John Keats-Ode On A Grecian Urn - Poetry Supplement! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

John Keats-Ode On A Grecian Urn - Poetry Supplement!

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shiver.

 

And I’m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love lit Podcast.  This week- by way of Segway between  Sophocles and the Greek theater  - to our next book the great romantic//gothic novel by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein   -  we have chosen the feature a Romantic take on the Greeks- Ode ON a Grecian Urn by John Keats- not to be misquoted by what seems more natural Ode TO a Grecian Urn. 

 

That’s true- and very perceptive- there are far more Odes TO things than there are Odes ON things (although Keates does have more than one)-  and obviously you would expect the Ode to be TO something or to someone because as we talked about in our discussion of the most prolific ode writer I know of, Paulo Nerudo, an ode is a poem TO something.  But what you’e going to see in pehaps the most beloved ode in the English language- is that Keats, by design, has made this poem so cryptic and enchanting that no one really says with any true authority much about who this poem is to, what it is about, and even what it actually means- we’re all just so confused!!!. And really- at the end of our discussion and when we talk about what he feels is his contribution to the world with what he called “negative capabilitity) even that should make total sense.   What people agree on is that it’s beautiful.  This poem is truly truly beloved.  And I’m not just saying tht to be vague= that is the flat truth of it. 

 

Are you saying that everyone loves this poem BECAUSE they dohn’t know what it means or in spite of it?

 

You’re getting ahead of where I want us to be in this discussion with that question= but the short answer is …Yes…and Yes…and this poem tells us it doesn’t even matter- let it be what it is.  And that feeling sbout the world can actually make us feel good about ourselves…you’ll see…But first, let’s go over a little bit about what Romantic writers are really about, especially the Brits who really own this genre, in my mind.  Everyrone loves them, and, of course, we’e not talking about Meg Ryan or Audrey Hepburn, although obviously we love them too.  Romantic writers are those who come out a specific time and way of thinking starting with the last couple years of the 18th century and taking us into the early 1800s.  Keats was born in 1795 and dies in 1821, so so sad and short a life.  And he embodies a lot of what Romanticism was really about.

 

Well, Historically, the world is really changing at this time period.  Obviously the French Revolution and the French principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are extremely influential in what goes on on the continent of Europe, but not just thee.. those ideas impacted the Western world- all the way into all of the Americas. Not just North America- but- just focusing on England- we can see patterns that will eventually extend world wide- first of all the English extended voting rights to middle class males AND abolished slavery by 1832 (fortunately without a war)- these are two big social and political changes that represent obviously big results of a change in thinking.  People like jean Jaques Rosseau led people to think about themselves and each other differently with ideas that seem obvious like, ‘Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains”. People began to allow to really think more emotionally- instead of the STEM- minded thinking of the enlightment, if you want to think about it that way.  Thoughts like allowing love and quality of life to matter for everyone led to considerations and new thoughts like- people should be able to work in safety- and this resulted in the first law governing factory safety, if you can believe it.

 

Well, I can absolutely believe it because the Romantic poets embody every bit of that and more, and we English people like to think that the poets, dreamers and writers and the ones on the front end of the ways people look and think about the world.  And maybe that’s why we love Romantic writers- they  wanted to write about the common man and many of them WERE common men- not necessarily fancy lords sitting in castles writing, but  common experiences- here’s a funny- John Keats was given what today we’d call an ethnic slur- he was referred to as being from the Cockney school, meaning that his language was low brow- the term was offensive- anyway Romantics talked about  how he/she felt, the natural world, the inner world, and a general questioning of the authority and tradition of their day.  You could think of them sort of like the hippies of their generation of their day- challenging social norms and yes- and we’ll definitely see this with Mary Shelley- experimenting with the ideas of free love, drugs and sometimes resulting in extremely dangerous lifestyle choices- and dying young. 

 

You say hippie- I say rock star culture- but interesting there is this cyclical nature of humanity- and the tensions between chaos and order that are the essence of being alive on planet earth and they are reflected in the arts.

 

Yes, I think that kind of dichotomy is a wonderful way to look at Romantic poets actually- and specifically John Keats.  Poor Keats was hyper sensitive to the tensions of life and felt them and expessed them so beautifully.  Keats life was so so tragic. First of all, and this isn’t really tragic, but his dad was not some aristocratic earl, but the guy who takes care of the horses at an inn- a true working man.  Sadly though, he died in an accident when Keats was nine.  His mom remarried to a guy that doesn’t appear to be super-awesome,  but she dies of tuberculosis when Keats was 14- so now he’s an orphans together with four other sibilings.  Four years after that, his grandmother who was raising them died-and that same year his baby sister died and two years after that, his brother died of tuberculosis.  In all of this, because of financial problems, it was decided that he should be taken out of real and apprenticed to become a doctor- I’m not sure that job was prestigious back then like it is today. 

