Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): The Omnipotence of Mind

1. Revolution and philosophy

a. William Godwin
b. Plato – transl. The Symposium in 1818
2. From the story of his life
a. Family background – born on the 4th of August, 1792, at Field Place, near Horsham in Sussex, into an
aristocratic family
1804 Shelly went on to study at Eton College, Oxford University.
1810 he entered the Oxford University College.
1811 Shelley was expelled from the college for publishing The Necessity Of Atheism, which he wrote with Thomas
Jefferson Hogg
b. Harriet Westbrook
Approx 1811 Shelley’s father withdrew his inheritance in favor of a small annuity, after he eloped with the 16-year old
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of a London tavern owner.
1816 Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine.
c. Mary Godwin
1814 Shelley travelled abroad with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, the daughter of the philosopher and anarchist Godwin
1816 Shelley married Mary Wollstonecraft and his favorite son William was born.
1818 the Shelleys moved to Italy
d. Byron – Julian and Maddalo
e. Keats – Shelley accuses the Quarterly Review of killing him – Adonais
f. Ariel – ‘heart of hearts’
8th July 1822 
Shelley sailed to Leghorn to welcome his friend Leigh Hunt. During the stormy return voyage to Lerici, his small
schooner sank and Shelley drowned with Edward Williams on July 8, 1822. The bodies were washed ashore at
Viareggio, where, in the presence of Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt, they were burned on the beach. Shelley was
later buried in Rome.
3. Important texts
1813 Shelley published his first poem, the Queen Mab.
1816 Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and Other Poems
1818 Shelley published The Revolt Of Islam (Laon and Cythna)
1819 The Mask of Anarchy – Peterloo Massacre
1819 The Cenci – the dramatic story of Beatrice Cenci
1820 Prometheus Unbound – Aeschylus and his trilogy: Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Prometheus, the Fire-
Bringer.
1821 Epipsychidion – dedicated to Emilia Viviani.
1821 Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats
1822 Hellas: A Lyrical Drama
1824 Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Edited by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
1861 Francis Palgrave’s The Golden Treasury of Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language (“Lines to an
Indian Air”, I fear thy kisses…, “Love’s Philosophy”, “To the Night”, “The Flight of Love”, One word is too often
profaned…, “Invocation”, “Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples”, “To a Skylark”, “Ozymandias of Egypt”, “To a
Lady, With a Guitar”, “The Invitation”, “The Recollection”, “To the Moon”, A widow bird…, “A Dream of the
Unknown”, “Hymn to the Spirit of Nature”, “Written in the Euganean Hills, North Italy”, “Ode to the West Wind”, “The
Poet’s Dream”, “A Lament”, Music when soft voices die…)
Essays:
The Necessity of Atheism Essay on Love
A Vindication of Natural Diet Essay on Life
Essay on the Vegetable System of Diet Essay on Christianity
Essay on the Punishment of Death Essay on Marriage

4. Quotes:
The author of the Prometheus Unbound … has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter
in his speech, which mark out the philosophic fanatic. He is sanguine complexioned, and shrill-voiced. … He is clogged
by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk
and hard husk of nature and habit, but is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the
sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in “seas of pearl and clouds of amber”. (Hazlitt, “On Paradox and
Common-Place”)
***
The senses are the sources of all knowledge to the mind, consequently their evidence claims the strongest assent. 
The decision of the mind founded upon our own experience derived from these sources, claims the next degree. 
The experience of others which addresses itself to the former one, occupies the lowest degree,-- 
Consequently no testimony can be admitted which is contrary to reason, reason is founded on the evidence of our senses.
…
Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind.---Every reflecting mind must allow that there is no
proof of the existence of a Deity. Q.E.D. [quod erat demonstrandum, “which was to be demonstrated”] (“The Necessity of
Atheism”)
***
LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

The Fountains mingle with the river See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the rivers with the ocean, And the waves clasp one another;
The winds of heaven mix for ever No sister-flower would be forgiven
With a sweet emotion; If it disdain'd its brother:
Nothing in the world is single, And the sunlight clasps the earth,
All things by a law divine And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
In one another's being mingle - What are all these kissings worth,
Why not I with thine? If thou kiss not me?
***
In writing The Cenci my object was to see how I could succeed in describing passions I have never felt, and to tell the most
dreadful story in pure and refined language. The image of Beatrice haunted me after seeing her portrait. The story is well
authenticated, and the details far more horrible than I have painted them. The Cenci is a work of art; it is not colored by my
feelings nor obscured by my metaphysics. I don't think much of it. It gave me less trouble than anything I have written of the
same length. (Shelley’s judgment recorded by Trelawny)
***
  XLI
       361     He lives, he wakes--'tis Death is dead, not he;
       362     Mourn not for Adonais. Thou young Dawn,
       363     Turn all thy dew to splendour, for from thee
       364     The spirit thou lamentest is not gone;
       365     Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan!
       366     Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air,
       367     Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown
       368     O'er the abandon'd Earth, now leave it bare
       369 Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair!

