John Keats’ belief in the beauty of potentiality is a main theme of him great “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” This idea appears in many of his other poems that precede this ode, such as “The Eve of St. Agnes,” but perhaps none of Keats’ other works devote such great effort to showcase this idea. The beauty of the Grecian Urn (likely multiple urns), and its strength as a symbol, is a masterful mechanism. Just about all facets of this poem focus on an unfulfilled outcome: but one that seems inevitably completed. Thus, while the result seems a foregone conclusion, Keats’ static world creates a litany of possible outcomes more beautiful than if any final resolution.
From the very title we find that this “Ode” is different. It is the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” as opposed to “Ode to a Nightingale,” or “Ode to Psyche.” The word “on” provides a little more interpretive flexibility. On one hand, the word on can be taken to mean “about” or “concerning,” suggesting that this is an ode about a Grecian Urn. This is in fact true. However, it can also suggest that this ode is taking place quite literally on the Grecian Urn—the ode itself would therefore not be Keats’ own poetry, but the actual Urn. This interpretation is backed up by in Stanza I. when Keats calls the Urn “Sylvan historian, who canst thus express / A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme” (lines 3-4). The urn can express the tale more sweetly because it presents the ode without the passage of time. Thus all the paintings are forever frozen and ever becoming, and any fulfillment would betray potential.
Keats asserts that while music is sweet, those which go unheard are sweeter, and thus implores the piper to “pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone” (14). Because the piper o...
... middle of paper ...
...nts have no quotation marks at all, but that too is problematic as the words are talking about what we know on “earth.” The speaker seems to be coming from a place outside of the realm of human existence. Thus it seems quite clear that the words must come directly from the Urn, although how much is up to debate, it seems.
Keats finds the most beauty in what can be, rather than what is. It is a statement that, once I heard it, rang entirely true in my life: the beauty of potentiality is that there is never a solid answer, and any number of truths can at once be a reality. The piper can thus play a tune that rings wonderfully in everyone’s ear, and the motives of the man chasing the woman stay pure because he has yet to consummate his desires. The actual act has difficulty living up to our imagination—but the potential always leaves final satisfaction up to us.
A Bedouin is a nomad and a nomad a wanderer. Nathaniel Mackey seems to wander far and away in his Bedouin Hornbook, a series of fictional letters addressed to an “Angel of Dust” and signed by the ambiguous “N.” N. interprets passages of improvisation, analyzing others’ musical expression in surprising detail to the point that his unquestioning sincerity and self-assurance are almost laughable. That N. can glean meaning from music in such a direct and certain manner is problematic because his tone implies that there is only one correct interpretation of music. In addressing the issue of how music conveys meaning, Mackey seems to wander in two disparate directions. After asserting each seemingly contradictory view, first that music and speech are simply ends in themselves and second that they are means to a separate end, Mackey reconciles the question through his motivic discussion of absence and essence.
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
After a four week survey of a multitude of children’s book authors and illustrators, and learning to analyze their works and the methods used to make them effective literary pieces for children, it is certainly appropriate to apply these new skills to evaluate a single author’s works. Specifically, this paper focuses on the life and works of Ezra Jack Keats, a writer and illustrator of books for children who single handedly expanded the point of view of the genre to include the experiences of multicultural children with his Caldecott Award winning book “Snowy Day.” The creation of Peter as a character is ground breaking in and of itself, but after reading the text the reader is driven to wonder why “Peter” was created. Was he a vehicle for political commentary as some might suggest or was he simply another “childhood” that had; until that time, been ignored? If so, what inspired him to move in this direction?
White, Keith D. John Keats And The Loss Of Romantic Innocence.(Costerus NS 107). Minneapolis: Rodopi BV Editions, 1996. Print.
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
Imagery and symbolism merged to express his imagination, he became a unique poet in an evolving world where Romanticism was quickly expanding globally, not into a movement, but a way of thinking. Keats’ mother and brother, and eventually he too, passed away of tuberculosis. At the time of his brother 's passing, he developed ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. ‘La Belle’ expressed Keats’ intellect and creativity, although at the same time he himself expressed his angst and depression for the loss of his brother. His poem ‘Bright Star’ was written in a part of his life in which a woman had influenced Keats’ greatly, so much in fact that he was driven to write ‘Bright Star’ in appreciation and celebration of the love of his life. These poems reflect Keats’ intellect, originality, creativity, and his ability to merge the contextual aspects of his life and his imagination with the ideals and concepts of Romanticism to create powerful
Throughout Keats’s work, there are clear connections between the effect of the senses on emotion. Keats tends to apply synesthetic to his analogies with the interactions with man and the world to create different views and understandings. By doing this, Keats can arouse different emotions to the work by which he intends for the reader to determine on their own, based on how they perceive it. This is most notable in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, for example, “Tasting of Flora, and Country Green” (827). Keats accentuates emotion also through his relationship with poetry, and death.
