A COMPREHENSIVE STUDY ON DESIRE’S BITTERSWEET CADENCE: A PSYCHOANALYTIC EXPLORATION OF MORTALITY AND EXISTENTIAL ANXIETY IN THE POETRY OF JOHN KEATS

Abstract

This research article undertakes a psychoanalytic inquiry into the interwoven themes of desire, mortality, and existential anxiety in the poetry of John Keats. His poetic oeuvre—intensely lyrical, sensuous, and philosophically reflective—demonstrates a persistent engagement with the paradox of beauty and transience. Through theoretical frameworks derived from Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, this study examines poems such as Ode to a Nightingale, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode on a Grecian Urn, When I Have Fears, and To Autumn, arguing that Keats’ poetry is a psychological landscape where longing is simultaneously pleasurable and painful, where beauty awakens intense yearning yet reminds the subject of life’s impermanence.

This paper demonstrates how Keats’ writings articulate unconscious conflicts, including the tension between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, the desire for transcendence, and the fear of annihilation. The study reveals that Keats’ poetic imagination constructs meticulous emotional spaces that mirror universal human anxieties regarding death, desire, and the search for meaning. Hence, Keats’ poetry is read here not merely as autobiographical testimony but as a profound commentary on the psychological and existential condition of humankind.