The Cultural Implications of “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles”

            The “Elgin Marbles” in the title of Keats’s poem refer to a series of Parthenon objects that were relocated from their original place atop the ancient temple to the British Museum by Lord Elgin in the early 1800s (Ward).  In the two centuries since Elgin removed the figures from the Parthenon, controversy has erupted over whether the museum should return these cultural artifacts to Greece.  Some Greeks believe that the marbles should be restored to the Parthenon, being an invaluable part of Greece’s cultural identity.  By demonstrating his existential experience in the presence of the Elgin Marbles, Keats makes an implicit argument for their placement in the British Museum.  For example, Keats suggests that the Marbles caused his recognition of his own mortality, which most likely would not have been achieved otherwise.  Therefore, Keats implies that the Marbles are important to Britain’s understanding of the impermanence of humanity, and can hold a place of significance in the British Museum.

            Keats denotes the Marbles as appealing to human as opposed to a cultural sensibility, suggesting that they can have a universal impact rather than one strictly related to Greek culture.  The poem relates to the common experience of all humans – that of the knowledge of one’s impending death.  Keats describes how, “each imagined pinnacle and steep / Of godlike hardship tells me I must die” (3-4).  The fact that the each “pinnacle and steep” is defined as representing an “imagined” vision of the might of Gods rather than one that is “real” suggests that the Elgin Marbles are extraordinary as a stimulus for the poet’s imagination rather than as objects themselves.  Keats feels small and fragile in comparison to the Marbles, referring to himself as a, “sick eagle looking at the sky” (5).  The fact that he refers to himself as an “eagle” suggests that he was once strong, but is now “sick” – aware of looming death but not able to prevent it.  In expressing this sentiment, Keats successfully encapsulates the curse of humanity – the idea one’s death is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  In the first lines of “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles,” Keats demonstrates the disarming effect of the Elgin Marbles, for the objects cause the poet to realize his stead in the world.

            The poem does suggest the “Grecian grandeur” (12) of the Marbles, specifically connecting the objects to their culture of origin.  However, Keats specifies that the, “rude / Wasting of time” (13) has spoiled the Marbles rather than their removal from the Parthenon.  It is the effect of time that has caused a “dizzy pain” (11).  This juxtaposition of pleasure and pain is fitting with the contradictory nature of Keats’s poem.  Despite the fact that Keats’s poem begins as a lament, defining mortality as like an “unwilling sleep” (2), he soon views mortality as a benefit.  For example, he states, “’tis a luxury to weep” (6).  Keats may evoke the specifically “Grecian grandeur” of the Elgin Marbles, but the fact that he refers to the Marbles as being affected by time (and by elements of nature – “A sun,” “A shadow of magnitude” (14)) emphasizes that the objects have the universal quality of being transient.  Therefore, Keats once again demonstrates how the Marbles have a significance that transcends any cultural identity.

            Keats does not directly confront the issue of the cultural theft of the Elgin Marbles.  However, in writing the poem demonstrating the effect of the objects on visitors to the British Museum, he is participating in it.   Keats stresses that the impact of the Elgin Marbles is not muted by their separation from the Parthenon or from Greece.  Therefore, Keats’ poem can be viewed as an argument that the Elgin Marbles belong not to any country, but to the world.

Works Cited

Ward, Victoria. "Why Are the Elgin Marbles so Controversial – and Everything Else You Need to Know." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.

Ode to the Elements

While Shelley's poem, "Ode to the West Wind," undeniably has profound philosophical meaning in that Shelley appeals to the wind for help as he copes with the onset of time and fading intellectual influence, the poem is profound in a Wordworthian sense, too, because it is an ode to the classical elements. In the poem, Shelley depicts earth, water, air, and fire and describes the effect they have on him and on each other.
For example, air is quite apparent in the poem (considering the fact that the word itself is in the title). In canto I, Shelley references the "West Wind," "breath," "ghosts," "azure sister of the spring," and "wild spirit." These are all different portrayals of the ephemeral. Earth also appears in canto I as "leaves," "grave," and "sweet buds." These references are to earthly substances, such as foliage or the actual ground.
In canto II, Shelley begins to more intricately intertwine the elements and introduces water and fire to the mix. Water appears with "ocean," "rain," "black rain," and "hail." Shelley begins to stoke the fire in the poem with reference to "lightning" and "fire" itself. He sets the elements up in interaction with and opposition to each other when he splices together different elements into the same image, for example in line 17, he says that the wind "Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean." Here, he is essentially describing wind, an air force, tangling with earthly tree boughs that are figuratively in the air ("Heaven") and the water ("Ocean"). Further, the wind comes into this scene in a "stream" in line 15, which hearkens to streams of water, effectively mixing the two elements.
Shelley sets up more of these fusions of classical elements throughout the poem. The fusions perhaps help Shelley to express the cycle of interaction and reaction in nature, which has larger implications for his philosophical message: how do people and ideas change over time and interact with each other? How do they effect change?

