Explore the presentation of pain and pleasure in Ode on Melancholy
and one other poem.
One of Keats’ most famous letters was addressed to George and
Georgiana Keats in mid-April 1819. In it, he explores his personal
philosophy of the world being “the vale of soul-making”. He accepts that
pain and sorrow are necessary “in order to school an intelligence and
make it a soul” – these emotions are what make us human, and we can’t
live a full life without them as the Romantics believed emotions were
central to the human experience. In this essay, I will explore how Keats
presents pain and pleasure as two sides of the same coin, first in Ode on
Melancholy (OM) where he uses Platonian abstractions to portray how
pain and pleasure are intertwined and omnipresent in life, and then in
the sonnet ‘On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again” (RKL) which is
autobiographical and describes a specific situation where he experiences
both pain and pleasure.
Keats uses a tripartite structure and a therapist-like tone in OM to change
the reader’s perception of Melancholy, and as a result, the relationship
between pain and pleasure. The coupling of the poem beginning in-
media-res and the use of the first person narrative creates a sense of
colloquialism and makes for a deeply personal experience for the reader.
The first stanza contains several symbols that are in the semantic field of
death, whether those are animals like “the downy owl” or “the death
moth”, or referenced that echo the fascination the Romantics (and the
public at the time) had with Ancient Greek culture, which is known as
Hellenism. The Romantics believed Ancient Greece to be a time of
simplicity and purity and the public’s general knowledge of Ancient
Greece was expanded by exhibitions like ‘The Elgin Marbles’ at the British
Museum (which Keats visited and was inspired by). The river ‘Lethe’ is
one of the rivers of the underworld and is known as the river of
forgetfulness; the “ruby grapes of Proserpine” refer to the pomegranate
seeds that Proserpine (Persephone in Greek Mythology) ate whilst in the
underworld and unwillingly trapped herself there for four months of the
year – this suggests that Melancholy has a complex nature that mortals
cannot comprehend. Here, Keats indulges the reader’s original perception
and one other poem.
One of Keats’ most famous letters was addressed to George and
Georgiana Keats in mid-April 1819. In it, he explores his personal
philosophy of the world being “the vale of soul-making”. He accepts that
pain and sorrow are necessary “in order to school an intelligence and
make it a soul” – these emotions are what make us human, and we can’t
live a full life without them as the Romantics believed emotions were
central to the human experience. In this essay, I will explore how Keats
presents pain and pleasure as two sides of the same coin, first in Ode on
Melancholy (OM) where he uses Platonian abstractions to portray how
pain and pleasure are intertwined and omnipresent in life, and then in
the sonnet ‘On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again” (RKL) which is
autobiographical and describes a specific situation where he experiences
both pain and pleasure.
Keats uses a tripartite structure and a therapist-like tone in OM to change
the reader’s perception of Melancholy, and as a result, the relationship
between pain and pleasure. The coupling of the poem beginning in-
media-res and the use of the first person narrative creates a sense of
colloquialism and makes for a deeply personal experience for the reader.
The first stanza contains several symbols that are in the semantic field of
death, whether those are animals like “the downy owl” or “the death
moth”, or referenced that echo the fascination the Romantics (and the
public at the time) had with Ancient Greek culture, which is known as
Hellenism. The Romantics believed Ancient Greece to be a time of
simplicity and purity and the public’s general knowledge of Ancient
Greece was expanded by exhibitions like ‘The Elgin Marbles’ at the British
Museum (which Keats visited and was inspired by). The river ‘Lethe’ is
one of the rivers of the underworld and is known as the river of
forgetfulness; the “ruby grapes of Proserpine” refer to the pomegranate
seeds that Proserpine (Persephone in Greek Mythology) ate whilst in the
underworld and unwillingly trapped herself there for four months of the
year – this suggests that Melancholy has a complex nature that mortals
cannot comprehend. Here, Keats indulges the reader’s original perception
