The Elgin Marbles are a collection of classical Greek sculptures that have been on display in the British Museum since 1816. In their timelessness, they act for Keats as a springboard for rumination about mortality: the central theme of this sonnet.
Body and Spirit
The cognisance of mortality induces a spiritual weakness in the speaker; his sense of body burdens his sense of soul, ‘[w]eigh[ing] heavily on [him] like unwilling sleep’ (2). The evocation of sleep implies that his ruminations are fostering a somnambulistic, even depressive, state, while the fact that it is ‘unwilling’ suggests a kind of self-persecuction. Nonetheless, the speaker realises the necessity of this corporeality: ‘each imagined pinnacle and steep/Of godlike hardship tells [him he] must die’ (3-4). The ‘imagined pinnacle and steep’ does not express a latent atheism, but alludes to the underworld and heavens of antiquarian mythology. Thus, the work of theologians - as well as mere observation - informs the speaker that death is inevitable; the Marbles are inadvertently a memento mori.
The speaker compares himself to ‘a sick eagle looking at the sky’ (5), an image which encapsulates the conflicted nature of the speaker’s condition. The eagle is a familiar symbol for freedom and performs a similar function here; however, this eagle is ‘sick’ to the point where it can no longer fly. It therefore represents the potential ‘imaginative flight’ of the speaker, which is compromised by his inner dissonance: he can see the expansiveness of the world, but he cannot lose himself in it. The image is strongly analogous to the central metaphor of Jean-Dominique Bauby’s novel The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, which respectively expresses the entrapment of the body against the freedom of the mind.
The speaker nonetheless finds consolation in the lack of responsibility that comes with mortality: it is ‘a gentle luxury to weep,/That I have not the cloudy winds to keep’ (6-7). However, the use of ‘gentle’ suggests that the consolation is minimal, perhaps unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, while the gods must handle the tempestuousness of the ‘cloudy winds’ (7), mortals may suffice with mere sight of a skyline ‘Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye’ (8); it is as though the speaker can enjoy the universe without feeling responsible for it, although - with a modern, environmentalist eye - this attitude is dubious.
The Volta
That line signals the end of the opening octave, which - although not spatially separated - is in fact structurally contained with a dual ABBA rhyming scheme. Following this comes the volta or twist: a sestet of alternately rhyming couplets, which - as is typical - signals a change in the attitude of the speaker. Indeed, his expression becomes less cogent, more tormented, as he refuses to offer a lasting conclusion. Turning to the text, we see that the sky of humanly freedom has become a ‘dim-conceived glor[y] of the brain’ (9), darkening and becoming locked in corporeality. This almost imprisons the heart with ‘an indescribable feud’ (10), exacerbating the ongoing sense of inner conflict. This again appears to induce a sort of sickness - ‘a most dizzy pain’ (11) - as the cultural polarities of ‘Grecian grandeur’ and ‘the rude/ Wasting of old Time’ (12-13) become confused and the metre is disturbed by caesura, as though the sickness induces a feverish bewilderment. Here, the torment is expressed through broken syntax, and the poem moves toward a rapid, degenerative denouement.
A Billowy Main, A Sun, A Shadow of a Magnitude
The final two lines are the most challenging in the poem and as such deserve isolated attention. They present three images - a billowy main, a sun, and a shadow of a magnitude - whose relationship is rendered ambiguous by the paratactic use of hyphens. The ‘billowy main’ is itself confounding, but billows conceptualise an environmental haze which reflects the confused mental state of the speaker, and perhaps the pollutant impact of his thoughts. ‘Main’ can be read as metonymic for the totality of the human condition, but it also has a literary tradition of meaning the open ocean. In this case, ‘billowy main’ suggests the overcast of this utmost image of earthly freedom, and therefore develops that central notion of inhibition.
It is unclear whether the three images exist simultaneously or independently, though they are imaginable within the same scene: the sun is of course above the ‘billowy main’ and casts ‘a shadow of a magnitude’ over the water. However, in this illustration, the shadow consists both of the sun itself and of the billows, representing the polarities of ‘grandeur’ and ‘rude/Wasting’. This seems the most straightforward and most plausible interpretation of the final couplet, but whatever its precise meaning, it remains true that the disrupted climax signals the speaker’s lack of resolution on the matter.
The Immortal Poem of A Mortal Poet
To conclude, ‘On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time’ is a poem about struggling with the truth of mortality. The speaker sees an object of beauty that will outlive him - much like Dorian Grey looking into his portrait - and laments his corporeal nature. Nonetheless, there is a comforting irony in the immortality of the poem, which stays with us even if its creator may not.
Joshua Feldman - I am a 20-year old English Literature student at Sussex University, contributing articles on Literature (of course), Politics, Society and ...
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