Close-Reading Exercise: A Good Bad Reading of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Part III

[This would be the third installment of my insanely close reading of Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn."  You can find the first here, the second here.  I know some of you must be bored by now, but I must say I feel like a scientist who—having written the definitive treatise on the leaf—was handed a microscope and then—having written the definitive treatise on the cell—was handed an electron microscope, &c.  The more attention I pay the more the poem yields.  I will, however, interleave other posts in with the Keats come tomorrow. For now, to the show again!]

I open with a few more lines than before:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
  For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!

Why?  Happy you should ask!  I cannot tell you how happy I am at this happy coincidence!  It is a most happy, happy coincidence!  Wait—what do you mean?  I am not trying to hard.  Does it sound like I'm trying to hard?  Does not. 

Does not!

Does not!

You may have a point.  This stanza screams of argumentum ad nauseam.  You want something to mean what you think it should, you repeat yourself until no one cares to challenge you or—not to be topical or anything—until people begin to mumble your words under their breath as they stumble into pool halls and voting booths.  In this example, the speaker needs you to believe the boughs are happy, happy with their perpetual plumage.  Maybe they are.  Maybe pain follows every leaf plucked by wind or wanton hand, and so the thought of keeping its foliage lushed and unplucked in perpetuity appeals to the bough.  That, at least, is what the speaker assumes.  Of course, since he anthropomorphizes the tree, I should have license to.  Perhaps Spring is the deciduous equivalent of our awkward, teenage years.  Perhaps every tree dreads the arrival of Spring, what with the budding pains, the pericarpal outbreaks—not to mention the inevitable heart rot.  Why should we assume that trees are happy in Spring?  The Western Tradition?  Is the one Keats and his speaker shared the same as the one the Roman potter and his clientele did? 

Not necessarily.  In diction, Keats and his speaker betray an aware of this.  The boughs "cannot shed" their leaves.  Not "will not shed" but cannot."  Despite its overwhelmingly happy happiness, the tree has been prevented from acting, prevented from doing what it would do left to its own devices.  Coupled with the coercive repetition, this characterization of an anthropomorphized tree seems cruel and unnecessary.  Had the tree just been a tree, I wouldn't bother—but anthropomorphize it and its inclusion in the scene becomes disturbing.  I suppose the attribution of agency hangs me up here, but with repeated readings that first line begins to resemble the words of a serial killer to his victim:

"Tell me how happy you are.  Tell me.  You are happy, aren't you?  Yes?  Do you want the hose again?"

At least the speaker was kind enough to specify that the happy melodist would pipe his song unwearied, as the alternative would fall prey to the logic of eternal life sans eternal youth.  Even so, the speaker informs us that the piper'll be "for ever piping songs for ever new."  Novelty without remission sounds like my idea of the good life, let me tell you.  Never to repeat the same song twice!  Happy!  To produce, without interruption, in endless succession, swinging new tunes!  Happy!  Happy!  For the love of Christ could someone please remind me how fucking happy I am?  Happy!  Happy!  Happy!

Putting aside the silliness momentarily, the note of insistence the speaker hits, hits then hits again lends a manic quality to the first half of this stanza.  That last line segues from the "happy" repetition to the "for ever" repetition, which I'm not sure I understand.  More and more of the "happy, happy love" will be:

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
  For ever panting, and for ever young;

But for the panting, that sounds good—only I'm not sure who will experience this.  The piper?  One of the men, gods, maidens, pursued, pursuers, strugglers, escapers or musicians from the first stanza?  The fair youth or his bold lover from the second?  The melodist from this one?  Does the "Ode" offer us enough information to make this determination?  Probably not, for reasons I explain here.  The speaker never provides enough context to connect those who appear—albeit disguised by the narrator's ignorance—in one stanza and those appear in the next.

Those last three lines, on the other hand, seem to echo the first three in ways I don't entirely understand right now.  Nor will, before night ends.

Comments

[Joseph Kugelmass]

"Do you want the hose again?"

That was hilarious. There is certainly the motif of sacrifice or even murder; that appears to be something Keats thinks aesthetic perception does to things by removing them from the flow of time.

One might read the forced joviality of Keats's repeated exclamations as an enactment of the difference between language (and, by extension, Thought) and image. In trying to reproduce the moment on the urn, he is forced by the diachronic nature of language into a shrill redundancy.

[Dana Anthony]

Well, you've convinced me. After reading the other parts of the analysis and the myriad comments, I feel like the poem is obviously saying what you think, and then some:

Part one IS saying that things are meaningfully aesthetic when you don't know what they really mean. And comparing it ceaselessly to consummation. No, really, imagining sex is better than actually doing it, and you should stay a virgin. Aesthetically. Always pursuing, always seeking to know, never able to get any closer at all to it, that's a good thing, sure it is. Beauty IS truth.

And then in all the repetition of happy, he's protesting too much. (Shhhh! He really does want to know what the vase meant to its creator, he wants to pierce the veil, the hymen, get laid...) but he knows he never will so he's going to keep insisting it's better to always want and never get - heck, it might make the vase boring if he knew, that'd be tragic, this way it's forever mysterious and alluring to him - and hope he convinces himself. He doesn't need to know. Really, come on, you gotta believe, he doesn't. He believes it. Sure he does :)

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

But but but I'm not finished yet! You're welcome to come back for the rest. Or, wait a minute, are you winding me up?