page_title: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
section_title: Analysis
hierarchical_section_title: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer / Analysis
caption_attribution_description: Depicted person&#58; &#32;Vasco Núñez de Balboa
context_page_description: On First Looking into Chapman's Homer is a sonnet written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in October 1816. It tells of the author's astonishment while reading the works of the ancient Greek poet Homer as freely translated by the Elizabethan playwright George Chapman.
  The poem has become an often-quoted classic, 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.
context_section_description: The "realms of gold" in the opening line seem to imply worldly riches, until the name of Homer appears; then they are recognized as literary and cultural realms. Of the many islands of the Aegean, the one which bards most in fealty owe to Apollo, leader of the inspiring Muses, is Delos, the sacred island that was Apollo's birthplace. The island-dotted Aegean lies at the eastern end of the Mediterranean; thus Keats contrasts the western islands of his own experience with the East Indies, the goal that drew adventurers like Cortés and Balboa to the New World, an example of the submerged imagery behind the text, which is typical of Keats' technique.
  The second quatrain introduces "one wide expanse" that was ruled by Homer, but which was "heard of" rather than known to Keats at first-hand, for Homer wrote in Greek, and Keats, like most cultured Englishmen of his time, was at ease only in Latin. The "wide expanse" might have been a horizon of land or sea, but in Keats' breathing its "pure serene", we now sense that it encompasses the whole atmosphere, and in it Chapman's voice 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 salient to contemporary readers due to 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.
  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 the Darién province of Panama. Keats had been reading William Robertson's History of America and apparently conflated two scenes it described: 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).
  Before Cortés's 1519–21 conquest of Mexico, he had been a colonist, administrator and conquistador in Hispaniola (from 1504) and Cuba (from 1511). He never traveled to Darién, but could have seen the Pacific sometime after his conquest of Mexico or during his 1524–26 visit to Honduras. Later during his governorship of Mexico, Cortes was a major explorer of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Baja California.
  Since Cortés was never in Darien, Keats made an historical error.  The standard critical view is that John Keats simply remembered the grand, but separate, images of Cortés and of Darien, rather than their historical contexts.
  In retrospect, 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.
  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".
caption: Statue of Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaching forward; he led the first Europeans to see the Pacific Ocean.
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