22. John Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
    Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
    A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
    Of deities or mortals, or of both,
        In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
    What men or gods are these?  What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit?  What struggle to escape?
        What pipes and timbrels?  What wild ecstasy?

THE ODE:

ANSWERS.COM

A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanzaic structure.

• It's a reference to a picture (Grecian Urn) or an object of the Urn

• the time preserved the Urn - it is still in a good condition. Even though the time passed it is unchanged, the time was kind for the Urn

• the Urn is addressed as it was a woman who is unravished (untouched)

• the Urn carries the story - picture of Arcadia. We can imagine different stories looking at the picture on the Urn. The object of art is supposed to tell something to us

• the picture on the Urn shows lovers. The lovers are about to kiss - a frozen moment in time when it stopped. This is a kind of consolidation. This state will never change. They will wait forever to kiss and their love will be forever the same. The lovers were caught in the moment of performing the activity

• (stanza 3) The people on the Urn will never be unhappy, old, exhausted, etc. In reality all these feelings would cause suffering but the lovers on the Urn will never suffer

• (stanza 4) more serious scene, less joyful. It depicts a heifer (jałówka) lowering in the skies - the town is seen which is empty - empty forever

• Mystery - no explanation of the picture art show us. Art shows us mystery but it doesn't explain it to us

• (the last stanza - 5) the Urn is addressed directly as a Cold Pastoral. It is called so because it makes us contemplate certain problems. It points to the relation between life and art. It is cold because it doesn't see the suffering of man through centuries. It shows ideal world not affected by time. There is no explanation of anything. It teaches us: Beauty is truth, truth beauty

• The poem concentrates on idealization of art

• Art - a single moment preserved by eternity

• Two contradicting things: life (not perfect) and art (perfect)

• Beauty is truth, truth beauty

The only reality we should know is beauty, world of imagination, knowledge through imagination, beauty is connected with imagination. Imagination belongs to two spheres of thought: ethics and aesthetic

STANZA FORM

• each of the five stanzas is ten lines long, metered in a iambic pentameter

• there is the two-part rhyme pattern; the first part is made of AB rhymes and the second part is made of CDE rhymes and the second part includes some variations within the last three lines:

ABAB CDE DCE (in the first stanza)

CED (in the second stanza)

CED (in stanzas three and four)

DCE (in stanza five)

- the two-part rhyme pattern is reflected in the two-part thematic structure: the first four lines (quatrain) in each stanza define the subject of the stanza, and the last six (sestet) develop it.

ART AND LIFE - RELATIONSHIP

• Life is mortal, it is connected with aging and death; it is full of changing emotions which may cause pain; life means passing of time, getting old and loosing the beauty of youth.

• Art is immortal, it is often untouched by the time (like the Grecian urn) and it lasts longer than people and their emotions do; it convey beauty and presents the artist's talent; art cannot be destroyed as easily as humans' emotions (f.eg. unhappy love).

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