Proceedings of the National Conference On Undergraduate Research (NCUR) 2011 Ithaca College, New York March 31- April

2, 2011

John Keats, the Apothecary Surgeon of Ode to a Nightingale

Taylor Fie English Department Western Carolina University 1 University Drive Cullowhee, North Carolina 28723 USA Faculty Advisor: Dr. Brent Kinser Abstract
Before John Keats (1795-1821) wrote the poems that would make him one of the greats of the Romantic age, he was trained as an apothecary surgeon at Guys Hospital in London. For six years, Keats walked the wards at Guys, nursing the ill and dying, much as he would later nurse his brother Tom, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1817. The knowledge that Keats took with him from his medical training shaped the ways that Keats viewed and wrote about both life and death. In his Ode to a Nightingale, Keats reveals the extent to which his training as an apothecary surgeon influenced his writing. The poet injects the ode with figurative descriptions of disease and with allusions to the medicinal properties of plants such as hemlock and opium in order to convey his own perspective on the paradoxical relationship between life and death. Critics have recognized Keatss medical background as a central element in his view of the human condition, yet they rarely mention the connection in the context of Ode to a Nightingale. In this essay, building upon the work of Raymond Havens, Joseph Epstein, and Donald Goellnicht, who recognize the importance of medicine to Keats without accounting for Nightingale, I trace Keatss use of medical language within the ode in relation to Keatss perspective on mortality. By reading the poem in this way, it becomes clear that the allusions to disease, drugs, and death in Ode to a Nightingale suggest that Keats viewed mortality as unjust in its forced endurance of suffering. At the same time, Keatss time as an apothecary serves as the metaphorical foundation of his treatment of Death as a lover.

Keywords: John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale, Medicine 1. Introduction

John Keats, apart from being one of the great poets of the Romantic age, was also an apothecary, working for six years in Londons prestigious Guys Hospital. As lines from his abandoned epic Hyperion suggest, Sure a poet is a sage; / a humanist, Physician to all men (1.187-90), Keats found a strong connection between the role of a poet and the role of a physician, both of whom have the ability, as he would put it in The Fall of Hyperion, to pour a balm upon the world (1.201). Within his poetry, Keats uses knowledge gained from his medical training to ultimately shape the way in which he writes about life and death. Keatss use of medical language to establish his views of the human condition is most evident in his famous Ode to a Nightingale, which reinforces the common healing powers of medicine and poetry. Before jumping into the ode, it is necessary for the reader to first establish that Keatss medical background is the root from which his perspectives on life and death stem from. Timothy Ziegenhagen and Michael Holstein recognize the importance of medicine and poetry for Keats. While Ziegenhagen contends that Keats struggled with the idea of mortality and looked upon it in a negative light, Holstein asserts that in Keatss mind medicine and poetry were similar disciplines, and he even refers to Keats as a poet-healer. Through both critics assertions of the role medicine plays in Keatss poetry, it is possible to see that his time working in the medical field was important to his conception of human suffering and the power of healing.

In his Ode to a Nightingale, Keats reveals the extent to which his medical training influenced the language and imagery in the poem. He turns to descriptions of the properties of medicinal plants and disease in order to convey his belief that life is unfairly abrupt and that death is inescapable. Critics, such as Raymond Havens, Joseph Epstein, and Donald Goellnicht, have recognized Keatss medical background as a central element in his view of the human condition, yet they rarely mention the connection in the context of Ode to a Nightingale. However, it is possible to trace Keatss use of medical language within the ode in relation to Keatss perspective on mortality. By reading the poem in this way, it becomes clear that the allusions to disease, drugs, and death in the ode suggest that Keats viewed mortality as unjust in the way that mankind is forced to endure pain over a short lifetime. His view of the human condition also serves as the metaphorical foundation of his treatment of Death as a lover.

2. Analysis
In order to fully understand Keatss Ode to a Nightingale, one must first understand why Keats is both repulsed and captivated by the idea of death. Throughout his life, Keats repeatedly experienced sickness and death in his family. In 1810, Keats became an apprentice at Guys Hospital in the hopes of becoming a licensed apothecary. There, he spent six years walking the wards, taking care of the ill and dying. These experiences caused Keats to become utterly familiar and engrossed with mortality, and this comprehension of life and death is reflected in Ode to a Nightingale. The Nightingale ode was written just a few short months after Keatss brother Toms death, and it is in the ode that Keats expresses his grief over his loss, as well as grief over the pain and suffering of humanity. In the first stanza, Keats wishes to escape his sorrow by joining the nightingale, which he hears while composing the poem, and whose song represents immortality. In order to unite with the immortal bird, the poet turns to drugs as a means of escape. He relays his knowledge of the effects of medicinal plants through his allusions to two popular nineteenthcentury drugs: hemlock and opium. Donald Goellnicht contends that Keats would have been familiar with both plants from his training as an apothecary, as well as from his own illness. He cites one of Keatss instructors, William Salisbury, who describes opium as causing within the body a degree of nausea, a difficulty of respiration, lowness of spirits, and a weak languid pulse (226). He also suggests that hemlock was most likely used as a sedative medicine rather than a poison (226), which it was infamously known for. Goellnicht argues that when it comes to opium, Keats knew from his training in materia medica that opium is often prescribed for both nervous disorders and phthisis, and he may have been treating himself for one of these (226). Either way, through such lines as a drowsy numbness pains my sense (1) and One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk (4), it becomes evident that the poet had some contact with these drugs during his lifetime, and because Keats studied medicine for six years, it was most likely at this time that he became familiar with these particular drugs. The opium causes the speaker to sink Lethe-wards (4), an allusion to Miltons Paradise Lost and the dreaded river of oblivion, Lethe. The reference relays Keatss desire to escape from the overwhelming grief brought on by Toms death and his own looming sickness. Wards, as it is used in the description, might also allude to hospital wards, of which Keats was entirely too familiar with. The depressed tone in the first stanza and the acute descriptions of the drug effects lead us to sense bitterness in the way Keats views his mortality. The drugs provide an escape from an unjust world, where death is imminent, and the young, like his brother, die unfairly. Keats wants above all else to join the immortal nightingale, which has never known pain. Throughout the first three stanzas, there are two different worlds forming: the world of Keats (reality) and the world of the nightingale. The bird symbolizes beauty and immortality, something set above humanity and unattainable to Keats. For the poet, it also represents freedom from the loss of his brother and from the pain of his own illness. The world of the nightingale is one of perfection, because for Keats, there are no traces of humanity within that world. In his analysis of Keats, Havens argues that, despite Keatss interest in the world of men, it was for him an unlovely world of poverty, pain, disease, death, and thwarted desires (209). This negative outlook is seen in the contrasting realms of Keats and the nightingale, reinforcing the idea that Keats viewed mortality as painful and abrupt. The third stanza displays Keatss thoughts on the world of men: The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies (23-26).

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These lines contrast greatly with his descriptions of the nightingale, who is called a light-winged Dryad of the trees (7) and later an immortal Bird (61), heard in ancient days by emperor and clown (61-64). The world of the nightingale is set apart and unattainable to humanity. Only through poetry can Keats transcend the mortal world and join the nightingale. Keats describes the world of men in terms of disease, using common medical symptoms to paint a gruesome image of mortality. Weariness, fever, and fret (23), symptoms of the ill and dying, would have been all too common to Keats, and he would have seen these symptoms during his time as an apothecary. His use of the word palsy (25) reveals that Keats had experience working with shaking palsy, often a sign of Parkinsons disease in the elderly. He accurately describes the world of men as a place where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs (25). The next line echoes the death of Tom as the speaker contrasts the elderly from the line before with the young. The degenerative health of the dying youth shows symptoms brought on by tuberculosis, as Keats would have seen while nursing his brother over the course of his illness. The entire stanza is filled with allusions to disease and death, perhaps because, as Epstein argues, the poet was deeply death-mindeddeath, for Keats, was no abstraction (48). Keats was familiar with death both in the family and the hospital, so he is able to write about it in a way that allows his audience to experience this familiarity along with him. The allusions to disease, particularly in the third stanza, show that Keats was frustrated with the brevity of mortality. Havens argues that Keats felt delight in beauty and disappointment with reality (206) and that Keatss disappointment arose from his failure to find in the world of men the beauty that he craved (206). Havenss claims are echoed in the contrasting worlds of Keats and the nightingale. Keats believes that reality is a place where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes (29) because, after nursing the dying in the wards, he came to the realization that there is nothing beautiful about disease and death, and the human condition is one of pain and grief. In stanza 5, Keats turns his thoughts away from the nightingale to his surroundings in order to set up a scene of which his own death is the plot. The speaker is outdoors after nightfall, and summer has brought the flowers into bloom. He cannot see what is around him, but he guesses from the fragrant smells the types of flowers that are nearby. The imagery here is captivating with its descriptions of the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine and the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves (49-50). Andrew Motion mentions that the purpose of this scene is to produce a place where the imagination creates what cannot be seen. The flowers are delicious but untenable, its paradoxes diluted by wishful thinking (400). I would disagree that wishful thinking has anything to do with this scene. Yes, the flowers are beautiful, but under these descriptions there is a sense of foreboding. Certain words stand out within the stanza, illuminating a darker side to his descriptions. Flowersat my feet, incense, and embalmd darkness (41-43) are words and phrases often used to describe funerary rituals. Keats is setting up his own funeral for the easeful Death which follows in line 52. The embalmd darkness implies a description of the inside of a casket or tomb. The flowers described in such full detail suddenly take on a new purpose: as flowers arranged at a funeral. Keatss use of the word embalmd not only echoes his training as an apothecary, where he would have been exposed to the embalming process, but also to the nightingale itself. Immortal and Embalmd are very similar in their meanings. Immortality is to live forever, but to be embalmed is to remain forever, to always exist in some form or fashion. Keatss allusions to funerary rituals transform death into a thing of beauty, ultimately allowing him to accept his own mortality. The descriptions of flowers in the fifth stanza make death seem not only beautiful, but also cyclical, like nature. Holstein acknowledges this idea upon analysis of On Visiting the Tomb of Burns, where he comments that for Keats, even nature reminds him of the cycle of sickness and death, and in thinking of the death of Burns, he is moved to lament the cycle that infects the world (36). As death becomes a thing of nature and beauty in the ode, Keats becomes accepting of death and even speaks of it fondly in the following stanza. It is in the sixth stanza that Keats is finally able to confront death and come to terms with his own mortality. His desire for an easeful Death (52) seems to be Keatss own response to his brothers death, as well as to the deaths of his patients. Keats played witness to hundreds of cases of illness, injury, and disease as an apothecary. Seeing the ways in which the body dies (where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs / where youth grows pale) left the poet longing for an easeful Death. He personifies Death, who becomes a sort of lover or friend to the poet; whom the speaker calls soft names in many a musd rhyme (53) This quiet affection radiates a closeness between Keats and Death, almost as if the two beings have an intimate relationship. Now that he has transcended reality and joined the nightingale on the viewless wings of Poesy (33), he is able to confront Death as a friend and lover-someone that he has run from in the past, but has now come to accept. Although he never came to embrace the idea that the suffering of his patients was fair (here, where men sit and hear each other groan [24]), his relationship with Death in the ode shows his reluctant acceptance of an easeful Death (52).

