Wellin Urns

Going to the Wellin museum and looking at their small collection of Grecian urns was a very interesting experience after reading Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and I revisited the poem afterwards. Although Keats’ poem deals largely with things which are physically present on the urn, these descriptions are centered almost entirely in the drawn depictions on the urn’s face. I had little idea of what the actual urns were going to look like, in terms of color, shape, or size, and I was immediately struck by their vivid orange colors, accentuated by the deep black background. Some of the urns were larger than others, and they had clearly been found in varying degrees of intactness: one of the larger urns had particularly noticeable cracks in it, where many fragments had ostensibly been glued back together after its discovery. I found this to be interesting food for thought. The urns displayed in front of me were done so intentionally; somebody else had discovered them and put them back together and arranged them, as if to more closely or genuinely resemble what they once were. This intention for preservation echoed Keats’ worries and speculations about preservation and endurance. If not for our active effort, these urns would not have survived in the first place, rendering preservation somewhat of a continuous effort / uphill battle. That I was able to relate the physical aspects of the urns to the thematic content of the poem was a pleasant surprise to me.