Ода Джона Китса «О бездействии»

1819 poem by John Keats

The "Ode on Indolence" is one of five odes composed by English poet John Keats in the spring of 1819. The others were "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to Psyche". The poem describes the state of indolence, a word which is synonymous with "avoidance" or "laziness". The work was written during a time when Keats was presumably more than usually occupied with his material prospects. After finishing the spring poems, Keats wrote in June 1819 that its composition brought him more pleasure than anything else he had written that year. Unlike the other odes he wrote that year, "Ode on Indolence" was not published until 1848, 27 years after his death. The poem is an example of Keats's break from the structure of the classical form. It follows the poet's contemplation of a morning spent in idleness. Three figures are presented—Ambition, Love and Poesy—dressed in "placid sandals" and "white robes". The narrator examines each using a series of questions and statements on life and art. The poem concludes with the narrator giving up on having all three of the figures as part of his life. Some critics regard "Ode on Indolence" as inferior to the other four 1819 odes. Others suggest that the poem exemplifies a continuity of themes and imagery characteristic of his more widely read works, and provides valuable biographical insight into his poetic career.

By the spring of 1819, Keats had left his poorly paid position as a surgeon at Guy's Hospital, Southwark, London, to devote himself to poetry. On 12 May 1819, he abandoned this plan after receiving a request for financial assistance from his brother, George. Unable to help, Keats was torn by guilt and despair and sought projects more lucrative than poetry. It was under these circumstances that he wrote "Ode on Indolence". In a letter to his brother dated 19 March 1819, Keats discussed indolence as a subject. He may have written the ode as early as March, but the themes and stanza forms suggest May or June 1819; when it is known he was working on "Ode on a Grecian Urn", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode to Psyche". During this period, Keats's friend Charles Armitage Brown transcribed copies of the spring odes and submitted them to publisher Richard Woodhouse. Despite this enjoyment, however, he was not entirely satisfied with "Ode on Indolence", and it remained unpublished until 1848. Keats's notes and papers do not reveal the precise dating of the 1819 odes. Literary scholars have proposed several different orders of composition, arguing that the poems form a sequence within their structures. In The Consecrated Urn, Bernard Blackstone observes that "Indolence" has been variously thought the first, second, and final of the five 1819 odes. Biographer Robert Gittings suggests "Ode on Indolence" was written on 4 May 1819, based upon Keats's report about the weather during the ode's creation; Douglas Bush insists it was written after "Nightingale", "Grecian Urn", and "Melancholy". Based on his examination of the stanza forms, Keats biographer Andrew Motion thinks "Ode on Indolence" was written after "Ode to Psyche" and "Ode to a Nightingale", although he admits there is no way to be precise about the dates. Nevertheless, he argues that "Ode on Indolence" was probably composed last.

Literary critics regard "Ode on Indolence" as inferior to Keats's other 1819 odes. Walter Evert wrote that "it is unlikely that the 'Ode on Indolence' has ever been anyone's favorite poem, and it is certain that it was not Keats's. Why he excluded it from the 1820 volume we do not know, but it is repetitious and declamatory and structurally infirm, and these would be reasons enough." Bate indicated that the poem's value is "primarily biographical and not poetic". In 2000, Thomas McFarland wrote in consideration of Dilke's comparison: "Far more important than the similarity, which might seem to arise from the urns in Keats's purview in both Ode on Indolence and Ode on a Grecian Urn  is the enormous dissimilarity in the two poems. Ode on Indolence  is a flaccid enterprise that hardly bears mention alongside that other achievement." Sidney Colvin, in his 1917 biography on Keats, grouped "Indolence" with the other 1819 odes in categorizing Keats's "class of achievements". In 1948, Lord Gorell described the fifth stanza as, "lacking the magic of what the world agrees are the great Odes" but describes the language as "[d]elicate, charming even". Later, in a 1968 biography of Keats, Gittings describes the importance of the poem: "The whole ode, in fact, has a borrowed air, and he acknowledged its lack of success by not printing it with the others  Yet with its acceptance of the numb, dull and indolent mood as something creative, it set the scene for all the odes that followed." In 1973, Stuart Sperry described it as "a rich and nourishing immersion in the rush of pure sensation and its flow of stirring shadows and 'dim dreams'. In many ways the ode marks both a beginning and an end. It is both the feeblest and potentially the most ambitious of the sequence. Yet its failure, if we choose to consider it that, is more the result of deliberate disinclination than any inability of means." Andrew Motion, in 1997, argued, "Like 'Melancholy', the poem is too articulate for its own poetic good  In two of his May odes, 'Melancholy' and 'Indolence', Keats defined themes common to the whole group with such fierce candour that he restricted their imaginative power. His identity had prevailed."