117HAT THE URN SAID KO-IeHI YAKUSHIGAWA I Introduction Many cntlcs have interpreted the Ode on a Grecian Urn, and perhaps there is no room for me to make any new interpretation. To interprete the ode, however, is not only an attractive enterprise, but an inevitable duty for anyone who wishes to study the British Romantic Poets, and so I must make my own attempt, no matter how many have been before me. There are, indeed, many persuasive interpretations of the ode, but no single one is perfectly convincing. They are more or less different from each other as to interpreting the intention of the poem, the meaning of the last two lines, connotations of each metaphor, etc., and more basically, as to the methodology or the type of approach to the poem. For example, E. C. Pettet says, "Our reading of it is always likely to he illuminated by the other odes; and since these poems, coming so closely together in time, stem from a common body of experience, these illuminations will often go deeper than merely formal or superficial correspondences,"l while Cleanse Brooks asserts, "Our specific question is not what did Keats the man perhaps want to assert here about the relation of beauty and truth; it is rather: was Keats the poet able to exemplify that relation in this particular poem? "2 It may he a fallacy to read a poem in the light of other poems {) the same author and reading a poem as an entity for itself is, if 1. E. C. Pettet: On the Poetry of Keats (Cambridge, 1957), p. 317. 2. C. Brooks: "Keats's Sylvan Historian" in British Romantic Poets ed. by S. K. Kumar (London, 1966), p. 294. ( 28 )
done too rigidly, a fallacy as well. A poem as an entity stands upon the edge of two worlds-one is the reader's world or the whole of his personal experiences, and the other is the author's world or the author's personal experiences. While we make use of our own experiences, consciously or unconsciously, in reading a poem, we have no clear way to make use of the world within the author's mind. Thus we often take the world in the author's letters and journals for the true world within the author's mind. They may indeed give us some cues to see the world within, but we must be aware that the world which the words show us is nothing but an abstraction of the author's raw experiences. To try to find out the author's world within and his true intentions in his letters and journals is, therefore, a kind of fictitious effort. The author's world within is always beyond our, or perhaps even his own, reach. Nor is there any need to make too rigid a distinction between an author's works on the one hand, and his letters and journals on the other. Each is an entity in itself and not complementary to the other. Both are to be put on the same level as works of fiction, not as raw materials. No matter how many long letters Keats may have written to his friends, we know that he could not have fully revealed his mind as it really was, for that is beyond the nature of human possibility. As long as we are fully aware of this fact, the letters are as important as the poem for us to understand his 'works of art. Ode on a Grecian Urn is an independent work of art in itself, and at the same time it has many relations to other works-including both poems and letters-and all the works form a world which is different from the world of any other poet. The world of a group of poets forms a world different from the world of another group of poets and so on. To read a poem requires the whole of the reader's own personal experience, as I said before, and on the other hand reader should aquire enough of the poet's context to sustain the poem, because nothing can live in a vacuum. "Nature abhores a vacuum." II Preliminary Study 1 "In the context of his poetry and letters, what he meant by 29
30 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty that is sll/ye know on earth and all ye need to know' is so clear that it is difficult not to suspect critics of bad faith when they pretend not to understand what it means,"3 said Stephen Spender. Nevertheless, the fact is that there are many understandings of the lines and no fixed answer yet. I will, therefore, list some important clues from Keats's letters first, according to Spender's opinion and my own attitude toward reading the poem as mentioned above. Though the world revealed from the letters does not prove the validity of the world I find in the poems, the effort to build up a world from the letters enriches and strengthens the effort to build a world from reading the poem. A poem, I said, stands upon the edge of two world-the author's and the reader's. But the world of the author's mind only exists, by supposition, in our own mind or experience. In other words, the author's world becomes fused with a conjectural world of our own. I am not trying to understand the poem under the directions of Keats's letters but to read the poem against the letters. Letters may be said to be a setting for the dramatic world of poetry. ( i ) The following will give us an idea of how poetry or art in general are conceived in Keats's mind. 1. 0 for a recourse somewhat human independent of the great consolations of Religion and undepraved Sensations-of the Beautiful-the poetical in all things...! (Nov. 1817, L. 2S) 2. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination-What the Imagination seize as Beauty must be truth. (Nov. '17, L. 32) 3. The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. (Dec. '17, L. 32) 4. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.... Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. (Feb. 'IS, L. 44) 5. I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and by Singularity-it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance. Its touches of Beauty should never be half way there by making the reader breathless instead of content: If Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. 3. S. Spender: The Struggle of the Modern (London, 1963), p. 36.
