Mythology in Keats' "Ode to Autumn" and "Ode to Psyche"

John Keats (1795-1821) was an English Romantic poet and was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death. The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes.

The Romantic poets, and especially John Keats, were deeply influenced by ancient Greek mythology. Keats deeply studies and consciously or unconsciously imitated the Greek classics in his works. His poems, “Ode to Grecian Urn”, “Ode to Psyche”, “Endymion”, “Ode to Autumn”, etc show a remarkable influence of Greek mythology. “Ode to Psyche” and “Ode to Autumn” are two of the odes belonging to this series of poems. Both these poems are similar in Keats’ use of mythology in them, though in different forms.

"Ode to Psyche" is a 67-line poem written in stanzas of varying length, is written to a Grecian mythological character, displaying a great influence of Classical culture. The mythological elements in this poem are more prominent as compared to “Ode to Autumn” as the poem itself centers on the mythological figure, Psyche, Cupid’s wife. This poem is an explicit example of Keats’ use of classical myths in his poems. According to this myth, Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful daughter of a certain king and queen. Her beauty was such that her admirers went as far as prayer to her and making her offerings, consequently ignoring the Greek Goddess of Love, Aphrodite (or Venus, the name her Roman counterpart is known by). Venus thus sends her son Cupid (or the Greek Eros) to make Psyche fall in love with a hideous creature. However, Cupid accidently manages to prick himself with his arrows and falls in love with Psyche.  Meanwhile, Psyche’s parents consult and Oracle who informs them that their daughter would fall in love with a dangerous dragon-like creature. So, she is taken to a cliff where the West Wind carries her away and deposits her on a meadow. She starts living in the castle she sees there, where she is treated like a queen, and has a husband who only visits her n the darkness of the night and whose face she is yet to see. Sometime later, Psyche’s two sisters come to visit her. When she came to know about her predicament, they advice her to light a lamp after her husband has fallen asleep so that she can see his face as they truly believed him to be a monster. When Psyche carried out the plan, instead of facing the monster that she was expecting, she discovers that her husband is none other than Cupid. In her surprise, she drops hot oil from her lamp onto Cupid, who wakes up to the betrayal of his wife and leaves her. Later on, after much wandering and many a difficult task where she had to prove herself, Psyche and Cupid are finally reunited.

The poem, “Ode to Psyche” opens with Keats proclaiming his wishes to be Psyche’s priest as she is the most beautiful but least worshipped Goddess. She has neither any altar to her name with any flowers, nor a choir to sing for her, or even a prophet praying upon her. Keats says that he wishes to be her priest and would also build a shrine for her “in some untrodden region of my mind”. With the help of the myth of Psyche, Keats displays the Romantic idea of the power of the mind. He worships her and wants to be her priest. He, however, does not want to build any physical temple for her. Rather, he dedicates a special place in his mind for the admiration and worship of Psyche’s unparalleled beauty. Interestingly, the term “psychology” has its roots in the Greek word “psyche”, which translates to “mind” or “soul”, and Keats’ rendering of the myth reinforces the power of one’s mental capabilities to see beauty in the outer world.

“Ode to Autumn”, on the other hand, contains only implicit hints at mythological allusions that can be grasped only by an intelligent and curious reader. Held in regard as undoubtedly the most beautiful poem by Keats, Keats’ use of subtle mythological allusions in this poem shows a certain maturity in his writing style. Unlike in his poem, “Ode to Psyche”, here the mythological elements are only present in the second stanza. Keats personifies autumn as a female figure and draws an image of four women engaged in different activities typical to autumn. Two o these images alludes to myths. The first image is that of a woman “sitting careless on a granary floor, / Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind;” this image immediately brings to the mind of a learned reader a painting of Psyche separating grains on a granary floor as a part of a task that her mother-in-law Venus assigns her to prove her worth. The second image is that of a woman “on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep / Drows’d with the fume of poppies”. To the unsuspecting reader, this is a picture of a woman reaping poppies who has fallen asleep by the intoxicating effects of the flower. But a well-read person learned in the study of myths will immediately invoke the myth of Ceres (Demeter) upon the mention of poppies. Ceres is the Roman Goddess of Earth, harvest and fertility, and is often worshipped with the poppy flower. According to the myth regarding this, Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, was abducted by the God of the Underworld, Hades (or Pluto). In her grief, Demeter was wandering when she came across a peasant whose son was mortally ill. Demeter cured this sick boy with poppies, and thus she is worshipped by offerings of poppies. In this poem, Keats uses myths to invoke the active participation of the reader in discerning the myths.

Thus it is seen that both “Ode to Psyche” and “Ode to Autumn” contain a substantial amount of Greek allusions. One might be more subtle in its use of classical Greek myths than the other, but it undoubtedly is present in both poems, and thus shows the reader Keats’ love for myths.

I’ll Give You the Sun: A Review

This book was everything they say it is, and so much more. The language is so poetic, the artistic metaphors so beautiful, the images so vivid, I’ll Give You the Sun struck a chord in me that many books haven’t managed to touch in a long time.

