Ode to a Grecian urn Flashcards
Form
Ode - a poem of praise, lyrical in tone
Ekphrastic poem - a vivid description of a work of art
“Grecian Urn”
- Urn is not a real life urn, instead Keats creates his own idealised imaginary urn - creates a universal appeal
“Urn” - theme of morality, contrast between art being eternal and humanity being transient
“Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness”
- Directly addressing the urn
Urn is being personified as pure, image of a woman before her wedding night (being married to quietness) - Urn is presented as mysterious - as it is from a distant time
- Art represents ideas of purity and innocence
“Foster-child of silence and slow time”
- Urn is further personified as being taken care of by silence and slow time
- Urn as a survivor of time, timeless
“Sylvan historian”
“Sylvan” - wooded/rural
Urn personified as a historian of the ancient rural world
Rural world is idealised and glamorised
“Who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme”
- Urn reveals a pastoral image - idyllic
- Urn is being celebrated - the power of art as being greater than poetry
“What leaf fring’d legend haunts about thy shape”
- Image of spirits, from a distant time
- The images on the urn are presented as ghosts of the past
“In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?”
- Keats debating whether the Urn is depicting which idealised locations
“Arcady” - Home of Gods, Keats as uncertain whether the urn is representing humanity or deity - Further enhances the urn’s mystery
“What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”
- increasing pace of rhetorical questions, conveys Keats growing interest
- Representation of an ancient myth/ ritual? Highlights mystery and how Keats doesn’t fully understand
“Hard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter”
- Paradoxical idea - Negative capabilities
- Idea that music he cant hear will in his imagination always sound better - imagination creates things of great beauty
- Idealised image of art
“Pipe to the spirit”
- Praising art
- Art elevates the human spirit
“Fair youth”
“Never canst thou kiss”
“Nor ever can those trees be bare”
- People depicted will forever be young
- Lovers will forever remain in that moment of anticipation
- Image of art as eternal - forever depicting an idealised image
- However, they are trapped eternally - this raises contrasts in how the image may not be truly ideal as the lovers relationship is never able to develop further
“Happy, happy boughs”
- Repetition, art is presented as static
- Preserved ideal
“Nor ever bid the Spring adieu”
“Happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new”
- Speaker is expressing a longing for everything to be joyous
- Music will always be preserved and the seasons will always stay the same
“That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue”
- Presented as overwhelmed by the beauty being eternally constant
- Idea that humans would feel pain living in the ideal world eternally
“Who are coming to the sacrifice?”
“Lowing at the skies”
- Darker shift in tone
- Theme of sacrifice and ancient rituals - otherworldly beliefs
- Urn is further presented as mysterious - cultural differences from being such a distant image
“Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?”
- Mournful and melancholy tone
- Image of people leaving the village for sacrifice - however, they will never return as this is a work of art
“thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can ne’er return”
- Empty image
- Speaker feels distant as he will never have the opportunity to communicate with these people
“O Attic shape! Fair attitude!”
- Poetic atmosphere
- Attic - something from Athens
- Beautiful appearance
“Tease us out of thought
As doth eternity”
- Simile
- Speaker feels they have gained an understanding of eternity
- But feels frustrated that the vase doesn’t allow him to fully understand it
“Cold pastoral”
- Oxymoron
cold - distance, long time ago
pastoral - a warm life
“In midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man”
- Urn is personified as providing solace, as it is eternal and not changing
- Idea that there will always be sadness throughout history
” “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty, – that is all
Ye on earth, and all ye need to know” “
- Voice of the urn - represents a higher truth? Humanity is unable to fully explain
- Chiasmus - creates the impression that truth and beauty are equal
- Interconnection between art and the human experience
- Romantic idea that truth is subjective - and so we create it through beauty
Context
- Written after Keats’ brother’s death, could be seeking consolation in the eternity of art
- Romantic context
