Percy Bysshe Shelly: (1792 – 1822)
Introduction:
“O world, O life, O time! On whose last step I climb,
Out of day and night, A joy has taken flight;”
He was known as “Mad Shelly” among the youth. He died in very young age of
thirty. His poems contained the melodious quality of Romanticism and a
different point of view towards the nature than Wordsworth had.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is widely regarded as having written some of the greatest poems in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets including Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.
Life - career:
Shelley’s critical reputation fluctuated in the twentieth century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist and materialist ideas in his work. Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), and the political ballad “The Mask of Anarchy” (1819). His other major works include the verse drama, The Cenci (1819), and long poems such as Alastor (1815), Julian and Maddalo (1819), Adonais (1821), Prometheus Unbound (1820)—widely considered his masterpiece—Hellas (1822), and his final, unfinished work, The Triumph of Life (1822).
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest
thought.”
At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long
hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up
in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who
became his closest friend. Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg’s
influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were
dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain’s war
with Napoleonic France, and Shelley’s father warned him against Hogg’s
influence.
Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues. Much of this poetry and prose wasn’t published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel. From the 1820s, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist and radical political circles and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Gandhi and George Bernard Shaw.
“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”
In the winter of 1810-11, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Necessity of Atheism (written in collaboration with Hogg) and A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things. Shelley mailed The Necessity of Atheism to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley. His refusal, to college authorities, to answer questions regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on 25 March 1811, along with Hogg. A number of writers have speculated that the expulsion of Shelley and Hogg was politically motivated. Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.
In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother’s grave on 26 June. When Shelley told Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Mary, his mentor banished him from the house and forbade Mary from seeing him. Shelley and Mary eloped to Europe on 28 July, taking Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of 3,000 pounds but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was now pregnant.
Shelley‘s life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a
backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social
conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818, and over the
next four years wrote a series of poems widely considered his
masterpieces. He died in a boating accident in 1822 at the age of
twenty-nine.
“Poets
and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
Critical acclaim:
Shelley’s work was not widely read in his lifetime outside a small circle of friends, poets and critics. Most of his poetry, drama and fiction was published in editions of 250 copies which generally sold poorly. Only The Cenci went to an authorised second edition while Shelley was alive.
The initial reception of
Shelley’s work in mainstream periodicals (with the exception of the
liberal Examiner) was generally unfavourable. Reviewers often launched
personal attacks on Shelley’s private life and political, social and religious
views, even when conceding that his poetry contained beautiful imagery and
poetic expression. There was also criticism of Shelley’s intelligibility
and style, Hazlitt describing it as,
“A passionate dream, a straining after impossibilities, a record of fond conjectures, a confused embodying of vague abstraction.”
Shelley’s poetry soon gained a wider audience in radical and reformist circles. Queen Mab became popular with Owenists and Chartists, and Revolt of Islam influenced poets sympathetic to the workers’ movement such as Thomas Hood, Thomas Cooper and William Morris.
However, Shelley's
mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his death.
Death:
On 1 July, Shelley and Edward Williams sailed in Shelley’s new boat the Don Juan to Livorno where Shelley met Leigh Hunt and Byron in order to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal. After the meeting, on 8 July, Shelley, Williams and their boat boy sailed out of Livorno for Lerici. A few hours later, the Don Juan and its inexperienced crew were lost in a storm. The vessel, an open boat, had been custom-built in Genoa for Shelley. Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of 1822" (1839) that the design had a defect and that the boat was never seaworthy. In fact the Don Juan was overmasted; the sinking was due to a severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.
Shelley’s badly-decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On 16 August, his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome.
Shelley’s Heart:
When Shelley’s body was cremated on the beach, his “unusually small” heart resisted burning, possibly due to calcification from an earlier tubercular infection. Trelawny gave the scorched heart to Hunt who preserved it in spirits of wine and refused to hand it over to Mary. He finally relented and the heart was eventually buried either at St. Peter’s Church, Bournemouth or in Christchurch Priory.
“I have drunken deep of joy,
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