Thinking Activity on John Keats

Hello Friends,

ज़िन्दगी तो बेवफा है एक दिन ठुकराएगी
मौत मेहबूबा है
मौत मेहबूबा है अपने साथ लेकर जाएगी!

This very famous lyric leads us towards mournful feeling.  Generally, Metaphor of Death is used in poetry or in any piece of work, it might have a kind of positive feelings. People consider death as sun which will set in very short time.  My question is that why human being has not courage to accept the reality of death which is conclusive or ultimate reality of universe.  Very worthy contradiction for this concept of death we can find in any artist’s thought v/s layman. Many of artists believe in afterlife or death as enchantment.  They usually consider death as only death of physical body and that’s why death is also fascination for artist rather than any other.

Roger McGough, Dylan Thomas, John Donne, Henry Scott Holland, Emily Dickinson, W.B.Yeats, Khalil Gibran are poets who wrote chiefly focusing upon this. When we are discussing about death poets how can we disremember John Keats. Many of Keats’ poems primarily deal with death. We can also say that Keats was half in love with death.

Examples:

Grecian Urn, Nightingale, Autumn sharpens the concept of death. John Keats’ does not consider death as destroyer but he has slight unique fascination towards death.

Pablo Neruda, Nothing but Death, P.B.Shelley etc.

There are many poems written on death in the world but each poet tries to unfold unique views regarding this.  This is absolutely kind of that thing about, which one can never have exact fact which can be narrated.

It is said that who has courage to face the death he/she can do anything and thy artists are closer to the feelings of death or it provides kinds of attraction. It is also quite interesting that how poets or authors are seeing the death and celebrate also. As we know that language is just a medium of literature but poets and authors are those who are very curious towards this mysterious concept and that’s why in any language we can find that poems upon death are written in numbers of manner and having wide interest area also.

“BEFAM” also celebrates death. His very famous line about death is..

રડ્યા ‘બેફામ’ સૌ મારા મરણ પર એ જ કારણ થી,

હતો મારો જ અવસર ને મારી હાજરી નહોતી!

Here we can say that poet Barakat Virani celebrates death as a festival. Though this lines gives doleful feelings of death he describes his absence as a victory of his life. Ultimate truth of our life is that we are came from dust and we have to transform into dust. In gujrati it is said that,

માટીમાં માટી ભળી જાય તો એને મૃત્યુ ન કહો!

JIGNESH ADHYARU also says that,

મૃત્યુ એટલે

ઝરણોનું ભળવું સાગરમાં

અને સાગરનું

વાદળ થઇ ગાગરમાં.

મૃત્યુ અંત નથી,

વર્તુળનો છેડો છે.

એ એક અનંત પ્રકાશ છે,

ઉલ્લાસનો ઉજાસ છે.

કદાચ એટલે જ હવે

ચિત્તાનો અગ્નિ

વ્હાલો લાગે છે,

સોનાની અશુદ્ધિ દુર કરતા

પાવક શુધ્ધોદ્ક સમો

ચિંતન આવકાર્ય છે.

-જીગ્નેશ અધ્યારૂ

If we are talking about poems upon that how can we forget MARIZ! There are innumerable shayries also on death which sees death as victory.

‘મરીઝ’ એની ઉપરથી આપ સમજો કેમ ગુજરી છે,

મરણ આવ્યું તો જાણ્યું જિંદગાની લઈને આવ્યો છું.

– મરીઝ

જે જાણે તે જાણેઃ

મૃત્યુ એટલે કાચબો

ધીમે ધીમે ચાલીને એ હંમેશાં

સસલાને હરાવે છે.

મૃત્યુ એટલે સોનાનું પતરું

એ કાટથી ખવાતું નથી;

લખેલા અક્ષર

કદી ભુંસાતા નથી.

મૃત્યુ એટલે ફૂલ પર

ગણગણતો ભમરો નહિ;

મૃત્યુ એટલે મધમાખી

મૂંગીમૂંગી જે રચે મધપૂડો.

મૃત્યુ એટલે એક અજાણ્યું ઈંડું

ફૂટ્યા વગર એના ગર્ભને

પામી શકાતો નથી.

– જયંત પાઠક