The Shape of Despair

The Shape of Despair: Structure and Vision in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Author(s): Jason Mauro

Source: Nineteenth-Century Literature, Vol. 52, No. 3 (Dec., 1997), pp. 289-301
Published by: University of California Press
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The Shape of Despair:
Structureand Vision
in Keats's "Ode on a
Grecian Urn"
JASON MAURO
IIW, ITH sympatheticeyes Karl Kroeber

sees Keats as a Western poet "dying of
poetry," withering in the arid gap between the audience he had
achieved and the community he longed for.' According to Kroe-
ber, Keats's particular despair outlines the limits of all Western
poetry,whose domain, in Stuart M. Sperry's terms,is the "dream"
rather than the "vision." By comparing the dynamics of Keats's
"Fall of Hyperion" to the Ojibwa "Deer Dancing Song," Kroeber
claims that Keats was doomed by the traditions of Western po-
etry to the isolating activityof reporting dream material to an
audience rather than transferring a visionary experience to a
community:
There was for [Keats], as for all Westernpoets, no social outlet

throughwhichto dischargethe dangerous potencywithinhis psy-
che. Publication, admiringfriends,even wide popularityare not
effectivesubstitutesfor the Indian's tribe.The tribe consistsnot
in listenersor audience merely,but ofculturalsupporterswho can
physicallyaid the poet bygivinga social formto the power speak-
ing throughhim. (pp. 276-78)
( 1997 byThe Regents of the Universityof California

I "Poem, Dream, and the Consuming of Culture,"GeorgiaReview,32 (1978), 276.
289
290 NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
The tribe,as distinctfromthe audience, reproduces the dream,