This heart wrenching book follows the stories of twins, Noah and Jude. The narratives are set apart by three years at two different points in their lives. Noah’s part is written when he’s 13 while Jude’s narrative is of her later years, when she’s twenty.

We see the twins being broken in irreparable ways, broken individually, as well as broken together, stuck in lives, surviving circumstances, beyond their control. Jandy Nelson does a wonderful job of displaying the truth about broken people and broken families. The character developments are remarkable in that we see WHY they turned into the persons they were at that point in their lives, what exactly lead them to be the person they turned out to be. Also, the writing is so powerful, so descriptive, almost poetical in nature, it painted in my mind beautiful, beautiful pictures of the art as well as incidences described in the book. I’ll Give You the Sun is also the only book that forced me to take out my doodle-art book and create this.

(…)new kid floating in the air with his green hat and suitcase full of stars.” –  Jandy Nelson, I’ll Give You the Sun

Apparently, Jandy Nelson took some time working on this novel, and it definitely shows. The plot is seamless. Everything simply works out, and not in a non-realistic way, too. Nothing is clear right at the beginning, and that works out for the best.Jandy Nelson drops hints right from the beginning, at unexpected moments, and very slowly the story unravels in totally unexpected ways. The disclosing of information little-by-little was done in the wonderfully.

Another aspect of this novel that I enjoyed is the various references to famous art by a wide range of artists. Not only were these art described in a manner that paints the most vivid pictures in our minds, but the glimpses we get into Noah’s head was so artistically lively and colourful, it left me breathless with bursts of emotions and colours. His mind is that of a naturally gifted artist (painter). He sees art everywhere, and through him, we see the art everywhere in its rawest of forms.

The characters are their own persons in this book. All the characters and not only the protagonists are very well-drawn, writing each character as the hero of their own stories. The character development is amazing as well written.
By the time I was done with this book, it took me a long time to come out off the high I got while reading the book; it took me a while before I could pick up another book. This book left me out of breath; I was left completely undone. My emotions were raw, my mind in shambles yet refreshed at the same time.

tl;dr: this book is out of the world with an amazing plot, remarkable well-drawn out characters and vivid descriptive images, and y’all should all go give it a read.

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Me Before You: A Review

DISCLAIMER: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD. NOT KIDDING. EVERYTHING SPOILERY CAN BE FOUND N THIIS REVIEW. So, yea. Read at our own risk.

I liked this book. I really did. Maybe I won’t reread it, or even fangirl over it with other fans. But I liked this. At least, I liked it enough to stay awake till 4 am on a Monday morning to finish reading it.

I mean, the plot was not what you’d call original. You know how the story goes; girl is average, leads an average guy, boy is rich, leads a rich life. Boy meets girl, they instantly don’t like each other, he changes her, and she makes him happy, yada yada yada. Add in the tiny detail of him being paraplegic. And then he dies. Just a run-of-the-mill love story where a main character dies.

Except that there are a few things I actually liked about this book. But before that, let me put down what I didn’t like about the book.

·         The plot. Like I said, it was pretty ordinary, if not a tad boring. The whole thing is a bit overused, with too many young adult fiction writers using the same tropes over and over and over again.

·         Lou. I found her annoying. Granted, as the story progressed, she grew a bit less annoying, but all her whining, especially about missing her old job, really got on my skin. So you got sacked. Big deal. You pick up the pieces and move on! Not whine about your new, albeit crappy, job, and get fired for all fucking kinds of silly reasons.

·         The POV changes. Jojo Moyes, let me give you a bit of constructive criticism; you don’t change your POV when you otherwise maintain a constant narrative of the MC. I mean, it’s a different matter when the whole book is constantly changing between different narratives. I found the change in POV’s that sprung up from nowhere in this book very unsettling; it constantly disrupted my reading flow.

And then there are the things that made skip several hours of sleep on a weekday.

·         Will. I love dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. I have a dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. Will Traynor had a dry, asshole-ish sense of humour. So, by default, he quickly turned into the asshole that I couldn’t help but love. I mean, don’t get me wrong; he’s far from (one of) my fictional boyfriend(s), but when a character says these lines:

“Come on, what’s the worst that could happen – I end up in a wheelchair?”

Or, gets a tattoo that says “Best before: 19 March 2007”, which is the date of his accident,

Or says,

“If you’re worried I have some devious secret plan to seduce you, you can just pull my plug out.”,

you kinda start really liking him. So, you see, I had a hard time not loving the sarcastic little shit.

·         MCD. So, okay, maybe this is something I did not particularly like. Hell, I hardly even like books with Major Character Deaths, and absolutely despise books where the author’s aim itself is to make your heart hurt. In this book, however, the character was not killed off just for shock value or for furthering the story; there were legitimate, albeit ethically controversial, reasons for his death.** And this is something I really liked about the author.

All in all, it was a good read with slightly annoying but realistic characters and a good prose. I’ll maybe rate it as 3, maybe 3.5. Because I’m an asshole like that lol. 

