Romanticism in Shelley's Life and Poetry
A thesis submitted to the Graduate College, University of
Khartoum for the Degree of M.A in English
Selma Ali Mohammed Elhassan
B.A(Honours) in English language 2001
Supervisor: Dr.Khalid Al-Mubarak Mustafa
Department of English – Faculty of Arts
February, 2009.
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Dedication
To true romanticism wherever it exists,
Real love that knows no boundaries,
Deep emotion without which life is meaningless
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CONTENTS
Contents
Pages
Acknowledgment
Abstract (English version)
Abstract (Arabic version)
Introduction
CHAPTER (1)
Characteristics of the Romantic Poetry
4
5
6
7
13
political atmosphere
Napoleon Bonaparte and England
14
17
Social atmosphere
19
Industrial and commercial changes
22
The New Trend in Poetry
26
Romantics and Imagination
27
Romantics and the Exotic Beauty
32
Romantics and Solitude
35
Romantics and Nature
39
Romantics and the Use of Language
48
Romantics and the Forms of Their Poems
CHAPTER (2)
The Life of Shelley
56
Shelley at School
Love in Shelley’s Life
62
65
Shelley, the Youth
66
Shelley at the College, Oxford
66
CHAPTER(3)
Romanticism in Shelley’s Poetry
Nature in Shelley’s Poetry
91
Solitude in Shelley’s Poetry
CHAPTER(4)
Shelley in-Focus
97
The poet and Emotions
112
The Poet and Personality
114
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The Poet and Language
119
The Poet Idealism, Prophecy, and Established Religions
121
The Poet and Nature/Vegetarianism
Epilogue
126
126
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to acknowledge everyone who helped, assisted, and
supported me in this study. I would love to start by thanking God
almighty for helping me and I am sure without His help this study would
never have seen the light.
Thanks and appreciation to my mother who was the first poetic voice I
heard in my life and from her I learned to appreciate and love poetry.
Deep thanks and appreciation also to my father for his non-stopping
guidance and support that because of them I am here today presenting a
study on Romantic poetry.
I would never forget to thank all my professors and teachers for their
sincerity and unconditional love. Especially Dr. Jubarah Elhassan, Dr.
Mohamed Elbosiry, Dr. Amer Mohamed Salih, Dr. Lemya Shmmat, and
Dr. Mohamed Elwathig.
Also very special love to the flowers of my life Yousuf and Maryam for
their time and innocent honest prayers.
To everyone believes in romanticism and its impact on our life, I dedicate
this work with love and respect.
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ABSTRACT
This study aims at focusing on the romantic era and its
characteristics applying them on the poet Shelley. The study
starts with an introduction to the Romantic Movement giving a
historical background then widens to cover the characteristics of
the Romantic Movement. A background about the life of the
poet Shelley is given as well as the characteristics of his poetry
in an attempt to see how much he applies typical romantic
features and characteristics in his poetry.
The study also sheds light on different opinions about Shelley
and how critics approached his poetry and how they criticized
him.
The study finally concludes by a comparison of two major
streams in criticism and the raises an important question about
the real standards of criticism should criticism be a matter of
(self study) to the poet or (work study) should we handle the
poet’s life as a clue that helps to understand the poet as a person
or to analyze his poetry through his life events.
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‫ﻤﺴﺘﺨﻠﺹ‬
‫‪‬ﺪﻑ ﻫﺬﻩ ﺍﻟﺪﺭﺍﺳﺔ ﺇﱄ ﺇﻟﻘﺎﺀ ﺍﻟﻀﻮﺀ ﻋﻠﻲ ﺍﻟﻔﺘﺮﺓ ﺍﻟﺸﻌﺮﻳ‪‬ﻪ ﺍﳌﺴﻤ‪‬ﺎﺓ ﺑﺎﻟﻔﺘﺮﻩ ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻴ‪‬ـﺔ ﺃﻭ‬
‫ﺍﻷﺩﺏ ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻲ‪.‬‬
‫ﲤﻴ‪‬ﺰﺕ ﻫﺬﻩ ﺍﻟﻔﺘﺮﺓ ﺑﺎﻟﺘﻐﲑ ﰲ ﻛﻞ ﺷﻴﺊ ﻟﺬﻟﻚ ﻓﺈﻥ ﺃﳘﹼﻴﺘﻬﺎ ﺗﻜﻤﻦ ﰲ ﺃﺛﺮﻫﺎ ﻋﻠﻲ ﺍ‪‬ﺘﻤﻊ ﻛﺎﻓﺔ ﻭﻟﻴﺲ‬
‫ﻓﻘﻂ ﻋﻠﻲ ﺍﻷﺩﺏ‪.‬‬
‫ﺇ ﹼﻥ ﻣﻨﻬﺠﻴ‪‬ﺔ ﺍﻟﺒﺤﺚ ﲤﺖ ﻣﻦ ﺧﻼﻝ ﺩﺭﺍﺳﺔ ﻋﻦ ﺗﺎﺭﻳﺦ ﺍﻷﺩﺏ ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻲ ﻭﺗﺎﺭﻳﺦ ﺍﻟﻔﺘﺮﺓ ﺍﻟﱵ ﻇﻬﺮ‬
‫ﻓﻴﻬﺎ ‪ .‬ﻳﻠﻲ ﺫﻟﻚ ﺩﺭﺍﺳﺔ ﺍﳋﺼﺎﺋﺺ ﺍﻟﱵ ﻣﻴﺰﺕ ﺍﻷﺩﺏ ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻲ ﻭﻣﻦ ﰒ ﺍﺧﺘﻴﺎﺭ ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻋﺮ ﺷﻠﻲ‬
‫ﻟﻴﻜﻮﻥ ﳕﻮﺫﺟﹰﺎ ﳝﺜﹼﻞ ﺍﻷﺩﺏ ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻲ ‪.‬ﺩﺭﺍﺳﺔ ﺣﻴﺎﺗﻪ ﻭﳏﺎﻭﻟﺔ ﺭﺅﻳﺔ ﻭﺗﺘﺒﻊ ﺧﺼﺎﺋﺺ ﺍﻷﺩﺏ‬
‫ﺍﻟﺮﻭﻣﺎﻧﺴﻲ ﰲ ﺷﻌﺮﻩ‪ .‬ﻭﺃﺧﲑﹰﺍ ﺍﻟﻘﺎﺀ ﺍﻟﻀﻮﺀ ﻋﻠﻴﺎﻻﺭﺍﺀ ﺍﻟﻨﻘﺪﻳﺔ ﺍﳌﺨﺘﻠﻔﺔ ﺣﻮﻝ ﺍﻟﺸﺎﻋﺮ ﺷﻠﻲ ‪.‬‬
‫‪-7-‬‬
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.0 Overview
The word romanticism has been mentioned a lot in English literature.
Romanticism, since existence was controversial as many people do not
understand what it means. They link romanticism to love and romance. I
asked many people before I decided to write on this topic, many of them
linked romanticism to love, roses , candles. And very few mentioned that
romanticism was and artistic movement that existed in at the late
seventeenth century and it participated in all life sides like war, religion,
and that it was a philosophy of life rather than a love philosophy.
Because of all this and in addition to my interest in the (big six.), Shelley
is one of them. I have taken the decision to write on romanticism to show
the readers as well as myself the sides of romanticism through a
comprehensive study of its characteristics through the poet Shelley. The
man and Shelley the poet , looking at the romantic sides in his life and in
his poetry .
My approach in this study was a historical study to the romantic
movement and its origins in history including the political , social , and
industrial background. All that change caused the new trend in literature
and poetry, this new trend caused the romantic movement.
One believe that this thesis answers questions such as what romanticism
is, what is its originality, who is the real Shelley, what are the romantic
characteristics that appeared in his poetry and finally different critical
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views and opinions about Shelley, including those who criticized him as
well as those who considered him a great poet.
In the end one believes that criticism should be constructive and not
destructive. It should help and assist in improving the performance and
not to ruin or nullify the poet or the artist, therefore one believes that
there should be certain standards to criticism. Adding to this critical
work should deal with works and not the poet’s life of his personal
events as there should be a gap between the poet’s life and the poet’s
work.
1.1 The Romantic Movement
Romanticism was an artistic and an intellectual movement in the history
of ideas that originated in the eighteenth and the late nineteenth century in
Western Europe. It stressed strong emotion, which now might include
trepidation, awe, and horror as aesthetic experience, the individual
imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom within or
even from classical notion of form in art and overturning of previous
social
conventions,
particularly
at
the
position
of
the
aristocracy(Abrams,1993:4).
There was a strong element of historical and natural inevitability in its
ideas stressing the importance of nature in art and language. Romanticism
is also noted for its elevation of the achievements of what it perceived as
heroic individuals and artists. It followed the enlightenment period which
the study will discuss in chapter two and was in part inspired by a revolt
against aristocratic social as well as the previous period.
The term Romanticism is -for many- connected with love and romance, it
is the synonym of love and passion, they think of it as candles, flowers,
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peace, and purity. However, not all the romantic writers were dealing
with these issues. They wrote in different topics and at all times, as wars,
peace, conflict, and there are so many examples to prove that this era was
rich in the issue of themes. Wordsworth wrote sad poems in the death of
Lucy...Shelley wrote the famous Ozymandias and it had nothing to do
with love... John Keats's Kubla Khan is a symbolic poem. William Blake
wrote on the strange beauty of the Tiger which also has nothing to do
with love or passion (men of England) (England in 1819), (little black
boy) all these were poems of different themes and that varied in their
ideas and the messages they were sending. Love was not the only thing
the romantic were focusing on, it was one of several important themes.
The name romantic is convenient, but it would be misleading to give it
any narrow meaning or to equate it with escapism or "past_ ward"
yearning. For, almost all the romantic writers were actually aware of their
environment and their best work came out of their impulse to come to
terms with it( Ford,1970:11).
Romance was originally a descriptive term used to refer to the verse
epics of Tasso and Ariosto. Eighteenth century critics like Thomas
Worton used it in relation to fiction. The idea didn't strike roof until
August Wilham Schlegel used it in a lecture course in Berlin 1801 when
he made the distinction mentioned by Byron “Romantic literature, he
argued, appeared in the middle ages with the works of Dante, Petrarche,
and Boccaccio, in reaction to classism it was identified with progressive
and Christian views”. In other course of lectures in Vienna1808-9 he
went further “Romanticism was organic and plastic as against the
mechanical tendencies” (Duff,1994:4).
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Romanticism is a notoriously slippery concept of modern history as
early as 1801.In his Neology, or vocabulary of new words, the French
radical literary critic L.S.Mercier had written of the word romantic that
"one could certainly feel but could hardly define it"
(Calman,2001:xxxi),
and
this is the point the researcher started my research with when I randomly
asked many people what they think of romanticism and almost all of
them, answered that it is something you could feel but (romance is
romance) that was what they said. Most modern scholars feel similarly
that Europe experienced a sweeping cultural transformation during the
late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, few however can
agree on its precise character or time period.
It is historical truism that the idea of romanticism as a distinct ,self
labeled cultural movement and aesthetic practice originated in the late
eighteenth century in Germany where a group of young patriotic and
intellectual headed by Fredrich Schlegel 1772-1829 fashioned a fighting
program that opposed both revolutionary war and the dominant aesthetic
values of their enemy (the French)against the formal, mimetic style of
French classism, Schlegel and his comrades extolled the expressive
imaginative role of the artist, against the mechanistic enlightenment
materialism of the French philosophies German romantics revered
religion and feeling against the universalist abstractions of French
rationalism, they valued the organic, the particular and the historical.
(IBID:43).
Thomas Warton defines romance as species of fabulous narrative
coinciding with the reigning manners. Scott's (a definition of a genre as
fictious narrative in prose and verse, the interest of which turns upon
marvelous and uncommon incidents)
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(Duff,1994:11).
is followed by a
discussion built on the premise that romance and real history have the
same common origins.
only lately has the term romance come to be used to distinguish works of
pure fiction, the process by which romance evolved is identified as the
embellishing action of the love, of the marvelous, so natural to the human
mind, upon the facts of history, a formulation which appears to reflect
contemporary speculation on the nature of myth and indeed the category
of romance is tentatively expanded to embrace the mythical and fabulous
history of it.(IBID:3)
When Lyrical Ballads first appeared in 1798 the word romantic was no
compliment, it meant fanciful, light; even inconsequential. Wordsworth
defended good poetry not merely as overflow but spontaneous overflow
of feelings, which means the writer should only write on what he really
feels so that the feelings are spontaneously overflowing and forming the
good poem as he thinks. In the past poetry was regarded only as an art
that in modern times is practiced by poets who have assimilated classical
forms and were aware of the "rules" governing the kind of poem they are
writing. This would indeed frustrate the romantics for they would never
agree on the "rules" considered to control poetry, they believed the poet
would only write on what he believes without any rules or restrictions
imposed on him. that was the common trend of the romantic writers at
that time however, writers on Wordsworth’s life time did not think of
themselves as romantic the word was not applied until half a century later
by English historians, the major writers felt there was something
distinctive about their time not a shared doctrine or literary quality, but a
pervasive intellectual and imaginative climate (Ford,1970:23).
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Wordsworth and Coleridge would have resisted its application twenty
years later. The new generation of writers would recognize it only as a
counter in a debate conducted among European intellectuals hardly
relevant to what they were doing and that after all is the nature of
theoretical discourses. Even when conducted by practitioners, it may not
bear greatly on the creative process (IBID:6). So one can clearly say that the
term romantic should not always be associated with romance, the
Romantic Movement is the movement that spread in Europe in the late
eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century and it was not a utopian
or golden era filled with peace and love. Romantic poets did not only
write love poems, they wrote on different themes and even when it came
to their own lives we find that they were not living the romantic life
everyone imagines, their lives were not mainly centred on love and
passion. They lived in society, involved in its activities, joined the House
of Lords, fought, and dreamed as every other human being; in addition,
they were similar in many things. They had tendencies to nature, to
solitude, but this must not mean that they were copies of each others,
some of them were friends, others did not even know each others, and the
thing is that they were not following the same trend; they preferred to
create their own styles in life rather than to be enslaved by others.
To Wordsworth the composition of a poem originates from "emotion
recollected to tranquility (Abrams1993:11), and may be preceded and followed
by reflection. The immediate act of composition must be spontaneous
that is arising from the impulse and free from all rules and artful
manipulation. This was one of the reasons why they tried to change in the
literature of their predecessors, they thought it was just a mirror for
society and had nothing to do with feelings or imagination. The romantics
appreciated imagination a lot, they respected the human mind and what it
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may produce, and believed the mind is active and has an important role to
play not only in literature or poetry but in life generally. Coleridge said
"deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feelings and all truth is
a species of revelation". (Abrams,1993:13) so "the metaphysical solution that
doesn’t tell you something in the heart is grievously to be suspected as
apocryphal" similar thing was said by Blake when he insisted that he
wrote from inspiration and vision and his poem (Milton) was given to
him by an agency and produced without labor or study. This point is also
very common in the romantics' way of thinking; they believed that the
best works of poetry are those produced without labor and effort, Shelley
said the same thing, "an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry
are produced by labor and study" and suggested- instead- that they were
the products of unconscious creativity. He said "great statue or picture
grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb".
(Butler,1982:27).
The literature of a country is affected and influenced by how the people
of it live. The French revolution greatly influenced the nineteenth century
French literature and European literature in general; here is a general
image of the French society at that time; for example before the
revolution, the French lived in a strict society with no freedom to express
their feelings. Government restricted citizen from any kind of expression,
so people were very eager to express themselves and let their opinions
and voice be heard.
Eighteenth century literature was much like the society in which it was
produced. Society was divided into privileged and none privileged with
eighteenth century writers focusing on the lives of upper classes, those
writers followed formal rules and based their works on scientific
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observations and logic. The revolution gave the common people and
writers more freedom to express feelings and stimulated them to use
reason. This became a motive for many of the writers to say frankly what
they were afraid to say and declare things that have been hidden for
decades. This appeared clearly in the works after the French revolution,
especially after the declaration made by the French revolution of
establishing new laws less imposing literary standards that led to a desire
to burst out, so the literature became a matter of sense and emotion.
Every writer felt that and started to express his own because in the past
writers weren't expressing what they wanted; they were just reflecting
what was allowed for them to reflect.
Romanticism was shaped by the French revolution. Vinaver declared that
the revolution serves as clear source of the problems and tendencies of
romantic proper. English literature was also affected by the French
revolution but before discussing how or to what point here is a historical
background of the English society during that time (Butler,1982:29).
1.2 The Impact of the French Revolution on the Romantics
It was 1789 when the French revolution started, almost all the English
romantic writers were sympathizing with it, even more, they were
fascinated by it and they saw it as a way out of the society's frustrations
and they believed it would open a way for a new era filled with freedom
and democracy. Some British intellectuals were affected by the idea of
independence and liberty so they were fond of the American example of
the revolution and independence so they saw the hope in the French
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revolution and that explains why many writers were influenced by the
idea of the French revolution (Robert Burns – Blake - Wordsworth –
Coleridge- Southey and Mary Wollstonecraft) who travelled to France
especially to observe the French revolution firsthand in 1792. All
sympathized with it even the young generation (Shelley – Keats - Hazllet)
saw that it is the humanity's best hope. The revolution generated the
feeling that this is a new age with a new beginning, nothing is impossible
as Napoleon famous saying "there is no impossible under the sun" not
only in the political and social realm but also in the intellectual and
literary enterprises as well.
Wedgwood the great potter after reading James Thomson's liberty wrote
to a friend "happy would it be for this island where his three virtues the
foundation of British liberty: independent life, integrity in office, and a
passion for the common weal,-more strictly adhered to amongst us”.
( Ford, 1970:1)
William Hazllet described how in his early youth the French revolution
had been the "dawn of the new era, a new impulse had been given to
men's minds " the new poetry of the school of Wordsworth he maintained
"had its origins in the French revolution "it was a time of promise, a
renewal of the world and letters"(Butler,1982:33).
Hazlitt is considered one of the leading figures in the history of
literature; in the same time saw the French revolution as a dawn or an
impulse of a new era, and also admitted the fact that the French
revolution had a strong impact on the literature at that time. (Abrams,1993:21).
Françoise Jeffery; the foremost conservative reviewer of the day
connected the "Revolution in literature" with the "agitation of the French
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revolution" and the discussions as well as the hopes and terrors to which
it gave occasion.
(Duff1994:22).
Shelley in his Defense of Poetry said the
literature has arisen as it were from a new birth and electric life burns.
Keats said that (great spirits now on earth are sojourning).
Hazllet also declared that the school of poetry founded by Wordsworth
was the literary equivalent of the French revolution translating the
political changes into poetical experiments “kings and queens were
dethroned from their rank and station in legitimate tragedy or epic poetry,
as they were decapitated elsewhere”(Blunden,1946:17). This meant the French
revolution opened the way for many poets to express what they wanted in
a literary way; and transferred events into poems. In his (England 1819)
Shelley attacked George III who had been declared insane in 1811.
An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow;
Through public scorn –mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know,
***
Religion christless, godless-a book sealed
A senate, Time's worst statue unrepealedAre graves from which a glorious phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day(oxford book of romantic verse)
In this stanza he foretold the revolution as well (the phantom that may
burst to illumine our tempestuous day).
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England experienced a change from a primarily agricultural society into a
modern industrial nation, this change coincided with the American
victory, the French revolution, the wars, the economic cycle of inflation
and depression of traditional liberties. All these were factors worked
together to form the political atmosphere. The early period of the French
Revolution marked by the declaration of the rights of man and the
storming of the Bastille to release imprisoned political offenders evoked
enthusiastic support from English liberals and radicals alike. This had
great impact on the society, literature, people, writers, and poets. Poets
wrote poems flavored by the war, liberty and the desire for reformation.
Wordsworth and Shelley and other writers were influenced by "Godwin's
inquiry concerning political justice 1793"(Ford,1970:1) which foretold an
evitable but peaceful evolution of society to a final stage in which all
property would be equally distributed and all government would wither
away.