enacting it rather than merely admiring, reiterating,or cri-
tiquing it. According to Kroeber, the Ojibwa singer transfers
"energy,"a vision, to the tribe and thus formsa community,
whereas Keats is doomed to drawenergyand applause fromhis
audience. The louder he shouts out the content of his dream,
the more isolated he becomes.
I wonder though if the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" both en-
courages and providesa location forthe kind of enactmentthat
Kroeber reservesfornon-Westernpoetrylike the Ojibwa "Deer
Dancing Song." I would like to suggestthatKeats's ode is a site
fora ritualtransformationof the reader, where we are allowed
to participate in a transformative vision rather than witnessa
poet's dream. The act of reading the poem is, I believe, energy
producing rather than energy consuming (using Kroeber's
terms),and I am encouraged to put the poem down afterhaving
read it ratherthan to critique or fetishizeit. Of course, the act
of writingthis critique contradictsthis assertion,but I wonder
then if it is the traditionsand necessities of Westerncriticism
that delineate the breach between audience and community.I
had the opportunityto teach thispoem to a class called "Invent-
ing Death," whichwas designed to investigatecross-culturalatti-
tudes towarddeath and dying.Manyof mydyingstudentsfound
thispoem to be, to saythe least,usefuland transformative. The
"Ode on a Grecian Urn," then,standsperhaps as an antidote to
Kroeber's lament that"itis not easy to findanyWesternart that
doesn't serve as a locus forcollectingpower to itselfratherthan
passing it on into sociallyproductiveactivity"(p. 280).
I would like firstto discuss the kind of transformation un-
dergone by the speaker of the poem, most specificallythe tra-
jectory of the speaker's response to despair throughstanzas III
and IV Then, using Philip Fisher's concept of "nested frames"
of referencewithin the ode, I would like to suggest how the
reader is invitedto be a communal participantin thistransfor-
mation,not merelya witness.And finally,I would like to trace a
parallel between the shape of the ode's trajectoryand the out-
line of communal ritesof transformation suggestedby anthro-
pologistVictorTurner.
9
"ODE ON A GRECIAN URN 291
Even the gesture,common in the criticism,of ascribinga
geometricshape to the ode speaks to me of a participatoryges-
ture,tracinga shape witha finger,placing a hand in a handprint.
Helen Vendler presents a schematic of the poem's structural
form,a triple"parabolic trajectory," witheach curve represent-
ing the rise of the poet's aesthetic reverie and that reverie's
eventual fall, brought about by the inexorable "fact of pro-
cess."2Vendler holds thatthe fundamentaloutline of the poem
"is thatof a poet coming,in woe, to a workof art,interrogating
it, and being solaced by it" (p. 131). The poet's initialwoe is
generated by "the transienceof lifeitself"(p. 142), and, she ar-
gues, the urn servesas an antidote to thattroublingtransience.
Thus the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is forVendler an exploration
of how art can serve as a sharp rebuke to "the factof process"
(p. 126). Stuart M. Sperry,echoing Earl Wasserman, M.R.G.
Spiller,and others,ascribes to the ode and to the urn a circular
shape.3
The shape I findmost descriptiveof the radicallytransfor-
mativenatureofthe ode, however,is neithera circlenor a series
ofparabolas. More accurately,the ode inscribesa sine-wave,with
fivedistinctivepoints along itslength (see Fig. 1): first,the poet
is steeped in despair broughtabout by the world's unrelenting
flux; second, upon encounteringthe urn, he is filledwiththe
hope thathe has found an antidoteto his despair; third,he finds
thathis hope is unfounded, thatthe antidotewas no more than
a placebo; fourth,as he more closelyexamines the urn,he finds
thatit embodies a terrorfarmore intensethan the despair from
which he originallysought relief,that the placebo is in fact a
poison; and finally,he embraces the transientcondition of the
worldas an antidote to the terrorinherentin the urn. The most
distinguishingfeatureof the sine-wave,as distinctfroma circle
or a series of parabolas, is that the point of origin-the poet's
initial despair from which he wishes to ascend-becomes the
point of salvationtowhich,by the end of the ode, he wishes to
climb.
2 Helen Vendler, The Odes ofJohn Keats (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Har-
vard Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 124, 126.
3 See StuartM. SperryKeatsthePoet (Princeton:PrincetonUniv.Press,1973), p. 270.
2.
3~~~3 5-
4.
FIG. 1
Thus the urn does not solace the speaker byholding out to
him an alternativeto the "factof process,"but ratherit compels
him to embrace the process that he had initiallysought to es-
cape. The firstand fifthpoints are thus empiricallyidentical,
each registeringa cognitiveawareness of the "factof process,"
but theyare phenomenologically distinct-the speaker is no
longer the same in relation and in response to this awareness.
The firsttwopoints of the ode's progression,the speaker's
despair and initialconsolation, are generallyagreed upon and
require little comment. Although the poem begins with the
speaker alreadybefore the urn, his prior despair and initialre-
liefare revealed simultaneouslyin the firstand second stanzas.
His elation upon encountering trees that will never be bare
and virginalbeautythatwillnever fade points,of course, to his
grieffrombeing in a world of change and decay.
The thirdstanza severelyqualifies the elation the speaker
feels in stanza II. This thirdstanza has been the subject of in-
tense criticaldebate. Most commentatorsagree thatthe poetry
of this stanza is vastlyinferiorto the rest of the ode. Cleanth
Brooks regardsit as a "blemish"and a "falling-off" fromthe po-
etic grace of the other stanzas.4Vendlerviewsthe incessantrep-
etitionas "a formofbabble," and she sees the stanza as the price
paid forinfusingpoetrywiththe termsof propositionalanalysis
(p. 138). WalterJacksonBate feels thatthe language is, at best,
"excessive."5
4 Cleanth Brooks, "Keats'sSylvanHistorian: HistorywithoutFootnotes,"in Fve Ap-
proachesofLzterary
Crzticzsm:
An Arrangement ofContemporary Essays,ed. Wilbur S.
Crztzcal
Scott (New York:Macmillan, 1962), p. 237.
5 WalterJackson Bate, TheStylistic
Development ofKeats (New York:Humanities Press,
1958), p. 140.
"ODE ON A GRECIAN URN" 293
The nature of these weaknesses warrants further inspec-
tion. Not only is the third stanza internally repetitious, but the
entire section is redundant, merely reiterating what has been
more gracefully covered in the second stanza and contributing
nothing toward the poem's progress. It seems unlikely that Keats
would be blind to the stanza's obvious weaknesses-that he,
who believed that "Poetry should be great & unobtrusive,"6
would let stand such an obtrusive and distracting stanza; that
he could not avoid using "happy" six times in five lines and "for
ever" five times in four lines.
As David A. Kent suggests, however, the redundancy and
repetition within stanza III serve a crucial function in the ode.
Repetition is the rhetorical equivalent of stasis. The lexical and
syntactic repetition within the stanza further underscores how
tedious and ugly a suspension of process and motion could be.
"More happy love! more happy, happy love! "17Most critics have
assented in their cryof "please, no more!,"yet this critical disgust
enacts what Kent argues is the purpose of the internal repeti-
tions: "In effect,the rhetoric of repetition destabilizes the asser-
tion of happiness."8 M.R.G. Spiller's analysis of the final lines of
stanza III also suggests that perhaps Keats was indeed intent on
transferringto the reader the effectof his "excessive" language:
the love on the urn is abovehuman passion, but thatpassion itself
has high-sorrowful effects;this lexical awkwardnessis not then
helped bya syntacticawkwardness:as lines 26-8 are parallel ad-
jectival phrases describing"happylove,"itis tempting,because of
the lexical fieldof height,to take the followingline, "That leaves
a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,"as also a parallel descriptive
line, qualifyingnot, as it should, "human passion," but,as before,
"happylove." With an uncomfortableabsence of speech, with"a
parchingtongue,"the stanza ends; Keats intended his speaker to
refer,we believe, to the feverof sexual passion, but textuallyit is
the figureof iteration("happy ... happy,""forever ... forever"),
6 John Keats, TheLetters
ofJohn Keats,i814 -i82i, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), I, 224.
7John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," in ThePoemsofJohn Keats,ed. JackStillinger
(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, 1978), p. 373, 1. 25. Further
referencesto the poem are to thisedition.
8 David A. Kent, "On the Third Stanza of Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,"' Keats-
Shelley
Journal,36 (1987), 23.
itselfperhapsthe syntactic
equivalentof fever,whichleads to
repetitive
speech and abruptsilences,thatbringsthe parching
tongueand thesilencewhenthestanzaends.9
If,as Spillersuggests,itis therelentlessrepetitionof "happy"and

