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In Search of Sophrosene: A Study of Achilles’ Shield and
Keats’ Grecian Urn |
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“Beauty is
truth, truth beauty,”—that is all Ye know on earth,
and all ye need to know. These
final lines of John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” have been the focus of much
debate since the poem was first published in 1819. Some readers have found them enigmatic yet
lovely, while others, like T.S. Eliot, have disparaged them as “a serious
blemish on a beautiful poem” (qtd. in Murry 71).
Consideration of the lines, as well as the ode in general, has
continued without interruption for nearly 200 years. Scholars have applied various paradigms in
attempts to illuminate the meaning of the lines—indeed, of the entire final
stanza. John Middleton Murry, in 1939, described “[m]en’s reactions” to Keats’
concluding lines as “strangely various” (71).
The inspirations for Keats’ poem are well documented, and its
similarities to the description of Achilles’ Shield in Homer’s Iliad have been noted (Newman 10-11);
but no one seems to have used Achilles’ Shield to shed light on the
mysterious final lines of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In his careful study of “The Great Shield,”
Kenneth John Atchity speaks of Homer’s achievement
in words that echo Keats when he writes, “The shield, then, is didactic. All that man, fictional or real, needs to
know is presented on its surface. The
image asserts the continuity between art and life” (183). Atchity, however,
draws no connection to Keats or “Grecian Urn.” I assert that the connection is most
definitely there in that the Shield inspired in Keats a philosophy that
allowed him to cope with life’s misfortunes, including his own failing
health. |
This paper was presented at the Illinois
Philological Association Conference, April 2007, Sophrosene is a
transliterated Greek word meaning “perfect balance.” Link
to a version of “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” (Right click to open poem in a new
window.) Link to Samuel Butler’s translation of Iliad 18—as Chapman’s is not available
online. (Right click to open poem in a
new window.) |
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First,
though, let us verify Homer’s influence on Keats, the young poet. Heather Coombs suggests that for late
Romantic poets, like Keats and his friend Percy Shelley, their interest in
all things Greek and Italian was a “long-standing one” that was “deliberately
sought and delightedly pursued” (137).
She writes of Keats’ application of classical mythology: “[I]t would fit perfectly with [the poet’s]
instinctive use of individual experience to express universal truth”
(137). Of Homer’s specific influence
on Keats, Coombs describes it as “a thrilling awakening of the soul”
(138). The translation of Homer that
so enraptured Keats was Chapman’s seventeenth-century edition, which the young
poet read for the first time in the fall of 1816. Murry recounts
the tale: One
day in October [Charles Cowden] Clarke[, Keats’ friend,] was lent a copy of
Chapman’s Homer in folio, and Keats
was immediately summoned over in the evening […] to share the feast. They read Chapman together till dawn; […
and] between daybreak and breakfast-time [Keats composed the sonnet “On First
Looking into Chapman’s Homer”]. (16) This epiphanic event in Keats’ life occurred just prior to his
twenty-first birthday. In addition to the sonnet celebrating Chapman’s Homer,
Keats wrote the sonnet “To Homer” in which he describes himself as “[s]tanding aloof in giant ignorance” before encountering
Homer’s poetry. Coombs points out that
Keats never visited |
Link
to a version of “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.” Link to a version of “To Homer.” Link to englishhistory.net’s
discussion of “Ode.” |
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Though
many have puzzled over the conclusion to “Grecian Urn,” it appears that Keats
did not intend for the lines to be so nebulous. In its original published form (in Annals of the Fine Arts, probably
December 1819), the ode does not have quotation marks in the final stanza;
however, for the 1820 printing of Lamia,
Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, Keats, “correct[ing] with great care” (Murry
168), added “inverted commas” around “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” in order
to help clarify the ode’s conclusion—the implication being that the Urn
itself asserts the equation about beauty and truth and that the poet says,
“[T]hat is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” However, Ian Lancashire is among
contemporary editors who suggest that Keats was ill while the book was being
prepared for printing and did not edit “Grecian Urn” as closely as once
believed, so a more accurate punctuation of the final lines would be the
following: “Beauty is
truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.” This version
suggests that the entirety of the last two lines is attributable to the Urn,
with no final commentary in the voice of the poet. Yet another modern notion about the final
lines comes from Dennis R. Dean, who suggests, The
urn […] begins by quoting Sir Joshua [Reynolds] (for Keats and his readers,
the world’s greatest authority on art of all kinds), implicitly affirms the
sufficiency of human intellect, explicitly affirms the equation of beauty and
truth, and pronounces this knowledge entirely sufficient to create an elegant
geometry of such superb art as the urn. (qtd. in
“Ode”) Therefore, Dean
advocates this punctuation, which he says is in keeping with “present-day
editorial practice”: “‘Beauty is truth; truth,
beauty’—that is all Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.” In any event,
if indeed Keats did attempt to illuminate his meaning with the |
Link
to Representative Poetry’s discussion of “Ode.” Link to englishhistory.net’s
discussion of “Ode.”