On the other hand the September massacres of the imprisoned and the
helpless nobility in1792, the execution of the royal family, the invasion
by the French republic of the Rhineland and Netherlands and its offer of
armed assistance to all countries desiring to overthrow their governments
which brought England into the war against France (Roberts,1997:19).
1.1.1Napoleon Bonaparte and England
Napoleon was –for many-the champion and the founder of the new spirit
in France but he was the dictator for others, and he was the dictator who
changed to be a hero and emperor of France as Wordsworth wrote in his
prelude:
Become oppressors in their turn
Frenchmen had changed a war of self defense
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For one of conquest, losing sight of all
Which they had struggled for.
Napoleon's new standards changed the society as a whole not only in
France but in England as well .That period in England was one of the
hard repressive measures, public meetings were prohibited and it was the
first time over a hundred years to suspend the habeas corpus. An output
of the Napoleonic war put an end to reform and to almost all real political
life in England, for all the past years economic life was divided into two
the rich and the poor the landowners and the land labors.
Shelley described this in his (men of England) in which he was frustrated
that the poor had to get down on their knees for the rich.
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed and clothe and save
From the cradle to the grave
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat –nay, drink your blood?
Since the end of the French revolution 1815 which the workers had no
right to vote and they were prevented by law from unionizing, their sole
recourse was to petition ,protest meetings, agitation, and hunger riots
which only frightened the ruling class into more repressive measures.
Stress and pain were everywhere, the gap between the rich and poor was
getting wider and wider especially after the announcement in 1812 that
- 19 -
death would be the penalty for destroying farms (Lord Byron )was the
only one in the house of lords who refused to sign the law. This law
certainly, created more hatred amongst the poor to the landowners. The
historical upper limit of this period is unmistakably the outbreak of the
colonists’ rebellion in North America, their successful defense and their
achievement of independence. The American example of self government
without inheritance became a dream for most of the citizens; another
thing was that there was an appreciable sensation of “change” in the
political atmosphere and they thought democracy and establishing an
independent system would help them get out of this dilemma.
One of the other images in the political atmosphere was that in 1762 the
war taxation system was very hard and difficult for all; the excise man
had to make sure that everything was paid for. This system aggravated
the situation and emphasized the need for reformation after all the
frustration caused by these cruel systems. So there was a huge desire for
change and reformation in the community and as they considered the
French revolution as a tool for the ideal utopian community regulated by
reason and rights of man, and consider the fall of the Bastille as a sign for
regeneration especially for Blake and Byron, they also consider the
American victory as a way out and a solution for all their suffering and
pain. (Calman,2002:20).
Wordsworth explained the situation in1819, ‘I see clearly that the
principle ties which kept the different classes of society in a vital and
harmonies dependence upon each other have, within thirty years either
impaired or wholly dissolved, everything has been put up to market and
sold for the highest price it would buy'(IBID: 23)(checked)
- 20 -
1.2 The Social Atmosphere
On the social side there were also many changes in society, no doubt
when a society turns from a primarily agricultural society to an industrial
society it will be changed a lot even on the individuals social side .from
the eighties onwards the scale and tempo of change were visibly
increasing and this sense of change had been in the air through Blake's
poems and Burke's. Writers are an essential part of every society so some
of their poetry predicted
the next because they felt that there is
something about to happen.
Not only Blake, the French enlightenment writings that circulated freely
in Britain helped in saturating people with the new ideas. The formalized
system that molded the Augustan taste was splitting upon. (Ford,1970:7). The
poems of Burns and Blake revealed the immense transition from
convention to nature.
The languid strings do scarcely move!
The sound is forc'd the notes are few!(oxfrd …)
There were common views and publishers about democracy and
democratic views. John and Leigh hunt's 'examiner', Carlile's Republican,
Wooler's Black Dwarf, Hone's pamphlets-parodis
were only notable
publications expressing 'democratial views' which were brought before
the courts(Duff,1994:11).
Cobett's political register was the greatest stimulant and organizer of the
popular reform movement. His writing is still alive since it is the
romantic protest against the basic fact of exploitation. Everything in the
air was moulded with the romantic images, even the writing of the
- 21 -
revolutionary period (sirens - chivalric knights - round-tables - furies harpies - giants - spell - traces -magic-swords-wickedwizards – castle cave,)(Abrams,1993:58)
Writing expanded and became a tool for expressing the needs, the needs
for reform and change. There were great publishing writers were
competing to come up with the best works because there were desire to
read. Writing became a profession, both men and women competing for
when we say writing we mean both poetry and prose. In Emma, 1816 by
Jane Austen, the differentiation of social position is carried further. But if
we are going to talk about the role of women in writing we have to
mention the pioneers who came before Jane Austen and set the way for
women to participate and even have the rights to write and express what
they want to say. In the past decades women were not having any right,
they didn’t have the right to vote or to have the same right as men, so
they had to fight to get their rights.
After the 1789's declaration of the rights of human, Mary Wollstonecraft
and Olympe de Gourges (1748-17930) started the fight and they were the
pioneers during the French revolution who demanded independent legal
rights for women and initial modern feminism. While women demanded
some specific rights, the term 'man' remained synonyms to the word
'human'. Wollstonecraft indicated in her book' A vindication of the rights
of woman' 1792 that women and men are equally born) they should be
given the same rights. They were fighting for simple rights, education
political representation. Mary Wollstonecraft talked in different issues
concerning women at a time women had no political rights, were limited
to a few lowly vocations as servants, nurses, governesses and petty shop
keepers and were legally non persons who lost their property to their
- 22 -
husbands at marriage. She mentioned in her book that women were
educated since childhood that marriage is the only way for her to survive
in the society." women were told from their infancy and taught by
example of their mothers, that a little knowledge of a human weakness
justly termed cunning, softness of temper outward obedience, and
scrupulous attention to a puerile kind of property, will obtain for them the
protection of man everything else is needless, for at least twenty years of
their lives" (Ford,1970: 20).
On the social side people started to wear their own hair instead of wigs
which means that they started to feel “real” and started to be themselves.
They started getting rid of the fake things they used to hide themselves
behind and changed to feel the need to be real.
1.3Industrial and Commercial Changes
Society changed from an agricultural society to an industrial society this
change led to other changes in the economic side, towns became
industrial and factories were established and machines started to replace
man power, everyone was dreaming to come from the village to the
towns for better standards of living, this shift coincided with the general
rise in population which added some three million in thirty years. This
growth of population led to pressure in the cities (main resource for good
standard of living).
England became an industrial society; small technical improvements had
been made in the most industries throughout the country. England was
progressing so fast and was going rapidly to become the first industrial
country.
- 23 -
Josiah Tucker, an American had remarked in1757 "Few countries are
equal, perhaps none excel, the English in the numbers and contrivances
of their machines to abridge labor(Ford,1970:20).
Machines and their flame and smoke became symbols of modernity for
the society (this is none romantic view) for, as we mentioned, these – for
the romantics were signs of pollution, greed, and disgust, because they
liked purity and green, appreciated nature and real beauty.
Beneficial development took place at that time especially in geography,
discovering Australia and Sandwich Islands and cross the Atlantic circle
widened the area as well as the minds. People became more imaginative
and accepting everything. They liked stories and books about the new
world and new discoveries. They liked to know about everything around
them, they were no more sticking to their old society. The recent
circumnavigation had revealed new worlds no less astonishing than those
that the Elizabethan had discovered.
Society became more open in and out, the changes, enclosures, inventions
all had an impact on writers. Many references showed that the romantics
recognized the deep alteration in the national way of life and they judged
it inimically, this holds for Tory Southey as well as Shelley and they, as
part of the society cannot be stuck on a place while everything around
them is moving very fast.
There were also other factors that participated in this huge festival of
change, and there were also some other images of the society at that time,
one of these negative images was “slavery” that laid the heart of the late
eighteenth century British Atlantic Empire. There were national global
- 24 -
commercial networks stretched from China to the interior of Africa. This
was one of the hardest times in the history of England. For those who
support humanity and human views it were totally denying it and to them
to keep watching this and take no action was so difficult, so there were
many small societies that organized to fight this trade and called for
stopping this trade. This was achieved by the 1832.
The legacy of slavery lived on of course most notably in the forms of
communities of free black peasants of the west Indies but it survived
much closer to home in the habits and addictions of the British people
and millions of counterparts round the world (Calman,2001:59).
All the above were reasons and factors -positive and negative ones- but
were all
behind the Romantic Movement. Hazlitt published a book
called “the spirit of the age” described the French revolution and its
impact and he was saying that everything was changing during this era
and he called it an era of transformation, an age of change (the dawn of a
new era, a new impulse had been given to men's minds) he also remarked
when he heard Coleridge reading some of the newly written poems aloud
" the sense of a new style and a new spirit in poetry came over me "with
something of the effect that "arises the turning up of the fresh soil, or the
first welcome breath of spring". (Ford,1970:15).
William Wordsworth in his Prelude 1790 wrote "France standing on the
top of golden hour and human nature seeming born again" indeed that
happened, everything was born again even nature of poetry, life, and
everything changed. That was the era of the romantics and these were the
reasons why that era was an era of that great change.
- 25 -
In the next pages one is going to describe the characteristics of this
movement and explain the points in which the romantics were different
and their poetry was different from their predecessors and will talk about
the features that characterized this movement using different examples
from different romantic poets.
- 26 -
CHAPTER 2
Characteristics of Romantic Poetry
2.0 Introduction
In this chapter the researcher is going to discuss the characteristics of
romantic poetry.
The common trends and policies the romantic poets used to share, the
factors behind these common interests and the reasons why the romantics
were different from their predecessors. Showing this one we need to refer
to the era that preceded the Romantic Movement and see what special
characteristics they used to have and what was the differences between
them and the romantics and to what way was the change from eighteenth
century poetry to the early nineteenth in the characteristics of the poetry.
The earlier 18th century of Pope, Addison and Johnson had a compact
area of normality with a small permissible interest and sentiment.
Ford(1970:24):1970:24.
In the late 18th and the early 19th century this compact
area was breaking up as everything else was. Poetry of the 18th century
was very rational, it was like a mirror held up to nature. Poets were just
reflecting what was in front of them; there was no sense of expression,
utterance, and exhibition of emotion. They believed that the poet's role
was to imitate. The best example of the stability and normality in the 18th
century’s poetry is the choice by John Pomfret; the poem shows the
stability even in the dreams of the poet. However dreams are very wide
and someone may have the right to dream without restrictions but the
poet insists on dreaming stable dreams like:
- 27 -
If heaven the grateful liberty would give
that I might choose my method how to live,
And all those hours propitious fate should lend,
In blissful ease and satisfaction spend:
Near some fair town I'd have a private seat,
Built uniform, not little, nor too great:
It should within no other things contain
But what were useful, necessary, plain
The poet here-when had the chance to choose an ideal life for himself he
wished it to be a normal life. Look at such words like “moderate”,
“genteel but no great”, “useful, necessary, plain”. These words were the
characteristics of the 18th century’ poetry and they characterize their
poetry.
In the 18th century's poetry it was impossible to find a poem like (the mad
song) (the infant sorrow) (the tiger) (little black boy) of Blake in their
different themes and different ideas .Such poems are good examples of
the strange ideas.
In the late 18th and the early 19th century good poetry transferred to be as
Wordsworth described "spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings" this
was a new trend in poetry. The source of a poem not in the outer world
but in the individual poet, and the essential materials of the poem were
not external people and events but the inner feelings of the poet, or
external objects only after these have been transformed or eradiated by
the author's feelings (Abrams,1993:19).
- 28 -
2.1The New Trend in Poetry
The new trend in poetry included all the elements of the poem and
expanded to include (the language, the themes, the tendency toward
nature, the use of imagination, the interest in strange beauty, the insight
of childhood, the tendency toward solitude, considering the poet as vate,
seer or prophet), we'll discuss all these points in details in this chapter.
We have to say that as this period went on there was further use of
fantasy as means of giving expression, with some degree of control to
emotional expression not sanctioned by conventional good sense of
previous age and perhaps not strictly accountable to reason. The new
principle in poetry was the self expression and Coleridge thought that the
great work of literature to be a self originating and self organizing process
that begins with a seed like idea in the poet's imagination grows by
assimilating the poet's feelings and the diverse materials of sense
experience, and involves into an organic whole in which the parts are
integrally related to each other and to the whole (Abrams,1993:7).
2.1.1 Romantics and Imagination
The idea of imagination came originally from the old Kantian philosophy
that the mind is active and its role is not only to accept things from the
outer world it also reacts toward what it receives. This theory developed
and became a general trend in the romantic poetry. William Wordsworth
had an idea that the mind must break the elements of the scene and then
recreate the scene again according to the way the mind sees it.
The basic idea of the romantics is the expression of personality in some
way. The romantics believed that the mind is active and it has the ability
to create, so when the poet wants to write a poem or write about
- 29 -
something he has to break the real elements of the scene and then recreate
his own elements. This allows the chance for the mind to work and allows
the poem to become a good poem. According to Blake "the mind creates
its own milieu only when it rejects the material world”. Coleridge and
Wordsworth believed that the mind created the proper milieu in
collaboration with something given to it from without. Coleridge said
that" the mind not passive but made in God's image and that too in the
sublimest sense –the image of the creator"(Abrams,1993:7).
Whether the romantics had the same ideas or not –concerning
imagination- they all agreed in the same point that the mind shouldn't be
passive and should create its own style.
Coleridge in" The Prelude" stated that the individual mind:Doth, like an agent of the one great mind,
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.
The romantics thought the mind was active to the point that they
considered it has access beyond human beings (supernatural power) this
access leads to the infinite through a special faculty called the reason or
imagination. The romantics' predecessors refused the idea of this
supernatural; they considered anything beyond the human limits a sin or a
tragic error, whereas the romantics considered it a triumph and a glory*28
Duff:1994:.p34.Wordsworth,
in his Prelude described a flash of imagination
that revealed the invisible world and affirmed
Our destiny, our being heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
- 30 -
Effort and expectation and desire,
And something evermore about to be
In Wordsworth’s Lucy we see clearly how Wordsworth breaks the
elements of the basic scene death to make it an image rather than an
ordinary death. For anyone death is then natural fact of separation of the
soul and body and the travel to the other world .but to Wordsworth, death
is something else when it comes to Lucy,,, he had to use his imagination
to make the journey to death as a trip in heaven,,
She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of dove
A maid whom there where non to praise
And very few to love
***
In this stanza Wordsworth transferred the idea of death into a nice image
that Lucy now is dwelling in. She didn't die the death we know, she is
now dwelling among the untrodden ways beside the dove. The idea
sounds beautiful and he feels comfortable with it rather than paining
himself with the idea of death as an ordinary person looks at it.
Imagination was something appreciable to the romantics to the point that
there could be one scene watched by two poets at the same time; each one
describes it as he sees it as in the case of Wordsworth and his sister
Dorothy when they both saw
one scene and each one described it his
own way. Wordsworth used his imagination to break the elements of the
- 31 -
situation and see his own one. This is the free imagination when the poet
uses his imagination to change something and recreate his own.
18th century writers rejected the pride or aspiration beyond to limits
rational to our species .Pope wrote in an essay about man "could pride
that blessing find /is not to act or think beyond mankind"(Abrams,1993:24).
The romantic period was an era of radical individualism. They estimated
human potentialities and power. Their poems were different in themes,
ideas, expression, and even the language they used was different. The
romantics set themselves in opposition to their predecessors and they
believed that the good poem is the poem that expressed the personality
and inner soul of the poet.
Blake said that "men are admitted into heaven not because they have
cured or governed their passion or have no passion ,but because they
have cultivated their understandings .The treasures of heaven are not
negation of passion but realities of intellect, from which all passion
emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory"(Abram,1993:32).
The romantic era was an era of expression. Love, pain, grief, sorrow,
happiness. A very good example of
the expression or utterance is
Tennysons’s ( Break Break, Break) in which he was expressing and
wanted more utterance for that may relief him and his pain due to a loss
of a close person.
Break, Break, Break
On thy cold grey stone o’ sea,
And I would that my tongue,
Could utter the thoughts that arise in me.
- 32 -
Desire for utterance was something that almost all the romantic writers
were aware of ,they believed that the best things came up when they were
in pain or in happiness so there’s a good expression of feeling in a poem.
This might be considered one of the reasons behind their irrational poems
and themes. In other words the romantics felt that when they wanted to
say something they felt it at the moment. They just say it without even
thinking if this might be irrational in poetry. We could hardly find such
poems like theirs in the 18th century poetry. We could hardly find titles
like (the mad song-the infant sorrow-the tiger-the lamp.) of Blake and the
other romantic poets in others’s.
In the infant sorrow –as an example- Blake did a very irrational thing
according to the predecessor’s view. They could never have a poem
describing the first infants’ feelings the way Blake did. It would be
something really very astonishing in the literature of the 18th century but
the romantic period was the era of innovation and of the great change as
well as the abnormality in their poetry.
My mother groaned my father wept
Into the dangerous world I lept
Helpless naked piping loud
Like a fiend hid in the cloud
***
Struggling in my father's hands
Striving against my swaddling bands
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mother's breast
***
- 33 -
Imagination, to the romantics was considered something of great value;
works of arts in general were-to them- the works of hearts. The romantics
really believed in the moment of revelation which leads to the truth.
Shelley said that "an error to assert that the finest passage of poetry
produces by labor and study." "A great statue or picture grows under the
power of the artist as a child in the mother's womb". From this we can
clearly see how Shelley thought of good poems and good poet .if we
noticed that the child grows in the mother's womb gradually and
smoothly without pressure and even without the mother's own
interference but with that power that protects him and his existence from
anything, we now know how the good poem comes without pressure,
stress and even hard thinking and rethinking of making it.
"The definition of a genius is that it acts unconsciously" this statement by
Shelley looks very similar to "spontaneous overflow of feelings" by
Wordsworth. Coleridge also said that the "deep thinking is attainable only
by a man of deep feelings". And all the truth is a species of revelation.
Hence, a metaphysical solution that doesn't tell you something in the
heart is grievously to be suspected as apocryphal.". (Abrams,1993:23).
One believes that this statement is the key to almost all romantic issues
and to the idea that the romantics were in that conflict and struggle with
their predecessors in the aims of point of evaluating the good poem. The
romantics believed that the good poem was something that came from the
heart, deep inside and came spontaneously without labor or study.
Shelley said in his Defense of Poetry; imagination reproduces the
common world" but "purges from our inward sight the film of familiar
which obscures from us the wonder of our being" and "creates anew the
universe, after it has been blunted by reiteration "(Abrams,1993:24).
- 34 -
So the great power of imagination to the romantics was what makes
things new again. It is the power that recreates and regenerates again.
This is the reason that makes the romantic poems different in shape as
well as in contents from the other poems in other eras. One of their aims
in poetry was to bring that sense of wonder to their reader.
2.2 Romantics and the Exotic Beauty
To arouse in the sophisticated mind that sense of wonder presumed to be
felt by the ignorant and the innocent was a primary power of imagination
and a major function of poetry. The romantics –in their poems did not
want the expected things. That’s why they were interested in the strange
beauty which was not familiar especially by their predecessors.
"The earthworm is not beautiful but useful tiger is not useful but beautiful
Blake praised the tiger Dryden praised the earthworm" (Ford,2002:17).
Tiger, tiger burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand
Thy fearful symmetry
***
In the "Tiger" Blake introduced a totally new idea, for no one ever
thought to praise a tiger in a poem. This poem is the best example of the
romantic's interest in strange things only because they're beautiful.
Coleridge was interested in (mesmerism) which is now called
(hypnotism) and he studied like Blake and Shelley the literature of occult
and esoteric. (Abrams,1993:15).
- 35 -
Coleridge remarked on the special imaginative quality of Wordsworth's
early poems that "to combine the child' sense of wonder and novelty with
the appearance, which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered
familiar …this is the character and privilege of genius". And its prime
service is to awaken in the reader "freshness of sensation" in the
representation of the "familiar objects". Coleridge in his "frost at
midnight", showed the familiar wonder but he said in Biographia Literaria
chapter 14 that he wanted to achieve wonder by “frank violation of
natural laws and the ordinary course of events in poems of which the
incidents and agents were to be in part at least supernatural".
