Timeless: Taylor Swift's Art of Immortalization (Keatsian Ekphrastic Remix)

The Basics: 

Having walked into an antique shop, Taylor Swift is so moved by photographs of couples that she calls her partner to describe them. Swift describes her own love as timeless, and imagines the two of them in love during different historical eras: World War II, the 1500s, and the present. 

Literary Device: Ekphrasis

Timeless is a detailed description of antiques and the feelings those antiques elicit in the poet. In particular, Swift translates three physical works of art into poetry: two photographs and one book. While we have seen Swift previously use this device to describe a VHS tape in The Best Day, the most famous ekphrasis is Ode on a Grecian Urn, in which John Keats describes a piece of antique pottery in great detail. Keats’ Ode bears enough similarity to Timeless that it is worth including several excerpts. He addresses the people painted on the vase: 

“Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

They song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

Forever wit thou love, and she be fair”

…

“More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young” 

…

“When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe”

Like Swift, Keats fixates on the timelessness of the characters on the vase. These two lovers have been together, unmoving, since they were originally painted during what we would consider ancient history. Two hundred years after the death of Keats, they remain young and in love – a love that is safe from the ravages of time. As we shall see in our analysis, known Keats enthusiast* Taylor Swift expertly echoes Ode on a Grecian Urn by exploring the same themes with the same literary device.  

Analysis 

For young Taylor Swift, time generally makes things worse. Swift’s early albums include countless explorations of her time anxiety (1, 2, 3, 4, etc.) Swift includes a couple of brief examples in Timeless. In the bridge, she warns: “Time breaks down your mind and body / Don’t you let it touch your soul” and includes two examples of the physical evidence of aging: “a book covered in cobwebs” and a reference to her own “hair… turning gray.” In contrast to a decaying human body, art persists across time. Swift picks up a photograph and describes the scene clearly: “Black and white, saw a ‘30s bridge / And two lovers laughin’ on the porch of their first house.” Another photograph perfectly preserves another scene: “There was one of a teenage couple in the driveway / Holdin’ hands on the way to a dance.” While these couples have presumably passed away, their love persists through the photographs. Finally, Swift opens the cobweb-covered book to find a beautiful love story fully intact on the inside. While the physical medium has decayed, the story depicted inside has remained timeless. 

The timelessness of the lovers in the art causes Swift to consider that her own relationship might be timeless as well. She calls her partner and says: “It’s so hard to explain / But in those photos, I saw us instead.” Swift explores this timelessness from multiple angles. First, Swift is confident that she and her partner “would’ve found each other / In another life, you still would’ve turned my head even if we’d met / On a crowded street in 1944.” Swift imagines her love story set in three very different eras. Each time, she declares: “I believe that we were supposed to find this / So, even in a different life, you still would’ve been mine / We would’ve been timeless.” Through these examples, Swift is insisting that their love does not depend on the current moment in time. Swift and her partner would have found each other and fallen in love no matter the historical era – they would have been timeless. Swift also describes timelessness in the same way that Keats does. She refers to reading “your love letters every single night” and how one day she will look back at “photos of the life we’ve made.” Like the Grecian urn, the photographs in the antique store, and the book covered in cobwebs, Swift’s photos and love letters are artifacts that will preserve their love across time.

Swift notes that while the mind and body decay, the soul and the stories that people tell about themselves and their long-term relationships do not. Indeed, Swift’s lyrics immortalize the story of her life – inoculating her own relationships against the ravages of time. Timelessness is Swift’s most explicit statement of her archival project thus far: informed by her own ekphrastic analysis, Swift knows that everyone and everything she describes in her lyrics is “gonna be timeless, timeless.” 

*I’m not kidding – he was one of the inspirations for The Lakes https://www.billboard.com/music/pop/folklore-the-long-pond-studio-sessions-taylor-swift-things-learned-taylor-swift-9490082/