Redefining Solitude

English 240, 4/6/90, Prof. Gardiner

In 1816, John Keats’ first published poem, “O Solitude,” was printed in the London Examiner. As the title implies, Keats spoke in this sonnet to a personification of his own seclusion. He followed with a fourteen-line suggestion to Solitude that it might be willing to allow for a couple of changes.

As I read this, I am led to picture young Keats alone in a “murky” city, not happy with his isolation, and trying to escape it by way of a stream of wishful thinking. His imaginary escape takes two distinct steps: first, to change the environment of his solitude, moving from the city’s dinginess to a more pastoral scene, and then to change his solitude’s parameters, allowing for a companion with whom to enjoy the “haunts.” In fact, then, this is not Keats’ escape from solitude at all, but his palliative reshaping of it. And he puts this wishful stream on paper, addressing Solitude itself, but implying---and, as the poem develops, explicating---that he wants to share his thoughts with another, more real audience.

Solitude does not change for Keats as he writes his wishes down, and there is no other audience for him, but just thinking of the possibilities, the two big steps, seems to raise the young poet’s hopes. Within the poem, he moves from his actual, present situation, one which seems to be lonely indeed, to a possible future of highest bliss. Thus he changes his attitude, not by wishing that he could step out of Solitude’s bounds or that it would disappear, but by optimistically redefining it, to the point that a future of solitude would be something to long for, even a haven to flee to. In two poetic steps he is away from a perspective that depresses him, and considering one that pleases him.

That initial perspective shows in the way that Keats begins: “O Solitude! If I must with thee dwell...” The exclamation sounds of weariness, and the “if I must” breathes resignation. He has pessimistically decided that it is possible, even fateful, that he will always live in some seclusion. Even the word “dwell” connotes a continual, exhaustive lingering, and when Keats goes on to show where he is presently dwelling, the tone is stressed further. He is not just in the city of London, he is “among the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings.” And it will not do for Keats.  “Let it not be,” he pleads to Solitude.

But Keats does not merely lament his condition here; he turns around and takes his first step in the new direction of optimism. He suggests that he might lead his Solitude to an alternate environment. It is not a fantastic leap: Solitude will still have its enclosures, and its passive, detached ways. But there would be new buildings and better things to see. There would be the improved architecture of “Nature’s observatory:” a valley walled by “flowery slopes,” a pavilion made of trees, a span defined by the dell itself, bridging between its hillsides. And, of course, there would be new sights in the observatory. Keats describes one imagined scene with what might be the most beautiful lines of the poem: “Let me thy vigils keep,” he writes,

...where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

But it still won’t be enough, considers Keats, even as he takes the imaginary step. He would be glad to “trace” such peaceful scenes, but he is still aware of his detachment from them, and his isolation, with Solitude, of looking in from the outside, and not being a part of the action (i.e., he is not doing the “startling”). Keats does not want to cross the line; that would be walking away from Solitude, which hasn’t occurred to him as a possibility. Solitude, as “thee” and “thy haunts,” isreferred to with all respect, even to the sonnet’s end. Instead, he wants to take his established companion with him on a second step of wishful thinking.

He imagines, once more, an improved Solitude: this time, one that would allow for a population of two instead of one. He longs for conversation with an additional companion (the first one, Solitude, had not added to the “population”), and as he is explicit about how that conversation would go---sweet, innocent, refined---he implies that these are aspects that had been absent in his Solitude thus far. Innocence and refinement themselves imply a conversation of one voice undefiled by the other, one thought pure from the second, two spirits kindred, but apart; in other words, a conversation different from the one Keats had been holding, and a talk with someone other than himself.

“...It sure must be / Almost the highest bliss,” says Keats about this second revision to Solitude, reminding himself that he still isn’t there, but not yet abandoning all hope. Apparently, he has never been alone with anyone the way he has pictured it, sharing solitude with a kindred soul in a springtime (flowered and river-swelled) valley. He imagines, though, that it would be blissful (maybe just about the highest bliss), and, at any rate, his attitude has certainly improved since he first started dreaming: whereas at first he noted how he “must dwell with his present Solitude, now he appreciates “fleeing” to a future Solitude, just a “climb” and a “leap” away.