NPPF Comm 3: C.90-121 notes (2)

[Mary Krimmel]

At 10:15 AM 9/4/03 -0400, you [Jasper Fidget] wrote:

"...He [Kinbote] says parenthetically that the Keats' poem ['On Chapman's 
Homer'] is "often quoted in America." Was that the case in the 50s?  (It 
sure isn't now.)"

Yes, if by "often" we mean "often relative to quoting other poetry".

It was read in high school English class in the 30s, and apparently 
continued as exemplary at least until 1962, when Laurence Perrine included 
it in a textbook "Sound and Sense: An introduction to Poetry." The full 
title is "On first looking into Chapman's Homer". However, I have usually 
heard it called "On Chapman's Homer."

Perrine gives this interesting note:
"John Keats, at twenty-one, could not read Greek,...Then one day he and a 
friend found a vigorous translation ... [They] sat up late at night 
excitedly reading aloud to each other from Chapman's book. Toward morning 
Keats walked home and, before going to bed, wrote the above sonnet and sent 
it to his friend..."

Students (at least in America) seemed to be fond of noticing Keats's 
historical mistake of attributing discovery of the Pacific to Cortez, when 
it was in fact Balboa who was the first European known to see the Pacific 
from its eastern shore.

Mary Krimmel