On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1817

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Burden of Mortality

Viewing the famous Elgin Marbles makes the speaker acutely aware of his own relative insignificance and the burden of his mortality. These sculptures, which once decorated the Parthenon temple in Athens, have continued to exist over countless human lifetimes, surviving millennia of conflict and natural disasters (See: Background). The Elgin Marbles represent something that is no longer human but “godlike” (Line 4), and thus serve as a kind of memento mori for the speaker, that is, a reminder that “[he] must die” (Line 4). In comparison to the enduring beauty of the sculptures, the speaker feels weak and small. Indeed, the speaker introduces this feeling of weakness in the very first words of the poem: “My spirit is too weak” (Line 1). The sight of the sculptures causes the speaker to feel “mortality” (Line 1) that “weighs heavily” (Line 2); he compares this weight to an “unwilling sleep” (Line 2), evoking the idea of a natural process that is beyond one’s control but that is also inevitable.

Yet even the Elgin Marbles are not immortal. They show signs of damage brought about by many centuries of wear. This sight only reminds the speaker of his own mortality even more: He questions how such ancient sculptures are subject to time and how much more a single individual must be weighed down by their own mortality. Consequently, the “wonders” (Line 11) that the speaker beholds causes him “a most dizzy pain” (Line 11). This pain “mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude / Wasting of old time” (Lines 12-13), highlighting that nothing truly lasts. The sculptures become “a shadow of a magnitude” (Line 14).

The poem, however, is not only about existential anxiety and pain. To the speaker, even weeping for his own mortality is “a gentle luxury” (Line 6). There is a sense that while mortality may be a burden, immortality would be an even greater burden. The speaker is small and doomed to someday die, but at least he does not have the responsibility of maintaining the cosmos or of endlessly fighting against the ravages of time, does not have “the cloudy winds to keep / Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye” (Lines 7-8).

The Power and Importance of Art

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” explores the power and importance of the visual arts, which are able to move the human spirit and even allow humanity to transcend—to some extent—their mortality. Viewing the Elgin Marbles causes the speaker to feel overwhelmed. These works of art cause the speaker to feel the weight of his mortality, which he likens to an “unwilling sleep” (Line 2): “And each imagined pinnacle and steep / Of godlike hardship tells me I must die / Like a sick eagle looking at the sky” (Lines 3-5). The eagle becomes a poignant symbol for the humbling power of art. Usually a symbol of strength and freedom, the eagle becomes “sick” as it looks at the sky, much as the speaker’s human spirit is “too weak” (Line 1) before the high artistic achievements of the past.

Art has the power to evoke powerful emotions, but art is not important just because it is enduring. Indeed, the speaker notes with “a most dizzy pain” (Line 11) that even the “Grecian grandeur” (Line 12) of the Elgin Marbles attests to “the rude / Wasting of old time” (Lines 12-13). The speaker posits that even these historically monumental sculptures are now merely “a shadow of a magnitude” (Line 14), arguing that art is not immortal. Art can, however, stir the emotions of its viewers even long after it was created, and thus it achieves a power comparable to that of the natural world. The speaker thus highlights the mingling of the Elgin Marbles “with a billowy main” (Line 13) or “[a] sun” (Line 14). Even if art is not immune to time, it can transcend time and mortality by touching the emotions of countless viewers, just like the poem’s speaker, across the ages.

The Timelessness of Antiquity

Like many of Keats’s poems, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” turns to classical antiquity for inspiration. The Elgin Marbles decorated the Parthenon temple in Athens in the fifth century BCE. To many, they represented the pinnacle of classical art, and to the speaker in the poem, they indeed embody “each imagined pinnacle and steep / Of godlike hardship” (Lines 3-4), becoming a symbol for something that is no longer merely human. Such “wonders” (Line 11) are more enduring than a single human life, as the speaker reflects when he declares that his “spirit is too weak” (Line 1).

There is also “an undescribable feud” (Line 10) and “a most dizzy pain” (Line 11) that the speaker feels when he views the Elgin Marbles. For all their enduring beauty, these sculptures are not quite immortal either. Their “Grecian grandeur” (Line 12), though timeless, is still (somewhat paradoxically) subject to “the rude / Wasting of time” (Lines 12-13). Yet even in its ultimate mortality, these artifacts of antiquity remain timeless, and by the end of the poem the speaker merges them with the very forces of nature. Thus, the Elgin Marbles mingle not only with “old time” (Line 13) but also with the sea and the sun, “with a billowy main— / A sun—a shadow of a magnitude” (Lines 13-14). What is more important than the sculptures themselves are the feelings that they inspire—this is what makes them timeless. With this message in mind, the reader need not wonder why Keats’s ekphrastic poem makes so little effort to describe the Elgin Marbles in concrete terms. The concrete and tangible does not interest the speaker. What is concrete and tangible, whether in human life or antiquity, is ultimately subject to time; only the abstract, only emotion, is truly timeless.