Keats’ Diction in the ode
“ON A GRECIAN URN”
Prof. M. R. VYAS
Among all the odes, the ode On a Grecian
Urn has been interpreted in various ways by different critics. The purpose
and its meaning, too, have been variously judged. We cannot discard the possibility
that Keats may have stored in his mind a particular work of Greek art, most
probably of the
“They pass’d, like
figures on a marble urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades
return.”
(
The urn which Keats describes in the ode,
however, may not be an actual one; it is an imaginative creation and it is his
individual invention, too. In this connection E. C. Pettet
says, “The urn itself is an imaginary one….In their organisation,
elaboration, and in the emotions and the modes of sensibility associated with
them, the scenes on the Grecian Urn are primarily of Keats’ own making”.1 In the ode, although the urn passes through
different stages, it remains the same throughout. The five stanzas of the ode
not only present a different world, but provide a possibility of achieving
permanent joy of life through a work of art.
In the very first stanza, we find a sense of
paradox. The urn speaks and expresses histories. However, we do not expect it
to speak. The use of the word “express” in the opening stanza and the word “say’st”
in the last stanza reveal that Keats has presented the urn as a historian who
utters truths of histories. However, the atmosphere that surrounds the urn
seems to be of silence. It has been emphasised with
the words “quietness” and “silence”. This atmosphere is, as it were, beyond
sound and beyond change, too. Keats addresses the urn directly and calls it
“still unravish’d bride of quietness”. The participial
adjective “unravish’d” endows the urn with a certain
tender, “virginal” mystery and freshness. The word “foster” in “foster-child”
suggests that the urn is not the actual creation of “silence” and “slow time”.
Some unknown artist may have created the urn, but “silence” and “slow time”
have nurtured and fostered it through the long centuries. The expressions “unravish’d” bride and “foster-child” further reveal a contrast,
in that the urn is young and fresh; while the parents – “silence”
and “slow time” – are old. Then the poet calls it a “sylvan
historian”. “What is a “sylvan historian?” asks Cleanth
Brooks. “A historian who is like the forest rustic, a woodlander? Or, a historian who writes histories of the forest? Presumably,
the urn is sylvan in both senses”. 2 We can also say that the
epithet “sylvan”, taken singly, in a sense anticipates the holy festivals and
lovers’ frolics in ancient times which form the theme of the stanzas that
follow. In a narrower sense, it refers to the flowers and leaves,
that are carved, on the urn. The word “legend” two lines later
strengthens these meanings by its dual sense of “story” or “history” and also
“inscription”.
The compound “leaf-fring’d”
has the Keatsean clarity of visual image, while the verb “haunts”;
through its sense of immaterial visitation conveys the opposite meaning of
uncertainty and mystery, a sense reinforced in the rest of the stanza through
the successive questions which turn the urn into something of lovable enigma.
The word “
“They lay calm-breathing on the bedded
grass”.
(St. II, I, 3)
Keats seems to suggest here the raptures of
joy one can seek in an atmosphere of “silence” and “quietness”. In order to
achieve such a joy one must listen carefully to the truths of the histories,
expressed by the beautiful urn. The “wild ecstasy” that concludes the stanza is
in apparent contrast with the “quietness” and “silence” mentioned in the first
two lines. Inwardly, however, the beginning and the end of the stanza are in
harmony, in the sense that both relate to a world apart and away from the world
of mundane experience: the world of art and imagination.
The power of the urn lies in its appeal to
the imagination rather than the senses. We move into the world presented by
the urn. The use of the words “unheard” and “no tone” further strengthen the
atmosphere of silence created by the opening lines of the ode. The music that
is “heard” appeals to the senses: it is sensuous. It is sweet and audible,
while the music that is “unheard” appeals to the spirit. It is sweeter and can
be heard in the silence of the contemplative imagination. This music comes
from the “soft pipes.” The word “soft” is used in various contexts by Keats.
Frequently, the word suggests the softness of flesh – of lips, breasts, hands. For example, in Endymion
both Peona and the Indian Maid have soft hands.
We find “soft hand” in the ode On Melancholy – “Emprison her soft hand” (St. II, I, 19). Keats combines the ideas of gentleness and
pleasing sensation when he uses the word “soft” for the agreeable influence of
sleep, as in “soft-closer of our eyes”.3 “Soft-embalmer
of the still midnight”. 4 However, Keats also has used “soft” to suggest gentle breeze in his
early poem Colidore :
“Softly the breezes
from the forest came,
Softly they blow aside
the taper’s flame.”
(St. II, 152-153)
In the ode To Autumn, too, the word describes the gentle action
of the wind.
“Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind.”
(St. II, I, 15)
Here also Keats has used the word “soft” to suggest pleasing sensations
that he wants the pipes to provide. The figures that were nameless in the
earlier stanza are made more clear in the lines that follow. There is a
handsome youth that plays the pipe beneath the trees. The song of the youth is
endless interminable – a
attainable only in the realm of art. The trees also will never be bare. Keats
here seems to escape from that
sorrowful realization of the ode On Malencholy – “Beauty that must die”.5 The beauty of the
figures and the trees that are carved on the urn will remain for ever
beautiful. Cleanth Brooks has rightly noted the
darker implications of the negatives in these lines when he says, “The beauty
portrayed is deathless because it is lifeless”. 6 an
idea he rightly links with the “cold pastoral” of stanza five.
If the maiden will remain beautiful forever,
then the lover will love her forever, too. But the lover will love his maiden
forever without kissing her. He is deprived of perfect happiness–joys of
kissing the maiden. A sense of paradox continues, it appears, as if Keats tries
to seek the kernel of beauty that is unfading – deathless – through an eternal song. Probably, all true art is immortal and
timeless and this fact Keats wants to emphasise
through the urn. For Keats the urn stands for permanent joy – “wild ecstasy.” The urn provides him an ideal
emblem, nunured and preserved by time, for eternity
and timelessness.
The lover’s dissatisfaction is shown through
the phrase – “never canst thou kiss.” But at the end of the stanza we find a
hope for the lover that he will love his maiden for ever, and she will remain
beautiful for ever, too. From the mood of despair–“never canst thou love”, and
“thou hast not thy bliss” –we move towards the consolation and hope – “She cannot face”
and “Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!” In the ode On Melancholy Keats has dealt with Beauty and her objects
“morning rose”, “ globed peonies” and the beautiful eyes of the mistress. However,
these objects fade soon. The beauty that is shown in that ode is fading – shortlived –
while the beauty that is projected on the urn here is
changeless – unfading. It
lasts for ever and hence is eternal.
Now we move into the deep forest where the
happy boughs cannot shed the leaves nor bid a farewell to the Spring. It is
implied that the leaves have become an inseparable part of the boughs. The
boughs seem to be happy in the season of Spring. They seem reluctant to send
out the leaves or bid a farewell to the Spring. The inability of the boughs to
shed their leaves is linked with the changeless beauty of the maiden. Spring symbolises the ever green nature. Spring is the season of
budding of new flowers and leaves. The use of the word “happy” many times – as many as six times – provides a sense of contrast with the weariness endemic to the mortal
world. Keats has expressed his theory or Pleasure Thermometer in his letter to
John Taylor (30 January, 1818): “…..When I wrote it (wherein lies Happiness?
….” Endymion I, 777-781), it was a
regular stepping of the Imagination towards a Truth. My having written that
Argument passage will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I
ever did. It set before me at once the gradations of Happiness even like a kind
of Pleasure Thermometer”.
7 After the “happy boughs” we have a “happy melodist”
who is unwearied.” Weariness is an inevitable part of the lot of human beings:
therefore they are deprived of happiness. The figures that are carved on the
urn are happy because they are “unwearied.” The word “happy” employed by Keats
does not suggest bodily passion that offers momentary pleasure; it suggests
eternal joy which keeps the melodist’s very song
“ever new” and the lover’s love “For ever warm.” On the one hand “happy love”
is “For ever warm,” and then it is “Still to be enjoy’d.”
According to Cleanth Brooks, “......the tenor of the
whole poem suggests that the warmth of the love depends upon the fact that it
has not been enjoyed – that is, ‘warm and still to be enjoy’d’ may mean also ‘warm because still to be enjoy’d’.” 8 The lover has not
thoroughly enjoyed the pleasure of a kiss, though he loves his maiden for ever.
The maiden thus is made the more to resemble the urn in being, as it were, the
“unravish” bride of quietness. The phrase “still to
be enjoy’d” suggests the virginal aspect of the
maiden and an unsatisfied sexual passion of the lover. The use of the word
“panting” further strengthens the warmth of love. The lover will remain young for
ever and also will feel the warmth of the love endlessly. Such love seems to be
out of reach for the human passion. It is above human passion: the word “above”
separates the two worlds – the world of human passion from the realm of
art or imagination. The “human passion” leaves the heart in a high-sorrowful
state and insatiated condition. As a result of this
the earthly fever grips the human passion. This fever is expressed through
“burning forehead,” and “a parching tongue.”
