Brenton
itumeleng kganyago
Shea
Always Eighteen
AhmedIs beauty inherint within art?
December 31st 2006 12:42
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
By John Keats
This is one of those poem's that I was forced to read over and over for a high school assignment. In a way it perfectly sums up what poetry is all about, boring things. Like many kinds of art it is useless in terms of tangibility, it is no more useful than the Mona Lisa in those terms.
However you kind of want to know then, what use does it have? I want to say it is useful for one thing, and one thing only, to annoy fifteen year old high school kids, but there’s more to it than that.
It is a demonstration of what a bored and miserable man can come up with, you read the poem and you see a sort of artificial happiness developing, it is artificial because when it comes down to it all it's sad. It's boring in topic choice, it's sad in the grey atmosphere it trajects however this same grey atmosphere contains happiness.
Why this is art is apparent, why John Keats was a writing artist (ie poet) instead of a painter artist is also apparent, you cannot paint a happy picture with dull hues, you cannot demonstrate it because the person looking at the image will feel depressed by dull hues or be happy by bright colours but will never see both the way it is intended.
Paint, or more specifically the eye cannot bend to these subtleties. To understand it you must go to the basic basics, that is, you have to get the information in right into the core of your brain, you cannot as a rule of thumb enjoy a third medium, such as your vision to decide if something’s simultaneously joyful and sorrowful because your eye is flawed, as are all your other senses.
That is why poetry is the most complex art of all art forms, it goes right down to the very core of art, right down to the very basics of human thought, of the language it speaks in.
Then again, maybe it comes down to the person looking upon the piece of (visual) art to decipher how beautiful it can be. As John Keats states in this very same poem about an Urn 'A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:' on describing it. One has to wonder, is it the person who looks at the art that can decide how beautiful it is, or is the beauty inherent within the art?
Is it that I don't understand visual forms of art that makes meant see their beauty? Or at least not see them comparable to that of written forms of art? Is value inherent within art, or is the value of art a relative concept?
Can we blame the misunderstanding of the beauty of certain works of art on the person receiving the art or the artist who cannot display that he or she is trying to communicate? It is difficult to tell to say the least because people can lie or be misguided about beauty, but at the same time it could be the beauty, the art, that is misguided.
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit dities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweari-ed,
Forever piping songs forever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"---that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
By John Keats
This is one of those poem's that I was forced to read over and over for a high school assignment. In a way it perfectly sums up what poetry is all about, boring things. Like many kinds of art it is useless in terms of tangibility, it is no more useful than the Mona Lisa in those terms.
However you kind of want to know then, what use does it have? I want to say it is useful for one thing, and one thing only, to annoy fifteen year old high school kids, but there’s more to it than that.
It is a demonstration of what a bored and miserable man can come up with, you read the poem and you see a sort of artificial happiness developing, it is artificial because when it comes down to it all it's sad. It's boring in topic choice, it's sad in the grey atmosphere it trajects however this same grey atmosphere contains happiness.
Why this is art is apparent, why John Keats was a writing artist (ie poet) instead of a painter artist is also apparent, you cannot paint a happy picture with dull hues, you cannot demonstrate it because the person looking at the image will feel depressed by dull hues or be happy by bright colours but will never see both the way it is intended.
Paint, or more specifically the eye cannot bend to these subtleties. To understand it you must go to the basic basics, that is, you have to get the information in right into the core of your brain, you cannot as a rule of thumb enjoy a third medium, such as your vision to decide if something’s simultaneously joyful and sorrowful because your eye is flawed, as are all your other senses.
That is why poetry is the most complex art of all art forms, it goes right down to the very core of art, right down to the very basics of human thought, of the language it speaks in.
Then again, maybe it comes down to the person looking upon the piece of (visual) art to decipher how beautiful it can be. As John Keats states in this very same poem about an Urn 'A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:' on describing it. One has to wonder, is it the person who looks at the art that can decide how beautiful it is, or is the beauty inherent within the art?
Is it that I don't understand visual forms of art that makes meant see their beauty? Or at least not see them comparable to that of written forms of art? Is value inherent within art, or is the value of art a relative concept?
Can we blame the misunderstanding of the beauty of certain works of art on the person receiving the art or the artist who cannot display that he or she is trying to communicate? It is difficult to tell to say the least because people can lie or be misguided about beauty, but at the same time it could be the beauty, the art, that is misguided.
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