Form and Content in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" Author(s): Roy Arthur Swanson Source: College English, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Jan., 1962), pp. 302-305 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/373074 Accessed: 11-12-2016 23:33 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College English
302 COLLEGE ENGLISH suggest strongly must take another look. sweet What possession rewa heaven: beauty, of the eternal poet could aspire, rest, with the dead perf Blake's language young is always man and woman, richly to go to a placevoc and the connotations of eternal beauty and rest? in Surely this soul. poe notably vivid and His sunflower precise. his soul. As the last line Any doubts the of the reader poem brings the symbol may into perspective, all the other are images dispelled fall into place b have Blake means heaven two examples around he it. gives The poem's meaning of other becomes are going to this clear: same the writer, weary "golden of man's measured clim young man who time "pined on earth, longs away for the reward with of that is, did not eternity. sin, But to did achieve his not purpose Blake give carnal desire, and does not the compare "fair soul with sunflower; Virgin he from sin, pristine, equates them, shrouded and the two words become with for purity, arise interchangeable to go within where the structure the of the sun also wishes to poem. go-heaven, We cannot even say that almos the poem tainly, or at least has two Blake's levels, because concept this is clearly not of peace. a poem about a sunflower in any sense. The soul-symbol is artfully restricted and pinpointed. What kind of sunflower is this that yearns for the same life after death that humans Because this poem is brief and because do? The answer lies in a key word in the last line-my. Blake tells us that his sunflower yearns for infinity, rest, is "weary the entire poem presents a single symbol, I have found it a very effective tool in teaching symbolism to college freshmen. of time." To construe this possessive as The "unlocking" of the poem itself is a reference to a personal or privately ownedstimulating class exercise, and the students' sunflower makes the poem ridiculous, and pleasure at comprehending what they had since there is nothing in the poem's tone thought to be obscure is, as usual, the to indicate satire or humor of any kind, we English teacher's reward. FORM AND CONTENT IN KEATS'S "ODE ON A GRECIAN URN" It has become an esthetician's principle that form and content in a veritable work of art are identical. Great works of Greek literature appear to bear this out; their content in general is an assertion of those universal and manifold modes of proportion comprehended in the concept of the golden mean, an ideal sustenance of balance between extremes; their form in general is characterized by "Classical balance": stylistic symmetry and parallelism, that is, basically, chiasmus and anaphora. Classical balance and the golden mean are ultimately identical in great Greek literature. This RoY ARTHUR SWANSON An associate professor in the Classics Department of the University of Minnesota, Mr. Swanson is the editor of Odi et Amo: The Complete Poetry of Catullus (1959). must have been clear to Keats, whose "Ode on a Grecian Urn" reiterates the identity. But the reiteration is in the nature of a Romantic manifesto. Keats, a Romantic poet, contemplates a Classical Greek urn; his Romantic reaction to Classical balance results in a poem whose form is Classical and whose content is Romantic. His identification of form and content is a reconciliation of the Classical and the Romantic. This reconciliation is a type of synthesis. It is a synthesis of the logical and the illogical, of symmetry and asymmetry. We associate the logical and the symmetrical with Classicism, the illogical and asymmetrical with Romanticism. Our association here is, of course, general, for Classical works do admit and exploit illogicalities, as H.D.F. Kitto has shown in Form and Meaning in
ROUND TABLE 303 Drama, and Romantic umbilical stanza creates the works focus of the do presence of logicalities, poem, incidentally-the idea of such sempiternal as courses of Don happiness Quixote discoverable only which in the stasis of ha orientations than art. The stanza, chivalry. like the activities on the In K the Classical and the Romantic elements urn, is in medio. are complementary, insofar as opposites, These or are all examples of Classical balance. e.g., They, like the pastoral scene on the disparities, complement each other: black and white, illogicalities and Classical urn, reflect the "golden mean." Keats tragedy, logicalities and Don Quixote. freezes The the ideal pastoral action. The fact that Keats's ode identifies such complements is certainly no more startling beginning than and end, between the extremes described activity is in the mean between the fact that Nicholas V (or Pius II, of etc.) inception and realization. Both the form was a "humanist Pope," but is, for all (ode) that, and the content (depicted and depicting urn) are each a "cold pastoral," a paradox, the essential and functional paradox of the poem. The paradoxes freezing to (i.e., making constant) forever the which Cleanth Brooks