The Elgin Marbles Keats

The infusion of such art works from ancient greece could only strengthen and enrich british culture.

The elgin marbles keats.

The marbles have immense beauty and grandeur but they used to be part of the frieze on the parthenon in athens. Lord elgin made an expedition to the parthenon in greece returning with a significant number of marble statues and friezes which he subsequently sold to the british museum in 1816. The marbles are emblems of a culture to which keats and many of his friends in the leigh hunt circle thought it was noble to aspire. Now the sculptures are in fragments and in london no longer a living part of religion but exhibits in a museum.

He states how he knows that his mortality means that one day he must die. The classic collection of marble sculptures from parthenon at the british museum commonly known as the elgin marbles has been a vexed source of doubt appreciation enthusiasm disapproval and. 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. Read the excerpt from the poem on seeing the elgin marbles by john keats.

γλυπτά του παρθενώνα also known as the elgin marbles ˈɛlɡɪn are a collection of classical greek marble sculptures made under the supervision of the architect and sculptor phidias and his assistants. The longman anthology of poetry palgrave 2006. Through his awareness of other writings in this field and his first hand acquaintance with the elgin marbles keats perceived the idealism and representation of greek virtues in classical greek art and his poem draws upon these insights. Keats wrote a sonnet in 1816 entitled on seeing the elgin marbles in which the young fragile poet s own mortality is contrasted with each imagined pinnacle and steep of godlike hardship the.

The parthenon marbles greek. John keats sonnet begins with a statement about mortality. So do these wonders a most dizzy pain. 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.