Evaluate Keats As an Escapist

Answer

Do you think Keats wants to escape from reality? Justify your answer from your study of Keats.

Or, Evaluate Keats as an escapist. 

John Keats (1795-1821), a renowned English Romantic poet, is often associated with the escapist tendencies of the Romantic movement. An escapist is a person who tries to avoid the harsh realities of life and wants to escape into the ideal world. The ideal world is a world of imagination where life is full of enjoyment and free from all difficulties. However, Keats accepts the world as it is and returns to the world of reality.

“Ode to a Nightingale”: The poem “Ode to a Nightingale” (1819) starts with the effect of Nightingale’s song on the body and heart of the poet. To him, the song of the Nightingale is a symbol of everlasting joy. For this reason, being dissatisfied with the hard realities of real life, he wants to take shelter in the dream forest with the help of Nightingale’s song. In his imaginative forest, he finds all the pleasures and enjoyment that he would like to have in the ideal world. As the poet says,

That I might drink and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

However, by the word “forlorn,” Keats came back to the world of reality from the world of imagination. Because the poet believes that the world of imagination can shelter us for a short time and cannot give us the solution to the hard realities of life. In the poet’s tongue,

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”: In the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819), Keats describes the eternal beauty of art and immortalizes the objects that have been carved on the Urn. There are pictures of the youth and maiden lovers and beloveds, pipers, and trees. The piper is always piping under the tree. The lover on the Urn is always trying to kiss his beloved, who is trying to avoid his kiss. In this world of beauty, lovers will never decay. From the harsh realities of life, Keats seeks refuge in the beauty of the world of the Urn. The poet says,

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

Forever wilt thou love and she be fair!

“Ode on Melancholy”: In the poem “Ode on Melancholy,” we find the temporality of beauty. Beauty and joy are the real sources of melancholy. Melancholy cannot be found in the sad and ugly things but in everything beautiful and joyful. So, the deepest kind of melancholy can be found in the showers of rain, in the beautiful roses, and the bright, dark eyes of the beloved. Beauty, by its nature, is short-lived and gives birth to melancholy in the minds of men. The duration of beauty makes men sad. Keats has also personified Melancholy as a goddess who dwells with the goddess of Beauty. As the poet says,

She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die.

At the same time, the goddess of Melancholy and the goddess of Joy dwell in the same temple. The God of Joy always keeps his finger on his lips to bid farewell to his worshipper. In the poet’s tongue –

And Joy whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu.

To conclude, Keats is not a real escapist. Although he tries to take shelter in the world of imagination, which is an ideal world, he cannot remain there for a long time, and the hard realities make him take shelter there for a short time, not for a long time.