Ode to Psyche

1819 poem written by John Keats

"Ode to Psyche" is a poem by John Keats written in spring 1819. The poem is the first of his 1819 odes, which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". "Ode to Psyche" is an experiment in the ode genre, and Keats's attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a dramatic scene. The poem serves as an important departure from Keats's early poems, which frequently describe an escape into the pleasant realms of one's imagination. Keats uses the imagination to show the narrator's intent to resurrect Psyche and reincarnate himself into Eros (love). Keats attempts this by dedicating an "untrodden region" of his mind to the worship of the neglected goddess.

Keats was never a professional writer. Instead, he supported himself with a small income that he earned as a surgeon for Guy's Hospital. At the age of 23, Keats left the hospital, losing his source of income, in order to devote himself to writing poetry. He lived with Charles Brown, a friend who collected Keats's poetry while supporting him, during spring 1819 and composed poetry. The early products of this effort included La Belle Dame sans Merci and "Ode to Psyche", the first of a series of odes that he would write that year. It is uncertain as to when the poem was actually completed, but Keats sent the poem to his brother on 3 May 1819 with an attached letter saying, "The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains; I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and healthy spirit." Keats was exposed to a few sources of the Psyche myth. His contemporary sources for the myth included John Lempriere's Classical Dictionary and Mary Tighe's Psyche, an 1805 work that Keats read as a child and returned to in 1818. Keats wrote to his brother George, just a few months before writing "Ode to Psyche", to say that he was no longer delighted by Tighe's writing. Dissatisfied, he turned to Apuleius's Golden Ass, translated by William Adlington in 1566, and read through the earlier version of the Cupid and Psyche myth. After reading the work and realizing that the myth was established during the twilight of Roman mythology, Keats wrote to George: "You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour—and perhaps never thought of in the old religion—I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so neglected."

"Ode to Psyche", Keats's 67 line ode, was the first of his major odes of 1819. As such, the poem is an experiment in the ode structure that he was to then rely on for his next five odes. Although Keats spent time considering the language of the poem, the choice of wording and phrasing is below that found within his later works, including Hyperion or the odes that followed. "Ode to Psyche" is important because it is Keats's first attempt at an altered sonnet form that would include longer more lines and would end with a message or truth. Also, he did not want the poem to be based simply around that message, so he incorporated narrative elements, such as plot and characters, along with a preface to the poem. Of these additions, the use of a preface was discontinued in his next odes along with the removal of details that describe setting within the poems; they would only be implied within later odes. H. W. Garrod, in his analysis of Keats's sonnet form, believes that Keats took various aspects of sonnet forms and incorporated only those that he thought would benefit his poetry. In particular, Keats relies on Petrarch's sonnet structure and the "pouncing rhymes" that are found within Petrarch's octave stanzas. However, M. R. Ridley disputes that Keats favours Petrarch and claims that the odes incorporate a Shakespearean rhyme scheme. Regardless of which sonnet structure was favoured over the other, Keats wanted to avoid the downsides of both forms. "Ode to Psyche" begins with an altered Shakespearean rhyme scheme of The use of rhyme does not continue throughout the poem, and the lines that follow are divided into different groups: a quatrain, couplets, and a line on its own. These are then followed by a series of twelve lines that are modelled after the Shakespearean sonnet form, but lack the final couplet. The next lines are of two quatrains, with rhyme, followed by two lines that repeat the previous rhymes, and then a final quatrain, with rhyme.

Responding to the poem, Keats's friend Leigh Hunt declared that "When Mr Keats errs in his poetry, it is from the ill management of the good things, exuberance of ideas. Once or twice, he does so in a taste positively bad, like Marino or Cowley, as in a line in his 'Ode to Psyche' but it is once or twice only, in his present volume." Robert Bridges, turn of the 19th century literary critic, wrote "for the sake of the last section (l. 50 to end), tho' this is open to the objection that the imagery is work'd up to outface the idea—which is characteristic of Keats' manner. Yet the extreme beauty quenches every dissatisfaction. The beginning of this ode is not so good, and the middle part is midway in excellence." Later, T. S. Eliot thought very highly of Keats's work and wrote "The Odes—especially perhaps the Ode to Psyche—are enough for his reputation." Kenneth Allott, in defending against any possible harsh criticism of "Ode to Psyche", argues that the poem "is the Cinderella of Keats's great odes, but it is hard to see why it should be so neglected, and at least two poets imply that the conventional treatment of the poem is shabby and undeserved". Allott then cites Bridges and Eliot as views that he sympathizes with, and he believes that the poem "is neither unflawed nor the best of odes, but to me it illustrates better than any other Keats's possession of poetic power in conjunction with what was for him an unusual artistic detachment, besides being a remarkable poem in its own right. This may be another way of saying that it is the most architectural of the odes, as it is certainly the one that culminates most dramatically." To Harold Bloom, the last lines of Keats's ode "rivals any as an epitome of the myth making faculty". He elaborates further on this when he writes, "The poem Ode to Psyche is unique, and also central, for its art is a natural growth out of nature, based as it is upon a very particular act of consciousness, which Keats arrests in all its concreteness."