Google images: Grecian urn. Link to original image page. |
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What
is clear, though, is that Homer’s description of Achilles’ Shield in Iliad 18 was the fountainhead for
Keats’ Grecian Urn poem. Any
translation would verify the connection by showing the repeated images;
however, a study of George Chapman’s translation makes the connection even
more apparent as specific diction appears in each. In Homer’s poem, the artisan Vulcan forges
Achilles’ new armor at the request of the Greek hero’s divine mother, Thetis. Of the two
cities rendered on the Shield, “one did nuptials celebrate, / Observing at
them solemne feasts; the Brides from foorth their bowres / With
torches ushered through the streets […]” (445-47). Moreover, “youths and maides
in lovely circles danc’t, / To whom the merrie Pipe and Harpe their spritely sounds advanc’t […]”
(448-49). Keats begins his ode by
referring to the Urn as an “unravish’d bride of
quietness,” and as the poet commences his description of the pastoral scene
on the Urn he asks, “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
/ What mad pursuit? […] / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstacy?” In the second stanza, Keats again
references the “soft pipes” that “Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: /
Fair youth[. …]” Note the similar
diction of Chapman and Keats:
youths/youth, maides/maidens, pipe/pipe, and
spritely/spirit. Keats’ Fair youth is
“beneath the trees,” while Chapman speaks of “the king [whose …] / harvest Bailiffes underneath an Oke a
feast prepar’d” (506-508). The Fair youth, says Keats, is a “Bold
Lover,” reminding one of Chapman’s young men and women who are mindful of
“[t]he wanton’s pleasure” (521) as they dance, sing and whistle. Chapman’s translation of the scene
continues in a boldly sexual
description of the “youths and virgins” who “danc’t,
all yong and beautious”;
furthermore, “Fresh garlands too [recently deflowered] the virgines’ temples crownd; / The
youths guilt swords wore [phallic-like] at their thighs” (521, 539,
542-43). The dancing youths of
Achilles’ Shield remain chaste of course, as do Keats’ Bold Lover and the
maiden for whom he longs—“never canst thou kiss, / Though winning near the
goal.” |
The Shield of Achilles, made for King George IV’s coronation banquet in 1821. Click on Shield to magnify specific details. Link to original image page. |
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In
the third stanza of “Grecian Urn,” Keats may pick up Chapman’s phallic
symbolism with his description, “Ah, happy, happy boughs!” He continues, “More happy love! more happy,
happy love! / For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
/ For ever panting, and for ever young; / All breathing human passion far
above[. …]” Such passion, says Keats,
“leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, / A
burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
The kinetic tone in this section seems consistent with the Shields’
dancers who “as full of speed, they wound, / Not one left fast or breaking
hands” (546-47). The fourth stanza of
“Grecian Urn” is closely tied to the scenes of Achilles’ Shield. Keats begins by depicting a sacrifice
wherein “O mysterious priest, / Lead’st thou that
heifer lowing at the skies.” On the
Shield, “Foure heardsmen”
tend a “herd of Oxen” and a “Bull” at the head of the herd “deadly bellowed”
as he is “tugg’d off” by “Two horrid Lions” and
killed (522-29). In the stanza, Keats
asks, “What little town by river or sea shore, / Or mountain-built with
peaceful citadel, / Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?” Chapman writes of “a vale close to a flood,
whose streame / Usde to
give all their cattell drinke”
(474-75) and of “the river’s shore” (484).
And Keats’ “peaceful citadel” certainly sounds like the first city
described on the Shield, in contrast to the “other citie
[where] warres employ’d
as busily” (462). It is clear then
that Keats’ ecphrasis was inspired by Homer’s, and
specifically Chapman’s version of Homer’s ecphrasis. |
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Another
important similarity between Achilles’ Shield and the Grecian Urn is their
organic circularity. In Chapman,
Vulcan “beate / A ring, three-fold and radiant […]
/ [And] five-fold were the equall lines he drew /
About the whole circumference […]” (431-34).