"forever,"the verse approximation of a frozen bas-relief,that
resultsin "a hearthigh-sorrowful and cloyed,/ A burningfore-
head, and a parching tongue" (11.29-30), then it is presump-
tuous to hold the inferiorpoetryof stanza III to be a "blemish."
It maybe "babble," but it is highlyillustrativebabble, intended
to cloy,burn, and parch the reader. The effectis to transferto
the reader, against the speaker's assertions,the manic, feverish
affectto which the vision has broughtthe speaker.
There is another kind of repetition within the ode that
also warrantsour attention.Stanza II is a firstiterationof the
materialrepeated in stanza III, and it servesto illustratein verse
the staticnature of the bas-reliefscene on the urn. The lover
makes no progresstowardconsummatinghislove,and the poem
makes no progress toward its dramatic fulfillment.The only
more effectivewayforKeats to have illustratedthe suspension
of motion would have been to make stanza III a verbatimrepe-
titionof stanza II. Of course, as manycommentatorshave con-
ceded, such heavy-handedrepetitionmakes forbad poetry.But
Keats uses bad poetryin thiscase to greateffect,demonstrating
the consequences of tryingto step outside the world of process.
If acts and attitudesof bliss,beauty,and love-deprived of
process-turn ugly,then what happens to acts and attitudesof
desolation and despair? The thirdscene on the urn holds out
to the speaker the monstrousspectacle of fear and desolation
eternallyheld in suspension. The sacrificialheifer, like her
maiden counterpartin the second stanza, awaitsa consumma-
tion that will never come. Her desperate lowingwill continue
into eternity.
Keats explores in thisfourthstanzawhatbecomes of a pro-
cessional devoid of process: a general levelingoccurs. What dis-
tinguishesanimate frominanimate entitiesis gone, and Keats
thereforedevotes all of his pathos and sympathynot to the
9 M.R.G. Spiller, "Circularityand Silence on the GreczanUrn,"Durham University
Journal,8o (1987), 55-
people but to the inanimatefixturesof the scene, to the streets,
citadel, and town.What was originallya poem about a man in
despair seeking solace froman object is perverted,in the final
lines of the stanza, to streetsand buildings in despair, in need
of consolation:
And,littletown,thystreetsforevermore
Willsilentbe; and nota soul to tell
Whythouartdesolate,can e'er return.
(11.38-40)
With the "why"of the finalline leftunresolved,the sacrificeis

