Seven Metaphysical Poets: A Structural Study of the Unchanging Self. Robert EllrodtMarvell and Liberty. Warren Chernaik , Martin Dzelzainis
Bassanio off to the right casket and in fact do so is another matter, one that cannot be simply assumed. Berley continues: "It is possible [Portia's] father's trust in music could fail to prove true. But if Portia cheats with her hints, her father's wisdom . . . might prevail, and therefore not her love" (116). If Portia hints and cheats, she is subverting the conditions of her father's will; the notion that he wished for her to do so contradicts the facts of the play. Keats's declaration in the Ode on a Grecian Urn that "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter" understandably resonates through After the Heavenly Tune, and that poem and the Ode to a Nightingale receive much attention in the section on Keats. "The nightingale," Berley writes of the bird in the latter poem, "not being made for death, is, paradoxically, not born for life. A soul that is not made by experience cannot truly be immortal" (258-59). That is very well said, and is entirely faithful to Keats's poem and to his general meditations on the failure of the not human to instruct the human. What follows, however, undermines this fine perception. "Keats's 'immortal bird' is immortal only in the limited sense that every nightingale sings the song of the nightingale. It dies, but is replaced by another indistinguishable singer of that song. Keats's nightingale is immortal in the sense invoked by Shakespeare in Sonnet 18 ['Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?']. The 'eternal summer' of his poem surpasses the idealized summer of its admired subject" (258-59). The nightingale is immortal because the species, which is what matters, will survive in nature. Shakespeare's young friend is immortal because he will be preserved as an individual in Shakespeare's sonnet. Immortality may be a figure of speech in both cases, but the two are vastly different figures. MARK TAYLOR Manhattan College