As we talked in class, tensions fascinate artists and writers because a tension presents an ever-fluid situation in which two forces are flirting, combating, wrestling,intercoursing with one another. Tensions defy status quo, bringing forth oppositions that stir imagination and trigger narration. In other words, a tension or an opposition is forever intriguing, forever evocative, and forever provocative for artists.
In fact, you can find out this "tension" or "opposition" operating throughout John Keats's poetry. His poems such as "Old to a Nightingale" or "Ode on a Grecian Urn" are built upon oppositions. Although he likes to set up a tension, he does not want it fully resolved. However, much of the pleasure we derive from his poetry stems from this opposition between dreams of something better and the pains of reality.
Here comes your assignment: Pick up any sections of his poem, looking at the details of the poem. Identify a central opposition in the poem and analyze this "opposition."
15 comments:
I’ve found opposition in line 11 to 20, which is the second section of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
First, the section describes a man is fascinated by a woman. Then, the man gradually becomes so crazy about her that he wants to have her. He constantly harasses her and she suddenly ends up being “untouchable” (either she becomes frozen or turns into one of trees). As a result, the man can’t do anything to her and her beauty remains forever.
As the head line of the section “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter” has suggested, something that one cannot have is the greatest thing in the world. The woman whom the man desires so much is so close at his hand that he can touch her, yet, due to what happens to her, it turns out the only thing he can do is to just stand there and watch her eternal beauty. He can’t do anything like kissing her.
In addition, the rest of other sections also mentions about the same woman.
Therefore, the struggle between having the woman and not having her is the central opposition of the poem.
I choose "Ode to a Nightingale." In this poem, there are one evident tension between stanza 2 and 3.
In stanza one, the narrator used a lot of mythological and romantic image to describe the fantastic world which the nightingale brought to him. Keats was fascinated with this unconsciousness, so he wanted to escape away the reality.
While stanza one is full of mirth, stanza two seems to be pale and gloomy. The picture here is too dismal to face the crucial reality for the narrator. For example, the beauty would fade away, and there is no endless love.... This stanza is flooded with melancholy.
A paradox exists between them; however, this tension has deepened the extreme experiences. The struggle, joy, suffering and cheer existed in the same time between the ideal imagination and the reality where Keats would like to run away.
I would discuss the second poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn".
In this poem, John Keats imaged everything in the Grecian urn are frozen.
He used to compared with breathing human in natural world.For instance, third stanza is
praised everything in urn is fix and frozen, and for ever spring, boughs for ever happy also
eveything is for ever young.But in the other side, breathing human are changeable, full of sorrwful
and cloyed, have a burning forehead and parching tongue, the oppositions between imagination and reality are shown obviously in John Keats poem.
In my opinion, John Keats's poems want to suggest the reader nature is changeable and it's beautiful. Last I like the sentence which John keats has praised "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty".
In the john keats's poem "ode on a Grecian urn". There have a lot of opposition of the real life and the urn. For example in line 15 says girls will forever yong, in line16 says winter never comes, in the line 17, lovers never kiss together. The world in the urn is so pretty, every thing stays in the wonderful condition and the posture is so good. It is never happened in the real world. People will make lots of changes, but the urn is absolutely correct. It is the most differences.
I have found an opposition in the poem" Ode to a Nightingale." In the second stanza of this poem described the beautiful scenery which has abundant of fruit、vintage and full of mirth atmosphere. However, all of these picturesque scenes stop when it comes to stanza three. In stanza three the poem change it intonation. It writting takes reader to a place which filled with weariness 、 fret and despair. Everything is not vigorous as stanza two. Everything seems forlorn died and quiet.
I think the author John Keats blend many ordinary living natural things together. He also draws attention on sensual、visual、 tactile and auditory in this poem which made it as vivid as life. Nevertheless these picturesque scenes are his imagination. He thinks that the beauty of nature is permanence but things are not always immutably. After return to the reality, he felt more disappointment than joy. He thinks that the ideal world in his mind has disillusioned.
In the “Ode to a nightingale”, the first and second stanza describe a beautiful picture of summer. But it changes in the stanza third. John Keats uses many words, such as “dim”, “weariness”, “fret”, “palsy” and “despair” to portray an image of death.
He uses this kind of tension to describe the contrast between the nightingale and human. The nightingale can live forever through its beautiful song. But in contrast, human pass away without leaving anything. John Keats uses the pessimistic tone to convey that the pleasure cannot last and death is also a part of our live which we cannot evade.
In the Ode to a Nightingale, the author use the opposite to describe his imagination word. In the first stanza, we can feel the atmosphere is delight. However, we read the third stanza; the poem is changed to despair. It means that pleasure cannot last and death is an inevitable part of life.
In the front of this poem, the author uses sense to describe his imagination, such as he uses the sense of sight, smelling, tasting and hearing. In the five stanza, the author’s senses change. He loses his sense of sight to allow him to experience the new word that he can enter.
Poems are very special things, they dont need to write down a lot but they do tell readers alot,more then anything.
