美と真といにしえの詩人達の活力 : 『ギリシア古瓶のオード』再読

Abstract

What did Keats want to say by the concluding lines of his Ode on a Grecian Urn? Too many things! His oversimplified statement has given us various interpretations. Is the conclusion really a blemish of the beautiful poem as T. S. Eliot said. Is it actually a cerebration about the beauty of art? The question is still open to us. We can notice that there is a sense of time or history in the ode. His idea of history plays an important role in the poem. As Keats expressed it in "Ode to May, " anciant Greece was an ideal world of poetry and arts. The old vigour of its poets was highly evaluated by Keats. Though such world had gone forever, he could revive the world and its messages on his imaginary urn. As a friend to man, the urn is expected to remain in the long history of man and gives us not a consolation but a piece of advice how to live with human misery and woe by the help of beauty.