Ode to the West Wind

In class on Tuesday, we briefly discussed how the readings for Thursday were Shelley's political poems. Upon my initial reading, I didn't quite understand how this poem represented Shelley's involvement in politics. The footnotes gave some suggestions, but I think ultimately this poem is about the helplessness that Shelley was feeling. Because he was in Italy when he wrote this poem, he most likely felt disconnected from the political happenings in his native Britain. The footnotes mention that "the spirit of liberty was said to have deserted Europe." It goes on to talk about how the West Wind would bring this spirit back to Europe, but I think this West Wind is actually pushing him further away from his native country. In the first stanza, Shelley is feeling extremely disconnected. The West Wind drives up dead leaves "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing" (3). This is Shelley claiming that the political figures who may have once been activists and causing some upheaval, have now given up on the cause, and are also being moved out of England. As one of the political figures, Shelley felt helpless in his position. The wind, another invisible force, is something he cannot fight.

Another thing I found interesting about this poem is Shelley's use of comparisons over metaphors. As in "To a Sky-Lark," Shelley again uses similes which I think makes the poem stronger. As we discussed, Coleridge and Wordsworth had a tendency to create really grand images that could be difficult to grasp. Although Shelley still manages to make the unseen forces seem out of reach, he still allows for more footholds for his audience because he uses several similes that create images that are relatively easy to conceptualize.

Wind blowing the stanzas

In Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" there is not only the description of the wind in the poem, but it feels as though the wind is actually present for the reader. The poem jumps quickly and presents many different images. Shelley does this by writing very short, three or even two line stanzas. The small number of lines in each stanza gives each small chunk of writing a sort of lightness. It is as if Shelley wanted the wind to be able to blow the reader through the poem, bringing with him or her each pervious stanza. If that were the case, he would have to ensure that no stanza were to heavy for the wind to blow along.
I also really liked the image or idea that Shelley presents when he offers the hypothetical reality in which he is a "dead leaf" (43). It contorts the relationship between poet and poem by giving the poem and the wind its own course, separate from the poet's control. He relinquishes his ownership over the poem and the various ways it can be interpreted when he presents himself as a "wave to pant beneath thy power" (45). The power he refers to could be seen as the power of the wind that carries the dead leaf in whatever direction it is blowing, and then discards the leaf in a new place without any concern for the leaf's desires. However, it also seems to suit the poem that Shelley is some how beneath his own poem. As the same line ends on a discontinued thought, and then picks back up with the start of the next stanza, there is the sense that the poem is speaking to itself. It is almost as if the stanzas are somehow interconnected in a way that even Shelley did not necessarily intend, but that they somehow work together to create something larger than Shelley created when he put the words on the page. All of this functions nicely within the idea that the wind blows things in all directions, reshuffling the natural world, and recreating the visual effect of an environment. This poem works in a similar way in that the stanzas seem to all have had their own place, and then the wind came and blew them all together onto the page.

Vishnu and Siva

In many ways, Shelley often acts as Siva and Vishnu when he writes. Every Shelley poem we have read so far focuses on the importance of paradoxes. For example, in the “Ode to the West Wind” the speaker says that the winter prepares for spring and later that sorrow prepares a way for joy. The wind brings about these seasons and changes, which makes the wind both a preserver of beauty and harmony. Unlike Wordsworth’s usually comforting imagery and inspirational thoughts on nature, Shelley addresses the fact that nature is a preserver (as Wordsworth points out often) but nature is also a destroyer. When winter is here, spring is always following closely behind, and the wind takes winter away in order to bring spring back.  

Similarly to “To a Sky-lark”, Shelley begs the ‘spirit’ in the poem, in this case the West wind, to teach him how to be like the wind. He shows a need for this understanding and begs for the wind to make him its lyre with hopes of eventually becoming the wind. If Shelley were to take on this position, he too would be the preserver and the destroyer. He cannot beg for nature’s gifts without accepting the complicated duality of it.

In his writing Shelley attempts to be like the West wind by showing presence through absence or through paradox. I believe Shelley thought of poets as paradoxes as well. He believed nature was a powerful thing that humans could never fully understand, this is especially conveyed in “Mont Blanc.” He personifies the mountain because it is so vast and inexplicable in any other form. Later in the poem though, Shelley questions what nature would be without man to perceive it. This is a very complicated paradox where poets (and people) are nothing without nature and nature is nothing without it. This is not to say that either is equivalent. Shelley makes certain to point out that the one of the only contributions that can be made by people is to stand in utter awe of nature yet nature is timeless and powerful and serves as an element of inspiration and destruction.

 

On a Sky-Lark

The separation of skylark in the title is interesting—in the footnote it’s one word, so I wonder what was the normal way to write it at that time/is now. I looked it up on oed.com and found it both ways. Written as it is in “To a Sky-Lark,” the emphasis on “sky” as an adjective describing the noun—“lark”—is greater. It draws attention to the other meaning of "lark," too--and increases this consideration of the bird as simple/fun/amusing--not knowing pain. The emphasis of the word is  more split—in skylark it is more strongly on the first syllable while Sky-Lark gives both parts of the word equal weight. It also implies that there may be a lark that is not in the sky—perhaps the emphasis is made to make clear that the bird the speaker is referring to is flying, and therefore probably singing (at least according to the footnote). This is interesting—I don’t know that there is any place in the poem where the bird is on the ground or it is even acknowledged that the bird does come down—the speaker seems to only view it as going “higher and still higher” (6) and, in accordance with this, sees the bird as an idol above humanity, with “ignorance of pain” (75).

