1795 - 1821
John Keats 1819
painted by his friend Joseph Severn
• A man in his midtwenties
• wearing a dark coat
• sitting on a hill
• one leg resting over
another
• his head slightly
tilted as if listening
• behind him a little
hill
• A silent landscape
John Keats
dying
by Joseph
Severn
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English protestant cimitery in
Rome, Keats ‘s and Severn’s tomb
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
After a life of tragedies Keats turned to poetry,
Imbued with a sense of melancholy, death and
Mortality.
It was conceived as:
 the only means to defeat and overcome death.
Poetry should spring naturally from his inner soul
 it didn’t have to contain a message or convey a
philosophical theory but only to reproduce what
his own imagination suggested to him…and
Beauty struck his imagination
A. Archer (1819), The Temporary Elgin Room in the British Museum :
Lord Elgin transported these Parthenon marbles into England and sold
them to the British Museum (1803 - 1813)
Elgin marbles
ELGIN MARBLES
“Every time he [Keats] went with Severn to the
Sculpture Galleries, or to Picture Exhibitions, he
learned something or gained some suggestive
hint...He went again and again to see the Elgin
marbles, and would sit for an hour or more at a
time beside them rapt in revery. ..with eyes
shining so brightly and face so lit up by some
visionary rapture…”
(Sharp’s biography of Keats)

SOSIBIOS VASE 50B.C.
(Louvre)
main themes:
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His experience committed him to search for
something unchangeable to balance the
transience of life.
Real perfection doesn’t lie in life itself, which is
subject to the passing of time, but in the
immortality of art. The eternity of art can be the
illusion for the poet, but he can’t avoid suffering
for the laws of life
Beautiful things will never die but will keep
demonstrating their beauty for all time.
Tthe contemplation of Beauty is the only
consolation in a life of sorrow and sadness
“ A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever”
He was the forerunner
of the
Aesthetic Movement
“ Art for Art’s sake”
Oscar Wilde
First known copy transcribed
by Keats in 1820
Type of poem: lyric poem
 Type of lyric poem: ode

the "Romantic meditative ode."
It is a complex meditation on the
relationship between
ART and LIFE
 the atmosphere is full of feelings and
emotions.
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Keats's ode seeks to find a "classical
balance" between two extremes :
1.
2.
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the symmetrical structure of classical literature
the asymmetry of Romantic poetry.
The use of the ABAB structure in the beginning
lines of each stanza represents a clear
example of structure found in classical
literature
the remaining six lines appear to break with the
traditional poetic styles of Greek and Roman
odes
The first four lines of each stanza roughly
define the subject of the stanza, and the last six
explicate or develop it.
This Ode is
1.
2.
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composed of five stanzas of ten lines
each
divided in 3 parts:
the first three stanzas describing one
side of the urn
stanza 4 describing the other side of the
urn
the conclusion
Imagination
makes the vase
live again
Time
Motion
The narrator
addresses the urn by
saying:
The Urn is out of time, to underline this
concept he uses 3 abstract words:
Quietness
Silence
Slow Time
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness!
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time
1. because it is created from stone
and It is silent but it can communicate
better than words
2. As stone, time has little effect on it and it is such a
slow process that it can be seen as an eternal piece
of art
• because a border of leaves
encircles the vase
• because the scene carved on the urn
is set in woods.
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
The urn is capable of
producing a story out of the
time of its creation
personification:
bride
foster –child
sylvan historian
What can you see on the urn?
Deities
Engraving by Piranesi
Mortals
Gods
Maidens
Pursuit
Struggle
Escape
Pipe
Timbrels
Ecstasy
It is introduced the valley of Arcadia, a pastoral ideal
world where gods and men live together
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
the world of Love is
introduced
the world of music
The key- word is ECSTASY .
Through the world of sensations represented by
nature, love and music we reach the realm of
imagination;
it is beyond any rational state, it is a higher form
of thought
Art can communicate this sense of sublime
What is taking place in the urn?
What mad pursuit?
What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels?
What wild ecstasy?
There is a pursuit and a
strong sexual element
The unfulfilled desire
How is the description of the Urn made?
through questions
The description is based on contrasts: deities/ mortals, man /
gods, pursuit / escape …the silence and quietness of the first part
and the excitement of the second one
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
A link with the second stanza
"The unfulfilled desire prepares for the
impossibility of fulfilment of stanza 2
( .. unravish'd bride , loth, struggle to escape )
 Music and musicians are symbols of poetry
and poets
 The melody accompanying the pursuit is
intensified in the second stanza
 Although we cannot literally hear their music,
by using our imaginations, we can imagine
and thus hear it even better.
