Ode To Psyche - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Responding to the poem, Keats's friend Leigh Hunt declared that "When Mr Keats errs in his poetry, it is from the ill management of the good things,--exuberance of ideas. Once or twice, he does so in a taste positively bad, like Marino or Cowley, as in a line in his 'Ode to Psyche'... but it is once or twice only, in his present volume."

Robert Bridges, turn of the 19th-century literary critic, wrote "for the sake of the last section (l. 50 to end), tho' this is open to the objection that the imagery is work'd up to outface the idea—which is characteristic of Keats' manner. Yet the extreme beauty quenches every dissatisfaction. The beginning of this ode is not so good, and the middle part is midway in excellence." Later, T. S. Eliot thought very highly of Keats's work and wrote "The Odes—especially perhaps the Ode to Psyche—are enough for his reputation."

Kennet Allott, in defending against any possible harsh criticism of "Ode to Psyche", argues that the poem "is the Cinderella of Keats's great odes, but it is hard to see why it should be so neglected, and at least two poets imply that the conventional treatment of the poem is shabby and undeserved". Allott then cites Bridges and Eliot as views that he sympathizes with, and he believes that the poem "is neither unflawed nor the best of odes, but to me it illustrates better than any other Keats's possession of poetic power in conjunction with what was for him an unusual artistic detachment, besides being a remarkable poem in its own right. This may be another way of saying that it is the most architectural of the odes, as it is certainly the one that culminates most dramatically."

Walter Jackson Bate states that the poem has "always puzzled readers But finding the poem so elusive, we return to it only after we know the others far better. If we had hope to use them as keys, we discover they do not quite fit the lock. Meanwhile they have given us a standard hard to equal. Hence we either feel a disappointment about the 'Ode to Psyche' or else, remembering the care Keats supposedly gave it, we once more put the poem aside for future consideration." However, he also states that "The modern, respectful attitude toward this ode is deserved. But the itch for novelty has encouraged a few critics to suggest that the poem, in some dark but fundamental way, has more to it as a whole than do the later odes."

To Harold Bloom, the last lines of Keats's ode "rivals any as an epitome of the myth-making faculty". He elaborates further on this when he writes, "The poem Ode to Psyche is unique, and also central, for its art is a natural growth out of nature, based as it is upon a very particular act of consciousness, which Keats arrests in all its concreteness."