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Full page photoA Road to Aesthetic StylisticsALLS 7(4):95-112, 2016
105
Relational clause,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,
in spite of the lexicogrammatical complexity raised by this line of
verse, is the aesthetic experience, which will be comprehensively explored in the second cycle of the stylistic analytical
process. This point may lead us to investigate the Ode in terms of philosophy of beauty. Relevant to this merit is the
metaphoricity of the language: in these metaphorical modes of expression, there is "variation in the expression of
meaning; and this variation is lexcigrammatical rather than simply lexical" (Halliday, 1985:320). Put it another phrase,
the representation of the physical or human nature is incongruent, which gives the Ode its entire aesthetic value as a
work of art. So a synesthetic metaphor like, "sylvan historian," is an incongruent form of intersensory combination of
greenery( colour) and physicality (human). In the process, the association of a human feeling as (happy) to an abstract
as ( love) may create that metaphorical mode of expression, i.e.,
happy love
(25), which is repeated more than once in
the structure of the Ode. The function of the synesthetic imagery is to transmit the senses of sound, light, and colour.
One more metaphorical mode lies in the transience from the pleasure of the body by the metaphorical nominal group
"sensual ear
,"
to the spiritual kingdom by
the spirit ditties of no tone
. This aesthetic tension may bring more depth and
richness to the texture of the Ode.
The two stylistic characteristics of paradox and intense are correlated to a third characteristic, i.e.,
permanence.
Though
not explicit in the surface structure of the Ode, it can be inferred from the deep Ode's texture. In the Ode's structure,
there scatter clusters of words and noun groups effectively function as summoning for sensuality and physical pleasure,
which ultimately pave the pathway to the speaker to realize - that beauty is the only truth man should know on earth.
Behind such summoning resides the ravish desire for permanence: it is the human cry for the aesthetic good things to
stay forever in that ever transient universe. The three stylistic domains of Keats's Ode can illustrated in Fig. 3
Figure 3. The Tripartite stylistic Domain of Keats's
Ode on a Grecian Urn
All this process of transience form physicality to spirituality, all this rivalry and
wild ecstasy
is transmitted to the reader
by the power of art and its material form, i.e., the Grecian urn. There is a source of binary opposition between the two
contradictory human phenomena in the poetic texture, namely, the transient and the permanent. But this is not the whole
story: created by the sensual chosen diction in the poetic texture, the tone itself holds a sense of uncertainty. This point
needs more explanation.
Analyzing the structure of the first stanza from a stylistic stance shows that this poetic form constitutes two distinctive
divisions: the first division is a set of invocations to the marble shape in form of a sequence of nominal groups. The
second division constitutes six interrogative structures of different length and syntax. The answerable sequence of
questions raised in the beginning of the Ode's discourse gives the hint that though Keats is aesthetic in his sensibility
and humanistic in his world view, he is still skeptical whether things in the world are real or merely a vision, whether
things are transient or permanent. If we comprehend the skeptical mind of the poet; therefore, it is no wonder to detect
this variety of questioning and negation throughout the veins of the Ode(s). In one letter (quoted in Sendry and Gianone,
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