Final answer:
Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' explores the connection between art, beauty, and truth, suggesting that beauty embodies an eternal truth.
Step-by-step explanation:
In John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet ponders the relationship between art, which is represented by the urn, and life, as well as between beauty and truth. The famous concluding lines of the poem, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' suggest that the aesthetic beauty of the urn's form and the eternal moment it captures are in themselves a manifestation of an ultimate truth. This is a reflection on the enduring power of beauty to convey a form of truth that transcends time and human experience. Cleanth Brooks, through his interpretation, supports the notion that Keats's poem unifies the paradox of a poem's beauty and the truth or falsity of its assertions.
T.S. Eliot criticized these lines, arguing that they felt like an intrusion, not organically emerging from the rest of the poem. In contrast, Brooks counters Eliot's critique by positing that the poem is indeed cohesive, and the concluding lines epitomize the central paradox around which the poem is constructed: the intricate relationship between beauty and truth. The urn, silent and unchanging, tells a story of frozen beauty, arguing potentially that in its silence and permanence, what it symbolizes is all one needs to understand about life and truth.