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"ODE ON A GRECIAN URN" (JOHN KEATS) & STONEHENGE.
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Examines poem & ancient British monument & their impact on the human imagination.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines poem & ancient British monument & their impact on the human imagination.
Paper Introduction:
The human imagination is one of the things we believe separates us from the animals, and different writers and theorists have taken different views of the importance of the imagination. Blaise Pascal points to one of the primary values of the imagination--it allows us to conceive of things we cannot experience directly. One of these things is death, which we do experience eventually but which we must imagine in life. One of the problems Pascal sees in science is that it makes human beings arrogant, as if they were able to control the world in a way they are not. In truth, he finds human beings weak and frail without spiritual support, capable of being completely destroyed by the slightest shift in health:
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe
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It is also clear from the historical recordthat the existence of Stonehenge has fired the imagination of people eversince as they try to understand its mysteries, fathom its construction, andlearn about the people who preceded them on the Salisbury Plain and builtthis monument. The elements of this worldcannot be made young forever except through artistic expression, expressionthat captures the moment and preserves it forever. MacKie also notes that it might bepossible to doubt some of the alignments identified by theorists suggestingastronomical meaning, but "it is a fact that so many pairs of features atthe site to dorm lines towards significant rising and setting positions ofthe sun and moon that this can hardly have come about by chance" (MacKie129). (31-34). There are many small islandssurrounding Great Britain. What we can do is use our imagination and allow Stonehenge, like theurn, to spur us to deeper thought and to a consideration of how we aredescendants of a people who could create such awe and beauty and make it soit would last for centuries and indeed for millennia. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1978.----------------------- 11 MacKie notes that "among the hundreds ofstone circle sites in Britain and ireland it is paramount botharchitecturally and in the sophistication of its geometrical design"(MacKie 127). Keats both marvels at the images on the urn and regrets the lost liferepresented there. Keatschooses to do this by means of poetry, using words and sounds to expresshis ideas and to communicate with others. The human imagination is one of the things we believe separates usfrom the animals, and different writers and theorists have taken differentviews of the importance of the imagination. New York: St. Many other peoples have expressed themselves in artistic worksand religious structures which show the application of the humanimagination to the problem of the mysteries of the universe, bothastronomical and metaphysical. In this world the trees are bare and youth changes to old ageand then death. For a longtime, part of the mystery was how these huge blocks of stone weretransferred from one place to another and set atop one another once theywere brought to the Salisbury Plain, but archaeological investigationsaround the world have shown a number of ways ancient peoples managed toaccomplish this feat, from the Pyramids in Egypt to the huge faces onEaster Island in the Pacific. Keats grabs the attention of the reader with the first line of thepoem, a line embodying many of the responses and themes of the poem: "Thoustill unravished bride of quietness." This line refers to one figure onthe side of the urn, a female about to be ravished but throughout timenever being ravished because the moment is frozen. He sees on the side of this urn images of life--peoplereveling, dancing in the woods, singing, playing music, and so on. A stone monument might be more problematic. Stonehenge is linked more to Easter Islandin that the mystery of each remains strong because there is now writtenrecord as to the reason why some ancient people expended the necessaryeffort to create these monuments. Theentire image is of a moment frozen in time, a joyous moment in which peopleare laughing and cavorting and now will be doing so forever because of theway the scene has been captured forever by a long-ago artist. When British history first began to be written, Stonehenge filled the need to dignify the national past with a memorial to patriots felled by a national enemy, the Saxon pirates. Amsterdam: Time-Life, 1986.MacKie, Euan W. In the last stanza, the poet offers a deeper meaning for all thathas gone before. This affects the culture of the region greatly, for itdraws elements from the different societies that make up the UnitedKingdom. Stonehenge is unique in its construction and so holds a unique placeon the imagination. With the Druids fading away in this age of science, now is the time for Stonehenge to be taken over by research scientists as a celestial observatory and eclipse computer (Stover and Kraig 1).The authors wrote this in 1978, and since that time another wrinkle hasbeen added as various New Age groups have claimed to find in Stonehengeevidence of everything from portals to another universe to proof of extra-terrestrial visitations. In addition