Sunday, March 13, 2011

John Keats ODe ona Grecian Urn - not so true and not so beautiful

John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn



In John Keats ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ we see the use of time in an idealized moment in time. Though it seems he is commenting on the moments of the past displayed on an ancient urn, instead it displays artistic, and created, moments that the reader will probably never feel.

He uses the images of the ‘unravished bride’ (1), the ‘unheard melodies’ (11), and the ‘forever young’ (16) to display how the urn has shown the moments of life bringing joy, unable to ever be destroyed by time (or by it actually happening). He even urges the reader to see the ‘happy’ which is repeated six times between lines 21 and 25. But the truth is that when depicting these acts frozen in time they will never be actually acted out, and therefore they cannot ever have the true pleasures of the action. The art is pure yes, but it is easy to be pure without substance.


It is important to also see that theses actions are created, in the same way that this poem is created, just in a different art form (pottery and paint). In the fourth section of the poem Keats asks of the town, ‘Why thou art desolate?’(39). It is just as important to understand that this ‘town’ is a depiction of a town, not a true one. The most interesting part of the entire poem is the last lines, ‘Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty”, but really, what parts of this poem are really true? Which part shows the world, or people? Instead this is a poem depicting how an urn is an example of a created moment.

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