Scarica John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn: Beauty as Truth and Truth as Beauty e più Appunti in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! Ode on a Grecian Urn, John Keats This ode starts from the description of the figures drawn in the urn, a work of art that cannot speak but the poet starts inquiring on the meaning and the story of it. All his questions remain unanswered, thus he understands what the urn conveys to us, that is beauty is the only true possible, it’s true itself (beauty is truth, truth beauty). This is the process which leads to negative capability: the poet gives up with his questions and with trying to solve all the mysteries and he focuses on the most important message of the urn. It is described as a Pindaric ode, even if it’s a 5 stanza ode and there is a rhyme scheme which is not the same in all the stanzas. I stanza The poet addresses the urn and personifies it because he talks to it as if it were a bride, a child or a historian. He looks at its figures and starts asking who they are and what they are doing, but he receives no answer and, in fact, the first words associated with it refer to silence. In this way we understand that the poet is aware of the fact that the urn cannot hear and talk. His imagination leads him to think that those people are Grecian and men are running after young women to embrace and kiss them. II and III stanza Some figures on the urn are playing an instrument but we can’t hear their melodies which are better than the ones we can actually hear thanks to imagination. This gives the idea that the senses are limited while imagination isn’t. it is mentioned a fair youth who is playing an instrument and, since he’s frozen in the urn, he will play on and on forever; likewise, the trees will never lose their leaves and it will be spring forever, and the young man who is trying to kiss the young girl will never kiss her, so his desire won’t be satisfied (the positive aspect is that the girl will be young and beautiful forever and their love will last forever). This is the limit of the urn: anything that is drawn cannot change or develop, it is made eternal. Therefore, a work of art is a form of immortality (Shakespeare thought the same about poetry, which is the through that can make something immortal). It emerges the idea that if the young man had managed to kiss the girl, his desire would have been satisfied but this would have left him with nothing to hope for because he would have reached his goal. In this sense being frozen is positive since hoping for a desire to be fulfilled is better than fulfilling that desire (the same theme of Leopardi’s Il sabato del villaggio, expecting for something to happen is better than the thing itself). IV stanza Again we get the idea that something which is frozen cannot change. He keeps on asking questions to which he isn’t given answers. He sees a group of people and a cow that are going, perhaps, to a sacrifice, but he wants to know who they are and where they are going to. He also realizes that the town they come from will always be empty because all people have gone somewhere and no one will never come back. V stanza He changes his attitude towards the urn, addressing it as an object (an Attic shape). He stops asking questions, given that they would remain unanswered, so, step by step, he makes us understand what negative capability is (ability to give up to have always certainties, to solve all mysteries). The urn is described as cold but a friend to men because, even if it’s different from us, it keeps an important message, a universal truth: a work of art is beauty, the contemplation of beauty leads to truth and the only truth is beauty.
