Is John Keats' poem 'ode on a grecian urn' about 'life and death' or 'beauty and truth?'

Question

i cant decide between the two. i know that the message of the urn is beauty and truth but the poem is also about the immortal nature of the urn. so which one is it?

Answer 1

Why just one? That isn't how literature works -- good literature is always about many things, and whenever you think you see multiple themes in a work, they are probably all there.

I think you are perceptive about the poem -- both themes are there, and I suggest it might be fruitful to try to discern the relationship between the two themes. Is Keats suggesting that beauty and truth are ideal states, and as such have to be unchanging -- and that therefore no living thing is beautiful until transformed by death or art?

There is no single answer to a question like that either.

Answer 2

What a beautiful poem. I seem to remember it was about how something most people thing is ordinary can be very beautiful. That was a common theme during the romantic period...like William Wordsworth's poem "To the Spade of a Friend"...he was writing about a shovel!

Oh those crazy Romantics...they were romantic, all right:)

Answer 3

The night that my now ex suggested that "while i'm with you, i think as though i ought to triumph over the worldwide!" We have been the two 17, so youthful and naive as to how this worldwide can ravage such comfortable and passionate love. We innocently shared at that one 2d frozen in time an unshakeable perception that we ought to triumph over the percentages stacked against youthful fans. We divorced after very nearly 8 yrs. of a tumultuous marriage. yet, i'm going to on no account overlook how stunning it felt to have somebody sense that i ought to alter their existence continually for the greater efficient. "that's greater efficient to have enjoyed and lost, then to have on no account enjoyed in any respect." Who suggested that? that's authentic.