Ode to Psyche by John Keats

All right, with that, let's turn to Ode to Psyche.

So, as I often say, I try, I don't necessarily like the idea that poetry requires a lot of prior knowledge.

I sometimes like to emphasize that you can, with a lot of great poems, understand them as texts themselves.

This poem I do believe you do need to know To really understand what Keats is doing and saying, it helps to know a little bit about Psyche.

Psyche was a Greek goddess, and the word Psyche essentially translates to soul.

You could think of it as the soul, the spirit, the life force.

In Greek mythology, Psyche was the lover of Eros, Eros or Cupid.

You've probably seen in museums lots of paintings of Cupid and Psyche or Eros and Psyche.

Today we use the word psyche in a more abstracted psychological way, thanks to psychologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, but I think there is an obvious connection between psyche as an internal state and psyche as the Greek goddess of the soul.

And in fact, I believe Keats' poem is drawing this connection between the ancient Greek world and the modern internal world.

That, I think, is the big theme of the poem.

The way the externalized spiritual values of the Greeks become internalized in the 19th century and the way that sort of spirituality moves inward.

I think it's a very insightful and very interesting way of thinking about the soul, thinking about imagination, thinking about the power of the soul and its connection to love, but also of the continuity between the Greek world and our world.

I think that's part of what makes this poem so interesting and insightful.