(" Three axioms of Poetry" Feb. '18, L. 51) 6. I am sometimes so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack a lanthen to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. (Mar. '18, L. 53) 7. I have come to this resolution-never to write for the sake of writing or making a poem, but from running over with any litttle knowledge of experience which many years of reflection may perhaps give me; otherwise I will be dumb. (Mar. '18, L. 116) 8. You speak of Lord Byron and me-there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees-i describe what I imagine. (Sept. '19, L. 156) From these we can abstract an outline of his idea of poetry: it is not a "palpable design" upon us but a human recourse and consolation for us who live in the miseries of the real world. This consolation comes from Imagination which transforms all disagreeable elements by discovering their close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Moreover, this consolation must come as naturally as the reader's own words flowing out of his mouth. In this respect, the poetical character should not have any self. "It has no character-it enjoys light and shade." But thus far there is no explanation of Beauty nor Truth. To find some explanation of them, we should search for his ideas about human beings in general. ( ii ) The following will give us an outline of his idea of human beings. 1. I have asked myself so often why should I be a Poet more than other Men. (May '17, L. 14) 2. I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. (Dec. '17, L. 32) 3. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. (Feb. '18, L. 48) 4. Scenery is fine-but human nature is finer... The eagle's nest is finer for the Mountaineer has look'd into it. (Mar. '18, L. 53) 5. We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author. (May '18, L. 64) 6. As Byron says, "Knowledge is Sorrow"; and I go on to say that" Sorrow is Wisdom "-and further for aught we can know for certainty" Wisdom is folly"! (May '18, L. 64) 31
32 7. Afther all there is certainly something real in the World. (May '18, L. 64) 8. All I hope' is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs. (Oel. '18, L. 93) 9. Though it may sound paradoxical; my greatest elevations of Soul leave me every time more humbled. (Oct. '18, L. 94) 10. But then, as Wordsworth says, "we have all one human heart" there is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify. (Mar. '19, L. 123) 11. By a superior being our reasonings may take the sametone-though erronous they may be fine-this is the very thing in which consists poetry. (Mar. '19, L. 123) 12. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, it is the Minds Bible, It is the Minds experience, it is the teat from which the Mind or intelligence sucks its identity. CL. 123) 13. The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing-to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts. Not a select party. (Sept. '19, L. 156) 14. I am more at home amongst Men and Women. (Nov. '20, L. 166) 15. Oh, Brown, I have coals of fire in my breast. It surprised me that the human heart is capable of containing and bearing so much misery. 'Vas I born for this end? (Nov. '20, L. 241) These are only a part of his sayings but enough to grasp an outline of his idea on human nature. It was May 1817 that Keats asked himself why he ~hould be a poet more than other men. And it was November 1820 that a half answer was given to the question, when he was surprised to see that the human heart is capable of containing and bearing so much misery. He asked himself again, "Was I born for this end?" He could not bring out a clear answer from his life, but only a feeble one in an interrogative form. At any rate, we can find an outline of the poet's mind between the question and the pseudo-answer to it. The prevailing mood in these passages is that of sticking to the human world and of believing in human nature. There is no transcendental aspiration nor "palpable design" found there. Negative Capability is a catch phrase to represent Keats, but this negativity or passiveness, we should understand, is backed up by his belief in the human Heart-his only fixed idea or "palpable design" which he himself always hates. The fifth quotation llbove means the importance of being at one with the Author and consequently with all human
beings by means of believing in W ordsworth' s saying, "We have all one human heart." Nothing but belief in the Heart as a unifying and purifying force could encourage him to live through the human miseries and to say, "Scenery is fine-but human nature is finer." Thus he hopes not to lose all interest in human affairs, no matter how miserable human affairs are, and he feels more at home" amongst Men and Women" decaying in the tide of Time. Besides the belief in the Heart, what encourages him to be convinced of the validity of the real world is the belief in Intelligence, which is, like Coleridge's idea of Reason, the spark of divinity and, in short, God himself. Vifith the belief in the Heart, Keats faces the real world and sees into it with the eye of Intelligence, when "the vale of soul-making" is opened before him. In other words, Heart and Intelligence become one as Soul. Negative Capability and Imagination are the two functions of Soul, the superior being in which Poetry consists. Keats once boasted and said, "He (Byron) describes what he sees-i describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task." Though it is beside the point to decide which is the hardest task, the difference between them is very clear. And behind his boasting, we can see his self-confidence in realizing the existence of the superior being, Soul, of which Byron, on the other hand, would not take notice. I have no intention to build up a kind of "palpable design," in the light of which we should read Keats's poems, but only to juxtapose the outline and the poem to help us understand the poem. III Preliminary Study 2 The next preliminary task is to read the neighboring works of the Grecian Urn ode. It goes without saying that a poem has its own position among the complete works of the author and that we should read a poem in relation to this context. But now we shall narrow the context to two particular poems. In this respect, the following two poems, Ode to a Nightingale and To Autumn will be considered. ( i ) Ode to a Nightingale It is significant to see this ode in its resemblance of plot to and,difference of conclusion from the Urn ode, though by and large 33
