John Keats is considered a second generation Romantic because he is more radical than Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. Like Blake, Keats had no formal education. He became dissatisfied with sonnets and turned to writing odes. I was especially drawn to “Ode to a Grecian Urn”. This poem has a very Romantic feel, as he finds great imagination in an old, Grecian style urn.
In the poem, Keats ponders the two sides of immortality through the three scenes on the urn. The first scene can be found in stanza 2. He sees a piper playing a tune and says that the piper will play this tune forever because he is frozen in time. Keats also says in lines 11-12, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter;” so he tells him to play on. Keats believes that the piper has obtained permanence and immortality. I think he sees this as a positive because the piper's unheard tune will never fade and will remain sweet forever.
In stanza 3, Keats describes the scene on the urn of two young lovers. The male is chasing a female and is about to kiss her. Here is seems that Keats is saying that this scene is frozen in the best part of love, the chase. The boy will never catch his love. However, Keats shows this as a positive of immortality because the maiden will always be there, her beauty will never fade, and he will always be chasing her, which is the fun part. In line 28, Keats portrays what humans feel of love but says that the lover on the urn will never have to experience this. He doesn't have to feel what humans feel in the real world.
In stanza 4, we see a funeral type procession for a town sacrifice. Everyone from the town has left to go to the sea and the streets are silent. Keats ponders that the town will remain desolate and no one can ever return. This can be seen as a negative of immortality. This town will never be full, the streets never walked on. Because this scene is frozen on the urn, the immortality achieved is not necessarily ideal for Keats. He uses these three scenes to view the two sides of immortality and the contrast that makes life go. By providing these three different scenes I think it is easier for the reader understand the controversy Keats is experiencing by putting himself "in the urn".
In stanza 5, Keats takes himself out of the urn and returns to the physical world. It is here that he actually looks at the urn for what it is. His description of the urn is not as beautiful as it was when he was engrossed in the three scenes. He sees it as cold, lifeless, and not real in a worldly sense. In lines 49-50 Keats provides two controversial lines:
Beauty is truth, truth is beauty,- that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Here Keats tries to find the answer to immortality. Is it better to live forever? Also, Keats lets the reader interpret these last two lines. If the urn is saying this to the reader, then this is all the reader needs to know. If the urn only says line 49 and the speaker says line 50, then that’s all the urn needs to know but is not a favorable answer for us as humans. I tend to agree with the first rationale that this is all we, as readers, need to know. The urn tells us that we can’t find these kinds of answers in the real world. The only answers come from what we see and experience, which is all we need to know in this world.
2 comments:
Kelly,
Good focus on and discussion of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." You make several insightful observations about the poem. Your analysis is most persuasive when you base it on quoted passages; in much of your posting, though, you tend to rely on paraphrases of the ode. Paraphrases are dangerous because they put your interpretation at a further remove from the text, and if your paraphrase is not exactly correct your interpretation will be less accurate.
I liked the way that you took this blog and examined each separate stanza. It seems that the theme here is that the grass is greener on the other side. Sometimes immortality can be what those who are mortal seek but I think when look at those with a bad immortality they may want to be mortal. I think it is unique how Keats looks at this ordinary urn and writes such a powerful poem.
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