John Keats' "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2025

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

As William Shakespeare was putting the final touchers on Hamlet, George Chapman was beginning (arguably) an even more momentous undertaking: introducing the English-speaking world to Homer’s epics. In a turn of historical irony, the fame of Chapman’s translation continues almost solely in and through today’s poem–but there are worse ways to be remembered. Happy reading.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:08.3	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, January 29th, 2025.
0:14.3	Today's poem is by John Keats, and it's called On First Looking into Chapman's Homer.
0:24.0	This is a very famous Keatsy and sonnet, often studied by schoolchildren, at least that used to be the case,
0:32.5	and frequently alluded to quoted, remembered maybe more in abstract through certain particularly
0:40.5	well-known phrases than in its entirety.
0:42.8	But the poem as a whole and its subjects are worth remembering and revisiting here today.
0:50.0	So I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments, and then read it one more time.
0:55.1	I'm first looking into Chapman's Homer.
0:59.4	Much have I traveled in the realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdom seen.
1:05.2	Around many Western islands have I been which bards and fealty to Apollo hold.
1:10.4	Offed of one wide expanse had I been told,
1:13.5	that deep-browed Homer ruled as his domain. Yet did I never breathe its pure serene,
1:19.7	till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
1:25.4	when a new planet swims into his ken, like stout cortez when with eagle eyes
1:31.2	he stared at the pacific and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise silent upon a peak
1:38.9	in darian this poem gives us something unexpected, maybe because of the way that we tend to think about translation today.
1:52.4	Often translation is a barrier to an experience of reality.
2:01.8	If there is an ancient work written in some ancient language,
2:06.9	we instinctively recognize that to really plumb the depths of that work,
2:12.1	we have to learn at least a little of that language.
2:16.5	This is certainly true of biblical studies.
	...

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