 

No, it wasn’t, it was also a dangerous job if you consider what we know today about germs.  And it clearly wasn’t his calling from what we know of his weak health.  He got into writing and got published really early and decided to go for the big break out writing career  before he even got his medical license.  He clearly didn’t like life in the city- he found it lonely a ‘jumbled heap of murky buildings”- to use his words.  And the only other medical practicing I could find that he did was the nursing of his brother, the one you mentioned dying of tuberculosis.

 

Really and truly, and this is my humble opinion, although I almost dare not have an opinion on somebody so beloved and well-studied as Keats.  There are so so many Keats scholars out there who know eveyrhting there is to know about this young man, but it is my impression that it is exactly the fact that John Keats walked the shadowy line between life and death so long and with so much love that his perspective on life is so appealing.  He stared at death so often, and it broke his heart and left him with so many real questions, yet his writing is not dark and hopeless like Edgar Allan Poe.  He isn’t desparing like the nihilists that were to come after him.  He clearly understands his mortatlity and loss and writes about it like the famous sonnet, “When I have fears that I may cease to Be” but there is such a sweetness to his work, maybe a certain innocence in the sense that he never got to finish living and wanted to live every moment, but not a naivite that he didn’t know about problems or troubles. 

 

And cut short it truly was.  He got sick on a hiking trip in Scotland in the summer of 1818 and really never seemed to recover although he did still continue to take care of his brother all the way until he died.

 

He fell in love with Fanny Brawne, too but they couldn’t get married because he was too sickly and had no money.  By the age of 24 I think even he knew he was done.  He moved to Rome because he was told that the warmer climate might save his life, but on Feb 23, 1821, he was dead- and he never even knew he was going to be famous.  They say he asked that his tombstone have the phrase, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water” instead of his actual name.  Even though they ignred that- thnk goodness. 

 

His name is actually on his grave in the Protestant graveyard in Rome.  And of course there is the Keats- Shelley memorial house right next to the Spanish steps in Rome- a nice tribute really-

So, tell us, Christy.  Why are we reading “Ode ON a Grecian Urn”.

 

Well, I would say because it’s a favorite, because it is- but that’s cliché.  This poem is everyone in the world’s favorite.  I would be much cooler if I liked a more esoteric one.  There are literally thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of commentary on this poem.  There are literatue professors who teach this poem every semester of careers that span decades- and I have read comments from these same professors claiming that they don’t tire of reading it.  If you google litery criticism or go to a real online library, you’ll find out that every school of literary criticism claims this poem as a great example of whatever that school is trying to do- and I mean the most common ones like “feminism” “new criticism” “deconstructionism” “New historicism” “reader-response criticism” and on and on we go.  And I’ll tell you this- every single person reads this poem differently and absolutely understands it and their understanding is totally different.  So, I have to offer this obvious disclaimer- We’re going to read it and think about it out-loud as best we can- and what I hope will happen to you as you listen to this poem through your ear buds or car radio speakers is that you’ll be able to look at the beaytiful and romantic world that keats is going to create for us, think about what we say about it, but know- that if you were next to us in this room- your ideas would definitely be different because - the genius of how this man writes is that he is able to get in your head with the perfect balance of obtrusiveness but also invisibility that just lingers around for a long time.

 

Okay- Have I built it up enough.

 

I’d say, it’s definitely made it sound confusing-But not to confuse anyone on what the poem is about- can we at least agree that it’s about a Greek jar. 

 

 

 

No we cannot- we cannot even agree on that.  And this is a tangent that is a little cool.  So, during Keat’s life time, the Elgin Marbles showed up in London and we know for a fact that Keats went to see this.  So, many, although not all, people think that he made up the jar- there was no jar or urn at all- but he wrote this poem about the Elgin Marbles housed, even today in the British Musuem in London.  So, Garry, for those who don’t know about this 200 year old scandal= tell us about it.

 

Elgin Marble

 

Take a second and look this up= and go through it.  We’ve actually been to the Acropolis museum where the space is.   

 

So, we don’t know if there’s actually an urn so now  we’ll go on to the rest of the title- we do agree on the Grecian part-  but the title is Ode ON instead of TO- creating again a bit of confusion- perhaps it’s the paintings ON the urn that are giving tribute to something, and since we’re not giving tribute TO the URN, I’m not sure we know what exactly were giving tribute to. But, the first word of the poem is “Thou” – so clearly he’s talking TO the urn in some sense- so with that bit of personification- Garry- how about reading for us this poem- stanza by stanza, and after each one, we’ll stop and chat about it.  Now, this isn’t the BEST way to read a poem, if you were in a lit class, I’d ask you to read the whole thing and then go back, but since we only have a little bit of time and the poem is a little long-five stanzas of ten lines a piece- we’re going to cheat- and skip step one.

