Ode on a Grecian Urn Paper

658 Words3 Pages
Mike McDonald
Ms. Byrne
English 10
3 May 2013
Interpretation of the Grecian Urn

Is it possible for something to speak to people without the use of words? If one thinks about it, one of the best examples of something that can speak without verbal communication is art. A certain poem named Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats is a perfect example of how art is able to communicate with humans. However, not everyone can read the language of art; it speaks a language that only those who choose to listen to it can understand. John Keats is an example of a man who is trying to understand the language of art, which he questions throughout his entire poem. Art can come in a wide variety of forms, and John Keats is trying to interpret a visualized story painted upon the urn. While it is said that a photograph can be worth a thousand words, Keats is able to prove that a painting upon an old Grecian piece of pottery can say just as much. He describes the urn’s visualization of its stories as a way to tell “a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme” (Keats 4). However, he is not fully capable of discerning the meaning behind the story being told, nor can he discern any of the other paintings upon the urn completely. It goes to show the complexity of the language of art when read by mankind.
Art can not only speak to a person, but it can also paint a picture of a perfect world inside one’s mind. The human mind and human emotion can sometimes yearn for the world that is reality to bend to what it desires. Though this is not likely at all to occur in the realm of reality, it is easy to capture a world of perfection in eternal stillness in art. John Keats finds this exact kind of ideal world on the urn he talks about in Ode on a Grecian Urn, describing it as what will “remain, in midst of other woe” (Keats 47). Despite the troubles the real world may bring to one, those
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