34 Keats's six great odes have the same theme. As R. H. Fogle says, "The real theme of Keats's six great odes is the sadness of mutability,"4-although there remains some doubt about "the sadness of mutability." Now let us examine the dramatic development of the ode. Listening to the happy song of a nightingale in the trees, "I" feels his heart ache and his senses pain. "I" analyses the aches and pains to explain: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,- But" I" himself knows well that this self-analysis is not so fully convincing. He knows that without a draught of vintage he could not be happy in the nightingale's happiness. Thus, the conscious disavowal of envy betrays "I" to show his unconscious avowal of envy and the helpless distance between the bird and" I ".5 This sense of dis tance is the main element of the ode. The sense of distance is to be felt again in the last line of the first stanza, "Singest of summer in full-throated ease." As a matter of fact, especially to Keats, it is not so easy a task to sing in "fullthroated ease." (For Keats in real life, this may have been particularly painful, because his sore throat, after the walking trip, was the first synptom of tuberculosis.) There looms a meditative figure of Keats as a poet, waiting for a gradual ripeness of intelligence, not for an immediate lyrical outcry, behind the line. Thus "being too happy in thine happiness" sounds vain. " I" who becomes unable to bear the burden of distance is forced to long for "a draught of vintage." The second stanza shows the earnest longing of "I" for the ef fect of a beakerful of the warm South. Now a beakerful of wine is heightened to be a magical force. But it results in emphasising the fatal distance between the world and the "forest dim." The more feverishly sunbarnt mirth is celebrated, the more miserable the world 4. R. H. Fogle: "Keats's Ode to a Nightingale" in Twentieth Century Inter pretations of KEATS'S ODES ed. by 1. Stillinger (Prentice.Hall Inc., 1968), p.35. 5. In this respect, Mr. Dickstein remarks, "Still between the poet and the nightingale there is a distance he had never experienced with the less resistant Psyche." Keats and His Poetry (The Univ. of Chicago Pr., 1971), p. 206.
of the poet as a man becomes, and hence the wider the gap becomes between the two. As a due reaction to the craving for plenitude and sunburnt mirth, "I" cannot help turning his eye upon the world, in the third stanza; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;,vhere but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs. It is needless, not meaningless, to recall Keats's condition of health and his love affair and so on. This notion of the real world means that the happiness of the Nightingale is completely indifferent to the happiness or lack of it in the real world. In other words, the possibility of happiness in the world is now validated. The forest stands in contrast to the world of human miseries and the contrast becomes so strong; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim. When "I" feels the contrast keenly and painfully, the wine turns into "the view less wing of Poesy," in the fourth stanza, which is, in other words, Fancy as mentioned in the last stanza. Thus, "I" flies into the forest dim, "though the dull brain perplexes and retards." The mood of the first stanza echoes here. A kind of guilty conscience may be looming behind the delightful flight into the realm of Flora. But now that "I" has emptied a beakerful of wine, he cannot but plunge into the world of euphoria. The calm and tender night is unfolding before him. "But here there is no light." This suggests that the realm of Flora cannot be seen by the eye but imagined. A fatal shift of stance has taken place. The realm is liberated from "the despotism of the eye,"6 as Coleridge put it, and seized only by Fancy. It should be noticed that" Here there is no light," is the first key notion in this ode, but not the crucial one. The fifth stanza describes what" I" imagines, not what he sees. The flowers, the grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree are all only 6. S. T. Coleridge: Biographia Literaria ed. by J. Shawcross (Oxford, 1949) Vo!. I, Ch. VI, p. 74. 35
36 guessed. Moreover," soft incense" and "embalmed darkness" suggest death, as Brooks and Warren have pointed out. 7 The realm is, then, full of happines and death as well. The sixth stanza is the peak of this ode and sings of ecstasy in unification of "I" with the Nightingale. "I" listens to the Nightingale as he listened to it in the first stanza. The difference is that " I" is in the darkness himself this time and feels to be at one with the Nightingale. He is now going to be free from the burden of the human world, in order to complete his self-hood separated from the others. But the sole-self cannot but claim its own self-annihilation rather than self-assertion, which the fifth stanza anticipated. 8 Thus " I" calls to mind that "for many a time/i have been half in love with easeful Death." It is certain that to die is a way of completing the escape from the real world of human miseries. But now that he is in the world of death, it is a fatal contradiction to see "it rich to die" more than ever. To die in the real world is to become one with the Nightingale in the dim forest. But now it means complete alienation from the Nightingale. Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain To thy high requiem become a sod. These last two lines of this stanza compell us to feel the painfulness of his alienation. As mentioned before, the distance between "I" and the Nightingale is the main element of this ode. There was clearly felt the sense of distance between them in the first stanza and the feverish craving for filling up the distance encouraged "I" to take a beakerful of wine and to fly into the forest dim. And the gap seemed to be filled up, when chilliness passes through his mind. This stanza is, indeed, shivering upon the edge of "oxymoron" as Kenneth Burk 7. C. Brooks and R. P. Warren: Understanding Poetry 3rd edition (New York, 1960), p. 429. 8. In this respect, Dickstein remarks, "This desire for self-transcendence is the basis of Keats's death wish; the nightingale exists wholly within the terms of his own inner conflict. At this point the poem turns.... Death is not a fulfillment, a luxury or a transcendent passage, but simply the end." op. cit., pp. 213--4.