severed fromthe ties of process and communityritualthatjus-
tifyand sanction it. The processional becomes a weird tableau;
humans become fixtures,fixturesbecome human. The speak-
er's perspective becomes confused between the animate and
inanimate,havinglost sightof the processional's origins,desti-
nation,and motivation,all rooted in process. We watchhim be-
come transmutedto a hybridbetween a human and a thing;a
heifer,leftdangling in fearand desolation,withoutreason and
withouthope of abatement.
It is in this sense that the speaker accuses the urn of
"teas[ing] us out of thought" (1. 44). Human thoughtdepends
on the feltcontinuitybetween action and motivation,between
feeling and origin. The frozen perspectiveof the urn shatters
thatcontinuity, relegatingthe speaker's perspectiveto thatof a
beast whose "thought"is perpetuallypresenttense. The tone of
the final stanza is thereforejustifiablyindignant. How far the
speaker has come fromhis opening epithets("Thou stillunrav-
ish'd bride of quietness,/ Thou foster-childof silence and slow
time" [11.1-2]) to his closing expostulations ("O Atticshape!
Fair attitude!withbrede / Of marble men and maidens over-
wrought"[11.41-42]). "Happyboughs" (1. 21) and "leaf-fringed
legend" (1. 5) have been reduced to "forestbranches" and "the
troddenweed" (1.43). The speaker's initialinfatuationwiththe
urn has become barelyconcealed contempt.He has awakened
fromhis spell of the previousstanzawitha vengeance, and he is
intentupon makingthe urn a mere object again-an object of
his thought,not his thoughtitself.His use of the word "brede"
to describe the figureson the urn suggestsan attemptto dis-
tance himselffromthese figures,a distinct"breed" withwhom

he had earlier sought to establishan affinity.
Vendler contends that the disjunction between the lan-
guage of this final stanza and the rest of the ode is too jarring
and inconsistent:
The languageofthecloseofUrncannotbe entirely assimilated
to
thelanguageused earlierin theode, and thisis a flaw.
(p. 145)
This would indeed be a flaw if we assume with Vendler that

throughoutthe ode the speaker has remained relativelyconsis-
tent.As we have seen, however,the speaker has undergone a
sharp reversalof his initialperspective,a dramatictransforma-
tion thatis aptlyreflectedin the diction of the finalstanza.
It is crucial to note thatthe reader has followed,or indeed
has preceded, the speaker to this state of transformation. While
in the thirdstanza the speaker is stillinsistentupon the happi-
ness depicted on the urn, already the reader has split away
from this insistence.According to Kent, the rhetoricalstrate-
gies of the poem "all join to subvertthe ostensible assertions
the language contains" (p. 25) . We are slightlyout of phase with
the speaker, pushed slightlyahead and given a vision of where
he will be before he gets there. This ode then, is not a report
upon a transformationthat we witness;it is a delicatelystruc-
tured arena in which we partake in the rite of transformation.
According to Kroeber,what distinguishesa "vision"froma
"dream" is the kinds of participationand response thatare en-
couraged and aroused froman Other.'0 If this Other is simply
told about dream material, as in most Western art, then the
Other is placed in the position of an "audience" member or a
witness to the poet's selfishdream. But in the Ojibwa "Deer
Dancing Song," Kroeber tellsus, the singeris a visionaryto the
degree thathe
10 See Kroeber, pp. 269, 275-76. In this distinctionKroeber rehearses Sperry's
contentionthatKeats pereniallyconfuseddreams and visions,when Sperrywrites:"The

