Roll no- 19
Year - 2015-17
M.A
Semester - 2
Paper no. (5) The Romantic Literature
Email Id: - vaidehi09hariyani@gmail.com
Assignment
topic:
Analysis on “Ode on a Grecian Urn” – John
Keats
Submitted
to: Dr. Dilip Barad,
Smt.S.B.GARDI
DEPARTMENT
OF ENGLISH,
MAHARAJA KRISHNAKUMARSINHJI BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY,
BHAVNAGAR, GUJARAT.
John Keats:-
John Keats (31
October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of
the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord
Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for
only four years before his death.
In 1819,
John Keats composed six odes, which are among his most famous and well-regarded
poems. They are
1.)
"Ode
on a Grecian Urn"
2.)
"Ode on Indolence"
3.)
"Ode on Melancholy"
4.)
"Ode to a Nightingale"
5.)
"Ode
to Psyche"
6.)
“Ode
to Autumn”
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in 1819 and published in
1820.
Now before we proceed further, let’s take a look on
What is an Ode?
Ode itself is of Greek origin. It is a short lyrical
composition proper to be set to music or sung. It is a lyric poem characterised
by sustained noble sentiments and appropriate dignity of style.
In 1918, Keats had attempted to write sonnets, but he found
that form did not satisfy his purpose because the pattern of the rhyme worked
against the tone that he wanted to achieve. When he turned to ode form, he
found that the standard “Pindaric” form used by poets such as John Dryden, but
it was inadequate for proper discussion of philosophy. So, Keats developed his
own type of ode in “Ode to Grecian urn.” Odes were one of the classical verse forms reintroduced and
experimented with in the Romantic period. Romantic odes were often used in
meditative tributes. This ode consists of five 10-line stanzas, each composed
of a quatrain followed by a sestet. The quatrains have an ABAB rhyme scheme,
sometimes employing off-rhymes. The sestets have a rhyme scheme that varies. On
the printed page, the lines in the sestet that rhyme are indented by the same
amount. The base meter of Ode is iambic pentameter.
1 Stanza:-
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
haunts 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 first four lines serve to present the urn first as a
bride, then as a foster-child, then as a historian. These comparisons are
productive, if fully visualized. It is a foster child of silence and slow time,
since it is passing so slowly that it has not been able to destroy the
grandness of the urn. Just as a bride remains calm and quiet, maintaining her
beauty so also the urn remains undisturbed and untarnished for a long time. The
poet sees the urn which has been standing at its place for many years
untarnished by weather etc. he calls it a bride of quietness, a foster child of
silence and slow time and a woodland historian. The urn is an as yet unravished
bride of quietness. It is not a wife. This may mean that the pictures and
engravings on the urn are as sharp as the day it was made; if it had been
ravished by quietness, the figures on the urn might not speak to the poem's
speaker as strongly as they do. The urn is an adopted child of silence and slow
time. This may refer to the urn as a product of the business and industry of an
artisan's workshop that now, probably in a museum, stands separate from the
bustle and noise of human life.
2nd Stanza:-
Heard melodies are sweet,
but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes,
play on;
Not to the sensual ear,
but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the
trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be
bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the
goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not
thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love and she
be fair!
‘Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter ,
therefore, ye soft pipes, play on!’ because in heard music there is no place
for a flight of imagination, while in unheard music fancy gets a free play.
Imagination gives an exquisite sweetness and richness which can never found in
the heard music. unheard music appeals to the soul, it has spiritual, not the
physical appeal. The
imagery in stanza 2 is straightforward, yet it is used to express complex
ideas: unheard melodies are sweeter than heard melodies, so "pipe to the
spirit ditties of no tone"; the lover who will never kiss, yet who will
love forever. The "sweeter unheard melodies" is an expression of the
speaker's great respect for imagination. Few of us would suggest that it is
better to imagine hearing great music than to actually hear it. The whole
stanza seems a tribute to the imagined ideal as being greater than the actual
could ever be. Or perhaps it is a tribute to the process of imagining as being
greater than any of its products.
3rd Stanza:-
Ah, happy, happy boughs!
that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring
adieu;
And, happy melodist,
unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more
happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever
young;
All breathing human
passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and
cloy'd,
A burning forehead and a
parching tongue
It tells about Keats’s feeling that he is extremely unhappy.
