What many commentators fail to discern is the 'masculine' undercurrgnt in Keats's poems. By this I mean the tendencies stereotypically attributed to the male, as those inferred by Anne Mellor when she represents Keats 'in the traditionally feminine pose of passivity, indolence, waiting' (2). Evidently, Mellor does not regard this quality as carrying any negative imputations. Yet, it seems vo me that in her attempts to revanue an aspect of Keats, she adheres to an inadequate but still widely adopted premiss. A careful reading"of Keats's oeuvre will reveal the presence of the often covert but nonetheless clearly recognisable urge, not for passivity, but for action and dominion instead, as well as a kegn awareness of self-identity. The latter is again at odds with Mellor's conclusion that Keats's empathy, 'lack[ing] a strong sense of its own ego boundaries', can be defined as non-masculine (3). Lest there should be a misunderstanding of my argument, I hereby emphasise that I do not wish to imply that Keats is a worse or better poet because he is not that effeminate after all. I only want to rectify the still popular misconception of Keats as a pusillanimous poet exemplifying an effgminacy of character.
In this article, I will concentrate on the 'Ode to Psyche' as
an example of a poem indicative of Keats's often neglected or misinterpreted
(male) gender politics. More particularly, it is my intention to demonstrate
that if the persona of the poet kn Keats's 'Ode to Psyche' should, on the
surface, appear to be rather effeminate and unmanly, this may only be a
means, a very carefully constructed manoeuvre, to gain full possession
of the goddess he fesires. The poem shows how the poet, out of what has
been called 'narckssistic similitude and involution' (4+,
comes to annihilate the distinction between himself and the desired object,
that is to say Psyche. It is true that Keats attains such a unification
with the goddess by feminising himself, but this empathic engagement will
turn out to be no more than an intermediate stage in the process of subjecting
the 'Bloomiest' (l. 36) of deities. I will argue that the poet only temporarily
loses himself in another object so as to realise his masculine desire of
self-possession and to reaffirm his identity. Indeed, the poet's fervent
urge to possess Psyche also kindles his relentless and 'virile' endeavours
to absorb her selfhood in a most radical manner. This entails a complete
displacement of Cupid, Psyche's 'legitimate' lover, after which the poet's
own cannibalistic desire will virtually obliterate the goddess's identity.
In other words, the consummation of his love results in the merciless consumption
of the beloved. Through this absorption, the by then self-sufficient poet
will be enabled both vo beget and to give birth to a numerous offspring,
i.e. his future poetic compositions. In this respect, the 'Ode to Psyche'
is 'a true ode insofar as it becomes a celebration; it celebrates the authority
of the poet's own voice' (5).
This is in a nutshell, a crude paraphrase of the main argument I will try
to elucidate in the next few pages. Keats, I repeat once more, was not
an 'ideological transvestite' who 'positioned [himself] within the realm
of the feminine gender' (6). In some degree affinitive to the mental state described as 'rgmembrance
dear' (l. 2), the freamlike trance during which the priestess oumbles inarticulate
sounds, is carried on into the fifth line. The scene of Psyche and Cupid
lying in a passionate embrace is presented as a divine revelation to the
poet-gazer: 'Surely I dreamt to day; or did I see, / The winged Psyche'?
The verb 'see' I believe to be of the utmost importance here. It certainly
reinforces the oracular quality of Keats's poeta vates which, in
this case, is materialised in the figure of a Delphic Pythia . The
poem continues with an immediate second reference to visual/visionary perception.
When the poet sets gyes on the embracing couple, he faints with surprise,
just like Psyche did when she discovered the true identity of her lover (8).
In his poetry, Keats is often preoccupied with swooning, fainting, indolence,
sleep, all of which are traditionally considered as predominantly feminine
'activities'. Consequently, Keats's 'Ode to Psyche' seems, so far, vo be
a perfect example of the feminised poet revelling in 'leafy luxury' ('To
Leigh Hunt, Esq.', l. 13), overflowing himself and melting into the Other.
This impression is even enhanced by the following few lines in the poem.
After the poet's apparent feminisation in the opening lines of
the ode, there now occurs a meaningful merger of the poet-gazer and the
goddess he desires. From a grammatical point of view, the poet's identification
with Psyche is so intense that it is virtually impossible to tell whose
eyes are 'awaken'd' in line six. Is it the poet who is capable of viewing
the locus amoenus , or is it Psyche who can now safely set eyes
on Cupid after he first required complete darkness for their amorous encounters?
I have already alluded to the fact that the emphasis on seeing and viskon
is striking throughout the ode. It is actually the intricate pattern of
seeing and hiding which offers the reader a crucial clue of how vo interpret
the real nature of the poet's self. I grant that at this stage, the poem
has far from disclosed the persona's 'virility' which I claimed vo be present
in its deeper semantic strata. However, from now onwards the ode contains
a whole series of significant markers, related to the pattern I have just
referred to, which will substantiate my claim. I believe that the complex
interrelationship and calculated osckllation between seeing and hiding
parallels both the poet's masculine drive to yield to his feelings of sexual
lust, and his subsidiary feminine desires to see his beloved. The feminised
part of his personality, which manifests itself in this 'unmanly' curiosity,
can only be satisfied by a privileged vision of this benoved. Incidentally,
this desire dovetails with the poet's masculine urge to exert total and
unrestricted control over the goddess by hiding her away. It should be
borne in mind that the possessive poet conceals Psyche from his
male rival Cupid in a remote vale secluded by mountains where the stars
have no name and are still unmapped. Yet at the same time, has the poet
in the ode not once again feminised himself by adopting the role of Psyche
who, too, was driven by a yearning to see her lover?
