Keats: imagination and Ode on a Grecian urn
Breve riassunto in inglese della vita e le opere di John Keats (2 pagine formato doc)
KEATS: IMAGINATION AND ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
He belongs to the second generation of romantic poets: they all died very young.
They produced and published their works during all the 19th century (Keats – Odes after 1819).The Congress marked the end of revolutions and restored the Ancient Regims – feeling of failure – social pessimism (supported by individual pessimism embodied by Keats).
[ Coleridge, who had optimistic faith in the future, planned an utopia in Norther America with some friends.]
He experienced death in his life ( dad, mom and younger brother). He didn’t have the oppurtunity to live his brief life enjoying it because of his weakness which led him to an awareness of his destiny – rejection of life.
Ode on a Grecian urn: analisi strofa per strofa
KEATS POETICA
Poetry had always been seen since centuries as something catching the fleeting moment.
Inclination (maybe illusion) to find a way to stop time – consequently to his tormented life.
Art’s the mean to stop time.
He wrote a lot of letters to his lover because he was aware his illness would never let him meet her.
Whenever he thought everything was ok something happened . he would have liked to live such a life of pleasures.
To combine himself as a man and himself as a poet. Did he make it or not? Was he able to combine these two worlds or not?
KEATS ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
Ode on a grecian urn: an ode is a rhymed lyric, often in the form of an address, serious in subject, usually exhalted in style and varied or irregular in metre.
He reaches beauty by using poetry as a music which supports images.
Poet is aware of the immobility of the urn ( that’s why in the title “on” instead of “to”).
Comparison
Urn ground: silence, purity still unravished bride of quietness
Slow time eternity
Foster child manipulated
Sylvan historian
Tatctile impression with “ leaf- frigend legend...”.
KEATS IMAGINATION
Girls are runnin’ – men chase ‘em
The poet, using his imagination, wonders what’s goin’ on.
Unheard melodies – imagined by our imagination. Melodies that we can create by means of our imagination.
LOVERS desire fulfillment of desire
Something not fulfilled is doomed to grow in intensity. The unattanaible is mostly desirable.
When you desire somethin’ and then you get it:
- you start being afraid of losing it
- you get tired of it ( think ‘bout babe and his toy).
Approfondimento: Dici di amarmi: testo, analisi e parafrasi della poesia di Keats