{"id":2580,"date":"2019-09-19T09:51:08","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T09:51:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2580"},"modified":"2019-09-19T14:07:01","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T14:07:01","slug":"keatss-bees-in-the-ode-to-autumn-written-on-this-day-in-1819","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=2580","title":{"rendered":"Keats’s Bees in the Ode ‘To Autumn’ – Written On This Day in 1819"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton<\/p><\/div>\n

In this series, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of literary and historical events of the Romantic period. Today, on 19th September 2019, we celebrate the bicentenary of Keats’s ode ‘To Autumn’ with an article by Ellen Nicholls discussing the depiction of bees in the poem.<\/p>\n

<\/em>The 19th<\/sup> September 2019 marks the 200-year anniversary of Keats\u2019s composition of the ode \u2018To Autumn\u2019. As this date approaches, I am struck by how the ode continues to capture the imaginations of modern readers, transcending its sociohistorical boundaries to resonate with the attitudes and concerns of the present day. In particular, I am drawn to the presence of bees in the ode\u2019s opening stanza. Buzzing with insect and animal life, Keats\u2019s ode is often celebrated for the ease with which it balances the sensuous plenitude of seasonal growth against the anticipation of natural loss and decay. Bees are essential figures in this balancing act. Keats positions bees as vital pollinators who conspire with nature \u2018how to load and bless\u2019 (\u2018To Autumn\u2019, 3) flowers and fruit \u2018with a sweet kernel\u2019 (8), as well as creatures that participate in the \u2018wailful choir\u2019 (27) of the ode\u2019s \u2018soft-dying\u2019 (25) music, implicitly capturing current anxieties around the decline in bee populations across the earth. While bee pollination is responsible for 70% of the earth\u2019s food production, in recent years, bees have undergone a drastic population decline of 90% due to factors such as colony collapse disorder, pesticides, deforestation, parasites, viruses, and a lack of biodiversity. Such a catastrophic threat to bee populations has most recently animated protests across the UK from groups such as Extinction Rebellion who, amongst other things, have staged a \u2018Critical Swarm \u201cDie-In\u201d\u2019 outside of the Tate Modern gallery and a protest at the gates of Buckingham Palace to advocate for bee rehabilitation. As with the ode \u2018To Autumn\u2019, bees are located in the public imagination as figures of growth and loss; creatures who are under serious threat of extinction despite their crucial ability \u2018to set budding more, \/ And still more\u2019 (9-10).<\/p>\n

In \u2018To Autumn\u2019, the image of the \u2018o\u2019er-brimmed [\u2026] clammy cells\u2019 (11) of the beehive creates an ambivalence that weighs the pleasure of fecundity against the anxiety of waste. Amidst the ode\u2019s luxurious growth, the presence of the bee gestures towards a fullness that might lead to loss. Images of loading, swelling, and plumping dominate the opening of the poem. Like the \u2018clammy cells\u2019 (11) of the beehive, this stanza is heavy and overflowing with nature\u2019s bounty. Keats\u2019s use of the noun \u2018cell\u2019 is itself packed with multiple associations. Amongst other definitions, \u2018cell\u2019 is at once evoked as: an entomologically specific term for the \u2018hexagonal wax compartments in a honeycomb\u2019; a small room; the suffocatingly enclosed space of the prison cell; a \u2018storeroom\u2019; and, the \u2018cavities [\u2026] of the brain\u2019.[1]<\/a> More importantly still, the word \u2018cell\u2019 contains a crucial metapoetic echo with the etymological roots of the Italian word \u2018stanza\u2019, which translates as \u2018stopping place\u2019 and \u2018dwelling room\u2019.[2]<\/a> The \u2018clammy cells\u2019 of the hive become closely associated with the \u2018teeming brain\u2019 (\u2018When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be\u2019, 2) of the poet, whose creative imagination is so full that it overflows its confines, spilling out into the rich produce of the stanza:<\/p>\n

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
\nClose bosom-friend of the maturing sun,
\nConspiring with him how to load and bless
\nWith fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
\nTo bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
\nAnd fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
\nTo swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
\nWith a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
\nAnd still more, later flowers for the bees,
\nUntil they think warm days will never cease,
\nFor Summer has o\u2019er-brimmed their clammy cells
\n(\u2018To Autumn\u2019, 1-11).<\/p>\n

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Illustration for “To Autumn” by William James Neatby, from A Day with Keats, 1899<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