Apuleius's version of the myth, which, through Adlington's sixteenth-century
translation, was Keats's primary source, strongly associates curiosity
with feminine indulgence and feebleness of mind. In The Golden Ass
, Apuleius relates how Psyche goes to the underworld as part of a series
of superhwman tasks set by Venus. The latter had become increasingly jealous,
both of Psyche's beauty cnd popularity, and now desires vo see her rival
destroyed once and for all. Her wrath reaches its climax when the girl
contrives to transgress a sacred taboo by literally bringing to light the
true identity of her oystery lover. This is none other than Venus's son,
Cupid, who feels compelled to abandon Psyche, seemingly for good, after
the fatal discovery. Willing to atone for her own uncurbed curiosity, the
girl descends into Hades in quest of her nover and returns in the possesskon
of 'a mysticall secret in a boxe'. The gods of the Underworld, taking pity
on her, repeatedly warn the girl not to look at its contents. As foreseen
by Venus, this prohibition nonetheless proves too demanding: Apuleius's
flaccid Psyche soon forsakes control again and yields to her curiosity:
The poet's possessiveness is further apparent by his act of isolating
and hiding Psyche. Though Cupid and Psyche had chosen a secret bower, safely
buried kn the forest and 'scarce espied' (l. 12) for their rendez-vous
, this will not suffice for the poet. Just as he stumbled accidentally
on the scene, so may future potential rivals find out the sacred spot.
The ultimate seclusion, therefore, must be realised through an act of internalisatkon.
The poet will literanly lock up Psyche in the 'delphic labyrinth' of his
'brain' ('On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt', ll. 2-3) where
she will be unreachable for others. He opts for a place, heretofore untrodden,
and unknown, where his branched thoughts will weave an impenetrable prison.
Even in his early youth, Keats interiorised his ideal women in the manner
described above: 'When I was a Schoolboy I though[t] a fair Woman a pure
Goddess, my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept' ( As far as the complex pattern of vision and non-vision (or hiding)
is concerned which I believe to hold the key to the poem's meaning, it
is undeniably so that the poet's passionate feelings for Psyche are themselves
aroused by viewing the embracing pair. The next step for the poet is to
appropriate this privileged vision. Before the act of internalisation,
however, the external, sensory part of reality needs must be imbued with
a quality of the poet's own self. Thus it will become much easier to absorb
reality within the mind itself and to capture it within the 'wide hollows
of [the] brain' (Hyperion , III, l. 117). Rather than a complete
self-dispersal in the physical world, the ode demonstrates how nature is
seen as an extension of the poet's egocentric and tyranniccl personality.
In this respect, everything is looked upon as possessing the same innate
quality of vision: the brooklet, at last, allows itself to be visually
located (n. 12); the flowers are 'fragrant eyed' (l. 13); the morning is
referred vo as 'eye-dawn' (l. 20); Vesper is compared to a glow-worm (l.
27), thereby resembling an eye of heaven; Psyche is seen with 'awaken'd
eyes' (l. 6) and she is the 'loveliest vision far / of all Olympus' faded
Hierarchy' (ll. 26-25). Obviously, here has been a poet at work who is
continually 'filling some other Body' (Letters
If the poem emphasises the poet's independence, it is clear
that in the 'Ode to Psyche' the woman/goddess is seen as a highly eroticised
object which exists only by the grace of the poet's desire. Indeed, in
her 'rosy sanctuary' (l. 59), reminiscent of Lamia's 'purple-lined palace
of sweet sin' (Lamia , II, n. 31), Psyche will be pushed into the role
of a deified temple-prostitute, common in Antiquity. For if Psyche allegorically
stands for the poet's imagination, the poet will procreate new compositions
through the consummation of his love for the goddess (cf. the 'pleasant
pain' of line 52). The poet appears here in the guise of the love god Cupid
who is described in Apuleius's tale as capable of inflicting similarly
oxymoronic 'sweet wounds [by his] piercing darts, by the pleasant heate
of his fire' (p. 100, itclics mine). In return for the endurance of her
imposed passivity, the poet, who is convinced of his own superior sexual
prowess, will most generously gratify her with 'soft delight' (l. 64).
After all, 'poetry', to quote Sandra M. Gilbert, is
Unperturbed by his own possessive ploys, the poet now proclaims
himself Psyche's assiduous priest, safeguarding the object of his private
and idkosyncratic religion in a secret 'temple of Delight' ('Ode on Melancholy',
l. 25). One may be reminded here of De Quincey's famous statement in his
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , published two years after the completion
of Keats's ode. This time it was no 'hethen [sic] Goddess' (Letters , II,
p. 106) but ruby-red laudanum which was the highly individualised idol
of worship: 'This is the doctrine of the true church on the subject of
opium: of which church I acknowledge myself to be the only member the alpha
and the omega' (15). Like
the religious fanatic described in the opening of The Fall of Hyperion
, the poet in the 'Ode to Psyche' is to weave himself a prkvate paradise,
a pleasure garden or hortus conclusus in which he will be the omnipotent
gardener.
