Concetti Chiave
- The poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by Keats explores themes of eternity and beauty through the depiction of scenes on an ancient urn.
- In the first stanza, the urn is described as a silent, eternal object, sparking curiosity about the stories behind the depicted figures.
- The second stanza contrasts the eternal love depicted on the urn with the fleeting nature of human love, emphasizing the timelessness of art.
- A religious scene in the fourth stanza portrays a static procession, highlighting a sense of desolation and contrasting with other lively scenes.
- The poem concludes with the notion that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," suggesting that art's beauty holds a deeper truth than transient life.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Introduction
Keats has seen this object in the British Museum (is a container where Greeks put the ashes, decorated with religious and pastoral scenes).
Ode
Classical poem, written with a high language.
Introduction by Fitzgerald
‘Poetry I something you feel, something like a fire or a bore. The Grecian Urn is something ‘unverably beautiful’ or something you just don’t understand.’
Summary
Ode on a Grecian Urn is divided into five stanzas.
1) In the first stanza, the speaker addresses an ancient Grecian urn.
2) In the second stanza, the poet looks at another picture of a young man playing a pipe with his lover.
He could not ever kiss his lover, time is stopped but his melodies will last forever and their love too. Unlike mortal love, that is a cycle of desire, fulfillment, satiety, decay.
3) Happiness is only possible in the world of forever.
4) In the fourth stanza, the poet looks another picture on the urn, a religious scene ( sense of desolation, this time). There is a procession with an heifer to be sacrificed. He thinks where they came from – a little town- and where they are going to do their sacrifices.
Static scene, juxtapose to the other scene.
5) In the fifth stanza, the speaker addresses the urn saying that the urn will remain forever.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”: beauty is truer than life, even if is frozen.
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