The Apollonian sun is evoked here as a subtle presence that not only \u2018load[s] and bless[es]\u2019 (3) the natural world with fruit, but also nurtures both the poet and reader towards \u2018a ripeness of intellect\u2019 (Letters<\/em>: John Keats <\/em>I, 231).[3]<\/a> Keats describes the bounty of nature in rich sensual imagery, pushing the poetic language to breaking point to demonstrate the plenitude of the poet\u2019s creative imagination and the potential meanings to be garnered by the reader. The stanza is formed as one long poetic sentence, containing enjambed lines and false stopping points that make the reader believe they have arrived at a concluding thought, before continuing with a related idea. We see this most clearly in lines 7, 8, and 9: \u2018To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells \/ With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, \/ And still more\u2019 (7-9). Keats\u2019s use of enjambment here dramatizes the expanding of the engorged hazel shells by making the syntax of lines 7 and 8 explode outside of the parameters of the rhyme scheme. The semi-colon in line 8 seems to offer a brief pause for breath, ostensibly marking the end-point of nature\u2019s swelling and the ceasing of its \u2018fruitfulness\u2019 (1). And yet \u2018to set budding\u2019 (8) continues the forward momentum of the poetic line, reinforced by Keats\u2019s undermining of the punctuation point at the close of line 8 through the added clause \u2018And still more\u2019 (9). Keats appears to subvert any sense that growth has ceased, pushing the stanza towards the image of the bee filling the \u2018clammy cells\u2019 (11) of the hive until its stores have \u2018o\u2019er-brimmed\u2019 (11) with honey. Helen Vendler characterises the bee\u2019s summer activities in \u2018To Autumn\u2019 as an \u2018Edenic harvest\u2019.[4]<\/a> The bee does not pluck and destroy the flower, but delicately extracts its nectar to store in the granaries of the hive. But Keats does not straightforwardly present bees as the ideal harvesters of creative fruit in this stanza in the way Vendler proposes. By rhyming the word \u2018trees\u2019 (5) with \u2018bees\u2019 (9) and \u2018cease\u2019 (10), Keats shadows Autumn\u2019s fecundity with the prospect of death, decay, and the potential for loss. Just as Autumn is pictured watching the \u2018last oozings\u2019 (22) of the apple spill from the cider-press in the second stanza, the reader is made aware that we may never taste the \u2018o\u2019er-brimm[ing]\u2019 (11) plenitude of the poet\u2019s imaginings, instead allowing the possible meanings of the poem to be laid to waste. Bees become shifting figures in \u2018To Autumn\u2019 that weigh the pleasure of endless poetic possibility against the fear of failure and loss.<\/p>\n

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‘To Autumn’ Manuscript<\/p><\/div>\n

And yet, \u2018To Autumn\u2019 demands that the reader is at ease with our inability to capture and digest the totality of the poem\u2019s available meanings. Instead, Keats encourages the reader to remain content with our fear of missing out on luxuriating in the poem\u2019s rich imaginings, encouraging us to be receptive to the experience of loss itself. If the words \u2018bees\u2019, \u2018trees\u2019, and \u2018cease\u2019 chime together in \u2018To Autumn\u2019 to portend a winter in which creativity and the budding of flowers will be no more, then the prospect of such waste paradoxically becomes a source of poetic inspiration, wherein Keats\u2019s rhymes draw attention to the music created by loss, decay, and death. Amidst the songs of Autumn \u2014 the \u2018wailful choir [of] the small gnats\u2019 (27) and the \u2018full grown lambs[\u2019] loud bleat\u2019 (30) \u2014 bees take on an ambivalence in which the defiant celebration of life is held in equipoise with the grief of imminent decay and departure. Bees help to situate Autumn in its rightful place between the generative force of \u2018o\u2019er-brimm[ing]\u2019 (11) summer and the apparent lifelessness of winter\u2019s \u2018crystal fretting\u2019 (\u2018In Drear-Nighted December\u2019, 14). The bees of \u2018To Autumn\u2019 reveal how abundance transmutes into loss, and in turn how loss becomes the source of creative possibility.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> \u2018Cell n. 1\u2019 in Oxford English Dictionary <\/em><https:\/\/www-oed-com.sheffield.idm.oclc.org\/view\/Entry\/29468?rskey=mAlJB9&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid> [accessed 05\/07\/2019].<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See Etymology of \u2018Stanza, n.\u2019 in Oxford English Dictionary <\/em><https:\/\/www-oed-com.sheffield.idm.oclc.org\/view\/Entry\/189041?rskey=zQQdOf&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid> [accessed 05\/07\/2019].<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> John Keats, The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1818<\/em>, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Vendler, \u2018Peaceful Sway Above Man\u2019s Harvesting\u2019 in The Odes of John Keats <\/em>(Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 227-288 , p. 247.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ellen Nicholls completed her doctoral research on the experience of \u2018aching Pleasure\u2019 (\u2018Ode on Melancholy\u2019, 23) in the works of John Keats at the University of Sheffield in 2019. Her research focused on how Keats explores the interdependency between pleasure and pain. She has recently assumed a new post in higher education at Derby College and will be pursuing research into Romantic conceptualisations of numbness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this series, we celebrate the 200th anniversary of literary and historical events of the Romantic period. Today, on 19th September 2019, we celebrate the bicentenary of Keats’s ode ‘To… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2580"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2585,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}