put it, that is, to complete the unification by death in ecstasy is nothing but to complete the alienation. Now," I" has mounted up to the summit of dark happiness. In this respect, this stanza is to be understood as the summit of this ode. Shivering himself on the summit, "I" thinks of the nature of the Nightingale. "Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!" is the inescapable recognition which "I" has always cherished half consciously, because the nightingale has become an abstract idea of eternal happiness which" I" has been looking forward to, and it has ceased to be a mortal bird. This shifting has been completed when "I" plunged into the dim forest. This reminds us of Wordsworth's little poem, "Yes, it is the mountain Echo," in which the mountain echo changes suddenly into the voice of God. Both the poems consist in the sudden change. To" I" the voice of the Nightingale becomes immortal and beyond time limitation. The voice has consoled the mind of "Ruth" and charmed" magic casements." He finds that he is not the only person charmed and brought into the realm of Flora by the voice. W. J. Bate says about the stanza that it" moves gently from the actual past, through the realm of possibility and Biblical story, to the remote world of fancy."9 There the word, forlorn, is interpreted as "remote." This is, of course, one meaning of the word in the context, overlapping from the stanza above, but another meaning has the word in the context of the succeeding stanza; Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! The seventh stanza showed that the voice reached to the faery lands forlorn beyond the limit of the particular listener, while the eighth stanza shows that "I" is alienated from the immortal voice. " I" stands in the same line as Ruth did, and he is never alienated from faery lands, no matter how remote they are. But now in the eighth stanza, he is compelled to realize his alienation from the voice. This shifting of the meaning is born out of the interval between the last two stanzas. IQ The power of this word, "forlorn," is to be felt 9. W. J. Bate: John Keats (London, 1967), p. 509. 10. In this respect, Pettet remarks, "It is certain that there is some shift in 37
38 the more horrible, the higher the reader has flown away into the dim forest with " I". It may have been something like a religious conversion. After an instant, but almost infinite interval between the stanzas, the word swells up to have the heaviest content. " I" who flew up to the summit of ecstasy following the voice of the Nightingale, now has been forced to be thrown back to the starting point, the real world, the real self. The value of this ode depends upon how severely we are to take the falling back. But the severeness is softened by the succession of monosyllables in the first two lines of the eighth stanza,n which makes the last two lines come naturally. Keats may have avoided consciously facing directly the falling back and trying to give a fixed conclusion to the dream journey. But this does not result in any blemish, but rather success in expressing the forlornness and unstableness of human life. The point of this ode is, therefore, not "a struggle between ideal and actual," but the forlornness of human life, or a kind of resignation, after waking up out of an exultation in the realm of Flora, which is only a seemingly ideal world.1 2 Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music :-Do I wake or sleep? It seems to be somewhat of an exaggeration to distinguish" a vision" from "a dream" in this context. It is natural to see both the words having a similar meaning. At first, the world of the Nightingale seemed to be an ideal world and he craved to enter it leaving the world of human miseries. But now in drowsy numbness he is doubtful whether it is the truly ideal world or not. In other words, he is not in sober mind enough to decide it by himself. The distance has the meaning of 'forlorn' as he repeats it at the beginning of the last stanza. The degree of the shift must be left to the interpretation of the reader." op. cit., p. 279. 11. Refer to R. H. Fogle: op. cit., p. 38. 12. In this respect, Dickstein remarks, "The Ode to a Nightingale is a tragic poem rather than a visionary one, founded like so many of the best Romantic poems not on imagination flight but rather on the dialectical tension of the poet's divided self." op. cit., p. 219.
