Abstract.Compared with traditional aesthetics, Ecoaesthetics places emphasis on natural aesthetical objects.This paper is aimed at making a new study on John Keats’s natural poetry in the perspective of Ecoaesthetics by observing natural principle, engagement principle and holism principle, so as to concretely experience and expresses the natural beauty, an animated feeling process. The following aspects are taken up to explore Keats’s eco-consciousness: ecological beauty of sound, color and taste, harmony between mankind and nature, defect and loss of natural beauty and expectation for it.
Key words: John Keats；Ecoaesthetics；natural principle；engagement principle；holism principle
1.Introduction
John Keats, as one of the most outstanding romantic poets, is endowd with the most artistic temperament. Till now, achievements have been made in both aesthetic appreciation fields and historical fields, but research methods are kept evolving and innovating, and research perspectives are continuously renewed and broadened.
In recent decades, critics and scholars often turn ecocritical eyes to Keats’s poems. Many discussions demonstrate mankind’s bond with the Earth, a fragile, beautiful and ecological wholeness, and ecological consciousness which plays a central role in the comprehension of ramifications of aesthetics, philosophy and ethics. In addition, Keats’s attitudes to Nature show how he regardes nature as central to the creative process and physical and psychological therapy to human beings. In China, scholars also have made great efforts to study Keats’s works in ecological views. The findings are that some Keats’s poems symbolize a world in ecological crisis and embody a harmonious world, Keats adores nature and hopes to get merged into nature.
Under the guidance of three principles of ecoaesthetics: natural principle (purpose of ecoaesthetics), engagement principle of (aesthetic methods) and holism principle (aesthetic field of vision), this paper focuses on one that appreciating the pure natural beauty without any attached personal feelings, another that engaging with nature without subjects or objects and the third that putting oneself into nature to become one part of it. By these principles, the ecoconsciousness that exists in Keats’s natural poems will be analyzed from an ecoaesthetical perspective.
2. Natural Principle of Ecoaesthetics in Keats’s Poetry
Ecoaesthetics, compared with traditional aesthetics, lays emphasis on natural aesthetical objects and it mainly means aesthetics to nature that neither makes the concrete aesthetical experience abstracted to form theoretical cognition nor delivers or refers to aesthetician’s emotion or personal power through specific aesthetical objects, but a pure description for natural beauty itself. What Keats presented to us is what he has heard and observed. By sound, color, tactus and time, he told us an undecorated natural world and portrayed nothing but a living nature.
2.1. Ecological Beauty of Sound
Keats’s intuition to nature comes from a variety of ecological aspects, not only including sounds uttered by birds, but also other low grade living things, in which he succeeds in communicating with nature at different levels. So the natural charms are displayed:
‘…The merry lark has pour’d ?His early song against you breezy sky.’; ‘…for they heard?A rustling noise of leaves, and oiut there flutter’d?Pigeons and doves’; ‘When I awake, ’twas in a twilight bower;?Just when the light of morm, with hum of bees, ?Stole through its verdurous matting if fresh trees. ?How sweet, and sweeter! for I heard a lyre’;‘…voice sweet ?Warbling the while as if to lull and greet ?The wanderer in his path.’
Larks, pigeons, doves, bees, etc. are born musicians, beautiful songs coming out at any place, any time, but none of them is chaos or noise. Sounds of birds and insects in Keats’s works are most harmonious, most beautiful chorus, ceaseless living forms performing the wonders of nature. Grasshoppers’and crickets’singing all the year around, nightingales’loud and proud singing in the darkness, winged insects’plaintive whining, robins’ whistling, swallows’twittering, the Nile’s roaring forward, the sea’s writhing back and forth, all constitute a harmonious ecological world.
