This particular ode focuses on Keats’ immediate concrete sensations and emotions which switch drastically between those of ecstasy and those of misery. His use of paradox brings the most tender of human emotions to the forefront, expressing that true happiness is but an unreachable dream.
In his poem Ode to a Nightingale Keats uses paradox and opposing descriptions to convey his thoughts on the conflicted nature of human life. He recognizes the mixed emotions of pain and joy, numbness and intensity of feeling, life and death, the actual and the ideal, and separation and connection. Keats creates in the reader a sense that the poem was written in a dreamlike state, and while it begins pleasantly enough, by the end the reader can't help but feel that this dream has become a kind of nightmarish reality. The dreamer who begins the poem is not in the same state of mind by the time the reader reaches the end. His outlook changes and the harsh realities of darker human emotions seep into the dream like the wonders that are described so vividly at the beginning of the poem, changing the tone from one of a carefree dream to a reality facing description of human suffering. This particular ode focuses on Keats' immediate concrete sensations and emotions which switch drastically between those of ecstasy and those of misery. His use of paradox brings the most tender of human emotions to the forefront, expressing that true happiness is but an unreachable dream.
In the first stanza of the ode Keats introduces the nightingale, who he claims to be “too happy in thine happiness,” and in response to the melody he is struck by sentiments of both pain and joy. He declares that although his heart aches he is overcome by a drowsy numbness. How can a person ache, but be numb at the same time? While this may sound ridiculous, it strikes within the reader a true sense of just how much pain Keats is experiencing at the sound of the nightingales voice. It causes him such pain that he cannot fully handle the experience of it and a sense of overwhelming numbness has taken over. Keats is describing how pleasure can be so intense that paradoxically it can both numb and cause pain. It is as if Keats knows he can never be like the nightingale, and be free from the stresses of life. Like Scott says, “The poet seeks to leave behind the weariness, the fever, and the fret of a world of mortals, who are slaves of time and subservient to pain, aging, and death,” (139) just as Keats tries to get lost in the voice of the nightingale. The nightingale symbolizes Keats ideas of true joy and an ideal he knows will be impossible to reach.
As Keats delves further into his desires to live free of pain in his joy verses pain structured reality his descriptions become more fantastical and imaginative. He uses a kind of paradox again as he describes different types of wine with which he hopes will take him away from the realities of the earth, yet each wine he describes comes from a distinctive region and each is heavily representative of the earth. He paints beautiful descriptions of what each wine reminds him of yet he wishes that he “might drink and leave the world unseen.” How can he desire such earthly beauties like: “deep delved earth, country green, warm south, and forest dims” and at the same time wish to never see these things again?
As the poem progresses to the third stanza Keats uses the nightingale's innocent and happy life to show just how corrupt the world can be. Even the effects of wine cannot pull him from his awareness of the real world; here in this stanza Keats truly realizes that he can never escape “leaden-eye despairs”. He speaks to the nightingale of his desires and his wish to “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget what thou among the leaves hast never known.” In stanza four “the poet suddenly cries out "Away! Away! For I will fly to thee." He turns to fantasy again; he rejects wine in line two, and in line three he announces he is going to use "the viewless wings of Poesy" to join a fantasy bird" (Scott 140). This idea of relying on “poesy” to escape the world is different from the descriptions of wine in stanza two. Instead of wishing to escape through the numbing powers of wine, Keats now asserts that the only true way to experience happiness is through ones own mind. Keats seems to be saying that by using ones imagination is the key to happiness and a way to escape the harsh realities that he is facing. In opposition to the beauty of numbness that he had earlier stated, Keats now degrades those feelings of wishing to escape by saying “the dull brain perplexes and retards.” With this line Keats takes his own advice and plunges into line after line of fantasy driven descriptions as he lets his imagination run wild. It seems that at this moment he has successfully grasped the kind of true happiness felt by the nightingale, but Keats cannot escape reality for long as he remembers once again “but here there is no light.”
