In "Ode to the Nightingale" by John Keats, a desperate speaker overhears a nightingale deep in a distant forest. The speaker wishes to leave his physical world behind and join the bird in its metaphysical world. The nightingale sings of a world where there is no pain, there are dulled senses, and life is immortal: the opposite of the speaker's dominion. The speaker considers joining the Nightingale's world of immortality through alcohol, death, and ultimately creating his own art. John Keats explores these themes in "Ode to a Nightingale" to illustrate the speaker's struggle with reconciling the conscious and unconscious worlds. The main theme of this poem focuses on the reconciliation of many opposites, as Richard Fogle summarizes in his article "Keats's Ode to the Nightingale": Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe main emphasis of the poem is a struggle between ideal and real: inclusive terms that, however, contain more particular antitheses of pleasure and pain, of imagination and common sense, of fullness and deprivation, of permanence and change, of nature and the human, of art and life, of freedom and slavery, of waking and dreaming. (Fogle, 211) While all these opposites play against each other, in this article I intend to focus on how Keats attempts to balance mortality and immortality in “Ode to a Nightingale.” Dissatisfied with pain and the inevitability of death in the conscious world, Keats seeks ways to circumvent the unpleasant aspects of this physical state. Keats explores the opposing worlds of the conscious and the unconscious in many of his odes. He seems very interested in uniting the two worlds, reconciling their opposites and thus bringing together the best of both states. “Ode to a Nightingale” represents a further step in Keats's journey towards this desired reconciliation. An earlier ode, “Ode on Indolence,” rejects the conscious world altogether, while “Ode to Psyche” celebrates an opposite state of creativity. “Ode on Melancholy” focuses on the pain and beauty present in reality and the action required in this reality. “Ode to a Nightingale” attempts to locate a point between these two states of reality and illusion through means of drugs, death, or creativity. In his article "The Subtext of Keats's Ode to the Nightingale", Karl Wentersdorf explains the importance of this ode: "In a certain sense, the excursion in the Ode to the Nightingale briefly records the aesthetic and psychological journey this had led Keats to a more mature judgment regarding poetry and its relationship to life" (Wentersdorf, 82). Keats is very interested in how life and the world of poetry mix and can eventually merge. Next, “To Autumn” will finally accomplish what “Ode to a Nightingale” alludes to. Keats is able to accept the passage of time and find a point that unites mortality and immortality, permanence and impermanence, maturity and decay, darkness and light and so on. “Hymn to the Nightingale” is an important step in Keats's exploration of blending opposites and extracting the best of both worlds. Two main opposites that Keats attempts to balance found in “Ode to the Nightingale” are mortality and immortality. The speaker's conscious world is one that implies the inevitability of death. The unconscious world of the nightingale is that of immortality. The speaker will sooner or later meet physical death, while the bird and its song will live forever. In his article “The Immortality of the Natural: Keats's Ode to the Nightingale,” Kappel focuses on why the nightingale is seen as immortal and man is not: “This ontological difference gives rise to the essential distinction experiential between the two beings, around thewhich the poem is constructed: the bird is unaware of death, the man is painfully aware of it" (Kappel, 272). The nightingale does not know death, and therefore lives every day without thinking about the end of life. On the other hand, the speaker is mortal in that he knows and awaits death. Also note that the nightingale belongs to the natural world. Nature – and, similarly, the nightingale – is eternal and never knows death (Kappel, 272). Keats emphasizes this idea: Vanish away, dissolve, and forget altogether that among the leaves you never knew, the weariness, the fever, and the agitation here, where men sit and hear each other groan; (ll. 21-24)Keats wants to sink into the natural and primitive world of the nightingale where the concerns of man are not known. The bird is emphasized as dwelling among the leaves, a strong symbol of nature. Similarly, Keats describes the bird and nature as free from burdens; therefore they are immortal, unlike man. In his quest to reconcile the two worlds and escape the pain and mortality of the conscious world, the speaker considers several options. To join the mockingbird in his dark world, empty of pain and full of permanence, the speaker first explores drunkenness. The speaker asks for a quantity of wine: Or for a glass full of the warm South Full of the true, the Hippocrene blush, With rimmed bubbles winking at the brim, And the mouth stained purple; May I drink, and leave the unseen world, and with you fade into the dark forest: (ll. 15-20) Here, the speaker hopes that alcohol can take him into the nightingale's world by numbing his conscience and the sorrows of life mortal. Wine, in itself, represents a strong symbol of mortality and immortality united. The winking of bubbles may suggest the merging of the conscious and unconscious, as a wink is neither a closed nor a fully open eye. Wine purple is another fusion, as blue is a cool, somber color, while red is a vibrant, lively color. Wine also unites the two worlds because