Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

Greek Mythology in Keats’ Odes

Along the centuries, Greek culture has left a mark on everyone who came in touch
with it, presenting itself either through mythology, language, music, literature, history or
architecture, painting and sculpture. The raw yet powerful artistic vim present in everything
connected to Greece has inspired and astonished critics and sensible individuals from the
very beginning. The greatest poets, the best painters, the ablest orators and the finest
sculptors that the world have ever known appeared during and soon after the Greek Era, and
though, in other respects, they lived in a society comparatively barbarous from ours, they
released the golden treasure that underlies the whole world with its original and unparelleled
works of art. Johann Joachim Winckelmann in his Reflections on the Imitation of the Painting
and Sculpture of the Greeks proclaimed that “Taste was not only original among the Greeks,
but seemed also quite peculiar to their country; it seldom went abroad without loss”. With its
inspiring touch, the very utterance of the word Greece would tell a story of an irrecoverable
golden age of “noble simplicity and sedate grandeur”.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw numerous developments within
the field of mythography. The word mythography derives from the Greek mythografia,
“writing of fables”, precisely from mythos – “speech, word, fact, story, narrative” plus
grapho – “to write, to inscribe”. Hence mythography is the rendering of myths into arts,
while a mythographer is one who records, narrates or comments on myths. The Romantic
poets believed that the era they were living in was one of decay in terms of the power to
create. Thus, they were using Greek mythology and thoughts from the Great Golden Age of
the Greeks, simbolically invoking this muse to enlighten them with similar genius.
Throughout most of the eighteenth century, mythographers were primarly concerned with
making pagan “idolatry” acceptable to a Christian audicence. While the typical eighteenth-
century attitude toward Greek mythology was a negative one, it remained a source of interest,
mainly out of a sense of obligation to classical studies. By late eighteenth century, the
distortion of Greek myth for the sake of Christian sensibilities was becoming increasingly
unpalatable to the growing Romantic movement. Greek mythology underwent a revival in
which it was presented factually and objectively, rather than being reduced to Christian
allegory. These treatments, as well as more comprehensive studies of lesser known myths
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

became the point-of-entry into Greek myth for many Romantics. Edward B. Hungerford
stresses that for Shelley and Keats, as well as other Romantics, mythology became a “new
language” for exploring religious and spiritual themes. Byron, Shelley and Keats are
acknowledged by modern critics to be the best representatives of English Romantic
Hellenism, as Harry Levin notes, the three poets “are very near the centre of romantic
Hellenism in England”.

The genius of Keats was Grecian and sensible to a far higher degree than that of the
other Romantics. His sense of beauty was profounder still and the ardour of his nature
showed itself in a still intensity. He was characterized by a profound passion. Beauty was the
very essence of Keats’s poetry and he was absorbed in it. As G. M. Matthews sais, “Keats
possessed eminently the rare gift of invention”. “The most remarkable property of his poetry,
however, is the degree in which it combines the sensuous with the ideal”, continues
Matthews. Levin describes him as “the most Grecian of modern poets”, who’s inspiration
includes Greek sculpture and art, as in Ode on a Grecian Urn, as well as mythology, as in
Endymion and Ode to Psyche. Frederick Erastus Pierce notes that poems such as Ode on a
Grecian Urn and Hyperion are “classic in the noblest sense of the word, as nobly Grecian as
anything in our language”.

John Keats was part of the second generation of Romantics (the first one being
represented by great names as Wordsworth and Coleridge). He lived a short, difficult life,
dying at the age of 26 of tuberculosis. This particularity of his life is rather important in the
idea that he battled anxiety and depression all his life and suffered because the uselessness of
his dream – to become as great as Shakespeare or Milton. Although he originally began a
career in medicine, John Keats found his studies to be unfulfilling and, therefore, he chose to
devote his attention to more the creative matters of his daydreams rather than to lecture
material. Keats had long held respect for the famous poets such as Spenser, Shakespeare and
Milton, and took great inspiration from them. Keeping with the Romantic tradition of
imagination as opposed to science, Keats considered poetry to be “the only thing worthy of
the attention of superior minds”. Keats had an enduring interest in antiquity and the ancient
world. He borrowed figures from ancient mythology to populate poems, such as Ode to
Psyche and To Homer. For Keats, ancient myth and antique objects, such as the Grecian urn,
have a permanence and solidity that contrasts with the fleeting, temporary nature of life. In
ancient cultures Keats saw the possibility of permanent artistic achievement: if an urn still
spoke to someone several centuries after its creation, there was hope that a poem or artistic
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