This expresses the difference between life and reality. The green trees will
never shed their leaves and will enjoy the perpetual summer. The melodies will
always remain young and his song will remain ever fresh and new. The urn is
record of lovely yet fatal enchantment.
4th Stanza:-
Who are these coming to
the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious
priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer
lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with
garlands drest?
What little town by river
or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful
citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this
pious morn?
And, little town, thy
streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er
return.
Imagery of sacrifice:
- There he sees as scene of sacrifice where people are going in large number,
and wonder who these people are. There is the priest going with the people. He
calls him mysterious because he knows the secret reason of offering sacrifice.
5th Stanza:-
O Attic shape! Fair
attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and
the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out
of thought
As doth eternity: Cold
Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation
waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of
other woe
Than ours, a friend to
man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth
beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye
need to know."
The word "pastoral" suggests warmth, spontaneity,
the natural and the informal as well as the idyllic, the simple, and the
informally charming. The urn itself is cold, and the life beyond life which it
expresses is life which has been formed, arranged.
And the description of "cold pastoral" is pitch
perfect. It's a summary of the whole paradox fashioned so carefully in the
piece: a cold, inanimate surface (the urn) that depicts a warm, lively scene (a
pastoral).
When the urn says "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"
then, Brooks wants us to keep our eyes open for irony. It's a "cold
pastoral," and a "silent form" that "say'st" riddles.
So we probably shouldn't trust the urn to be honest with us, and take
"beauty is truth, truth beauty" at face value.
The beauty of the scene on the urn
isn't quite real, is it? But we loved it nonetheless.
Cleanth Brooks defines the paradox that
is the theme of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" somewhat differently:
"the world of imagination offers a release from the painful world of
actuality, yet at the same time it renders the world of actuality more painful
by contrast. “
Douglas Bush noted that "Keats's important
poems are related to, or grow directly out of...inner conflicts."
Pain and
pleasure are intertwined in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and; love is intertwined
with pain, and pleasure.
Conflicts
observed in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:-
1.)
Transient
sensation or passion / enduring art.
2.)
Dream or vision / reality.
3.)
Joy
/ melancholy.
4.)
The
ideal / the real.
5.)
Mortal
/ immortal.
6.)
Life
/ death.
7.)
Separation
/ connection.
8.)
Being
immersed in passion / desiring to escape passion.
9.)
Identity
is an issue.
Keats' Theory of
Negative Capability
“'The concept of Negative
Capability is the ability to contemplate the world without the desire to try
and reconcile contradictory aspects or fit it into closed and rational
systems.”
“Negative
Capability” — the willingness to embrace uncertainty, lives with mystery,
and makes peace with ambiguity.
The excellence of every
Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporate, from their
being in close relationship with beauty & truth. Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in
uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact
& reason, with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
Keats' theory of
"negative capability" is concerned with a particular state of poetic
receptivity that makes literary creation possible. It concentrates on capturing
the intensity of emotion and communicating this feeling via the imagination.
This involves a key
action: the poet must throw himself into an object in order to obliterate his
personal identity. The purpose of this is to fuse emotional intensity
with the object so that the object becomes symbolic of the emotions.
This complete fusion of
poet and thing is so intense that all "disagreeable," all
associations that are not particularly relevant to the poet’s key insight are
displaced.
As a result, the beauty
and the truth that are present there are a union of the perceived object and
the poet’s emotions. This is especially important to Keats because it removes
the need to establish a kind of scientific certainty; instead, the poet (and audience)
reveal in the mystery, the undefined ambiguities. It represents openness to
experience. Keats' theory breaks down as the following:
1.)
Imagination
communicates an intense emotion.
2.)
The
poet gives up personal identity to focus on the object being described.
3.)
As
a result, the object becomes symbolic of these intense emotions.
4.)
And
all other matters not important to this emotion are side-lined.
5.)
The
poem's beauty/truth is a combination of poetic emotion and perceived object.
6.)
This
leaves open the enjoyment of mystery because the poem is a subjective truth.
The urn in "Ode to a Grecian
Urn," is an object that speaks a truth and a beauty, but that truth and
beauty are understood by the negative capability of the artist. The urn's
message is one that is finally open-ended and mysterious.
“Ode on a
Grecian urn” is one of the most remarkable Odes by John Keats.
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