Keats On Seeing The Elgin Marbles

John keats visited the british museum in 1817 and recording his feelings in the sonnet titled on seeing the elgin marbles.

Keats on seeing the elgin marbles. This sonnet attempts to convey the poet s complex attitude towards death couched in a reflection on the british museum s greek statues. On seeing the elgin marbles other sonnets of john keats my spirit is too weak mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep and each imagined pinnacle and steep of godlike hardship tells me i must die like a sick eagle looking at the sky. John keats sonnet begins with a statement about mortality. Upon seeing the elgin marbles keats is overcome by a sense of his own mortality.

To haydon with a sonnet written on seeing the elgin marbles haydon. A combination of obscure and abstract images give the poem a lightness which belies its proposed interest. John keats on seeing the elgin marbles. More john keats sign up for poem a day.

Posted on september 20 2011 by impracticalcriticism. What is keats saying about the worth of human artistry. On seeing the elgin marbles by john keats about this poet john keats was born in london on 31 october 1795 the eldest of thomas and frances jennings keats s four children. The marbles have immense beauty and grandeur but they used to be part of the frieze on the parthenon in athens.

Investigating themes in on seeing the elgin marbles. The sonnet on seeing the elgin marbles tells the reader how john keats struggles with mortality and that struggle brought this sonnet to express that accepting fate exceeds denying an inevitable death. Explain how the poem conveys the idea that art can both move with its beauty and disturb by its tendency to remind us of our own mortality. Forgive me that i cannot speak.

Now the sculptures are in fragments and in london no longer a living part of religion but exhibits in a museum. On seeing the elgin marbles john keats 1795 1821 my spirit is too weak mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep and each imagined pinnacle and steep of godlike hardship tells me i must die like a sick eagle looking at the sky. Born in 1795 john keats was an english romantic poet and author of three poems considered to be among the finest in the english language.