“Ode
on Grecian Urn” was written in 1819 by one of the most prolific, even if the
most short-lived, poets of the Romantic period John Keats. In this ode Keats
draws the relationship between imagination and actuality, and the supremacy and
immortality of a work of art if compared to our imperfect and ordinary life.
The poet starts the first stanza of the poem by addressing
the urn directly as if he was having a conversation with it. Keats' imagined
urn is addressed as if he were contemplating a real urn. It has survived intact
from antiquity. It is a "sylvan historian" telling us a story, which
the poet suggests by a series of questions. Who are these gods or men painted
on the urn? Who are these reluctant maidens? What is this mad pursuit? Why the
struggle to escape? What is the explanation for the presence of musical
instruments? Why this mad ecstasy?
Imagined melodies are lovelier than those heard by human
ears. Therefore the poet insists the musician pictured on the urn to play on.
His song can never end nor the trees ever shed their leaves. The lover on the
urn can never kiss her beloved, but the poet consoles his mind by saying that
the boy should not be disappointed because his beloved can never lose her
beauty. The trees are happy because its can never lose its leaves and also the
musician is happy for his playing music which will remain forever new. The
lovers on the urn enjoy a love that will stay forever young, more beautiful
than actual love which eventually brings frustration and dissatisfaction.
In the first three stanzas Keats draws the perfection of the
urn. But In the last two stanzas Keats portrays that though the art over the
urn is beautiful and perfect; the urn is ultimately an object. Here the poet
shows the limitation of the urn and compared its perfect art with our imperfect
human life. In the fourth stanza Keats address the urn and asks who are the
people coming to perform a sacrifice? To what reason does the priest lead a
ornamented heifer? What town do they come from? That town will forever remain
silent and deserted. But the urn can answer that at all, because it is an
object.
In the last stanza Keats tells that as if the urn is flawless
and our human life is defective, but our life is more beautiful. Keats
addresses the urn as “Cold Pastoral”, whereas in the first stanza he discourses
as “Sylvan Historian”. The poet believes in artistic truth. The imagination can
never be truth but that is enough to be truth- that is poetic truth. Anything
that is true can be beautiful, though it is not beautiful but enough to be
beautiful. That is how Keats depicts the imperfect human life as wonderful-
“Beauty
is truth, truth beauty”, - That is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need
to know.
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