Percy Bysshe Shelley

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Testo

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Shelley had a great conception of the task of the poet, which is also very different from Keats' and more similar to that of the other romantic poets: he wrote an essay called "Defence of poetry", a passionate and exalted defence of poetry, in which he claims that poets should be the promoters of a world based on truth and beauty.
Shelley had two major influences:
- Radicalism (William Godwin). He took sides with the most extreme ideas of the time, that were embodied by Godwin. When he was at university in Oxford he was called "mad Shelley" by his mates, and once he wrote a pamphlet called "The necessity of atheism" and got expelled for that, which originated a scandal. According to Godwin's thoughts, he believed in man's perfectibility: he claimed that man in time could be perfect thanks to the lights of reason. He also believed that all social institutions should be either reformed or even abolished, because in his opinion in a world based on love and justice we shouldn't need institutions. He also went to fight in Ireland, in order to urged people to fight for their autonomy, and this caused a lot of suffering to the people who didn't share his views.
- Neoplatonism. Most romantic poets believed in Neoplatonism, according to which the reality we see through our eyes is not the real one, and we have to go beyond in order to find the true reality, because this is just an illusory and deceptive reality, it cannot be true for it keeps changing all the time. Shelley believed in imagination, and in one of his poems "Intellectual beauty" he described how it comes and goes and when it goes, it leaves man in despair, but when it comes he is as happy as he could be, and if it could saty forever it would be like heaven all the time. He actually swore eternal faith to the religion of imagination. He also wrote parts of Mary's "Frankenstein", and he loved science.
Shelley belonged to an aristocratic family, and was sent to Eton but he hated it, and he was teased by the others.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND.
Shelley wrote Ode to the West Wind close to Florence, near the banks of river Arno, when a storm was just about to break out.
The whole ode is divided into 5 sections, each consisting of 14 lines, and we also have a typical feature of the Shakespearean sonnets: the final rhyming couplets that here have the same function, to sum up, point out the main ideas, working like a sort of conclusion.
Each section is actually a mixture of the Shakespearean sonnet and Dante's terza rima, because we have the division in triplets that visually represents the movement of the wind, the whirl, the tumult of the wind. The scheme of each part is also repeated in the ode in general: part 5 is actually the conclusion, a sort of general summary in the end.

PART 1.

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

At the beginning we have an apostrophe: the poet is addressing the wild West wind (not the alliteration in the phrase), then we have a list of images and metaphors through which the poet wants to tell us something about the wind, which is seen as the very spirit of the essence of autumn.
The first image has to do with the wind, then he start talking about the leaves: the first three parts are actually all about different natural elements as the leaves, the clouds and the waves. The choice of colour for the leaves is rather unusual: they are said to be black or pale or feverish red. Shelley is here probably trying to reproduce the colours of the plague, but some critics have even wanted to find in this description different skin colours. Then he says that the wind carries the winged seeds bringing life to their dark winter bed, where each is like a corpse in a grave. So far, all the images are related to death. Then we have a change, Spring comes and all of a sudden we have life, and all the following images have to do with life and with the typical cycle of the seasons. The closing final couplets are two epithets that sum up the content of the whole section: the wind is at the same time destroyer and preserver, because by driving the seeds in their wintry beds they will be protected and when spring comes they are protected, so the wind helps life to come back by sweeping the leaves that are already dead. In the end we have a list of imperatives: "hear, O hear!", but we don't know yet what the wind should hear.

PART 2.

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth's decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,
Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine aery surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head
Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith's height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou Dirge
Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre,
Vaulted with all thy congregated might
Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain and fire and hail will burst: O hear!

The second section follows exactly the same pattern as the first one: we have a heap of images and at the end the exhortation again. All the surface is covered with clouds, and the sound of wind is like the dirge of the dying year, which is thus personified. The landscape becomes a vast sepulchre whose dome is made up of the powerful (fusion of) vapours.

PART 3.