object from Keats’s time might continue to speak to readers or critics after Keats’s death or
another writer or creator. This achievement was one of Keats’s great hopes. In an 1818 letter
to his brother George, Keats quietly prophesied: “ I think I shall be among the English poets
after my death”.

The year 1819 has been variously described by scholars as Keats's “fertile year” or
“living year”. In the span of a few months, he wrote the five odes upon which his reputation
is based. The ones that the critical study is going to base on are Ode to Psyche and Ode on a
Grecian Urn, as both of them are filled with Greek symbols, characters, motifs and customs.

Ode on a Grecian Urn was written in 1819, the year in which Keats contracted
tuberculosis. He told his friends that he felt like a living ghost, therefore it is not accidentally
that the speaker of the poem should be obsessed with the idea of imortality. The poem
displays itself as a historicist reading of an ancient urn that seems to depict specific scenes
from the daily basis of Greeks during The Golden Age. Urns are known for their sleek,
beautiful shape but also for the quality of the picturesc that were often painted on their sides.
Here, the urn symbolizes eternity; it is similar to a “museum” defining its “cultural lateness”
in the contrast between its own modernity and an object that “must be from Greece, the
culture in which a serene triumph, an almost effortless ease about art existed”, as Philip
Fisher states. Most of the poem centers on the story told in the images carved on the side of
the urn. The first stanza introduces the reader to the topic, the picture on the urn, and presents
several questions, the second stanza speaks of music and love, the third one continues with
music, nature and love while the fourth stanza deals with religion and sacrifice and the last
stanza gives a recapitulation of the descriptions, followed by the truth revealed by the urn –
that beauty outlasts all.

Ode to Psyche, written in 1819, is a venerating song that rises the youngest of the
Greek godesses on the same level with the classic gods. Although bards and priests left her
behind, the speaker of the ode submits all his genius and power of imagination to worship
her, to serve her as a priest and to sing about her. In one of his letters to his brother George,
Keats wrote: "You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a goddess before the time
of Apuleius the Platonist who lived after the Augustan age, and consequently the Goddess
was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervour - and perhaps never
thought of in the old religion - I am more orthodox than to let a heathen Goddess be so
neglected". Thus, Keats had a fresh diety on his hands, the perfect vessel for the expression of
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

all that had been brewing inside him. Pofessor Elizabeth H. Haight, in Apuleius and his
Influence, wrote: “Keats has embodied … a new symbolism of a poet’s worship for the
unworshipped Psyche”. Specifically, as the embodiment of soul, the godess Psyche was the
perfect representative of his “vale of soul-making” philosophy – an acceptance of grief and
pain as necessary to the creation of a unique individual - . Moreover, Keats finds his
condition similar to Psyche in terms of both his future as a representative of the Romantic
movement and his love for Fanny Browne. Ode to Psyche is first and foremost about love and
all that comes along with it.

John Keats stoped in particular his attention on the lyrical category of odes, genre that
brought his fame mostly. Keats’s odes are considered the best in the English language and
they are certainly the most famous. For instance, Ode to Psyche was an experiment in the ode
genre and Keats’s attempt at an expanded version of the sonnet format that describes a
dramatic scene. Thus, to begin with, what binds these two poems is their genre, which is an
ancient Greek form of poetry that is marked by its seriousness and technical difficulty. They
are usually very thoughtful works that try to praise and elevate their subject. Ode to Psyche is
said to be the most deliberate of the odes. It is a love and marriage ode; the attitude of the
lovers suggest the timeless intensity desired by any mortal. On the other side, there is Ode on
a Grecian Urn, a poem of contemplation and awe, where it is present one of the finest poetry
of symbolic debate.

