Are Truth and Beauty Two Sides of the Same Coin?
There is apparently a complex relationship between “Beauty and Truth” but not as complex as it seems rather it is obvious. According to Stanford Encyclopedia, beauty has traditionally been counted among the ultimate/universal values, with goodness, truth, and justice. It is also a primary theme among ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and medieval philosophers, and is considered central to the eighteenth and nineteenth-century thought, as represented in treatments by such thinkers as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Burke, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Hanslick, and Santayana.
However, John Keats poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” makes the relationship between the two more than evident. The word “ode” comes from the Greek “aeidein” which means “to sing or to chant.” The poem according to some sources, was first published anonymously in Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819[1] (see 1820 in poetry).
The poem is one of the “Great Odes of 1819“, which also include “Ode on Indolence”, “Ode on Melancholy”, “Ode to a Nightingale”, and “Ode to Psyche”. However, his ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ taps on the themes of the immortality of art, beauty, and romanticism. The main theme of this poem is the immortality of art or artist’s imaginatin. He was inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English artist and writer Benjamin Haydon
Keats perceived the idealism and representation of Greek virtues in classical Greek art, and his poem draws upon these insights.
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
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?
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:
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!
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;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
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 this 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.
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
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
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.”
In five stanzas of ten lines each, the poet addresses an ancient Greek urn, describing and discoursing upon the images depicted on it. The urn seems to be decorated with three scenes: a bunch of guys are chasing beautiful women through the forest, people are playing pipes and beating on drums and everyone looks happy. The scene is chaotic and the speaker doesn’t know quite what’s happening; a young man is sitting with a lover, seemingly playing a song on a pipe as they are surrounded by trees; a priest is leading a cow to be sacrificed. People have come from a nearby town to watch.
But, poet, in particular reflects upon two scenes, one in which a lover pursues his beloved, and another where villagers and a priest gather to perform a sacrifice. The urn itself symbolizes the intertwining of life and death.
Some scholars, while pontificating on the background of the poem, point out that Urns were used in ancient Greece to hold the ashes of the dead. Keats does not describe a specific urn in his ode, but he knew Greek art from engravings, and experienced it at first-hand on visits to the British Museum, which had recently taken possession of the Elgin Marbles. Here “probably, an antique marble vase with bas-relief of an ancient religious procession inspired Keats to write his poem. Although the urn can be used to hold flowers, or be placed in a garden, but holding the ashes mean it depicts the history of intertwining of life and death. Moreover, it has beautiful shape and unique pictures that inspire the poet to write a poem that conveys wonderful ideas about truth and beauty.
Thus in the poem he surmises that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The speaker says that is the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.
Although the poem seems to be complex and mysterious but has charmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. It attempt to engage with the beauty of art and nature, addressing a piece of pottery. Poet, especially, mulls over the strange idea of the human figures carved into the urn. They are paradoxical figures, free from the constraints and influences of time as they don’t have to worry about growing old or dying, they cannot experience life as it is for the rest of humanity. In other words, Keats decorated the poem by dissimilarity between the stationary figures on the urn and dynamic life, depicted on it; soul, variable and eternal, stable; life and art.
According to some commentators, the poem also bears similarities to the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (which was probably written slightly earlier) in its exploration of the relationship between imagined beauty and the harsh, changeable reality of everyday human experience.
First Scene (Unfulfillment of desire)
It looks like a wild party with attractive young people. There are men who might be mistaken for gods; and blushful maidens struggling to escape the importunities of lovers.He contrasts the perpetual excitement of the men and maidens with the experience of unfulfilled desire. However, they also enjoy a love forever warm, forever panting, and forever young, far better than actual love, which eventually brings frustration and dissatisfaction.
Second Scene (Imagination is more powerful and attractive than reality)
Here a a young man is sitting with a lover, seemingly playing a song on a pipe as they are surrounded by trees. The poet, while explaining the scene, comforts the man, not to be sad that he will never be able to kiss his companion, with the fact that she will never lose her beauty as she is frozen in time. In other words, lover cannot get his beloved, but at the same time she cannot escape out of his sight as she would have done in real life. Thus his love will be as eternal as the beauty of his beloved. The line “Heard Melodies Are Sweet, but Those Unheard Are Sweeter” is saying that the power of our imagination is often greater, more attractive, perfect and eternal than reality.
Moreover, real beauty is immortal and ageless as it will always be there even when we die. Similarly, truth is also immortal unlike the lie that has not roots and thus sooner than later evaporates in the thin air.
Third Scene (Religion becomes ritual than a means of true understanding)
It is a sacrificial scene that is depicted and he contemplates the priest and the heifer (a cow that has not borne a calf) and a green altar arranged in a proper attitude. There’s also a crowd of (perhaps pagan) people following behind in anticipation of the sacrifice. Represented by a “mysterious priest” of a spiritual practice long dead, the urn’s religion has itself become art that is eternally abstract. Although everyone is headed to a sacrifice, no one (or at least the poet) doesn’t know what the sacrifice is for. Instead, everyone is outside, enjoying the weather and looking forward to the ritual and thus “holy day” becomes “holiday.” Regardless, the predominant mood of the poem seems to be melancholic and there is emptiness and silence of the town. This silence is really the Ode on a Grecian Urn: silence of the universe when religion becomes an antique artifact rather than a means of understanding the “high romance” Keats talks about in “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be.”
Poem’s famous conclusion (that is said to have provoked a long debate that divided the 20th century’s critics) deserves a deeper exploration/investigation:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ — that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
The poet’s contemplation leads him to the realization that beauty is identical with truth and that beauty is the highest ideal of mankind.Beauty is all we need in order to discover truth, and truth is itself beautiful. Thus we find in this Ode “the poetry of truth and the poetry of beauty. The Ode takes us away from the world of time to the world of eternity. And as has already been explained the “real or true beauty is the beauty of imagination that is everlasting and immortal unlike the ephemeral beauty of fleeting reality. In the same vein, the truth is also immortal that reveals the hidden and eternal beauty unlike the lie or our desire, that is never fulfilled because the mind is an avid drifter or loves to play tricks on us. And the more you satisfy, the more it wants. Moreover, “Truth and Beauty” are equal, inseparable, and ultimately indistinguishable paths toward one end, Knowledge, which is indeed all we can or need to know on earth
In short, a concrete form of beauty perishes but the spirit of beauty is eternal. And it is also a universal truth. Thus those who can see in the finite form of beauty the eternal spirit of beauty which is truth are true seers and Keats says that there is no higher knowledge attainable by man than this realization of the infinite in the finite. In other words, beauty is all we need in order to discover truth, and truth is itself beautiful. This is all we, are mere mortals, know, but it’s all we need to know: we shouldn’t impatiently go in pursuit of answers which we don’t need to have. Implied in these last lines of Keats’s poem is the suggestion that we shouldn’t attempt to find concrete answers to everything; sometimes the mystery is enough.
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References:
i) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
ii) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn
iii) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
