Shelley As A Romantic Poet

Shelley as a Romantic Poet. Percy Bysshe Shelley - A Romantic Rebel The Romantic era was not only idyllic pastorals and longing for the simple and natural; it was also a time of revolution and protest. The “old ways” of society were challenged by a generation of angry young men and women. In pamphlets and articles they attacked the established values and institutions. The Church, Christianity, the educational system, the legal system, and not least the aristocracy and Royalty were all the targets of a harsh and defiant criticism from these radical writers. One of them was Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose short and dramatic life stands as a symbol of the revolutionary ideas and strong emotions of the romantic period. The Rebel

Shelley seems to have been rebellious by nature. He was a highly intelligent boy and was interested in science and literature; he was particularly fascinated by the Gothic tradition which was popular at the time. But his school career was to be a line of disciplinary reproaches from day one at Sion House Academy in Sussex until he was expelled from Oxford in his freshman year for “contumaciously refusing to answer questions”. At Eton, he had picked up on radical literature and was reading the works of philosophers like Hume and Voltaire. He also developed a scepticism towards Christianity, and at Oxford he wrote and published a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism,” which was a contributory factor for his expulsion from Oxford. Love and Morality In London, Shelley met Harriet Westbrook, who probably was his inferior intellectually – but she was madly in love with him. Shelley was flattered and entered a relationship with Harriet, possibly as some sort of a fling. But as she was disgraced by her parents for being associated with an atheist and a rebel, he was provoked into marrying her. He was nineteen and she sixteen; and entering a marriage on such premises would, not surprisingly, prove to be a mistake. The young couple travelled in Scotland and in Ireland, where Shelley wrote and gave speeches to encourage the work for political reforms. He and Harriet had two children together, but their marriage was withering, and when he, in 1814, met 17year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Goodwin, he was lost; their mutual attraction was

electric. They eloped to Switzerland for the summer, and when they came back, Harriet drowned herself in Hyde Park in London. A few years previously, Shelley had published his first important poem, “The Queen Mab,” expressing his socialist criticism of society and his denunciation of Christianity. This, in combination with his somewhat infamous conduct of life was the reason why his appeal for custody of his children was turned down by the authorities; he was seen as “morally unfit,” they proclaimed in the verdict. In Exile Percy and Mary moved to Italy in 1818, both because of his bad health and because he felt exiled by the verdict. In Italy they socialised with other English expatriates, like Lord Byron and Edward Trelawny. During his stay in Italy, his writing became richer and more poignant due to influential friends and circumstances that moved him emotionally, for example the death of his little daughter Clara. Percy and Mary had a son when they lived in Florence, which brought some happiness into their lives. Still, Shelley was often depressed and felt anger and pity for “the ways of mankind and the wrongs of the world”. But all this inspired his writing. One of his best love poems,“Emilia,” was inspired by a beautiful Italian woman (with whom Shelley probably was in love) who was locked up in a convent because she refused to marry the old nobleman her parents had promised her to. The death of his friend, John Keats, in 1821, also moved Shelley to produce some of the finest poetry in English literature. Mary was also active writing, and her famous “Frankenstein” was written during their stay in Italy. The Death of a Poet Shelley died in 1822, 30 years old, and the circumstances around his death and cremation were truly befitting a romantic rebel. After a meeting with colleagues in connection with the launching of a new periodical, The Liberal, Shelley and a friend were sailing homewards along the Italian coast. A violent storm broke, and they capsized and drowned; their bodies were found washed up on the shore two weeks later. Italian law required cremation, so the friends who had gathered (Lord Byron was one of them) decided to burn the bodies on the beach. As the flames picked up, and Shelley’s body slowly decomposed, Edward Trelawny stepped out and snatched his heart out of the flames, and presented it to Mary; a strong symbolic act resembling the dramatic scene in “Frankenstein,” where the monster rips the heart out of Elizabeth’s bosom. Another mystic element of Shelley’s death was his own forewarning of the way he died; in one of his latest works, “Adonais,”

which was “a vindication of all poets and their immortality,” there are several passages that give a detailed description of death by drowning. There are many examples of how poets and writers live their literature, or become what they write. Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of them; his short life and dramatic death certainly became a true analogy of the rebellious and ardent ideas that characterized the romantic era.

