The imagination is an amazing thing. John Keats was well aware of this, and he believed that the imagination was indeed an important and powerful part of everyone. However, he was also aware of the dangers the imagination could bring. The “Romantic Realist,” John Keats, was able to maintain a healthy balance between the imagination and reality. He appreciated the power of the imagination, while remaining firmly planted in reality. John Keats had reason to be wary of the imagination. He watched his younger brother waste away from consumption, and he had no choice but to accept his brother’s eventual and inevitable death. Keats, himself, eventually became sick with the same disease. He was able to accept his fate, knowing there was nothing he could dream up to change that fact. Throughout his poetry, Keats reveals the dangers of the imagination and the consequences that could result in denying what is real. Especially through the character of Madeline in “The Eve of St. Agnes,“ Keats illustrates that lingering too long in the world of dreams and imagination can be dangerous because it causes people to create a warped version of reality, to miss out on the joys of experiencing life, and to be disappointed and dissatisfied with real life.
Keats’s main character, Madeline, in his poem, “The Eve of St. Agnes,” created and resided a dream world for herself. She got to the point where she no longer cared for what was real. In fact, she based her denial of reality on a legend, a legend where young virgin girls go through a certain ritual before they go to sleep on the Eve of St. Agnes, they will dream of their future lover. That was all Madeline was interested in that particular evening. She ignored the excitement and celebration of the feast going on around her. She ignored the numerous advances made by other young men at the celebration.
“Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,
And back, retir’d; not cool’d by disdain,
But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:
She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.”
Madeline’s imagination took over her whole being the night of the St. Agnes celebration. The only thing real to her that night was the prospect of going through the legendary ritual to seek the lover of her dreams, when she could have found someone real to entertain her that very night.
Because Madeline is stuck in her world of dreams, she does not truly experience what real life has to offer. She may not experience real pain in her dreams, but she cannot experience real joy either. In her dream, Madeline is:
“Blissfully haven’d both from joy and pain;
Clasp’d like a missal where swart Paynims pray;
Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain,
As though a rose should shut, and become a bud again.”
Using the metaphors of sunshine and rain, Keats is
illustrating that one cannot truly experience joy without experience what pain is like as well, just like one cannot appreciate the sunshine if he never felt a drop rain, or got caught out in a storm. Madeline is harming herself because she is denying the experience of real life even if it means some pain because she is so caught up in the perfection of what she dreams. Luckily, Porphyro saves her from her imagination. He enters her room in the middle of the night and wakes her from her trance to let her experience something real. The beadsman, a religious character introduced at the beginning of the poem, who reappears at the end of the poem, had no one like Porphyro to introduce him to reality. He spent the entirety of his life in prayer. “The joys of all his life were said and sung;” They were not actually experienced. Because he never really lived his life, at the end of the poem, “The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,/ For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.” He died alone without every actually experiencing joy. Unlike the fate of the Beadsman at the end of the poem, Porphyro and Madeline go off together into the storm. The storm is another image Keats uses to explain what reality is like. The storm represents reality and all of the hardships that go along with it. However, it is only by surviving the storm that one can truly appreciate the sunshine or rainbow that may be left in its wake.
The last point Keats makes about the dangers of imagination and the denial of reality is that it may cause people to become disappointed and perhaps dissatisfied with real life. Keats even alludes to another one of his poems, “La Belle Dans Sans Merci.” This is the name of the tune Porphyro plays on his lute to Madeline while she is still dreaming. This allusion is appropriate because that particular poem describes what can happen when one stays for too long in the realm of the imagination. The knight in “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” becomes so caught up with the imaginary fairy lover, that when the dream is over, he can no longer be content in the real world. This is what possibly could have happened to Madeline, had Porphyro not come to sweep her off into the storm of reality. When the real Porphyro makes his presence known to Madeline, the first thing she does is weep and then comment on how different he is from the dream. In the dream her lover was perfect and radiant, but in reality he is “pallid, chill, and drear.” In fact, Madeline is afraid that her lover is dead because he is so different from the perfection of her dream. Porphyro has to convince her that she is no longer dreaming and that they must leave together to face the storm. Madeline finds leaving her dream world to be a very frightening experience indeed, however, her final embracing of reality will allow her to experience life at its fullest.
Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” is one big warning sign against the dangers of the imagination. It adequately describes, using the beadsman as an example, what could happen to Madeline if she spent her whole life in her imagination. With a little help from Porphyro, Madeline was able to embrace reality and accept that difficulties and hardships go hand in hand with the joy of experiencing what real life has to offer.
Well I did get an A on this paper…rough draft.