(Abrams,1993:11).
Another example of the romantic's interest in exotic beauty and
supernatural is "Frankenstein" the famous novel by Mary Shelley in
which there was strange creature everyone was afraid of. He was living in
the suburb and not in contact with others only because of his ugliness but
this creature was very kind inside and he finally saved the child's life.
That was a proof for everyone Frankenstein was good inside. But he
sacrificed his soul for this. The message the writer wanted to tell us was
that "don’t judge people the way they look", for they might be totally
different.
The novel "Frankenstein" was another example of the romantic's great
interest in the strange beauty, the inner beauty and the insides and the
feelings; what they were concerned with was the inside. It proves that the
value of love has no limits. Another example is Jane Austen's "pride and
prejudice" in which the romantic love in the novel shows that the
individual values could achieve high definition, usually in the conflict
- 36 -
with the social code that condone marriage for money and social
standards .
Frankenstein also proves another idea which is the interest in ghosts and
the supernatural creatures which was a common trend in that era, beside
the message Jane Austen wanted to tell the readers about, that beauty is
something of great value and it is not something that we judge externally.
These examples are from novels, romanticism, was not only in poetry, it
was a common interest that was common in that era and every piece of art
was affected by it. They were interested in monsters and ghosts'. It wasn't
only a matter of a moral message by Jane Austen, it was a matter of the
general trend and the huge interest in strange things and stories.
2.3 Romantics and Solitude
The 18th century great writers had typically dealt with men and women as
members of an organized society .Authors regarded themselves as
integral parts of this society so they have the responsibility of expressing
those people’ lives and needs.
Romantic poets were interested in being in solitude and often isolated
themselves from the society they were living in probably to give a scope
to the individual vision. William Wordsworth in his Prelude described
himself as "musing in solitude".
If we take a general look at the romantic poems we'll see that they
frequently used words like "solitude, lonely, solitary, and alone”. These
words show how they felt about being in solitude and their desire to stay
away from society and then give their view on the life scenes.
- 37 -
The romantics were not interested in solitude only for their own
enjoyment, but they were also interested in solitary people .Take a look at
Wordsworth's Solitary Reaper and we will clearly see how fascinated he
was by the lonely young girl reaping.
Behold her single in the field
Yon solitary highland lass
Reaping and singing by herself
Stop here or gently pass
***
In this stanza Wordsworth is directing the reader's attention to look at the
solitary reaper who was singing as she was reaping, he was so interested
in what she was doing to the point that he didn’t want any disturbance
from any one. This thing was really valuable to him that if it wasn’t
valuable to you just leave gently.
Alone she cuts and binds the grain
And sings a melancholy strain
O' listen, for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound
***
The image of the girl was so beautiful to Wordsworth that whole "vale" is
"overflowing" with the sound of the girl. Again Wordsworth repeats the
word "alone" that gives the sense that not only the voice of the girl was
interesting to him but the whole image of the solitary girl was the thing
that he liked most to the point that he preferred to start the poem by an
image of the single solitary girl rather than starting by saying "listen to
- 38 -
her singing". He instead said "behold her" so he was aiming not only to
draw attention to the voice, he drew a picture for the whole scene of the
lonely girl,
No Nightingale did ever chant
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travelers in some shay haunts
Among Arabian sands
***
A voice so thrilling never was heard
In spring time from the cocko bird
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the furthest Hebrides
Again comes the fascination with the supernatural and the strange things
"haunts, Arabian sands" words show a strange and unfamiliar things like
the Arabian sands to show how strange and beautiful the voice and to
give a touch of mystery to the poem, when comparing her voice to that
bird singing to those weary bands as the voice was so thrilling. This
shows the interest of the terrible beauty "breaking the silence of the seas
among the furthest Hebrides" this is another image to the strangeness in
beauty the romantics were interested in.
Whatever the theme the maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending,
I saw her singing in her field
And over the sickle bending
I listened motionless and still
And as I mountain up the hill
- 39 -
The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more
***
Words and expressions like lonely repeated many times in the romantic
poems, either by being alone(the poet himself) or praising someone who
is alone or doing something while he is alone.
Loneliness was not only interesting to the romantics, everything lonely
was interesting. The lonely child, the lonely star, and the lone vale.
I wandered lonely as aloud
That floats on high over vales and hills
And here Wordsworth praises the lonely child:
Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray
And when I crossed the wild
I chanced to see at break of day
The solitary child
***
That was not enough for Wordsworth .She had to be without friends and
comrades to make him more interested in her.
No mate no comrades Lucy knew
She dwelt in a wild moor
The sweetest thing that ever grew
Beside a human door
While Wordsworth is "musing in solitude"
- 40 -
On man on nature and on human life,
Musing in solitude, I oft perceive
Fair trains of imagery before me rise
Accompanied by feelings of delight.
Shelley was also interest in silence, quietness and loneliness
How calm it was-the silence there
By such a chain was bound
Then even the busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness
The romantics' interest in being solitary or their interest in being alone
and love the lonely things "stars, cloud, child." was not because they
disliked their society or they wanted to escape from their reality, on the
contrary they were interested in their societies and they were parts of
them. They participated and joined the members of the society positively
and they acted positively but the thing is that they had another view to
nature and to life that was behind their interest in “Loneliness”. They
wanted to see the world as they wished not it as it was, they wanted to
contemplate and absorb the beauty of nature and life.
2.4 Romantics and Nature
Wordsworth complained that from Dryden to Pope there's a scarcely
image from external nature "from which it can be inferred that the eyes of
the poet had been steadily fixed in his objects ".Wordsworth in his
prospectus to the Recluse said that not nature but the "mind of man is my
haunt and the region of my song"(Abrams,1993:9).
- 41 -
If one take a general view to the romantic poetry we will find that many
of the romantic poems consider nature an important issue and they
believe that nature was an inspiration to them. We will also find that the
romantic poetry was filled with words like (rose, mountains, flowers,
caves, spring, nintingale ,and skylark).
one will discuss this when we come to discuss the romantics and their
use of the language and how such words can stand as symbols to other
things.
(To the Cockoo) by Wordsworth is a very good example how the
romantics thought of nature and how deeply inside it affected them and
even the birds, flowers and the natural creatures weren’t just as they are
to the ordinary people, they inspired the romantics and gave them other
meanings and interpretations far from the ordinary ones by the ordinary
people.
O BLITHE New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O cuckoo! Shall I call thee bird?
Or but a wandering voice?
***
While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
That seems to fill the whole air's space
As loud far off as near.
- 42 -
In this poem Wordsworth wonders if he can call that beautiful voice a
normal bird for it's more than an ordinary thing to him and the voice of
the bird even was louder than it should be.
O Though babbling only to the vale,
Of sunshine and of flowers,
You bringest unto me a tale
***
Thrice welcome, darling of the spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bird but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;
***
These last two stanzas show how Wordsworth thought of nature. To him
the Cuckoo was not a cuckoo but an invisible thing a voice a mystery.
Another example to nature and how the romantics thought of it is
Byron's" she walks in beauty" in which he expressed the beauty of his
lover like nature or objects from nature as well …
She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspects and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
***
- 43 -
Best beauty to Byron was the innocent beauty from nature or like nature.
So when the “night of cloudless climes and starry skies” comes with the
beautiful contrast of the dark and bright, here comes the perfect beauty of
his lover. From this stanza we can say that when Byron was thinking of
the beauty of his lover the image of nature was in his mind the
unconsciousness worked and came up with this idea to beauty.
Nature was something inspiring and of great value. Romantics thought of
nature positively and talked about it in many of their poems but
describing nature and natural objects was not their main aim what they
wanted was what behind .
They used nature not for the sake of nature but for something they were
seeking for, as beauty to them was not in the outer beauty –though
important and being decribed a lot- but they wanted the inside beauty that
was to be pure and innocent, Wordsworth said "not nature but the mind is
my haunt and the region of my song ".
“Nature” to Wordsworth in his "Ttintern Abby" is
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope
***
Until he says…
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I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded among o’er the mountains by the side,
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who thought the thing he loved .for nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all – I cannot paint
What then I was .the sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, where then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love
***
Wordsworth also says
.... For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity
***
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of the elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused
Nature to Wordsworth was the sound of humanity and the thing that
brings him happiness and fulfills his needs. He believed that nature
gives him the thing that he seeks in life …
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well pleased to recognize
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart and soul
Of all my moral being.
And here he comes to the key of his belief when he says…
My dear, dear sister! And this prayer I make
Knowing that nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of our life,
***
To led from joy to joy, for she can so inform
The mind that is within us so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts
From these lines we understand that Wordsworth had a strong belief
in nature. To him it was the lover that never betrays and the kind
heart that –in it- you listen to the whole humanity.
The romantic poems endow the landscape with human life, passion
and expressiveness. The view that natural objects correspond to an
inner or spiritual world underlay a tendency especially in Blake and
Shelley to write symbolist poetry in which a rose, sunflower, a cave
or a cloud presented by an object imbued with significance beyond it
self." I always seek in what I see the likeness of something beyond
the present and tangible objects" and by Blake mere nature, as
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perceived by physical eye and unharmonized by the imagination,
was spurned" as the dirt upon my feet no part of me"(Abrams1993:12).
Many romantic poets supported this idea. George Darley, said:
It is not beauty I demand
A crystal brow that moon despair,
Nor the snow's daughter, a white hand
Nor mermaid's yellow pride of hair.
***
Tell me not of your starry eyes,
Your lips that seem on roses fed,
Your breasts where cupid tumbling lies,
Nor sleeps for kissing of his bed.
***
Give me instead of beauty's bust,
A tender heart, a loyal mind,
Which with temptation I could trust,
Yet never linked with error find.
***
This wasn't only for him but for most of the romantics; beauty was
not in rosy lips and cheeks it was something in their minds. As
nature yes they praised beauty in many of their poems but this
represented ways and means for another thing they aimed at. At the
same time they praised nature but not for the sake of nature it was
always part of ways and means for another thing.
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Blake's Sick Rose is a good example of the symbolism in romantic
poems.
O lovely rose!
Thou art sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
Of the howling storm
Hath found out thy bed
Of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Doth thy life destroy
Blake used the sick rose which is dying and losing its freshness as a
symbol for any dangerous relationship that might destroy the beauty
and the innocence of any young pretty –rose like- girl. Because
when being involved in such a relationship,(dark-secret) the fresh
flowery girl looses life ingredients (clarity and light) so she becomes
like the dying rose that loses her life ingredients such as (oxygen and
light) so both get destroyed by that fatal relationship.
Wordsworth has another symbolic poem in which the rose stands as
a symbol for another beautiful girl. (My Pretty Rose Tree)
Then I went to my pretty rose tree
And tend her by day and by night
But my rose turned away with jealousy
And her thorns were my only delight
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In this poem Blake likens the girl that might be destroyed by a secret
dark love, likens her to a flower that is destructed by an invisible
worm that flies in the night of the howling storm. Blake used this
symbolism in many of his poems. The romantics used words like
"the rose" "the cave" "the mountains" as a symbol that stand for
other real things in life.
The romantics believed in things that come from what they feel and
not what they see. they believed that the true and real thing is not
what is seen by the normal person but it is that you feel with your
heart and what you see is not important if it has nothing to do or
something that affect the heart. So sense perceptions are not always
true they are just means to the feeling they only reflect and show the
heart what is in the world but it is subject to the heart to feel and
enjoy and decide what to think or write.
Look at Coleridge's dejection when he says
Yon crescent moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see not feel how beautiful they are!
Coleridge admitted that he saw the beauty of the sky but he seemed
not to be in a good mood so he cannot feel the beauty of the sky
however he sees it very clear so we can understand from this point
that the romantic poems did not reflect what they see or were only
imitation to the world or nature in front of their eyes, they were
deeper than just reflection or imitation whereas in traditional
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aesthetic theory ,poetry was regarded as supremely an art that in
modern times is practiced by poets who have assimilated classical
precedents and aware of the rules governing the poems they were
writing .
To Wordsworth the composition of a poem originates from emotion
recollected to tranquility and may be preceded and followed by
reflection, the immediate act of composition must be spontaneous
that is arising from
impulse and free from all rules and artful
manipulation of means to foreseen ends . Keats said that "if poetry
comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come
at all"(Abrams,1993:20).
2.5 Romantics and the Use of the Language
The romantics did not follow one trend in their poetic language; for
the new tasks attempted by many of the writers of the period
demanded new tools of language especially in poetry. The more
conservative poets, Roger, Moore, Southey, for example, were
content with language and verse forms that flowed with the ease of
habit through minds trained on Pope. (Abrams,1993:18).
The summer and autumn had been so wet,
That in winter the corn was growing yet,
'T was a piteous sight to see all round
The grain lie rotting on the ground.
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This is Southey's "God judgment on a wicked bishop"; the language
and the verse form are nearly like the eighteenth-century way and
language of Pope.
Byron's aims in poetry were also compatible with the language of
the older school in essentials…
When we two parted in silence and tears
Half broken hearted to sever for years
Pale grew thy cheeks and cold colder thy kiss
Truly that hour foretold sorrow to this
***
And he goes on until he says
In secret we met in silence I grieve
That thy heart could forget and thy spirit deceive
If I should meet thee after long years
How can I greet thee in silence and tears?
***
No matter the theme was totally different from Pope's and Byron's
predecessors but the poem looked similar to the language of the
eighteenth century.
Romantic poets were not all using the same way and style in writing
and composing their poems. Byron was different from Shelley who
was different from Keats. The same thing was true of the old
generations.
William Wordsworth was different from Blake.
Sometimes they agreed, other time they disagreed. What we are
trying to say here is that they all agreed on the basics with normal
differences in the details.
Byron wrote a letter to Moore in which he explicitly ranged himself
with the poets who used the older forms rejecting Leigh Hunt's
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suggestion that Wordsworth was the best and the pre eminent poet
among them.
"He is the only one of us whose coronation I would oppose. Let
them take Scott, Campbell, Rabble or you or me or any of the living
and throne him, but not thin new Jacob Behmin, this whose pride
might have kept him true, even had his principles turned as perverted
as his "soi-disant poetry-" (Ford,1970:47 )
It is very clear that Byron was not interested in what Wordsworth
said about being far from the language of their predecessors and it is
also clear that Byron was so interested in it that he refused accepting
Wordsworth as the best poet because he thought his language wasn't
up to be the language of the best and there may be more than one
poet considered better than him.
Byron in his "Don Juan" used the language his own way and came
up with a very Byronic sense to speak about the poets and give his
own ideas about them…
Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;
Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey;
Because the first crazed beyond all hope,
The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthy;
With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope,
And Campbell's hippocrene is somewhat drawthy;
Thou shalt not steal from Roger,nor
Commit –flirtation with muse of Moore.
***
Wordsworth stated that he tried "to ascertain how far the language of
conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted
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for the purposes of poetical pleasure". This statement was taken as
extreme revolt against the conventionality and donnishness of the
earlier poetic diction; the triteness of its metaphor, the pompousness
of simile, its failure to record direct observation and the rigidity of
the verse form in which it was cast (Duff,1994:52).
Wordsworth stated that the aim of lyrical ballad was to choose
incidents and situations from common life and to use selection of
language really spoken by men. When a certain colouring of
imagination when ordinary things should be presented to the mind in
an unusual aspect.,Wordsworth invested words that in earlier writers
had been derogatory-words like "common", "ordinary", "humble".
His aim was to shatter the lethargy of custom so as to refresh our
sense of wonder in divinity in the everyday, the commonplace, the
trivial and the lowly (Ford,1970:15).
Actually not only Wordsworth but many of the romantics followed
the same things to bring this sense of wonder, and Wordsworth was
not the only one to use such words or to invest them. Taking a look
into a collection of the romantic poems we will find that such words
appeared many times for the same purpose of Wordsworth.
This sense of wonder was very important to the romantics and most
of them tried to reach it in different ways .That’s why the insight of
childhood was very important characteristic that was made only by
the romantics and their focus on this childhood insight was a tool –
for them- through which they get to sense of wonder and
unconsciousness.
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Coleridge believed that a "fusion of" the sense of novelty and
freshness with the old familiar objects" could be achieved specially
by carrying on the "the feeling of childhood into the powers of
manhood" by combining the child' sense of wonder and the novelty
of with the appearances, which every day for perhaps forty years had
rendered familiar. Blake was aware of the terror and hostility of
conventional adult society in face of some features of the child's
outlook. The child was for Blake primarily an aspect or possibility of
every human personality "(IBID:14)
To the romantics, there was a difference between the childlike and
the childish .they believed that childlike was a kind of compliment
but childish was more likely to be a critique.
As we said that words like humble and ordinary were familiar in the
romantic poems and they are repeated many times. this is the solitary
reaper by William Wordsworth
(Will no one tell me what she sings?)
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old unhappy far of things
And battles long ago
Or is it some more humble lay
Familiar matter of to day
Some natural sorrow loss or pain
That had been and may be again
***
Wordsworth was concerned a lot with the humble things in life.
They meant a lot to him and that the ordinary things in life were
- 54 -
important to him to a point that he consider may be a cause of those
beautiful numbers that flow from the solitary reaper. The music that
bore in his heart long after it was heard no more.
I listened motionless and still
And as I mountain up the hill
The music in my heat I bore
Long after it was heard no more
Another thing that we would like to focus on is that the romantic
poets had something that they believed in. It was the role of the poet
as a seer or a prophet, the one who predict and expect and tell people
what might happen to them. This role was played well by most of
the romantics. They also believed that the role of the poet is to
illuminate, reveal, and inspire.
Byron had no wish to illuminate or reveal and his use of the
language was nearer to Pope in one fundamental characteristic,
whereas Shelley was different in language and his language was
much more complicated than Byron’s. He was attacked for
outpourings of emotion in his poems- will discuss this in chapter
three.
All we mentioned were points and techniques used by the romantics
to please the reader and take him to the final message they want to
convey, there is also an important point regarding the language and
it appears when someone is reading a romantic poem he goes
gradually with the poem and through the language used by the poet
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so, the layout of the poem and its language is something very
important to the romantics.
To illustrate this more, one has to speak about translation, and if we
take a look into the works of the romantic poets we find that the full
meaning of their texts is achieved only if we go on reading their
work and not translating it into our own words, that the poet adds to
his work the language through which we get the full meaning. The
way they invested and developed the poem was one key to admire a
poem or not
If we take an example and try to make a paraphrase for a romantic
poem we will see how the full meaning of the poem is understood
through both the language and the style of the writing and not only
through the meaning or the theme.
Three years she grew in sun and shower,
then nature said a lovelier flower
On earth was never shown;
This child I to myself will take;
She shall be mine and I will make
A lady of my own.
***
Paraphrasing this stanza, the meaning would be…
There was a beautiful young girl ,this girl was taken by nature when
nature said the girl should not be living with human beings and that
it decided to make another image from the girl and take her to be this
image which is called (the lady of nature)…
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Myself will to my darling be
Both law and impulse and with me]
The girl in rock and plain,
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower,
Shall see an overseeing power
To kindle and restrain.
"Nature" goes on saying (the girl would be mine and I will give her
everything I can. I will be to my darling everything the law and the
impulse and the girl with me will have an overseeing power unlike
the one she had with humans.
If we read both the stanza and the paraphrase we will find that the
meaning is quite clear through the paraphrase but the full meaning is
only understood and become clear through the language the poet
used. By this only we can feel what the poet wanted to tell us.
This issue reminds one of what Coleridge said in beauty when he
said that he (sees not feel how beautiful they are) when he was
talking about the beauty of the stars in the sky. I can now say when
we read the paraphrase of a romantic poem, we see not feel how
beautiful it is. But if we read both the poem and the paraphrase by
now only we see and feel all the beauty of the romantic poem.
