BEAUTY
AND TRUTH
AN
OUTLOOK ON KEATS’ “ODE ON A GREECIAN URN”
E.
BHARADWAJA
“On
a Greecian Urn” is unlike most other odes of Keats in
several respects. In most of the other odes Keats addresses beauty and the
beautiful things in nature. In a way even the one on melancholy eventually
falls into the same category. In the ode “On a Greecian
Urn” he addresses a work of art which has once and for all captured the
beauty of Nature in one piece of art, the urn. And it is only in this ode that
the world of arts speaks with the world of man, the world of life, in the last
two lines. While most of the other odes voice only the poet’s anguish at the transcience of love, youth, beauty and joy in
life-in-nature, in this poem the work of art, the urn, acts as a friend to man
and comforts him with the wisdom–
“Beauty
is truth, truth beauty–That’s all
Ye
know on earth and ye need to know”
The
poem itself springs from a recognition of a paradox
which underlies the world of man. Human life longs for lasting beauty and joy.
The beauty and joy we find in nature and life only serve to rouse and intensify
this yearning and end in redoubled sorrow caused by their evanescence and they
leave
“…..a
heart high, sorrowful and cloy’d
A
burning forehead and a parching tongue.”
The
man of keen aesthetic awareness would fly “on the viewless wings of poesy” and
capture moments of surpassing beauty in life and nature in his art and render
them permanent. Keats himself provides instances of this in his odes. Thus art
which is a product of transient life renders beauty and joy which are
evanescent permanent. Out of a recognition of this
paradox springs the poem “On a Greecian Urn”.
The
awareness of this paradox is suggested by the very choice of the urn as the
subject of the poem. For, any other work of plastic art could have served the
poet to convey the rest of his meaning as well. And an urn is a vessel which is
intended to contain the mortal remains of a departed soul. As a work of art it
is a symbol of man’s artistic or moral triumph over his transience in life and
nature. As the preserver of the ashes, it remains a “silent form”, a “bride of
quietness”; as the preserver of beauty in art it sings “to the
spirit”, “unheard melodies” which are even sweeter than the heard melodies”. It
is no wonder then that art, in the person of the urn speaks of Life, like a
comforting friend amidst its “woes”. It tells man that the only lasting Truth
that we can grasp from life is the beauty of art. And this is the only true
beauty that man can ever hope for and he needs to hope for. Only art can say
what Shakespeare said to his friend and patron in his “Sonnets”:
“So
long as men can breathe and eyes can see
So
long lives this and this gives life to thee.”
Has
not the Urn given life eternal to the panting lovers, the “soft pipes”, and a
whole crowd of ancient Greek rustics proceeding to a sacrifice? May be even the
gods of Tempe–Apollo and the Muses–as
well as the men of
How does the “silent form” accomplish this? It is by teasing us “out of thought”; for “to think is to be full of sorrow” (“Ode to a Nightingale”). The urn could do it only because it is a “cold pastoral.” Whatever utters or sings its joy cannot accomplish so much. The “songs of spring” (“To Autumn”) pass away and the “music too” of Autumn cannot say or accomplish this much. Even the song of the Nightingale could not do it; it needed Keats to “fly” “on the viewless wings poesy” in order to fancy that the bird was “not born for death” even then he has to quickly realize that…….“fancy cannot that so well.”
Keats
the poet himself is sure that he cannot do it through his song and so he
confesses that the urn can “express”–
“A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.”
Thus
the urn accomplishes the unique function of immortalizing beauty and making it
the only Truth that could or need be aspired for. This triumph of art is made
most telling in the passage referring to the “little town”
“What
little town by river or sea-shore
Or
mountain built with peaceful citadel,
Is
emptied of its 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.”
Not
a soul can say why the little town is desolate. And as Walter Jackson Bate
explains, It is not simply because the figures are
forever imprisoned on the urn that no one can ever return to the empty town but
because the actual inhabitants disappeared in the remote past–a past from which
no one remains except as figures on an urn in other works of art.” And what all
those persons could not do, the urn has done; it has told Keats why the town is
empty. And in doing so the urn has actually done to the inhabitants of the town
what Shakespeare promises to do to his patron-friend in the lines from his
sonnet quoted above. Indeed it has done the same for
“Sylvan
historian, who can’t thus express
A
flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme’
And
if the critics are remembered by posterity as such it is on account of the urn
of Keats’ poem and not the other way round.
In
short the last two lines of the poem are not merely those of the urn but of all
plastic arts in general and through them, that of all art. If art does not say–
“Beauty
is truth, truth Beauty–that is all
Ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
What
else can it say? And what else is art expected to say without ceasing to be
art? If the urn ceases to say what it does, all art ceases, and with it the
only hope of giving permanence to beauty and joy which man has. The sole aim
and hope of all mankind would be defeated. And in speaking out this invaluable
truth, is not the urn the true and only friend of man though critics seem to
dislike its saying it? And what else is more appropriate to be said by the urn
which is the “still unravished bride quietness,” and
which is, like the lady in one of the pictures on the
urn–
“Forever warm and still to be enjoy’d
Forever panting
and forever young.”
Going a step further, did the urn utter the last two lines of the poem at all? It is “a
cold pastoral”, the “silent form” and could not have “said” it. The lines only represent the “unheard melodies” the “soft
urn sings to the spirit and the essential truth of the saying lies in the urn being what it says both in its beauty and truthfulness.
There is another possible way of viewing the words that
the urn is supposed to utter to future generations. I suggest that besides the
pictures described in the fourth stanza of the poem the urn should be taken to
be bearing these two concluding lines of the poem as an inscription engraved on
it. For such a thing is quite in keeping with ancient Greek custom of
urn-making. Walter Jackson Bate has come very close to saying this: “The final
two lines are in the vein of the inscriptions on Greek monuments addressed to
the passing stranger.” Thus realistically taking it, it is the ancient maker of
the urn that has made the statement by inscribing it on the urn; and he himself
had gone into dust; this is the additional
force behind the poet’s address “Thou Foster child of silence and slow time”;
this “Foster child of silence and slow time” bears out the truth of the saying by its own beauty and
permanence; and in making such an urn, its maker too demonstrated the truth of his own statement. It is only because the urn could make such a
statement and because of the sublime truth of the statement itself, we may
fancy, that “slow time” and
“silence” consented to become its foster-parents and took all care to preserve it, especially time, which is usually
the destroyer of all things.
Three points have emerged from the above consideration:
1. That the main theme of the poem is not merely the statement
that “Art is long and life is short”; besides it is that plastic art is superior
to all other arts like music and poetry.
2. That the last two
lines of the ode are not merely approriate;
they are even essential to the
poem.
3. That lines 39
to 41 do not carry “an undertone of sadness, of disappointment” which Sidney Colvin
calls “a dissonance”; and that the expression “cold pastoral” is not
expressive of Keats’ dissatisfaction with urn’s want of human feeling which,
according to Prof. Garrod, contradicts the general tenor of the earlier part of the poem.
The feeling expressed in both the cases is quite the contrary; it is one of joy and marvel at what a lifeless marble could achieve.