**I’m not going to comment on the topic of euthanasia. Assisted-suicide is still a topic I find very controversial about with valid arguments from both sides, and I don’t think I could ever come to a concrete conclusion, generally speaking or even regarding a particular patient.

Greek Mythology and Harry Potter

Little known fact: we come across tit bits of Greek mythology everyday; in the books we’ve read as a child or the cartoons or movies we’ve seen when we were young. In today’s novels and books, references to Greek mythology are, quite frankly, everywhere. The ideals of an epic hero and stories of epic journeys are repetitive in modern-day pop culture and entertainment. These modern stories have heroes growing through trials. According to Steve Persall, a researcher in the field of allusions, “many hero stories have great parallels to Odysseus, since it was essentially one of the very first “hero” stories of all times.”

Many kids are introduced to Greek mythology at quite an early age. For instance, in The Little Mermaid, the idea of mermaids have been derived from the idea of sirens, which are female winged creatures in Greek mythology whose singing lured unwary sailors on to rocks. Ariel’s father was Neptune, the Roman name for Poseidon. Even the idea of Ursula has been adopted from the Greek monster Scylla.

Many books have plots revolving around the world of Greek gods and goddesses (Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, the Starcrossed series by Josephine Angelini, etc) while many others have allusions in them. Harry Potter, surprisingly, is full of Greek mythological allusions, which, I guess,is no surprise since Rowling did study Greek and Roman mythology at Exter University.

• The name Hermione can be considered as an example. The only daughter of Melenaus and Helen, Hermione in Greek mythology was a smart and hardworking girl, whose parents left her behind and sailed away. The character of Hermione in Harry Potter was not very far from her namesake. Interestingly, both Hermione’s were pursued by two man, Orestes and Neoptolemus, and Ron Weasley and Viktor Krum.
•  Minerva McGonagall was named after the Roman counterpart of Athena, Minerva, who was the goddess of wisdom and war. Both of them were quick to help others with reason, fierce in battle and strict. Also, Athena’s symbol was an owl, which was McGonagall’s pet.
• Even our beloved Rubeus Hagrid’s back-story has been adapted from Hagrid Rubes, a kind giant, who was framed for the murder of Zeus and banished from Mt. Olympus to take care of animals.
• The character of all-seeing man and caretaker of Hogwarts, Argus Filch, has been adapted from the Greek Argus Panoptes, a great watchman with a hundred eyes and Hera’s servant who was instructed to watch and guard Io from Zeus.
• The character of Albus Dumbledore and the Greek Merlin is similar in their physical and personality description. Despite being a heroic archetype, both of them were wise, powerful, a caregiver and an advisor.
• Another example is the predicament of Harry. Harry, like Odysseus, was looking for a place he could call home. Special abilities being brought out by trying times is a characteristic we see in mythic heroes, a characteristic common for both Odysseus and Harry.
• Even the merpeople that Harry had to fight in one of his journeys at the bottom of the school pond were fashioned after the sirens of Greek mythology. These creatures distracted Harry from his quest, just like they did to Odysseus in his journey.
• Sybill Trelawney is the divination teacher at Hogwarts. Her great-great-grandmother was the celebrated seer and witch, Cassandra Trelawney. Although none of Cassandra's prophecies were ever told in the novels, because Dumbledore once kept the divination "program" for the mere fact of the Trelawney name, one can assume they were legendary. Dumbledore once noted that Sybill's skills were far less apparent than those of her great-great-grandmother, but nevertheless, Sybill did have a few great prophecies that served accurate. According to myth, Apollo, the god of music, fell in love with the Trojan Princess Cassandra, her beauty causing him to grant her the gift of prophesy. When she did not return his love, Apollo became angered and instead of taking the gift back, cursed her so that no one would ever believe her or her descendants’ predictions. This could be one reason why many believed Sybill to be a fraud. 
• Fluffy, the three-headed dog that could be put to sleep by playing music was an allusion to Cerberus in Greek mythology that guards the Underworld and can be put to sleep in much the same way.
• The superlative centaur among his brethren, Chiron is known to be one of the many wise centaurs of Greek Mythology. The centaurs were known to be wild drunkards, but Chiron was an exception to this stereotype. He possessed a great number of skills, which also included teaching and prophecy.  During the fifth Harry Potter novel, Firenze, a centaur from the colony in the Forbidden Forest takes the spot of the divination professor at Hogwarts. Firenze was not like the rest of the centaurs and was very concerned with teaching and divination. Because of this, and his acceptance of Dumbledore’s teaching offer, he was ostracized by his “herd”.

From the very first chapter, it is evident that the work holds strong Greek mythological backgrounds. For anyone who has ever seen, read or heard the Harry Potter books or movies, classical connections can be made quite easily. Rowling was able to use Greek mythology as a way to attract all types of people and age groups. These seven books prove mythology still lives and influences modern culture even after thousands of years. So whether it be by page or by screen, Harry Potter will always be there to welcome one into the fascinating world of Greek mythology through a modern lens.