Lecture 13 Percy Bysshe Shelley (2 hours)

Lecture 13 Percy Bysshe Shelley (2 hours)I. Life: Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in 1792, at Fieldplace near-Horsham in Sussex;, his father, Sir Timothy; was a conservative and narrow-minded country gentleman. Shelley was gentle and kind by nature, but he had a stout heart. He could not stand any injustice. At Eton he was known as" Mad Shelley. At this time he was much influenced by the utopian-socialist doctrines of William Godwin.

Life: Then he went to Oxford, where he took part in progressive activities and soon came into sharp conflict with the reactionary university authorities. In 1811 Shelley wrote and published an anti-religious pamphlet ' The Necessity of Atheism', believing that religion was an instrument of oppression. For this he was promptly expelled from the university and disowned by his father. Shelley became a homeless man. While living alone in London at the age of 19, he made acquaintance with and married, out of sympathy, a school-girl of 16, Harriet Westbrook. For two years the young couple wandered about England, Ireland and Scotland. He had long been interested in the Irish people's struggles against British domination.

lifeShelley's marriage with Harriet had proved hasty and unsuitable, because she could not share his ideas. During the two years of their marriage, the lack of mutual understanding between them continued to increase. The unhappy union was dissolved in 1814. In 1816, Shelley married Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin, the radical philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecroft, the authoress of the famous ' Vindication of the Rights of Women'. Shelley's second marriage was a happy one.

lifeHe was compelled to leave England in 1818 and spent all the rest of his life in Italy. As early as 1816 began Shelley's friendship with Byron. While in Italy Shelley and Byron formed a closer connection with each other and from then on the names of the two poets have been linked up for ever.The news of Shelley's death was received by the reactionaries with undisguised joy. Meanwhile the English people have ever cherished his memory and poetry with love. Mary Shelley did a good job in collecting and editing his poems, and her explanatory notes have been helpful to all editors and readers of Shelley's works.

II . "Queen Mab""Queen Mab", Shelley's first long poem of importance, written in 1813. contains almost all his major social and political ideas. It is written in the form of a fairy-tale dream. The fairy Queen Mab carries oil in her celestial chariot a beautiful and pure maiden Ianthe, and shows her the past, present and future of mankind. Through the mouth of the fairy queen the poet presents his own views on philosophy, religion, morality, and social problems. The poem has 9 cantos. The first two cantos deal with a vision of the past; the last two with an ideal view of the future, while the five central cantos are devoted to a fierce attack on the social evils of the day.

III. The Revolt of Islam': "The Revolt of Islam', another important long poem of Shelley's, was Written in 1818. A brother and a sister. Laon and Cythna are united in their common ideal of liberty, equality and fraternity and they rouse the spirit of revolt among their Islam people against their tyrants. Heroic struggle for the liberation of mankind and union with a sister-comrade were inseparable elements of Shelley's ideal, and the love between Laon and Cythna was but the symbol of their common devotion to a lofty cause. Besides the theme of revolution the poem shows Shelley's attitude towards the position of woman in society. Cythna the woman warrior seeks the intellectual liberation of her sex.

IV. " Prometheus Unbound" Shelley's masterpiece is "Prometheus Unbound' (1820), a lyrical drama in 4 acts.According to Greek myth; Prometheus stole fire from heaven and taught men how to use it. For this he was punished by Zeus, the supreme god, who chained him to a rock on Mt.Caucasus, where during the daytime a vulture fed on his liver, which was restored each succeeding night. So the figure of Prometheus has been 'symbolic of those noble-hearted revolutionaries, who devote themselves to the just cause of the people and suffer great pains at the hands of tyrants'.

IV. " Prometheus Unbound" Though chained to the rock, Prometheus has "great allies' in the World: He is supported by innumerable forces; Mother Earth gives him strength to endure all sufferings and sends the spirits of heroes and martyrs to cheer him. Lovely shapes of Faith and Hope hover around him. His bride Asia, the spirit of love and goodness. He knows the reign of Zeus is but a passing period in the life of the universe, so to the last he refuses to yield to the tyrant in heaven. Finally, in spite of desperate resistance, Zeus is overthrown by the huge spirit Demogorgon, the symbol of change and revolution. Prometheus is released by Hercules the hero of great strength.

