On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer
By John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold;
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men
Look'd at each other with wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
During an address to the World Humanist Congress years ago, Philip Pullman admitted his fascination with poetry. As a young man, he identified himself here as a "Romantic extremist." He went on to very reasonably add, "No point in being a Romantic moderate, is there?"
Indeed. That's the sort of thing I like to hear. And I must say, while I am no longer a particularly young man, I can very much relate. Not only was I an English major in college with an emphasis on Romanticism, I also once named a dog Lord Byron. So the roots run pretty deep.
But anyway, the last time I read "Chapman's Homer," I realized I wanted to say something about it in relation to the Pullmanverse. For one thing, there is a rather direct correlation between the writing of Pullman and the writing of poetry. I will have more to say later on his philosophy of this art, as well as the effect of its sound and textures and rhythms and overall feel on his own writing.
For now though, while he does technically craft prose, I will posit his lyrical writing is as close to poetry as prose can get. It is almost achingly poetic at times, as one critic noted regarding his last novel The Secret Commonwealth - "every sentence sings." And as far as I'm concerned, it very much does.
In a Pullman novel, something as simple as a character thinking a thought is given wings and allowed to fly. "The idea hovered and shimmered like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst." This fictional mental experience is made so real one can almost see it happening, and that is the real magic and quality of poetry.
Lest one think I am too far off base, or simply being hyperbolic, I will mention one of the many iconic scenes in The Subtle Knife, and this one casts a direct line of reference to Keats and our current discussion. Our heroine Lyra has crossed into our world, and is exploring that mysterious Dust which is inexplicably woven throughout the universes. She has met a scientist named Mary Malone, who has rigged a way to communicate with the particles of Dust, which she calls "Shadows."
Most importantly is the frame of mind she has to conjure up for the communion to take place. As Mary notes, you can't see the particles until you expect to. "Unless you put your mind in a certain state," she explains, adding, "You have to be confident and relaxed at the same time."
Then she makes the English major in me very happy, and reads a very famous quotation from a letter written by John Keats himself in 1817. In order to see and interact with Dust, one had to be in the same mindset as one who wrote great odes about Grecian Urns, or great YA novels reframing Paradise Lost. "I mean Negative Capability," Keats authoritatively wrote all those decades ago, "that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason."
So the mindset for Dust is the same as the mindset for poetry, and the link between Romanticism and HDM is splendidly clear (in regards to this particular literary theory, Pullman himself once likened starting a new novel to moving into an "uncertain fog." Which is remarkably Keatsian).
But for the purposes of the above sonnet, the connection with Pullman and his worlds and "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" is simply much more of an emotional one, a response more steeped in sensation and experience than in particular theories of creativity. At least for me.
In this truly masterful sonnet, Keats deftly uses the theme of discovery or exploration to underline and accentuate his personal feelings about poetry. Having composed it when he was but a young lad of twenty, the sonnet exquisitely encapsulates the experience of a reader being expertly guided into a previously unknown or unimagined universe. In this particular case, he is immortalizing his feelings on first hearing a translation of the epic poet Homer by the epic wordsmith George Chapman.
The opening lines beautifully set the stage for us, as Keats speaks of his travels in "realms of gold," and of all the "goodly states and kingdoms seen." He has also sailed to countless islands that paid homage to the Greek god Apollo (appropriately a god of poetry, among other things), but then the literal nature of the imagery takes a sharp right turn. His journeys have not been physical, but rather held within the pages of poetry and verse, specifically the domain of "deep brow'd Homer."
Certainly one of the most striking literary metaphors in the Western canon, Keats' equating the breathless delights of travel with that of reading is hard to forget. Pullman uses the symbolic device of the subtle knife to slice his way from one "realm" to another, but here the device is poetry itself. Halfway through the sonnet, Keats admits that while he had read and experienced Homer before, he had never so purely breathed in and experienced his work until he heard Chapman's translation, when he spoke the ancient bard's words so "loud and bold."
While Keats employs two other metaphors to illustrate his point, it feels necessary to note here how the general theme and experience of his poem can already be pretty neatly used to overlay His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust. For many readers in general, but certainly for myself specifically, this is the kind of feeling that can be experienced when flipping through the pages of any of the aforementioned novels. One may have read fantasy or even literature before, but one had never read it like this.