been left ambiguous yet. Hence we cannot find a neat figure of the dialectical tension of the divided self but a lonesome figure of the ambiguous self. ( ii ) To Autumn Now another poem, To Autumn, will be examined as the last part of the preliminary studies. While the characteristic of Ode to a Nightingale is a description of the loneliness of the sole self, that of To Autumn is a description of a concrete and steady world. Now because the contrast of concreteness and abstractness is the undertone of the Ode on a Grecian Urn, it seems to me significant to read these two poems as the background to understand what the urn says. Another characteritic of To Autumn is its" anti-deamonic strain" as Patterson put it,13 that is, "the common consciousness sensitive to its surroundings in the phenomenal world and aware of the full beauty and meaningfulness of that world to humanity."14 Indeed, the unique quality of To Autumn becomes conspicuous when juxtaposed against Lamia and the like, as Patterson says. But my point is not to distinguish To Autumn from other poems but to find the moment when Keats becomes able to hold the two antagonistic strains, daemonic and anti-daemonic, within his mind. In short, we can find that moment in Ode on a Grecian Urn, without which the tranquility of To Autumn would have to be left enigmatic or to be thought of as a death ecstasy. Dickstein says, "The main story of Keats' literary life ends here (The Fall of Hyperion). He goes on immediately to write To Autumn, but that is no more than a flawless and seemingly effortless footnote to the odes of April and May."15 But I cannot accept this understanding of Keats's literary life. To Autumn is not a mere footnote but a significant counterpart to the other "daemonic" poems. In other words, To Autumn alone can fulfil the daemonic world because of its anti-daemonic strain, though we must not look over Perkins's remark, "the dominant image is of autumn as the harvester-and a 13. C. 1. Patterson, Jr.: The Daemonic in the Poetry of John Keats (Univ. of Illinois Pr., 1970), p. 220. 14. C. I. Patterson, Jr.: Ibid., p. 221. 15. M. Dickstein: op. cif., p. 262. 39
40 harvester that is in a sense another reaper, death itself."16 The steadiness of To Autum:n, it can be said, is based upon the equilibrium between its own anti-daemonic strain and daemonic one. In the following paragraphs I shall endeavor to give a brief interpretation of To Autumn. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; these two lines shows that the base of the ode is "fruitfulness. And the fruitfulness is not eternal but temporal. Moreover, it is a terminal of a maturing process. "Maturing" here has a double meaning, one is to cause growth, and the other is to grow old. Indeed, Autumn is maturing, but ripeness is not eternal. This does not mean, however, that the poet thinks of the ephemerality of Autumn. Even though the ripeness of Autumn hints at the coming of Winter, the warm days never seem to cease. There drifts the sense of joyous fulfilment and at the same time the stanza suggests, "that the maturing can go no further, that the fulfilment has reached its climax," as said Perkins. 17 This is reinforced by the second stanza: Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; The fulfilment reaches near the end, filled with the sense of drowsy numbness in the air. But the numbness is, of course, not the numbness felt in hearing the song of the Nightingale. This time, it is the numbness of the "last oozings" of "the cyder-press." The poet is amid the ripeness and feel" contentment. In this respect, there cannot be found any attitude of quest for "tragic knowledge" as Dickstein puts it. 18 To be sure, this is not a poem of quest and discovery. The only discursive lines in this poem are the first two lines of the last stanza: Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,- 16. D. Perkins: The Quest for Permanence (Harvard Univ. Pr., 1959), p. 292. 17. D. Perk ins : Ibid., p. 292.
But the two lines seem to be a crucial turning point on which this poem turns itself from a mere descriptive poem or "a flawless and seemingly effortless footnote to the odes" into a significant counterpart to the other odes. The point is how to understand these lines. vve have already had in our mind Keats's saying, "Scenery is fine-but human nature is finer." Now, his letter on writing the poem suggests what Keats feels in Autumn: How beautiful the season is now-how fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather-dian skies -I never lik'd stubble-fields so much as now-aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Some-how the stubble-plain looks warmin the same way that some pictures look warm-this struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it. '9 Of course we are aware of "Intentional fallacy" in interpreting a poem. To be sure, it is a fallacy to read To Autumn in the light of this letter alone, without making the mind of this letter one's own. To Keats, "This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it." And this may be true. But to us, this poem strikes us so much that we are forced to recall the letter. To Autumn is not a poem on Autumn, not a beautiful description of autumnal scenery. The poet is looking at or hearing the songs of Autumn in autumn. And the songs are coming from the" winnowing wind," "a half-reap'd furrow," "hook," "gleaner," "cyder-press," all belonging to the human world and human activities. Thus the personification of Autumn is, we should understand, not a mere good device but a necessary one. Personification is a familiar device; "Winter comes, to role the varied year,/sullen and sad; with all his rising train,/vapours, and clouds, and storm," sings James Thomson in The Seasons, for example. But we can easily understand the difference between the personification of Keats's Autumn and that of Thomson's Winter. In other words, while the spring of the Nightingale is the climate of the alienated realm of Flora, the autumn of To Autumn is the 18. M. Dickstein: op. cif., p. 263. 19. Letter to Reynolds, Sep. 21, 1819. L. 151. 41
42 climate of the human world. The poet would not try to wander out of this world into another world. He is staying where he has been, without feeling lonely nor forlone, because he is now hearing the song of Autumn and it is the song of human nature itself. I wrote that fruitfulness is the base of the poem. Now we can understand that the fruitfulness does not come from Nature in itself but through human activities. If the fruitfulness were of seasonal production alone, it would inevitably lead to ephemerality. But human activities run through the changes of season, sowing and reaping. Fruitfulness is not a terminal end of the activities but a part of it. Therefore the poet sings, "thou hast thy music too, -." This is not a feeble whisper of resignation but a triumphant cry for affirmation of human life, mortal as it is. Keats wrote in the above quoted letter, "Some-how the stubbleplain looks warm-in the same way that some pictures look warm." Keats feels the plain warm not because it is covered with stubbles but because the stubble-plain, though it is bleak after reaping is over, is filled with human Ravor just as some pictures, though they consist of canvas and colors, look warm because they have become a part of human nature, while the green of spring is chilly because it comes out for itself without any association with human nature. A swath is the evidence of human nature acting upon Nature and stubble are the result of it. The poet is now stable and calm, seeing the subtle moment when "barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day," and it is not euphoria nor "love with easeful Death." A drowsy numbness may be prevailing over the poem but it is different in essence from that of the Nightingale ode. "Diligent indolence," as Keats himself put it, is to be found here. "Here impermanence is accepted without the least trace of sadness, for the reason that Keats is able to see it as part of a larger and richer permanence. This greater permanence is the continuity of life itself,"20 says Robin Mayhead. I can agree with him in general but I am afraid that his understanding comes from a little over-generalization of human life, which results in the recognition of a larger and 20. R. Mayhead: John Keats (Cambridge, 1967), p. 96.
richer life beyond the human world as an entity. As Graham Hough says, "Keats finishes where, unlike Shelley, he generally finishes, with his feet on the ground."21 What all the works of Keats give us is the significance of human life itself. IV Interpretation of What the Urn Says Now It IS the time to embark on an interpretation of what the urn says. Perhaps Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the most controversial works that Keats presented to us, and one of the points is whether the last two lines are a blemish or not. As to the point, my interpretation will attempt to illuminate that they are not a blemish but an inevitable conclusion with finer tone based upon the tight and subtle structure. Two premises are required by my interpretation: one is, as the title of this paper shows, that the last two lines are addressed to both the poet and the readers by the urn; and the other is that all of the last two lines are the utterance of the urn. Of course, neither of these premises is completely indisputable. In this respect, the appendix of Twentieth Century Interpretations of KEATS'S ODES, edited by Jack StiHinger is very useful but it does not give us any definitive conclusion about "~Who says what to whom at the end of the ode?" Since we do not have Keats's own manuscript of the ode, it is natural that the premises can not be fully validated. But the validity of the former is convincing, it seems to me, through the interpretation of the ode. As to the latter, we had better depend upon Robert Gitting's study of this problem. He says, "It has shown, on the evidence of this transcript by George, and all others, that the whole of the last two lines is a summary of its message by the U rn."22 Jacob Wigod takes the ode as "the poet's desire to escape the painful actual and seek repose in the ideal,"23 and the ideal is, according to Wigod, "something much more complex, unattainable in either 21. G. Hough: The Romantic Poets (London, 1953), p. 175. 22. R. Gitting: The Odes of Keats & Their Earliest Known M~anuscripts (London, 1970), p. 70. 23. J. vvigod: "Keats's Ideal in the Ode on a Grecian Urn" in Twentieth Century InterjJretations of KEATS'S ODES, p. 58. 43
44 life or art since it encompasses both life and art."24 Admitting his understanding of the" ideal", I cannot agree with him. Wigod,seeing the odes, as a whole, revealing the poet's desire to escape painful reality, holds" Cold PastoralI" parallel to " Forlorn! " in the Nightingale ode. 25 Though it is certain that there is one pervading theme in the odes of 1819, this does not always mean that they are parallel to one another. Rather, each ode is a constituent part of the world of the odes and each has its own position. I said in the interpretation of the Nightingale ode that the sense of amplitude of vibration between real world and the realm of Flora is the crucial element to constitute the world of the ode, and at the same time the sense of forlornness could not become piercing to the mind of the poet, and of the readers as well, without this sense of amplitude. And this is the case of the Grecian Urn ode, too. But what the sense of amplitude brings forth is completely different. On the other hand, To Autumn is stable and free from this sense of amplitude. The stability is, in a sense, to be found in the Grecian Urn ode, while the ode is full of another sense of amplitude unlike that of To Autumn. The following interpretation of the Grecian Urn ode will make it clear how it differs from and is similar to the other two odes. Keats begins with the definition of the nature of the Urn. The first four lines of the nrst stanza: Thou still unravished bride of quietness, Thou foster child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhymes, shows it. As many critics point out, "still unravished bride" shockingly defines the nature of the urn. The urn is yet a pure virgin unravished by "quietness," and the poem implies that the urn will still keep its own position distant from the bridegroom. This sense of distance, again, is the crucial element of this ode, as it is in the case of the Nightingale ode. 24. J. Wigod: Ibid., p. 58. 25. J. Wigod: Ibid., p. 61.