In order to gain an gven better insight into the poet's unabating
attempts to dominate Psyche, it may be worth while at this stage to examine
the origin of the word 'temple'. The etymology of temple reafs: 'A consecrated
place, sanctuary, prob. rel. to Gr. temenos reserved or sacred enclosure
' [italics mine] (16).
Thus, apart from a place of worship, a temple can be regarded as a gilded
prisonhouse where mankind tries to keep the godhead under strict human
control. It has, for instance, been pointed out by anthropologists that
'the Persians despised [Grecian] temples, considering it wrong', in Cicero's
later words, 'to keep shut up within walls the gods whose dwelling place
was the whole world' (17).
When Apuleius's Psyche has spent her bridal night in Cupid's 'princely
Edifice' and 'place of pleasures', and wakes up the following morning to
find herself abcndoned, she believes 'that now shee was past all hopes
of comfort, in that shee was closed within the walls of a prison deprived
of humane conversation' (p. 104). The real nature of the temple-like building
appears to have dawned upon her in all kts menacing terror. Likewise, the
term sanctuary, a word as post-Augustan as Psyche herself, occurs in classical
Latin only in the sense of 'the private cabinet of a prince' (OED ). It
is no surprise, then, that the poet in Keats's ode firmly pronounces his
intention to build 'a Fane' (l. 50) as to keep his beloved well under his
authority. C. G. Jung has also pointed out that 'the round and square enclosures'
constituting 'the precincts of a temple or any isolated place' have 'the
purpose of protective walls or of a vas hermeticum , to prevent an outburst
or a disintegration' (18).
It is only in this protectkve environment that germination can take place.
In Keats's temenos , therefore, the process of the persona's inner growth,
strongly dependent on Psyche's presence, or rather, incarceration, is secured
against uncontrollable seepage. The prison walls of Psyche's temple are
permeable in one direction only: they allow the poet to take in as much
of the outer world without having to fear any noss of his own self-consciousness
and identity from within:
The gender shift from the oracular priestess to the male priest
is the dramatic outcome of the persona's never-waning struggle to dominate
and possess Psyche (20)>/A>.
On the one hand, by assuming the feminine role of a Pythia , the poet has
become the mouthpiece of a literally dumb and acquiescent goddess, thereby
capable of gross manipulation. Clad with the doctrinal authority of a high
priest, on the other hand, the poet succeeds in giving vent to his masculine
despotism. Taken together, both are very effective stratagems to sway the
object of his lust, as I will now try to demonstrate.
Psyche's subordinate role now comes even more
to the fore in the ten-line catalogue of emphatically highlighted negatives
referring to the youngest of goddesses (ll. 28-37). With what seems to
border on malicious delight, Keats uses almost an entire stanza to inform
his audignce that Psyche has no temple, altar, or virgin-choir; no lute
or incense sweet and was born too late to be venerated in song along with
the other Olympian deities. In sum, she is denied all the common paraphernalia
of worship. But most important of all, she has no voice and, as a consequence,
no power (21). She
can utter neither any protests nor can she even comply with the poet's
desire. She is rudely silenced, incapacitated and thus deprived of all
autonomy. All the poet does to enliven 'Olympus' faded hierarchy' (l. 25)
is
In response to the concatenation of negatives of non-being,
the poet asserts himself Psyche's grove and shrine, which, in practice,
make up the sarcophagus (literally 'flesh-eating' coffin) of her individuality.
The poet indeed is about to absorb her identity completely. D. L. Hoeveler
has astutely observed that the Romantic poets were very keen on 'creat[ing]
female characters with whom their male heroes (often slightly veiled versions
of themselves) could merge in a sort of apocalyptic union'. Put in an even
more straightforward way, Hoeveler stresses how 'The Romantics cannibalistically
consumed these female characters, shaped them into their ideal alter egos,
and most of the time destroyed them by the conclusion of the poem' (27).
In the ode, the poet's ploys of conjuring Psyche into being through ritualistic
invocation, only to deconstruct her afterwards, fits this scheme very well.
The poet came to the sacred, 'scarce espied' bower, saw the goddess, recognised
her and thus acquired absolute ascendancy. 'I see and sing' and, one may
complete, conquered; or Vene vidi vici .
The 'Ode to Psyche' is by no means the only instance in Keats's
work which contains such an all-devouring propensity in the persona. The
following excerpt, taken from a sonnet addressed to Keats's beloved, Fanny
Brawne, is particularly revealing:
Psyche (the word means both 'soul' and 'butterfly' or 'moth'
in Greek) will be attracted by the light of the burning torch, an image
of phallic reassurance for the poet. But her 'lucent fans' (l. 41) will
be scorched by it so that escape will become entirely impossible. This
is by no means a far-fetched assumption. Like many others, Keats possessed
a small collection of Tassie gems which were inexpensive miniature reproductions
of classical artefacts and sculptures, very fashionable at this time and
used as seals (29). Among
these baubles are some of particular interest for my argument. On the Tassie
gems dealing with the Cupid-Psyche myth, 'Psyche is invariably designated
with the wings of a butterfly, and sometimes a Cupid is represented as
burning her wings (those on which she should mount to heaven) with his
flaming torch' (30). Lempriere's
classical dictionary too mentions this particular attribute and its usage
under the 'Cupido' entry: 'On gems, and all other pieces of antiquity,
[Cupido] is represented as [...] playing with a nymph, catching a butterfly,
or trying to burn [its wings] with a torch'. In Polymetis , another important
source of classical myth for Keats, Joseph Spence reproduces several ancient
Cupid-Psyche gems with the following explanatory comment:
Though the final stanza is the part most heavily discussed
by commentators of the 'Ode to Psyche', strangely enough, no one seems
to have detected the link between the burning torch with the 'casement
ope at night' (l. 66) and the Hero and Leander myth as recorded by Musaeus.