From the world of flowers and trees, leaves
and boughs we are now taken to the communal life in a nameless town. The scene
is of a sacrifice and a sacrificial procession. The procession includes the
young cow, the priest, and the worshippers. The town is nameless and dateless.
We cannot visualize a definite picture of the town: it may be a little town
that is situated near the river or on seashore or on a mountain. But it has got
a “peaceful citadel”. In fact the town is only imagined from the scene of the
procession as engraved on the urn. Yet there is one aspect of the town, not on
the urn that interests Keats especially. It is its desolation on the pious
morning. As the people move out in a procession led by a priest, its streets
turn empty and desolate. Here it appears that the atmosphere of silence which
prefigured earlier, now further intensifies in this stanza through such words
as, “emptied”, “peaceful”, “silent” and
“desolate”. From the forests, the silence is now spread in the world of men;
the sacrificial procession seems to be so important that everyone has gone
there to witness the sacrifice. The stanza begins with the people’s coming to
the sacrificial procession; it ends with the town emptied and desolate. The
description of the procession gets a decorative rather than realistic touch
through the phrased “...silken flanks with garlands drest”.
The urn once again occupies the centre in the last stanza. The word “shape to makes us
visualize the urn as an object of art. The word “Attic” suggests an age-old
relationship of the urn and the past stretching back to ancient Athens. The urn
is also addressed as “Fair attitude,” a phrase which not only singles it out as
a beautiful object, but also once again conveys through the apt use of the word
“attitude,” the idea of an action that is fixed or frozen, a theme that is
worked out in different ways in the five successive stanzas of this ode and
that finds its rather cryptic conclusion in the identification of beauty and
truth in its last but one line. The word “brede,”
combined with the verbal adjective “overwrought”, conveys the suggestion of
decorative engraving on the urn, and thereby strengthens the idea that the urn
is an object of art that stands apart in the realm of common earthly
experiences, and as such commands an order of perfection and harmony not
encountered elsewhere in the world. The men and women presented by the urn
seemed to be human beings in the third stanza.
“For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young.”
Now, however, these very figures – men and maidens – are of “marble” – Keats probably sees them as
being immortal because they are inhuman. The age will not tell on these figures
as they are frozen and fixed. The men and maidens are “overwrought, /
With forest branches and the trodden weed.” This is the decorative
aspect, which has been expressed earlier in “silken flanks with garlands drest.”
The urn appears to be such a silent form that
it teases us out of thought like eternity itself. Keats associates silence with
eternity. The urn stands for eternity. Why should the urn tea se us? We can
presume that as a sylvan historian the urn expresses the tale of the men and
maiden who are timeless and nameless. As Cleanth
Brooks puts it, “…like eternity, its history is beyond time, outside time, and
for this very reason bewilders our time-ridden minds: it teases us”. 9 The sylvan historian now turns into a “Cold-Pastoral”. The story of the
lovers is full of warm love that will remain young for ever. It also presents
the lively picture of the sacrificial procession. Despite this the urn itself
remains cold. It is described as a “Pastoral” to suggest the simple and natural
life of the people it presents. The tale which the urn recites continues from
one generation to other. Although the generation passes, the urn will remain
forever young and fresh even amidst the woes of human beings. The life of men
and women on the earth seems to be full of sorrows and sufferings. The only
solace comes to the human beings from the urn itself that remains “a friend to
man.” The urn, however, remains unaffected, even though it lives in the mortal
world. As a historian, it tells the truth that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
Beauty and truth here seem to mingle with each other and then become
inseparable.
The last two lines of the ode have aroused
different opinions regarding their meaning. According to T. S. Eliot “…this
line (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all”)
strikes...as a serious blemish”.10 William Empson finds “... that the last lines with their brash
attempt to end with a smart bit of philosophy have not got enough knowledge
behind them, and are flashy in the same way”. 11 A point of dispute regarding the lines beginning
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
concerns the question as to who speaks the lines to whom! Is it the poet or the
urn? If we take the urn to be “a friend to men,” then it has every right to
utter these lines. The utterance seems to be a solace for the suffering
humanity. It is a truth that has come from the age long experience of the urn.