Grierson did rightly say, “Classic and Romantic are terms no attempts to define which will ever seem entirely convincing to ourselves or others”. So everyone tries to attribute one’s own views to “Romanticism”. For, to Hein and Beers, Romanticism is synonymous with Medievalism; to Elton it is “thought confounding words”, to Victor Hugo, “Melancholy” is the distinguishing mark of romantic art; to Abercrombie “Romanticism is a withdrawal from outer experience to concentrate upon inner experience”; to Pater it is ‘an addition of strangeness to beauty’; to T.S. Eliot Romantic signifies, “The individual” and even ‘revolutionary’; to Herford ‘liberty or imagination’ So in short, we can say anything novel is romantic. Romanticism against Classicism: For Pater, classic signifies measure, purity and temperance whereas romantic signifies an addition of strangeness to beauty. Abercrombie says Romanticism is an attitude of mind—an element of art. Classicism is not an element at all but a mode of combining elements in a just proportion. For him there is no antithesis between Romanticism and Classicism. Classicism includes the romantic element in its balance, for all good art is first romantic, and then becomes classical. Of all the Romantics, Shelley is the one who most obviously possessed the quality of genius-quickness, grasp of intellect, the capacity for learning languages rapidly,

ability to assimilate and place scientific principles and discoveries. Yet he is more criticized for his ‘falsity’ and ‘lack of grasp. Love of Nature: Like the other Romantic poets, Shelley too was an ardent lover of Nature. Like Wordsworth, Shelley conceives of Nature as one spirit, the Supreme Power working through all things. “The one spirit’s plastic stress/ Sweeps through the dull dense world.” Again he personifies each object of nature as an individual life, a part of that Supreme Power, Nature. He celebrates nature in most of his poems as his main theme such as The Cloud, To a Skylark, To the Moon, Ode to the West Wind, A Dream of the Unknown. In his treatment of nature, he describes the things in nature as they are and never colors it. It is true, he gives them human life through his personifications, but he does it unintentionally for he felt they are living beings capable of doing the work of human beings. His mythopoeic power had made him the best romanticist of his age. In Ode to the West Wind, he personifies Nature as the Destroyer and the Preserver, and in the Cloud, the cloud is a possessor of mighty powers. He also believed in the healing aspect of Nature and this is revealed in his EuganeanHills in which he is healed and soothed by the natural scene around him and also the imaginary island. In The Recollection we see the same idea of healing power of Nature. Love, Beauty and Thought Love: The idea of Love and Beauty in Shelley is greatly influenced by Plato. Love to Shelley, as to Plato is the perfection of all that is good and noble in life. In Epipsychidion, he says that love is not bound to one object at a time and when love fades away, we need not be faithful. He adds that love conquers death and beauty, and even goodness and truth originate in it: True love differs in this from gold and clay That to divide is not to take away. In fact, Shelley was in love with love itself, I love Love, though he has wings And like light can flee.

Beauty: Beauty, to Shelley, is an ideal in itself and a microcosm of the beauty of Nature and he calls it ‘Intellectual Beauty’. He celebrates Beauty as a mysterious power. In the de arts, to Intellectual Beauty he says that when Intellectual Beauty departs this world becomes a “dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate” and if human heart is its temple, then man would become immortal and omnipotent: Man were immortal and omnipotent Did’st thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Imagination: ‘Facts’ said Shelley, ‘are not what we want to know in poetry, in history, in the lives of individual men, in satire or panegyric. They are the many diversions, the arbitrary points on which we hang and to which we refer those delicate and evanescent hues of mind, which language delights and instructs us in precise proportion as it expresses.’ Shelley calls poetry “the expression of Imagination,” because in it diverse things are brought together in harmony instead of being separated through analysis. In this he resembles Bacon and Locke, but differs from them in his idea of imagination as man’s highest faculty through which one realizes noblest powers. Shelley made a bold expedition into the unknown and he felt reasons should be related to the imagination. His expedition was successful when he made the people understand that the task of the imagination is to create shapes by which reality can be revealed to the world and this is heralded as the best romantic note by his successors. Idealism: Shelley’s idealism falls under three subheadings Revolutionary, religious and Erotic. (i)Revolutionary Idealism: His revolutionary idealism is mainly due to the French Revolution. Through his Queen Mab, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound he inspired people to revolt against tyranny by scorning at the tyranny of state, church and society and

