Reality and Illusion in Keats's The Eve of St. Agnes

I mentioned Keats while discussing Tate in my last post, so I thought we could take a look at one of my favorite of Keats's poems, The Eve of St. Agnes.  I value this one as much as I value his great odes--there is a strange beauty to this poem, and I find it deeply ambiguous.  Its ambiguity means that it can and has been interpreted in dozens and dozens of ways, so I don't aim for a final word on the matter.  I just want to look at some of the more Gothic aspects of it, and the ways the poem engages with ideas of reality and illusion.


The poem is too long to paste here, but I encourage you to read it in its entirety:  http://www.bartleby.com/126/39.html


Let's start with a brief summary.  The poem takes place on the feast day of the title, and fair Madeline leaves the huge celebration in her familial castle because she has heard a superstition that if you go to bed on the Eve of St. Agnes, say your prayers, and don't look around or behind you, your true love will come to you. Meanwhile, Porphyro (from the word porphyry, a red rock that is igneous, meaning created in intense heat - this is a clue that underscores the fire of his passions) sneaks across the meadows and moors, into the castle.  He is hated by Madeline's family and is literally risking his life here.  With help from Madeline's nurse, he sneaks into Madeline's room, hides in her dresser, and waits for her to come in.  He waits till she falls asleep, then wakes her up, and after some suggested hanky-panky, they escape and . . . Well, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Their fate is uncertain, and we'll look at it in a bit.


I don't think we are supposed to see the couple's escape as a victory - I think we are supposed to see it as a giving in to illusion.  One clue is the repeated use of the word "seem."  Keats uses some conjugation of that word six times in ten pages.  This undermines the poem's sense of reality, but I think it does more than that.  Keats was an avid reader of Shakespeare, and would have been familiar with Hamlet's retort to his mother when she suggests he should leave off mourning his father:


Gertrude. Why seems it so particular with thee? 
Hamlet. "Seems," madam? Nay, it is; I know not "seems."


Hamlet is saying that his surface does not represent what's going on inside of him.  He goes on: "I have that within which passeth show."  In other words, his insides give substance to his outsides.  He is not just surface, he is also depth.  


I'm not convinced that Madeline and Porphyro have such depth, and I think Keats alludes to Shakespeare here to contrast them to Hamlet.  The nurse is initially shocked by Porphyro's decision to invade Madeline's room, and she says, "Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem."  Later, when Porphyro is watching Madeline undress, we get the following lines: "She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest / Save wings, for heaven."  These are people who seem but who do not have the depth to back up what they seem to be.  They are types, characters made intentionally two-dimensional by Keats.  Keats is indicating that naivete, lack of depth, weak imaginations lead to a loss of reality.  Reality is hard-won.


Let's look at their escape.  They creep out of Madeline's room, and Madeline, afraid, thinks "there were sleeping dragons all around."  The danger is much more real than dragons, but Madeline has been drawn into a shared dream.  Next, 


"They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;
Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide"


They are losing their substance.  Keats says twice in two lines that they are like phantoms.  This is not the stuff of young romance, the liveliness of youth.  This is the opposite--a kind of death.  And then we never know exactly what happens to them:


"And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm."


Does this sound like a triumphant escape?  It sounds to me like a death.  And everyone else in the castle seems to be under the grip of a spell or a dream, too:


"That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe
And all his warrior-guests with shade and form
Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm
Were long be-nightmared."


Nothing is what it seems.  Even the supposedly holy day is really just a cover for the manipulations of a hot-blooded young man "with heart on fire."


I think Keats wants us to see how imagination can be dangerous if it is linked with ignorance and naivete.  Imagination must be coupled with reality, with solidity, with intellect, or else it's like wandering into a fairy storm, living an illusion, which is ultimately the same as losing your life, becoming a phantom.