"On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while he was reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.
The poem has become an often-quoted classic that is cited to demonstrate the emotional power of a great work of art and the ability of great art to create an epiphany in its beholder.
Keats's generation was familiar enough with the polished literary translations of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, which gave Homer an urbane gloss similar to Virgil but was expressed in blank verse or heroic couplets. Charles Cowden Clarke and John Keats both had a scrappy awareness of Pope’s translation and the most famous passages of Homer. Chapman's vigorous and earthy paraphrase (1616) was put before Keats by Clarke, a friend from his days as a pupil at a boarding school in Enfield Town[1] who was integral in Keats’s poetic education.
Charles Cowden Clarke had been lent a copy of Chapman’s Homer that was circulating around friends of Leigh Hunt, co-founder and editor of The Examiner. They sat up together till daylight to read it: "Keats shouting with delight as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination. At ten o'clock the next morning, Mr. Clarke found the sonnet on his breakfast-table."
The poem was first published in The Examiner on 1 December 1816. It was later published in a collection called Poems in 1817.[2]
The "realms of gold" in the opening line seem to imply worldly riches until the name of Homer appears, then they are recognised as literary and cultural realms. The gold in this case refers to the intellectual and emotional rewards of literature.[3] Of the many deities worshipped in the cultures of the Aegean, the god to whom the bards owe the most in fealty is Apollo, the leader of the inspiring Muses and Greek god of poetry and music.[4] The Western islands is a reference to the Western Canon. Delos is the sacred island that was Apollo's birthplace.
The second quatrain introduces "one wide expanse" that was ruled by Homer, but Keats had only “been told” of it as he could not read the original Greek[5] (most cultured Englishmen of the time were only familiar with Latin). The "wide expanse" might have been a horizon of land or sea, but in Keats's ”pure serene”, it is sensed as encompassing the whole atmosphere. Chapman's voice then rings out. This sense of fresh discovery brings the reader to the volta: "Then felt I...".
The reference to a "new planet" would have been important to Keats’s contemporary readers because of the recent discovery of Uranus with a telescope in 1781 by William Herschel, Court Astronomer to George III. News of Herschel's discovery was sensational, as it was the first "new" planet to be discovered since antiquity.[6]
Herschel was not the first person to have seen Uranus, but he was the person to have it recognised by the world as a planet. Keats may have read about Herschel’s discovery in the last chapter[7] of a book he won while at Enfield Academy,[8] an Introduction to Astronomy by Johnny Bonnycastle (published 1807). The author compares reading Homer's poetry through Chapman's translation to discovering a new world through a telescope. The translation helps Keats appreciate the significance of Homer's poetry. Through Chapman's translation, Homer's preservation of the ancient Greek world comes to life with patience and perseverance in reading. Keats was thrilled by the gift of discovery, similar to Herschel.
Members of Vasco Núñez de Balboa's expedition were the first Europeans to see the eastern shore of the Pacific (1513), but Keats chose to use Hernán Cortés. "Darien" refers to Darién Province, in Panama. Keats had read William Robertson's History of America[9] as a library book from Enfield Academy, and apparently conflated two scenes that it describes: Balboa's view of the Pacific and Cortés's first view of the Valley of Mexico (1519).
The Balboa passage: "At length the Indians assured them, that from the top of the next mountain they should discover the ocean which was the object of their wishes. When, with infinite toil, they had climbed up the greater part of the steep ascent, Balboa commanded his men to halt, and advanced alone to the summit, that he might be the first who should enjoy a spectacle which he had so long desired. As soon as he beheld the South Sea stretching in endless prospect below him, he fell on his knees, and lifting up his hands to Heaven, returned thanks to God, who had conducted him to a discovery so beneficial to his country, and so honourable to himself. His followers, observing his transports of joy, rushed forward to join in his wonder, exultation, and gratitude" (Vol. III).
In retrospect, Keats's use of Cortés rather than Balboa as the person to introduce the Pacific Ocean to the wider world may have been serendipitously insightful. This is because the first translation of Homer into English was done by Arthur Hall in 1581. However, Hall’s translation, while earlier, like Balboa’s sighting of the Pacific that was earlier than Cortés’s, did not have as renowned and impactful a reception as Chapman’s later translation did.[10]
Before Cortés's 1519–21 conquest of the Aztec Empire, Cortés had been a colonist, administrator and conquistador in Hispaniola (from 1504) and Cuba (from 1511). Cortés never traveled to Darién but may have seen the Pacific after his conquest of the Aztec Empire or during his 1524–1526 visit to Honduras. Later during his governorship of Mexico, Cortés was a major explorer of the Pacific coast of Mexico[11] and Baja California.
Since Cortés was never in Darién, Keats made a historical error. The standard critical view is that Keats simply remembered the grand but separate images of Cortés and of Darien, rather than their historical contexts. In retrospect, Keats's historical error does not diminish from the poem’s literary impact, and likewise suggests that Chapman’s inaccuracies (Chapman gets details wrong, adds entire lines and has his own interpretation) do not diminish the poetic impact of Chapman’s Homer.
Homer's "pure serene" has prepared the reader for the Pacific and so the analogy now expressed in the simile that identifies the wide expanse of Homer's demesne with the vast Pacific, which stuns its discoverers into silence, is felt to be the more just.
The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean on Earth. It represents a vast and deep new frontier that has an all-encompassing influence on the islands (Homer is the original influence for other poets) and facilitates connection and cultural exchange between communities. Cortés wonders at the ocean’s significance and beauty, and his understanding of the world is transformed by contemplating the encounter.
Keats felt amazed by the beauty and meaning of Homer’s poetry when he read Chapman's translation. He compared it to discovering the Pacific, due to its vastness (large cast of characters in a 10-year war who span the emotional palette), depth (in the sense that literature rewards close reading, in the depth of motivations and emotions, the depth to which the themes of mortality, destiny, morality, identity inform the human condition), and Homer's influence as the first and greatest written poet in the Western Canon. He enjoyed (particularly with Clarke, with whom the poem was first commemorated before being extended to the public) how poetry can connect people in shared wonder and contemplation.
Keats’s poetry engages the old (Uranus, the Pacific, Homer) with new eyes and fresh appreciation. It is filled with a sense of wonder, inspiration, joy, excitement, adventure and possibility at discovering the amazing made accessible (in Herschel’s and Cortés’s findings, Chapman’s English). This expands one’s horizons with life’s mysteries (the nature of free will, whether Homer was a group or a person,[12] whether the Trojan war is historical fact[13]), beauty (in expressiveness, relatable characters and timeless themes) and grandeur (as epic mythology, preserving Greek values and ideals of the good life[14]).
Before the poem was published, Keats altered "wondr'ing eyes" (in the original manuscript) to "eagle eyes" and "Yet could I never judge what Men could mean" (which was the seventh line even in the first publication in The Examiner) to "Yet did I never breathe its pure serene".
This poem is a Petrarchan sonnet, also known as an Italian sonnet. It is divided into an octave (the first 8 lines introducing the problem of not reading Homer) and a sestet (the last 6 lines introducing the solution of Chapman’s translation and how it makes Keats feel). It follows a rhyme scheme of ABBAABBACDCDCD. After the main idea has been introduced and the image played upon in the octave, the poem undergoes a volta (here “Then felt I…”), a change in the persona's train of thought. The octave offers the poet as a literary explorer, but the volta brings in the discovery of Chapman's Homer, the subject of which is further expanded through the use of imagery and comparisons which convey the poet's sense of awe at the discovery.
As is typical of sonnets in English, the metre is iambic pentameter though not all of the lines scan perfectly (line 12 has an extra syllable, for example).