Essay About Paradoxical Concept Of Beauty And Grecian Urn

Reflective Ode To Greation
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Keatss “Ode on a Grecian Urn” offers a paradoxical concept of Beauty. It describes the frozen beauty portrayed on the Urn as sweeter than reality, for its expiration is a locked impossibility. The lovers kiss is sweeter when in waiting, and her timeless beauty and devotion are worth the kisss impossibility. Thus, the observation of beauty is more sweet than its reception, and objects in their prime are best just before their expiration. This poem is reminiscent of Shakespeares sonnets in its zeal for permanent youth and disdain for times drain on youths beauty. Yet, after all the desires for the Urns timeless youth and beauty (an impossibility in reality), the poet ends with, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Keats objectifies and works to define beauty through his description of the Urn, or art in general. If the beauty found in the urn is an impossibility in reality, how can it be undeniable truth? “La Belle Dame sans Merci” further complicates this question. Here, beauty is false trickery. The knight is pulled in by a mythical creature whose beauty and pleasing actions draw him into her lair, where she leads him to tragic ending on the cold hills side. It can be deduced from this poem that Beauty is deceiving, and, consequently, not Truth. So what are we left with? “Ode on a Grecian Urn” implies that art represents Beauty. But this Beauty is impossible in the realm of reality; it can only be in the unmoving atmosphere of an Urns surface. After four and a half stanzas supplying evidence of the scenes impossibility, the finishing lines inextricably link Beauty to Truth.