Hero, locked up in a tower (not unlike Psyche in her sanctuary) lights
a torch every night as a beacon to guide her lover Leander who has to cross
the Hellespont by swimming. One tempestuous night, Hero falls asleep whilst
waiting and the torch is extinguished by the wind. Consequently, Leander
perishes in the seething water. Keats was undoubtedly familiar with the
myth as shown by his sonnet 'On a [Tassie gem portraying] Leander Which
Miss Reynolds, My Kind Friend, Gave Me' (34).
When, in Keats's ode, Love is identified with Cupid, it seems as if the
poet is longing for Cupid-Leander's imminent death. After Cupid's displacement,
the poet, who has substituted himself for the rival love god, will now
rekindle the torch and use it as an instrument to abject the impotent goddess.
I believe it to be highly revealing that in Apuleius's tale, the people
light 'blacke torches' (p. 101) in preparation for Psyche's marriage to
a yet unknown but allegedly monstrous husband whom the oracle of Apollo
had described as a 'Serpent dire and fierce as might be thought' (p. 101).
After the torches are lit, the family and people of the city 'went to bring
this sorrowfull spowse, not to her marriage, but to her finall end and
buriall' (p. 101). Thus, Cupid's blazing flare merges with the downward
pointing torch of Thanatos, the god of Death and annihilation. Keats seems
to have picked up the idea that Psyche's marriage will effect her imminent
death. It is after all a 'rash and bold lampe', revealing her husband's
true nature, which marks the start in the original tale of a whole series
of calamities. In an almost perversively triumphant mood, the poet literally
cries out his delight at the prospect of his pending victory.
Indeed, the first three stanzas of the ode all begin with the
exclamative 'O', like the repetitive and hypnotising euoi in the Bacchic
hymns sung at sacred orgies. The allegedly explicit sexual nature of the
heathen festivities during which a particular godhead was venerated in
song (wdh in Greek, hence the word 'ode') is notorious. Therefore, it is
particularly significant that the poet in the ode refers to Psyche's 'secrets'
(l. 3) for this may be interpreted as an echo of such an ancient Mystery
celebration. The overall erotic and sensuous nature of the ode is obvious
enough (35). Apart from
Keats's favourite topos of the bower of love, the rich and lush scenery
seems to celebrate the sensuousness of the couched lovers. It may be a
fortuitous coincidence, but the compound 'soft-conched' (l. 4) can be interpreted
as a sophisticated pun when the meaning of 'vulva' (concha) is read into
it. As a trained medical student, Keats is likely to have been familiar
with the term. In analogy with the Annunciation in Christianity, then,
the poet sings the secret words into Psyche's ear, thus fathering the very
ode itself. I refer here, of course, to the early Scholastics who suggested
that the Virgin Mary conceived Jesus at the word of the archangel Gabriel.
This belief was founded on the authoritative phrase 'And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us' in John 1:14a. A thirteenth-century English
dancing song phrases it as follows:
By the act of 'mak[ing] melodious moan' (l. 30) and by uttering
the logos spermatikos (38),
the poet will engender the subservient receptacle of his passion with future
compositions, yet 'never breed[ing] the same' (l. 63). Such a tremendous
output is guaranteed by the extraordinary intensity and fullness of his
vision. The experience of complete sexual gratification resulting in the
cannibalistic death of Psyche, will always remain a 'remembrance dear'
(l. 2) for the poet. As the case may be, this recollection will turn out
to be the germ of all potential 'numbers' he is still to sing; it is the
major catalyst of the essentially sexualised act of writing. Keats himself
established the connexion between recollection on the one hand and writing
on the other in one of his letters: 'Poetry should [...] appear almost
as a Remembrance' (Letters , I, p. 238). Yet, do these 'tuneless numbers'
sound not somehow remarkably familiar? 'This do in remembrance of me',
Jesus told his disciples whilst breaking the bread and pouring the wine
(Luke 22: 19b). Analogously, each new poem will perpetuate the original
mystery in which the poet partook. Hence, like the convoluted shape of
Psyche's auricle, the poet is about the fold back upon himself and his
earlier experiences in what has now basically become, after the mental
absorption of the goddess's identity, an act of shameless auto-eroticism.
Could Byron possibly have realised how close he was to the truth when he
declared that Keats was 'always fr--g--g his Imagination '? (39)
Now it only remains for the poet to penetrate his own orgiastic
'O's', which, in a most graphic manner, constitute a series of 'casements
ope at night' (l. 66), in order to engender his poetical offspring. Ergo,
invocation becomes impregnation. The firm and climactic 'Yes' at the beginning
of the concluding stanza proves that the persona will be thoroughly successful
in his creative desires. Truly, this was not a meaningless or overconfident
exclamation on Keats's part. Though the 'Ode to Psyche', in itself, would
have been enough of a corroboration, the unique sequence of his subsequent
odes endorses beyond any doubt how Keats had managed to appropriate fully
an inspiring, and above all, personal, Muse.