One characteristic these two odes share together and which, in the same time,
ennobles them is the so-called visionary imagination concept. This is not genuinely a Greek
feature but it helps the poet to reach for the images, scenes and characters he is yearning to
see placed in an ancient Greek background. In Keats’s poetry the visionary imagination, the
paradise it conceives, and the poetry wich embodies this conception are all associated
together; for a work of art – the Grecian urn is the most obvious example – mirrors the
visionary intuition of the artist. Through the process of vision, the imagination compensates
for the frustrations inherent in earthly existence. In the Ode on a Grecian Urn there is the
reflection that “heard melodies are sweet” and then the larger claim for the imagination in
that “those unheard are sweeter”. There is a progress into the visionary world when the poet’s
imagination moves from the original stimulus, the urn seen as a totality, to the “legend” or
“brede” carved on the urn and finally into a close focus upon particular scenes in the “legend”
which seem for the moment almost to be living. In terms of Ode to Psyche, the goddes herself
may be regarded as only an imaginary creation, and the first stanza of the poem may simply
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

imply that the poet can successfully envision a life wich corresponds to his wishes.
Throughout the poem Psyche remains more a concept than a concrete presence. What is
more, the visionary imagination is also displayed when the speaker of the ode summons all
the resources of his imagination to worship Psyche. He would give to Psyche a region of his
mind, where his thoughts will transform into the sumptuous natural beauties Keats imagines
will attract Psyche to her bower in his mind. He wants to partake of divine permanence by
taking this goddess into himself; he has not yet become interested in the outward imaginative
expression of art. Last but not least, Keats uses in the end of Ode to Psyche the phrase “ the
gardener Fancy”, making reference to imagination as a gardener able to beautify, provide and
care for the subject he is serving to. The word fancy is derived from Middle English fantasie,
which comes from the Greek phainein - "to show" and it’s meaning is imagination or fantasy,
mental image or conception. Therefore, it’s place in the ode as well as in the process of
visionary imagination is well thought out.

With these two odes, Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to Psyche, and not only, Keats
redefines the modern poet’s relation to the classical myth. Myths tell such interesting and
fundamental stories that is no wonder that mythology has been a rich source of inspiration for
authors. Its influence has been evident ever since the ancient Greeks began telling stories
about their gods. The magnificence and exotic character of Greek gods’ lives and their human
way of acting, thinking and feeling let the Romantics feel more connected to them than to any
other deities. The legends, the diverse approach concerning love and sexuality, the power, the
gossips, the wars and disputes, were having a fascinating vim for everyone who came in
touch with the Greek antiquity. Keats took as a basis for his Ode to Psyche a famous myth,
that was first recorded by Apuleius in the second century A.D., and it is thus much more
recent than most of the myths – this is why Keats refers to Psyche as the “latest born” of
“Olympus’s faded hierarchy” - . It is so recent, in fact, that Psyche was never worshipped as a
real goddess. Psyche was the youngest and the most beautiful daughter of a king. She was so
beautiful that Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was jealous of her; she dispatched
her son, Eros, the god of love to punish Psyche for being so beautiful. But Eros was so
startled by Psyche’s beauty that he pricked himself with his own arrow and fell in love with
her. Eros summoned Psyche in his palace, but remained invisible to her, coming to her only
at night and ordering her never to try to see his face. But tormented with curiosity, Psyche lit
a lamp in order to catch a glimpse of her love; but Eros left her instantly, angry with her for
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

breaking her promise. Psyche was forced to perform a number of difficult tasks to relent
Venus and win Eros back as her husband.

