Ode on a Grecian Urn
The speaker of Keats’ poem begins his ode to the urn by asserting that the vessel itself is wed to a personified “Quiet”. One may question, however, the reason for this assertion by Keats due to the fact that the urn can be found in a museum, which, at least in the 21st century, is not the pinnacle of quietness. Similarly, the urn is likened to “still unravish’d bride” leaving the reader to question the nature of the word “still”. The implications of this word are such that either the vessel has yet to be sexually “ravaged” by “quietness,” or, that the vessel is now in state of stagnation, and motionless.
The speaker progresses in the stanza in asserting that urn is a “foster-child of silence and time.” This begs the question as to the true parent/parents of the urn? In addition to the question of the origins of the urn, the speaker also creates the question of the validity of the urn being in the museum. If the artist can be seen as the parent, and time and silence as the foster parent, then it may be observed that the urn is now relegated to the status of orphan in that it has been removed from its context in Greece.
At the conclusion of the stanza, the speaker of the poem presents the reader with questions of the nature of consensual sex. The speakers diction is indicative of the ambiguity associated with the scene depicted on the urn in that the observer is either witnessing an erotic playful pursuit, or a scene of rape in which the female entity is attempting to escape. Similarly, the first stanza ends ambiguously in that the speaker is unable to answer the question of whether or not what he is witnessing in abhorrent or playful.
In the second stanza the speaker crafts a paradoxical conundrum. While he asserts that audible melodies are enjoyable, he claims that those inaudible are even “sweeter.” It would appear that the speaker is hearkening back to the ambiguous nature of the first stanza in that the realm of fantasy creates nothing definitive of concrete. Rather the observer is permitted to construct for himself an imaginary world in which sour notes do not exist. As the second stanza progresses, the speaker provides several images which leave the reader feeling stalled. The image of two lovers gazing into each others eyes, and a tree trapped in spring leave the reader feeling enjambed, and frustrated with a desire for gratification, yet never to receive it. The agency is taken from every fictional character, including the tree, leaving them suspended in time, acknowledging that “thou has not thy bliss.”
The third and forth stanzas asserts the same point as the second one, depicting a suspended scene of love where they are “more happy”. The only one who seems to gain an relief from this suspension in the fourth stanza is the cow who will never be sacrificed to the gods. However, these two stanzas continue to perpetuate the feeling of dissatisfaction. There is a delaying of gratification that the speaker seems to be asserting, yet no gratification for it.
In the final stanza, there seems to to be an acknowledgement of the refusal of gratification on the part of the speaker. In lines 46 and 47, the speaker states, “When old age shall this generation waste, / Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe / Than ours.” It is in these two lines that the speaker appears to assert the duality that exists in the nature of being human. Humanity exists in a realm which possesses fleeting moments of the joy and gaiety which the urn depicts, however, the human existence is also punctuated with instances of intense sorrow as well. Despite the fact that the characters of the urn exist in a state of perpetual bliss, their bliss is relegated to dissatisfaction due to the fact that they will never be able to truly gratify themselves. Furthermore, these lines may be seen as a reference back to Keats’ earlier sonnet on the Elgin marbles in that the impermanence of humanity can only be truly be given perspective when juxtaposed to physical art.
Questions:
Ok…so the last two lines of the poem…a doozy. Is Keats asserting that all this talk about art and the impermanence of humanity is superfluous, because, in the end, all that the poet and artist are trying to do is communicate an incommunicable concept due to the fact that beauty and truth are something that must be felt, rather than understood?
2) How is the individual reader supposed to interact with this poem? Should the reader see this
poem as disturbing, as, arguably, I have done? Or, should the reader adopt a less syndical posture?
Precisely! The poem repeatedly stages ambiguity in which it is difficult to tell what is going on. The poem thus cultivates a feeling of suspension in which things are stuck in time, fixed in a state of endless anticipation. This, as you say, creates a sense of dissatisfaction that runs directly counter to the claims that the urn represents “More happy love! more happy, happy love!” (25). This tension makes the urn’s message vexed: one might say it is a “cold Pastoral” because it refuses to give us anything definitive to grasp onto even though it is a material object. Keats has thus taken something tangible (the urn) and made it intangible, an object that refuses to be pinned down and fully understood, a “silent form” that will “tease us out of thought” (44). There are several ways to read the end of the poem: by using a chiasmus, Keats may be repeating this suspension, suggesting that the balance between truth and beauty is the knowledge conveyed by the urn, a perfect knowledge that remains intangible like the form that conveys it. Or, the chiasmus might be designed to cancel out beauty and truth leaving an empty void. This may suggest the urn’s words are empty of meaning, and thus what ye need to know is not knowledge at all but the condition of suspension—always seeking but never fulfilled—that is presented on the urn and in the chiasmus itself.
ReplyDelete