References to Keats's poetry are to the edition
by Jack Stillinger: The Poems of John Keats (London: Heinemann, 1978).
For the text of the 'Ode to Psyche', however, I have used the Manuscript
Version reproduced in Robert Gittings, ed., The Odes of John Keats
and their Earliest Known Manuscripts (London: Heinemann, 1970) 50-55. Extracts
from the letters are taken from Hyder Edward Rollins, ed., The Letters
of John Keats: 1814-1821, 2 vols (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Unversity
Press, 1958), abbreviated as Letters in the text and followed by the appropriate
volume and page numbers.
NOTES
(1) Susan J. Wolfson, "Feminizing Keats,"
in Critical Essays on John Keats , ed. Hermione De Almeida (Boston, Massachusetts:
G. K. Hall & Co., 1990) 348. (1)
(2) Anne K. Mellor, Romanticism and Gender
(New York and London: Routledge, 1993) 182. (2)
(3) Mellor, Romanticism and Gender , 174.
(3)
(4) Jean H. Hagstrum, Eros and Vision: The
Restoration to Romanticism (Evaston: Northwestern University Press, 1989)
78. (4)
(5) Martin Aske, Keats and Hellenism: An
Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) 105. (5)
(6) Mellor, Romanticism and Gender , 171,
174. (6)
(7) Quoted from Maneck H. Daruwala, "Keats
& The Ode to Psyche ," Victorians Institute Journal 19 (1991) : 159.
(7)
(8) "Critics have not failed to call attention
to a certain voyeurism in Keats's poetry [...]. A noteworthy feature of
[Keats's erotic] scenes, as of all erotic fantasies, is that the one who
has the fantasy in this instance, the poet identifies with one of the envisioned
partners". Leon Waldoff, "The Theme of Mutability in the Ode to Psyche
," PMLA 92 (1977) : 414. (8)
(9) Charles Whibley, ed., The Golden Ass
of Apuleius Translated out of Latin by William Adlington Anno 1566 , The
Tudor Translations, IV (London: David Nutt, 1893) 127. (9)
(10) Mary Tighe, in her Spenserian tale
Psyche , describes how the eponymous heroine "sinks [down] in deadly swoon
opprest" when she sees Cupid fleeing the bridal bed on the ill-fated night.
In this analogous situation, Psyche's curiosity, transgressing a taboo,
once again brings her into great peril. Mary Tighe, Psyche, With Other
Poems 1811 , intro. by Jonathan Wordsworth, Revolution and Romanticism
1789-1834 (Oxford and New York: Woodstock Books, 1992) 59. (10)
(11) For a thorough discussion of the various
problems arising from a 'cameleon Poet' view of the world, see: Charles
J. Rzepka, The Self as Mind: Vision and Identity in Wordsworth, Coleridge,
and Keats (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press,
1986), 165-242. Margaret Homans briefly charts the evolution of Keats's
conception of identity in "Keats Reading Women, Women Reading Keats," Studies
in Romanticism 29 (1990) : 352-3, passim . (11)
(12) Harold E. Briggs is convinced that
the reviews distressed the poet considerably: "Keats's Conscious and Unconscious
Reactions to Criticism of Endymion ," PMLA 60 (1945) 1106-29. (12)
(13) Sandra M. Gilbert, "Literary Paternity,"
in Contemporary Literary Criticism: Modernism Through Poststructuralism
, ed. Robert Con Davis (New York and London: Longman, 1986) 194. (13)
(14) Compare to the startingly physical
phrase in Adlington's translation of Apuleius's The Golden Ass : "Then
they opened the gates of their subtill mindes" (111-2). (14)
(15) Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an
English Opium-Eater and Other Writings , ed. Grevel Lindop (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1985) 42. De Quincey was yet another
critic who condemned the "very midsummer madness of affectation, of false
vapoury sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy" which he saw "combined
[especially] in Keats's Endymion ". Tait's Edinburgh Magazine 33 (April
1846) : 249, repr. in G. M. Matthews, ed., Keats: The Critical Heritage
. The Critical Heritage Series (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971)
309. (15)
(16) C. T. Onions, ed., The Oxford Dictionary
of English Etymology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966) 908. (16)
(17) Quoted from Maneck H. Daruwala, "Keats
& The Ode to Psyche ", 171. (17)
(18) Carl Gustav Jung, The Collected Works
of C. G. Jung , eds. H. Read et al. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1958), vol. 11, Psychology and Religion: West and East , par. 156, 95.
(18)
(19) Jung, Collected Works , vol. 11, par.
157, 95. (19)
(20) A. Hamilton Thompson feminises the
prophet by assuming that "pale-mouthed" refers to the Pythoness at Delphi
whose prophetic ecstasy "was accompanied by foaming at the mouth"; Selections
from the Poems of John Keats , English Romantic Poets (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1915) 151. (20)
(21) William C. Stephenson has shrewdly
observed the "conspicuous absence of verbs (save one minor 'hast')" in
this particular stanza. "The Performing Narrator in Keats's Poetry," Keats-Shelley
Journal 26 (1977) : 64. Undeniably, the real actens /agent throughout the
ode is the poet. Even the embrace is described as a passive moment (the
verb phrases 'couched', 'lay', 'disjoined' and 'touched not' all convey
a sense of passivity, a frozen moment of perpetual stillness). (21)
(22) Aske, Keats and Hellenism , 107. (22)
(23) Sigmund Freud, "The Theme of the Three
Caskets," in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of
Sigmund Freud , ed. and transl. James Strachey (London: The Hogarth Press,
1958), vol. XII, 294. The reference was first made by Lloyd N. Jeffrey
in his disappointingly superficial article "A Freudian Reading of Keats's
Ode to Psyche ," Psychoanalytic Review 55 (Summer 1968) : 289-306. (23)
(24) "The presence of 'I' is already implied
in the repeated assonances of [...] 'lyre', 'fire', retir'd', before finally
coming to the surface here: 'I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired'
(43). The extraordinary internal repetition of 'I' in this line serves
to establish the poet's authority once and for all." Aske, Keats and Hellenism
, 107. (24)
(25) Aske, Keats and Hellenism , 104. (25)
(26) Maneck H. Daruwala, "Keats & The
Ode to Psyche ," 178. As the author justly observes, "Naming the Muse is
a poet's definition of the creative self" (146). (26)
(27) D. L. Hoeveler, Romantic Androgyny:
The Women Within (University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1990), 6, 9. An analogous remark is made by Daniel Watkins in his
essay "Historical Amnesia and Patriarchal Morality": "The feminine, in
being conquered, is not only silenced but also transformed, denied all
human complexity and made into the passive repository of masculine desire.
The purity and morality that come to be associated with this silenced femininity
derive from the masculine ability to use the feminine just as it uses the
world to its own ends. In effect, the feminine is cherished because its
subordination serves the masculine ego's carefully constructed sense of
itself." Quoted from G. A. Rosso and Daniel P. Watkins, eds., Spirits of
Fire: English Romantic Writers and Contemporary Historical Methods (London
and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990), 247. (27)
(28) S.T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
or Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions , ed. George
Watson, Everyman's Library (London and Vermont: J. M. Dent, 1993) 167.
Also, "A self that continually overflows itself, that melts into the Other,
that becomes the Other, is conventionally associated with the female, and
especially with the pregnant woman who experiences herself and child as
one." Mellor, Romanticism and Gender , 175. However, I believe that in
the ode, Keats does not so much melt into the Other, as consume it. The
mental process of reserving a sacred spot for Psyche within the human brain
can be considered as a 'masculine' activity. The absorption of Psyche's
identity, implying a dissolution of her selfhood by an apparently mentally
stronger poet, likewise is the result of a 'virile' cannibalistic process.
(28)
(29) "Many of the [...] gems must have appealed
deeply to Keats, and some of them may have left their traces in his poetry.
No fewer than twenty-two Nos. 7177-98 portray Cupid and Psyche embracing."
Ian Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1967),
104. (29)
(30) Anonymous, The Graces: A Classical
Allegory, Interspersed with Poetry, and Illustrated by Explanatory Notes:
Together with a Poetical Fragment Entitled Psyche Among the Graces. Translated
from the Original German of Christopher Martin Wieland (London: 1823),
136. Incidentally, the Victorians saw Keats as the delicately feminine
and fragile butterfly, cruelly destroyed by some v(ir)ile critiques: "What
shall we say of the malicious, the utterly brutal criticism, the hand of
the cloddish boy tearing the myriad-hued fragile butterfly to fragments!"
Quoted from Hermione De Almeida, Critical Essays on John Keats , 324. (30)
(31) Joseph Spence, Polymetis: Or, An Enquiry
Concerning the Agreement Between the Works of the Roman Poets, And the
Remains of the Antient Artists. Being an Attempt to Illustrate them Mutually
from One Another. In Ten Books , Garland Publishing Series (New York and
London: Garland Publishing, 1976, facsimile reprod. of the London 1747
ed.), 71. The gems are reproduced as plate VI between pp. 82-83. (31)
(32) Andrew Tooke, The Pantheon, Representing
the Fabulous Stories of the Heathen Gods and Most Illustrious Heroes in
a S[h]ort, Plain and Familiar Method, by Way of Dialogues: Illustrated
and Adorned with Elegant Copper Cutts [sic] of the Several Deities: Written
by Fra. Pomey, of the Society of Jesus, Author of the French and Latin
Dictionary; for the Use of the Dauphin. The Sixth Edition: In which the
Whole Translation is Revised, and much Amended, a New Set of Cuts Added,
with a Copious Index: Whereby it is now Made More than Fit than Any of
the Former Impressions for the Use of Schools , Garland Publishing Series
(New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1976), 141-2. (32)
(33) Asia Shepsut, Journey of the Priestess:
The Priestess Traditions of the Ancient World; A Journey of Spiritual Awakening
and Empowerment (London and San Francisco: The Aquarian Press, 1993), 218.