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his chrystalline streams,
Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering whithin the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know
Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

This section is about the waves and the awakening of the oceans.
The wind is addressed as the one who woke the Mediterranean, where he lay sung to sleep by the repetitive, regular movement of his crystalline streams, beside a pumice isle and while sleeping he is also dreaming and he could see the palaces and towers, and he feels as if he was fainting representing such a sweet image trembling underwater. Again, the wind is addressed as the one on whose passing the Atlantic's powerful surface splits into abysses, so while passing it is breaking the surfce and the plants far below, the sea blooms and the muddy woods which wear the dry foliage of the ocean, recognise its voice and grow grey of fear.
Shelley himself told us that here he was referring to the scientific phenomenon by which underwater plants change colour in winter, and he used this also to express the fear they had of the wind, which is personified and seen as a frightening presence. Like we said before, the first 3 sections have the same function as the octave in the sonnet: now we have a changing of the tone. Up to this point the poet has been concentrating on three main natural elements, and by doing so he is also referring to the four elements composing the world: water, air, earth, and there are some references to fire as well, because Shelley wanted to give a cosmic and universal dimension to the poem.

PART 4.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share
The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven
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!
A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

Now the poem is becoming more personal: it begins with "I" and the poet starts expressing three wishes: if he were a dead leaf, that he could be carried away by the wind; if he were a cloud, that he could fly with the wind, and share the impulse of its strength. The wind is referred to as the Uncontrollable, because actually it cannot be controlled. This is a good part to compare with Wordsworth, because here Shelley remembers when he was a boy and he seems to have a lot of regrets, because then he beieved he could actually compete the wind and overcome its speed and be as fast as it, and now he says that he would never have prayed to him so much, if he did not need his help so desperately. He ends by saying that this load, burden of time has bent one too similar to him. In this section he is obviously referring to his personal experience: the ode was written in 1819 and by then a number of tragic events had taken place in his life, but we don't know which one he's referring to. Two of his children had died, and only one survived, Florence Shelley. They had a nomadic life, they moved about and Shelley didn't care too much about eating when they were almost starving.

PART 5.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies
Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
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 unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

He is asking the wind to make something: "make me thy lyre" we can hear a sound as though the forest was a musical instrument.
My leaves are falling: probably he is referring to physical decaying.
Both = forest and poet.
Autumn is both sweet and sad, there is a lot of melancholy. We have like a crescendo: first he asks the wind to carry him away but do nothing. Then he also participates then he longs for an identification with the wind.
The wind is again to be seen as poetical inspiration. Lots of references to what he has been saying before, like an echo.
Quicken = accelerate
Scatter = spargi
Hearth = focolare (domestico)
Rhetorical question: answer is no. When winter comes, spring is very close. Dead leaves are replaced by the dead thoughts likely to produce life.
What the wind does to nature, he wants it to do to him too. Accelerate a re-birth. Ashes and sparks: echoes of stanza nr. 2. When he speaks of the vault of the dome references to sections 1 and 2. Trumpet = clarion: the wind should be through the poet's lips. Spread the message and prophecy to unawake earth that should come to life again through the poet's words that are spread by the wind.
The last 3 sections are more personal and on a social level. Repetition of continuous cycle of seasons, the poem is about the cycle of seasons, how they alternate. Personal level: the poet hopes the wind will help him change on a personal level, to be able to be a new person and find new poetic inspiration.
There is also a social message because mankind is asleep: the French revolution had failed and most people had bitter disillusion. The poet is optimistic instead: now it is winter but spring cannot be far away. He believed in some revolutions that would bring about some new brotherhood, justice etc., a new kind of society.
Different levels of interpretations: natural - personal - social.
Very very high conception of the function of poets: unacknowledged legislators of the world. Very very high role to the figure of the poet, seer, prophet, etc. "Beauty is truth": he believed this too, if you can see truth, you should be the one who makes the law.
Bear - bore - borne ("born" quando significa "nato").

PREFACE.
skirt = costeggiare
sympathy of the vegetation with the changing of seasons.

Comments on the ode as a poetic form. Compare with Keats' ode. As an ode in general it is typical in that it has an elevated tone and we find the apostrophe. Not so typical of the ode: usually in the Augustan age the ode consisted in the logical development of an idea, but in this case we don't have it, the whole ode is made up of just a heap of images, but the unity of the ode lies in the interdependence of the images.
About the main theme = a cycle that implies life and death: alternation or to be more precise the main theme is birth originating from death in a permanent cycle where life triumphs.
Conveys optimistic note, deep hope in a better future (if winter comes, can spring...) Now we live in a period of conservatorism but a new revolution will come again to bring a better society. From the very beginning it is about birth = the seeds.
Life must triumph: main message the poet wants to convey. "change" is the keyword, a change for the better because it is life to triumph, the change takes place in nature, in his own self and in society.

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