hoping for a golden age which too is not immune from pain or death. His political idealism makes him a prophet. (ii) Religious idealism: Though Shelly was rebel, he wasn’t an atheist. He believed in the super power of God, and he imagined God as Supreme ‘Thought’ and infinite Love. His Platonic conception of Love was the base of his metaphysical idealism. He believed in the faith of one mind, one power and one all-pervasive spirit. (iii) Erotic idealism: Just as he is a revolutionist and a pantheist, so also he is a theologist. He believed in the abstract quality of love and beauty-love as infinite and beauty as intellectual. He celebrates love as a creator and preserver in his Symposium, and beauty as Supreme Spirit with which man becomes immortal in his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty . Melancholy: Though Shelley was a man of hope and expectation and spiritualistic about the future of mankind, yet he represents himself in his poems as a man of ill luck, subject to evil and suffering. He expresses this in his Ode to the West Wind:

Poetic Style and Music: Shelley’s poetic style is also romantic. The series of gorgeous similes in The Skylark show the romantic exuberance of Shelley. He never uses any ornamental word and every word fits in its place and carries its own weight. They express the diverse feelings of the poet with the notes of music which appeal to every human being’s ears.

Conclusion: In brief we can say every bit of Shelley’s poetry is romantic— in temper and style. Whether they are short or long, whether they are lyrical or odes, with Shelley’s element of imagination they rise to an expectation which is far beyond our reach. No wonder Shelley is heralded as the best Romantic poet of his age.

Draw the image of the West Wind as a destroyer and preserver as you find in the poem ‘Ode to the West Wind’. The faculty of the visionary and revolutionary zeal was inherent in the mind of Shelley, because he entered in the world of poetry during the storm and stress of the French Revolution. From his earliest years, Shelley found himself in opposition to the convention of the class to which he belonged. So he denounced the existing order of things and assailed the barrier which checked the free development of human spirit. The pain which inflicted his heart was the cruelty of society which instead of hailing him as an intellectual apostle and liberator regarded him as a moral outcast. Ode to the West Wind written under the influence of the French Revolution expresses Shelley’s idea of Revolution. Shelley believes that both nature and the society of men are suffering from deadly diseases like tyranny, oppression, corruption and injustice. These deadly diseases are like pestilence which can be cured by a miraculous change. This change can be brought about by power and the West Wind has this power because it is a destructive as wet as a creative agent of nature. Shelley has created the image of the West Wind by some technical means such as similes, metaphors, personification, a special verse pattern, music of words etc. The figures of speech lie scattered here and there in the poem. Of them the remarkable ones are in the comparison of the West Wind to a magician (simile), the West Wind is the dirge of the dying year (metaphor), the Mediterranean dreaming of his palaces and towers (personification). In the first three stanzas of the ode, The West Wind is depicted as a force of nature with its influence on land in the air, and on and away the under water. The West Wind drives away the dead and decayed leaves just as a magician drives away a ghost by his magic spell. West Wind also scatters the seeds far and wide and covers with dust to bury them underground where they lie till the advent of the spring when they sprout into plants bearing flowers of sweet smell and attractive colors. In the air the West Wind carries loose clouds which seem to have fallen

from the sky just as withered leaves fall from the branches of trees in autumn. The clouds scattered by the West Wind are the bringers of rain and lightning. The locks of the approaching storm are spread on the aery surface of the sky. The West Wind is “the dirge of the dying year”. A huge tomb will be built over the dead body of the year. The darkness of the night which is spreading over the earth will serve as the dome of that tomb. The collective strength of the clouds will be the vault or arched roof of that tomb. From the solid seeming vapors of clouds in the sky will fall rain, lightning and hailstones.

As for the influence of the West Wind on and under water, the poet has drawn the picture of the calm Mediterranean being disturbed by the wind and the Atlantic, thrown into a state of agitation by the same power. The West Wind seems to awaken from sleep the blue Mediterranean, dreaming of old palaces and towers which once stood on its shores. When the West Wind blows on the Atlantic its water becomes restless and mountain like waves role on its surface. Turbulent waves are raised on the surface of the ocean and between these waves great hollows are produced. Before the west wind blew, the surface of the Atlantic was level but now it would seem as if the Atlantic has cut a path on its surface for the West Wind to pass over it. While the West Wind begins to blow on the Atlantic, the plants growing at the bottom of the ocean tremble with fear and shed their leaves. Thus Shelley has drawn the image of the west wind in its three phases— appearance, action and message. Its appearance and action on land, in the air, and under water are connected with its dual capacity for destruction and creation. Its function on land is noticeable in the change of seasons, autumn, winter and spring. The terrible functions of the West Wind in the air have been made vivid through three images ; (a) vapor rising from ocean to form clouds, the source of rains, lightning and hailstones, (b) the stormy wind in the image of the dancing Maenad in intoxication out of clouds. The image of the Mediterranean and that of the Atlantic under the influence of the West Wind are also terrible forces of nature. Shelley’s approach to the phenomena of nature was distinct from others. The life of nature to Shelley was as real as the life of man. But his attitude to nature was scientific. Shelley retained or even magnified the true character of a natural phenomenon when he personified it. His West Wind, while he personified it remained a wind, or rather a terrible wind, an agent of destruction and preservation for creating again in nature.

