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ODE ON A GRECIAN URN: LIFE VS ART Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a balance between the flux of human experience and the fixity of art, the contrast between enduring art and ephemeral art, and an equation between realism and aestheticism. The indefinite article in the poem refers to how Keats did not refer to any single work of Greek art; but to art in general.
The origin of the poem can be traced to various sources: a marble vase in Louvre, another one in Louvre depicting a revelry scene, the famous Eligin marbles in the British museum and another one belonging to Lord HollandKeats addresses the urn as an inviolate bride and a child who is fostered by Time, the otherwise universal enemy. Keats conveys to us the great age and silent repose of the urn terming it as ‘Sylvan historian’, who does not relate mere factual information but projects a “creative perception into reality”.
The first stanza functions as an expository part and enumerates in a series of questions ideas that are to be amplified later. The second and third stanzas reveal the triumph of art over life. The lovers love without tiring and they play melodies unheard, that remain sweeter to comprehend. The beauty of maidens and the greenery of the trees shall never fade away. If the first scene depicts Dionysian revelry, the second signifies Appolonian order. It potrays the serene scene of a sacrificial ritual.
If the first portrays individual yearning, the second depicts communal activity. The last Stanza brings us to the urn itself as an object: “attic shape” and “cold pastoral”. The urn itself is a ‘silent form’ and it speaks not by means of statement but understatement. It is an enigma and will recite history to generations to come. The final statement:” Beauty is truth, Truth beauty” has come in for much criticism. Bridges has praised their artistic excellence. To T. S. Eliot, “they are a serious blemish on a otherwise beautiful poem. ” I. A.
Richards calls it “a pseudo-statement. ” Garrod also feels that the statement is an intrusion upon the poem. he Romantics and the Victorians both addressed the idea of preservation of a perfect moment. In Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the perfect moment is one frozen in art, while in “In Memoriam,” Tennyson struggles to preserve perfect moments in the past spent with his dear friend, Arthur Hallam. “Urn” is almost a debate between art and life. Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal ??? yet do not grieve. “
The recompense for the lover’s eternal frustration is his lover’s everlasting beauty and his own everlasting passion for her. Pipes play unheard melodies of unimagineable beauty, trees remain ever green, love remains ever fresh. But then Keats turns and calls the timeless images preserved in art a “Cold Pastoral. ” He seems to suggest that the process of living and dying, to know life in all its joy and sorrow, is more eternal than actual immortality in a frozen emotion, hinting at “Ode on Melancholy”‘s theme that beauty is beauty because it is ephemeral.
The final ambiguity is the controversy over the use of quotation marks in the second to last line. In this version, the quotation marks attribute the statement “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty'” to the urn and its immortality in art, implying that the following statement ” ??? that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,” is Keats’ commentary on the truth of the urn’s statement. But without the quotes, both maxims are the urn’s views, which brings into question the authority of the two statements.
Even with the quotes, there is uncertainty over whether the “ye” addresses mankind, in which case we are to understand that beauty really is truth, or whether it addresses the urn, which could be read as a criticism of its ultimate limitation in interacting with the entire range of human experience in asserting that beauty is all, art is all. Also, doesn’t the very fact that the question is being put into an art form, poetry, make it highly ironic and even hypocritical?
Hence, the value of preserving a perfect moment in art is never clearly confirmed nor denounced. “In Memoriam” is marked with touching scenes of Tennyson’s searching for reminders of times spent with Hallam. He visits Hallam’s house, his old dormitory room, longing to see Hallam’s face, hear his voice, clasp his hand. He poignantly attempts to recover perfect moments with Hallam by sapping the physical reminders, but he cannot. So find I every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet,