“Ode on a Grecian Urn”: An Analysis of Paradoxes and Controversy

1002 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: keats' theory of aesthetics in ode on a grecian urn

Renowned poet of the Romantic era, John Keats, is known for his thought provoking poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Within this poem, Keats analyzes an urn depicting various scenes from history. While Keats contemplation of the beauty of the urn is apparent throughout the work, there is a particular stanza that is particularly noteworthy. The fifth, and final, stanza of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” states,
“O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’s
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know” (Greenblatt, lines 41-50).
This specific stanza is exceedingly significant due to the purpose it serves of bringing Keats’ contemplations on eternity and mortality through the urn to a final resolution, the way in which the final stanza serves to exemplify the harmony of pleasure and pain found throughout Keats’ poem, as well as the controversial nature surrounding the many interpretations of the final couplet of the stanza.
Throughout his poem, Keats’ utilizes the use of paradoxes to illustrate his reflections on eternity and mortality. In the second stanza of the poem Keats states “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes, play on” (Greenblatt lines 11-12). In presenting this paradox of the heard and unheard, Keats is implying the silent music from the instruments depicted on the urn is far more pleasant than the discernible music from a real instrument due to the p...

... middle of paper ...

... In “Ode on Grecian Urn”, Keats contemplates the various forms of eternity and the concept of mortality through the visions depicted on an urn. The fifth, and final, stanza of the poem states,
“O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’s
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all
Ye know on earth and all ye need to know” (Greenblatt, lines 41-50).
This stanza is the most notable stanza of Keats’ poem due to its ability to bring Keats’ reflections on various forms of eternity and mortality through the urn to a resolution, as well as provide the controversial final couplet

Show More
Related

  • Time and Tide: Kenneth Slessor's 'Five Bells'

    1728 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...he imagery of the more intensely-felt passages in the middle of the poem. Perhaps the poet is like someone at their journey's end, `all passion spent', recollecting in tranquillity some intimations of mortality?

    Read More

  • John Keats Dance With Death

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    For example, in the first line is him contemplating his fear that he may never live to share all of his knowledge. It is a strange fact that we, as humans, believe that we will not die; we think this until there is that one point in life that we first see death. For many, a sense of mortality does not hit until a loved one’s light suddenly goes out and all that is left is a stream of hazy memories of that person. Keats knew his flame was flickering, so he wrote down his feelings and thoughts with vigor. When people of his time read what he put down on paper, they were not ready to accept the inevitable because they only saw a man belligerent about his life. Is has been said that, “the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work, with malicious zeal, as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart." (The Poetry Foundation) After his death at such a young age, people began to see why he was contemplating such a dark concept. Basically, Keats gives the example that although the words of today can sometimes be ignored, there may be a time in the future when those words mean the world to

    Read More

  • Combined Experience of Suffering, Death and Love all at Once

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis Of 'Ode To A Nightingale And Bright Star'

    1443 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Martin Espada Bully Summary

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Themes of Love in Lord Byron's “She Walks in Beauty” and Keats' Poem, “La Belle Dame sans Merci”

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...tion between loneliness and death. The first three lines of each stanza in this poem generally have four feet, while the last line have only two or three. This change calls attention to the last line, in which Keats makes references to images.

    Read More

  • The Literary Techniques Used to Evoke the World of Senses in Keats Odes

    1576 Words  | 4 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • The Beauty of Potentiality in Keats’ “Grecian Urn”

    909 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be By John Keats Analysis

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

  • Allusion In Ode To A Nightingale

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Exploring How Keats Finds Beauty In Death

    1193 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is no life without death, and no death without life. Life and death mutually define each other and without one, the other would have no meaning. Keats was an English poet very concerned with death and human mortality. His poems usually deal with his struggle to accept his own mortality and his attempt to flee from reality into a world of immortality. This poem, “To Autumn”, which Keats wrote after observing an autumn evening, is seemingly simplistic and purely descriptive. However, underneath the surface, Keats has finally begun to accept the difficult truth that death is inevitable. Through the poem “To Autumn”, Keats urges humankind to accept death as a natural part of human life and to recognize the beauty in death.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Keats's Ode To Melancholy Essay

    844 Words  | 2 Pages

    In order to experience true sorrow one must feel true joy to see the beauty of melancholy. However, Keats’s poem is not all dark imagery, for interwoven into this poem is an emerging possibility of resurrection and the chance at a new life. The speaker in this poem starts by strongly advising against the actions and as the poem continues urges a person to take different actions. In this poem, the speaker tells of how to embrace life by needing the experience of melancholy to appreciate the true joy and beauty of

    Read More

  • 'Ode To A Nightingale And Ode On Melancholy'

    678 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Ode to A Nightingale,” a prominent significance to Keats is his idea of the conflicted interplay in human life of living and death, mortal and immortal, and feeling versus the lack of feeling or inability to feel. “The ideal condition towards which Keats always strives because it is his ideal, is one in which mortal and immortal,…beauty and truth are one” (Wasserman). The narrator plunges into a dreamlike state when hearing a nightingale sing. As the nightingale sings, he shares its elation and feels the conflicting response of agony when he comes down from his dreamlike ecstasy and realizes that unlike the nightingale in his imagination, “Thou was not born for death, immortal Bird,” his life is finite (61). “Where palsy shakes a few, sad last gray hairs, where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies” (25-26).

    Read More

  • John Keats Speech

    794 Words  | 2 Pages

    "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.

    Read More

  • Kubla Khan and Ode on Grecian Urn

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...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.

    Read More

More about “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: An Analysis of Paradoxes and Controversy

Open Document