Keats presents his feelings on how he no longer wishes for impossible goals, and how it is much more preferable to enjoy life as much as possible. It is of no use longing for things we cannot have, and so we must learn to live with the myriad of things we already have, of these one in particular appeals to Keats: the warmth of human companionship and the passion of love.
John Keats employs word choices and word order to illustrate his contemplative and sympathetic tone. The tone could be interpreted as pessimistic and depressing because the majority of the poem focuses on Keats’ fear of death. However, if the reader views the last two lines of the poem in light which brings redemption, one might see that Keats merely wants to express the importance of this dominant fear in his life. He does not desire for his audience to focus on death, but to realize that man does not have control of when it comes. The poet uses poetic diction, a popular technique of the early nineteenth century. The poem also demonstrates formal diction that Keats is often known for. Although Keats meant for most of his words to interpret with denotative meanings, he does present a few examples of allusion and connotation. His connotations include “teeming,” defined as plen...
In Keats “Ode to a Nightingale” we see the sense embodied through a variety of different literary techniques and in particular his use of synaesthesia imagery. The dejected downhearted nature of the poem promotes emotion in the reader even before noting poetic devices at work. The structure of the meter is regular and adds to the depth of this poe...
Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.
The direction the speaker is giving a person is very clear and direct, as if they are headed down a wrong path or set of actions and must change or correct an oversight. Here the speaker clearly warns against Melancholy ’s fit as if she is a force of nature. As a force of nature beauty is drowned out by “a weeping cloud” or Melancholy’s fit when she “fosters the droop-headed flowers” (Keats 932).
Examining the definition of “ode,” there is a strong connection between song and poetry—an ode being “a poem intended to be sung or one written in a form originally used for sung performance”--, and within both poems the inspiration of each narrator is described in terms of creating poems meant to be sung. Essentially, Keats’s poem plays with the concept of the poetic form of an ode on a couple of different levels. Firstly, the nightingale, in stark contrast to the narrator’s feelings of despair, is presented as a “light-winged Dyrad of the trees, / In some melodious plot / … Singest of summer in full-throated ease” (“Ode to a Nightingale 7-8, 10). By introducing the nightingale in this manner, and by referring to it twice with musical adjectives—referencing its “melodious plot” and how the bird “singest of summer”—establishes this element of song as the focal point of the nightingale. Similarly, the goddess Psyche is first introduced by means of song, as the narrator begins “Ode to Psyche” by singing, and asking her to hear “these tuneless number” (Ode to Psyche 1) and to “pardon thy secrets should be sung” (3). The musical references to Psych continue in the third stanza, as the narrator laments the inclusion of Psyche into the Greek pantheon, he reveals
...storal” (45, p.1848). The urn’s eternity only exists artistically and does not reflect human life because only the urn “shou remain” forever (47, p.1848). Keats contrasts the ephemeral nature of human life with the longevity of the urn. In last two lines, Keats declares, “beauty is truth, truth beauty” (29, p.1848) embodying both sides of his perspective. By establishing a relationship between beauty and truth, Keats acknowledges that like truth, the beauty of the Grecian urn is unchangeable and that the ability accept reality is beautiful.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" discuses the idea of immortality in a picture, and how if a moment is captured on an urn then does it exist always? It seems the theme of this poem came from a phrase of Leonardo DiVinci: "Cosa bella mortal passa e non d'arte." Translated, this means mortal beauties pass away, but not those of art. "Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu." Keats uses personification in this example to make the tree branches seem like they are happy and enjoying the situation. In the third stanza the word "forever" is repeated: "And, happy melodist, unwearied. Forever piping songs forever new. More happy love, more happy, happy love. Forever warm and still to be enjoyed. Forever panting, and forever young." This repitition is done to draw attention to the word forever which makes the reader appreciate the true meaning of the poem, which is the debate over immortality and death and what immortality means.