A willingness to trust the language to produce such effects sought
for but not preconceived, is evident in Blake, Keats, Shelley,
Wordsworth, and Coleridge, where Pope and his followers used the
language as a tool for their purposes , these romantics treated it
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rather as material or medium and to some extent submitted their
purposed to it( Ford,1970:61).
The romantics treated the language in a way that they worked in it to
reach a final result needed by the poet. Exactly like the sculptor
when he carves or shapes a block you never know what is the work
unless he finishes, every single action he does adds something to the
work. That was what the romantics were doing with their poems
;they considered the language an important tool in their work and the
more the poet is able to play with this tool, the more his poems
become whole and he becomes a good poet.
2.6 Romantics and the Forms of Their Poems
The romantics wrote lyrical poems (short poems usually written in
the first person).This form became a major form of the romantic
poems. (I) is used many times in these lyrics so, some people believe
that the poet speaks of himself or there’s reflection of his personality
on the poem. That was one of the reasons why some people believe
that if you want to understand a poem accurately you have to study
the poet's own life for there's a link between the poet's own life and
what he write. That was also one of the reasons behind the T.S Eliot
critique and attack on the romantic.
theories that he believed the poet should totally separate himself and
his own circumstances from what he writes in order to be a good
poet.
Byron usually invites his readers to identify the hero with the author
whether the hero is presented romantically as in (child Harold) or
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ironic perspective as in (Don Juan) .Byron's continental popularity
reflects this quality of his writing it is largely understandable without
a native ultimate feeling for the English language. He was fascinated
by the forbidden and by the appeal of the terrifying satanic hero.
Keats was sensitive to the ambivalence of pleasure and pain and the
destructive sex and the erotic quality of the longing for death.(Ford,
1970:22).
The romantics wrote a lot of lyrics most of which were successful
and they represented the poets’own lives and circumstances and
sometimes attitudes. Their poems shared some characteristics but
were not all like each other . Each romantic poet had his own way of
writing, for example in the (Rime of the ancient mariner) and (kubla
kan) Coleridge used the superstition and demonology as a poetic
technique. In Adonais Shelley used the romantic language “flowery
language” and he used natural objects to mourn for john Keats
which give the poem the sense of the very romantic outpouring
which is so many in Shelley’s poetry.
The romantics did not only write lyrics or short poems only, they
also succeeded in writing epics.They wrote long poems but with the
romantic flavor and taste. For example The Prelude by Wordsworth
was an epic in which he represented himself as a chosen son. Other
English examples of this form are Blake's Milton, Shelley's
Prometheus unbound, Keats' Endymion and the fall of Hyperion.
The romantics were not so far from the language of their
predecessors. In fact ,they were far from the themes created by their
predecessors. They started to do something new; they talked in
issues not mentioned before. The thing that they liked to do very
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much was to create and to use their imagination to recreate and
rebuild any scene. They invented new trends in poetry unlike their
predecessors. They tried to represent the voice of the human being,
the voice of the inside not the outside and this –
one consider –the
most important difference between them and all their predecessors.
2.7 Summary
In the next chapter we will choose Shelley as an example to the
romantic poets and put him under study and try to find out through
both life and poems how the romantic characteristics work and try ,
through the same study to answer questions in the relationship
between the poet and his poetry and is it necessary that the poet
should write according to his personal life and the personal events.
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Chapter 3
The Romantic Life of Shelley
3.0 Introduction
In this chapter, we will discuss the life of Shelley and to what extent were
romantic characteristics existed and to what point his life was romantic as
his poetry.
It is worth mentioning that one does not do a study of the life of Shelley
to analyze his poems through it or to try to link certain events in his life to
say they were behind writing certain poems because – and as we will
expand in the last chapter- that one do believe that the role of the critic is
to take the poems as a sole work and separate any author life
events(tragedies-psychic issue) from the work study but one also believe
that we can study the life of the poem to get to know his personality , the
way he thinks the way he handles life issue and again one say we do this
in terms of a biography. As we read Ghandi, Napoleon Bonapart’s
biography as figures we care to know about their lives but we do not
involve their life and life issues in their politics and their decisions.
When we study the life of Shelley we are studying a life of a romantic
poet regardless of what this life has to do with his works or to affect
them.
3.1 Shelley’s Early Life
The name is Percy, but the famous poet's name is Shelley.‘Shelley’ as a
personal name was very famous name in England. "Shelley's ancestors
had been Sussex aristocrats since early in the seventeenth century, his
grandfather, Sir Byshy Shelley made himself the richest man in Horsham.
His father Timothy Shelley was a hardheaded and conventional member
of parliament”. (Abrams,1993:589).
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The children of Timothy and Elizabeth Shelley lived in a very beautiful
place forty miles from London. "The place was surrounded by fine
gardens and Orchids as well as the American gardens (long strip of
green,softly,turfy and sweetly shaded with circles and crescents of
rhododendrons here and there ornamental pines of many kinds ,cedars
beeches and fruit trees set amongst the weeping ashes dropping branchtops to earth and making tents of greenery where one might sit hid unseen
yet seen"(Blunden,1964:11).
This wonderful environment would certainly encourage the poet since
childhood to look at life differently from other kids in his age. The little
child developed an early sense of romanticism through the nature that
best fitted natural humans. The beauty, the nature and the surroundings,
made Shelley very happy and affected his whole life –as we will see later
–as a poet as well as a man and was very clear in many of his poems.
Percy had six sisters and brothers; Elizabeth, Mary, Helen who died in
infancy, another Helen, Margaret and John.
"
Helen's memory of Shelley
was that he used to take them in walks and made little adventures for
them. He had a talent in telling wonder stories and make the
surroundings of Field Place abode of fantastic creatures(Blunden,1964:14).
What Helen mentioned about her brother suggests that the poet's personal
life and his poetry are not separated at all which-some critics also believe,
but one here studied Shelley’s life to understand him but not to judge or
evaluate his poems as one see that to evaluate a poem we have to look at
the work and not the poet but studying his life is for the purpose of the
study of a great poet’s life. Shelley was a normal child but since early
childhood he was so interested in 'walks' which indicated to one that the
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poet was in love with 'nature'. As well as his interest in telling wonder,
exotic stories, some of them were of Ghosts and unusual creatures.
Clearly, this is to be considered one of the romantic characteristics (the
tendency to unusual, the love of nature, the fascination by the exotic and
strange things), as we explained in chapter one and will later discuss
more in chapter four –Shelley’s philosophy in life.
The Shelley's house itself was inspiring. "Upstairs, under the roof there
was a big garret and a closed room only to be entered by a trap door in
the garret floor. This un known land was made the fancied habitation of
an alchemist, old and grey with a long beard"
(Blunden,1964:9).
Shelley's
imagination was very wild since childhood. He had great interest in
abnormal things as well as a desire to create fanciful creatures and live
with them as if they were real.
Shelley was a slight of build, eccentric in manner and unskilled in sports
or fighting. And as a consequence, was mercilessly baited by older and
stronger boys. Even though he saw a petty tyranny of schoolmasters and
school masters as representatives man's general inhumanity to man and
dedicated his life to war against injustice and oppression. (Abrams,1993:644).
This is another point that supports the idea that the poet was different
since his early childhood and his being a romantic poet came as a matter
of the development of his personality as a unique child. In another place
Shelley reported that sports and fighting were not considered an
important matter to him. In fact they were denied to him." Games are the
recreations of people who do not think", the world he felt was so "full of
numbers of things" (Blunden,1964:13).
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3.1.1 Shelley at School
Being in the age of Shelley it was very hard to convince other people
with his ideas for they have their own standards and they wouldn't judge
him by any other and that might be the reason why he was "harried" until
(Sion house). The school became a "perfect hell for him” (Gribble,1972:17).
Shelley's experience in school wasn't easy. The boys at Sion house must
behave like man-eaters to new comers and unusual boys. No easier target
could have appeared than the boy from Field Place, beautiful and
rhapsodical. The attack astonished and drove him to too perilous lines of
defense; scorn and solitude.
Shelley always felt strange at school. He felt that he was in need of
something that he couldn’t find at Sion House. The boys there didn’t
understand that, they were dealing with a unique personality. Many of
them reported these facts about his life.
Three school fellows have recorded their collection of him, one of them,
Sir John Rennie, the engineer who built Waterloo Bridge. Another one
was his cousin and biographer Tom Medwin wrote “he passed among his
school fellows as a strange and unsocial being, for when a holiday
relieved us from our tasks, and the other boys were engaged in such
sports as the narrow limits of our prison-court allowed. Shelley, who
entered into none of them would pace backwards and forwards”.
(Gribble,1972:28).
Almost all biographers who wrote about the life of Shelley mentioned
that he was an unusual child. John Rennie in his autobiographical study
about Shelley stated that he was a child of great imagination who was
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interested in unusual things; "His imagination was always roving upon
something extraordinary, such as spirits, fairies, fighting, etc. and he was
not infrequently astonished his school fellows by blowing up the
boundary palings of the play- ground with gun powder. In fact in times he
was considered to be almost upon the borders of insanity, yet with all this
when treated with kindness he was very amiable, high spirited, and
generous"( Blunden,1964: 33).
When we discussed the characteristics of the romantic period and the
standards by which we judge to what extent a poet is romantic or not, we
mentioned that imagination as one of the fundamental things in
measuring the romantic poet and we also noted that the romantic era was
flowing with imagination, for it was the main distinction between it and
the previous eras. Now we're dealing with a person still at school and he
was not yet a mature person ,however we see many describing him as"
unusual child" with "imagination roving upon something extraordinary"
One of Shelley's lifelong habits was noticed while he was at school. “ He
had a way of drawing little pictures in his exercise books and so do many
children: but his way was different, there was some ability and delicacy
in his sketches, and possible he had profited by earlier instruction. The
cedars and pines he penciled amid his Latin verses were the confession of
his feelings; they were the images of return to Field Place (Blunden1964:15).
“Shelley used to stand at inn doors while his friends stayed within and
find his materials and subjects of drawing decorating walls.” “There is a
spirit in the leaves and the best of his trees are fluctuant and
graceful.Beside trees he enjoyed sketching the wide waters and the
sailing boat upon him”. (Abrams,1993: 543).
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This was another romantic point that Shelley used to practice when he
was young. This tendency to nature and the belief in the odd things
(things that seemed strange to others in his age and even older than his) is
not easy to be found except in a typical romantic person. Shelley used to
think that “a boat says glorious things if men knew how to hear” and he
saw her not as mechanical construction but as a natural creature like rock
and tree” (Peterfreund,2002:21).
The boy was interested in things unusual to others. Things deeper than
the normal things that usually interest common people. For instance, he
liked reading all the time. He was never seen much except with a book in
his hand .in bed, on the table and especially in his walks. He liked
solitude and speculations. He liked to feel not see and his story of the
boat saying something to the one who understand are proofs of his
romantic tendencies since early age.
He enjoyed Windsor Park which was a typical place for him. It was one
of his haunts with its many giant oaks. He loved this place and used to
walk in this park with his friend ( Holiday) whoever in a long life lost the
“sunny time” or the vision of Shelley’s love of nature and the sparkling
poetry of his mind which shone out of his speaking eye when he was
dwelling on anything good or great. (Blunden,1964:19).
(Hornby)
then composed a poem “childhood” drove against “mad
Shelley” –as they used to call him at school- for he was different and they
used to make jokes on him like knocking his books from under his arms,
seizing them as he stopped to recover them, pulling and tearing his
clothes or pointing with a finger as one Neapolitan maddens another.
(Peterfreund,2002: 27).
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Shelley survived despite all these things. His friends used to do and in the
same time he enjoyed some times at school –in his walks with his friend,
enjoying the beautiful nature and having great time reading a book or
musing in speculation beyond his years.
Shelley became friendly with one who in real life appeared more
romantic than any invention, Dr. James Lind one of the king’s physicians.
The man was a strange personage. A doctor, an astronomer, and he had
his own printing press and made hieroglyphs for use with it. Antiquities
and pictures graced his home. His crowded garden inspired Shelley to
write “the sensitive plant”. (Gribble,1972:25).
It was a strange relationship between the old, tall, thin, white haired man
of seventy and a boy with deep, blue eyes. And the strangest thing was
that the old man understood the boy and in the same time the boy
revealed to him the school problems he was suffering from. The man was
never mentioned in Shelley’s writings without love and veneration.
There is no final answer except that Shelley at Eton had some misery and
some serenity. His worst days were probably the earliest (Gribble,1972:31).
3.1.2 Love in Shelley’s Life
love was the only law Shelley recognized “ I think one is always in love
with something or another , the error and I confess, it is not easy for
spirits ceased in flesh and blood to avoid it ,consists in seeking a mortal
image the likeness of what is perhaps eternal” (Peterfreund,2002:24)
During the years 1809-1810 Shelley wasn’t thinking much of his school
friendship, studies, or anything else than of Cousin Harriet Grove,
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Shelley was very pleased with his successful devotion to Harriet, The
most important stage in Shelley’s youth-hood. Shelley at seventeen was
tall for his age, slightly and delicately built with a profusion of silky
brown hair that curled naturally. His expression was remarkable for its
sweetness and innocence .his eyes were large and blue. His voice
ordinarily soft and low but rising to a screech when he was
excited(Wood,1924:12).
Harriet was not the first love in Shelley’s life; however she is always
mentioned with sense of priority. She was Shelley’s cousin, a very pretty
girl in sixteen. She loved Shelley and they were both too young to be
formally engaged... Harriet thought that Shelley was different from the
others. She loved his romantic features she shivered in girlish delight
when he spoke to her of haunted ruins and began to frighten her.
3.2 Shelley at Oxford
Shelley’s cousin wrote “Shelley was sent to University College because
his father had been at that college and sir Philip Sidney a benefactor of
it”.
Their Oxford was the early Oxford in which no games were played.
There was no (tubing) at those days and no practicing at the nets the only
way of entertainment was to walk and talk(Gribble,1972: 48).
Among out men, Shelley’s only friends appear to have been some
Estonians. It is said that he was always glad to see them when they called,
but equally glad to lose sight of them when they went. The men of his
own college too, saw little of him – except his intimate friend and future
biographer Thomas Jefferson Hogg (Foot,2004:55).
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It was 27th march 1811, Shelley and his friend Hogg had been at Oxford
less than six months, they were both prodigiously clever and both
expelled –for a sin that shocked everyone in the college and everyone else
heard the story.
Shelley and Hogg had written and published a defense of atheism, the
first to appear in print in the English language. (Blunden,1964: 51) (all ideas of
Shelley about atheism will be mentioned in chapter four that will deal
with Shelley’s philosophy in life.)
Shelley and Harriet were now separated and Shelley wrote to his friend
Hogg “she is gone, she got married to a clod of earth, she will become as
insensible to herself; all those fine capabilities will molder .let’s speak no
more on the subject”.( Wood,1924:12).
There may be several reasons behind the breakup. But the most
recommended one is that the couple were too young at that time and they
were incapable of holding on in addition, Harriet was of a disposition too
quiet and careful to be wholly or long pleased with Shelley’s incorrect
bursts of intellectual passion. ( Blunden,1964:47).
Whatever was the reason, the story ended by the marriage of Harriet and
the demand of Shelley not to talk about the issue. But as we mentioned in
the introduction, Shelley could never live without love and love was the
essential thing in his life, as a result Shelley was engaged in a second
relationship with a second Harriet. The story will be discussed in the next
pages.
Back to the atheism subject, Shelley was asked to apologize and recant
what he said but he refused apology and recantation. In a letter to his
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father he explained that his atheism was not a passing fancy or an
undergraduate prank. It was essential to everything he believed in. To
recant his atheism was to recant all his ideas and that he couldn’t and
wouldn’t do( Foot,2004:55).His refusal of apology was the reason that he was
expelled from the college.
Memories of Hogg show Shelley as a wild youth,-but of a delightfully
fantastic wildness,-long-haired in an age in which it was the fashion for
men to wear their hair close-cropped like grooms-standing or rather,
walking, aloof from the conventional-studies and normal amusements at
Oxford. In particular we find him pursuing and rejoicing in literary
adventures (Gribble,1972:32) .
Second Harriet was a showy girl with a startling complexion, brilliant
with natural pink and white. She had an advantage over the others for she
was at school with Shelley’s sisters. (Foot, 2004:15). Shelley loved beauty and
she was extremely beautiful. Going through the life of Shelley we find
that he was in love of every beauty, he was always in search of something
that he couldn’t find. As we go deeper and as we see in some
biographers’ point of view that he wasn’t in love with second Harriet as
he was missing something he wanted to compensate it by the love of
Harriet. Shelley married her with the help of the old sister Eliza, so the
couples eloped together from London married in Edinburgh. Her father
was to refuse such marriage for he wanted his daughter to finish her
studies rather than getting married in school.
The best account on Harriet comes from Thomas Love Peacock, who
befriended the Shelley’s in 1812 when he wrote “her complexion was
beautifully transparent; the tint of the blush rose shining through the lily.
The tone of her voice was pleasant; her speech of essence of frankness
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and cordiality; her spirits always cheerful; her laugh spontaneous, heartly
and joyous. She was well educated, her whole aspect demeanor such
manifest emanations of pure and truthful nature, that to be once in her
company was to know her thoroughly.
She was kind, gentle and honest and she was by no means the “dumb
blond” which Shelley worshipers have made her out to be.” (Wood, 1924: 16).
Shelley was the heir of baronetcy and great states. Harriet Westbrook,
whom he soon married, was a daughter of a licensed saloon keeper. She
was thinking and acting like a saloon keeper’s daughter (Wood,1924:18). The
gap between them got wider and wider specially that Shelley did not
enjoy that sort of women. Comparing Shelley to Byron we find that when
Byron loved a woman, he looked for a female animal to hold; Shelley,
when he loved sought for an angle with whom to chatter sweet
philosophy .Static’s establish that few angels are born to Saloon keepers
or indeed to men. (Peterfreund,2002:37).
It seems that Shelley was not in real love with Harriet at that time it is
more probable that he was never in love with her .They were different in
many things and the proof that Shelley wasn’t really in love with her was
that he wrote to Hogg “your jokes on Harriet amuse me; it is a common
error for people to fancy each other in their own situation, but if I know
anything about love I’ m not in love” (Gribble,1972:39).
Shelley advised Harriet to resist her father when he endeavored to compel
her to go to school but she said that resistance was useless but she would
“fly with me and through herself upon my protection”(Abrams,1993: 634).
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The reasons why Shelley married Harriet if he was not in love with her
remain hidden for even Shelley didn’t obviously declare that he was not
in love with Harriet until they broke up.
Some Shelley’s admirers thought that Harriet was the reason behind the
break up but we must not be hard on Harriet for she was only sixteen and
a daughter of a saloon keeper, she thought that it was better for her to get
married than to complete studying.
She thought that Shelley was her cavalier –she used to believe in
chivalry- And she appealed to it. Shelley married her out of chivalry not
love (Blunden,1946:40).
Many biographers believed that Shelley wasn’t in real love with Harriet
and he married her out of chivalry only. Edmund Blunden in his (Shelley,
a life story) mentioned that “Shelley didn’t think that he is in love with
Harriet and the discovery increased to appeal to his chivalry”
(Peterfreund,2002:116).
Harriet lived with Shelley for just under three years. The first two of them
were the happiest ones. She was content to be Shelley’s companion and
disciple. He was flattered by her passive adoration and even promoted it
but increasingly he was frustrated by It. (Foot,2004:118).
We can clearly see that this point was also one of the romantic influences
on Shelley. The man was a romantic poet. Poets are always in search of
something and always looking for excitement Harriet was always in love
with him. There was some stability in their relationship; sometimes this
stability may cause frustration and frustration.
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There were early signs of this frustration. One poem written probably at
Lyn mouth in 1812 seems to be an effort to make up some marital
dispute.
It begs for one soul reviving kiss and then goes on to argue, as though this
point was at the center of the debate that the poet’s love is bound
inexorably to action.