refers ("Keats's warmth of activity in ritu. Sylvan Historian" in The Well-Wrought The succession of rhetorical or deliberative questions in the first and fourth stanzas Urn) are examples of Romantic illogicality (e.g., silent speech, motionless actors, perpetual novelty, cold warmth). is also from the Classical tradition. The form (rhetorical question) is identical with There are two chiasmi in the first stanza. the content (Dionysiac mystery); that is, Lines 1 and 2 include: the unanswered questions along with the A B B orgiastic and sacrificial rites, concerning still [a which they were tempo posed, constitute mysteries. A The urn, too, on which the mysterious -time rites are presented in relief, is, like the Thou still unravish'd bride of quiteness, eternity it symbolizes, a mystery which does Thou foster-child of silence and slow "tease us out of thought." There is no time... rational or logical solution to the mystery. The disposition of lines 5-9 is chiastic: One can only contemplate and experience A What... the urn and eternity, illogically and irrationally ("out of thought": We need some B Of... C In... such word as "erationally" or "aponetically.") This, then, would be a Romantic B What... A What... experience of a Classical item, a supralogical of reaction the to logical and symmetrical The fifth stanza echoes a balance silence-time theme with "silent" and proportions: the reaction of the Romantic Keats to the Classical urn. "eternity." There are, as in the first stanza, two chiasmi: for eternity has no perspective, no beginning-middle-end. Only that which is within brede-men-maidens-ove thought is capable of symmetry. The golden "Beauty is truth, mean is a symmetrically truth defined all-middle; beau Anaphora but is eternity obvious cannot be all-middle, because in t it precludes the extremes which define the form of stanzas middle. 2-5. The fi "Thou" (twice) and "What There is also There the is additional successio asymmetry in the conceit of lines 11-13: A B Sylvan historian flowery tale leaf-fringed legend. In the third stanza "happy" is repeated six times, "for ever" four times, etc. This The urn is symmetrical in proportion, but it symbolizes that which is asymmetrical, Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear... "Heard melodies" are definite; they have
304 COLLEGE ENGLISH each a beginning, giving middle, birth to consideration and of the end abstract. Keats here or prefers inferred, the sweetness of unheard, i.e., imagined definite, not subject the abstract, undefined to symmetry by sense, to that of when we hear only the concrete, a portion defined by sense. of a fa melody, we supply As the tangible, the unheard balanced urn inspires par is, we complete subjectively consideration of the intangible what ("Not to the is jectively presented sensual ear, to but, our more endear'd,/pipe sense of to theh The heard part spirit is sweet; ditties of no tone"), the it is unhea clear that demands from us the Classical an effort gives birth to which, the Romantic. p results in pleasure, As Keats sees possibly Romanticism in Classicism, for our made it, possibly the two because become identical. Just it so, men has and re us with the satisfaction gods are identified in of line 8, competen since the depicted figures may then, be either; and may chiastic be pletion. Imagination, reward us by returning disposition balances the identity: our dream instant we provide it; investment and are simultaneous and identical. This is more immediate when a melody is provided in its deities-morta entirety by the imagination. A concrete The urn is addressed in the first stanza as item, such as a figure on Keats's urn, gives (1) "still unravish'd bride of quietness," rise to purely abstract pleasure. The whole (2) "foster-child of silence and slow time," melody is then unheard and is completely and (3) "Sylvan historian"; in the last independent of the sense of hearing. stanza as (4) "Attic shape," (5) "Fair The symmetry of a Greek temple directs our eye to the middle, the columnar Pastoral." As an "unravish'd bride" the urn attitude," (6) "silent form," and (7) "Cold mean. This provides the pleasure of a whole is itself comparable with one of its parts, comparable with a heard melody. An asymmetrical object directs our eye to the in- the second stanza. The idea in "foster- the girl pursued by the "bold Lover" of complete extreme. The pleasures of Classical child of silence and slow time" is reiterated art lie in the mean, those of Romantic art in "silent form" teasing "us out of in the extreme. The Romantic artist permits thought/as doth eternity." Silence teases or challenges the viewer, reader, or listener us out of thought, eternity is out of time, to complete the art work and, in doing so, the sweeter melodies are out of sound: this accords him the pleasure of creation is a progression from the definite to the through use of the imagination. Allusive indefinite, from the symmetry of the urn poetry may be said to be Romantic in this to the asymmetry of the undefined. The respect; it enables the appreciator to aid indefinite is co-extensive with the definite as artistic composition by recognizing and the urn is co-extensive with its parts, or, applying the "unheard" part to which the specifically, with one