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The Sylvan Historian
1. The Sylvan Historian refers to the way in which the urn tells the tale. “Sylvan” means, by definition, Inhabitant of forest: a person, animal or spirit that lives in a forest. This implies that the Sylvan historian, who is located and familiar with the woods, is best fit to tell the tale. The first stanza states that the Sylvan historian is better fit to tell the story than anyone else. 2. Rustic, representing a woodland scene.
Arcady
The valleys of Arcadia, a state in ancient Greece often used as a symbol of the pastoral ideal. “Tempe”: a beautiful valley in Greece that has come to represent rural beauty.
sensual ear
The ear of sense (as opposed to that of the “spirit,” or imagination).
“All breathing human passion far above”
This line is important because it refers to the idea that being frozen is better than “all breathing human passion far above”. The reality of it is that one’s feelings and passion will become so overwhelming and will ultimately lead to sadness, misery and sorrow. Being frozen, as suggested by the still images on the Gracian urn, is essentially the only way to be happy.
Attic
Greek. Attica was the region of Greece in which Athens was located.
fair attitude
Probably used in it’s early, technical sense: the pose struck by a figure in statuary or painting.
overwrought
Ornamented all over (“overwrought”) with an interwoven pattern (“brede”). The adjective “overwrought” might also modify “maidens” and even “men” and so hint at the emotional anguish of the figures portrayed on the urn.
cold pastoral
He believes that you loose something in the process when you try to be in touch with the transcendent reality.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”
1. The REAL reality is the TRANSCENDENT condition we get through Art, not the human condition.
2. The quotation marks around this phrase are found in the volume of poems Keats published in 1820, but there are no quotation marks in the version printed in Annals of the Fine Arts that same year or in the transcripts of the poem made by Keats’s friends. This discrepancy has multiplied the diversity of critical interpretations of the last two lines. Critics disagree whether the whole of these lines is said by the urn, or “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” by the urn and the rest of the lyric speaker; whether the “ye” in the last line is addressed to the lyric speaker, to the readers, to the urn, or to the figures on the urn; whether “all ye know” is that beauty is truth, or this plus the statement in lines 46-48; and whether “beauty is truth” is a profound medaphysical proposition, and overstatement representing the limited point of view of the urn, or simply nonsensical.
References:
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” The Longman Anthology: British Literature. Ed.
David Damrosch & Kevin J.H. Dettmar. New York: Pearson Education, Inc. 2006. 905-906.
“Sylvan.” MSN Encarta. 2007.
