Compared to the last couple of poems, “The Chambered Nautilus” was a much shorter work. But this does not mean it had less of a thematic significance. Literally the poem is about an animal known as a nautilus. It is living in its own shell for a long time, and it grows old. It sees a new shell, and it makes it the new home. The nautilus then hears a voice say that it needs to leave its old shells behind and go to a better one each time. So the nautilus’s life consists of a continually growing shell that it needs to give up for better shells.
The poem really leaves a lot to interpretation. One way to see it is that the nautilus is simply like a human, constantly growing and getting better. This is a boring interpretation, so I like to think it alludes to something more important. I think it is a metaphor for the religious fervor and experiments going on at the time. The poem says “Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; wrecked is the ship of pearl” (Holmes). I think this is saying that theological ideas are no longer constrained, but they can “unfurl” like a snail. America is not being held to Calvinistic ideas of predestination like they used to be, but they can have new ideas where everyone has a chance and spirituality comes from within. Then it says “still as the spiral grew, he left the past year’s dwelling for the new” (Holmes). As one religion seems to be dominating the people are wanting something new. It goes on to say “thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee… a clearer note is born than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn… through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings” (Holmes). The heavenly message would be from God, and it is clearer than Triton’s message. Triton would be from Greek mythology which seems like it is comparing Greek ideas to Calvinism. It says that this new message is better than that one, and then in thought a voice that sings is heard. This is like the spirituality that comes from within. That voice then leaves a philosophical message about continuously growing. The whole poem exemplifies the Romanticism Period with its wording, but it is literally about an animal which shows the influence of nature. Combined with the idea of religious connections coming from within, the whole poem does a good job of relating to its literary period.
Randall Huff says that the moral is “to keep growing spiritually… for ever loftier temples until finally free from the outgrown shell (the physical body after death)” (Huff). This is pretty close to what I see, but instead of being about religious ideas it is about a single person’s experience with religion. This is definitely a plausible translation. He also says that it is a political statement, and that he saw “his father's ministry as an advancement over its more fundamentalistic predecessors and his own even more liberal beliefs as an advance over his father's” (Huff). Once again this could be very possible, but I do not have a vast amount of knowledge on Oliver Wendell Holmes and his father. That is definitely an interesting interpretation that he could have wrote this about his father’s beliefs being the original shell and his own beliefs being the new layers.
Holmes, Oliver Wendell. "801. The Chambered Nautilus”. 1909-14. English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman. The Harvard Classics." Bartleby.com: Great Books Online -- Quotes, Poems, Novels, Classics and Hundreds More. Web. 07 Dec.
Huff, Randall. "'The Chambered Nautilus'." The Facts On File Companion to American Poetry, vol. 1. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007.Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= CPAP0070&SingleRecord=True (accessed December 8, 2011).
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