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TEXTUAL ANALYSIS
POEM : ODE TO PSYCHE by John Keats
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS – Submitted as a partial fulfilment for the Degree
Of
BA. (Hons.) in Applied Psychology
Avni Narang Guide : Dr. Divya Dhawan
UG- SEM 2 Assistant Professor
22/FBSS/UGPSY/
BA Hons. Applied Psychology
Department of Applied Psychology
Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences
Manav Rachna International Institute
Of Research and Studies
Department of Applied Psychology- FBSS
( Batch – 2022 - 2024 )
Acknowledgment:
I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my guide Divya Dhawan Who gave me the golden opportunity to complete my term paper of supervised independent learning of textual analysis by the poem “ Ode to Psyche ”. Who also helped me in completing my project. I would also like to thank my HOD Dr. Priyanka Tiwari without whom we would not have this subject and therefore the opportunity to learn something new. I learnt a lot of new things and I am really thankful for that. Regards, Avni Narang 22/FBSS/UGPSY/ BA. Hons. Applied Psychology Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences MRIIRS
POEM :
O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, And pardon that thy secrets should be sung Even unto thine own soft-conched ear : Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes? I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly, And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise, Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran A brooklet, scarce espied: Mid hush’d cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed, Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian, They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass; Their arms embraced, and their pinions too; Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu, As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, And ready still past kisses to outnumber At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love: The winged boy I knew; But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? His Psyche true! O latest born and loveliest vision far Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star, Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky; Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, Nor altar heap’d with flowers; Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours; No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming; No shrine, no globe, no oracle, no heat Of pale-mouthed prophet dreaming. O brightest! though too late for antique vows, Too, too late for the fond believing lyte, When holy were the haunted forest boughs, Holy the air, the water, and the fire; Yet even in these days so far retir’d From happy pieties, thy lucent fans, Fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired. So, let me be thy choir, and make a moan Upon the midnight hours; Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet From swinged censer teeming; Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane. In some untrodden region of my mind, Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind: Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep; And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain, With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign, Who breeding glowers, will never breed the same: And there shall be for thee all soft delight That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!
Summary:
The basis for the story of “Ode to Psyche” is a famous myth. Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful daughter of a king. She was so beautiful that Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was jealous of her; she dispatched her son, Eros, the god of love (the Cupid of Roman mythology and the “winged boy” of Keats’s poem) to punish Psyche for being so beautiful. But Eros was so startled by Psyche’s beauty that he pricked himself with his own arrow and fell in love with her. Eros summoned Psyche to his palace, but he remained invisible to her, coming to her only and night and ordering her never to try to see his face. One night, Psyche lit a lamp in order to catch a glimpse of her lover; but Eros was so angry with her for breaking his trust that he left her. Psyche was forced to perform a number of difficult tasks to placate Venus and win back Eros as her husband. The word “psyche” is Greek for “soul,” and it is not difficult to imagine why Keats would have found the story attractive—the story of the woman so beautiful that Love fell in love with her. Additionally, as Keats observed, the myth of Psyche was first recorded by Apuleius in the second century A.D., and is thus much more recent than most myths (this is why Keats refers to Psyche as the “latest born” of “Olympus’s faded hierarchy”). It is so recent, in fact, that Psyche was never worshipped as a real goddess. That slight is what compels Keats’s speaker to dedicate himself to becoming her temple, her priest, and her prophet, all in one. So he has found a way to move beyond the numbness of indolence and has discovered a goddess to worship. To worship Psyche, Keats summons all the resources of his imagination. He will give to Psyche a region of his mind, where his thoughts will transform into the sumptuous natural beauties Keats imagines will attract Psyche to her bower in his mind. Taken by itself, “Ode to Psyche” is simply a song to love and the creative imagination; in the full context of the odes, it represents a crucial step between “Ode on Indolence” and “Ode to a Nightingale”: the speaker has become preoccupied with creativity, but his imagination is still directed toward wholly internal ends. He wants to partake of divine permanence by taking his goddess into himself; he has not yet become interested in the outward imaginative expression of art. The "Ode to Psyche" is an important poem among Keats' works because it embodies Keats' ideal of love, an ideal unattainable in this world but possibly attainable hereafter and certainly attainable in the imagination, which can build a shrine to Psyche with a window through which Keats may enter and enjoy a perfect union with the perfect woman. In the story of Psyche,
Keats found an ideal vehicle for the expression of one of his profoundest yearnings. The "Ode to Psyche" is a poem about young, warm Keatsian love, much like that in The Eve of St. Agnes. In addition to what the "Ode to Psyche" reveals to the reader about Keats, the poem contains an abundance of imagery felicitously phrased. Flowers are "cool-rooted." "Olympus' faded hierarchy" states succinctly the fate that has overtaken the religion of the Greeks and Romans. "Haunted forest boughs" expresses eloquently the classical practice of peopling nature with hosts of such lesser divinities as nymphs. Pines "murmur" in the wind. Fancy is a botanist- gardener who "breeding flowers, will never breed the same." Psyche's wings in the ode ("thy lucent fans") are accounted for by the fact that, in Greek, psyche is the word for soul, and the soul was often represented as having the wings of a butterfly. Cupid also traditionally had wings.
- ‘fane’ means temple; the speaker will be a priest to Psyche and build a temple to her in his mind
- The speaker’s thoughts branch out like the limbs of a tree.
- ‘zephyrs’ are light breezes
- ‘dryads’ are wood-nymphs
- ‘Fancy e’er could feign’ means ‘Fancy could ever invent’
- What are these shadowy thoughts? Perhaps thoughts which emerge unexpectedly or thoughts which cannot be fully understood or explained.
- a ‘casement’ is a window
- As explained in the introduction above, this final line was altered by Keats from ‘To let warm Love glide in’ to ‘To let the warm Love in’. Biographers / critics believe the last two lines directly reference Keats’s physical proximity to Fanny Brawne. She lived next door to the poet and their respective windows quite literally opened up to one another; they shared a common garden.
Poetic Devices:
The poet has used a number of poetic devices in the poem.
- Alliteration : It is a device when two or more words that start with same sound are repeated in a phrase or sentence. for example: And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
- Anaphora : It is a device in which a phrase or word is repeated at the start of successive phrases sentences or clauses. for example: No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
- Assonance : It is a device where repetition of vowel sounds in the same line. for example : And in the midst of this wide quietness
- Oxymoron : It is a device in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. for example: pleasant pain
- Metaphor : It is a device in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. for example: But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove? Comparison of Psyche to a dove.
- Simile : It is a device involving The comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, it is used to make a description, more empathetic or vivid. for example: O latest-born and loveliest vision far Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy! Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star Comparison of Psyche to a star
Conclusion:
The Ode to Psyche is incredibly speculative. Accepting it as a piece of wonderful enhancing mythology would be easy but there is probably more to it. Psyche is the soul, not perceived as a goddess in the traditional Greek folklore. However, in the Christian sense, neither is the soul. Keats is remarkable in that he expresses no particular Christian sentiment or even a Christian orientation. His primary religious emotion is a yearning for ancient natural piety. It is not simply a piece of fictitious devotion to an absolute myth with its lovely imagery, which is half inspired and half natural; but Keats's recognition that his exploration of the interior landscape will be his primary focus and that his ultimate devotion will not be to the outside world or any external power.
References:
- Waldoff, L. (1977). The Theme of Mutability in the “Ode to Psyche.” PMLA , 92 (3),
- https://doi.org/10.2307/
- Ode To Psyche: by John Keats - Summary & Analysis. (n.d.). Literature Analysis. Retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://www.englishliterature.info/2022/07/ode-to- psyche-by-john-keats.html
- Ode to Psyche Poem - Line By Line Analysis & Summary. (2015, February 22). https://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/ode-to-psyche/ LitCharts. (n.d.). LitCharts. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/john-keats/ode-to- psyche
- Ode to Psyche: a Study Guide. (n.d.). Www.cummingsstudyguides.net. Retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides8/Psyche.html
- Keats’s Odes Ode to Psyche Summary & Analysis. (n.d.). SparkNotes. Retrieved May 31, 2023, from https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section2/
- “Ode to Psyche.” (n.d.). Www.cliffsnotes.com. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/k/keats-poems/summary-and-analysis/ode-to- psyche