V. Lyrics on Nature and Love Shelley's short poems on nature and love occupy a very important place in his literary career. To him, nature exists as an unseen Life of the Universe, and his love of nature is almost boundless.In Shelley's lyrics, nature is endowed with life, and the poet merges himself with it. This gives an exquisite beauty to these lyrics on nature. This passionate love of nature is but an expression of the poet's eager aspiration for something free from the care and misery of real life.

VI. A Defence of Poetry"In 1821, T.L.Peacock, one of Shelley's friends, published The Four Ages of Poetry", in which he asserted that poetry taking its origin in relatively primitive and simple modes of thought must inevitably decline with the progress of civilization, and in an age of rationality, such as the 19th century, it can only be an anachronism, i.e. something out of its proper time, which is barbaric and absurd. Shelley's essay' A Defence of Poetry' was written as a refutation of Peacock's view. Shelley maintained that poetry, so far from being deteriorated and made powerless by the advance of civilization is actually the indispensable agent of civilization? Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world', and poetry can play a very important part in the spiritual life of society.

Points of view

(1) Politically Shelley was a revolutionary and a democrat. He was fighting all his life against cruelty, injustice, authority, institutional religion and the format shams of respectable society. He thought that his age was one of the war between the oppressed and the oppressors. And he believed that in spite of the defeat of the revolution, France would rise again, that the forces of liberty would again triumph in Europe.

Points of viewLiterarily Shelley, with a triumphant praise of the imagination, highly exalted the role of poetry, thinking that poetry alone could free man and offer the mind a wider view of its powers.Poetry "is a more direct representation of the actions and passions, of our internal being". It is through language that the imagination most readily apprehends the ideal order of truth.

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)1 O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, 2 Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead 3 Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, 4 Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 5 Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, 6 Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 7 The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, 8 Each like a corpse within its grave, until 9 Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow 10 Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 11 (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) 12 With living hues and odours plain and hill: 13 Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 14 Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)15 Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky's commotion, 16 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, 17 Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean, 18 Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread 19 On the blue surface of thine aiery surge, 20 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 21 Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge 22 Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 23 The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge 24 Of the dying year, to which this closing night 25 Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, 26 Vaulted with all thy congregated might 27 Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere 28 Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear!

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)29 Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams 30 The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 31 Lull'd by the coil of his cryst{`a}lline streams, 32 Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, 33 And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 34 Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 35 All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 36 So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou 37 For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 38 Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 39 The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear 40 The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 41 Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with fear, 42 And tremble and despoil themselves: oh hear!

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)43 If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; 44 If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee; 45 A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 46 The impulse of thy strength, only less free 47 Than thou, O uncontrollable! If even 48 I were as in my boyhood, and could be 49 The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven, 50 As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 51 Scarce seem'd a vision; I would ne'er have striven 52 As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 53 Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud! 54 I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed! 55 A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd 56 One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

"Ode to the West Wind" (1819)57 Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: 58 What if my leaves are falling like its own! 59 The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 60 Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, 61 Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, 62 My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! 63 Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 64 Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! 65 And, by the incantation of this verse, 66 Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth 67 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! 68 Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth 69 The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, 70 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

OzymandiasI met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away.

TO A SKYLARK Hail to thee, blithe Spirit! Bird thou never wert, That from Heaven, or near it, Pourest thy full heartIn profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest,And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning Of the sunken sun O'er which clouds are bright'ning, Thou dost float and run,Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

The pale purple even Melts around thy flight; Like a star of Heaven In the broad daylightThou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight:

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows In the white dawn clearUntil we hardly see--we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air With thy voice is loud. As, when night is bare, From one lonely cloudThe moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.

What thou art we know not; What is most like thee? From rainbow clouds there flow not Drops so bright to seeAs from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wroughtTo sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:

Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden Soul in secret hourWith music sweet as love, which overflows her bower:

Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hueAmong the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view:

Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Till the scent it givesMakes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers, All that ever wasJoyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird, What sweet thoughts are thine: I have never heard Praise of love or wineThat panted forth a flood of rapture so divine.

Chorus hymeneal Or triumphal chaunt Matched with thine, would be all But an empty vaunt--A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains Of thy happy strain? What fields, or waves, or mountains? What shapes of sky or plain?What love of thine own kind? what ignorance of pain?

With thy clear keen joyance Languor cannot be: Shadow of annoyance Never came near thee:Thou lovest, but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep, Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep Than we mortals dream,Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream?

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn Hate, and pride, and fear; If we were things born Not to shed a tear,I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures That in books are found,Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!

Teach me half the gladness That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flowThe world should listen then, as I am listening now!