A fight has broken out on a non-poetry board over the scansion of a single line of poetry in Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.”
Please mark your scansion of this line:
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
And also, if you want to, answer a couple of questions:
1. Why did Keats say “Cortez” when the real explorer was Balboa?
2. Could he have put “Balboa” into this line?
3. Are other scans of this line possible given your knowledge of Keats?
Just between us chickens, Keats was a bright young poet about whose works I consider it unsafe to get too personally opinionated. My doubts regarding that particular line play leapfrog over “Cortez” and what may or may not have been the correct British academic pronunciation thereof at the start of the 19th century. These are fun questions, Julie, as long as nobody loses eyes they weren’t already blindered in, right? OK, so, there’s a demon I keep upstairs who’ll take the fall for saying what we’ve got here is a line of straight IP, no muss, no fuss. That leaves, “He got it wrong”, “No” and “Yes”, for answers 1-3. And, boy-howdy, there’s plenty of room for me to get all wishy-washy about those answers, don’cha know. Now you’ll excuse me, it’s time to nuke my neckwarmer.
I agree. It’s iambic pentameter.
1. He didn’t know any better.
2. Yes. If he removed “stout.” Stout is an interesting word here. Perhaps I’m looking at it with modern eyes, but it gives the impression that Cortez was a large, bulky man, which he wasn’t. So, Keats had to have meant “stout” in the sense of “bold.” I wonder if “stout” wasn’t added for metrical reasons. If so, had he gotten the explorer right, he wouldn’t have needed the adjective for the meter. Of course, this is all pure speculation.
3. I suppose it’s possible, but I think it would be a stretch.
Hello, again, Julie; Kevin, I am come to elaborate. There’s [imo] a helpful speculation in this Wikipedia article regarding the now-infamous Balboa-Cortez mix-up. Reading a bit on Keats, more precisely on what has become the discipline of Keats-study, makes me feel better about feeling unsafe with a strong personal opinion about the poet…if I’m backing that opinion with the opinion of Some Known Authority. Reading the line in question in my own Californicated accents, I read, “Or like / stout Cor / tez when / with ea / gle eyes“, and await criticisms that to scan it so makes some swashbuckling mockery of one of the marble saints of English Lit.