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The poet says that
“unheard” melodies are
sweeter than mortal
melodies because they
are unaffected by time.
Beauty imagined is far superior
thetopoet
looks
at another picture on
beauty
perceived
is of
better
than man
theExpectation
urn, this time
a young
fulfilment.
playing
a pipe, lying with his lover
beneath a tree
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
The Urn, with the
power of art, can go
beyond the senses
and lead us to a
deeper level of
perception.
sensual conveys an idea of physical pleasure
opposed to spiritual one caused by unheard
melodies. The senses are more limited than
creative imagination.
the poet asks the pipers to play not for
the sensual ear but for the spirit
is
the only thing
that
can hold a moment
of happiness, fix it
There isArt
a
stasis
that
prohibits
the
characters
and make it eternal
on the urn from ever being fulfilled
Represents the songs out of the time
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Represents the eternal desire
they represent the clash between
reality and the ideal
Third stanza: the narrator begins by speaking to a tree:
The poet envies the immortality of the lute players and
trees because they shall never cease playing their songs,
nor be bare.
FOR EVER
immutability makes the anticipation of pleasure sweeter and more
lasting than the consummated pleasure itself.
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
the eternal value of the urn , a joy for ever
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoyed,
For ever panting and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
There is a difference between human physical love
and the love anticipated and wished on the urn
Human passions are negative while love experienced
through art gives only pleasure.
A paradox
the human figures carved into the side of the
urn are :
 free from time
 but simultaneously frozen in time.
 They do not have to confront aging and death
(their love is “for ever young”)
 but they can not have experience (the youth can
never kiss the maiden; the figures in the
procession can never return to their homes).
In order to overcome this paradox of life and
death, the poem shifts to a new scene with a
new atmosphere .
The fourth stanza opens with the sacrifice of a
virgin cow, an image that appeared in the Elgin
Marbles, suggesting suffering and sadness.
• a cow
• an altar
• A child playing the flute
At the background
• Greek buildings
• carved statues
• the statue of Hermes
Raphael's "The Sacrifice at Lystra
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
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.
They suggest an image of sadness.
Claude Lorrain’s sacrifice to Apollo
•some scene are only imagined as emptied
towns…., it stresses the fact that the urn is
able to stimulate imagination and
communicate feelings
• The questions are unanswered because there is
no one who can ever know the true answers
Claude Lorrain: a view of Delfi with procession
The final stanza :
the urn is a piece of
inanimate object
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
a rural
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
environment
Impassive and indifferent
In front of it we are unable
to think, we feel confused
BORGHESE VASE ( Louvre ) : Dioniso and Arianna
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
• Art with its beauty will always offer
consolation
• it helps him to face the sorrow of
living, accept the difficulties of life
•it reminds men of the possibility of
escaping from their earthly reality
into the eternal world of imagination
key-point of Keats ’s conception of
beauty
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," -that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
True and beauty coexist in art,
they are the same thing ,
nothing else can survive and
preserve human passions.
Possible interpretation
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a work of art can give serenity, inner peace
connected with the revelation of truth, so
contemplation of beauty leads to truth.
truth is the essential goal of knowledge as
beauty is the essential goal of art, they both
tend to the same result
only through the beauty, revealed through
an intense spiritual experience, we can come
to know truth. Both truth and beauty are
immortal
More…
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Imagination is both beauty and truth, since the
inner meaning of the world can reveal itself
only through a moment of ecstasy.
The Urn symbolises art and beauty, providing
an escape from time, change and decay into
eternity.
The role of art is not to describe specific but
universal characters, which falls under the
term "Truth".
There is no knowledge through reason and
logic
NEGATIVE CAPABILITY
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The poet is not concerned with a moral judgement, he
must have the ability to escape from and negate his own
personality, and thus open himself fully to the complex
reality around him .
The poet is passive, accepting things as they are, not
trying to change or explain them .
The poet is not searching the ideal behind the real.
He is submissive to sensations, not like Wordsworth
and Coleridge.
the poet disappears from the work, the work itself
chronicles an experience in such a way that the reader
recognizes and responds to the experience without
requiring the explanation of the poet.
Physical versus Spiritual Beauty
Physical beauty is caught in all its forms
through the senses, not only sight and
hearing, but touch too
 “ A thing of Beauty is a joy for ever”,
physical beauty is a stimulus to create a
spiritual beauty: poetry, love, friendship.
 Physical beauty is limited in time, it decays
and dies
 Spiritual beauty is eternal.
 The beauty the poet has created lives on,
poetry is the only way to defeat death
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