In “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats, a desperate speaker hears a nightingale in the depths of a distant forest. The speaker longs to leave his physical world and join the bird in his metaphysical world. The nightingale sings of a world where there is no pain, where the senses are mute and where life is immortal: the opposite of the domain of the speaker. The speaker plans to join the nightingale's world of immortality through alcohol, death, and finally by creating his own art. John Keats explores these themes in “Ode to a Nightingale” to illustrate the speaker's struggle to reconcile the conscious and unconscious worlds. The major theme of this poem focuses on the reconciliation of many opposites, as summarized by Richard Fogle in his article "Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale': Say No to Plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get the original essay The main emphasis of the poem is a struggle between the ideal and the real: inclusive terms which, however, contain antitheses particularities of pleasure and pain, of imagination and common-sense reason, of plenitude and deprivation, of permanence and change, of nature and the human, of art and life, of freedom and slavery, of waking and dreaming. (Fogle, 211) While all of these opposites play against each other, in this article I intend to focus on how Keats attempts to balance mortality and immortality in “Ode to a Nightingale.” Dissatisfied with the pain and inevitability of death in the conscious world, Keats sought ways to circumvent the unpleasantness of this physical state. Keats explores the opposing worlds of the conscious and unconscious in many of his odes. He seems very interested in combining the two worlds, reconciling their opposites and thus reaping the best of both states. “Ode to a Nightingale” constitutes a new step in Keats’s journey towards this desired reconciliation. An earlier ode, “Ode on Indolence,” rejects the conscious world altogether, while “Ode to Psyche” celebrates an opposite state of creativity. “Ode on Melancholy” focuses on the pain and beauty found in reality and the action required in that reality. “Ode to a Nightingale” attempts to locate a point between these two states of reality and illusion through drugs, death or creativity. In his article "The Subtext of Keats's Ode to the Nightingale", Karl Wentersdorf explains the importance of this ode: "In a sense, the excursion in Keats's Ode to the Nightingale briefly recounts the aesthetic journey and psychologically it had led Keats to a more mature judgment about poetry and its relation to life” (Wentersdorf, 82). Keats is very interested in how life and the world of poetry mix and can eventually merge. Later, "To Autumn" will finally accomplish what "Ode to a Nightingale" suggests. Keats is able to accept the passage of time and find a point merging mortality and immortality, permanence and impermanence, maturity and decadence, darkness and light, etc. “Ode to a Nightingale” is a milestone in Keats’s exploration of a merging of opposites and extracting the best from both worlds. Two major opposites that Keats attempts to balance in "Ode to a Nightingale" are mortality and immortality. The speaker's conscious world implies the inevitability of death. The unconscious world of the nightingale is that of immortality. The speaker will meet physical death at some point, while the bird and its song will live forever. In his article entitled "The Immortality of the Natural: Keats's Ode to a Nightingale", Kappel focuses on the reasons forwhich the nightingale is considered immortal while man is not: “This ontological difference gives rise to the essential experiential distinction between the two beings. , around which the poem is built: the bird is unaware of death, the man is painfully aware of it” (Kappel, 272). The nightingale does not know death and therefore lives every day without thinking about the end of life. On the other hand, the speaker is mortal to the extent that he knows and expects death. Also note that the nightingale comes from the natural world. Nature – just like the nightingale – is eternal and never knows death (Kappel, 272). Keats emphasizes this idea: Vanish away, dissolve and forget completely What you never knew among the leaves, Weariness, fever and worry Here, where men sit and hear each other moan; (ll. 21-24) Keats wants to delve into the natural and primitive world of the nightingale where the worries of man are not known. The bird is highlighted as living among the leaves, a strong symbol of nature. Similarly, Keats describes the bird and nature as being free from all burdens; they are therefore immortal, unlike man. In his quest to reconcile the two worlds and escape the pain and mortality of the conscious world, the speaker considers several options. In order to join the mockingbird in his dark world, empty of pain and full of permanence, the speaker first explores drunkenness. The speaker calls for a quantity of wine: O for a beaker full of the hot South Full of the true and blushing Hippocrene, With pearly bubbles flashing at the brim, And a mouth stained with purple; So I can drink and leave the world. invisible, And with you disappear into the dark forest: (ll. 15-20) Here the speaker hopes that alcohol can bring him into the world of the nightingale by numbing his conscience and the pains of mortal life. Wine, in itself, represents a strong symbol of merged mortality and immortality. The wink of the bubbles may allude to the merging of the conscious and unconscious, as a wink is neither a closed nor a fully open eye. Wine purple is another fusion, as blue is a cool, dark color, while red is a vibrant, lively color. Wine also merges the two worlds as it contains symbols of life such as the ripe grapes of summer and the “hot South”. It also contains symbols of death, as it is aged as a mortal being would and stored underground and in a dark, tomb-like setting. Wine not only acts as a symbol of the merging of the conscious and unconscious, but it also acts as a medium. By drinking wine, the speaker can leave the conscious world and delve into the unconscious. However, alcohol cannot provide a lasting combination of these two states, because the effects of wine are only temporary. To circumvent this temporary state, the speaker considers death as a solution to escape the inconveniences of the conscious world. Death would be the ultimate escape from the unconscious world. In Jeffery Baker's John Keats and Symbolism, he discusses the fault Keats finds in the idea of ​​escaping the pains of the conscious world and enveloping the unconscious by means of death: "Keats's Position at this point in the poem is that consciousness is extinguished by death, but the contrary is offered by the contradictory implications of the diction. If Keats dies, he will cease, but the bird will continue to pour out his soul abroad” (Baker, 148). Therefore, although death may seem like the perfect solution, it lacks the immortality that unconsciousness offers when pitted against consciousness. Death goes beyond the reconciliation of opposites that Keats attempts to achieve, because death is too final. Janet Spens deepens thisidea in his article "A Study of Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale': Death would make him deaf and blind to the beauty of the world concentrated in the song of the bird, and he exclaims that it is of immortal origin . it is life and not death that the nightingale sings: its song “invites” it to “divine communion”: it has entered into the unity of the world of pure emotion. (Spens, 242) Death ignores the desired aspects of the conscious and unconscious worlds. The beauty and activity of the physical world and the immortality of the non-physical world are lost with death. To reap the benefits of both worlds, the speaker must look beyond the simple, mediocre, and temporary method of intoxication and avoid the final, extreme, and blinding method of death. The speaker must join the immortal song of the nightingale with his own song. The remaining option allows the speaker to join the immortal world through action. The conscious and unconscious worlds can thus be reconciled: immortality being part of the unconscious world, and action being that of the conscious. Indolence must be put aside, while physical death must be accepted. Through these exchanges, the speaker can reach the point where the two worlds combine. The nightingale and its song can be compared to the poet and his poem: "If the nightingale's song is a symbol of lyric poetry, the words 'immortal bird' must refer to the poet" (Kappel, 270). So the nightingale as a poet will live on through the art he creates. The bird's song will be heard generation after generation, as Keats declares: You were not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generation tramples under your feet; The voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient times by the emperor and the clown: (ll. 61-64) The song is heard by all through the past and into the future. Thus, the song and its creator, the bird, never die. Thus, the speaker finds the long-sought immortality in the world of the nightingale and its song, and is driven to join the bird through the act of his own artistic creation. Even though the speaker may not be physically capable of living forever, his song, like that of the nightingale, will endure. In this sense, the speaker as poet will also live eternal. To live forever, the speaker must move away from indolence and create. He can't rely on alcohol: Go! Far! For I will fly to you, not on the chariot of Bacchus and his pardes, but on the invisible wings of poetry, (ll. 31-33). Here, the speaker rejects alcohol as a legitimate solution to his desire to reconcile the conscious and unconscious worlds. . He cannot count on death either. He will join the immortality of the nightingale through the creation of his own song. Keats's sixth stanza talks about how death might prove the solution: I have been half in love with easy death, I have called it sweet names in many thoughtful rhymes, to carry away in the air my calm breath; Now more than ever it seems rich to die, to cease at midnight without pain, while you pour out your soul abroad in such ecstasy! You would always like to sing, and I have ears in vain... At your high requiem become an idiot. (ll. 51-60) Here the speaker is tempted by thoughts of death, for this would surely end all pain. Yet he soon realizes that even though all his mortal pains would be relieved, the bird would continue to live and sing. On the other hand, the speaker's consciousness would be dead, and therefore unable to experience this beauty and immortality. The bird would still live and create, while the speaker would have left the life and beauty of the conscious world and would therefore have sunk below that world into final unconsciousness. He is buried under (1984): 70-84.