tomarveling at the design of Stonehenge, we have to marvel at how well it hassurvived the weather and other earthly upheavals. Blaise Pascal points to one ofthe primary values of the imagination--it allows us to conceive of thingswe cannot experience directly. The artist in this case was from ancient Greeceand has saved this scene forever by placing it on the side of the urn.Keats is similarly preserving his observations of the urn and its meaningby placing those thoughts in the form of this poem. Whether this alignment was for the storing of astronomical knowledgeas some believe or for ritual purposes as others believe, or for both,remains unclear. Theworld of art, the world that is captured and shaped and left to subsequentages, is always more beautiful, more perfect, more permanent than thisworld the various images cover a variety of different human activities andemotions--love is well-represented, as are musical expression and religiousworship: Who are these coming to the sacrifice? Thefact that this creation still empowers the imagination is noted by Stoverand Kraig when they write, Every age gets the Stonehenge it longs for. This may indeed cause usto ask whether this sort of monument did indeed reach through to somemetaphysical plain which helps protect it and us. One of the themes expressed in this poem is the way Art shapes Natureand makes it more than it was before, adding the human imagination so theartist can speak to subsequent generations as Keats does in this poem andas the painter did on the urn. We can do so in the way Keats did, throughwords. The first four stanzas reiterate the emotion of the poet as heexamines the scenes on the side of the urn, and in the course of thesecertain ideas and attitudes are made apparent--the images are givenimmortality by being captured by the artist, the world of the urn ispermanent and this world is not, and in each scene a moment has been frozenforever. The artist alwaystranscends time in this way and speaks to subsequent generations as well asto his or her own. Science and Society in Prehistoric Britain. The poet's argument is simply that the artist has given these peopleand their actions immortality. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him (Pascal 95).What gives the human being nobility is the fact that he or she can thinkand has an awareness of what is happening, even an awareness of death.This is something that no other creature can claim. The origin of Stonehenge has thus been shrouded in mystery since thebeginning of recorded history. Only throughbeauty can we touch the immortality we may want but can otherwise neverachieve. One of these things is death, which we doexperience eventually but which we must imagine in life. Each generation must learn the same lessonand must take it to heart. Keats observes this with a certain sadness as well, forin this world all is mortal, while in the world of the urn life isimmortal. The people are more diverse than in most areasof the same size, for Britain is a multinational society within a unitarypolitical state. There is something in the human being thatseeks both to reshape and to explain the world through creation. We can always imaginewhat we want, and every product of man, from a stone monument to a poem,serves to remind us of this important fact. After the Revolution, Stonehenge fell into the wild, jagged ruins of the romantic vision, relics of a liberal Druidism that helped throw off the Roman yoke. The scene for the poem is therefore wherever the poet has encounteredthis urn, an the poet is now responding to the images he sees on the urn,to the ideas that the scene brings to his mind, and to the way he feelsabout those ideas. In the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet speaks directly to thereader and describes the scene. The so-called Heel stone remains a problem, for its purpose hasbeen subject to much speculation. Stonehenge: The Indo-European Heritage. We similarly look at Stonehenge and marvel at theachievement while regretting that we cannot know the people who made,cannot speak to them and ask them what they were thinking and how theircreation served their needs, and what lessons we might take from theirlives. The island of Great Britain consists of three countries, England,Wales, and Scotland, and along with the province of Northern Ireland, thesecountries comprise the United Kingdom. and Bruce Kraig. There is an immediacy in the way Keatsdescribes the scene and comments on the action. The Celts arrived first some 3, years ago and spread their culture throughout Europe from a homeland northof the Alps. One of theproblems Pascal sees in science is that it makes human beings arrogant, asif they were able to control the world in a way they are not. Much speculation has developed in recent years aboutthe purpose of the structure. The scene on the urn will exist after Keats and the reader arelong gone, and this is true no matter when the reader picks up the poem,just as the poem itself will outlast poet and reader alike. Stonehenge is not just a structure produced at one point andthen left alone--it was changed over the centuries, with additions,alterations, and use by the people who made it for whatever reason theyhad. We go toEurope and marvel at the abilities of people whose names we now and whobuilt monuments such as Notre Dame or London Bridge or the Fountains ofRome; we marvel all the more at the imagination of a people so ancient wesee them as living in huts, tilling the land, and barely producing aliving. The poets asks