 

Oh dear- but okay- I’ll read it…

 

First thing to notice, and this is just doing it the easy way- when you want crack open anything- start easy and move to the harder stuff- so, just to get this out of the way- this poem is written in rhyme- easy to see.  If you were to scan it, you’d see that is is abab-cdecde, pretty much all the way though with one exception.  Now, that is something we could talk a lot about, but I don’t want to camp out there too much, but just to say, he’s borrowing the style of the two great sonnet writers -and of course, we all know sonnets are basically love poems- (Shakespeare and Petrarch)- he wrote the first half of each stanza like Shakespeares sonnets, and the last half like Petrarch (interestingly enough Petrach always had unrequited love- he was neve loved back, so tht’s a bit sad and a chat for another day)- but does give you a little bit of direction.  It’s also in iambic pentameter- which is how sonnets are written as well- and as English people like to say- the beat of the human heart- ten syllables -barump

 

Another thing to immediately notice is that this very fist stanza uses another literary device besides personification- one a little more obscure and  we call it an apostrophe- which is a Greek device—not the punctuation mark- but what it is essentially is when you talk to someone or something that can’t talk back to you.  So, if I were to pick up my phone and say- stop ringing- that’s an apostrophe.  If I were to holler at my daughter lizzy, who is away at college and accuse her of hiding my shoes (we wear the same size, but I would never do that) I would say, ‘lkizzy, whee are my brown booties)- when I know she can’t hear me- that’s an apostrophe.

 

So, here he addesses three things on the urn- and look how strange they are- unravised bride of quietness, foster child of silence, sylvan historian- and hence begins the questions- what the heck is an unravished bride- oh my- why is she quiet, or is quietness the groom- what does that have to do with a foster child- what do these things have in common- and then the urn is called a historian.  Sylvan is a word for a forest- so are there trees on the pot?  But look even more closely- he says, “Those STILL unravished bride of silence- I think it may be a fun- she’s STILL unravished implying she’s getting eady to be ravished- however you want to read that- or maybe she’s still- like she’s quiet.

 

What does it mean? 

 

I know- you tell me- I want to point out a couple of othe things- notice how many s sounds there.  Now, emembe, in poety- sound devices don’t CREATE meaning- a rhyme is a rhyme, an s sound doesn’t have meaning- but sounds support meaning- it makes the first stanza sound a little swishy- like its windy or something- “What leaf-fringed legend haunts about they shape of dieties or mortals or both”. Tempe is a valley in Greece and Arcadia is the rural part of Greece- so in the second half of this poem- the sexstet- what we have are a bunch of rhetorical questions and extra punctuations marks that speed up the tempo like the wind picking up – and kind of take us from this unravished still bride at the beginning to wild ecstasy at the end.

What is he talking about?   I’m not really sure, but to me, it’s the exposition of a story perhaps that the urn is telling us.  He’s getting us to look at the urn in our minds and thinking about it in t his way- this pot is a story- it was made by people, and the pictures on the urn are their stories- their legends, wee the gods, wee they mortals- are they reluctant, are the running, what are their sounds.  It’s a nice thought. 

 

Let’s go to stanza 2

 

 

And that line is SO famous, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter’..a paradox- which is something that seems like it doesn’t make sense on first pass, but then it does.  And of course, he’s evoking the beauty of the imagination- and how beautiful things can be in our own minds- this is kind of a bad analogy but the idea is like when you read a book, girls do this, and the love interest in the book is gorgeous, and as you ead the book you create this man to be absolutely the most amazing gorgeous man in the world..and then you see the movie…and the actor..is a mere mortal…he can neve be the beauty of your inagination…”it’s the same idea except with music- heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”..so you can look at the musicians on the urn and in your mind they can be playing the most perfect most beautiful music in the world.. so “play on..pipe as he says ‘to the spirit ditties” of no tone.  And then of course, my personal favoite image on the whole urn…and the one I remember my college professor telling me about when I first heard somebody read this poem. He. Name was Dr. Susan Wink and she read this poem, explained this image and I remember it to this day.   Here’s the paradox- talk about this….

 

What do you think about that, Garry…”forever wilt thou love, and she be fairr!””  What about being frozen in just that moment for all eternity.

 

Keats LOVED to dwell in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts…he said that himself- he calls it negative capability- he believes you must be able to confront the tensions of all the opposities in life without being annoyed by them or fighting them or trying to make them fit into nice logical boxes- life just isn’t like that-, and he really is bringing us to understand his understasnding hee.  He’s going to say, just enjoy THIS moment- don’t stress about the next one- what if you could freeze it.  And on that thought he takes us to the happiest place in the poem- stanza 3

 

Look at all the repetition of the word happy here.  Even the leaves ae happy – you know why- if they are frozen on the urn- they never have to shed- if you ae frozen in one locked moment and it’s a happy moment- your favorite song never has to end- more love, more hap[y happy love- and I know all of us can probably think back to a special moment in time, that if you could =you’d freeze it. 

 

 

 

 

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