But at the same time, I'm wondering if the poem is also setting up a more intimate connection between beings that are alive and beings that are dead; Isabella "by gradual decay from beauty fell" only "because Lorenzo came not" (lines 256 and 257). I'm curious as to why the stanza breaks in between these phrases in such an odd and awkward way...did Keats want to underscore this idea? Was he pointing out the importance of proximity? In words, I think that love in Keats' poem is made out to be a very physical (note: I don't mean sexual), chemical, biological thing -- and just as the worm takes in and digests nutrients, death nourishes love: "Thy beauty grows upon me, and I feel/A greater love through all my essence steal" (line 320). The senses aren't organized in the traditional way -- "paleness warms" and one can "forget the taste of earthly bliss" (lines 316 and 315), but love is not "dethroned" (line 400). Rather, the dead thing is enlivened by the living, as in the stanza toward the beginning of the poem: "Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air/Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart/Only to meet again more close, and share/The inward fragrance of each other's heart" (lines 73-76). Isabella feeds her Pot of Basil with her tears; in creating this image, Keats demonstrates a highly physical conception of love in that it does not have to be between two living things. So wherefore all this wormy circumstance? Because death refracts the senses and makes love stronger. Is Lorenzo only an echo, or something more? I think the point is that he is an echo, but this is not a bad thing -- the poem and the ideas in it are sublime between we have to see these negative images (paleness, decay, echoes, ghosts) but at the same time believe in the beauty of (somewhat creepy) obsession over the Pot of Basil. And maybe that's why it's such a big deal when it's taken away from her.
15 February 2012
Love, Death, and the Senses in Keats
I'd like to comment on Keats' use of synesthesia (and the animation of the senses in general) in trying to expound on what calls the "wormy circumstance." In lines 389-392, Keats addresses the reader to "take a glance/For here, in truth, it doth not well belong/To speak:--O turn thee to the very tale/And taste the music of that vision pale." This passage seems to mark the change in perspective that the reader (as well as Isabella) must experience upon witnessing the sublime; not only do we get that "vibration" that Janelle was talking about in class, but it also seems like we are asked to see things in their decomposed, multilayered, fragmented state. And so lyrical music breaks down into smaller "syllables of woe," and we must face the "simple plaining of a minstrel's song!" (lines 441 and 388).
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I completely agree that the poem is sublime in that it is asking us to see these negative images but believe in the beauty of Isabella's obsession or love. Isabella's actions after Lorenzo's death are shocking and uncomfortable, but there is something to be said for your idea of death refracting the senses and making love stronger. The symbolism of her tears making basil grow is a really beautiful depiction of death strengthening love (as strange as it is that there is a head under the basil). As you point out, the way worms are nourished by eating decay, perhaps love grows from loss and that is the wormy circumstance Keats is questioning.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very insightful interpretation. It also does a nice job of bringing the two aspects of the course together. Thus far our, discussions of worms have mostly begun with a scientific discussion and then turned to metaphysical, ontological, and other philosophical repercussions. This interpretation of wormy circumstance begins with a moral issue and then describes that moral issue in terms of the scientific discovers that we discussed previously in one elegant line.
ReplyDeleteI would like to focus on Allison's phrase "Rather, the dead thing is enlivened by the living." It is such an eloquent way of phrasing the near end of the poem. Isabella's tears nourish the plant that contains the head of the man she loves, and her tears make it grow, which provides an interesting inversion of normal workings. We normally think of dead, or decomposing organisms nourishing the living and making them grow, but here it is the opposite. Not only is Keats demonstrating a "highly physical conception of love," he is also forcing us to consider life and support in a different way.
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