C.M Bowra explains the relation thus: Truth is another name for ultimate reality and is discovered not by the reasoning mind but by the imagination. The imagination has a special insight into the true nature of things and Keats accepts its discoveries because they agree with his senses, resolve disagreeable discords and overwhelm him by their intensity. He is convinced that anything so discovered is true in a sense that the conclusions of philosophy are not. Keats calls this reality "beauty" because of its overpowering and all-absorbing effect on him.
In fact he substitutes the discovery of beauty through imagination for the discovery of facts through the reason and asserts that it is a more satisfactory and more certain way of piercing to the heart of things since inspired insight sees more than abstract ratiocination ever can. Keats' concern is with the imagination in a special sense, and he is not far from Coleridge in his view of it.
It is an insight so fine that it sees what is concealed from most men and understands things in their full range and significance and character. The rationale of poetry is that through the imagination it finds something so compelling in its intensity that it is at once both beautiful and real. thus "there is nothing real but the beautiful and nothing beautiful but the real." An through the Urn he wants to say that this is only knowledge we possess and that we need no other.
The second line of the questions-"that all ye know on earth and all ye need know"- is sometimes misunderstood to mean that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" gives the complete philosophy of life. Keats never intended it to be. It is only a theory of art, a doctrine to explain Keats' own creative experience. He was increasingly conscious that art is not everything and in his last two years he became more uneasy about the detachment from life which his work imposed on him. In "Fall of Hyperion" Moneta suggests that the poet is but a "dreaming thing" and must hold a lower place than those who are moved by human suffering. When he wrote the ode on a Grecian Urn-in which the lines occur-Keats had not gone so far as to think that the truth which he sought through the imagination was a dream,
It was still a very important truth for him as poet-but only as a poet. The Ode is his last word on a special activity and special experience. Within its limits it has its own view of life. The belief that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" is true for the artist while he is concerned with his art. It is no less true that, while he is at work, this in all that he knows for certain and all that he needs to know for the proper pursuit of his special task. Unless he believes, he is in danger of ruining his art.
This proposition implies that art should not exist for a moral purpose so much as primarily for its own sake. Keats worshiped beauty for the sake of beauty. Oscar Wilde like Swinburne and Keats too had no utilitarian view of art and battles against didacticism. The sole object of art is to please us by its aesthetic experience.
[ Part 1 ]
In fact he substitutes the discovery of beauty through imagination for the discovery of facts through the reason and asserts that it is a more satisfactory and more certain way of piercing to the heart of things since inspired insight sees more than abstract ratiocination ever can. Keats' concern is with the imagination in a special sense, and he is not far from Coleridge in his view of it.
It is an insight so fine that it sees what is concealed from most men and understands things in their full range and significance and character. The rationale of poetry is that through the imagination it finds something so compelling in its intensity that it is at once both beautiful and real. thus "there is nothing real but the beautiful and nothing beautiful but the real." An through the Urn he wants to say that this is only knowledge we possess and that we need no other.
The second line of the questions-"that all ye know on earth and all ye need know"- is sometimes misunderstood to mean that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" gives the complete philosophy of life. Keats never intended it to be. It is only a theory of art, a doctrine to explain Keats' own creative experience. He was increasingly conscious that art is not everything and in his last two years he became more uneasy about the detachment from life which his work imposed on him. In "Fall of Hyperion" Moneta suggests that the poet is but a "dreaming thing" and must hold a lower place than those who are moved by human suffering. When he wrote the ode on a Grecian Urn-in which the lines occur-Keats had not gone so far as to think that the truth which he sought through the imagination was a dream,
It was still a very important truth for him as poet-but only as a poet. The Ode is his last word on a special activity and special experience. Within its limits it has its own view of life. The belief that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" is true for the artist while he is concerned with his art. It is no less true that, while he is at work, this in all that he knows for certain and all that he needs to know for the proper pursuit of his special task. Unless he believes, he is in danger of ruining his art.
This proposition implies that art should not exist for a moral purpose so much as primarily for its own sake. Keats worshiped beauty for the sake of beauty. Oscar Wilde like Swinburne and Keats too had no utilitarian view of art and battles against didacticism. The sole object of art is to please us by its aesthetic experience.
[ Part 1 ]
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