The poet compares the double morbid state of his physiology and life to the fact that people fall into a state of numbness after swallowing opium. He stumbled on the edge of life, feeling as if he had stepped into the oblivion of Hades, and stepped into the realm of sleepless as if he were dead. In reality, the poet is suffering from "fatigue, fever and anxiety", and his youth is "pale, haggard and dead" in this torture, and the beauty and love pursued by the poet have completely lost their luster. The brisk singing of the nightingale walking around in the forest made the poet feel the vitality of life, made the poet forget the pain in the world, and detached himself from "sadness and despair with gray eyes". The nightingale's song is like wine buried underground for a long time, which inspires the poet's longing for a new life with its sweetness and makes a green country of "flowers, love songs, sunshine and dance" emerge in the poet's mind. The poet drank the "fountain of inspiration", got rid of the pain in the world, "drank away" and disappeared in the dark forest with the nightingale. The first three verses of the poem are described strangely, and the description of nightingale singing is full of fresh and bright colors.
The fourth, fifth and sixth sections of the poem show the protagonist's pursuit of the dreamland caused by the nightingale. The poet's pursuit of nightingale is not driven by Dionysus, but the poet's help. His persistence in poetry will give him "invisible wings", which reflects Keats' belief in poetry. Poetry is a way for Keats to break away from reality and reach the ideal state of beauty. It is not a confused state caused by drinking, but a way of existence to make up for the lack of life, so it is also a happy state. What is such a happy state?
The poet and the nightingale walked through the dark forest together, and the star that guarded her later seemed to herald death in darkness and tranquility. Only when the breeze passes through the treetops can there be some skylight. The poet can't see flowers here, but can only imagine that in this "warm darkness", white bitter orange flowers, roses in the field, violets and musk roses release fragrant breath, and these beautiful flower trees have become harbors where gnats live. In the poet's image construction, the nightingale's flight is still full of death.
In the sixth section, the poet listened to the nightingale singing in the dark and said that he almost fell in love with "quiet death". Surrounded by the euphemistic song of the nightingale, the poet felt the romantic death of "scattering into the sky in one breath". Under the guidance of the nightingale's flight, the consciousness of death seems to be more abundant than in the world. The expectation of ending life painlessly in the infinite universe shows that the poet yearns for a kind of eternal peace of the soul. The nightingale's song seems to be a requiem sung by God to the poet, or the nightingale's song is the sound of nature. This kind of death that poets yearn for is obviously different from the fidgety death caused by fatigue and fever. However, following the nightingale's beautiful song, he still can't get rid of the idea of death, which also shows the pain that the poet is still fighting against reality.
Eternal bird, it won't die. The nightingale is the messenger of heaven and the voice of nature, bringing eternal peace to life. It also transcends history and time and space. This meaning is expressed in the seventh section of this poem. The nightingale's song once brought joy to ancient emperors and villagers, soothed the melancholy heart of Jewish mothers, and perhaps aroused the hearts of beautiful women trapped on islands in the Middle Ages many times, so that the knights in her heart could save their dreams. The nightingale's imagination here is undoubtedly romantic and beautiful. In the eighth section, when the poet wakes up from imagination and meditation, he completely denies these imaginations without mercy. "Fantasy, this deceitful demon child", he issued a sharp question. When the nightingale's song floats across the lawn, hillside and stream, the poet can't grasp whether the previous imagination and longing are hallucinations or dreams: "Am I sleeping?" Is it awake? "This actually implies the emotional clues that run through the whole poem, that is, the state of life in which reality and imagination are intertwined.
Throughout the poem, Ode to a Nightingale not only expresses the poet's feeling of realistic pain, but also poetically depicts his life ideal and attitude. Poetry combines the melancholy of reality with the liberation of imagination, fully expressing the duality of human life experience. Although the author feels lonely because of real pain, his creative imagination and the ecstasy of poetic art make his inner life extremely rich. With the help of imagination, the protagonist calms the pain in the fourth and fifth sections, but the last two sections correspond to the beginning and return to this pain. Reality always represents frustration, and imagination gives the poet happiness, but no matter which direction he is led, the author is always reflecting, and reflection is always in confusion. In this flowing transition of life state, the nightingale's song not only expresses the ideal and beauty of life, but also has richer connotation of exploring the meaning of life. Chen: Some people call Keats a "sentimentalist", which is not unreasonable. The general poet's keen sensory ability is mainly in vision and hearing, while Keats is fully developed. For example, in the first two paragraphs of Ode to a Nightingale, he remembered the nightingale's voice, from which he remembered wine, from which he remembered The Wizard of Oz, Flower God, Love Song, Sunshine and Dance, and The Source of Inspiration ... What a keen sensory system. Musicians' ears, painters' eyes, gourmets' tongues and many other feelings are all gathered together. But simply calling Keats a "sentimentalist" can easily lead to misunderstanding and cannot explain all the features of this poem. His feelings, like the nightingale's song, are only the trigger point of poetry, and more importantly, his incomparable imagination. Only with this kind of imagination can countless pictures be triggered by a certain sensory impression. These rich images, in turn, cover up the nightingale's singing. From the second season to the fifth season, I never heard her singing again, but was completely immersed in the poet's imagination.
The central image of this poem is a pair of contradictions, that is, the contradiction between the imaginary world represented by the nightingale and the real world in which the poet lives. Imagine that under the dim light, the world is full of music, wine and tranquility, while the real world is full of anxiety, illness and anxiety. But this kind of bitterness and joy is a unity. Why did the poet say in the first sentence that he was "poisoned" and swallowed opium and felt "too happy"? Why did he say in the sixth section that he "almost fell in love with quiet death" and praised "how rich death is"? This is puzzling to read, but it is actually the embodiment of Keats' important aesthetic thought of "negative acceptance". The connotation of this thought means that a person can feel at ease in an uncertain, mysterious and problematic environment, and is not eager to explore facts and reasons, but will internalize people and things and understand the mystery of the universe, thus creating the truth and beauty of poetry. In other words, the pain and happiness felt through the senses must be imagined and refined in order to reach the superb poetic realm.
The artistic feature of this poem is that it uses a lot of symbols, metaphors, exaggerations and other techniques, sometimes remembering the past and sometimes paying attention to reality. It is beautiful, mysterious and changeable, full of romantic imagination, and shows the outstanding talent of the poet.