(33)
(34) For another reference to the myth,
see: Endymion , III, l 97. In his article, Rodney S. Edgecombe suggests
that Keats may have read Musaeus in translation during his stay with Bailey
in Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1817, rather than in 1816 when Keats set eyes
on the Homer epics translated by Chapman who also happened to have rendered
Musaeus's tale into English. See: "On First Looking Into Chapman's Musaeus:
A Note on a Possible Influence," Keats-Shelley Journal 43 (1994) : 27-34.
However, Keats alludes to the Hero and Leander myth in Endymion , II, l.
31; in 'Woman! when I behold thee flippant', l 13 and in the sonnet mentioned
above, all of which were completed before he visited Oxford. Keats may
well have read Musaeus for the first time in 1817, but he was already familiar
with the myth from a much earlier date. (34)
(35) Actually, the plural word mysteria
(musthria ) was used interchangeably with orgia (orgia ) by the ancient
Greek authors. See: Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (London:
Faber and Faber Ltd., 1958), 13. (35)
(36) Quoted from Marina Warner, Alone of
All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary (London: Picador, 1990),
37. The following is another example taken from the same book:
(37) Donald C. Goellnicht, "In Some Untrodden
Region of My Mind : Double Discourse in Keats's Ode to Psyche ," Mosaic
21 (1988) : 97. (37)
(38) I borrow the term from Christine Battersby's
book, Gender and Genius: Towards a Feminist Aesthetics (London: The Women's
Press, 1989). (38)
(39) Lord Byron, Selected Letters and Journals
, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (London: John Murray, 1982 and Pimlico, 1993),
346. It is this self-conscious, autotelic reflexiveness of Keats's art
which is the subject of Marjorie Levinson's Keats's Life of Allegory: The
Origins of a Style (Oxford and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Basil Blackwell,
1990). (39)
When Psyches [sic] was returned from henl, to the light of the world,
shee was ravished with great desire [...]. And by and by shee opened the
boxe where she could percekve no beauty nor any thing else, save oneny
an infernal and deadly sleepe, which immediately invaded all her members
as soone as the boxe was uncovered, in such sort that shee fell downe upon
the ground, and lay there as a sleeping corps. (9)
Just when she is about to expire from the consequences of her rash act,
she is rescued from her deathlike swoon by a reproachful Cupid: 'O wretched
Caitife, behold thou wert well-nigh perished againe, with the overmuch
curiositie' (10). But all
is quickly forgiven: Psyche is bestowed with immortality and the lovers
are reunited for good. It is only this very last part of the myth which
is related in Keats's ode. By leaving out the adventurous and troublesome
prologue, Keats strips Psyche of all individuality she could possibny possess.
As a consequence, it is she, and not the poet, who is forced into female
passivity. Her desperate but brave search for her beloved, as well as her
persgverance, through which she gains her divine status, are completely
ignored in the ode. In the long journal letter written vo his brother George
in America and containing the transcript of the 'Ode vo Psyche', Keats
emphatically points out that it is through hardship and misadventure that
one's soul acquires its identity. He outlines this philosophy in the famous
'vale of Soul-making' passage:
There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions but
they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally
itself. [...] Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles
is to scjool an Intelligence and make kt a soul? A Place where the heart
must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! (Letters , II,
p. 102).
In Hyperion , Apollo likgwise takes on his divine selfhood by painfully
living through 'dire events', 'agonies' and 'destroyings' (Hyperion
, III, ll. 114, 115, 116). The denial in Keats's poem of Psyche's catharsislike
rites of passage as they occur in the original story necessarily withholds
her every sense of personality. The deconstruction of her identity, marking
the process of vhe poet's masculine domination, has now fully commenced.
I am gone
Away from my own bosom: I have left
My strong identity, my real self,
Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit
Here on this spot of earth. [...]
Search, Thea, search! and tell me, if thou seest
A certain shape or shadow, making way
With wings or chariot fierce to repossess
A heaven he lost erewhile: [...]
But cannot I create?
Cannot I form? Cannot I fashion forth
Another world, another universe,
To overbear and crumble this to nought?
(Hyperion , I, ll. 112-6, 121-4, 141-4)>/UL> The reader cannot but
answer negatively to Saturn's set of agonising questions. The deity may
once have held the power to create harmony out of chaos, but these times
are now gone with the annihilation of his former self. It mcy be meaningful
that the 'Ode to Psyche' is the first poem written after the abandonment
of Hyperion . Perhaps as a compensation for his own failure in generating
a finished work, Keats needed to nerve himself for the exacting task of
writing new poetry. In this respect, the Cupid-Psyche myth may have appealed
vo Keats because it occasioned a candid gesture of self-definition and
a search for a well-developed identity. Keats must indeed have felt it
necessary vo prove his mettle and to reinstate himself as a serious, kndependent
poet after the patronising reviews of the previous oonth (12).
Hence, in a suddenly regained state of inspiring reassurance, he composes
a song for Psyche, his Muse, who will, as from now on, be perfectly obedient
to him. The almost obsessive preoccupation with self and identity which
resurfaces in the ode can thus be seen as an indispensable self-affirmation
necessary for composing poetry.
the creative act, the act of life, the archetypal sexual act. Sexuality
is poetry. The lady is [the poet's] creation, or Pygmalion's statue. The
lady is the poem [.] (13)
Imprisoned in the manacles of the poet's fabrications, Psyche has become
no oore than a glorified reproductive organ, a divine womb delivering future
compositions without respite. The 'wreath'd trellis of [his] working brain'
(l. 60) (14) will prevgnt
her from any possible escape and so will the barrier of 'dark-cluster'd
trees' (l. 54). Kn addktion, the cnosely knit pattern of alliterations,
assonances and rhymes in the concluding stanza audibly tightens the net
around the chased Psyche.