root of the problem reallylies in the distinction. .. between dream and vision. The
poem [in thiscase "The Fall of Hyperion"] turnsupon Keats's desire, indeed his vital
need, to discriminatebetween the two,while at the same time preservingthe grounds
of a common unity"(Sperry,p. 334).
does not simplyrecollect the original old man's storyof a dream,
he verballyrecreatespart of it,just as in earlier timesother Indi-
ans acted out, danced, the dream. The song, thus, gives us a
glimpse into how unique experience can become, and has be-
come, cultural tradition.Beginning in privatedream, part of a
personal gift,the song becomes available to others. (p. 272)
This level of participation is not only enabled by the dic-

tion of the ode's second and third stanzas, it is solicited by the
very kind of poem the ode is. Philip Fisher argues that the "Ode
on a Grecian Urn" be included in what he calls "emergency art":
Artappears on an emergencybasis when a multiplicationof crises

intrudes hesitation everywherein the process of production.
Where continuityis lost there is an attentionto the past, a pro-
duction of the past that is conspicuous as a desperate act....
Withinthis emergencya central factis the appearance of works
of artabout otherworksof art,poems like Keats's "Ode on a Gre-
cian Urn,"paintingsabout otherpaintingslike Picasso's "Femmes
d'Algiers." These works of art about other works of art in a
unique way outwitthe problematic situationwhile registeringit
most completely.If all art is a mirrorheld up to nature, such
worksare mirrorsheld up to mirrors,a fallingthroughmirrors."
Fisher makes clear the powerful and complex relations among

the numerous aesthetic levels of the poem. The urn stands in
relation to Keats as the urn's maker stands in relation to the
piper, and as the reader stands in relation to Keats's poem
about the urn. The effect is dizzying, reminiscent of a Boy
Scout manual I once had on whose cover was pictured a happy,
striding Boy Scout holding a copy of the manual, on which was
pictured the same Scout holding the manual on which he was
pictured ... ad infinitum.
At each aesthetic level of the poem (ode, urn, piper, etc.)
the ostensible object of art functions as both a work of art to be
contemplated and a meta-commentary on the works above and
below it. What Keats claims about the urn is at once applicable
to his own poem, and what he claims about himself as he con-
11 Philip Fisher, 'A Museum withOne Work Inside: Keats and the Finalityof Art,"
Keats-Shelley
Journal,33 (1984), 87.
templates the urn applies to the reader as well. Kent hints at

this interchangeability ("Keats implicitly includes his own urn-
like ode in his reflection on this issue" [p. 251), and Fisher
multiplies the correspondences in his fascinating account of
what he calls "nested frames of time" (p. 97).12 To my mind the
effectof this interchangeability is to liftthe experience of read-
ing this poem out of any determined reference to any single,
genetic experience of Keats before an urn. He looks into the
urn, only to find himself and the urn reflected in a dizzying
multiplicity. He turns away from the urn and sees himself re-
flected as the anticipated reader of his urn-like ode on which he
himself is now figured. There is, alas, no place outside of the urn,
though its depths recede outside of any viewer's sight and its
outer edge recedes beyond any reader's experience. I see in the
dynamics of these "nested frames" of reference an analogue
with Kroeber's description of the Ojibwa song:
the specificbeginning of this Ojibwa traditionalsong is not ex-
actlyidentified:it startedwith an anonymous "old man" some-
time "long ago." The latersingerparticipatesin a traditionrecre-
atively,rather than merely reciting a later "version"of some
definitivelyplaced original.The Indian traditionis not so purely
genetic as our own; originationdoes not equate withprimacyso
neatlyas in our art. (p. 272)
It seems to me that the energy of Keats's ode is designed to