In On the Grasshopper and Cricket, a well?constructed musical poem, the lives of those brave little singers are so romantic and beautiful on the wild mountainside! All the air about them is music; every breath they draw is part of a song. Songs created by birds are the path to nature and through them as through a window look into nature"s warm heart. In On the Sea, Keats shows us a fierce image of the sea full of ferocity that whispers around: a vivid scene, issuing the beauty of strength, the beauty of sound, a powerful, energic and eternal sea, with its mighty swell, cleansing the desolate shores and leaving the caves old shadowy sound―all these demonstrate a forceful and dreadful Oceanus covering everything in its shade. Sounds in Keats’s poems are natural and harmonious, just like what he described in Sleep and Poetry. No decoration, no embellishment, a pure natural world appears before us, vivid and original, and the world is full of sound, full of music, full of ecological beauty. To nature, Keats has got a gift for listening; very sound coming to him from nature is a piece of music. Cricket’s humming, robin’s tweeting, swallow’s chirping and lark’s twittering, even sound made by the wind blowing the grass, are pretty tunes in the eyes of Keats. Birds’ songs lead us to a music world, making happy people and wonderful tunes engaged together.
2.2. Ecological Beauty of Colour
John Keats is a keen poet who is fond of grasping the slight changes of colour about nature and depicting the colourful changing world of the natural hues, especially yellowness and greenness, for they stand for harvest, an exuberant and vital spring, also they can be seen everywhere: on the ground, on the tree, on the prairie lie the exuberant greenness and ripe yellowness, so does they in the mountain areas, in the valley, in the water. Keats grasps yellow and green colour of nature to praise their energetic, harmonious and eternal character, making people feel calm, peaceful, comfortable, abundant and safe, and giving people a sense of eternality,
Nature’s observatory ― whence the swell, / Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell / May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep / "Mongst boughs pavillion"d, where the deer"s swift leap / Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
Here, flowery, crystal swell and boughs pavilion form a vivid picture. The observer standing on the observatory watched the swell, found nearby the crystal river streaming, flowers lying on the slopes, and in the boughs glanced at the deer swift leaping and the wild bee flying out startledly from the fox ? glove bell. Only several lines have depicted a vivid picture of nature that we readers could easily be attracted by the beautiful scene and enjoy the peaceful atmosphere.
Thou shalt, at one glance, behold / The daisy and the marigold; / White-plumed lilies, and the first / Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst; / Shaded hyacinth, always / Sapphire queen of the mid-May; / And every leaf, and every flower / Pearled with the self-same shower.
A colourful world appears before our eyes, nothing but flower kingdom, with no artificial ornaments interrupting this pure natural world. The competing process demonstrates a certain kind of beauty, an ecological beauty of colour, just like what he described in To Autumn. So Keats’s poems are never short of colors, whenever you go, or wherever you go, flowers accompany you. Whatever flowers you can think of, they are always there waiting for you in advance.
2.3. Ecological Beauty of Taste
Keats has got a strong sense of taste, such as the taste for food, for the delicious dishes in the tavern have fostered his developed taste-bud in his childhood, therefore, when growing up, he puts this strong sense into poems, becoming a great poet with unique taste to beauty.
While he from forth the closet brought a heap / Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd; / With jellies soother than the creamy curd, / And lucent syrops, tince with cinnamon; / Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d / From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, / From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.
Whether you are full or not, you can’t help reaching out your hands to touch these delicious fruits when faced with them. Candied apple, quince, plum and gourd each are attractive enough to catch our eyes, let alone they turn up in a heap on the plate. We have no desire to ask why they come here, or care for who will win this cate competition, for it is nothing but a great feast for our taste, and demonstrates a certain kind of beauty, an ecological one that can explain the peaceful state of harvest when fruits come to their mature stage. We fix our eyes on the nature’s works, enjoying the rich harvest, immersed totally in this pure inartificial fruit world. Besides the taste for fruits, Keats also has a gift for tasting liquor that is always closely related with nature. Such relationshiop is quite obvious in Ode to Nightingale: ‘O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth’, short line as it is, a desire for tasting can’t be stopped appearing before us. When appreciating natural beauties, Keats made himself merged with nature, keeping his strong sense of beauty exposed to nature, which precisely coincided with natural principle of ecological aesthetics. His senses are in good condition that he will never miss any wonderful scenery, and that his sense of smell will become sharper which can make him enjoy the fragrance of nature.
3. Engagement Principle of Ecoaesthetics in Keats’s Poetry
Engagement principle is based on the associated standpoint of ecologism. Ecoaesthetics means devoting completely to the nature, sometimes even needs to be oblivious of ourselves, engaging with the nature, especially at the beginning of aesthetics appreciation: the aesthetics of engagement of man and nature. To be engaged with nature and appreciate the beauty of it during the process, the beauty-observer should forget himself, experiencing nature aimlessly. Only by this means can he come to the core of nature and appreciate more and more natural beauties.
