Grecian Urn Ending: What the h-double toothpicks?

[MonroeDoctrine]

The truth speaks louder than any word; observe it unfold its power
This bullshit about everything being false is like Propaganda from a WatchTower!(id est garbage)
Most people that speak existential rhetoric are lonely and couldn't get a girlfriend outside of their left or right hand;
they get sunk deep into their shit constructed quicksand
Keats is on a high level like a Hawk;
Most unprincipled truthless fascist existentialist blurt out
chicken squawk!

[Saturn]

Are you talking about anyone in particular here?

If you are going to insult me, or anyone else here I would rather you did it directly and not in this obscure manner.

[dks]

Too bad everyone has a different definition of truth, though, eh, MD?

What's this you're going on about? Yes, of course Keats was on a higher plane...yes, of course he would've sympathized with revolutionaries...yes, of course he was in line with the anti-politics burgeoning in his day...yes, yes, yes...and NO he wouldn't like Dick Cheney, either...he think he'd like you...he would not consider you among the "fashionables"--the ones who stay in line with popular opinion--the sheep, that is...he'd have tea with you, MD.

[Saturn]

Pretentiousness is it's own pin-prick

[redan]

My goodness. I was not trolling. If anyone is a fascisti here it is Keats; and that would be an over smplification. I suspect if Keats had lived he would have had a drift to the right like Wordsworth and Coleridge. And Mary Shelley. [I recent read a short memoir by a teenage American girl who was staying at the same Hotel Mary Shelley was when Mary died. Like those interviews of people who happended to witness a traffic accident. Thank you young lady, and what was your point? ] My reading of the B=T T=B was from the point of view of Blake, whose left wing bona fides are impecable[sic]. And Derrida, whom I have almost against my will been reading au fond lately.

All of Keats texts are important. But it is important also to remember that they are poems, works of FICTION. There should be no more of a moralizing truth in them than there is in The Barber of Seville, to name one piece of contemporary music. To paraphrase the Bandits in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, "Truths? We don't need no stinking Truths!"

Truth is usually unpleasant. Lies are often quite nice. That is all I know about lies, and all I need to know?

Truth is the Supreme Fiction, Madam. Is of course a quote from Wallace Stevens in his poem a High Toned Old Christian Woman.

Stevens' later masterpiece was Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction.

Monroe Doctrine are you okay? It seemed to me you might have imploded. Sorry you couldn't follow the thread of my argument-- but remember, the actors who play villians on TV and in the cinema are usually not "like that" in real life. And that's the truth!

-Redan

[Saturn]

Monroe Doctrine left the building after the bomb exploded.

[MonroeDoctrine]

Don't worry Saturn I wasn't attacking you it is clear who I was addressing; I said it without saying it ; I was ambiguously straight forward!

[Saturn]

It wasn't clear to me, or anyone else it seems

[Michael Emmanuel]

Surely one may conclude that there is only one thing: That which is. To the confused mind there are two things, that which is and that which seems to be. One in this state gives substantiation to the seeming, which is his perception of what is, but not what is, being a perception.

Seeming can not be by its very definition. Therefore, a concept of truth may be that of a" perceived truth" and not being truth at all, only seeming to be. And therefore a lie. All the while truth is awaiting to be acknowledged or not, it's acknowledgement unnecessary to it's being. That which is.

This is what " is" behind this discussion, I believe.

A friend to man to whom thou sayest-- is not literally anyone or any thing "saying", but that which is discerned by one who is kind and a friend to man, (as in, what does that picture say to you)-- that he may interpret as truely as possible, and pierce the illusions of what seems to be (all the scenes of our life, and how we are affected by our interpretations of them, as depicted on the urn) from the standpoint of what is, was, and always will be.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty--is knowledge, it is knowing that there is that which is, anything else is seeming, temporary, fleeting, woven in time and space coming from that which is but not being that which is. In the world but not of it.

[greymouse]

To gain more insight into this famous phrase, it helps to read Shakespeare's short poem "Phoenix and the Turtle" which also deals with an urn, and "truth and beauty". Consider the threnos:

"Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.

Death is now the phoenix' nest
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,

Leaving no posterity:
'Twas not their infirmity,
It was married chastity.

Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but 'tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.

To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair
For these dead birds sigh a prayer."

It is clear that Keats was heavily influenced by this masterful example, and intended some sort of cryptic reference to it. It doesn't really "solve" the enigma, but it gives food for thought.

[Saturn]

An enigma, by it's very nature is insoluble

Thanks for pointing out the similarites - Keats may well have had that passage in mind.

He certainly was deeply influenced by Shakespeare.

[Dark]

Here's a link to 3 options concerning the last 2 lines of Grecian Urn...

http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/engli ... sions.html

Any agreement about which of these is more valid?

I go by the one in the 1820 edition.

Anyone accepting the version with quotes around the entire last 2 lines is useing one that JK NEVER saw or had a chance to endorse.

Are you all familiar with another (#4) version concerning the quote from Sir Joshua Reynolds?...the Urn QUOTING Reynolds, that is?[url][/url]

[BrokenLyre]

I am sure that Professor Jack Stillinger has a say about it, since he edited and published the definitive Poems of John Keats in 1978. I tend to like version 2 in the link you mentioned, but I wonder what Stillinger thinks (or Helen Vendler for that matter). I don't have ready access to either scholar right now since my books are stored away. I'll look it up tomorrow. I do know that it is up for debate - perhaps Keats liked such nebulous ambiguity. His letters seem to indicate that at least.

[Wynn]

Think on 't a moment: Beauty is truth, truth beauty. Look at life. Why do we seek the truth so much? Truth is usually very pleasant. So much so that it's called beauty, especially in art.
Humility is the essence of a poet. Look at bad art and see why it is bad. Usually it's because the artist is not entirely accepting the world as is, i.e., denying truth, and, therefore, denying beauty.
Read St. Thomas Aquinas, the master of common sense, and it will become apparent that what Keats says is true.
I don't know if all this helps; but Beauty IS truth and truth IS beauty.

[susanspy]

Hello all,

susan here i like thsi like by some one down "An enigma, by it's very nature is insoluble" it really holds lots of meaning in it thought being really soft.

Cheers!!!