Short Q

How does Shelley’s treatment of nature differ from that of the earlier Romantic poets? What connections does he make between nature and art, and how does he illustrate those connections? Whereas older Romantic poets looked at nature as a realm of communion with pure existence and with a truth preceding human experience, the later Romantics looked at nature primarily as a realm of overwhelming beauty and aesthetic pleasure. While Wordsworth and Coleridge often write about nature in itself, Shelley tends to invoke nature as a sort of supreme metaphor for beauty, creativity, and expression. This means that most of Shelley’s poems about art rely on metaphors of nature as their means of expression: the West Wind in “Ode to the West Wind” becomes a symbol of the poetic faculty spreading Shelley’s words like leaves among mankind, and the skylark in “To a Skylark” becomes a symbol of the purest, most joyful, and most inspired creative impulse. The skylark is not a bird, it is a “poet hidden.” 2. How and why does Shelley believe poetry to be an instrument of moral good? What impact does this belief have on his poems, if any? As Shelley explains in his essay A Defence of Poetry, he believes that poetry expands and nurtures the imagination, and that the imagination enables sympathy, and that sympathy, or an understanding of another human being’s situation, is the basis of moral behavior. His belief that poetry can contribute to the moral and social improvement of mankind impacts his poems in several ways. Shelley writes his poems in fulfillment of the responsibility to exercise the imagination and provide it with beauty and pleasure; thus his poems become whimsically imaginative in content and manner. The sense of this “responsibility” also adds

urgency to Shelley’s poetic product, and makes the widespread reading of the poems a central and explicit goal: thus Shelley’s speaker makes declarations such as those in “Ode to the West Wind” and “To a Skylark”, expressing his desire that his words will spread amongst humanity. 3. Many of Shelley’s poems include a climactic moment, an instant when the poet’s feelings overwhelm him and overwhelm his poem. What are some of these moments? How do they relate to the poems as wholes? How are they typical of the poetic personality Shelley brings to his writing? The most obvious example of such a climactic moment is the speaker’s collapse at the beginning of the third stanza of “The Indian Serenade”; one might also include the poet’s cry “I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” in “Ode to the West Wind,” and “To a Skylark” as accounts of such moments sustained for an entire poem and distilled from all feelings of lesser intensity. These moments show both the power of the outside world to affect Shelley’s inner feelings, and the power of these feelings in and of themselves—Shelley responded very intensely to the world, and in his poems the world is a place to which one can respond only intensely. 4. Think about Shelley’s use of the sonnet form in “England in 1819” and “Ozymandias.” How does he shape the form to his own purposes? How does his use of the sonnet form break from the established traditions of the early 1800s? 5. Shelley was a political radical who never shied away from expressing his opinions about oppression and injustice—he was expelled from Oxford in 1811 for applying his radicalism to religion and arguing for the necessity of atheism. What do we learn about Shelley’s ideal vision of the human condition, as based on his political poems? With particular attention to “Ode to the West Wind,” how might a sense of his social hopes emerge from even a non-political poem? 6. In some ways Shelley is a creature of contradictions: he was an atheist who wrote hymns, a scandalous and controversial figure who argued for ethical

behavior, an educated aristocrat who argued for the liberation of humankind, and a sensuous Romantic poet whose fondest hope was that his poems would exert a moral influence over the human imagination. How can one resolve these contradictions? (Are they even resolvable?) How do they manifest themselves in his poetry? 7. Shelley lived a fascinating and turbulent life among fascinating and turbulent people, from Lord Byron, the most famous, controversial, and popular poet of the era, to his wife Mary, the author of Frankenstein. How does a knowledge of Shelley’s biography (and early death) affect your appreciation of his poetry? Or does it affect it at all? Is it necessary to know about Shelley’s life and times in order to fully understand the poetry?