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

[Paul Mackin]

On Sat, 2003-09-06 at 09:23, Mary Krimmel wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
For some reason this particular sonnet, both the title and opening lines, are very memorable.

Students of the 40s in my experience had British poetry coming out their
ears. The 12th grade lit book at my school was Prose and Poetry of
England.