I wonder about the first footnote: “The European skylark is a small bird that sings only in flight, often when it is too high to be visible”

How important is this? Couldn’t we have figured out that this poem was about a bird on our own? I definitely think the ideas are interesting and beautiful—a bird that can only sing when it can fly, and when we cannot see it—and I wouldn’t necessarily have known it after reading the poem if I hadn’t read the footnote. I wonder if this kind of information about skylarks was common knowledge at the time (that seems like an odd idea)?

This fact does seem to align with the ideas of the poem, of course—the bird only sings when it is flying (not in pain but transcending it) while humans “sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought” (90). The idea of not being able to see the bird is also reflected in the poem—“Until we hardly see—we feel that it is there” (25).

While the speaker is says he is jealous of the skylark’s ability to sing most beautifully of happiness and have the world listen to its “harmonious madness” (103)—I wonder whether he is just simply jealous of the skylark’s inability to feel pain---or perhaps the only value he sees in pain is the beauty that results from it, and therefore he is jealous of the skylark's ability to have that beauty without the pain.

here are some random associations I made while reading this poem that may have no relevance but you may enjoy:

Marianne Moore's "The Fish"

It’s very different obviously but the rhyme scheme/stanza arrangement just made me think of it//along with the nature-focus

Elton John’s “Skyline Pigeon”

I know this is talking about a pigeon, which may be weird (maybe not as pretty as skylarks) but it is also in the sky

Also here’s what a skylark really sounds like:

There may be something to this “world should listen then—as I am listening now” thing///I listened to this a lot a lot after I found it. Now that we can separate the birdsong from the bird with youtube videos, though, I wonder if it really has the same meaning or can sound quite as good.

Elegy and Line Break in Shelley’s “To Wordsworth”

I think this post builds off of Addie and Jared's thoughts on "To Wordsworth." Like Addie, I too was surprised at the different readings this seemingly simplistic short poem presented.

On first reading Shelley’s pseudo-elegy of Wordsworth, which is not about Wordsworth’s passing from life into death but rather his passing from a younger frame of thinking to a more conservative mode (according to the first footnote), I was disappointed by what seemed like a rather straightforward and un-strange poem in its description of the subject. The figurative language Shelley uses to compliment Wordsworth’s old viewpoint, composed of “sweet dreams,” a “lone star,” and a “rock-built refuge” (4, 7, and 9) seemed rather tired and cliché. Bloom suggests that this is Shelley mocking Wordsworth; I wouldn’t read the poem the same way and was far more interested in looking beyond the content of the poem and trying to figure out other, more subtle methods of reading the poem.

The content of the poem is obviously important: but what is more striking to me is the first point I made, which is that this reads elegiacally, despite its subject still being alive at the time of Shelley writing the poem. Bloom argues that Shelley is presenting himself as the new Romantic poet, a successor to Wordsworth’s mantle; however, Shelley’s comment seems not championing the downfall of poor William, but instead genuinely grieve-felt “that thou shouldst cease to be” (15). What’s more interesting is that Wordsworth’s very existence, this “having been” (15), is bound up in his old poetic mode and beliefs. To Shelley, Wordsworth is only alive in the verse that believes in “childhood and youth, friendship and love’s first glow” (3). The “loss is mine,” admits Shelley, because to Wordsworth this loss is perhaps not deplorable (6) and Wordsworth himself literally keeps on living without self-mourning. But to Shelley, the poet having “desert[ed] these” provides the space to mourn Wordsworth, who is, perhaps, now deceased in spirit (14).  

The other interesting facet of the work seemed to hinge on the structure of the poem. Although the content wasn’t too gripping in my reading, I was fascinated by how Shelley played with the line break. Five of the fifteen lines run into the next without pause except by their existence as a line’s end. I especially enjoyed the playfulness of line 1, where the “Poet of Nature, though has wept to know” as if knowledge itself were a cause to weep. The followup – “that things depart” – is not much more specific in its complaint, but Shelley allows a kind of epistemological tragedy to dangle in front of the reader at the very start of the poem. That knowing could itself be an occasion for weeping seems to build off Milton’s Paradise Lost and the Edenic narrative that Wordsworth takes so much pride in re-building among crags and rivers. The other moment I thought this worked especially well was when Shelley comments that Wordsworth’s light, like a lone star shined (brilliantly!) but then, following the break from line 7 to line 8, we discover that the light shined on some frail bark. I wouldn’t read this, like Bloom does, as a criticism of Wordsworth. Instead, it seems to segregate Wordsworth further from every other poet and member of the throng and shows a greater tragedy: the first line simply displays his light, even as a lone star, and then we discover that it only shines on something frail, later described as “the blind and battling multitude” (10).