loosen the bands of this kind of genetic primacy, to draw us
away from any specific origin of aesthetic experience, be that
origin the urn, the ode, or Keats himself. Indeed, the ode en-
courages us to put it down, to stop reading it, as Keats in the
ode finallyturns away from the urn.
Thus the urn is a very peculiar "friend to man" (1. 48). It is
not the kind of friend the speaker would like to emulate, despite
his initial infatuation with its static nature. He calls it "friend"
in the sense that Scrooge called the Ghost of Christmas-Yet-to-
Come "friend": a friend who has shown by counterexample
12 Fisher'sconcern here is withdistinguishing among these levels of aestheticexpe-

rience as he delineates the "natural,""social," and "cultural"fieldsof experience rep-
resented in the ode. His argument,I believe, is differentfrom,but not antitheticalto,
myown argumentabout the continuityamong these levels.
what he would like to avoid. Contraryto what Vendler and
other criticspropose, the urn has not offeredto the speaker a
desirable alternativeto the "factofprocess";rather,ithas shown
him that participationin the "factof process,"fromwhich the
speaker had initiallysought refuge,is far more desirable than
the staticfixationon any urn-likeworkof art.
The intractable difficulty of attributingand interpreting
the finallines of the ode mightperhaps be an extension of the
strategythatKeats employsin the thirdstanza of the poem, in
which the confusion and excesses of the diction work to great
effect.Myreflexis to read the finallines of the ode ("'Beauty is
truth,truthbeauty,'-that is all / Ye know on earth,and all ye
need to know" [11. 49-50]) as not being spoken by the urn
(contraryto whatmanyreaders assert) but by the speaker,who
indirectlyattributesthem to the urn. They are what he con-
cludes fromhis encounter withthe urn, not what the urn tells
him directly.Thus a crucial psychic distance has been inter-
posed between the urn and the speaker, and a palpable irony
fillsthe gap. "Beauty,"saysthe speaker, "is the truthof process
and transience,not the stasisofyou, the urn."Vendler has com-
pared the final chiasmatic aphorism to the alternatingbeams
of a lighthouse (p. 133) . In a verydifferentsense, I believe the
urn itself(and by extension the ode) is like a lighthouse,a bea-
con thatfroma distance calls one to shore, but the closer one
gets,the more it servesas a warningto stayaway,lestyou be run
aground and shipwrecked.
The fact that these closing lines can be attributedvari-
ously-speaker to urn, speaker to reader, speaker to figureson
the urn,urn itselfto reader 3- mightwell be a means bywhich
the poem assertsthe continuityof all the aestheticlevels enu-
meratedbyFisher.These lines in theirlexical and syntacticam-
biguityspeak at once to each distinct"nested frame of time."
They existboth inside and outside of any single frameof refer-
ence, in the gap that separates and unites the reader, speaker,
figures,and maker of the urn. It is withthissimultaneityof lev-
13
For a complete discussion of these alternativeattributions,see Jack Stillinger,
"TheHoodwznkzng ofMadelzne"and OtherEssayson Keatss Poems(Urbana and Chicago:
Univ. of Illinois Press, 1971), pp. 167-73.
els of discourse that Keats assumes a sense of community, a

sense that Sperry and Kroeber contend Keats never achieves.
In a 30 September 1820 letter to Charles Brown, Keats
traces the essential shape that I see underlying the dramatic,
transformativeprogress of the ode:
I wish for death everyday and night to deliver me from these
pains, and then I wish death away,fordeath would destroyeven
those pains which are betterthan nothing. (Letters,
II, 345)
The most distinguishing feature of the sine-wave shape