The thirst for action, and the impassioned thought
Prolong my being; if I wake no more
My life more actual living will contain
Than some grey veteran’s of the world’s cold school,
Whose listless hours unprofitably roll
By one enthusiast feeling unredeemed,
Life went on despite these disagreements and Harriet gave birth to her
first child Iantha. Peacock writes that Shelley was extremely in love with
the daughter and he used to please and lull her with his songs.
During that era of disagreement and the conflict between the two couples,
a second child came to life. (Charles) and it was very clear that Shelley
was in another relationship with another woman and that soon aggravated
the situation which was after this incident turned the relationship into
pieces especially after Shelley’s elopement with another woman –Marry
Godwin.
Many things were said as reasons behind the break up for Harriet was
expecting a child and it was impossible to continue to live as a wife of a
wandering prophet of cloudy righteousness. And he didn’t like this in her
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nor did he like her sloppiness as a housekeeper. She was a cook utterly
without even ordinary appetite and bad cooking was ever a fruitful
instigator of unfaithfulness (Wood,1924:32).
Hogg said “the beefsteak Harriet cooked would have made good soles for
shooting shoes. No wonder Shelley became a vegetarian, and would rush
into bakeries to purchase a loaf of bread and munch it ravenously as he
walked along the streets” (Blunden,1964:41).
This is also one of the romantic influences on Shelley. I can’t see a point
in all that was said by Shelley’s biographers that he was suffering in his
life with Harriet for she was a daughter of a saloon keeper and that she
wouldn’t have learned the discipline of the high society, or she couldn’t
deal with her husband in a the way that he wanted or dress as he wanted.
The point is different. Shelley as a typical romantic poet was always
looking for and expecting the best. This constant search for the best was
the reason of many troubles in his life. For, the one who is always
searching and expecting the best in life,especially in his relationships
with people will always suffer. Shelley – quite probably- wanted the
blossoming flower he first met at school with his sisters. He wanted that
(most beautiful young girl of the school) not forgiving her for any
change.
Two years after this incident she gave birth to Shelley’s son Charles and
two miserable years later she flung herself into the Serpentine and
drowned. Their sad story ended by the suicide of Elizabeth.
Back in London Shelley became a disciple of the radical social
philosopher, William Godwin, author of (Inquiry Concerning Political
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Justice) Godwin , a philosopher and feminist was a man of high thinking
and low finances was urging his disciples of whom Shelley was one to
take his writings less seriously and lend him more money (Abrams,1993:644).
Godwin’s political justice had influenced Shelley very much. He read it at
Eton and Oxford. Godwin had been an advocate for free love as well as
his being a non conformist minister, a Unitarian, an atheist, and a
republican. (Wood,1924:35).
Shelley was somehow affected by Godwin’s ideas and he made himself
like son to him and of course his daughters had to take part in this
relationship between the young poet and their father. Fanny, one of them
committed suicide for the love of Shelley, Mary eloped with him and
married him ,Jane lived with Shelley and Mary which- in the eyes of
many- one of his mistresses. This was probably a partial fantasized
satisfaction of his extreme love for his sisters(Foot,2004:127).
Mary Godwin, was in every particular, the opposite of Harriet (educationbehavior-beliefs,) she was well educated and a daughter of a philosopher
unlike Harriet, a daughter of a saloon keeper. Shelley knew Marry during
his marriage to Harriet and he loved her during it as well. They eloped
together and got married in France July.28th 1814.
In 1815, Mary gave birth to her baby who died a few days after birth.
This was a second disaster after the death of his wife .This disaster
shocked him so much.
In 1819 little William arrived and for the bad luck the second baby too
died in his father’s arms. That was too difficult for the couple to endure.
Mary withdrew from everything, even the books which had comforted
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her through the previous disaster (she wrote her very famous novel
Frankenstein after her first disaster).
She described her withdrawal from Shelley and from everything in a
short poem soon after the death of the baby.
During that time Shelley got closer to Claire, the daughter by an early
marriage of William Godwin’s second wife. She was in contact with
Shelley for the last eight years of his life. She was with the couple when
they eloped to France. Shelley wrote many (hidden) poems to Claire
Thou too, O comet beautiful and fierce,
Who drew the heart of this universe
Towards thine own; til, wrecked in that convulsion,
Alternating attraction and repulsion,
Thine went astray, and that was rent in twain;
Oh, float into our azure heaven again!
***
and some letters to her as well asking her to write to him confidential
letters as the confidential he wrote her. “A adieu, dearest –be careful to
tear this letter to pieces as I have written confidentially” (Foot,2004:132).
In 1818, Shelley departed from England and was recognized as poet of
original tone, style, and subject fertile in mighty visions and in the same
year Shelley decided to take his paintings and go south visiting Florence
and Rome and settling until the spring in Naples. (Blunden,1946:45).
Shelley’s yacht was taken to the coast , it turned out that it has a hole
which probably made it sink. The bodies of Shelley, Williams and
Charles Vivian which the sea gave up and for which Trelawney searched
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the Italian shore with such energy, were so long in the water that they
revealed very little of those last moments.
On July 8th, then, Shelley and Williams had perished. Leigh Hunt wrote
the best words cor cordium in Latin. Beneath the quotations by
Trelawney on the grave stone
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange
***
Shelley’s life was full of romantic incidents and was –for many- the life
of a typical romantic poet who used to believe in inspiration and on the
feeling that he was always inspiring others to know themselves.
In his early youth he used to believe himself to be one sent among men
with a modern salvation for them. The chance that he was born a destined
leader of a new day didn’t disappear from his new mind altogether or he
couldn’t have prayed the spirit called the West Wind to. (Blunden,1964:314).
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth;
And, by the incantation of this verse
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
During Shelley’s life he experienced many romantic characteristics. The
previous one was the belief that the role of the poet is to be a seer or a
prophet, the one who tells people and inspire them to do and to express
themselves. When Shelley’s dead body was found they found in his
pocket a small edition of Sophocles and in the other the volume of
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Keats’s poem borrowed from Hunt. That shows and proves Shelley to the
last moments was interested in reading and in looking for the new and the
better.
On August 16th the funeral pyre was built and before a similar concourse
headed by Trelawney, Byron, Hunt, Captain Shenely, Italian soldiers and
officers. The same ceremonies were observed in the same surpassing
brilliance of nature. This time however a new offering was made to the
dead and the copy of Keats’s last book- the only one procurable in Italymade part of the flame that rose from the pyre. The English men all
agreed “that lovers of book and antiquity and ,like Shelley and his
companion, Shelley in reticular with his Greek enthusiasm would not
have been sorry to foresee this fate” all were taken with the extraordinary
beauty of the flame looking as though it contains the glassy essence of
vitality “on the yellow sand between the soft shining Mediterranean and
the marble mountains; but when Trelawney’s description of the whole
occasion ,not lacking in painful and mortal touches ,was given to the
world. In 1858, it was used as an argument against cremation(Blunden,1964:
304).Shelley’s
ashes were buried in the protestant cemetery in Rome.
The life of Shelley has ended dramatically, has gone with a belief that
love is life “man is always in love with something or another”. Indeed he
was always in love with love in something or another until he passed
away.
3.3 Summary
Next, the study will focus on the poetry of Shelley and study them in an
attempt to show the romantic characteristics and qualities we discusses in
chapter one.
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Chapter 4
Romanticism in Shelley’s Poetry
4.0 Introduction
In this chapter we will focus on the Shelley’s poetry and study it in terms
of the romantic characteristics we mentioned in chapter one, taking the
characteristics of the romantic era one by one and search about them in
Shelley’s poetry will prove to what extent Shelley was a typical romantic
poet and to what degree his poems were typical romantic poems. But the
technique we will use will be complex for we may find in one poem two
or three of the romantic characteristics, so we will choose a poem and
then discuss all the romantic characteristics in it and discuss them.
In this chapter we will also see what Shelley really thought of poetry and
how he defined good poetry and good poets. We will also see how he put
standards for the good piece of art and what those standards are.
4.1 Romantic Characteristics in Shelley’s Poetry
Shelley was not far from other romantics in his way of thinking and
evaluating poetry. He was like Wordsworth in the idea that poetry is a
matter of expression not a matter of imitation. He was like Coleridge
considering imagination the main element of poetry. He only differed
from them in the techniques of using the language and the different
themes he was writing on.
Shelley believed that poetry is an “expression of feelings” It differs from
logic that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind
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and that its birth and recurrence has no necessary connection with
consciousness or will" (Shelley,2006:49).
In this respect Shelley thought the same way the romantics used to think
of poetry as an expression of imagination.
Shelley believed that the good poet is the one who is capable of
redrawing a scene or an action using his own imagination, he didn’t want
the elements to affect him but he is the one who must affect the elements
of a scene of a poem.
Shelley says “man having enslaved the elements remain himself a slave.”
(Abrams,1993:753)
The question whether poetry is a matter of pleasure and joy or it has a
message to convey was answered by Shelley himself when he explained
“poetry is ever accompanied with pleasure; all spirits in which it falls,
open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight”.
(Shelley,2006:51)
Shelley didn’t mean that poetry only brings pleasure to the readers but at
the same time it has a message to convey and wisdom to present.
Knowing what poetry meant to Shelley we come to know who the poet to
Shelley was because good poems were presented only by good poets.
Good poets to Shelley are “those who imagine and express this
indestructible order, are not only the authors of language and music, of
the dance and architecture and statuary and painting they are the
institutors of laws and the founder of civil society, and the inventors of
the arts of lives and the teachers who draw into a certain propinquity wit
the beautiful and the true that partial apprehension of the agencies of the
invisible word which is called religion.”(IBID:53)
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This is a full definition that obviously gives the reader an idea how
Shelley used to think. Shelley extended the term “poet” to include all
those who play important role in creating something that affects the
society positively. He meant those who innovate and create something or
a piece of art, here we’re back again to the main concept of the romantics
that a good poet is the one who innovates not just imitates, he is not the
one holding a mirror to society and nature, he is the one that plays
effective role through his creative imagination to participate in the events
and the scenes he sees in life.
Romantic characteristics existed very obviously in many of Shelley’s
works. (Considering the ones we discussed in the first chapter).Speaking
about Shelley and not all the romantics because they differ from each
other in the forms of their poems and even the language they used.
Shelley’s language was attacked that it is an overwhelming language
filled with passion and emotions regardless of the themes, and that he
focuses more on the synonyms of certain words showing emotions and
passions.
“poem after poem shows him putting himself into the habitual poetic
postures, trying to work up the customary pressure of feeling ,and filling
out facile lines with the limited range of poetic properties that he used
over and over again-the stars, the abyss, oceans, spirits of the air,
lightening, promontories, mountains the whirl wind, et cetera. Often
enough both theme and emotional attitude are totally banal.” “They act
only as artificial stimulants to the favorite emotional states that he was
determined to stir in himself"( Ford,1970:212).
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Studying many of Shelley’s poems, one can see that this stress and focus
on the emotional language and the use of special words repeating them a
lot is a fact but the question remains; is it a matter of emptiness or it is
meant to show and support certain ideas and themes he writes about?
Taking those poems in detailed study will reveal whether this is true or
it’s been exaggerated according to other reasons like “difficulty in
understanding these poems or other reasons we will come to.” In
addition, one can not judge a person’s statements saying they are too big,
but rather say they are too big for ‘me’ to understand or to accept. When
–for instance- one see Shelley’s statements and verses are completely
acceptable and free of any exaggeration. Shelley has intensity of emotion
that is why people may consider what he says as an exaggeration but if
we double look at his poems and we know that to him what he says is
really what he feels one can understand and appreciate this ‘so called’
exaggeration.
For Shelley, poetry is "A species of linguistic master text that constructs
the world artistically, intellectually and socially." (Peterfreund,2002:2).
This is also considered to be one of the romantic characteristics. As they
also believe in the point of destruction through certain power of
imagination. To them the good poet is the one who is able to destroy the
elements of any scene and rebuild it using his imagination. This
destruction doesn’t come only through imagination; it comes through all
the elements of the poem itself (the language and its techniques).
Speaking about the techniques of the language I mean all the elements the
poet uses to reach the best expression he looks for.
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Shelley emphasizes that “sounds as well as thoughts have relations both
between each other and towards that which they represent (Abrams,1993:
756).
Shelley here is telling us that the sound also affects the poem and the
message that it conveys. So, one of the techniques that is used to support
the poem is the sound. And here comes the issue of translation we
mentioned in the first chapter.
Hence the language of poets have ever affected a certain uniform and
harmonious recurrence of sound, without which it were not poetry, and
which is scarcely less indispensable to the communication of its
influence, than the words themselves ,without reference to that peculiar
order. Hence the vanity of translation; it were as wise a violet into
crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and
odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of
a poet( Shelley,2006:9).
Sound is not the sole quality that should be used in a poem to make it
successful and different from speech. The rhyme as well gives the poem
its taste and work as an important factor in succeeding the poem. Shelley
is very much concerned with rhyme.
The use of rhyme by Shelley makes one admiringly aware of the poet’s
awareness that every detail in a poem counts that technical
considerations are always significant"
(Reiman and Fraistat ,2002: 622).
To Shelley as to many of the romantics, poetry is an expression of
feelings. To express these feelings many factors have to wok together to
form the final shape of the poem. These factors are (the elements of the
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language). Language to Shelley was the most important element that
brings joy to a poem. He considered it “the skein, the thread, the material
basis that –when woven into poetry frames, reveals and conceals beauty
or passionate desire” (PeterFreund,2002:144).
The language of poetry- to the romantics- is the language of emotions and
sense. Shelley uses the emotional language in many of his poems to the
point that he is accused that his language is (conventional effusion) a
basically simple state made with great emotional heightening.
In this stanza from Prometheus unbound:
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steed
Which trample the dim winds: in each there stands
A wild eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen tars:
Others with burning eyes lean forth and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair they al
Sweep onward.
***
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The emotional quality defines itself more than the object aroused it. The
emotional quality of language to reinforce the scene is while familiar
enough but a passage of such description of the hours goes much further
towards the expression of emotion without support from a stated theme.
(Ford,1970:214)
No wonder Shelley meant to use this “spontaneous occurrence of such
feelings not without reasonable causes”, for he considers poetry itself has
no logic and it differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to
the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and
recurrence have no necessary connection with consciousness or will
(Shelley,2006:49).
In Shelley’s hymn to intellectual beauty:
The awful shadow of unseen power
Floats though unseen amongst us,-visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower,Like moon beams that behind some piny mountains shower,
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,***
Like cloud in starlight widely spread,-like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear and yet dearer for its mystery.
***
The language shows the techniques Shelley used in his poetry (a romantic
characteristic). In this stanza Shelley’s imaginative language is very clear
since the very beginning of the poem. Intellectual means none sensible,
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beauty that is beyond access by sense experience. He describes this
intellectual beauty as “summer winds that creep from flower to flower,Like moon beams that behind some piney mountains shower,
Each human heart and countenance”
The tendency to nature and natural objects is very obvious in this stanza
and the personification of this “unseen” power as if “seen” is also one of
the romantic characteristics in writing.
In another stanza of the same poem, some of Shelley’s own personality
appears when he says
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed;
***
It is very clear that Shelley refers to his personal experiments when he
was young with magic. Here also we find another romantic characteristic
which is the tendency to exotic beauty and supernatural creatures, the
belief in the strange things that hardly be appreciated by a non-romantic.
Imagination is one of the most important fundamental rules of the
romantic poetry; imagination is to have access beyond the common sense
perceptions. It is to break the main elements of a scene and rebuild them
using your imagination. Shelley was always in search of something that
he couldn’t and wouldn’t find his whole life for he was searching for
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ideal love and when he couldn’t find it he had better imagine it and dream
about it. This state of dreaming was also clear in many of Shelley’s
poems. Through it he reached his full satisfaction and contentment
dreaming that he found what he was looking for.
In one of the most important poems by Shelley the “Epypsichidion” he
says
Soft as an incarnation of the sun,
When light is changed to love, this glorious one
Floated into the cavern where I lay,
And called my spirit, and the dreaming clay
Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below
As smoke by fire, and in her beauty’s glow
I stood and felt the dawn of my long night.
Was penetrating me with living light.
It knew it was the vision veined from me
So many years –that was Emily.
***
A year later Shelley wrote to his friend John Gisborne “the
“Epypsichidion” l can not look at. The person it celebrates was a cloud
instead of a Juno.I think one is always in love with something or other;the
error; and I confess it is not easy for spirits ceased in flesh and blood to
avoid it ,consist in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of perhaps
eternal” (Foot ,2004:137)
Indeed not easy for spirits ceased in flesh and blood to avoid it. No doubt
Shelly was always in search of his perfect love and that is obvious
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through what he confessed to his friend I addition to what his poems
reflected.
When failed to find this perfect love in reality, Shelley dreamed about it
and instead of seeing the young girl in the poem as just a ‘girl’ he started
reshaping her -with his imagination- as a juno (queen of heaven in roman
myths). Using his imagination and his ability to construct and rebuild
scenes and actions. This is common in nonromantic quality that their
imagination does have the ability to change people, places, and situations
as well.
Another poem that shows this ability to construct and build an image
according to his own desire and wish is the “love’s philosophy” when his
imagination draws a nice picture mixed by nature to show his beloved
how everything in life is divine and mingled together so that they should
be together for this is the law of nature and they have to follow. In this
poem Shelley used beautiful images from nature to support his
philosophy so no one can reject or deny what he says. He uses these
images to come to a final end that he and his beloved should be together.
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by the law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?
***
- 88 -
When Shelley lives this state of imagination he deeply live it to the point
that leads him to reject reality. In the “ode to the west wind” (the wild
spirit, preserver and destroyer) he lived in that state of imagining himself:
As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
***
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And by the incantation of this verse
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to un awakened earth
The trumpet of prophecy! O, wind,
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
***
Another example of Shelley’s imaginative power that enables him to see
what others cannot see and put it in a suitable form is “A Widow Bird
Sate Mourning”
A widow bird sate mourning for her love
Upon a wintry bough;
The frozen wind crept on above,
The freezing stream below.
There was no leaf upon the forest bare,
No flower upon the ground,
And little motion in the air
Except the mill-wheel’s sound
- 89 -
***
In this poems Shelley imagines the bird's song as a mourning tune and he
based the rest of the poem on this imaginative romantic concept.
Everyone sees or hears the bird singing will understand it as ' a bird
singing', and here what we mean by that romantic power that interprets
scenes according to how the poet sees it and then base an entire work of
art on it. The bird is not just singing, she has lost something/someone. It
could be also the projection of the poet's self feeling as he- at that
moment felt the loss inside so he sees it in front of him in all situations
and creatures around him.
Many of the romantic characteristics appeared in Shelley’s famous poem
“Queen Mab”. Starting by the idea itself in which a young girl traveled in
the stratosphere by a fairy queen. The fairy queen showed her the
ugliness of the world we live in. This ugliness to Shelley is very essential
for Shelley’s hatred to tyranny and the kings in very deep and huge. So
when Shelley thinks of the worst thing in the world he thinks of
monarchy and its ugliness, this itself is a typical common romantic idea
in all romantic poets' specifically to Shelley as he was almost obsessed
with his hate to tyranny and many of his poems have the same theme.
The king, the wearer of a gilded chain
That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool
Whom courtiers nickname monarch, while a slave
Even to the bases appetite-that man
Heads not the shriek of penury; he smiles
At the deep curses which he destitute
Mutter in secret, and a sullen joy
Pervades his bloodless when thousands grown…
- 90 -
It is very clear from the above stanza that Shelley hates nothing more
than kings and monarchs and he is ready to call them have no feelings and
they’re just enjoying their being kings without having the sense to help
others or at least feel and appreciate their pain and suffering.
The theme is a typical romantic theme. Many romantic poets talked about
such themes of hatred to kings (new spirit of the world) and as we talked
in the introduction of this dissertation we showed how the old generation
of the romantic poets welcomed the French revolution and supported
Napoleon just because they believed that he would put an end to the old
systems of monarchy and would bring more freedom to the nation and the
generations to come and everyone unsatisfied with the royal system.
