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.
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.
The infusion of such art works from ancient greece could only strengthen and enrich british culture.
Such dim conceived glories of the brain bring round the heart an indescribable feud.
Read the excerpt from the poem on seeing the elgin marbles by john keats.
In five stanzas of ten lines each the poet addresses an ancient grecian urn describing and discoursing.
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.
John keats sonnet begins with a statement about mortality.
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.
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.
Upon seeing the elgin marbles keats is overcome by a sense of his own mortality.
The parthenon marbles greek.
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.
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.