"The foster-child" emphasizes the sense: the urn is not an offspring of the parents, "silence and slow time." She is a daughter-inlaw. Again," sylvan historian" shows the position of the urn detached from actual events. A historian should be detached from events enough to express what the events ought to be, selecting and abstracting the raw materials. Thus, the urn is described as an existence detached three-fold from her bridgeroom (or the present), her parents (or the past), and any event (or future). We cannot overlook this detachment of the urn, because of which the urn could express more sweetly a flowery tale than our rhyme. As a whole, it means that the urn stands outside of human affairs.26 "Here in the very beginning of the poem is a clue to Keats's real attitude toward the permanence of the urn and the supremacy of art,"27 says C. 1. Patterson. The first half of this comment seems to me very right, but the second half seems not so convincing. The first four lines of the stanza is concerned not with the "supremacy of art" but just with the detachment of the urn. What we should take notice of, however, is that the undercurrent of detachment is not yet revealed distinctively but looming behind the sensation roused from seeing the sweet tranquility of the urn's shape and beauty of the "leaf-fringed legend." Guided by the sweet sensation, the poet is being absorbed into the world of the leaf-fringed legend. The following six lines consist of seven questions. The first two questions: vvhat leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dale of Arcady? 'ivhat men or gods are these? reveal that the legendary world is not confined within the human world nor the deities' world alone, but it is a world beyond human reasoning at any rate. Though the poet wonders whether they are deities or mortals, this is not a genuine question but only expresses the states of mind absorbed into ecstasy, losing itself in the world of 26. See E. R. Wasserman: The Finer Tone (The Johns Hopkins Pr., 1953), p.27. 27. C. I. Patterson, Jr.: op. cit., p. 50. 45
46 the urn. In the same way, we can understand the exclamatory effect of the following five questions. "What wild ecstasy?" is, thus, the right conclusion of the first stanza. Now, the poet and the figures on the urn are a1l in wild ecstasy. It is not a world of actuality but of fancy, where unheard melody could claim its supremacy over those heard. The music played by the soft pipers is not to the sensual ear. More than that, the music is not flowing with Time. And this is a natural cosequence resulting from the first stanza. Transcendence of Time is further confirmed, which results in negation of actuality running through Time. The six negations repeated in the second half of the second stanza reveal the poet's negation of actuality with as much strength as possible. 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! Eternal beauty and youth belong to the world of the urn, but the figures on the urn and the poet and the readers know that it is gained at the cost of bliss or ravishment. They must be content with their destiny of remaining unravished forever. Time is merciless and the poet feels like praising Timelessness because of its eternity. But the more enthusiastic the negation of actualities becomes, the more severely it reveals the significance of being actual in Time. "Yet, do not grieve" shows the contradiction of the poet's aspiration towards the Timeless world. The sense of detachment behind the first stanza, now reveals itself as a centripetal effect against the centrifugal aspiration towards the Timeless world. The second stanza, and the third as well, are now on the edge between the two worlds, quivering subtly, though the poet would like consciously to put emphasis upon the centrifugal aspect. The third stanza is not to be separated from the second. "Ah, happy, happy boughs! " and " happy melodist," and " More happy love! more happy, happy love! " and" For ever piping songs for ever new; " "For ever warm and still to be enjoyed," and "For ever panting,
and forever young; "-all these happy aflirmations of the world of ecstasy and the happy aspiration for infinite youth, following the happy, but a little too fanatic, negation of the actual world in the second stanza, make the gap deeper between the two worlds. There come the last three lines of the stanza: All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. These three lines betray the feverish agony of human passion, by means of which they make the poet's mind stand upon the subtle oxymoron more beautiful and more tragic. The poet continunes to try to pursue the ecstasy. Robin Mayhead is right in pointing to "the contrast between the feverishness of that last line and the general air of coolness and stillness surrounding the urn."28 But we should be aware that the contrast is not of dichotomy but of oxymoron, as Wasserman put it. Though I have said that the sense of detachment is the crucial of this ode as well as of the Nightingale ode, the poet, now in this ode, would never think of flying away to the realm of Flora but stays still, gazing at the urn and contemplating the paradox. The poet's ecstasy is a sorrowful bliss. The stronger the contradiction becomes, the more blissful the ecstasy becomes. And it is the sense of detachment that supports the contradiction. There comes the crucial moment when the frame of the oxymoron cannot endure the growing of contradiction. A sudden change of the scene in the fourth stanza brings with it a change of mood. The ecstasy of eternal youth is calmed with the awful scene. Oxymoron, reaching almost its limitation to bear contradiction, manages to keep the frame. But the stillness before bursting could not be maintained so long. What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 28. R. Mayhead: op. cit., p. 83. 47
48 This interogative form is clearly distinguished from the questions asked above, in its genuineness of questioning. And little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. The last three lines of the stanza show us where the poet's eye is cast. By and large, the second half of the stanza reveal.s the breaking down of ecstatic oxymoron. This is the zenith of the ode as a whole. Wasserman regards the third stanza as the climax of the ode because he claims the perfection of oxymoron as the chief theme of the ode. In contrast to Wasserman's remark, Patterson claims, "The fourth stanza presents the imagistic and structural climax of the poem where is carried to its ultimate development the ability of art to stir the imagination to see into the life of things. And this development leads the poet to an inevitable turninig back from the ideal world to the actual world."29 Here we can hear the breaking down of the oxymoron, which consisted of the ecstasy in the ideal world and human miseries in the actual world, because the fictional world of the urn as the ideal ceased to be a counterpart of the human world and has become as miserable as the human world in quality. The esthetics of oxymoron breaks down somewhere. This is the crucial point the ode is trying to show us, though, of course, the distinct superiority of the ode lies in its strictest tension before the breaking. Thus the first five lines of the last stanze reveal cooling down of ecstasy: o Attic shape 1 Fair attitude 1 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: "0 Attic shape! Fair attitude! "-these exclamations have no enthusiastic strength. The poet's mind is now completely detached from the fair attitude and from the world overwrought as well. "Forlorn! 29. C. 1. Patterson, Jr.; op. cit., p. 52.
