The human imagination

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him (Pascal 95).

What gives the human being nobility is the fact that he or she can think and has an awareness of what is happening, even an awareness of death. This is something that no other creature can claim. John Keats explores his poetic imagination in works such as "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Thousands of years ago, human beings in what is now Britain exercised their imagination to create an enduring monument in Stonehenge. Today, we exercise our imagination by reading Keats and marveling at Stonehenge. This is indeed a link between the two, for in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keat

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es the moment and preserves it forever. This is what the painter has done on the side of the urn, and it is what Keats is doing with the poem describing the urn. Each generation must learn the same lesson and must take it to heart. Keats expresses that lesson well and draws the reader into his point of view, ultimately expressing his aesthetic in the last lines as he indicates that beauty and truth are synonymous and are what we are all seeking and all we really need to seek. Only through beauty can we touch the immortality we may want but can otherwise never achieve. One of the themes expressed in this poem is the way Art shapes Nature and makes it more than it was before, adding the human imagination so the artist can speak to subsequent generations as Keats does in this poem and as the painter did on the urn. There is something in the human being that seeks both to reshape and to explain the world through creation. Keats chooses to do this by means of poetry, using words and sounds to express his ideas and to communicate with others. Pre-literate people thousands of years ago in what is now Britain sought to express their awe at the mysteries of the universe by creating a huge stone monument, the precise function of wh
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Approximate Word count = 2771
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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