Ode-on-a-Grecian-Urn原文加解析

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1、。Ode on a Grecian UrnSummaryIn the first stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He ispreoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the“still unravishd bride ofquietness,”the“foster-child of silence and slow time.”He also describes the urn as a“h

2、istorian”that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legendthey depict and from where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of menpursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be:“What mad pursuit? Whatstruggle to es

3、cape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a young manplaying a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the pipers“unheard ”melodies are sweeter than mortal melodies becaus

4、e they are unaffected by time. Hetells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should notgrieve, because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surroundingthe lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves. He

5、 is happy for the piperbecause his songs will be“for ever new, ”and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will lastforever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into“breathing human passion”and eventually vanishes,leaving behind only a“burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”In the fourth stanza,

6、 the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group ofvillagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are going (“To what green altar,O mysterious priest.”) and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty ofall its citizens, and tells it that

7、its streets will“for evermore ”be silent, for those who have left it,frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself,saying that it, like Eternity,“doth tease us out of thought.”He thinks that when his generation islong dead, the urn will remain,

8、 telling future generations its enigmatic lesson:“Beauty is truth,truth beauty. ”The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.Form“Ode on a Grecian Urn”follows the same ode-stanza structure as the“Ode on Melancholy,”though it varies more the rhyme sc

9、heme of the last three lines of each stanza. Each of the fivestanzas in“Grecian Urn”is ten lines long, metered in a relatively precise iambic pentameter, anddivided into a two part rhyme scheme, the last three lines of which are variable. The first sevenlines of each stanza follow an ABABCDE rhyme s

10、cheme, but the second occurrences of the CDEsounds do not follow the same order. In stanza one, lines seven through ten are rhymed DCE; instanza two, CED; in stanzas three and four, CDE; and in stanza five, DCE, just as in stanza one. As inother odes (especially“Autumn”and“Melancholy”), the two-part

11、 rhyme scheme (the first partmade of AB rhymes, the second of CDE rhymes) creates the sense of a two-part thematic structure as well. The first four lines of each stanza roughly define the subject of the stanza, and-可编辑修改 -。the last six roughly explicate or develop it. (As in other odes, this is onl

12、y a general rule, true of some stanzas more than others; stanzas such as the fifth do not connect rhyme scheme and thematic structure closely at all.)ThemesIf the“Ode to a Nightingale”portrays Keatss speaker s engagement with the fluidexpressiveness of music, the“Ode on a Grecian Urn”portrays his at

13、tempt to engage with thestatic immobility of sculpture. The Grecian urn, passed down through countless centuries to thetime of the speakers viewing, exists outside of time in the human senseit does not age, it doesnot die, and indeed it is alien to all such concepts. In the speakers meditation, this

14、 creates anintriguing paradox for the human figures carved into the side of the urn: They are free from time, but they are simultaneously frozen in time. They do not have to confront aging and death (their love is “for ever young ”), but neither can they have experience (the youth can never kiss the

15、 maiden; the figures in the procession can never return to their homes).The speaker attempts three times to engage with scenes carved into the urn; each time he asksdifferent questions of it. In the first stanza, he examines the picture of the“mad pursuit”andwonders what actual story lies behind the

16、 picture:“What men or gods are these? What maidensloth? ”Of course, the urn can never tell him the whos, whats, whens, and wheres of the stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced to abandon this line of questioning.In the second and third stanzas, he examines the picture of the piper playing to

17、his lover beneaththe trees. Here, the speaker tries to imagine what the experience of the figures on the urn mustbe like; he tries to identify with them. He is tempted by their escape from temporality andattracted to the eternal newness of the pipers unheard song and the eternally unchangingbeauty o

18、f his lover. He thinks that their love is“far above ”all transient human passion, which, inits sexual expression, inevitably leads to an abatement of intensity when passion is satisfied, allthat remains is a wearied physicality: a sorrowful heart, a“burning forehead,”and a“parchingtongue. ”His recol

19、lection of these conditions seems to remind the speaker that he is inescapablysubject to them, and he abandons his attempt to identify with the figures on the urn.In the fourth stanza, the speaker attempts to think about the figures on the urn as though theywere experiencing human time, imagining th

20、at their procession has an origin (the“little town ”)and a destination (the“green altar ”). But all he can think is that the town will forever be deserted:If these people have left their origin, they will never return to it. In this sense he confrontshead-on the limits of static art; if it is imposs

21、ible to learn from the urn the whos and wheres of the“real story ”in the first stanza, it is impossibleever to know the origin and the destination of thefigures on the urn in the fourth.It is true that the speaker shows a certain kind of progress in his successive attempts to engage with the urn. Hi

22、s idle curiosity in the first attempt gives way to a more deeply felt identification in the second, and in the third, the speaker leaves his own concerns behind and thinks of theprocessional purely on its own terms, thinking of the “little town ”with a real and generous feeling. But each attempt ult

23、imately ends in failure. The third attempt fails simply because there isnothing more to sayonce the speaker confronts the silence and eternal emptiness of the little-可编辑修改 -。town, he has reached the limit of static art; on this subject, at least, there is nothing more the urn can tell him.In the fin

24、al stanza, the speaker presents the conclusions drawn from his three attempts to engage with the urn. He is overwhelmed by its existence outside of temporal change, with its ability to“tease ”him“out of thought / As doth eternity.”If human life is a succession of“hungrygenerations, ”as the speaker s

25、uggests in “Nightingale, ”the urn is a separate and self-contained world. It can be a “friend to man, ”as the speaker says, but it cannot be mortal; the kind of aesthetic connection the speaker experiences with the urn is ultimately insufficient to human life.The final two lines, in which the speake

26、r imagines the urn speaking its message tomankind”Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”have proved among the most difficult to interpret inthe Keats canon. After the urn utters the enigmatic phrase“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”no onecan say for sure who“speaks ”the conclusion,“that is all / Ye know on e

27、arth, and all ye need toknow. ”It could be the speaker addressing the urn, and it could be the urn addressing mankind. If it is the speaker addressing the urn, then it would seem to indicate his awareness of its limitations: The urn may not need to know anything beyond the equation of beauty and tru

28、th,but the complications of human life make it impossible for such a simple and self-contained phrase to express sufficiently anything about necessary human knowledge. If it is the urn addressing mankind, then the phrase has rather the weight of an important lesson, as though beyond all the complications of human life, all human beings need to know on earth is that beauty and truth are one and the same. It is largely a matter of personal interpretation which reading to accept.-可编辑修改 -。THANKS !致力为企业和个人提供合同协议，策划案计划书， 学习课件等等打造全网一站式需求欢迎您的下载，资料仅供参考-可编辑修改 -