John Keats: "Ode to a Nightingale"

Russell Stoll – 1B

The most important thing to understand about Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” is the moment of the poem. This has some major implications in how one reads the poem, and why Makdisi’s theme of self and imagination comes into play.

The poem is about a moment of intense spiritual and emotional connection that Keats feels with a nightingale that he sees and hears out of his window. He sees the bird and hears it singing with a joy that he wishes he had, and for an instant he is inspired by the bird’s ability to sing so joyously in the dead of the night. The inspiration that Keats draws from this is to find happiness in his own sorrows, instead of being burdened and feeling depressed or anxious. But, the bird leaves and Keats is left feeling depressed again.

However, while this is what the poem is about, this event of his connection with the bird is not the moment of the poem. This moment of grand connection happens before the poem begins, and the actual moment of the poem is what happens to Keats after the bird leaves. Every description of the bird, the bird’s song, and the happiness that he felt from the bird is all based on his recollection of what happened in the recent passed. He writes about having seen the bird, but not about seeing the bird; it a past thing, not a present thing. What is happening in the “present” of the poem is that Keats is going through various game-plans to try to reconnect, to try to hold on, and to try to feel happy again before everything fades completely away into his memory.

Then, at the end of the poem, Keats wonders: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream? / Fled is that music:- Do I wake or do I sleep?” So now, looking beyond the end of the poem, we see that Keats has opened a discussion about whether or not the bird even existed in the first place, and consequently whether or not he even felt that moment of happiness. Perhaps it was real, or perhaps it was a figment of his imagination. This leaves the reader, and presumably Keats, with a question: if something profound in your life turned out to have never really happened, is the effect it had on you truly profound? In other words, can your own imagination affect your self in a way that can bring about a significant change in attitude? This is a question that Keats leaves unanswered, but it seems that an argument for either side could be reached depending on how one reads the text further.

To sum up: The coming and going of the bird and Keats’ happiness is in the past.
The effort and attempt to reconnect with fleeting happiness is in the now.
The question of imagination and its effect on the self is implied in the future.

Things to look for: usage of music imagery/diction, usage of nature imagery/diction, usage of punctuation (especially exclamation marks at points of woe/pain), repetition of “death” or “die,” repetition of “fade.”

(Feel free to e-mail me at rstoll@ucla.edu with queries, questions, qualms, etc. Thanks!)