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Ode to a Grecian Urn Keats
John Keats' poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn," contains many messages about life, love, and history. Within its stanzas there are countless allusions to the fact that art, once recorded becomes and ideal of beauty, shattered only by the loss of such art but never degraded by time, memory or corporeal reality. The three themes that repeat throughout the work are those of love, silence, and beauty
The work written in celebration of Greek art is not known to be attributed to any particular piece of art, but is instead associated with Keats' memory of the Greek art he had seen in his lifetime. (RPO john Keats "Ode to a Grecian Urn" (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1129.html) It seems that through the reflection of this form of Greek art, often depicting the youthful ideal in very athletic stances, there is a symbol of representation of perfection, etched forever in the silent clay.
In the mentions of love throughout the work are sentiments of the ideal of courtly love,...
"Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, / Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; / She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, / For ever wilt though love, and she be fair!" (Keats lns 17-20) In this passage Keats demonstrates an ideal of love, one that is admired from afar and therefore never soiled by the focus of closeness or challenged by deceit.
Keats begins the Ode with the concept of the sweetest music being silence. The figures of youth and beauty cannot tell their story, so the viewer can conjecture, making the game even greater for the viewer. "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / the foster child of silence and slow time." (lns 1-2) And later in the work also, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; / Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd, / Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave / Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;"…
Keats ideal of beauty is probably the most profound of the thematic messages within the work. His message seems to be that the figures on the Urn are the ideal of beauty but are vague enough that the viewer can behold the beauty as he or she sees fit to meet his or her own ideal. Therefore the work will always encompass beauty. "When old age shall this generation waste, Though shalt remain, in midst of other woe / Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, / "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all / ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." (lns 46-50)
Keating, in this work an intense sense of the positive aspects of art, and especially ancient art, that art that cannot be explained or interpreted by any living soul. Furthermore the messages of the work are as enduring as the Urn itself, though only from memory Keats' demonstrates the ideal of the Grecian Urn as well as the ideal of human love and beauty. The silence of the works demonstrate an image of that which cannot be corrupted, the messages are so ancient that the beautiful pastoral locations are unknown and the peoples feats can only be idealized. The reader leaves with an sense of enduring hope that ideal beauty is in the eye of the beholder and even though real beauty, love and silence are corrupted on this corporeal earth their images in ancient history can always remain ideal.
RPO John Keats "Ode to a Grecian Urn" 2003, Retrieved July, 20, 2004 at http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1129.html.
Ode Grecian Entering the Greek and Roman art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I was first struck by the skillful lighting and the overall professionalism inherent in the displays. There were not as many people in this section as in some of the others I had visited that day. Yet because of the caliber of artifacts exhibited at the Met, I still felt continuity with
.." As the youth is in a constant state of seeking, eternally about to experience the joy of a first kiss. Relatable Human Emotion Though Keats means for the symbols to be expressed as unknown through the expression of curiosity about who these individuals might be: "What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape/ Of deities or mortals, or of both,/ In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?/ What men or gods are these? What maidens
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. Specifically it will discuss the points John Keats makes regarding the power of art to stir the imagination, to survive across time and space, and to give meaning to a world in flux. Keats poem celebrates the urn as an artifact of history and how that artifact is like a snapshot in time, illustrating the lives and the people of long-ago. This
Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats; "The Convergence of the Twain" by Thomas Hardy; and "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. Specifically, it will identify the common theme in these three poems, which is time. Time stops in all three poems for various reasons, and adds to the impact of each poem in a special way. COMMON THEME In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats is celebrating the past, stopped
All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, burning forehead, and a parching tongue. A lines 28-30) The final lines of the Ode encapsulate the tension and conflict of the poem in a vision of art as the only means of resolving the disparity between the ideal and the real. When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man,
Rousseau’s First Discourse and Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” both focus on Beauty as the sole arbiter of Truth and the only guide through life that society really needs. Yet each work is different because they both come to different conclusions: Rousseau’s treatise is a work of philosophical speculation that essentially rejects beauty and truth (justifying this rejection by referencing the words of Socrates no less), while Keats’ work