Ode To Italy

Keats' InspirationKeats is probably one of the most relevant allusions I could think of to be included in The Evening of the Holiday. His poems always hint at how ephemeral beauty is, and how time can eventually undo its allure, and this novel is all about the ephemeral, the fleeting things in life: fleeting impressions (as evidenced by how quickly Sophie and Tandredi's initial impressions of each other change), fleeting love (often Sophie reflects upon moments that are so fleeting, like riding back from Florence, with sadness because she knows she will never get to experience them exactly the same way again), and of course fleeting life itself (the contrast between the extraordinary character and attitude Luisa brought to her life and the fact that, even despite this, she too was susceptible to weakness and death proves life's ephemeral nature and makes it seem almost arbitrarily fleeting). What the novel really explores is how the transience of all of these things is amplified by having them occur in a foreign place, particuarly in a relationship in a foreign place, just by dint of the idea that travel and the foreign experience must eventually come to an end. Of Keats' poems, Ode to A Nightingale especially represents this idea.
It is first referenced at the beginning of the novel, when Sophie is sitting in the darkness of the garden with Luisa and Tancredi, trying to remember the opening line after hearing nightingales in the shrubs. The speaker of the poem addresses a nightingale, whose song pulls at his heart because he recognizes all too well the happiness of it, which is now beyond his reach in "the weariness, the fever, the fret" of human life. This reminds me of Sophie, who is always being called too serious and who at first had such a hard time letting go and allowing herself to enjoy a relationship with Tancredi. However, in the second stanza, the speaker calls "for a beaker full of the warm South!" The South, in this case Italy to Sophie's English North, has a numbing effect on the speaker, and would allow him to "leave the world" that he knows, just as Sophie's time in Italy brought her into an atmosphere disconnected from time and obligation and conducive to finding an all-encompassing love. Isn't this what we always seek in travel - escape? If the nightingale's song is analogous to Sophie's time in Italy, the ending, in which the speaker wonders, "was it a vision, or a waking dream? ... do I wake or sleep?" is an echo of Sophie's state of the end of the novel. She understands that it must end (and so too must the song must end for the speaker) but when it does she is left completely lost.