Shelley has also more poems in this theme and poems also in which he
attacked George III, describing him at the beginning of his sonnet
England 1819 as an old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king.
In another poem the devil’s walk in which he mocked the prince saying;
Fat as that prince’s maudlin brain
Which, addled by some gilded toy,
Tired, gives sweet meat and again
Cried for it like a humoured boy.
For he is fat, his waistcoat gay,
When strained upon a levee day,
Scarce meet across his princely paunch;
And pantaloons are like half moons
Upon each brawny haunch.
- 91 -
***
Again the “romantic language” turns to be a language filled with anger
and frustration when it comes to kings and princes. This also supports
when we say about Shelley that “it is a matter of what he feels is what he
writes and not only if the theme is love that he uses exaggerate language”.
It is also when he talked about something he hated he find the language
high so one would like to say that Shelley expressed what he really felt
not meaning to over -express or write ‘facile lines’ to entertain the reader
only. He wrote what he felt and just expressed it the way he knew.
4.2 Nature in Shelley’s Poetry
Shelley went further in his hatred and discontentment with the royal
system as well as the kings and princes. In “Queen Mab” he makes it
'nature' that rejects it, and this is also –one considered- a romantic
quality; that is to say the romantic poet feels happy so he imagines
everything in world happy 'the flowers smile, the moon shines, the birds
sing and even sing a lovely song for him and his love. In the same time
when a romantic poet is sad, the sun doesn’t shine, the sky is dark, and
the birds mourn sad song for the lost love. What one means to say is that
the romantics see what they want to see and believe in what they consider
the facts. They see the world as they feel it. Their emotional status is the
key to all their approach to life especially in their poetry; their themes
could be different from the real situation, they could be even of no
relation to what exactly happens. Their themes are the reflections of what
they feel and sense.
In “Queen Mab” Shelley presents many of his ideas as a romantic, but
when it comes to deep concept in his mind says
- 92 -
Nature rejects monarch not the man;
The subjects not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other’s hands
Whose stakes are vice and misery.
***
The other characteristic that appeared in Shelley’s poetry is his love to
nature; it is not only a matter of love when love means admiration. Nature
meant more to him. It is an inspiration, a resource of power and strength.
Mary Shelley wrote in her preface to posthumous poems.
“His life was spent in contemplation of nature, in arduous study, or in
acts of kindness and affection. He was an elegant scholar and a profound
metaphysician; without possessing much scientific knowledge, he was
unrivalled in the justness and extent of his observations on natural
objects; he knew every plant by its name, and was familiar with the
history and hobbits of every production. He could interrupt each
appearance in the sky; and the varied phenomena of heaven and earth
filled him with deep emotion”. Then she says “such was his love to
nature that every page of his poetry is associated" Hutchinson et al.
(1990: xxvi)
That is why when Shelley says that nature rejects monarchy he has more
to say than just 'natural objects reject monarch' he means nature, with its
huge and vast meaning and impact on him and in humans –as he
assumes-, nature with its greatness and souls rejects tyranny, so tyranny is
so ugly thing that we-as readers- should hate because it is against the law
of life, which is –to Shelley – the law of nature.
- 93 -
In Shelley’s “song” he presents his deep love to nature and all its
elements and as a matter of fact his love to nature was a love to all the
natural things. In the song he wrote:
I love all that you lovest,
Spirit of delight!
And the starry night;
Autumn, evening, and the morn
When the golden mists are born.
***
I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost;
I love waves, and winds, and storms
Everything almost
Which is nature’s and may be
Untainted by man’s misery.
***
These lines have the key to the concept of nature to Shelley that support
the idea that nature means much more than admiration to him. It is true
that he confesses and declares his great love to nature but the truth is that
there is something in nature that he seeks and he successfully finds.
The first thing that he loves in nature is the naturalists, “untainted” and
this itself is one of the most important things to Shelley. He wants purity
and he wishes all humans are pure and clean. This point of clearness and
purity is not rare in Shelley’s but found also in his famous poem
“Adonais” when he says
- 94 -
From the contagion of the world’s slow stain
He is secure
Shelley believes that the world is stained and not as pure as it should be.
The second thing that supports this idea in Shelley’s love to nature
appears when he says
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
Between thee and me
What difference? But thou dost possess
The things I seek, not love them less
***
So the idea is that Shelley finds that nature possesses the things he seeks
and wishes he had. The admiration of nature and the repetition of this in
many poems do not come in vain or just as a matter of joy and pleasure
caused by nature. In fact, when Shelley repeats words like sky,
mountains, flowers, and all these natural vocabulary, he means to remind
himself that he lacks something and this thing appears in nature and that
is why he wants to run and escape in nature, because he feels kind of
anesthesia in the pure nature from all the world’s pain and sorrow in
reality and here comes his poem “To Jane: An Invitation” when Shelley
writes
Away, away, from men and towns,
To the wild wood and the downs
To the silent wilderness
Where the soul need no repress
- 95 -
Its music less it should not find
An echo in another’s mind,
While the touch of the nature’s art
Harmonizes heart to heart.
***
These lines were basically supposed to be for Jane inviting her to go out
with him but the story soon changes to be as if the poet’ s invitation is for
his own soul to go to nature in a place where no soul repression would be.
Shelley goes on to say
Where the earth and ocean meet,
And all things seem only one
In the universal sun.
***
His narcissism makes it understandable that his feelings mirrored in
nature o induced by “her”. He could rely on “her” sympathy in all his
moods without disturbances or challenge or the disappointment of an
unsympathetic response from another person. True this passage comes
from an invitation to Jane to join him but her presence plays a negligible
part in the anticipation perfection".
(Ford,1970:208).
What we can say about nature in Shelley’s poetry is that it is something
that he wanted and searched for. It is the place where he finds
contentment, satisfaction and relief from the world misery. It is a state of
mind in which he creates his own harmony with the world he dreams
about.
- 96 -
Shelley was like the other romantics finds in nature things he usually does
or likes to do in the real world, but the truth is that he likes describing it
more and more in dreams or nature and this is the link.
"He idealizes things and puts them in the form that fits his own thoughts
and imagination.
In an ethereal dream in sailing away in a boat with a loved one and
making love eternally under the stars ,we can get some glimpses of what
he really liked doing, and could do in real world with real people.
(Foot ,2004:137).
But in these lines Shelley idealizes it and links it to nature to fit his
imagination and desires.
Though we eat little flesh and drink no wine,
Yet let’s be merry: we will have tea and toast;
Custards for supper, and an endless host
Of syllabubs and jellies and mince-pies,
And other such lady-like luxuries,Feasting on which we will philosophize!
***
The Romantics were eager to take emotional states seriously from
whatever source they rose unlike the Augustans who were more
concerned to relate their emotions to a reasoned structure of values. In
many of his poems Shelley bases himself on the emotion induced on him
by some natural event, a skylark song or the west wind and then find
- 97 -
some other feature of human life to which the emotion is fitting"
(Ford,1970:208)
4.3 Solitude in Shelley’s Poetry
Tendency to solitude and fascination by loneliness is very common in
Shelley’s poems just like the tendency to nature and fascination by it. The
idea, I consider believe is the same in nature and solitude because the
poet would love to escape from the “stained world” to be with his soul or
the loved one in a quiet place in nature and the same points said in the
love of nature can be said in the love of solitude in the perspective that
both are considered as escapism.
In “stanzas written in dejection” the main theme of the poem is not the
description of the sky or the sea. It is a state of mind Shelley goes through
and he –as usual – wants to link this state of emotion to nature and natural
things “clear unstained things”. Again he finds his way to nature and
stays there alone to see and contemplate the emotion induced in him:
The sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon’s transparent night,
The breath of the moist earth is light.
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city’s voice itself is soft like solitude’s.
***
- 98 -
Shelley starts the poem by drawing a picture, a nice image to the place
and the weather by setting a very beautiful scene of nature surrounded by
solitude. But is that all? Shelley wants to share all his readers his state of
emotion.
I see the deep untrampled floor
With green and purple seaweeds strown;
I see the waves upon the shore,
Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown;
I sit upon the sands alone,The lightning of the noontide ocean
Is flashing round me and a tone
Arises from its measured motion,
How sweet! did any heart now share in my emotion.
***
And because of the emotional state of depression and despair he wants
this solitude and likes it as a resource of contemplation that leads to
satisfaction.
Alas, I have nor hope nor health,
Nor peace within nor calm around,
Nor that content surpassing wealth
The sage in meditation found
***
Then after sharing this pain he tells us the reason why he was there and
why he sits alone.
- 99 -
Yet now despair itself is mild,
Even as the winds and waters are;
I could lie down like a tired child,
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear,
Till death like a sleep night steal on me,
And I might feel in the warm air
My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea
Breathe over my dying brain its last monotony.
***
What could be said about solitude is the same –to far extent- as what we
already said about nature and the way Shelley uses it as a medium to
reach his contentment.
In “To Jane the Recollection” Shelley describes silence as;
How calm it was!-the silence there
By such a chain was bound
That even a busy woodpecker
Made stiller by her sound
The inviolable quietness:
The breath of peace we drew
With its soft motion made not less
The calm that round us grew.
***
The “silence by such a chain was bound” is like the place in which the
“soul need no repress”. So it is the same idea that silence to Shelley is a
- 100 -
reflection to something that he really wants to get in reality. It is where he
can escape to nature and keep hidden from the stained world to purity.
This combination of silence and nature both work together to form the
ideal dream Shelley looks for. In his poem “song” he declares.
I love tranquil solitude,
And such society
As is quiet, wise, and good;
***
Now what appears from the above mentioned is that “solitude” or the
tendency to solitude can be replaced by the tendency to “contemplate”.
And being alone should not be understood as being apart from the society
Shelley lived in but being with his soul contemplating.
“The Indian serenade” explains how Shelley starts in the very beginning
by a state of emotion or a dream “something exists in reality” he just
wants to reshape it using all the tools he like to form it in another way.
I arise from dream of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright;
I arise from dream of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me-who knows how?
To thy chamber window, sweet!
***
- 101 -
The first thing that Shelley does is to put us in the situation, showing and
sharing us his emotional state then
The wandering air they faint
On the dark, the silent streamThe champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart;As I must on thine,
Oh, beloved as thou art!
***
After we come to know the state of emotion, he has to draw a scene –for
more imagination and through it he reaches satisfaction and contentment
mentioning the emotional vocabulary in details which makes his readers
able to live the same dream and be in the same situation as he. Now in
the last stanza he became totally saturated by his state of mind to the
point that he says,
Oh lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kiss rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heat beats loud and fast;Oh! Press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.
- 102 -
***
Here Shelley comes to the final result that he looked for from the very
beginning, but to reach this final result and as a romantic poet Shelley has
his own tools that he uses in all the his poetry “nature, imagination, sense
and the language”.
Now we have to say that Shelley tended to “contemplation” as a tool to
convey his messages and not for the sake of solitude itself and what one
say could also be applied on nature.
Not only the above were the romantic characteristics in Shelley’s poetry,
there are also some other general characteristics that appear in his poems
and considered to be romantic.
In Shelley’s “Ozymandias”, there appears one of the fundamental
principals in Shelley’s life. “The hatred to kings and tyrants” and we will
talk about it in details in the next chapter. But here we will discuss it as
one of Shelley’s most important sonnets.
I met a traveler from antique land
Who said ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the dessert…near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tel that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those 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;
- 103 -
Look on my works, ye mighty and despair”!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of the colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’
***
Though the theme is common, the scenario is extraordinary. In the poem
Shelley presents the idea that he hates barbarism and human wildernesswhich is common to the romantics, but the way how Shelley introduces
this idea and presents it successfully to the point that made the poem one
of the most important pomes in the hatred of the kings and the tyrants in
history.
Less pronounced but no less telling is the analogy between
“Ozymandias- Rameses II” and another latter-day tyrant, Napoleon, who
conquered what remained of the former’s Egypt in 1798 defeating
Mamelukes twice, within sights of the pyramids. The sonnet “feelings of a
republican on the fall of Bonaparte” published two years before
“Ozymandias” in the “Alastor” volume in 1816, contains a striking
anticipation of the shattered statuary in it. The republican speaker
laments the fact that Napoleon, who could have been the champion of
liberty, became its murderer" (Peterfreund ,2002:53).
Thou mightst have built thy throne
Where it [liberty] had stood even now: thou didst prefer
A frail and bloody pomp which Time has swept
In fragments towards oblivion
***
- 104 -
The poem is very clear considering the theme and even the language
which made it alive till now as a symbol for the hatred to the kings
‘manners, and which also made it famous as a quotation to any one wants
to peak of the ugly face of tyranny. A Sudanese poet, Seed Ahmed
Elhardalo has a poem in which he talks about tyranny and kings. It is
worth mentioning for he quoted Shelley’s term “king of kings” to reveal
that ugliness appears in the faces of the tyrants:
‫ﻫل ﺒﺩﺃ ﺍﻟﻁﻐﺎﺓ ﻭﺍﻟﺒﻐﺎﺓ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻟﻡ ﻴﺭﺤﻠﻭﻥ‬
Do” tyrants” and “ transgressors”
‫ﻫﺎ ﻫﻡ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻜل ﺍﻟﻌﺼﻭﺭ ﻭﺍﻟﺩﻫﻭﺭ ﻴﺴﻘﻁﻭﻥ‬
started to leave the world? I see them
during decades pass away. Neither
‫ﻟﻡ ﺘﻤﻨﻊ ﺍﻟﺠﻴﻭﺵ ﻫﺒﺔ ﺍﻟﺸﻌﻭﺏ ﻀﺩ ﺘﻠﻜﻡ ﺍﻟﻌﺭﻭﺵ‬
Army would stop the nations’ arise
‫ﻭﻻ ﻤﺨﺎﻓﺭ ﺍﻟﺒﻭﻟﻴﺱ ﺤﺎﻟﺕ ﺩﻭﻥ ﺩﻙ ﻤﻌﻘل‬
against them nor the police protected
‫ﺍﻟﻁﺎﺅﻭﺱ‬
their crowns, nor the names “king of
‫ﻭﻻ ﺃﻟﻘﺎﺏ "ﻤﻠﻙ ﺍﻟﻤﻠﻭﻙ" ﻭ "ﺍﻟﻘﺎﺌﺩ" ﺃﻨﻘﺫﺕ ﺍﻟﺩﻴﻭﻙ‬
the kings” “commanders” saved the
‫ﻭﺍﻟﺘﻴﻭﺱ‬
“roosters” and the “he-goats”. They
‫ﺫﻫﺒﻭﺍ ﻜﻤﺎ ﺠﺎﺀﻭﺍ ﻓﻬل ﺘﻔﻴﺩ ﺍﻵﺨﺭﻴﻥ ﺘﻠﻜﻡ ﺍﻟﺩﺭﻭﺱ‬
have gone the way they came. Will the
other make use of such lessons!
There are questions being repeated a lot especially when speaking about a
romantic poet, [Is there a relation between the poet and the poem?], in
other words, [do poets’ lives appear in their poetry and to what extent]?
[Should the poet separate his personal life and experiences from the
poems he writes or there should be a link between them?] [Is poetry an
expression of self emotions and experiences or it is a reflection of the
community with all its events and incidents?][Was Shelley the only poet
accused of emotional exaggeration?]
- 105 -
The answer –one consider- (No). Almost all the romantic poets especially
Shelley were attacked and accused of focusing on their feelings not
putting into consideration the community around them.
Mary Shelley, in her note on “Alstor; the spirit of solitude” explains that
“A very few years, with their attendant events, had checked the ardour of
Shelley’s hopes, though he still thought them well grounded, events not
political, such as the final defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the
Bourbons in France, but personal such as poverty, loss of friends, and the
expectations that he would soon die of consumption”. And she considered
“Alastor” “an outpouring of emotion.” (Reiman & Fraistat,2002:654).
Shelley was “putting himself into the habitual poetic postures, trying to
work up the customary pressure of feelings and filling out facile lines
with the limited range of poetic properties that he used over and over
again. That is one thing said about Shelley; the second thing is that he
“was in capable of effective reasoning and the intellectual control of his
emotional outpourings”. (Ford,1970:210)
Is Shelley really incapable of effective reasoning and the intellectual
control of his emotional outpourings? Some critics do not think so, they
believe that the complexity sometimes comes from the readers
themselves to understand and cope with Shelley’s way of writing. Taking
“Ozymandias” as an example, the poem was compressed to the point it
may not be easily understood and there is some grammatical confusion in
the lines:
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
- 106 -
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed
And on the pedestal these words appear:
The meaning of these lines is “the sculptor well perceived these passions
which have now (stamped in the stone record) outlived both the
sculptor’s hand that imitated them and the kingly heart that nourished
them” . But the poem is still clear despite the difficulty appears to the
reader for the first time.(Ford,1970:211)
However it may be clear that Shelley uses emotional outpouring a lot and
some of even his great poems contain these huge feelings without reason,
his poetry became familiar by their honesty as well as their abilities to
convey a message that he wants his readers to receive. And it is not
necessarily that he is over reacting to his emotions this could be the real
feelings of him but because people were used to the Augustans taste in
which the poet only represents the general fallings of the common people
and he has to focus on the reason rather than the feelings of his own.
Or may be Shelley has the ability to feel and predict things others cannot
do so they came to attack him which is normal in poetry many poets were
attacked the same attack however they continuo feeling they are “vates”
or prophets- if not prophets they have secrets of prophecy- as Shelley
used to believe. This reminds one of a poem by the Lebanese poet- Ellia
Abomady- (Alomyan) (the blinds):
How many times we listened to the
‫ﻜﻡ ﺨﻔﻀﻨﺎ ﺍﻟﺠﻨﺎﺡ ﻟﻠﺠﺎﻫﻠﻴﻨﺎ‬
ignorant and we excused them while
‫ﻭﻋﺫﺭﻨﺎﻫﻡ ﻓﻤﺎ ﻋﺫﺭﻭﻨﺎ‬
they never do, tell them you wise
‫ﺨﺒﺭﻭﻫﻡ ﻴﺎ ﺃﻴﻬﺎ ﺍﻟﻌﺎﻗﻠﻭﻨﺎ‬
people that we _poets_ have the
‫ﺇﻨﻤﺎ ﻨﺤﻥ ﻤﻌﺸﺭ ﺍﻟﺸﻌﺭﺍﺀ‬
- 107 -
secrets of prophecy.
‫ﻴﺘﺠﻠﻰ ﺴﺭ ﺍﻟﻨﺒﻭﺓ ﻓﻴﻨﺎ‬
***
***
Tell them for there may be a great
‫ﺨﺒﺭﻭﻫﻡ ﻓﺭﺏ ﺨﻴﺭ ﻜﺒﻴﺭ‬
benefit done by reminders, for people
‫ﻓﻌﻠﺘﻪ ﺍﻟﻬﺩﺍﺓ ﺒﺎﻟﺘﺫﻜﻴﺭ‬
are from either mud or light and
‫ﺇﻨﻤﺎ ﺍﻟﻨﺎﺱ ﻤﻥ ﺘﺭﺍﺏ ﻭﻨﻭﺭ‬
those made of mud worship mud and
‫ﻓﺒﻨﻭﺍ ﺍﻟﻨﻭﺭ ﻴﻌﺒﺩﻭﻥ ﺍﻟﻨﻭﺭ‬
those made of light worship light.
