Ode On A Grecian Urn - Background

Background

By the spring of 1819, Keats had left his job as dresser, or assistant house surgeon, at Guy's Hospital, Southwark, London, to devote himself entirely to the composition of poetry. Living with his friend Charles Brown, the 23-year-old was burdened with money problems and despaired when his brother George sought his financial assistance. These real-world difficulties may have given Keats pause for thought about a career in poetry, yet he did manage to complete five odes, including "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode to Psyche", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode on Indolence", and "Ode on a Grecian Urn". The poems were transcribed by Brown, who later provided copies to the publisher Richard Woodhouse. Their exact date of composition is unknown; Keats simply dated "Ode on a Grecian Urn" May 1819, as he did its companion odes. The structures of the poems unify them as a set without indicating an order, and while the five poems display a unity in stanza forms and themes, the unity fails to provide clear evidence of the order in which they were composed.

The odes were Keats's effort to discuss the relationships between the soul, eternity, nature, and art, which he was busy contemplating throughout 1819. His idea of using classical Greek art as a metaphor originated in his reading of Haydon's Examiner articles of 2 May and 9 May 1819. In the first article, Haydon described Greek sacrifice and worship, and, in the second article, he contrasted the artistic styles of Raphael and Michelangelo in conjunction with a discussion of medieval sculptures. Keats also had access to prints of Greek urns at Haydon's office, and he traced an engraving of the "Sosibios Vase", a Neo-Attic marble volute krater, signed by Sosibios, in the Louvre Museum, which he found in Henry Moses's A Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, Paterae.

Keats's inspiration for the topic was not limited to Haydon, but embraced many contemporary sources. He may have recalled his experience with the Elgin Marbles and their influence on his sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles". Keats was also exposed to the Townley, Borghese, and Holland House vases and to the classical treatment of subjects in Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. Many contemporary essays and articles on these works shared Keats's view that classical Greek art was both idealistic and captured Greek virtues. Although he was influenced by these ideas on classical art, his poem is unique; the urn that he describes as the subject of the poem is based on no known original, and is of his own creation.

Although "Ode on a Grecian Urn" was completed in May 1819, its first printing came in January 1820 when it was published with "Ode to a Nightingale" in the Annals of Fine Art, an art magazine that promoted views on art similar to those Keats held. Following the initial publication, the Examiner published Keats's ode together with Haydon's two previously published articles. Keats also included the poem in his 1820 collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems.