Ode Grecian
Entering the Greek and Roman art section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, I was first struck by the skillful lighting and the overall professionalism inherent in the displays. There were not as many people in this section as in some of the others I had visited that day. Yet because of the caliber of artifacts exhibited at the Met, I still felt continuity with the greater world of ancient art. Looking around the gallery containing the Archaic Greek vases, painted in the "black figure" technique, I was immediately impressed by the range of imagery that was depicted on the vases. The sheer age of the vases was astounding. I know most of them were restored painstakingly by experts, but these were items about 2500 years old. I was drawn to one vase in particular, a "neck-amphora" made of terracotta construction and finished with the classic Archaic black figure technique. According to the description on the Metropolitan Museum's Web site, black figure vase painting involved the application of glaze "in silhouettes," and then after that, details like the drapery are incised using a fine object. The particular amphora I was looking at was attributed to an artist named Exekias. I did not know that there were any famous Greek vase painters.
Then I remembered the underlying purpose of my visit and why I selected this very gallery. I was gazing directly at the "still unravished bride of quietness," the "foster child of silence and slow time," (Keats lines 1, 2). A piece of art like the...
.." As the youth is in a constant state of seeking, eternally about to experience the joy of a first kiss. Relatable Human Emotion Though Keats means for the symbols to be expressed as unknown through the expression of curiosity about who these individuals might be: "What leaf-fringed legend haunts 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
Ode to a Grecian Urn Keats John Keats' poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn," contains many messages about life, love, and history. Within its stanzas there are countless allusions to the fact that art, once recorded becomes and ideal of beauty, shattered only by the loss of such art but never degraded by time, memory or corporeal reality. The three themes that repeat throughout the work are those of love, silence,
Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. Specifically it will discuss the points John Keats makes regarding the power of art to stir the imagination, to survive across time and space, and to give meaning to a world in flux. Keats poem celebrates the urn as an artifact of history and how that artifact is like a snapshot in time, illustrating the lives and the people of long-ago. This
Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats; "The Convergence of the Twain" by Thomas Hardy; and "Fern Hill" by Dylan Thomas. Specifically, it will identify the common theme in these three poems, which is time. Time stops in all three poems for various reasons, and adds to the impact of each poem in a special way. COMMON THEME In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats is celebrating the past, stopped
All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, burning forehead, and a parching tongue. A lines 28-30) The final lines of the Ode encapsulate the tension and conflict of the poem in a vision of art as the only means of resolving the disparity between the ideal and the real. When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man,
Rousseau’s First Discourse and Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” both focus on Beauty as the sole arbiter of Truth and the only guide through life that society really needs. Yet each work is different because they both come to different conclusions: Rousseau’s treatise is a work of philosophical speculation that essentially rejects beauty and truth (justifying this rejection by referencing the words of Socrates no less), while Keats’ work
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