"She cannot fade, though thou hast not they bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" (Ode on a Grecian Urn, 19-20)
Our class discussion had me thinking, not of timeless beauty, but of imitation beauty. Oh how that Grecian Urn is representative of our society today. We seem to always be chasing something that we can never quiet reach. "What maidens loth?" Though she will ever be fair and beautiful she will never be real.
It seems that beauty is truth and vice verse because it will always be true in the society in which it is accepted. In Keats' time it was more attractive for a woman to be fair of skin and untanned. We would laugh at that in our society as we rush from the makeup counter to the tanning salon and back again. I'm not criticizing by any means, merely observing that we aren't very dissimilar from those figures so artfully displayed on a piece of clay. I suppose the only difference would be that they actually are in their immortal state, and we are still chasing after ours. :)
I don't really know how I feel about Keats. He is a bit of an enigma to me. We will have to get to know each other a bit better as I continue reading. He seems such a dreamer. Not only that, he's a believing dreamer: still young and untarnished by the cynicism of the world. I too hope that Shelly wouldn't have had to write a To Keats at the end of his life.
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I really like this insight. Your post made me think about magazines at the check out stand. The women on the front covers always look so gorgeous and flawless and we all wish we could be them, however they've been so airbrushed and digitized that they aren't real anymore. "Beauty" as we know it, just as on the urn, is false. It's better to be a real person with a personality, quirks, and character, than a pristine image of beauty.
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