***
Death is not death to him. Transferred
into another world, he lives on in our hearts
and like a vestal virgin keeps a watch
on the pure magic fire of eternal love. (Pencho Slavejkov’s Heart of Hearts)

***

Keats (1795-1821): Poetry of Imagination

1. Biographical points of reference
 Lower-middle-class background
 The spectre of consumption (tuberculosis)
2. Major poems
 Tales: Lamia (heroic couplet); Isabella, or, The Pot of Basil; The Eve of St. Agnes (Spenserian
stanza)
 Endymion – publ. 1816 in The Examiner (ed. Leigh Hunt) – Selene (Phoebe, Dian, Cynthia)
 Hyperion
 The Fall of Hyperion
 The odes: The Ode on Indolence, The Ode to Psyche, The Ode to a Nightingale, The Ode on a
Grecian Urn, The Ode on Melancholy, and To Autumn.
 La Belle Dame Sans Mercy
 Two collections of poems published in his lifetime: 1817, 1820
3. Keats’ Craftsmanship
 Imagination before Reason: ‘I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections
and the truth of the Imagination— What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether
it existed before or not’. (To Benjamin Bailey, 22nd Nov. 1817)
 Experience: ‘we find what he [Wordsworth] says true as far as we have experienced and we can
judge no further but by larger experience - for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are
proved upon our pulses: We have read fine ______ things but never feel them to thee full until we
have gone the same steps as the Author.’ (To J H Reynolds, 3rd May 1818)
 Negative Capability:
I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it
struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so
enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,
without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude
caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued
through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. (To his brothers 21st Dec. 1817)

As to the poetical Character itself (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished
from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself - it has no self - it is
every thing and nothing - It has no character - it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich
or poor, mean or elevated - It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous
philosopher, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its
taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence;
 because he has no Identity - he is continually in for - and filling some other Body - The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men
and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute - the poet has none;
no identity - he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures. (To Richard Woodhouse, 27th Oct. 1818)

 Poetry – intensive and unobtrusive:

‘The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close
relationship with Beauty and Truth.’; ‘Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and
does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.’

1st I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity—it should strike the Reader as a wording of his
own highest thoughts, and appear-almost a Remembrance—2nd Its touches of Beauty should never be half way therby
making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come
natural natural too him—shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight—
but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it—and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry
comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. (To John Taylor, 27th Feb. 1818)

I find that I cannot exist without poetry - without eternal poetry - half the day will not do - the whole of it - I began with a
little, but habit has made me a Leviathan - I had become all in a Tremble from not having written any thing of late - the
Sonnet over leaf did me some good. I slept the better last night for it - this Morning, however, I am nearly as bad again …
(To J H Reynolds, 17-18 April 1817)

4. Quotes:
From The Eve of St Agnes

208     A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,  230     Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees: 
209     All garlanded with carven imag'ries  231     Half-hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed, 
210     Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,  232     Pensive awhile she dreams awake, and sees, 
211     And diamonded with panes of quaint device,  233     In fancy, fair St. Agnes in her bed, 
212     Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,  234 But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.
213     As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings;  …
214     And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries,  361     They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; 
215     And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,  362     Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide; 
216 A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens 363     Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl, 
and kings. 364     With a huge empty flaggon by his side: 
… 365     The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide, 
226     Anon his heart revives: her vespers done,  366     But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: 
227     Of all its wreathed pearls her hair she frees;  367     By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:-- 
228     Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one;  368     The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;-- 
229     Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees  369 The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

***************

To Autumn

1 Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

2      Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
3 Conspiring with him how to load and bless
4      With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
5 To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
6      And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
7           To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
8      With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
9 And still more, later flowers for the bees,
10 Until they think warm days will never cease,
11           For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

12 Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

13      Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
14 Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
15      Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
16 Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
17      Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
18           Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
19 And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
20      Steady thy laden head across a brook;
21      Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
22           Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

23 Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

24      Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
25 While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
26      And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
27 Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
28      Among the river sallows, borne aloft
29           Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
30 And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
31      Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
32      The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
33           And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
**************

Bibliography:

Cronin, Richard. “Keats and the Politics of Cockney Style”, Studies in English Literature, 1996, pp. 787-805.
Curran, Stuart (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Gittings, Robert (ed.) Letters of John Keats. Oxford: Oxford University press, 1970.
Jack, Ian. English Literature, 1815-1832. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
O'Neill, Michael (ed.) Keats: Bicentenary Readings. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP for the University of Durham, 1997.
Ridley, M.R. Keats’ Craftsmanship: A Study in Poetic Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.
Webb, Timothy. English Romantic Hellenism, 1700-1824. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982.

Letters online:
http://www.john-keats.com/briefe/briefe_index.htm
http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters.html