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Epstein affirms that Keats desire to die in this manner is a foreshadowing of Keatss own death, thus relating the struggle of mortality to Keatss own life. He quotes the dying Keats, who informed his friend Joseph Severn: Dont be frightened-I shall die easy-be firm, and thank God it has come (64). In a letter to Charles Brown only months before his death, Keats writes: I wish for death every day and night to deliver me from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy even those pains which are better than nothing (64). These lines mirror Keatss earlier desires for a painless death in the ode. At the time Keats wrote the Nightingale ode, it is possible that he was already aware of his fading health.

3. Conclusion
Ode to a Nightingale stands out as a poem that clearly reveals the extent to which Keatss training in medicine influenced his writing. He uses medical language to close the gap between medicine and poetry, contending that the two disciplines are similar in their healing abilities. In the end, it is only through the healing power of poetry that Keats is able to embrace death. His allusions to medicinal drugs and specific diseases in the ode bring to light Keatss bitter attitude against the unjustness of mortality, which causes him so much suffering. In a sense, Nightingale is autobiographical because it implicitly reflects Keatss grief over the loss of Tom, his own foreboding death, and his outlook on poetry as a healing escape, which allows Keats to transcend reality and find beauty in the mortal world. It is only in this transcendental state that Keats can accept death and move forward.

4. Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Dr. Brent Kinser for putting up with my constant questions over this paper and for getting me interested in this topic in the first place. Without his help, I would still be writing like a mediocre high school student. I would also like to thank my mother, whose passion for healthcare transferred over to me at an early stage of my life.

5. Bibliography
1. Epstein, Joseph. The Medical Keats. The Hudson Review 52.1 (1999): 44-64. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. 2. Goellnicht, Donald C. The Poet-Physician: Keats and Medical Science. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984. Print. 3. Havens, Raymond. Of Beauty and Reality in Keats. ELH 17.3 (1950): 206-213. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. 4. Holstein, Michael. Keats: The Poet-Healer and the Problem of Pain. Keats-Shelley Journal 36 (1987): 32-49. Web. 16 Oct. 2010. 5. Keats, John. Ode to a Nightingale. Complete Poems and Selected Letters of John Keats. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. Print. 6. Motion, Andrew. Keats: A Biography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997. Print. 7. Parkinson, James. An Essay on the Shaking Palsy. Project Gutenberg. London: Whittingham and Rowland, 1817. 8. Ziegenhagen, Timothy. Keats, Professional Medicine, and the Two Hyperions. Literature and Medicine 21.2 (2002): 281-305. Web. 16 Oct. 2010.

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