the very word" fits his mind, which faces eternity-which has ceased to be blissful-alone. Eternity is horrible because of its timelessness, of its void nothingness, though once it attracted his mind because of its intrinsic nature. Henceforce, the unravished bride turn cold because of the eternal purity, unheard melody becomes frozen, and mad pursuit, too, loses its vitality. 'What a cold world! Here the last cry of "Cold Pastoral!" fixes and confirms the distance between Eternity and Temporality, between the Grecian urn and the poet. If this is the end of the journey, however, there is little difference between the Nightingale ode and the Grecian Urn ode, and moreover, it makes the last stanza of little meaning or at its worst, meaningless. Jacob vvigod says, "The climax occurs at this point of tragic awareness, in the final stanza."30 Indeed," Cold Pastoral!" is a significant phrase, but it is not the crucial turning point. vvigod set the turning point a little later in the ode, and so the ode to him could not go beyond Keats's familiar pattern, as he put it,-" initial detachment leading to absorption in the dream and the ideal, followed by rejection."31 On the contrary, when the poet uttered the phrase, " Cold Pastoral!" he is completely awakened, and ready to go further. Though the poet recognized the urn and the "sylvan history" 'on it as "Cold Pastoral" and rejected to identify himself with its cold beauty, it did not mean that he negated the world of the urn as a whole. On the contrary, the world of the urn was indispensable for the poet to see the human world as it really is. By means of 'seeing the urn's "Cold Pastoral" the poet came to be able to see the human world as it is without being attracted to euphoria by the fictitious world of the urn. To Keats Imagination is not the means to see the sylvan world but the very means to see the human world as it really is. Thus; 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. 30. J. Wigod: op. cit., p. 63. 31. J. Wigod: Ibid., p. 62. 49
50 Here is another important phrase, "a friend to man." The urn was first an unravished bride and then a "historian, who canst thus express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme," and next it was precipitated into" Cold Pastoral ", and now it is turned into "a friend to man." This changing process is significant in our reading the poem. It distinguishes the Nightingale and the Urn: the nightingale being not able to become "a friend to man" but a "deceiving elf." The urn's awfulness arising from its eternity is overcome, because the poet gained back his calmness in being a mortal man, when he found the urn not to be enigmatic. The seemingly eternal beauty and happiness of the urn was dethroned to be "a friend to man." In other words, the urn was put down to the same level with man, though there exists a natural gap between the urn and the men. In this situation, Beauty, of which the urn speaks to us is not the unravished bride's beauty nor that of unheard melody, but beauty found in the mortal world, from which once the poet tried to escape following the nightingale's song. And this is the Truth that all of us need to know. The point is to distinguish the urn's beauty from human beauty and to see the urn's world as a counter-world to human world. Mayhead says, "The urn while still being a "Cold Pastoral ", is "a friend to man". 32 He juxtaposes" Cold Pastoral" and" a friend to man" and consequently, it seems to me, he is in a little embarrasment how to reconcile the two phases of the urn. He should have said, "The urn can be 'a friend to man' because the poet could see it as 'Cold Pastoral '." The two phases are not the juxtaposed attributes of the urn but the one is the necessary pre-requisite to the other. And it is the Imagination that can grasp the relation. The last two lines of the ode are, thus, the very fulcrum to turn the forlornness of sole self in the Ode to the Nightingale into the contentment and fulfilment of To Autumn. 32. R. Mayhead: op. cit., p. 85.