Synaesthesia in Ode on A Grecian Urn

Synaesthesia in Ode on A Grecian Urn

Ode on A Grecian Urn is full of synaesthetic images as Romanticism sought to interconnect all the aspects of nature and to interweave everything so as to create a complex fabric of Oneness. We see examples of synaesthesia throughout the poem: 

'heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter' 

here sensations overlap and the images appeal to different things: 'melodies' is a clear auditory image, while 'sweet' appeals to the gustatory sense. This connection seeks to validate the pleasantness in the ideal, as it suggests that 'unheard melodies are sweeter', provoking in the reader the sentiment that higher pleasure and enjoyment can be obtained if we indulge in the unreal.

'more happy love! more happy, happy love! 

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, 

for ever panting, and for ever young;' 

This use of synaesthesia is fascinating. The adjectives 'Warm', 'panting' and 'young' modify 'love', but herein lies the problem: what 'love' is Keats referring to? Carnal love-making or the abstract sensation of love? Regardless of his ambiguity, the adjectives used appeal to different senses, so even if we take both as correct interpretations, we can still unearth the use of synaesthetic imagery. Love, through all of its attributions, gains dimensions and complexity: Keats uses different instances of love and their sensations to summerize and create in the mind of the reader a flash of wholeness in the understanding of love. Keats talks about warmth in love: it is a clear thermal image, but we know he refers to the feeling of coziness and comfort that love catalyzes; he talks about 'panting' and there, although it is a visual image and a physical one, we understand the reference to the sexual face of love; in using 'young', the image is visual again, but the reader perceives the real intention behind the use of the word, to highlight the immortality that the Urn guarantees. All in all, the combination of these three adjectives provides unity and richness in depth to 'love'; Keats makes sure that the allusion to love is not only to one side of it, the sexual or the abstract, but to the whole concept of love, with all its implications.