Homer emphasizes the circles by adding three more to the Shield: the “earth,” “the never-wearied Sunne,
[and] the Moone exactly round” (436-37). Atchity comments, Circularity,
the hallmark of perfection, is referred to both at the beginning and at the
end of the description, where the dance is likened to a potter’s wheel and
the Ocean stream circles around the rim.
The presence of the circle on the shield as the sign of perfection, of
continuity […], of cyclical reciprocity, of fertility, crystallizes an
important structural aspect of the poem itself. (179) In sum, writes Atchity, Vulcan “has framed human life between mortality
and immortality” (180). Likewise, the
figures on the Grecian Urn move
around its circumference. Any reader
of the poem would know that an urn or vase is typically round, so the ode’s
title begins to communicate the idea of circularity; but Keats underscores
the image in the fifth line of the poem by referring to the “leaf-fring’d legend [that] haunts about [the Urn’s]
shape.” This line—indeed the entire
first stanza—is especially interesting when viewed via the light reflected by
Achilles’ Shield. The word legend, for example: Keats was no doubt using the word to mean
“a collection of stories”—about maidens and young men and musicians and even
a “mysterious priest”—but legend
has special import when comparing the ode to the Iliad, because it (along with its synonyms myth and fable) “refer
to stories handed down from earlier times, often by word of mouth.” Homer’s epic, its heroes and the backdrop
of the Trojan War are certainly legendary,
having survived for thousands of years, and quite possibly for hundreds of
those years by word of mouth. Importantly, the Shield is wrought at a
crucial juncture in the Iliad: when Achilles decides to re-enter the fray
and secure his destiny as a legend, as opposed to simply sailing home to live
out a long life but to be forgotten by the ages. |
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This
connection between Homer and Keats seems tenuous perhaps, but the remainder
of the stanza offers phrasing that is both Achillean
and Iliadic.
One is reminded of Achilles, a demigod, by Keats’ reference to Urn
figures as “deities or mortals, or […] both”; and then asks, “What men or
gods are these?” two lines later. In
between, Keats refers to two Greek locales, |
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The
ideas associated with mortality versus immortality—and with fixedness—are central to “Ode on a
Grecian Urn,” and I will return to them; but for now I want to continue my
examination of the first stanza.
Looking again at the “leaf-fring’d legend
[that] haunts about” the Urn, the line employs an interesting verb in haunts in that it obviously congers
the notion of ghosts, and it is the ghost of Patroclus
who visits Achilles in Iliad 23 and
insists that their remains be kept together in a single urn after the great
hero’s death. “[T]he funeral urn […]
symbolizes the unanimity of the two friends,” writes Atchity. “It will secure their friendship from the
pain of separation only when both are dead.
But the urn will remind living men who see it of the eternal aspect of
such friendship” (159). The only other
funeral urn in the Iliad is Hektor’s (Book 24)—the great Trojan hero, Achilles’
counterpart, who has also achieved a type of immortality due to the epic. Therefore, with the word haunts Keats may be harvesting yet
another reference to mortality/immortality from Homer. The final two lines of the ode’s first
stanza seem Iliadic also, with the “mad pursuit,”
the “struggle to escape,” and the “wild ecstasy”—all of which are apropos to
a description of the Trojan War, especially once Achilles rejoins the fight
with his newly forged shield and armor.
In fact, Homer compares the avenging hero to a lion, a wild animal if you will. |
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Before
leaving Keats’ first stanza I want to take a last look at the multifaceted
word legend. I have already noted its relations to
storytelling and immortality, but there is one other angle to pursue
regarding the interplay of the Grecian Urn and the Shield. Etymologically, legend is descended from the Middle Latin word legenda,
meaning a “lesson.” This aspect of the
“leaf-fring’d legend” is especially noteworthy
considering that the conclusion of the ode takes the form of a lesson: “that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye
need to know.” Recall that Atchity posits the Shield is “didactic,” as it
“present[s] on its surface [… a]ll that man […]
needs to know.” That Keats intended
the reader to grasp this ancestral aspect of the word legend is improvable (some may insist, improbable), but there is
no question that he intended his ode to be didactic, just as Homer intended
his Shield to be. |
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What
then is the lesson that Keats took from Homer, and how might it shed light on
the enigmatic truth/beauty statement?
To fully explore these issues, one must attempt to understand Keats’
state of mind when he wrote the ode. Murry writes, The
time at which [Keats] wrote the Ode on
a Grecian Urn was a time of grinding misery. Everything was being taken from him, a
brother dead, a brother exiled—and their love was “passing the love of
women”—his new-born love [of Fanny Brawne]
strangled at birth, his money gone, his life in question. (77) It must have
seemed to Keats that to move forward was to encounter new permutations of
tragedy in his life—and very possibly have his own life cut short by the
disease that had taken his brother and mother, tuberculosis. Keats’ letters reveal that throughout 1819,
the year of composition for “Grecian Urn” and other now famous odes, the poet
was plagued by a chronically sore throat that he feared was the onset of
tuberculosis (Coombs 9-10). It is
logical then that Keats would be intensely interested in the idea of
“arrested action,” as Murry phrases it: “He envies the felicity of the [Greek Urn]
participants who are immune from mortality and decay” (79). Yet there is a sadness in the ode and its
frozen figures. The Urn after all is a
“foster-child of silence and slow time,” and the whole scene is summed up by
the poet as a “Cold Pastoral.” Murry writes that Keats both “envies and grieves for” the
Urn figures (80). |
Portrait of John Keats
Portrait of Fanny Brawne |
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This
ambiguity is very much part of Achilles’ Shield as well. The Shield communicates a type of
immortality in its static-yet-not-static figures. Susanne Lindgren Woodford argues that
through the Shield’s circularity, “the poem symbolizes its own resistance to
mortality” (79). Moreover, “[t]he
shield […] summarizes the claims of the poetic figures through the Iliad to a nonlinear temporality that
will allow the fame of the warriors to remain ‘unperishing’”
(79). Woodford’s
“nonlinear temporality” is equivalent to the figures’ being frozen as they
are on Keats’ Urn; the Shield holds its images in a state of suspended
animation, as it were. Atchity concurs:
“The result [of Homer’s placement of images], in the poem as on the
shield, is a transformation of real time into an idealized temporality, a
peculiarly poetic time within, but suspended from, everyday reality”
(179). Within the world of the Iliad, however, the Shield’s
interruption of the march of time is just that, an interruption, and not a
termination. At the end of Book 18,
Vulcan completes the Shield and, quickly it seems, the remainder of Achilles’
armor; then Thetis immediately leaves the divine
artisan to make delivery to her son and facilitate his return to combat, thus
hastening the deaths of thousands—including Hektor
and Achilles—and the destruction of Troy (though much of the death and
destruction will take place beyond the time frame of the epic). Thus, for Homer, like Keats, the Shield at
once celebrates a kind of immortality for its heroes while simultaneously
signaling the continuation and even escalation of life’s horrors. |
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The
images of |
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Thus,
the Shield of Achilles provides a philosophical model of how to achieve sophrosene in life:
One must accept the wonderful and the horrible, and find balance in
them via an artistic vision. Truth
and beauty must become one.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty.
By merely implying the verb in the reversal, Keats encourages the
impression of “truth beauty” being one thing.
The encouragement continues with “that is all / Ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know.” The repetition
of all hints at the comprehensiveness of experience represented by the
word truth. Note, too, that the
ode ends with a last circular image:
earth. The earth, like the
Shield, contains all the wonders and horrors; and through its symmetry these
wonders and horrors are seen as perfectly balanced. |
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Let
me return finally to mortality and immortality, which are so central to
Achilles’ character in the Iliad.
Keats originally intended to be a man of medicine and earned his
license of the Society of Apothecaries in 1816 by passing a series of arduous
examinations. By the fall of the same
year, however, Keats chose to abandon his medical career to focus on poetry
fulltime (Coombs 2). In essence,
Keats’ choice was the same as Achilles’.
He could become a surgeon and fade into obscurity after his death, or
he could become a poet and live on through his art. Only in retrospect can we note this Achillean parallel.
And like Achilles, Keats died young, living fewer than five years
after wedding himself to a life of poetry.
In that brief time Keats was surprisingly productive, in spite of his
troubles and deteriorating health.
These misfortunes, however, no doubt shaped Keats’ ideas about life
and death and art; and it was Achilles’ Shield that helped the young poet to
mold these ideas into a philosophy about truth and beauty that
is manifested in “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” |
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Works Cited Atchity, Kenneth
John. Homer’s Iliad: The Shield of Memory. Chapman’s Homer:
The Iliad. Ed. Allardyce Nicoll. Coombs, Heather. The
Age of Keats and Shelley. Murry, John
Middleton. Studies in Keats New and
Old. Newman, John Kevin.
The Classical Epic Tradition.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
15 Oct. 2005
<http:englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odeonagrecianurn.html>. (Link) “Representative Poetry Online: John Keats (1795-1821).” Ed. Ian Woodford, Susanne Lindgren. The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic. |
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Ted Morrissey
teaches literature and writing courses at |
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Text © 2007 Ted
Morrissey |
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