it contains symbols of life such as ripe summer grapes and the "warm south". It also contains symbols of death, as it is aged as a mortal being would age and preserved underground and in a dark, tomb-like environment. Wine not only acts as a symbol of the fusion between the conscious and the unconscious, but also acts as a medium. By consuming wine, the speaker can leave the conscious world and immerse himself in the unconscious. However, alcohol cannot provide a long-lasting combination of these two states, since the effects of wine are only temporary. To avoid this temporary state, the speaker thinks of death as a solution to escape the unpleasantness of the conscious world. Death would be the definitive escape from the unconscious world. In Jeffery Baker's work, John Keats and Symbolism, he discusses the fallacy Keats finds in the idea of ​​escaping the pains of the conscious world and enveloping the unconscious through death: "Keats's position at this time in the poetry is that consciousness is extinguished at death, but the opposite case is offered by the contrasting implications of the diction. If Keats dies, it will cease, but the bird will continue to pour its soul abroad" (Baker, 148). Therefore, although death may seem like the perfect solution, it lacks the immortality that the unconscious offers when opposed to consciousness. Death goes beyond the reconciliation of opposites that Keats attempts to achieve, for death is overly final. Janet Spens supports this idea in her article "A Study of Keats's 'Ode to a Nightingale'": Death would make him deaf and blind to the beauty of the world concentrated in the song of birds, and he cries that it is of an immortal nature. it is life, not death, that the nightingale sings: its song "calls" it back to "divine communion": it has entered the unity of the world of pure emotion.(Spens, 242) Death ignores the desired aspects of the conscious and unconscious worlds. The beauty and activity of the physical world and the immortality of the non-physical world are lost at death. To reap the benefits of both worlds, the speaker must look beyond the simple, the mediocre, and the simple temporary method of drunkenness and arrest before the final, extreme, and blinding method of death. The speaker must join the immortal song of the nightingale with a song of his own. The remaining option allows the speaker to join the immortal world through action. The conscious and unconscious world can thus be reconciled: immortality is part of the unconscious world and action is part of the conscious world. Sloth must be put aside, while physical death must be accepted. Through this give and take, the speaker can reach the point where the two worlds come together. The nightingale and its song can be compared to the poet and his poetry: "If the song of the nightingale is a symbol of lyric poetry, the words 'Immortal Bird' must refer to the Poet" (Kappel, 270). Thus, the Nightingale as a poet will live on through the art he creates. The song of the bird will be heard generation after generation, as Keats says: Thou art not born for death, immortal bird! No hungry generation tramples upon you; the voice I hear this passing night was heard in ancient times by the emperor and the clown: (ll. 61-64) The song is heard by all in the past and future. Therefore, the song and its creator, the bird, never die. Thus, the speaker finds long-sought immortality in the world of the nightingale and its song, and is moved to join the bird through the act of his own artistic creation. Although the speaker may not be able to physically live forever, his song, like that of the nightingale, will live on. In this sense, even those who speak as poets will live eternally. To live forever, the speaker must turn away from sloth and create. Cannot rely on alcohol: go! Distant! For I will fly to you, not on the chariot of Bacchus and his pards, but on the invisible wings of Poetry, (ll. 31-33) Here, the speaker rejects alcohol as a legitimate solution to his desire to reconcile the conscious world and the unconscious one. Nor can he rely on death. He will join the nightingale's immortality through the creation of his own song. Keats's sixth stanza talks about how death might prove the solution: I have been half in love with sweet Death, I have called her by sweet names in many a thoughtful rhyme, To carry my still breath through the air; Now more than ever it seems rich to die, to cease painlessly at midnight, while you are pouring your soul abroad in such ecstasy! You would still like to sing, and I have ears in vain: at your high requiem become an asshole. (ll. 51-60) Here, the speaker is tempted with thoughts of death, for it would surely put an end to all sorrows. However, he soon realizes that while all his death pains would be relieved, the bird would continue to live and sing. On the other hand, the speaker's consciousness would be dead and therefore incapable of experiencing this beauty and immortality. The bird would live and create immobile, while the speaker would abandon the life and beauty of the conscious world and consequently sink beneath this world into final unconsciousness. He is buried underground, unable to enjoy both consciousness and unconsciousness. Therefore, he sees that the key to reaping the pleasure of both states and living eternally is to imitate the nightingale's method. It must create poetry. John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" explores how a balance might be found between the conscious physical world and the unconscious non-physical world. He hopes to avoid the unpleasant aspects of these worlds and take only the best qualities of both: (1984): 70-84.