a series of questions in the firststanza which serves to draw the attention of the reader to the variousimages on the side, to the issues being raised, and to an apparent puzzleat this stage--why is the poet asking these questions? Today, weexercise our imagination by reading Keats and marveling at Stonehenge.This is indeed a link between the two, for in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keatswonders at how we can look back at a work of art and imagine the actions ofits subjects, just as we do today with the poem and the monument. To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed? Indeed, the last five lines of the poem embody themeaning of the work quite well: When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (46-5 ).Here is the restatement that this world will waste away while the world ofart does not, that beauty is a truth that transcends time, and that this isall that the poet or the reader needs to know. This is answered inthe course of the poem. She exists in aneternal state that can never be changed--the moment will never go forwardand can never go back. He does not simply explain itbut revels in it, detailing image after image, linking every image to thefact that time does not pass on the urn and does pass in this world. It is through such creations that we make a connectionbetween ourselves and our ancestors, sometimes directly throughunderstanding, and sometimes indirectly when we must use our imaginationmore because we have fewer facts on which to base a judgment. Pre-literate people thousands ofyears ago in what is now Britain sought to express their awe at themysteries of the universe by creating a huge stone monument, the precisefunction of which remains i some doubt. Keats expresses that lesson well and draws thereader into his point of view, ultimately expressing his aesthetic in thelast lines as he indicates that beauty and truth are synonymous and arewhat we are all seeking and all we really need to seek. It seems that Stonehenge was always there,and no one has ever been certain who it was that put it there. shows that thehuman imagination is not something developed only with the level ofcivilization we can more easily recognize but is part of the humancondition. Martin's Press, 1977.Pascal, Blaise. In truth, hefinds human beings weak and frail without spiritual support, capable ofbeing completely destroyed by the slightest shift in health: Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. In this regard, they are like the figures on the side of the Grecianurn in Keats, people who left something of their life for us to read today. New York: Penguin, 1966.Stover, Leon E. This explanation carried authority for over five centuries. John Keats exploreshis poetic imagination in works such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Thousandsof years ago, human beings in what is now Britain exercised theirimagination to create an enduring monument in Stonehenge. This is what thepainter has done on the side of the urn, and it is what Keats is doing withthe poem describing the urn. After that, just before the French Revolution, Stonehenge was all classical architecture and courtly, flushed with the joys of monarchy. Pensées. Stonehenge was not the only suchstone circle created during that era, but it remains the most famous. We can try to useour imaginations to create something that will last half as long, and wehope that this is possible. In a broader sense, Keats is speaking ofthe power of art to transform beauty into a larger truth and to give it thepower to transcend time. The ethnic composition of the population has roots in the historyof the nation, for Britain was settled by successive waves of invaders.Four peoples made major contributions to the British stock--the Celts, theSaxons, the Vikings, and the Normans. In Britain they found and partially displaced an older andmore mysterious race, the heirs of an even more ancient culture that hadraised the stone circle of Stonehenge and had made equally enigmatic tombsand megaliths in Orkney and Caithness. The earlier peoples had entered theBronze Age, and the Celts brought with them iron swords and shields(Britain 18-19). The structure was first created around 28 B.C., and there are hintsthat it was intended as a relatively advanced astronomical observatory andtemple. Works CitedBritain. The poet describes many of the images andspeculates about the melody unheard, the moment unfinished, and the youthunfulfilled. Timelessness is evoked again and again and compared with thetransitory nature of this world: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on (11-12).The youth on the urn is told that he can never leave his place beneath thetree, and that those trees will never be bare--the world of the urn isalways precisely as seen, and for Keats the sadness is that this world isdifferent. Yet, we can see a link in that they took the time to exercisetheir imagination and to create something greater than themselves,something that speaks to us to this day. The fact that such a monument could exist in 28 B.C. The audience is the reader, who hears the scenedescribed and who is then treated to the idea evoked in the mind of thepoet by this scene and by the way the scene has been frozen in time. A cursory reading mightmake one think that he is describing an actual scene he is observing, whenin fact what he is doing is describing a scene painted on the side of aGrecian urn. The poet effuses about this matter.
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