‫ﻭﺒﻨﻭ ﺍﻟﻁﻴﻥ ﻴﻌﺒﺩﻭﻥ ﺍﻟﻁﻴﻥ‬
***
***
Do you say “he is insane”! Do you
! ‫ﺃﺘﻘﻭﻟﻭﻥ ﺇﻨﻪ ﻤﺠﻨﻭﻥ‬
say he’s “crazy”! Do you say “poor
! ‫ﺃﺘﻘﻭﻟﻭﻥ ﺇﻨﻪ ﻤﻔﺘﻭﻥ‬
poet”! How many king, commanders
‫ﺃﺘﻘﻭﻟﻭﻥ ﺸﺎﻋﺭ ﻤﺴﻜﻴﻥ‬
and Minster wished to be just a “poor
‫ﻜﻡ ﻤﻠﻴﻙ ﻜﻡ ﻗﺎﺌﺩ ﻜﻡ ﻭﺯﻴﺭ‬
poet”
‫ﻭﺩ ﻟﻭ ﻜﺎﻥ ﺸﺎﻋﺭﹰﺍ ﻤﺴﻜﻴﻥ‬
***
***
“Milton” lived un known; “Homer”
‫ﻋﺎﺵ "ﻤﻠﺘﻥ" ﻓﻠﻡ ﻴﻜﻥ ﻤﺫﻜﻭﺭﺍ‬
was blind like “sheikh”! Have you
‫ﻭ"ﻫﻭﻤﻴﺭﻭﺱ" ﻜـ"ﺍﻟﺸﻴﺦ" ﻜﺎﻥ ﻀﺭﻴﺭﺍ‬
ever seen like the blinds! Don’t you
"‫ﺃﺭﺃﻴﺘﻡ ﻜﻡ ﺭﺃﻯ "ﺍﻟﻌﻤﻴﺎﻥ‬
use their light to see!!
! ‫ﺃﻓﻠﺴﺘﻡ ﺒﻨﻭﺭﻫﻡ ﺘﻬﺘﺩﻭﻨﺎ‬
Finally we can say that however Mrs. Shelley claims “Alastor” is an
outpouring of emotion- recent criticism- has tried to demonstrate that
“Shelley’s poem Alastor is not an outpouring at all. It is "A carefully
staged dialogue of sorts between the main character and the narrator
neither of which stands for Shelley, who could not decide the issue
between them" (Reiman and Fraistat ,2002:654).
What is applied on “Alastor” can also be applied on other poems by
Shelley however, I am not trying to negate the idea that some of his
poems were outpouring of emotion just like “Adonais”, but let’s ask our
selves what is wrong with the emotional outpouring? In fact it gives the
poem more sense and depth and who is the poet if not burned and made
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others burning when they read his poems…what is the role of the poet if
not a seer or a vate. In other words he could just be a normal person if he
lost these skills and gifts and start imitating the society he lives in. If so
any one could be a poet no matter wheather he’s a tyrant, a king, or an
average person.
Coming to the question whether the poet speaks of his own life and
personality through his poetry or not, and should specific poems by a
specific writer represent his personal experience and life events? That
was also one of the things said about Shelley. Indeed there is some link
between both but the most probable is that the persona or the hero in the
poem who tells the events is a reflection of the poet himself or who
foretells the events that the poet expect or feels may happen to him.
In “Alastor; the spirit of solitude”
He dreamed a veiled maid
Sate near him : talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought. …
***
The poet seeks for his prototype female and when he happens to find her
she is the “veiled maid speaking in low solemn tone and she’s like his
own soul”. As the study mentioned in the previous chapter that Shelley
spent his life looking for his ideal love, the prototype of females if one
can say. Also he provisioned his death in the last stanza of “Adonais”,
so one can say that Shelley not only was able to write in the present
events he predicted and previsions events and that fact was declared by
Shelley himself in his defense
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“Poets, according to the circumstances of the age and nation in which
they appeared, were called in the earlier epochs of the world legislators o
prophets. A poet essentially comprises and unites both these characters.
For he not only beholds intensely the present as it is, but he beholds the
future in the present. Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross
sense of the world or that they can foretell the form as surely as they
know the spirit of events; such is the pretence of superstition which would
,make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute
of prophecy"(Shelley, 2006:16).
The idea is clear .Shelley believed that the poet has a degree of prophecy
and ability to foretell events to serve the poem not only as a matter of
prophecy itself, and this idea is not only Shelly’s only one it was
practiced by many of the romantics and even non romantic poets
worldwide. Edrees Jamma, a famous Sudanese romantic poet composed a
poem (Min waraa al qudban; From behind the jail) days before his death
elegizing himself and talking about his near death that he felt so close.
Khlaeel Motran, a famous Egyptian romantic poet wrote a wonderful
poem mourning for his days and elegizing his gone spirit:
Alone in my passion, grief, and
‫ﻤﺘﻔﺭﺩ ﺒﺼﺒﺎﺒﺘﻲ ﻤﺘﻔﺭﺩ ﺒﻜﺂﺒﺘﻲ ﻤﺘﻔﺭﺩ ﺒﻌﻨﺎﺌﻲ‬
pain.Complaining to the sea my
‫ﺸﺎﻙ ﺇﻟﻰ ﺍﻟﺒﺤﺭ ﺍﻀﻁﺭﺍﺏ ﺨﻭﺍﻁﺭﻱ‬
‫ﻓﻴﺠﻴﺒﻨﻲ ﺒﺭﻴﺎﺤﻪ ﺍﻟﻬﻭﺠﺎﺀ‬
restless notions and he answers with
his strong waves. The unstable horizon
‫ﻭﺍﻷﻓﻕ ﻤﻀﻁﺭﺏ ﻗﺭﻴﺢ ﺠﻔﻨﻪ‬
with a wounded eyelid holds sighs and
‫ﻴﻤﺴﻲ ﻋﻠﻰ ﺍﻟﻌﺒﺭﺍﺕ ﻭﺍﻷﻗﺫﺍﺀ‬
dirt. As if the last tear in the world is
‫ﻓﻜﺄﻥ ﺁﺨﺭ ﺩﻤﻌﺔ ﻟﻠﻜﻭﻥ‬
mixed with my last tear to elegize me.
‫ﻗﺩ ﻤﺯﺠﺕ ﺒﺂﺨﺭ ﺃﺩﻤﻌﻲ ﻟﺭﺜﺎﺀ‬
‫ﻼ‬
‫ﻭﻜﺄﻨﻨﻲ ﺁﻨﺴﺕ ﻴﻭﻤﻲ ﺯﺍﺌ ﹰ‬
And as if –knowing my fate-I looked in
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‫ﻓﺭﺃﻴﺕ ﻓﻲ ﺍﻟﻤﺭﺁﺓ ﻜﻴﻑ ﻤﺴﺎﺌﻲ‬
the mirror and see how my evening
looked like.
In future research I hope to continue comparing Arab and English
romantic poets because there is a lot to say about their common shares
however they had never even see each other or copied from each other
but romanticism is the same around the world.
What I want to end this chapter with is that “much of Shelley’s life
history is irrelevant to the assessment of his work, but "some aspects of
his personality have literary significance through the expression they find
in his poetry and the limiting effect they sometimes have on its appeal for
the adult reader and that he would obviously not have been content with
the emotional outpouring devoid of thought but from his practice it
seems equally obvious that for him thought is valid only as part of a
more inclusive state of being and has to be judged by its truth to the
matrix of mood and attitudes from which it emerges" (Ford,1970:207).
4.4 Summary
In the next chapter we will put Shelley in focus and discuss what modern
critics say about him. We will also raise some points regarding criticism
and analyze them in the case of Shelley as one of the most controversial
poets.
Finally we will conclude the chapter with an epilogue in which we
present what one believe the perfect criticism is.
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Chapter 5
Shelley in-Focus
5.0 Introduction
Shelley’s name has been mentioned a lot in modern criticism. Whenever
the romantic era is mentioned it is Shelley's name to be mentions as one
of the powerful, influential poets who represented that era. However his
poems do not always appeal to all critics, as there were those in favor and
those who are not in favor of his poetry. This is usual in poetry as well as
in life; for it is almost impossible to have someone or something that suits
everyone, but in the case of Shelley it was almost the same comments
raised by almost all critics analyzing Shelley's poetry that is why we want
to shed light on the points mentioned by critics against Shelley versus
those who accepts Shelley as a great poet and defend certain points said
about him concluding the chapter with what we think and clarifying
certain points we believe in criticism.
In the previous chapter, one discussed Shelley’s ideas and beliefs and his
philosophy as a poet who considers poetry as a prophetic work, his ideas
and views on monarchy and tyranny and his refusal to wealth being
unequally distributed amongst people, his non stopping seeking for the
infinite love. And in this chapter one is going to shed more light on the
poet critically; mentioning what critics say about the poet; his ideas,
theories, poetry, and even life trying to unfold the truth about who is the
real Shelley, the man that despite people’ disagreement on remains one of
the greatest (big six) in the history of the English romantic poetry.
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5.1 The Poet and Emotions
Shelley’s poetry had influenced many critics to analyze and take as case
studies for the romantic era. Shelley’s name has been mentioned as a poet
of emotions and feelings rather than a poet of language and techniques.
The quality of poetry Shelley uses is very emotional and filled with raised
quality of feelings higher than the quality of the poem.
“ In some of the characteristics of Shelley’s poetry what is primarily
conveyed is an emotional quality of outlook towards rather vaguely
outlined situations and ideas , the emotional quality defining itself more
precisely than the object that aroused it.” Ford(1970:213)
We should keep in mind that the idea of romanticism was basically based
on emotions and concentration on them; Wordsworth defines poetry as
emotion recollected in tranquility. No wonder if Shelley focuses a lot on
the emotion, the era that raised Shelley was an era of emotions, unlike the
past when people were more centered in life events and external objects it
was the era of the shift to self and personality expressing. By poetry
Shelley means
“…Something much more fundamental than just end-stopped lines of
verse. He means the very capacity of sentient beings to synthesize sense
impressions and ideas which for him are made of sense impressions in
the manner as cords are composed of individual notes”. Morton (2006:187)
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So when Shelley writes pure emotion he means them, he means to
include all the weight and the power he has in order to succeed a poem
according to his own standards as well as the standards of his own age.
In “Prometheus unbound” Shelley says
The rocks are cloven, and through the purple night
I see cars drawn by rainbow-winged steeds
Which trample the dim winds: in each three stands
A wild-eyed charioteer urging their flight.
Some look behind, as fiends pursued them there,
And yet I see no shapes but the keen stars:
Others with burning eyes lean forth and drink
With eager lips the wind the lips of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it. Their bright locks
Stream like a comet’s flashing hair: they all
Sweep onward.
***
This stanza is been mentioned in a critical essay as:
“A passage like this description of the hours goes much further towards
the expression of emotion without support from a stated theme”.
(Ford,1970:213)
In this passage there is a direct shift to the emotion rather than the main
issue, and as I can see that Shelley doesn’t go beyond the normal over
flow of feelings as for – him- this is not an overflow of feelings. His
emotions appear in lines and as he writes he feels he has a lot to say and
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this makes Shelley unable to stop at any certain point and take control of
his words, he finds himself in a vicious circle moving around certain
emotional state that he basically aims and then finds himself tighten to in
so there is no way out.
Shelley, one agree, finds it quite satisfying to fill his poems with what
critics call “conventional effusion”, a basically simple statement made
with great emotional heightening”.IBID:215.
But to Shelley it is not only a matter of effusion to get the sympathy of
the reader. It was that state he loves to live thereof he loves to put in his
poems. Shelley himself declares that "he loves love"
.Abrams (1989:56).
And
as "love" means emotions recollected in tranquility , and as love means
feelings and Shelley loves "love" so this statement can be a clue to
understand why Shelley concentrated a lot on emotions and how to
overflow them in a poem.
This state makes him relived and that he appreciates this kind o
“effusion” as far as it helps helping the main theme of the poem and
elevates the emotional quality of it and it make him personally relieved as
if someone likes love, certainly will be deliberately or undesirably aiming
at inserting the thing he likes in his works and that unintentionally he will
find himself effusing emotions in his poem that he consider normal but
for others it may be kind of exaggeration and effusion.
5.2 The Poet and Personality
The question whether the poem should reflect the poet’s personality or
not is still debatable, T.S Eliot is considered one of the critics that are
totally disagreeing with the idea that the poem should reflect the
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personality of the poet or that the poet should impose any direct or
indirect features of his personality in the wok he does. Such a poem like
Tennyson’s “Break Break Break” would not appeal to Eliot as it says
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones o’ sea
And I would that my tongue
Could utter the thoughts that arise on me.
As in the poem Tennyson wishes his tongue to utter thoughts in side him.
Mr. Eliot doesn’t want a poem to include any personality clues or
indications; he believes that the poet shouldn’t be very concern with what
he feels inside, he should be concerned with what the whole society
wants.
T.S. Eliot, states
"Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the
poet but upon the poetry."
"The more perfect the artist, the more
completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind
which creates: the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the
passions which are its materials". (Lodge ,1988:74).
some agree with Mr. Eliot that personality should not be reflected greatly
on the work of art, though others see that the poet can never delete some
personal images which may exist in his poetry, as someone can not
completely stop parts of himself/herself from reflecting on the work that
he/she is doing. Part of a teacher’s personality will reflect on the way he
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teaches students, part of the doctor’s personality will affect the way he
deals with his patients. Yes people sometimes work hard to separate their
personality form the work they’re doing and the way they do things; they
try to be professionals doing a job where as they may be very careless in
their personality toward other things they do; love for instance. But in a
way or another part of one’ s personality would reflect on the thing that
he/she does, especially if that thing is a work of art which needs both
mind and heart working together to make it. Yes the poet is the voice of
the society and they should speak its issues, still the poet himself is part
of this society and should start expressing his/her own personal issues
otherwise he/she won't succeed expressing others' issues and themes.
Shelley as any other romantic poet has some features of his personality
appear in some of his poems.
He dreamed a veiled maid
Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones.
Her voice was like the voice of his own soul
Heard in the calm of thought…
***
"Praz points out (what indeed what Shelley practically avowed) that in
“Alastor” the poet’s feminine ideal is a projection of himself"(Ford,1970:213)
In many other poems by Shelley we will find this “self projection” very
clear as Shelley and many romantics mainly write to express their
personality not to hide it, so it would become difficult for them to delete
this self part from the poet’s part, plus, their main motive of writing is to
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create a work out of (spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings). And
'spontaneous' means no stopping feelings and emotion. This emotion is
sure has a major source where it is merged out from. This source is
personality as no one can pretend to have spontaneous over flow of
feelings. And if someone succeeds to pretend it he/she won't have these
spontaneous feelings as it is a gift given and not learned or gained!
Shelley has a part –if not parts of his personality – appear in his poems
and that is because he writes spontaneously and so emotionally that he
could not – as Mr. Eliot likes separate the man who feels from the poet
who writes but I believe as I mentioned before that it is not the poet who
should separate and stop his/her personality to exist in the poem as thisfrom experience- would not succeed if someone wants to be real, but it is
the role of the critic to ignore these parts of personality appeared and not
paying them any attention. The critic should mainly focus on the work of
art regardless who is behind it, a man, a woman, a psycho, a mentally
disturbed author; as it is the work of art the critic is supposed to be
studying and not the person who creates the work unless the critic is
doing something else rather than analyzing texts.
The emotional quality in the poem is considered an important element in
the romantic poetry in general and Shelley’s in particular. A critic like
T.S. Eliot sees it is completely mistake if we judge the good poem by the
standards of how much emotion it contains but what artistic process
applied in the poem.
“…For it is not the ‘greatness’ the intensity of the emotions, the
components, but the intensity of the artistic process”(Lodge ,1988:76).
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The romantics used to believe that good poetry is expression of feelings
and emotions. Poetry to them is “spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings” so such definition for T.S. Eliot would sound not good. Some
find it difficult to see why Mr. Eliot wants to devote personality and
emotion from the peace of art. The work of art as the romantics believed
is considered an innovation and the more the poet innovates the greater
the work is. They transfer the meaning of art from that their predecessors
used to think “imitation” to the new concept of “innovation”. Mr. Eliot
sees that
“The business of the poet is not to find new emotion but to use the
ordinary ones and in working them up into poetry, to express feelings
which are not in actual emotions at all” “…poetry is not a turning loose
of emotion, but an escape from emotion”. (IBID: 76).
Mr. Eliot does not want the poet to create new emotion and want to strict
him/her in using the ordinary ones and even goes further to declare that
poetry is an escape of emotions. Why should poets escape from emotions
if emotion had been the main source of great woks since early times and
that emotion is the motivation behind many great poems and escaping
from them is not a credit to poetry, on the contrary, it will create a new
kind of rigid works. I can add that not only in poetry if we delete emotion
from any other thing we do in life this will make our lives lifeless. For
emotions- I believe- is the inspiration of life and I cannot imagine life
free of emotion how difficult it would be. We shouldn’t escape from
emotions- I see- we should direct them in the right way and create the
best we can out of them. Most of the greatest poems in the history of
poetry were productions of emotions; most of the greatest poems that
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history will never forget are created from emotions being expressed and
not emotions being escaped from as Mr. Eliot claims.
5.3 The Poet and the Language
One of the things for which Shelley is criticized is that his use of the
grammatical structure is a bit difficult or needs more concentration from
the reader to understand. An example as “Ozymandias” is good as there is
this complexity in grammatical structure
I met a traveler from antique land
Who said ‘Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the dessert…near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lips, and sneer of cold command,
Tel that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those 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 the colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
***
The lines in which Shelley speaks about the sculptor that made the statue,
there is a grammatical construction that makes it difficult to understand
at first to see the meaning of line 6-9: the sculptor well perceived those
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passions which have now (stamped in the stone record) outlived both the
sculptor’s hand that imitated them and the kingly heart that fed them.. It
remains entirely logical and asks to be intellectually understood, not
accepted as merely emotional incantation. (Ford,1970:213)
Although Mr. Harding admits that the grammatical structure makes it
difficult at beginning to understand what Shelley wants to say but he also
believes that
"Still it remains entirely logical and asks to be intellectually understood
not accepted as merely emotional incantation”. (IBID: 212).
Shelley is not careless or unaware of grammatical structure, he is well
aware of the grammar usage but again the spontaneous feelings of his
huge hatred to kings and tyrants makes him only write the way he feels,
as someone who writes the way he speaks. Simply Shelley wants to say
that “the sculptor well perceived those passions which have now (stamped
in the stone record) outlived both the sculptor’s hand that imitated them
and the kingly heart that fed them” , and he put it the way he felt satisfies
him and accords with the fact that he wants us to see as he does.
Again this emphasizes the fact that Shelley writes the way he speaks and
that he mainly focuses on the idea he wants to present and his passion
makes it want to express without stopping his ideas beside the elliptical
way he uses which make it difficult for the average reader to cope with.
M.H. Abrams has the same ideas that Shelley is not a careless poet
concerning grammar structure and usage he says
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“...A critic who calls Shelley careless should make sure that he has
understood him.” “Shelley appears to have been quite innocent of any
instructions of English grammar he writes just as he talks and his
conversational tradition (Eton), though good was not at all points
identical with the formal written standards."(Abrams,1989:378).
“ What modern critics call carelessness in Shelley’s is more often of
highly adroit and skillful writing of a kind of poetry which they do not
understand or don not like that kind of poetry.” (Lodge,1988:206).
So as I can understand that both Mr. Abrams and Mr. Harding have the
same point that it is not Shelley’s poems or way of writing that is
difficult, it may be the difficulty for the modern reader and the modern
critic to understand the technique that Shelley uses and the language that
he means to use in order to convey the message he believes in, a message
like legislating the world, speaking on behalf of the poor, rebelling
against tyranny ,inspiring the beauty of nature and looking for an ideal
love even though this may cost him a life time.
5.4 The Poet Idealism/Prophecy and Established Religions
This harmonizes with his being an idealist, the language and the
vocabulary that Shelley uses even in emotional poems are based on
idealism. Shelley wants to express the huge feeling he has inside, he feels
many contradicting feeling, being brought up and raised as a noble and
feeling the pain of the sufferers and being the legislator for them. All this
make his poetry filled with this high intensity of emotion.
Shelley in his “a defense of poetry” states all facts that disregarding them
may lead to confusing the reader or the critic. He obviously declared that
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he believes that poets are prophets and the role of a poet is the legislator
of the world. Reading this might make us think why does Shelley choose
the term “legislator” and why does he compare the poet with a legislator.
We believe, because both have messages to convey defending the
voiceless and both concentrate on “speech!” Poets as well as the
legislator, never give up using words and phrases to prove an idea or to
defend an issue. All they have is their ability to express and utter and both
of them keep in variation of their language techniques according to the
situation and the case they present so as to convince the audience.