Paradoxes and opposites are what "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is based on. The difference between the urn with its frozen images and the lively life portrayed on the urn; the changeable human life against the immortal and permanent,and finally, life versus art.
In the last stanza, Keat again addressed the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, "doth tease us out of thought." Maybe he thinks that when this generation is long dead, the urn will be there, telling future generations its mysterious lesson.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty." Keat said that it's the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it(we) needs to know. Just like the urn may not need to know anything beyond the equation of beauty and truth, but the human's complicated life makes it impossible for such simple words to make the expression well.
I started to like it more after i wrote this comment, because i like things that's easy to say, but hard to be truly understood.
i'm going to analyze "To Autumn"
(superficial)
This poem superficially suggest that the author writes about a typical day of this sean.
(reality)
But the deeper meaning is about the age of a person's progress.
As we all know, autumn comes after summer and the next is winter.
Spring represents the new arrival.
Summer suggests growing up.
Autumn symbolises the maturity.
Winter indicates the end of life.
we can tell these from the poem.
The "full-grown lambs" tells that he is full-grown adult.Besides,
the sorrow of the gnats, he wind that lives and dies, and the day that is dying and getting dark also tells.
But i think even though the winter(the end of life) comes after winter, the author enjoys what he is at this period of time.
This is where the tension is.
I want to discuss the oppositions from the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In the line 26-27 of stanza III, keeping in his mode of repetition, the speaker keeps using the words "for ever" to make the point that the people on the urn are frozen in time. The world of art is eternal.
Compared to the steamy stanza III and stanza IV was a mellow, low-key affair, but the speaker suddenly gets excited again in the last stanza.
And in the line 44-45, I think we may compare the feeling to look at remote stars and planets, which seem cold and indifferent but also provide a sense of beauty and comfort.
Initially, I detect a tension in the first stanza, at the bottom of the second stanza, and in the third stanza of the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. A Grecian urn, immobility of sculpture, passed down through many centuries and exists outside of time in the human sense. It does not weather and die. Indeed, this ancient handicraft is alien to the speaker. In the speaker’s meditation, the unfamiliar sense creates an intriguing paradox for the human figures carved into the side of the urn. The male, which represents as the speaker, is depicted as an active person; the female is frozen on the cover of the urn. He wants to engage with her. But he seems to live in the real world and he would become old and die in the future. (Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss) Although he cannot kiss her, their sweet love may be preserved like that Grecian urn, for ever happy and for ever young. (For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair…….for ever panting, and for ever young) As what portrays in the fifth stanza, everything is carved into the urn, like eternity that only the urn realizes. (Beauty is truth, truth beauty－that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know)
Next, Keats point out a tension which those leaning the literature must have a ability. They should use their hearts to enjoy the sweetness and beauty which the author or the speaker used. In other word, the sense of sight is a kind of crime. They too often use their eyes to get information, therefore their heart or other senses will lose their functions. (Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweet)
I am going to talking about the first poem “Ode to a Nightingale”. In my opinion, the tension and opposition existed in eternal things that author wanted to pursuit. In the fist section of this poem, the author described the happiness of nightingale. He said that they can sing in full-throated ease and in the second section said that they lived in sunburn mirth.. They are free and have beautiful voice and this has been lived in people’s mind for a long time and it be eternal.
To the next section, the author became sorrow toward life for this life such as human’s life. Our life can not live in here forever. The author wants his life and his work become immortal. That is the opposition which exist in this poem.
In the six stanza of “Ode to Nightingale”, the opposition is very clearly to identify, such as “easeful Death” call the dead people in a “mused rhyme”, “now more than ever seems it rich to die” and “high requiem become a sod”. However, this kind of sentences is really ironic to a normal people to understand, they might ask: how come die could be rich? What kind of Death can be easeful? What kind of this evil man can imply the requiem is a sod? Surrounded the nightingale, the speakers thinks that he longs to “cease upon the midnight with no pain” while the nightingale pull his spirit ecstatically. Everything is just right if he were to die, he can escape from the earthliness: ” the weariness, the fever, and the fret”, BUT he would “have no ears in vain” and be no longer able to hear.
I want to talk about “Ode to a nightingale”. In this poem, it seems to be a happy surrounding. However, while describing the beautiful world of the nightingale, the author always suggested the disappointment of the human world. For example, at stanza two, the author imagined “the country green” then said he might drink and leave the world unseen to go to the nightingale’s forest dim. We can find he had negative view about the world he lived.
I select the first stanza of “Ode to a Nightingale” to answer the question. The tension in this stanza is weird. In the beginning, the author used “heart aches” and “drowsy numbness pains” to describe the speaker’s feelings, which were bewitched by the sound. Then, the author implied that the speaker’s sense had drunk a kind of poison and vomited the opiate to the ditches, depicting the magical sound making the speaker crazy about it.
However, in line five to line ten, the descriptions turned into ecstasy and almost into madness. The eye sights were filled with maximum greenery that one can imagine. The singing of “Dryad”, which meant nightingales, was loud enough to hear in the forest everywhere.
These two different portraits, suffering love and delightful love of nightingales’ sound, intensifies the intentions in the poem.
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