Urn As Keats example essay topic

How John Keats used Symbolism in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn" John Keats was born in 1795 in Moorfields, England. He was the son of a stableman who married the owner's daughter and eventually inherited the stable for himself. He was fourteen when his mother died of tuberculosis. Having been apprenticed to an apothecary at the age of fifteen, John felt the need to leave medical field to focus primarily poetry. Keats's imagery ranges from all of our physical sensations: sight, touch, sound, taste, and sexuality.

Keats is one of the most famous for his Odes. Traditionally, the ode is lengthy, serious in subject, elevated in its diction and style, and often elaborate in its stanza structure. "Symbolism seems the obvious term for the dominant style which followed nineteenth-century realism" (Well ek 251). According to an article found in Jstor journal, written by Vyacgeslav Ivanov, titled, Symbolism, "symbols are far from being an invention and convention of mankind, constitute in the universe, all pulsating with life, a primordial imprint in the very substance of things and, and it were, an occult language by means of which is achieved a preordained communion of innumerable kindred spirits, no matter how these spirits may differ in their individual modes of existence or whether they belong to different orders of creation" (Ivanov 29). Keats uses symbolism in "Ode to a Grecian Urn" to illustrate his love for ancient Greece. "Ode to a Grecian Urn' was written by John Keats at some unknown date.

"The Urn, as Keats described it, was a classical vase, decorated with a frieze of engraved figures in scenes from pastoral life. In reality it was more than any particular vase which he had seen on his museum excursions with Haydon or Severn. The Grecian Urn represented poetic vision, the timeless, enchanted world into which the artist's imagination alone can enter", as stated in Robert Gittings and Jo Manton's book titled The Story of John Keats (Gittings and Manton, pg. 148). In this poem Keats wants to create a world of pure joy, but the world is of make believed of people living in a moment in time. In an article titled, "Thought is sacrificed to sensation in the poetry of John Keats", author Iain Morrison states that "Existing in a frozen or suspended time, they cannot move or change, nor can their feelings change, yet the unknown sculptor has succeeded in creating a sense of living passion and turbulent action".

Stanza I begin slowly. The silence of the urn is stressed, it is the "un ravish'd bride of quietness". Symbolism is used to compare the urn as a "foster-child of silence. Keats makes use of time and motion with the word "still". Although the urn exists in the real world, which is subject to change and time, the urn and the life that it represents are unchanging. Hence, the bride is "un ravish'd" and as a "foster" child, the urn is touched by "slow time", not the time of the real world.

Because the urn is a thing, and the figures are carved on the urn, it is not bind by time; therefore, the urn may be changed or affected over "over slow time". According to author Jack Stillinger, in a book titled Twentieth Century Interpretations of Keats's Odes, "In the first line of the poem Keats pointedly enunciates the duality of his theme in a metaphor whose dual functions are neatly balanced. By addressing the urn as a "still un ravished bride of quietness", 'he suggests its changeless un generative descent through the ages, it does not reproduce itself, remains the itself and transmits itself and its meaning directly (Stillinger, pg. 49). Line 3 makes reference to the "Sylvan historian". Keats is symbolizing the border of leaves that encircles the vase. This "Sylvan historian" holds all of the answers to the past that this urn is representing.

The urn can express "a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme", and what the urn goes on to express is a "Leaf-firing'd legend" of "Tempe or the dales of Arcady". The urn utters history. In lines 8-10 the sylvan historian supplies no names and dates, "What men or gods are these?" The last scene is one of violent lovemaking. The use of pipes and timbrels symbolize the violence of "what wild ecstasy?" In addition, line 5 discusses the shape of the urn, "what leaf-firing'd legend haunts about thy shape".

Stillinger suggests that the word shape in this context is highly significant. Is it only a "legend", a story in picture that haunts about its form? These lines evoke images of distress and anguish (Stillinger, pg 50). Stanza II we move into the world symbolized by the urn.

The first four lines are paradoxical. How can unheard music be sweeter than any audible music? Line one and two "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter", are oxymoron. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, can the unheard be the same as the heard?

Again Keats has used symbolism in line 2, "ye soft pipes, play on", to suggest that the pipes are playing very softly. If we listen carefully, we can hear them. The last six lines of stanza II symbolize the lovers under the tree; the lover cannot leave his songs, the maiden, always to be kissed, never actually kissed, will remain changelessly beautiful. The maid is like the urn, a "still un ravished bride of quietness", not even ravished by a kiss.

This stanza, Stanza, is a recapitulation of the preceding two stanzas and it reintroduces some figures, the trees which can't shed leaves, the musician, and the lover. Keats portrays the ideal life on the urn as one without disappointment and suffering. The love scenes on the urn remain warm and young because it is not human flesh at all, but cold, ancient marble. The urn symbolic depiction of passion may be human, but it is also "all breathing passion far above" because it is unchanging. The tenor of the whole poem suggests that the warmth of the love depends upon the fact that it has not been enjoyed, that it is "warm and still to be enjoy'd may mean also "warm because still to be enjoy'd".

The love in a line earlier was "warm" and "panting" becomes suddenly in the next line, "All breathing human passion far above". With Stanza IV the scenes presented here form a contrast to the earlier scenes. The viewer of this urn sees more than is portrayed. These scenes constitute another chapter in the history that the "Sylvan historian" has to tell.

These scenes represent a communal life. We are given three possible locations for this town. This town is created through imagination and symbolism. This little town is remote, silent, and charming. Finally, Stanza 5 the poet sees the urn as a whole and remembers his vision. The first line marks a shift in the point of view of observing the urn with the apostrophe "O Attic shape."Cold Pastoral" symbolizes warmth and the natural and the informal as well as the idyllic.

The urn is cold, and life beyond the urn has been formed and arranged. The marble men and maidens of the urn will never age as flesh and blood women will, "when old age shall this generation waste". The marble men and women lie outside time. The urn will remain.

The final two lines contain the famous words, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty", that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know". The beauty lies in the urn. "What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth", as stated by Catherine Owens Peare, author of a book titled John Keats a Portrait in Words. "John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" was both inevitable and incredible.

It was inevitable that he should by now have struggled free of the sonnet with its fourteen-line prejudice to create this ten-line stanza and its two pairs of lines and two sets of triple rhymes, inevitable that in developing his own style he should have resolved his philosophic search at this his period of most superb creativity" (Peare, pg. 174). Douglas Wilson's article in Jstor titled "Reading the Urn: Death in Keats's Arcadia,"Like Blake's "Mental Traveler" and so many other Romantic poems, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" invites the reader into a landscape of consciousness. As S.T. Coleridge puts it, the primary function of the poetic work, like the visual language of painting, is "to instill energy into the mind, which compels the imagination to complete the picture. The ode's speaker responding to an imaginary urn conjures up, as part of a mental dram, the underside of a vanished culture that created such urns" (Wilson 823).