Rousseau\'s Confessions and Keats\' Ode on Melancholy

John Keats and Jean Jacques Rousseau

Loneliness and Suffering: Romanticism in "Ode on Melancholy" by John Keats and "Confessions" by Jean Jacques Rousseau

Between the period of 18th and 19th centuries, Western civilization bore witness to important social movements that significantly influenced the culture of human societies extant during these periods. In terms of literature and philosophy, 18th century gave birth to the age of Enlightenment, while the 19th century paved the way for Romanticism, movements that influenced people's contemplation of the future of humanity, realities, and self-realizations in life.

John Keats and Jean Jacques Rousseau are examples of philosophers and writers who subsisted to the principles of Romanticism and the Enlightenment. As reflected in their writings, each have discussed the prevalent thoughts of their time: Rousseau promoted the intellectual development that flourished during the Enlightenment, while Keats contemplated life through emotional expressions that dominated Romanticism.

In Keats' "Ode on Melancholy," and Rousseau's "Confessions," however, there is a distinct stream of Romanticist though in their writings. Despite Rousseau's rational contemplation of life, readers witness him as an emotional being as he recounted his path towards achievement of intellectual development in "Confessions," which was created and published a century prior to Keats' literary work. Moreover, apart from the dominance of Romanticism in both writers' works, they have also shown marked similarity in the themes in discussing life: both had utilized loneliness or melancholy as imperative experiences to one's life before truly experiencing happiness and contentment in life. This paper, thus, posits that Keats' "Ode on Melancholy" and Rousseau's "Confessions" reflected the Romantic sentiment that human suffering is an essential experience for humankind so that it would achieve happiness and intellectual development, which are products of an individual's self-actualization in life. In effect, to truly experience self-actualization in life, both Keats and Rousseau subsisted to the belief that suffering and loneliness allow humanity to realize its fullest potential in life.

This theme of suffering and loneliness as catalysts toward self-actualization is apparent in Keats' "Ode on Melancholy." The poem evidently puts praise on loneliness, an inevitable occurrence in the life of an individual. The theme of the poem deviates from the usual Romantic contemplation of life, which, most often than not, celebrates happiness, freedom, and life per se. Thus, Keats endeavored to explicate to his readers the real meaning of his 'ode on melancholy: "Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul."

The second stanza brought into fore his belief that humanity must 'feed' on melancholy, the inevitable feeling that we experience as a result of our existence. Keats encourages the reader to succumb to loneliness, though the reason for succumbing to it is not yet expressed directly in the poem. Using powerful imagery, he successfully set a feeling of fear for loneliness and at the same time, anticipation for it: "But when the melancholy fit shall fall ... Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes." Indeed, the poem's meaning remained a mystery for the reader, and it was only in the final stanza that the significant meaning of the ode took shape and was given meaning and significance to the reader.

The last stanza reflected the poet's motivation for creating the theme of loneliness in the poem. In it, Keats showed how loneliness is inevitable, mainly because joy and beauty exists in life. It is only in joy and beauty, according to the poem, that loneliness exists and thrives: "She dwells with Beauty -- Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu ... " Thus, because joy and beauty are essential experiences in the life of humanity, and because joy and beauty cannot exist without loneliness, loneliness then becomes inevitable. What Keats meant in his poem is that, in order to realize what we have in life, there must be an opposing and negative experience to both joy and beauty that would not make these positive experiences taken for granted.

It is thus Keats' thesis that humanity must first dwell on loneliness -- humanity's "Dark Age" -- in order to appreciate joy and beauty. Moreover, the poet considered loneliness as the catalyst for the individual to finally achieve self-actualization in life, wherein s/he already knows the positive and negative aspects of life, and chooses wisely on what kind of life to lead for the rest of his/her life.

This thesis is similarly reflected in Jean Jacques Rousseau's recollection of his path towards intellectual development in the "Confessions." In this discourse, Rousseau recounts how suffering and loneliness had been his aides towards achieving self-actualization in life -- that is, the achievement of a higher form of intellectual development. This intellectual development is characterized as more than just knowledge of information and facts about life; it is actually the achievement of a deeper and wider understanding of human life and its meaning and purpose on earth. This realization is not explicated in Rousseau's discourse theologically, but instead, philosophically and rationally, allowing his readers to be able to relate to his realizations without reflecting a biased or unilateral approach in discussing the natural path of humans towards self-actualization in life.

In "Confessions," Rousseau recounted how the strict supervision of Mademoiselle Lambercier had marked the beginning of his pursuit for intellectual development. During times of physical deprivation and suffering did he contemplated the significance of life for him, and it was also during these experience of suffering and loneliness that he later realized that he longed for a greater intellectual development than ever before. These realizations are reflected in the following passage: