The Trials of Creation in "On Seeing Elgin Marbles"

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles’ records Keats’ wonder at the Greek statues displayed in the British Museum in 1817. Within this wonder there is a deep solemnity within the artist, which seems to come from the experience itself and not from the speaker’s life outside this moment. This solemnity begins with physical pain born from metaphysical entities, as Keats says, “My spirit is too weak” (1) and “mortality/ Weighs heavily,” (1-2). There is an internal struggle which deals directly with Keats’ inescapable death, something that even at this early age hangs over him, creeping subtly closer. This feeling of death comes to the speaker “like unwilling sleep,” a characterization that suggests a fear not of death itself, but of the inability to control one’s existence. Keats as a poet seeks to create and the statues he faces represent  “each imagined pinnacle and steep/ Of godlike hardship,” (3-4) that the process of creation brings with it. Keats sees his own fate in the statues, a life of slavery to creation. And his death as “a sick eagle looking at the sky,” (5) leaves him as the old king observing his former kingdom; the expanse of creation unfolds before him and he can do nothing but perish.

Later in the poem Keats find some relief, “‘tis a gentle luxury” (6), in his not having to create nature himself. In this way, Keats is elevating the status of the statues in front of him to the same as the creations of some Creator and raising himself to this comparison. Keats is witnessing the breadth of creation in his mind at the moment of the poem and equating it all, finding no difference in the creations of man and nature. And all creation forces the same pain to well inside him (9-10 11). But this pain is not inflicted, rather it is fostered by this experience. The pain is uniquely that of Keats and the artist, not one that is present in the sculptures themselves.

And what is most interesting, is the contents of this pain which “mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude/ Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—/ A sun—a shadow of magnitude.” (12-13). Inside, Keats experiences the physicalities of the sculptures “Grecian grandeur” alongside his own “[w]asting of old time” (13) which widens the disparity between his idealized creator-self and his currently perceived self. Mixed within this churning self-critique are more abstract entities like “a billowy main” (13), “A sun” (14), and the “shadow of a magnitude” (14). These first two aspects refer to the raw power of nature both in motion and stillness, the ocean “billowing” in its endlessly repetitive tides and the sun staring motionless at the earth day after day. So activity is removed as a cause of Keats’ pain, his feeling having to do with the inexorable power of creation both forces have. And the final “shadow of magnitude” (14) hints in some way to Keats’ vision of his own legacy, both foreboding and intangible. This shadow could even be that of the once-healthy eagle Keats compares himself to in line 5, his still-healthy wings creating majestic shadows on the countryside.

Thus Keats is left in internal turmoil pitting his need to create against his creations’ legacies. His future is a shadow, not a roadway or a river running, something definite in shape but unknowable in consequence.