On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1816

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Simile

The most prominent literary device John Keats uses is the simile, to which he dedicates the entire sestet. A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things to arrive at a compressed and vivid description. Due to the ethereal nature of that which Keats is describing—the sublime awe of witnessing Homer’s work through Chapman’s vigorous and earthy translation—Keats leans on two similes, two visions, to frame the quiet yet ecstatic state he was left in. In each instance, Keats uses the signifying marker of a simile, the word “like,” to introduce his figures. “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies” (Line 9), he begins, and, turning to the peak in Darien, “Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes” (Line 11). In each instance, however, Keats does not actually describe how the astronomer or Cortez feels, but rather relies on the power of his poetics and his chosen images to communicate the sublime ethereality of his encounter with Chapman’s Homer.

Enjambment

Enjambment refers to the running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next without terminal punctuation. It can cause a cascading effect as the reader is led from one line into the next, and is often utilized for pacing, or dramatic effect. Keats’s first uses of enjambment are in service to his flowing sentences, such as “Round many western islands have I been / Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold” (Lines 3, 4), or “Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold” (Lines 7, 8). Keats maintains a regularity in his enjambment throughout the octave, balancing an enjambed line with an end-stopped line though to the sestet. When he reaches his description of Cortez in Lines 11-14, however, Keats uses enjambment in a different fashion, which, along with the caesuras of the hyphens, stagger and rush the reading of the final lines to evoke the charge of discovery and hesitant awe shared amongst Cortez’s men, their rush toward Cortez’s sole view that is arrested by the trochaic foot at the start of the last line.

Form and Meter

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a Petrarchan sonnet, a traditional form named for the celebrated Italian practitioner of the form and closer to the form’s origins in the court of the Holy Emperor Frederick II. The sonnet is 14 lines long and divided into two parts: the octave, which is composed of the first eight lines, and the sestet of a different rhyme scheme that comprises the final six lines. A volta, at the ninth line, marks the structural turn of the poem from the declaration of its octave to the refutation or extended metaphor of the sestet. Keats stays true to the English meter of iambic pentameter and the Petrarchan form; however, the first line and the last line feature a trochee—a heavy stress followed by a light stress—at their beginnings, introducing a cascading sensation to the lines. His use of the older Italianate form rather than the Shakespearean form further highlights the borrowing from and celebrating of foreign cultures.

One of the primary characteristics of the Italian sonnet is the use of extended metaphor. Again, Keats remains true to this form, composing an extended metaphor on the transportive aspect of Chapman’s translation. In this sense, Keats is a burgeoning poet in an apprentice manner, staying true to the traditions of the form. “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is markedly different than the other sonnets Keats wrote at the time and can be read as an early artistic departure, with Keats adopting a looser cadence, subtly altering the meter in the first and last lines, and focusing more on his purely subjective experience, all hallmarks of his later work.

The fact that this poem is meant to focus on the singular instance of Keats’s feeling can be seen in the proliferation of “I” (Lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9), which occurs in just under half of the poem’s lines. Despite this, Keats’s tone is carefully controlled, regardless of the rapturous feelings that coursed through him after the reading. The lyrical focus is maintained as Keats’s focus moves decidedly outwards, while, line-by-line, Keats’s interior horizons broaden. The tone is less celebratory, more reverential, evoking the sublime state Keats is left in: one of silence and wonder. Reverberating in the tone is the nature of the poem’s composition, in which it carries a somewhat confessional tenor, written to an audience of one—Clarke, who shared the experience with Keats. This tone reinforces the subjective focus on Keats’s feelings and is in tune with the lyric exploration of the Romantics. The lyricism, alongside Keats’s emphasis on the natural landscapes in the first quatrain, firmly situates this poem within the Romantic movement. The first line begins with a reversal of Keats’s iambic pentameter scheme, using a trochaic foot to begin on a declarative sound. It grabs the reader’s attention, and gives the impression of one starting grandly, as though a bard calling for the attention of their listeners. The first quatrain sets the imaginative stage of the poem, while its form, a single sentence divided into four lines, introduces the breathlessness of Keats’s declaration. The rest of the poem, the next quatrain and the entire sestet, pouring forth from Keats’s first sentence, comprises only one other sentence, though one that veers from Keats’s first interaction with Chapman’s translations, to the extents of the universe and the very edge of the known world.

Similarly, Keats introduces a rushed feeling to the end of the poem through alterations in the meter. In Line 11, Keats introduces an anapestic foot—two light stresses then a strong—after his first iamb (stout cor-TEZ), which slightly alters the meter but prepares the reader for the stopping point of the first caesura, the comma, and adds a further momentum to “when with eagle eyes” (Line 11). Line 12 is hypermetric, containing a hurried beat too many (pa-CIF-ic), suggesting a moment of astonished acceleration towards the final unveiling sight. While Line 14 has the correct amount of syllables, it reverses the first foot, leading with a trochee that upends the completeness of the meter and allows for a suspended moment that embodies the final settling of the sublime sight, a sight both agitating and soothing.