It seems that when Shelley writes he feels he has a lot inside that he
wants to explore and a lot that he wants people –specially those at that
era- to hear and he has nothing but his language, his words, the
vocabulary that he uses in his poems, so we find him using words and
terms and emphasizes using them trying to draw the attention that “ this
is me-this is my message to you- I mean what I say) and it is not that he
only has certain words that he uses and uses only for stirring the
emotional status in himself as well as his readers.
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by incantation of this verse,
Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of prophecy!
***
In the “ode to the west wind” Shelley wants his words to be spread
amongst mankind. Words – one believe that present and support his
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concepts-. Shelley does not repeat words for no reason; Shelley is so fond
of the idea of prophecy. Even when he talks about Christ he speaks of
him not as a prophet but as “a reforming leader"(Foot,2004:61). Someone
loves the poor and hate tyrants-same principles Shelley himself believes
in-. But Shelley has another problem with religions, his hatred to tyranny
makes him fear the idea of any ruling power, anything that imposes on
people any repression or torture. He even put them- religion and tyranny
together as he says
“Established religion had always been friendly to tyranny … Christianity
is an established religion” (IBID: 59).
Then grave and hoary-headed hypocrites,
Without a hop, a passion, or a love
Have crept by flattery by the seats of power,
Support the system whence their honours flow…
They have three words:-well tyrants know their use,
Well pay them for the loan, with usury.
Torn from a bleeding world! - God, Hell and Heaven.
A vengeful, pitiless and almighty friend,
Whose mercy is a nickname for the rage
Of tameless tigers hungering for blood.
***
Hell, a red gulf of everlasting fire,
Whose poisonous and undying worms prolong
Eternal misery to those hapless slaves
Whose life has been a penance for its crimes;
And heaven a meed for those who dare belie
Their human nature, quake, believe and cringe
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Before the mockeries of earthly power
The poem presents all kinds of hate and disgusts to established religions
and how they make lives of people miserable.
The main reason behind Shelley’s discontent with established religions is
probably that he wants to convince himself first that his defense for the
poor and his sympathy with them can go even further than just tyrants as
tyrants are not the only power that oppresses people. He believes that
even all kinds of established religions considered- in a way or anotherkind of oppression to the poor so he has to hate them and loudly says this
every chance he gets.
He wants this as he has to , I mean to say that Shelley is a son of a
millionaire and could have become a millionaire himself had he wanted
,but he was a man who followed his beliefs and strongly fights for his
principles, Shelley went so far in ideas that he did not want anyone to
claim for a second that how come for him as a noble man from an
extremely rich family to understand and feel the pain of the sufferers, this
might be just “speeches” of a man who wanted to write poetry or to act
as a man of people. Shelley would not accepted such claims so he had to
fight and do all he can (poems-letters-essays) to prove to himself in the
beginning and to everyone else that this is what he really believed in and
this was what really inside him- kind of sensitivity and high emotionsnot real rejection or hate to religions and their principles. Francis Gribble
in his book ‘The Romantic Life of Shelley and the Sequel’ mentions that
Shelley is not an atheist and that he –in one of his letters speaks about
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“God whose merci is great”…is that nature could be without a cause-a
first cause- a God? When do we see effects without causes?”(Gribble,1973:
66) .
These excerpts mean that Shelley believes in the existence of God as a
supernatural power. Mr. Gribble goes on to declare that
One feel comfortable with this justification as one can well understand
how a boy aged eighteen may think and be in controversy. Shelley wrote
“the necessity of atheism” in an early age, the age in which we cannot
judge him at. The age in which crimes are considered “juvenile crimes”
and their committers are considerd an immature and won’t be treated as
adults. Had the necessity of atheism been a crime, it would have been a
juvenile crime. It is likely that Shelley somehow was not an atheist.
Mr. Timothy Morton in his “Cambridge Companion to Shelley” states
that
“Shelley was not an atheist. His professions of faith, though rather
crudely put, hardly strike one as being more advanced than Rev. R.J.
Campbell. But he had been treated as an atheist; and he was in a
dangerous mood, and ready for mischief.” (Gribble,1973:66).
Indeed, he has been treated as an atheist and he was in a dangerous mood,
and ready for mischief. Being at the age of eighteen and rebellious as
Shelley and has all power to fight and rebel against all including family,
will make him accept being called an atheist and also be happy with it.
Despite all this I can see Shelley as a believer who is thinks of God’s
merci as a fact and who believes in God as supernatural power that
controls the universe.
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“Shelley has great interest in nature and culture, he believes in
vegetarianism as something based on “the idea that humans have a
certain nature which has become socially distorted, but which can be undistorted, to the benefits of society and the natural world…Shelley himself
practiced diet in his short lifetime”(Morton,2006: 195).
5.5 The Poet and Vegetarianism
Nature to Shelley in particular means much more than a source of food.
He sets nature versus boundless and bare in Ozymandias trying to set the
good versus tyranny, as tyranny is always behind catastrophes and
disasters.
We can consider Shelley as a pioneer in this vegetarianism as now it
started to become a fashion that many people are turning to nature
starting to consider its importance and how to keep it. Shelley did that
decades ago and this is not far from his being a poet, this is all is in one
circle –being caring and enthusiastic with life in general and with helpless
creatures in particular. “Legislating” for the voiceless and the hopeless
wherever and whoever they are even they are plants or animals.
5.6 Summary
Shelley’s life has become an area of interest to many of the critics. Many
see him as an exaggerator poet, some see him as a poet of emotions only,
others see Shelley as mainly focusing on the quality of emotion in the
poem devoted from the theme itself.
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“To “Angel” Shelley was a beautiful and ineffectual angel”. To Stephen
“Shelley’s poetry was too often the rainbow colored mist into which the
stagnant
pool
of
Godwin’s
paradoxes
had
been
transmuted"
(Abrams,1989:366).
There is always an argument whether someone is with or against Shelley?
Do you like his poetry or not? Do you think he is a good poet or not? This
is not the issue at all and it is not the question one is asking. It is what we
learn from him. Either Shelley or any other poet has something to say to
us and it is not that I am completely in love with Shelley’s poetry that I
take all what he writes for granted or the opposite. The important thing is
the message we get to learn from the artist, no matter we completely
agree with him or not and what one can say is that one learned from this
study on Shelley’s life story and poetry that we shouldn’t judge
something because we don’t like the person who said it.
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Chapter 6
Summary, Conclusions, and Suggestions
6.0 Summary
We would better not judge a poem because we think that the poet is bad
or dishonest. We should better keep in mind that as sometimes the best
things happen when not expected the best words may be said by
unexpected people. Sometimes the best wisdoms come from mad pebfg
ople. The real words come when person is anesthetic. Shelley is not
perfect?! Yes, but who among poets or artists is?
The point is that it is the artist who pays the price by being criticized and
made some people and critics dislike him just because he is imperfe/ct or
his life events and incidents do not appeal to them! The thing is that
many critics judged Shelley’s poetry according to his life events which
one believes completely unfair. one mean that we have to relook at our
standards of evaluating poetry and not leave it to the taste of the critic and
what he personally likes or dislikes.
Fredrick, A. Pottle, a critic who frankly declares that he likes Shelley
states that
“I asked a critic about Shelley and he replied that he wished Shelley to be
completely forgotten and as soon as possible; but he added that he [knew
he is unfair, another whom I charged with disliking Shelley said “I like
Shelley very much when he behave himself”. To Mr. Tate and Dr. Leavis,
Shelley is a bungler, a bad craft’s man, and therefore a bad poet”.
(IBID: 368).
Mr. Fredrick’s theory is based on the idea that when modern critics do
not like the theme or the way a poet writes or even when they do not like
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his personality as in the case of Shelley it becomes easier for them to
criticize his poetry an call him a bad poet. And in the case of Shelley, as
we have been explaining in the previous chapters that he counts on
sentiments a lot, he uses the language of emotion, he exaggerates the
quality of feelings. This won’t appeal to some modern critics.
The idea that the poet should “behave” himself because this will affect
his/her evaluation as an artist is not a new idea. It has been practiced
decades ago and many poets and artist have been judged or misjudged
due to personal qualities. Years ago many poets suffered from critics’
sharp judgments only because the poet has personal or personality
disorder. Lord Byron is a good example for the kind of poet who has been
judged according to personality and his poems have been evaluated based
on personal incidents that are not supposed to be included in the standards
of poetry evaluation. Ezra-Pound was boycotted because of his political
opinions. Even in Arabic literature, decades ago Abu-Nuas has been
accused of being Homo-sexual that was the only justification critics
applied on him when they saw how many times he talked about young
kids in his poetry. Ahmed Matter, Elias Abo-shabaka, and modern poets
as well, Mohamed Elwathiq is also a good example of the poet being
attacked personally regardless his poems when he attacked Omdurman,
the holy Sudanese city Sudanese city, the city of highly historical and
cultural prestige, the “Omdurmanians” instantly accused him of being
“psychologically disturbed” and has personal complexes that caused him
to write so. A few critics talked about the book itself and its language.
They didn’t bother themselves trying to understand that this poet has a
certain message to convey and maybe he chooses this special city as kind
of symbol to the bad traditions or believes he is not happy with. Whatever
is the reason behind these poems I cannot see any point in searching into
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the poet’s life, studying it carefully and come up with analysis to his
poetry from his life.
6.1 Conclusions
One don’t aim at completely separating the work of art from the artist on
the contrary one believe that behind every piece of art there is a life that
is worth studying and learn certain things out of it so take the personal
life as a guide to the artist but never judge or evaluate his/her work based
on specific events in their lives; one is not aiming at completely ignoring
the artist focusing only on his work for this seems difficult if not
impossible. And as I mentioned above in this chapter that in a way or
another the personality of the artist would appear in his works as the
personality of any other person may reflect on the work he does, but I
mean the involuntary reflection of personality, the reflection that
psychologists call it “subconscious” that part of personality mayinvoluntary fell- in the work someone does so the good critic could catch
it and say “this is it, finally we have a personality reflection on the
work!”.
It is better be this way. A way that is shocking and can help analyzing the
artistic work. the way that surprises the reader and the artist himself in a
way that makes him say “indeed it is me…this critic is so intelligent” and
not in a concentrated way that it becomes kind of research and not
analysis. To go and search in personality of the artist and study his
weakness points and the things that he may not be happy if they come out
to public and then interpret his poetry according to his life events or
explain them according to what he/she has been searching and studying in
his life and its surroundings is not considered criticism for critic here is
not analyzing texts, he/she is analyzing personality and this is not the role
critic should do.
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If a critic comes to criticize a picture he/she does this in terms of the
colours the painter uses, the measurements he fails or succeeded to
standardize, the incompatibility between the idea and the picture, and
then finally they may and/or may not say there is a part of the painter’s
personality exists on the picture. It may likens the painter or doesn’t but
they do not usually search in the painter’s life and base their criticism on
what they have found.
One believe constructive criticism should be done as it improves the
quality of the work of art no matter what it is but destructive criticism is
unacceptable neither to me nor- one believe – to everyone who seeks for
the improvements and the progress of art. Some readers also do not enjoy
what critics say about personality because they would spoil it for us to
imagine and create our own situations and compare them to the poet’s
ones. In other words won’t it be more challenging to the reader to think,
guess, compare situations, and even draw his/her own image for the artist
who does the work instead of having it all ready and prepared by a critic!
Why don’t critics using this theory give more opportunity to the readers
themselves to try to link the poem to many incidents in their own lives
without affecting them or distracting them with needless explanations and
theories and researches on the artists! Explanations that would definitely
affect the average reader and may even makes him love or even hate the
artist not because of his/her work but because he/she has read something
about the artist, something the reader does not want to know!
Mohamed Elwathiq in his book ( Omdurman dying) states that he never
defends himself or his poetry no matter what critics say because he does
not want to change the reader’s attitude and he does not want to direct the
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reader or guide him. The reader should be free to judge the work without
any interfering from the poet”.
One could add “ neither the poet nor the critic has any authority on the
reader so the author’s role is to present an artistic work, the critic’s role is
to analyze the work and the reader’s role is to like or dislike the work”.
There should also be certain standards for critics as well as certain
limitations so as not to hurt the artist or cross the lights with him and his
life privacy mentioning matters that touch the artist personally–even these
things are facts- these things remain irrelevant to their works and the
reader has no interest or even right to know them.
Wordsworth says that “you must love a poet before he will seem worthy
of your love” (Abrams,1989:377).
One is not going to say “love” because love is uncontrollable as one
cannot control, direct, or command, but one would at least say “respect”.
If we respect the work of art- even if we do not like it- we then will be
able to respect the artist. And as one mentioned previously in this study
that if we put in our minds that every artist –in fact- everyone has
something to present and has an idea that may be useful if not for us may
be for some people somewhere else, and that we can learn something
from every one and that everything has a message and that we should
learn something even from nothing, only in this case we will learn
something and make use of arts as educational as well as aesthetical and
we should keep in mind that the works of arts are not set only for
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entertaining the reader
they have other purposes and messages
to
convey.
In the case of Shelley it was not only the great joy that he created into his
readers when reading his poetry. His poems do have many messages no
matter how he put them or do we like or dislike the way he put them , the
fact is that he has something for the reader and does he/she succeeded to
grasp it or not.
“Through life Shelley was a martyr to ill-health, and constant pain
wound up his nerves to a pitch of susceptibility tat rendered his views of
life that different from those of a man in the enjoyment of healthy
sensation.”(Hutchinson,1990:xxvi).
We know this as we know that he died at the age of twenty nine, so his
life was a real tragedy, he did not need to assimilate the pain and
suffering in his poetry seeking readers’ sympathy. It was a real pain and a
real suffering caused not only by health condition but also caused by his
non stopping attempts for seeking or trying to find the perfect love and
the perfect world he was looking for, also the idealistic standards that he
wanted to set. The pain caused into him by the tyranny he spent his life
fighting against and could not, by the poor cries he wished he could help,
by the lost love that he never gained.
He passed away and his short life has ended in a tragedy as his few days
were spent in tragedy, he passed away but the influence he made on the
people would never be forgotten. He passed away and the entire world
will remember his immortal “Ozymandias”… “An ode to the west
wind”… “When the lamp is shattered”… “Prometheus unbound”… “The
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serenade”… He passed away lonely in the sea drifted lonely by the
waves.
He passed a way, Mrs. Shelley wrote
“The wise, the brave, the gentle, the bright vision whose radiant track,
left behind in the memory, before the critics contradict me, let them
appeal to anyone who had ever known him. To see him was to love him:
and his presence, like Ithuriel’s spear was alone sufficient to disclose the
falsehood of the tale which his enemies whispered in the era of the
ignorant world”
(IBID: xxvi).
All Shelley’s poems are not great but he is a great poet. Every one of us
has two sides and as an artist he has multiple sides. He produced multiple
works of art for us. He combined many contradictions, being an aristocrat
basically, then a rebellion who rebel against his own father at beginning ,
an “atheist”, an “ecologist”, a “reformer”, an “idealist”, a “translator”, a
“story -teller”, a “revolutionary”, a “feminist”, a “philosopher”, and of
course a “poet” all these things show that we only talk a little bout
Shelley and know a little about him as well and knowing all this make us
rethink when we want to take him as a case study and apply modern
critics’ principles and standards on him.
Knowing all this makes us think of further studies on him not only as the
“red Shelley”, but as the green, pink, yellow and the colorful Shelley as
each part of him can be represented by a certain color.
In future studies, one is going to shed more light on the idea of the author
being criticized negatively or even positively based on his personal life or
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qualities; the idea that a work of art is accumulation of personality that
finds its way out to readers versus the theory that the work of art should
be judged completely separate from who wrote it or what personal
psychological or social problems he/she suffers from. The author presents
us a work to study and analyze and he does not presents us his life.
In his essay "the death of the author" Roland Barthe, a French critic,
obviously explains his theory that critics use to interpret the text due to
the personality of its writer and that should not happen because it is the
language that should act and looked at and not who or what the author
personality like.
"Once the author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite
futile. To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish
it with a final signified, to close the writing. Criticism allotting itself the
important task discovering the Author (or its hypostases: society, history,
psyche, liberty) beneath the work: when the author has been found, the
text is 'explained' – victory to the critic"
Mr. Barthes believes that criticism should be applied and directed upon
the work not the author that is to say the role of the author should be
ended the moment he writes the work then here comes the role of the
critic which should be the focus in the work itself regardless who did it
and how his personality like
The French critic Roland Barthes states that:
" It is the language which speaks not the author; to write is through
prerequisite impersonality, to reach that point where only language acts,'
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performs' and not 'me'… we know that to give writing its future is
necessarily to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the
cost of the death of the author".
Here one would like to add, it is the artist who feels, suffers, cries, weeps,
being attacked, and tolerates more than any other person in order to
produce a work of art that all of us knows how difficult it is.
It is like giving birth to a new flower, creating a fabulous image,
designing an amazing statue, bringing to life a new wonderful baby, it is
the artist who holds the pain inside and manage to transfer it into a power
that makes him create, it is the author, the writer, and the poet who – with
what he writes- makes thousands of people move.
Do not we still impressed by Shakespeare's “Macbeth” and “Merchant of
Venice” after more than a century of his passing a way! Do not we still
laugh with “Shaw” when we read his satire criticism! Don’t we still cry
with Emily Dickenson and her three Ds “death-darkness and dread." Do
not we feel ourselves in Robert Frost's "two roads diverged in one" and
feel the regret choosing the wrong road! Do not we cry with Cowper
when imagining the man drifted lonely on the sea and his friends on the
boat looking at him with a tearful eyes not knowing whether to return or
continuo on their way leaving him to death in the “cast way”! Don’t we
see ourselves softly sitting in the dusk with “D.H Lawrence” and a lady is
pressing the soft tunes and in spite of ourselves the insidious mastery of
songs betrays us back till the heart of us weeps to belong to the old days!
Don’t we feel that we no more want to go roving so late into t he night
though the heart be still as loving and the moon be still as bright! Don’t
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we sometimes feel in need to go to the sea and ask him to “Break Break
Break on his cold grey stones and we would that our tongue could utter
the thoughts that arise on us”!!
Yes all the above mentioned poets could have been speaking of personal
incidents, yes some of them may have been suffering from personality
disorders and psychological problems but my question is “ did this
affected their words?” their words could be said by me and you had we
have their gift. They were the voice for all of us and they say what we fail
to say.
Their words are quite enough for any one appreciate poetry to appreciate;
no one needs to know their personalities to understand or to analyze their
texts. We might need to know about their lives as great artists but not to
include any part of what we have found or discovered in our analyzing to
their works. We must not direct the readers’ intelligence or guide
him/her. The good reader will find out –through imagination- what critics
are trying to discover in their researches and their studies to the poets’
personalities!
Poets express what we cannot express, they declare what we fear to
declare and keep in side. They are the legislators of the world. Had they
been speaking
of personal motivations, the world would soon forget
them but they spoke of us. They are the tongue and the voice of the
voiceless.
Art is a gift and that artists should be proud of. We should give them the
opportunity to produce not to make them busy defending themselves to
critics or spending their time tying to controvert points raised by critics
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accusing them of being so and so. For the time spent in such arguments
could be used in writing a new work to feed critics and make them busy
for a time. Focus on the work and ignore personality as it neither affected
nor will affect the work of art in a big way.
6.2 Suggestions
After a comprehensive study to Shelley’s personal life and poetry, one finds
many interesting areas that needs to be covered and re-evaluated. Shelley’s
life has been and still very controversial that is why one suggests to other
researchers to focus on Shelley, the rebellious, the man with principles that
he strongly believed and defended his entire life.
One also believe that the theory of the death of the author that aims at
separating the author’s personal life from his works and that there should be
certain standards to criticism and that critics should handle their criticism
with care and consideration not to hurt the author by mentioning hidden
areas in his/her life and that they should know that the artist is like everyone
else has his own ups and downs in life and he what he writes is not always
just a reflection to what he experiences or suffers.
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