More given to sensuous imagery, descriptive sensuality and joys of nature, dead in 1821 at the age of 25 after only six years of writing poetry, John Keats still remains fresh in our collective memory. His poetry can be viewed in stark contrast with our modern day obsession with practicality, pragmatism and profit. And yet, despite Keats’ antithetical quality vis-a-vis our present day preoccupations, he still remains a mysterious and compelling force.
I appear to run into Keats in a sustained way for short times and that has been true in the last number of years. But my share of him always remains reasonable and within the range of a plausible explanation. For instance, when I abandoned my place on the Piazza di Spagna and wandered next door to visit the room where he breathed last in Rome, I did so because my wife was too busy shopping near the Barcaccia Fountain. Or when I last read much of his work, I was preparing for a University exam where a question on him was most likely to appear.
Later, I would discover an occasional article or reference in some current magazine or newspaper. Even this I found to be unusual, considering that Keats had departed long time back.
But to have a week where you are reminded constantly about a long dead poet through different sources and conversations— when not even pursuing him on your own— is surrealistic. And this is exactly what happened to me in the summer of 2012.
First, there was that article on him in the Sunday newspaper section. Then, there was the occasion of perusing a review about him and his times, I found in the stack of magazines at Starbucks. Then that very same evening a friend from school days, in town for a convention, in his conversation quotes, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever” when I nostalgically remark about the great times we used to have at school. Then a day does not go by and my son requests me to edit his essay on John Keats—an assignment for his university course. And then, there was Keats’ famous line, “heard melodies are sweet….” I stumbled upon in a fortune cookie at a local Chinese restaurant. And it doesn’t end there. I should not forget mentioning about the faded picture of Keats I saw the very same week in the barbershop I had abandoned patronizing after Pete the barber retired, but oddly enough I had decided to visit.
It was almost as if Keats was compelling me to pursue a more nuanced study of his works.
In studying Keats carefully, the point I was struck with was one which is rarely, if ever, forwarded by his critics and commentators: his proximity with Mysticism and above all his capacity through his poetry to invoke a mystical transcendence in the reader. But the nexus between Keats and Mysticism is not clear until one digs deeper.
In presenting my thesis I understand that it would be incumbent on me to first outline at least certain aspects of mysticism before discussing specifically about Keats and the effect of his particular poem, “To Autumn.”
Mysticism is a hard nut to crack. It is elusive to define because in a broad sense it encompasses an array of definitions. However, in describing the essence of mysticism certain assertions are valid. Mysticism it may be claimed is part of the struggle to grasp the meaning of reality and is an attempt to develop a perspicuous vision of its inherent character, not through reasoning but by using the interplay of intellect and sensations and the filtering of intelligible realities through the symbolic significance of material images and forms. This is a noetic activity or a noera ergasia, very much a characteristic of mystical thought process as it appears in various cultures and religions from Jewish Kabbalah, Islamic Sufism to Christian spirituality.
In a dynamic sense, mysticism is a change of perception in an exercise to grasp reality through a vision that changes the consciousness. It becomes a spiritual awakening that transforms the person who in the pursuit of understanding reality, or the universe, uses a unique medium of contemplation that facilitates this understanding. Mystics in the Sufi tradition claim that to achieve this experience requires a certain mind-set and an attitude toward life before the real experience of oneness with God or Posse Ipsum (Nicholas of Cusa’s term for God with “His Unbounded Potentiality”) can be experienced. In other traditions also, to be a mystic, similar characteristics are a prerequisite. Some of the characteristics of famous mystics in history are: disdain towards material wealth, capacity to live an abstemious life, piety, compassion, patience, asceticism, abstinence and humility and chanting of select words, loudly or silently, to spiritually transcend the material world.
So through submission, humility and extreme contemplation the mystic’s journey moves towards the ultimate objective that should ideally terminate in oneness with Posse Ipsum. This is the search for God were the consciousness of anything material is gradually negated to end in rapture as in the Christian tradition, or nirvana as in the Buddhist tradition, or baqa billah as in the Sufi tradition. Other traditions define this experience with different terminology, but the end result and the experiential component is similar if not the same.
The properties of an authentic mystic are thereby restricted to a select few in history. Indeed, the component of rigor and insight essential to be a true mystic is beyond the bounds of possibility for most of us. However, this does not preclude one from experiencing a mystical experience for a fleeting moment, where for a time, albeit a short time, the sensations of mystical transcendence may be perceived and relished. This ephemeral mystical experience can be uplifting and is within the grasp of many. The experience is within the reach of an amateur mystic (my terminology).