In the collection of essays Daemon Voices , Pullman likened reading - and poetry in particular - to "discovering a new continent," where there were "new forms of knowledge, new ways of understanding, immense vistas of possibility." In short,, the reader found themselves in a new world, albeit one in which they were already a native or a citizen even though they'd never set foot in it before. They understood the language and the local dialects perfectly, despite having never heard them.
How many of us felt like this upon finishing Northern Lights for the first time? Like Keats on hearing Chapman's Homer, so was I after hearing Pullman "speak out loud and bold" for hundreds of pages. "Yet never did I breathe its pure serene." Breathing is another good Keatsian metaphor. We didn't merely read about Lyra's world - about her beloved daemon, her childhood at Jordan, her eventful stay in London, her quasi-adoption by the gyptians, her voyage to the North - we breathed it all in.
Indeed, when Pullman described the bitter cold and ice around Svalbard or Bolvangar, we shivered, and our breath turned to frost in front of us. Much like when reading the best poetry aloud, it elicits a very literal and physical effect.
Like Keats, we also travelled in "realms of gold." In point of fact, we learned alongside Mary Malone that the natural state of life, nature, and the universe in general, was to be saturated in the beautiful golden particles of Dust. We saw not just regular human "goodly states and kingdoms" but ones inhabited and ruled over by powerful armored bears. This is the endless imaginative domain of Pullman, as sure and timeless as the one of "deep brow'd Homer."
The last half dozen lines of "Chapman's Homer" appeal to me in precisely the same way. He likens himself as a reader to an astronomer, a "watcher of the skies" as an unknown and unexpected "planet swims into his ken." Feel free to take a moment to relish that language and lyricism. So again, we have that breathless excitement of such an event coupled with the discovery of reading.
The HDM equivalent is calling out to me like an irresistible siren song. I'm thinking, of course, of the opening of Northern Lights. Lord Asriel is inspired and championing heretical opinions, commanding the Retiring Room in an effort to secure more of that Jordan funding. As the Scholars, and a hidden Lyra and Pan, gaze on in wonder, an ethereal city appears in one of his lantern slides, outlined in the Aurora Borealis.
Much like the audience, Lyra mentally gawks. "Buildings and streets, suspended in the air!"
If this isn't a perfect literary metaphor for the kind of awesome wonders that await Pullman's readers, I don't know what is. We are truly kin to that "watcher of the skies" Keats wrote of, kin in spirit and anticipation. And this is only the second chapter of the first book.
The following and final image the poem leaves us with is arguably the most famous. Keats next spiritually likens himself to the explorer, the "stout Cortez," when "with eagle eyes" he and his men first bear witness to the Pacific Ocean. The only hangnail here is that it was actually Balboa who was the first European to discover the Pacific, not Cortez.
Still, the palpable rush of excitement is the same, this sudden opening up to new worlds with endless horizons. The first example from HDM that springs to mind is the initial chapter in The Subtle Knife. Our new young hero, Will Parry, is already tired, desperate, and wanted by the authorities. And then he sees a cat that serendipitously leads him to an entrance to another universe hidden in-between some hornbeam trees. Fortunately, he too possessed "eagle eyes" by which to identify this shimmering apparition between worlds.
In closing, the final lines of "Chapman's Homer" speak of Cortez' men staring at each other "with a wild surmise." Surely this too is an experience not unlike closing Northern Lights or The Subtle Knife or The Secret Commonwealth for the first time (Particularly realizing it may be years before the sequel will be written and published!).
And like Cortez and his men, we stand "silent," though not necessarily "upon a peak in Darien." We have such a plethora of fictitious "peaks" to stand on, whether in Jordan, or the haunted Cittagazze, or the strange world of the mulefa, or simply a worn wooden bench in the Botanic Garden in Oxford. Whatever our particular "peak," we know we have travelled, explored, discovered, and been deeply marked by a literary experience unlike any we have ever known, and might never quite know again.
And so that's what all of this poetry means to me.
P.S. This is one of those ineptly titled YouTube videos that makes it seem as though the whole interview is about Brexit. It's far more about Pullman's life and work, specifically as it relates to poetry. I was unaware, but apparently his mother read and wrote poetry as well. Tune in at about the twenty minute mark, as he gives a wonderful account of his first encounters with poets like Dylan Thomas, Allen Ginsburg, and of course, John Milton.
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