On 13/6/04 8:46 PM, "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
> it's an old perplexity as to who says the final lines. My own preference,
> purely on aesthetic grounds, is that is the Urn speaking, metaphorically of
> course. If it's Keats then it becomes a questionable piece of art-centred
> preaching, everything that is true is most certainly not beautiful, but if
> it's the Urn then it's just the kind of thing it might, as it were, say.
It appears indisputable to me that for the purpose of the poem it is the urn
speaking; I can't see how else grammatically it would make sense ("Thou,
silent form, dost tease us out of thought...Thou shalt remain...a friend to
man, to whom thou say'st" &c). And it also seems to me, though this is of
course arguable, what Keats "hears" from the urn is the flower of his own
thought about it.
What the lines mean is another question. To my mind, Keats clearly and
quite consciously isn't referring to fact or information (I would suggest he
is consciously appealing against it, being "teased out of thought" in the
"midst of ...woe"), nor appealing to an instrumental idea of "truth". In
which case the "truth" Keats means is not what might be mundanely regarded
as being true or factual, nor the "beauty" merely what is pleasing. The
poem itself is after all a suspended promise, an "unravished bride", art's
happiness.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
Blogs: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com
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