that underwrites this ode is that the point of despair at the be-
ginning from which the speaker seeks to flee is identical with
the hope that he embraces at the ode's conclusion. He finally
turns away from that which he initially thought might give him
solace, and he reembraces the pain from which he sought a
remedy. He thereby reveals a radical transformation in himself
(a transformation that I have earlier suggested is anticipated
and enacted by the reader).'4 The gesture is one of disintegra-
tion, a purging of the speaker's life before his encounter with
the urn and a reintegration back into that life that he had ini-
tially rejected. The pattern, of course, is an ancient one, most
fullyarticulated by Victor Turner in his conception of "liminal
periods," during which individuals become members of a com-
munity by firstpurging themselves of all attributes of their for-
mer life and then reclaiming those same attributes. During
their "liminal" phase these individuals are of "a twofold charac-
ter. They are at once no longer classified and not yet classified."
During such liminal times, says Turner,
It is interestingto note how,by the principle of the economy (or
parsimony)of symbolicreference,logicallyantitheticalprocesses
of death and growthmaybe representedby the same tokens,for
example, byhuts and tunnelsthatare at once tombsand wombs,
bylunar symbolism(forthe same moon waxes and wanes),. . . and
by innumerable other symbolicformationsand actions. This co-
incidence of opposite processes and notionsin a single represen-
14 It is curious that in Metamorphosus

zn Keats (New York: New York Univ. Press,
1980) BarryGradman does not discuss the "Ode on a Grecian Urn,"whose patternof
development is verymuch in line withhis observationson Keats's otherworks.
tationcharacterizes
thepeculiarunityof theliminal:thatwhich
is neitherthisnorthat,and yetis both.'5
It seems to me that the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" mightexem-

plifythese attributesof liminal periods, passage throughwhich
signals an achievement of communityand, in Kroeber's terms,
visionarystatus.I see in the identityof the beginning and end
points of the ode (the firstand fifthpoints on the sine-wave)
the single representation of opposite processes. And in the
fourthstanza I see the liminal statusof the speaker dramatized,
as he is "no longer classifiedand not yet classified,"speaking
withthe voice of the inanimate, looking for consolation from
the stone-silentfolk.
To the extentthat each reader re-creates,ratherthan wit-
nesses, the pivotal transformationof the speaker, feels the
ode's final,pulsar-likelines burningthroughthe nested frames
of referencethatjoin figuresto speaker,speaker to reader, and
urn to ode, to that extent the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" stands
apart fromKroeber's indictmentof Westernart. The ode rises
to visionarystatusand transmitsenergyfrompoet to reader, a
featthatboth Kroeber and SperrysuggestKeats longed forbut
never achieved.
UniversityofNorthFlorida
15 VictorW. Turner,"Betwixtand
Between: The Liminal Period in RitesdePassage,"
in Readerin ComparativeReligion:An Anthropological
Approach,ed. WilliamA. Lessa and
Evon Z. Vogt,4th ed. (New York:Harper and Rowe, 1979), pp. 235-36, 237.

The Shape of Despair

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The Shape of Despair: Structure and Vision in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

Author(s): Jason Mauro

IIW, ITH sympatheticeyes Karl Kroeber

There was for [Keats], as for all Westernpoets, no social outlet

( 1997 byThe Regents of the Universityof California

The tribe,as distinctfromthe audience, reproduces the dream,

If,as Spillersuggests,itis therelentlessrepetitionof "happy"and

With the "why"of the finalline leftunresolved,the sacrificeis

tance himselffromthese figures,a distinct"breed" withwhom

This would indeed be a flaw if we assume with Vendler that

10 See Kroeber, pp. 269, 275-76. In this distinctionKroeber rehearses Sperry's

contentionthatKeats pereniallyconfuseddreams and visions,when Sperrywrites:"The

This level of participation is not only enabled by the dic-

Artappears on an emergencybasis when a multiplicationof crises

Fisher makes clear the powerful and complex relations among

templates the urn applies to the reader as well. Kent hints at

It seems to me that the energy of Keats's ode is designed to

12 Fisher'sconcern here is withdistinguishing among these levels of aestheticexpe-

els of discourse that Keats assumes a sense of community, a

The most distinguishing feature of the sine-wave shape

14 It is curious that in Metamorphosus

It seems to me that the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" mightexem-

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