‘Ode to a Nightingale’ was written by John Keats, in a single day, from beneath a garden tree in the Spring of 1819. Keats' poem describes the narrator’s attempts to separate from the world by losing himself in the enchanting, echoing, immortal song of a distant nightingale. The song becomes a transcendent voice of reverie that compels the narrator to join with it in a liminal state, temporarily abandoning his sense of reason, and in turn escaping his own woe and concern. However, the nightingale remains somewhat ‘other’ - elusive and mysterious - making it impossible for there to be complete self-identification with it, which allows the narrators self-awareness to creep back in and begin to permeate the poem, slowly dragging him back towards his own reality and separation. The narrator clings to poetics to hide from the loss, but poetry does not bring about the escape and reverie that the narrator sought, instead it liberates him from his desire for the relative simplicity of pleasure alone...

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The nightingale and the presence of the nightingale becomes not simply about the bird or the song, but about human experience in general - one of conflicting duality - of connection and severance, of sight and blindness. The glimmer of hope is the glimpse towards wider connection and escape through a fissure in the wall of our condition. Despite the fact that we remain ever aware of the confines that bind us, of life and mortality, through a breeching, we can, perhaps, attain a little lasting liberation or transcendence.

This online mixed exhibition offers a selection of works, which for me, withhold within them a complimentary, liminal, mystery to Keats’ all too pertinent masterpiece.


Joseph Clarke, 2020