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Full page photoA Road to Aesthetic StylisticsALLS 7(4):95-112, 2016
106
1968: 62-30), Keats wrote: " I have not one idea of the truth of any of my speculations." Skepticism of the poet is
asserted in his letter to his brother George, dated on December 31, 1818): "I never can feel certain of any truth." But
instead of comprehending the phenomenal world through constructive reasoning, he had recourse mostly to the wings of
imagination to enter the paradise of Flora, the paradise of Beauty.
Epistemically, Keats's Odes are but aesthetic variations on humanistic dichotomies, like life/death, light/dark,
reality/dream, ecstasy/pain, etc. In
Ode on a Grecian Urn
, the real/visionary impulse in salient. What remains of the
Ode is but poetic variations on the merits of the figures engraved into the marble urn. The invocation turned from the
Grecian urn as one aesthetic unit to the details of the figures themselves. Though the style is impassioned, it is still
descriptive. Binarism becomes an organic part of the Ode's style. This is clearly envisaged in third stanza (lines 15-20).
So, though the
bold lover
cannot kiss his beloved, she is still
fair
. This crescendo motion and emotion is transmitted by
a set of nominal groups, like
fair youth
,
bold lover
,
thy bliss
, with the prepetition of the adjective
happy,
and the
Relational clause,
she be fair,
which charge the whole setting with the tone of ecstatic moment and energetic powers.
The lines of verse (31-40) with all their nominal groups are but an extension of the energetic processes of life envisaged
in the urn. From a semiotic standpoint, these marble figures and all the performed daily acts are the artistic
representations of reality: there is a symmetrical parallelism between the structure of art and the structure of reality.
This Attic ( not Greek) marble urn which is full of marble men and maiden is a sign standing for the whole energetic
life in its daily activities and rituals, and even in its quest for beauty as the sole truth on earth. This may give a
misunderstanding clue that art is a straightforward copy of reality. Art, to my mind, is the re-creation of reality in an
artistic vision. In this light, forms like,
mysterious priest
,
green alter, that heifer lowing at the skies
,
the pious mor
n,
and the like are the forms of real life. Though the process is that of pious parody, the thematic structure has nothing to
do with specific divinity, and this may attribute to the Ode its universality as an aesthetic experience.
One point is to be stressed concerning the style of the Ode. Though the impassionate impulse overwhelms the veins of
the Ode, the poet's style is fundamentally objective: the poetic discourse is almost directed towards the entirety of the
marble urn with the figures engraved in it. The nominal groups since the onset of the Ode like,
unravished bride of
quietness, Sylvan historian, attic form, fair attitude,
and
silent form,
are impersonal noun groups, impersonal
metaphors- they are essentially descriptive rather than emotive in construction. The impersonal style in most of Keats's
Odes has come to be referred to as
Negative capability.
The term, first postulated by Keats, is used to mean "the ability
to experience life without attempting to impose one's personality upon it" (Gilbert, 1965:72-3). The only stance that
refers to the speaker's individuality might be through the sensing clause," Thou, silent form, dost tease us of thought/as
doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!"(44-5). Abstracts cannot be seized by the empirical or experimental mind. Using the
comparative
as
to compare the urn to eternity might give the sense that both spheres (eternity and the urn) are the
creation of human vision, and not the product of factuality. Whether the experience of the urn is a real or an imaginary
one is not the quest of this study. What is important is the ode itself as an artistic creation transmitting an esthetic
experience encoded into clusters of nominal groups, which are fundamentally metaphorical patterns of expression.
Now, we are in position to interconnect the descriptive form to its aesthetic form. But before going a step further, it is of
interest for this study to highlight the concept of
Romanticism
from a philosophical stance, taking into consideration the
German roots of the term. The Western cultures witnessed dramatic changes in the intellectual, aesthetic and literary
sensitivity from the late eighteenth century to the mid- nineteenth centuries. The new orientation or
Romanticism
is
realized as a strong reaction against the rigid premises and conventions of
Classicism.
The movement was strongly
embedded in the disciplines of arts, literature and music. Romanticism focused on emotion as an emblem of aesthetic
experience. In addition, it was the epistemic revolt that exalted the creative impulse and the value of art. The Romantics
variously exalted the subjective, the picaresque, the supernatural, the spontaneous, and the visionary. The authentic
change occurred because of that cognitive shift from objectivity to subjectivity. It was Kant's idea which unraveled that
"human beings do not see the world directly, but through a number of categories. Romanticism might be degraded in
modern scientific ages for its excessive emotionalism and self- nihilism. In reality, Romanticism is a philosophical and
epistemic movement which emphasizes emotional self-awareness as necessary pre- condition to improving society and
bettering the human condition( see The Basics of philosophy, 2008). Romanticism is basically interlinked to the
German idealism and Kantianism. The Kantian perspective draws heavily on viewing the world in a subjective way, but
this view has a sense of objectivity, since feelings of pleasure and sorrow can be
universal responses
to certain
stimuli
.
The use of
responses
and
stimuli
in this philosophical coherent system of ideas might give the aesthetic experience a
psychological dimension, which is universal in trend.
The poet who developed a gorgeously aesthetic vision through an aesthetic experience is John Keats (1795-1821). On
the side of philosophy, the philosopher who is mainly interested in
Aesthetics
is Immanuel Kant ( 1724- 1804). Both the
German philosopher and the English poet deal with the doctrine of Beauty from a romantic stance. Both believe in the
Imagination as a creative, spontaneous and self-active faculty. The faculty is the
author
of all the free forms of possible
intuitions. For Kant, it is the perceiver or the beholder" through processing of the productive imagination," who has the
power to create the " phenomenal world" (Rajpoot, 2016 ). Likewise, Keats believes in the
authenticity of imagination
in the artistic creation. So Keats:" I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affection and the truth of
Imagination" ( see Abrams, 1987: 1871).
Moreover, the philosopher and the poet deal with the aesthetic experience as a self-reflective judgment. The human
perception, in the Romantic impulse, is directed towards the object as pleasurable. In other phrase, the experience is
mainly concerned with the self-reflection of feeling; it is the delight of sensation. What matters in the aesthetic
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