

He imagines that:

‘’ The voice I hear … emperor and clown’’

And in ‘’ Ode on Grecian Urn’’ he says:

‘’ Heard melodies are sweet, … soft pipes, play on’’

The sense of taste is vividly depicted in Keats' poem "Ode to Nightingale," in which he depicts the intoxication of wine. When he says:

‘’ O for a draught of vintage! …  leave the world unsean,’’

Similarly, though the poet cannot see the flowers in the darkness, he can smell the combined aroma of each blossom distinctly in the "Ode to Nightingale."

He says:

‘’ I can not see what flowers … guess each sweet.’’

Every line of Keats' poetry is rich with sensuous beauty; his picture sense is also quite distinct. "Ode to Autumn" is perhaps the best example of Keats sensuality. The experience of autumn is depicted in sensuous words in this poem, which invokes all of the penta-senses. He says:

‘’ Season of mists … maturing sun;’’

Keats imagery is also rich in sensuousness, e.g., ‘melodious plot’, ‘sunburnt mirth’, ‘embalmed darkness’, and ‘ suffering moist’. Keats' thought matures over time, and he expresses both spiritual and intellectual truths. He comes to see the beauty as well as the truth in it. He begins to see not only the beauty but also truth in it. He says:

‘’ Beauty is truth, truth is beauty,…..and all ye need to know.’’

Keats is a poet of sensuality rather than contemplation, but he does occasionally shift from sensuality to feelings. He combines sensuality with feelings, voluptuousness with vigour, and aestheticism with intellectualism in his mature works, such as his odes and Hyperion. He is not content with a life of feeling; instead, he tries to cope with the world's pains and sufferings. With the passage of time, he recognizes that the only way to achieve immortality is to move beyond sensual satisfaction to greater values. Keats' sensuality, on the other hand, is at the heart of his poetry.