Another Greek feature of these two odes is, along with the mentioning of great names
of deities like Psyche, Cupid, Phoebe, Dryads, there are originar Greek names of mythic
places and references to ancient customs and religious practices. The first stanza of the Ode
on a Grecian Urn mentions two locations placed in Greece, the names bearing rich meanings
to the ancient Greeks. The first one, Tempe, is a vale which in ancient times was celebrated
by Greek poets as a favourite haunt of Apollo and the Muses. On the right bank of the Pineios
river that crosses this vale, sat a temple to Apollo, this linking with the priestesses performing
a sacrifice mentioned in the ode – “Who are these coming to the sacrifice?/To what green
altar, O mysterious priest/Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies”. A characteristic to
Apollo’s temples was that he had priestesses not priests, the ode suiting again this feature.
What is more, The Vale of Tempe was home for a time to Aristaeus, son of Apollo, and it
was here that he chased Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, who, in her flight, was bitten by a serpent
and died. Once more, lines from the ode echo this legend of the vale: “What men or gods are
these? What maidens loth?/What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?”. The second place
named in the first stanza is Arcady, a name filled with double meaning: on one hand it makes
reference to a mountainous region of ancient Greece in the central Peloponnesus –
traditionally represented in literature as a place of pastoral innocence and contentment -, on
the other hand a figure of speech sending to any real or imaginary place offering peace and
simplicity, as every scene seen on the urn – predominantly the two lovers’ scene. As
previously mentioned, there are lines linking to ancient Greek customs as that of sacrifice,
which was seen as a proof of awe and worship.

Ode to Psyche and Ode on a Grecian Urn bear a multitude of themes, motifs and
symbols, which echo ancient Greek strong beliefs in life and death, nature – after all, the
deities were the embodiments of nature in its various forms - , and art. The theme of
inevitability of death was acute for Keats, as for him, small, slow acts of death occurred every
day and he chronicled these small mortal occurences. The end of a lover’s embrace, the
images on an urn, the withering of leaves – all of these are not only symbols of death, but
instances of it. What is more, in his poetry, Keats proposed the contemplation of beauty as a
way of delaying the inevitability of death. Keats’s speakers contemplate urns or deities.
Unlike mortal beings, beautiful things will never die but will keep demonstrating their beauty
for all time. The speaker in Ode on a Grecian Urn envies the immortality of the lute players
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student

and trees inscribed on the ancient vessel because they shall never cease playing their songs,
nor will they ever shed their leaves. He reassures young lovers by telling them that even
though they shall never catch their mistresses, these women shall always stay beautiful. The
people on the urn, unlike the speaker, shall never stop having experiences. They shall remain
permanently depicted while the speaker changes, grows old and eventually dies. The speaker
leaves the real world to explore the transcendent, mythical or aesthetic realm. At the end of
the ode, the speaker returns to his ordinary life transformed in some way and armed with a
new understanding. Often the contemplation or appearance of beautiful objects makes the
departure possible. A strong yet popular motif in both of Keats’s odes is nature, which is an
endless source of poetic inspiration for the Romantic poets. In Ode to Psyche, the speaker
mines the sky to find ways to worship the Greek goddess Psyche as a muse: a star becomes
an “amorous glow-worm” and the moon rests amid a background of dark blue. Keats not only
uses nature as a start-point from which to ponder, but he also discovers in nature similes,
symbols and metaphors for the spiritual and emotional states he seeks to describe. Apart from
that, the symbol of music and musicians appear throughout Keats’s work as symbols of
poetry and poets. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, for instance, the speaker describes musicians
playing their pipes. Although we cannot literally hear their music, by using our imagination,
we can imagine and thus hear music. In all the time, music was specific to Greek culture, and
which represented a state of being, a refuge, an art, a divine gift, a blessing. The lines “Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard/ Are sweeter” signals that there is a perfect music in
existence somewhere, that all the music seeks to replicate, yet falls short. This perfect music
exists in the urn. It is not the sensual ear that perfection appears to, but the soul.

In Ode to Psyche, Keats wrote: “ Fluttering among the faint Olympians,/ I see, and
sing, by my own eyes inspired.”, these lines echoing in his decision to search his own path,
independent from the influence of the people he knew or tryied to change his poetic course.
Besides signifying a sloitary search for inspiration, this line makes reference to Keats’s love
for Greek mythology which, though “faint” to modern eyes, held grater spiritual appeal to
him than Christian values. The Greek culture has proved itself more than worthy to be
admired, praised and valued, for it holds an eternal artistic, religious, cultural treasure that is
bound to never cease inspiring sensible and thirsty souls. Ending with the words of Stephen
Larrabee, that sumarize the mythographers’ goal, the Romantic poets “wished to emulate the
Greeks in making great art from the circumstances of their time” .
Eva Dima, 2nd year, 2nd semester, Undergraduate Degree, Erasmus student