To be this amateur mystic, a certain desire and a capacity to appreciate words and verses in poetry, prose or prayer is essential. Words are the pivotal media in any mystical experience. Verses, or the power of words in them, appear to be the life blood of religion or literature. “In the beginning was the Word” as the Gospel according to John makes it clear. Any Quranic reading commences with selected words: “Bismillah ur Rehman ur Raheem.” And it is this power of the word that presents itself in the form of a prayer. It is the similar power of words that translates in the pursuance of mysticism. This same power incites a mystical transcendence in literature.
But certainly it is not any words that have the power to facilitate a mystical journey. The words have to be special and in the correct syntactical order. Muhiyid-Did ibn Arabi (1165-1240), the great Arabic scholar points out that in achieving transcendence the repetition of certain words in a sequence can have tremendous power in religion and so, too, in literature. Most of the current day gibberish that passes for literature like so much of the rubbish of past, purported to be literary, is incapable of any uplifting experience. In the genre of poetry, the capacity to trigger a mystical transcendence can only be discovered in some poetry. My contention is that John Keats’ “To Autumn” happens to be one such poem.
Keats, mind you, is hardly ever characterized as a mystical poet but is universally accepted as a “romantic” poet. Unfortunately, restricting Keats to a narrow interpretation within the confines of the term “romantic” has meant an inadequate understanding of his poetry. A more nuanced study of Keats is required for an understanding of the mystical element in his works. By experiencing his work on an intellectual and emotional level, we discover the all-powerful relationship of mystical undertones woven in his poems. The shades of mystical thought are heavily laden in his poem “To Autumn”.
Unlike other English poets such as John Donne and William Blake, John Keats, not famously known to be a mystical poet, in his poems, especially in some of them, effectively sets the stage for the occurrence of an experience of a mystical transcendence in the reader.
While it is easy to detect the mystical vision in William Blake, in Keats we find a similar insight present in a more subtle manner. William Blake, it is known was influenced by Jakob Boehme, the German mystic and Swedenborrgianism, a fact which influenced his poetry, earning him the reputation of being a mystical poet. He understood, as is apparent from his poem Auguries of Innocence, that the “world can be seen in a grain of sand…heaven in a wild flower…and eternity in an hour”. Keats while he does not narrate such possibilities makes such experience possible through the magic of his poems. In this respect, John Keats was different and not a mystical poet in a traditional sense, as he did not comfortably fit this definition. After all, there is a qualitative difference in being recognized as a mystical poet and, on the other hand, having the capacity to facilitate a mystical experience. Keats had the latter quality.
The other reason critics have tended not to tie Keats with mystical inspiration is because it is generally believed that he was not heavily influenced by mystical thought. But it is very likely Keats was inspired by mystical writings. We hardly know of all the literature he read and was influenced by. As Plato once said, “poets utter great and wise things which they do not themselves understand.” This is a correct observation and perhaps he should have also noted that poets do this because of what they are impressed with through reading or experience that lurks in their sub-conscious and is then used in their work making it hard for others, as well as for them, to identify the fountain of these “great and wise things”. So if John Keats evokes a mystical element of thought in “The Autumn” that arouses a mystical experience in the reader it does not necessarily mean his effort is intentional. While he may not have focussed on the task of inducing elements capable of triggering mystical transcendence in his reader, he inadvertently does so simply because he had that uniqueness of expression and selection of words to move the reader into unknown directions.
John Keats uses different means and techniques that are responsible in presenting nature and “things” in a way where the senses of the reader merge with nature, with the overall effect leading to a feeling of oneness with it. The reader is left with no option but to identify with nature and become part of it, and this entity in turn has an opportunity to transcend and see reality from a very different angle, even if it be for a fleeting moment. In this fugacious moment a mystical experience becomes possible.
In his poem ‘To Autumn’, the overwhelming abundance of nature aligns our senses to fuse with nature to such an extent that we are slowly merged with it. Nature, then, represents an all-encompassing manifestation of God. This is very much similar to Rumi’s conception of mysticism where everything blooms with its root in what he calls one “natural stem” ,or to paraphrase the famous mystic Ahmad Ibn `Ata’Allah: everything around us points to the oneness of Him. In the Christian tradition this becomes a sequent, where God remains the cause of the creation, of everything, and then each thing originates from God or is a sequent to God. A similar thought appears in early Kabbalists concept of “Echod, Yochid, and Myuchod.” Even Hinduism with its 330 million or more gods claims that the worship of different gods is simply an appreciation of the attributes of one true God.
With Keats the things around us, manifested as different forms of nature, are not simply depicted or recalled but they invasively affect our senses so as to truly become a part of us, with the capacity to generate mystical overtones. The medium for this transcendence is nature, but only possible because Keats rolls us together with God’s manifestations, effectively creating an oneness, through sensory experience. This act is the first in a series to prepare us for a mystical episode with Keats showing us the road that had not appeared before.
