Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn”: A Rejection of the Poet’s Desire of Identification with the Urn
Keats’s “Ode to a Grecian Urn”: A Rejection of the Poet’s Desire of Identification with the Urn

Summary/Abstract: John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” has been interpreted in different ways, the best-known of which is the imaginative Keats’s desire to be identified with the urn in order to enter an ideal world of beauty where there is no pain. This study is a rejection of the long-held notion of the idealist Keats’s desire of identification with the urn. The poem is the poet’s discovery or recreation of the self in a Hegelian dialectical process for which he needs an addressee/other. Thus, the poet creates the urn not in order to be identified with it but to escape from what it represents, i.e. the ideal and relief from earthly pain. Based on evidence from Keats’s letters, this article concludes that the poet/urn relationship remains I/thee to the end, and the poet sees earthly pain as necessary to the formation of the self. It is in relation to the place of the urn as other as well as to the feminine descriptions of the urn that the poet can articulate himself, and establish a superior identity. This yields a different interpretation of the challenging “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” assertion. It emerges that Keats perceives the beauty of the truth that pain is both necessary and beautiful. Thus it is concluded that the unity of the poet and the urn is suspended and the poem ends with the poet’s assertion of what truth is. Keats rejects the urn at the end, for it can be no substitute for reality.

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