to sleep Flashcards
(17 cards)
context
keats became incresingly ill throughout 1819 and by the bveginning of 1820 the evidence if tuberculsosis was clear. Keats and franny brawne became sectretly engaged in october 1819 depsite keats discovery of his illness and franny refused to leave him. His condition limited htheir opportunities to meet but their correspondance reveelaed passioate devotion. keats mental health suffreed greatly towards rhe end of his life with morality pressing upon him he was beset by insecurities, jelosuy and depression probably exacerbated by the tuberculsosis ravaging his body.
embalmer
someone who presenvres and prepares bodies for burial and cremation
Embowered
surround or shelter ezpecially with trees or climbing plants
Benign
gentle and kind-not harmful in effect
Casket
coffin
wahtd oes the poem do to sleep
apotrophiseeses it and personifies ut as sleep describing it as the soft and begign provider of ‘forgetfullness’ for troubled human spirit. The speaker calls on sleep to end his wakefulness, otheriwse he will be disturbed by the thoughts of the day that has passed and his own examination of his conscience, which throw up unhelpfull memoires like a molehill, the speaker asks sleep to lock up the ‘casket of my soul’
letter to his brother george and his wife in 1819
” i have been endevoruriung to discover a better sonnet than we have. the legitimate (petarchian sonnet does not suit the language over the well from the pouncing ryhmes and the older kind shakespearen appears tol elegiac- and the couplet at the end if it seldom has a pelasing effect-i do not pretend to have succeeded-it will explain itself”
the tone
hushed and gentle, sleep is treated with the utmost courtosy and respect to perform its life giving function. the poem is a hymm as if sleep were a divinity who must be honoured the respectfull tone is conveyed by the phrase ‘if so it please thee’
how does the tone change in the sestet
becomes more urgent asb the speaker calls on him twice to ‘save’ him. the two imperatives which end the sonnet ‘turn and seal’ are succinct and again suggest the urgency of which the speaker needs sleeps gentle attention in order to be saved from attack by his ‘woes’ and ‘curious conscious’
sounds
the whole poem is full of soft sounds ‘f’ ‘m’ in opening quatrain and long vowels ‘gloom-pleased’ ‘embowered’ ‘soothest’ and sibilance ‘shutting’ ‘still’ . the gentle fludity if sleeps actions are further suggested by enjambment.
structure
experimental in its form-ot is basicaly shakespearean but keats makes modifications to the sestet which he rymes bcefef thus avoiding the final couplet, adrew montion commented that thios was to convey a sense of irresolution and openness, at the same time as trying to match the ryhme scheme to the octets
what does the octave focus on?
sleep as an emblamer and soother, an agent of love ‘lulling charirities’
what does the sestet suggest?
disrupts the dies of well-being with the mention of the conscienfe “burrowing”./ the poets personal disruption needs contraining with the mechnaincal perfection of sleep “deft’ “oiled” “seal”
how is sleep personified?
as an embalmer with fingers capable of shutting huamn eyes and as someone with a key which can lock troubling thoughts inside the soul. it is also endowed with life saving properties able to exclude the woes which lurke at the bottom of consciousness.
how is the conscience depicte?
as a mole ‘burrowiung’ its way through memory. moles are destructive and the enemy of anyone who cares about an ordered life as expressed through an ordered lawn
how is the soul seen?
as a ‘hushed casket’ as somethinh within which precious things are locked away. the surface of this ‘casket’ may give no indication of what lies beneath.
summary of to sleep
the poem is about the power of sleep to restore the sleeper, teh speaker clearly feels that human beings cannot tolerate too much consciouness and need peroids of ‘forgetfullness devine’ when the soul can be protected from the troubling thoughts which lurk beneath the surface of conscious thought. It is significant that keats is not appealinmg for some sort of creative trance in this poem, as andrew motion has said that the poem ‘hankers after a calm nowhere acceptig the pains of ‘curious conscience’ cannot be deferred indefintly’.
