In What Sense Is Beauty of Art Is Truth Not a True Statement?

Written in 1819, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' was the 3rd of the five 'great odes' of 1819, which are generally believed to accept been written in the following gild – Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn, Melancholy, and Fall. Of the five, Grecian Urn and Melancholy are only dated '1819'. Critics have used vague references in Keats's letters as well every bit thematic progression to assign order. ('Ode on Indolence', though written in March 1819, possibly before Grecian Urn, is not considered one of the 'not bad odes'.)

This ode contains the about discussed two lines in all of Keats'southward poetry;

'"Dazzler is truth, truth beauty," – that is all/Ye know on globe, and all ye need to know.'

The exact meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered them a blight upon an otherwise cute poem. Scholars have been unable to concur to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed. Arguments tin can exist fabricated for whatsoever of the iv near obvious possibilities, -poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet to figures on the urn. The issue is further confused by the alter in quotation marks betwixt the original manuscript copy of the ode and the 1820 published edition. (This upshot is further discussed at the lesser of this page.)

Crop from George Keats's manuscript copy of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'

You can view part of the earliest known manuscript beneath. Please note that it is a transcription in George Keats's handwriting; Keats's original manuscript / first draft is lost.

Thou notwithstanding unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and ho-hum time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, simply those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Non to the sensual ear, just, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the copse, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever tin can those trees exist blank;
Bold lover, never, never canst 1000 buss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, exercise not grieve;
She cannot fade, though grand hast not thy bliss,
For e'er wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the bound cheerio;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever pipe songs for e'er new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and withal to be savor'd,
For ever panting, and for ever immature;
All animate man passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning brow, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what light-green chantry, O mysterious priest,
Pb'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or body of water shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morning?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Volition silent exist; and not a soul to tell
Why thousand art desolate, tin can eastward'er return.

O Attic shape! Off-white mental attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent grade, dost tease us out of thought
Every bit doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old historic period shall this generation waste product,
G shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to human being, to whom chiliad say'st,
"Dazzler is truth, truth beauty," – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Note: In 1997, Dennis Dean published an article in the Philological Quarterly titled 'Some Quotations in Keats's Poetry'. In it, he discussed the trouble of the final quotation, linking it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds. I recollect it reasonably settles the 'quotation issue':

"In his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" Keats will say exactly the same thing, more elegantly but more cryptically also: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"–surely the most famous equation in English literature and precisely correct in suggesting the Newtonian origin of the unstated "proof." Many readers of Annals of the Fine Arts would probably have recognized the source of Keats'south equation in the writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds considering of their familiarity with Reynolds and because the whole technique of allusion (or even brusque quotation) was central to the neoclassicism in which both Reynolds and his readers had been educated.

In the 2nd published version of 1820, moreover, Keats represents this portion, and this portion just, of the urn's utterance equally a quotation–just every bit a quotation within a quotation. If 1 were free to punctuate the final pair of lines in the "Ode" according to present-day editorial practice, they would (in my view) await similar this:

"'Beauty is truth; truth, dazzler'–that is all
Ye know on globe, and all ye need to know."

The urn, in other words, begins by quoting Sir Joshua (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 dazzler and truth, and pronounces this cognition entirely sufficient to create the elegant geometry of such superb fine art as the urn.

Considering of the uniformity of human minds and passions, moreover, the figures inscribed on the urn (which puzzle the observer at first glance) become intelligible as nosotros chronicle them to our ain experience. The first stanza of the poem is filled with questions; the last, with none. Being art, the urn retains its power to "speak" to all who observe it, reminding the states of our paradoxical dilemma as mortals who exist in finite time."

Source: 'Some Quotations in Keats's Poetry' by Dennis R. Dean. From the Philological Quarterly. Book: 76. Issue: 1, 1997.

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