of its parts. The remaining apostrophes exemplify literature- allusion is made. We are reminded of the pleasure which a child derives from putting in-sculpture. "Sylvan historian" and "Cold together a model whose parts have been Pastoral" call to mind generic modes of prefabricated; pleasure in a pre-assembled literary composition (history and the pastoral); "shape," "attitude," and "form" are model is esthetic, but in an assembly of the model it is creative as well. consonant with sculpture. Again "bride" When an esthetically pleasing objectand "foster-child" relate humanity to art stimulates pure contemplation and the creation of, say, a melody independent of the the two. Finally, the means by which these (literature and sculpture) by identifying senses-when, as Plato suggests in the Symposium, the love of beauty, i.e., in a made-apostrophe, synecdoche, personifica- Romantically illogical identifications are beautiful object, gives rise to the love of tion, metonymy-are, to be sure, Classical birth in beauty-then the derived pleasurefigures of speech. is sweeter insofar as it is more abstract and Form is one thing, content another. In less bound to sense. Plato, of course, great art they coalesce, as one thing and recognized the value of the concrete another in thing become the same thing:
ROUND TABLE 305 sound ("pipes the and tangible timbrels") becomb silence ("no tone"), becomes thought literature, b experience, symmetry Classicism becomes Romanticism. becomes asy A READING OF "THE WINDHOVER" DANIEL STEMPEL Let us begin with an article of faith: Hopkins was not an "obscure" poet. What he had to say was complex and difficult and his verse reflects this complexity. His ambiguity-when he is ambiguous-is deliberate, not a byproduct of confusion or diffuse intuitions. The signs are there; with care and attention it is possible to follow him through to the heart of the poem. Any reading of Hopkins' verse must be based on the assumption that every word, every mark of stress, every line-division was placed there for an exactly planned and calculated effect. There is no carelessness in Hopkins' writing, no nonchalant tossing off of lines with a courtly sprezzatura. Each critic begins from his own vantage- control of the wind currents and rapid wing-beats. It is not, as Harrison points out, a soaring bird which circles over an area. The second type of flight is a swift darting to another fixed position by a rapid change in flight direction or by a downwind glide. The structure of the octave reflects the two modes of flight of the windhover and the contrast between these modes is the theme which is developed through the entire sonnet. From the first words to the end of the long adjectival sequence modifying "air," the poet is describing the hovering of the kestrel, "his riding/ Of the rolling level underneath him steady air." The bird is relatively motionless, completely at ease in its element, simply maintaining point and enters the maze of the poem from its position in the supporting medium. Then the angle corresponding to his peculiar perspective. The theologian approaches it as a "strides" into the wind, bends one wing and comes the change in flight. The bird vehicle for the embodiment of doctrine; the uses it as a pivot to swing around. The stylist as an experiment in metrics; the bending of the wing in order to "bank," as amateur psychologist as a personal confession, and so on. To review every readingpointed arch in the wing structure, like a pilot might put it, creates a kind of of "The Windhover" would be a major the arch of a nun's wimple (not a rippling task of research. Instead, let us begin again, of the surface!). Then, with the added lift not with doctrine or language or psychology but with the referent, the actual event swings downwind with the full force of the gained by flying into the wind, the bird which Hopkins witnessed and from whichwind supporting his rapid glide. This is he abstracted those elements which make what Hopkins means by "the hurl and up the image that dominates the poem and gliding/ Rebuffed the big wind." In contrast to his former static flight, the bird gives it its title. What Hopkins saw may give us the clue to what he is saying. has flung himself directly against the wind The flight of the windhover or European and has used its power for his own advantage; it has hurled itself against opposition kestrel has been described in Thomas P. Harrison's article on "The Birds of Gerard and has made that opposing force work for Manley Hopkins" (SP, July 1957) and init. This-not the hovering over one spotis the essence of "the achieve of, the mas- the writings of amateur and professional birdwatchers. There are two modes of flighttery of the thing!" utilized by the bird: first, the type of flight "My heart in hiding" seems to be a clear indicated by its name, "hovering" or remaining fixed over one point by delicatethe open sky, and the "caged skylark" of contrast between the bird in action, out in the poet's spirit, "This in drudgery, daylabouring-out life's age." He marvels at the Mr. Stempel, University of Hawaii, teaches in the English department and the English Language Institute of the East-West Center. stirs in sympathy with that heroic complete freedom of the bird and his heart con-