Though the mystical overtones are present in different works of Keats, “To Autumn,” I found strangely influential, for it carries a heavier load of symbolism and allusions which slowly, as the poem progresses, fade away in the background of the tapestry of effective language leaving an indelible mystical experience akin perhaps to an out of body experience. The delicate fusion of the color of language in “To Autumn” is like passionate strokes, on a rich background on the canvass that is progressively mellowed to the extent that the reader is left alone, one on one, with the poem, and without ever stepping on the toes of the richness of its background.
This unique technique and style of Keats is what I believe sets the stage for the reader to go through a mystical experience in a setting similar to that of a devout disciple who initially explores “Truth”, conscious and overawed by the richness of material surroundings replete with gifts to mankind from God. The exercise here is a slow rejection of the initial material surroundings and a gradual transference to a different plane. Nature that sustains the very life of the devotee serves as a prerequisite. It is rich, mysterious and life giving, and yet it slowly exerts its force, unconsciously, in the mix of a “focal experience”. Keats offers transcendence from the material to the spiritual and the reader is lured through the sensuousness of nature and its sensory richness which heralds the reader to a higher plane of experience.
Keats strives in “To Autumn” to infuse the poem with an epiphanic insight into the very “elemental essence” of autumn, bringing to the surface the intricate patterns of associations that lie dormant in the heart – patterns of joy and pain and anything in between. The verses of the ode, act like a catalyst to jolt the reader from the imprisonment of the present, forcing her to scramble to resurrect complex memories – distinct and unique – tied to the core of an experience of Autumn in the cycle of the seasons of life; of many Autumns and many indefinable memories of them, some fresh and clear, others dull and remote or as gloomy as if they were soaked in “hemlock”.
To accomplish this esoteric effect, in “To Autumn”, Keats in three stanzas almost propels the reader in to a different world. Initially a sensuous perception is nurtured that is subsequently shaped to appreciate the latent forces of nature and its representative essence, and this then finally leads to a transformation of the visual into the auditory when the “gathering swallows twitter in the sky.” It is like a progression in the meditation process that, by degrees, transforms into a nearness and oneness with the sublime.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun,
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of ring?
Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue:
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
The interweaving of muted sounds and rhythms in the above stanzas start building from the very first line of the poem, denoting the thickest conceivable abundance of seasonal plenty that rising to a crescendo, reaches its zenith. The role of different things in nature grows progressively to captivate our senses with what appears to be a cosmically inspired interaction, a depiction of protoplasmic activity meant to find its respective place in the scheme of nature.
The remarkable mastery of the construction of the ode inebriates the very frontal lobes and its various nerve conduits connected to the centers of senses by a formation. A collage repeatedly challenges different perceptions, from the sounds of the “bleating” of lambs and mourning of small gnats in a “wailful choir”, to the sight of the “maturing sun”, and “stubble-plains with rosy hue”, to the smell of the “fume of poppies”, to the “taste of hazel shells with a sweet kernel”, or to the thought of the soft touch of “Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”, transferring the reader in one fell swoop into the realm of oneness with natural beauty. It is this relentless and incessant involvement of all our senses that compels us to perceive nature as an act of God that pervades our existence. This constant assault on the senses provided by forces and experiences of nature in “To Autumn” melds our consciousness with it and transforms us into yet another thread in the fabric of creation.
All this builds into a sense of a strong link and inter-connectedness with nature, where we become part of it, no longer aliens exploiting it as a mere resource with our place outside of its realm. In Keats, our fate is inextricably linked with nature, leaving no room to distance ourselves from it. Like the “warm wind” that “lives and dies” Keats juxtaposes our fate with the elements, to live and die along with them. He appeals not only to our five senses but also to our archetypical sense of the concept of beauty. He captures all our senses, bundling them in a matrix of a sublime experience that can potentially serve as a platform for a religious experience with mystical overtones.
Most likely, Keats was moved by the wisdom offered in the body of old religions –pagan, animistic, polytheistic, gnostic, anthropomorphic and nature-governed. All these, very blasphemous and heretical in his times, but appealing and alluring just like nature. Keats’s verses celebrate life with a frenzied expression of joy and gloom and the whole gamut of feelings in between is rendered in glorious form. It is this Dionysian quality of joy with a hint of melancholy that Keats brings to life in every verse of his ode in “To Autumn”. The frenzy of the natural forces around us and the turmoil of our inside in one gush are assimilated to compel us to look within ourselves, as if peering into the realm of our soul that potentiates a probe into the reality of the creator and creation.
To truly understand Keats and his mastery of sensory involvement that directs us into the mystical realm, it is necessary to “experience” him by understanding the true context of nature and offering our unencumbered services of all our senses
This mystical quality can be inferred from his poetry. Its origin is in his thought, perhaps the result of his readings of mystical works, or perhaps some unique God given gift to a poet who has the power to act as a medium, to generate a mystical ecstasy in his reader. To quote Henry Miller: “We have only to open our eyes and hearts, to become one with that which is.”