Harmonious beauty between mankind and nature is the best reflection of this engagement principle. When Keats writes poems, he always regards himself as part of nature, puts himself into the natural circle and appreciates the pure beauty of nature in the ecological world. When studying at Enfield, he often runs out to the forest in order to get much close nature listening to the unique songs of nature and appreciating the charms of the green hills and clear water. Sometimes he lies on the grass for hours listening to the songs of birds as well as smelling the richness of fruits and watching the movement of the small animals that hopes to become part of them wandering cheerfully in the forest. Just as what he wrote in Endymion that in Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, that if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice, I was never afraid of failure. Not only Keats’s poems are full of admirable and harmonious elements, but even his letters are permeated with attractive molecules of nature engagement. The communication between human and nature here is not one between man and thing, but an emotional engagement. Ecological engagement principle emphasizes most on the minglement between man and nature, that is, the observer of natural beauty must put himself into nature, and becomes an engaged part of it.
4. Holism Principle of Ecoaesthetics in Keats’ s Poetry
Eco-holism plays a key role in the core thoughts of ecoaesthetics. Ecoaesthetics aims at not only a single aesthetic object, but putting it into the system of nature to observe what effects it will have on the nature and basing on the holistic ecological nature with great reverence to the natural system for its order appreciation. Eco-holism leads to the expansion of ecoaesthetics objects: every creature is equal to another, each playing its own role in the organic integrity, Nature.
Defect and loss of natural beauty and expectation for it are really worth our deep thinking. If Keats’s expectation and laud to ecological harmony are directly expressed in his works, his attention to ecological crisis is hidden in the loss between the real world and the ideal world. When Keats illustrates the natural landscape and advocates ecological harmony by poetic language, he expresses intense concerns for the ruined environment, thus arousing readers’ ecological consciousness during enjoying the beautiful scenery of the natural world.
To one who has been long in city pent, / ’Tis very sweet to look into the fair / And open face of heaven, ―to breathe a prayer / Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
The four lines show a pitiful scene：the environment is not what it used to be; it has been ruined and the heaven has been hidden. Besides, In Ode to a Nightingale, by comparison and contrast, the defects can be seen clearly, and Keats’s concern for nature is also demonstrated. By making a comparison between ‘my world’ (‘I’) and ‘nightingale’s world’ (‘you’), Keats once again describes an ecological loss.‘You’ sing in the ecological holistic nature and become immortal while ‘I’ have ears in vain and lie in a sod in the ecological defect world. In Keats’s poems, apart from natural beauties and happiness of human-nature, the damage and loss of ecology are exactly demonstrated, displaying the defects of ecological holism.
5. Conclusion
Keats’s poems are endowed with distinguished social concerns, free feelings and art charms. Just putting him on the seat of art for art’s sake and studying his poems on aesthetics at a surface level, or neglecting his inner thoughts and feelings concerning natural ecology and human ecology may easily fall into one-sided traps. According to the three principle of ecoaesthetics, this paper makes concrete analyses on Keats’s nature poems by natural principles, engagement principle and holism principle, and the result of the study is that Keats is not only an aesthetician, but also an eco-poet, for his ecological thoughts root deeply in his heart, when he goes to nature and enjoys the pure natural beauties, he never forgets that human and nature have holistic relations with each other for ever and ever. Still, there exist some other entire Ecoaesthetic forms, including dependence stage, competition stage and symbiotic stage, which can also be worth further exploring Keats’s poetry.
6. References
[1] Carlson, Allen. Aesthetics and the Environment: The Appreciation of Nature, Art and Architecture. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
[2] Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004.
[3] Kroeber, Karl. Ecological Literary Criticism: Romantic Imagining and the Biology of Mind. Columbia University Press, 1994.
[4] Coupe, Laurence. The Green studies Reader: from Romanticism to Ecocriticism. New York: Routledge, 2000.
[5] Buxton Forman. The Letters of John Keats. Kessinger Publishing, 2004.