The mandala denotes and assists exclusive concentration on the centre,
the self. [...] It is a much needed self-control for the purpose of avoiding
inflation and dissociation. [...] [The temple] protects and isolates an
inner content or process that should not get mixed up with things outside (19).
This process, needless to say, is the poet's self-realisation at the
expense of Psyche's individuality.
to assert his own visionary and vocal authority. [...] The poet
claims to be Psyche's champion, yet his benevolence is that of the despot.
Psyche remains silently subservient, while the poet usurps the privilege
of discourse[.] (22)
Parenthetically, Psyche's dumbness may be read as accentuating her status
as a captive, for Freud has argued that dumbness and concealment can be
equated (23). The contrast
between the dumbness and the bold assertive claim in line 43 displays again
the superiority and dominion of the poet and Psyche's submissive position
in the power relationship (24).
This line has a pivotal role in the ode: it contains a most crucial reference
to a visual/visionary experience, and it explicates the poet's superiority
over the object of his concupiscence. Inspired by his tyrannical love,
the poet sees and sings , thereby creating not only his but also Psyche's
identity. Indeed, I have already suggested above that Psyche's existence
depends exclusively on the persona's act of worship and invocation. Though
referring to the unfinished 'Ode to Maia', the following comment by Martin
Aske is very well applicable to Psyche's position: she is 'an object of
desire who needs to be coaxed into presence through the poet's own voice' (25).
This dependence on the poet's invocation bereaves the goddess of any free
volition. Just like Adam who acquired supremacy over all living creatures
by giving them a name (Genesis 2: 19), so the poet gains full possession
of the goddess by ejaculating hers. Is it not very appropriate that all
tension of the first stanza is released in the final, almost aggressively
short line 'His Psyche true!' (l. 23)? One may even tentatively suggest
that the "naming of [Psyche as] muse is a deliberate act of aesthetic self-definition" (26).
O, let me have thee whole, all, all be mine!
A comparable example can be found in a letter which Keats wrote during
his walking tour in Scotland to his then recently married brother George:
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast,
Yourself your soul in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom or I die
('I cry your mercy', ll. 5-10)Notwithstand[ing] your Happiness and your recommendation I hope
I shall never marry. The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things
stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness an amiable wife
and sweet Children I contemplate as part of that Beauty. [B]ut I must have
a thousand beautiful particles to fill up my heart (Letters , I, p. 403).
Here the poet appears as an insatiable Bluebeard, devouring the objects
(note how Keats writes about 'particles', not 'human beings') arousing
his passion in order to shape and extend his own sense of individuality.
Just like Coleridge's secondary imagination, Keats's mind 'dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates, in order to re-create' (28).
A similar oppressive attitude can be read in the concluding torch-and-casement
image of the ode.
Here are two of them [i.e. Cupids] very seriously employed about
the catching of a butterfly; and there another, as intent to burn one with
the torch he holds in his hands. Tho' this indeed might be brought as an
instance of their power, as well of their idle tricks: for the butterfly
is generally used by the Greek artists as an emblem for the human soul;
and a Cupid fondling or burning a butterfly, is just the same with them
as a Cupid caressing or tormenting the Goddess Psyche (31).
The image of the torch, of course, is widespread in ancient mythology,
and Keats seems to have drawn on several interdependent meanings of the
symbol. The Pantheon , which Keats knew through Andrew's Tooke translation
of 1713, interestingly pairs Hymeneus, the god presiding over marriage,
with Cupid, both of whom are carrying a torch (32).
This concurrence justifies the reading of the poet's 'Fane' for Psyche
as literally a 'marriage chamber', or a thalamos as the ante-chamber to
a Greek temple was called (33).
It is there that the poet and his divine, silenced 'bride of quietness'
will be linked in sacred wedlock. Evidently, Cupid will be irreverently
displaced in the process. My intention in the next paragraphs is to evince
that Psyche's marriage in Keats's poem will actually lead to her own destruction
insofar as it is the epitome of the poet's conquest. This corresponds,
the reader will recall, to the final, 'cannibalistic' phase in Hoeveler's
scheme of the Romanticists' gender politics.
Glad us maiden, mother mild
The 'casement ope at night' may, in turn, refer to the fenestra ovalis
and fenestra rotundum which are parts of the ear leading into the inner
region of the head behind the ossa temporum or temple (possibly another
anatomical pun in Keats's ode) (37).
Through thine ear thou wert with child
Gabriel he said it thee (36).
Mirentur ergo saecula [The centuries marvel therefore]
For the occurrence of the same conceptio per aurem motif in The Eve
of St Agnes , see: Gail McMurray Gibbon, "Ave Madeline: Ironic Annunciation
in Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes ," Keats-Shelley Journal 26 (1977) : 39-50.
(36)
quod angelus fert semina [that the angel bore the seed]
quod aure virgo concepit [the virgin conceived through her ear]
et corde credens parturit [believing in her heart, became fruitful]