Man should know this truth if he wants to achieve permanent happiness. This is
the only truth which exists on the earth which mankind should know. Cleanth Brooks says, “...it is the only kind that we have
to have”. 12 The relation between beauty and truth seems
to have exercised the mind and art of Keats throughout his life. In his letters
Keats has made a reference to this point in at least two different places. In
his letter to Benjamin Bailay (22 November, 1817) he
wrote: “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections
and the truth of Imagination–What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be
truth”. 13 A month later he wrote to George and Tom Keats (21 December, 1817): “The
excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close
relationship with Beauty and Truth”.14 Keats in the last lines of
the ode seems to go one step further. He thinks beauty with truth in such a
manner that both become inseparable. The idea has been summed up by H. W. Garrod in this manner: “...There is nothing real but the
beautiful, and nothing beautiful but the real”. 15 By “Truth” Keats
implies reality which underlies all experience. It is the central essence of
life. Beauty for Keats in the ode On a Grecian Urn is not a sensuous
beauty that fades and dies and provides but a momentary pleasure. The word is
used here in a fuller aesthetic sense for a beauty which is changeless and is a
source of eternal happiness for men. Kenneth Muir believes that, “In the last
stanza Keats proclaims that the sorrows and the meaninglessness of life can be
transcended if we learn the lesson of the Urn, that “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty”. 16
The ode On a Grecian Urn, among all
the odes, is “his maturest work”. 17 It is mature in many ways. It is written during the best period of
Keats’ poetic life. Nowhere else, in the odes of course, has he touched the
subject of Beauty that is changeless and unperishable.
In the marble urn he has visualised the beauty which
is deathless. The figures that are carved
on the urn stand for changeless beauty. “She cannot fade” and “For ever a wilt
thou love” are suggestions of a beauty which is unfading and unperishable. Similarly, the song which the melodist produces will remain “for ever new.” as the melodist is “unwearied.” This song is “unheard” and
therefore is sweeter as it appeals to the spirit of man rather to the “sensual ear.” The love of the lover
is “For ever warm and still to
be enjoy’d.” The lover will remain young “forever”
and his love too, warm “forever.” These figures – men and maidens – are of marble: they are above human passion and therefore immortal. If
they were human then they would be subject to decay and death. Nature – the trees, the boughs, and the leaves – are also changeless: for the trees can never be bare; the boughs cannot
shed their leaves, nor would they ever bid farewell to Spring. The mortal men
can achieve the changeless beauty represented by the urn if they know the truth
that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” In the ode Keats has sought and realized
a beauty that is imperishable and so gives enduring happiness to men who live
in time. The poem itself, even as it celebrates the manifold beauty of the urn
and suggest its rich significance for the imagination of man, turns into an object of beauty, an object of art
that is a source of permanent joy for the readers. And the choice and
patterning of the words in the ode are the primary means by which Keats has
achieved this dual success.
1 E. C. Pettet, On the Poetry of Keats. Cambridge Univ. Press. 1957. Pp. 317-318.
2 Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn. London
University Paperback, 1949. P. 127.
3 Sleep and Poetry, 1, 11.
4 To Sleep I,
1.
5 Ode on
Melancholy, III, 1.
6 Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn. (1949)
P. 129.
7 Hyder Rollins, Ed. The Letters of John Keats, 1814-1821.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. 1958. P. 218. Hereafter cited as Letters
I, 218.
8 Cleanth Brooks, The Well Wrought Urn (1949) P. 130.
9 Cleanth Brooks, P. 133.
10 T. S. Eliot, Selected
Essays, (1932). Rpt in G. S. Fraser Ed. John Keats: Odes. London MacMillan. 1971. P. 128.
11 William Empson. The Structure of Complex Words. (1931) Rpt.
in G. S. Fraser Ed. John Keats: Odes. (1971). P. 130.
12 The Well Wrought Urn (1949). P. 134.
13 Letters, I, P.
184.
14 Ibid, P. 192.
15 H. O. Garrod, Keats,
2nd Ed. Rpt. Oxford: Clarendon. Press, 1939. P. 103.
16 Kenneth Muir Ed. John Keats: A
Reassessment (1958) Rpt. in G. S. Fraser Ed. John Keats Odes (1971).
P. 229.
17 C. M. Bowrd, The Romantic Imagination. London : Oxford
Univ. Press (1950). 6th imp. 1973. P. 127.