Despondence wrote:Maybe there is no answer, or maybe there are many different answers, all equally valid. We know from his letters that Keats was a deeply philosophical person. Imagine, if instead it had been a totally obvious and trivial allusion wrapping up that ode - you'd probably never have given it a second thought. As it stands, it is obscure at best, but I think that's how Keats intended it. For centuries, that harmless little blurb has made people think about it, and that's the important thing!
Michael Emmanuel wrote:“Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.” JK
This is a good topic and I would like to add my thoughts although it's been a while since anyone's commented.
In my thinking there should be no ambiguity here. Keats sets forth his highest and most sublime thought with the ending to Grecian Urn.
dks wrote:Michael Emmanuel wrote:“Poetry should please by a fine excess and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance.” JK
This is a good topic and I would like to add my thoughts although it's been a while since anyone's commented.
In my thinking there should be no ambiguity here. Keats sets forth his highest and most sublime thought with the ending to Grecian Urn.
I heartily agree with you here. Thanks for posting that quote by him, as it is an extremely important one in understanding Keats's idea on art being the bridge and initial foot path to a higher 'other worldly' existence.
See Peter J. Sorensen's essay on the Grecian Urn--in the Keats-Shelley Review 1993-1994. It talks exclusively about the enigmatic ending of this great ode within a Neoplatonic vein--all associated with those "heard" and "unheard melodies" Keats talks about--these concepts are actually integrations of his philosophies about the poetic process, ie.) Negative Capability, Disinterestedness, Vale of Soul making, and the annhilated, "camelion" Poet--all of these are tools to help amalgamate the real, corporeal world and the "other" incorporeal world in which one can get to via "flight of fancy."
redan wrote:Beauty is thankless [sans merci]. Everything is false, or a lie, a fiction. [Truth is the Supreme Fiction, madam.] Everything is dead. Being "alive" is only a Special Case of being dead. [Can you handle this Truth?] "need to know" is a BASIS, a pecking order, a hierarchy. The spy master sends the assasin [assasin and hashish are the same word] to Prague to murder whomever he finds in a certain hotel room on a certain date at a certain hour [an enemy agent code name: Kafka]. Keats' puppet-master is a certain Moneta [code name]. Keats is employed by the Ministry as a publicist, a spin-doctor. The Ministry is aware of and afraid of his burgeoning prodigious talent. A Warrent for his Death has been issued.
-redan
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