Percy Bysshe Shelley

 INTRO WORKS
 Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is
regarded by critics as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well
as his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his
poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets
and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife,
Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

 Shelley is perhaps best known for such classic poems as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
Skylark, Music, When Soft Voices Die, The Cloud and The Masque of Anarchy. His other major works
include long, visionary poems such as Queen Mab (later reworked as The Daemon of the World),
Alastor, The Revolt of Islam, Adonaïs, the unfinished work The Triumph of Life; and the visionary verse
dramas The Cenci (1819) and Prometheus Unbound (1820).

 His close circle of admirers, however, included some progressive thinkers of the day, including his future
father-in-law, the philosopher William Godwin. Though Shelley's poetry and prose output remained
steady throughout his life, most publishers and journals declined to publish his work for fear of being
arrested themselves for blasphemy or sedition.
 His first publication was a Gothic novel, Zastrozzi (1810), in which he vented his early atheistic
worldview through the villain Zastrozzi. In the same year, Shelley, together with his sister Elizabeth,
published Original Poetry by Victor  [Shelley] and Cazire  [Elizabeth Shelley].  And, in addition, he
published a second Gothic novel of terror, St. Irvyne, most of which he had written at Eton. While at
Oxford, he issued a collection of verses (ostensibly burlesque but quite subversive), Posthumous
Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. A third publication, a pamphlet entitled The Necessity of Atheism,
brought Shelley's university career to an abrupt end, he was summoned to appear before the master of
University College and, when he refused to admit or deny his authorship of the pamphlet, he was
immediately expelled.

 Shelley's longest poem, The Revolt of Islam, in part a heavily symbolic account of a bloodless revolution,
and in part a restatement of the radical social views of Queen Mab, was the work of more than half of
1817. It is not only Shelley's longest poem, but it is also one of his least readable poems, partly because
of its symbolism and partly because of its structural weakness. Besides writing The Revolt of Islam in
1817, Shelley also wrote "Rosalind and Helen," the story of two pairs of lovers, one pair of which
appears to be Shelley and Mary, whose love without marriage is justified.

 The year 1819 proved to be Shelley's annus mirabilis. He completed Prometheus Unbound,  the

embodiment of his dream of a brave new world; he composed his play, The Cenci, a study in human
wickedness which is probably the best play written by a romantic poet; and he began a political
pamphlet entitled A Philosophical View of Reform,  in which he made some practical suggestions for
political reforms in England; in addition, he wrote a number of short poems on the political situation in
England. In these poems, as well as in Prometheus  and The Cenci, oppression is exposed and attacked.
 TMI : At the age of nineteen, Shelley eloped with Harriet Westbrook, the sixteen-year-old daughter of a
tavern keeper, whom he married despite his inherent dislike for the tavern. Not long after, he made the
personal acquaintance of William Godwin in London, and promptly fell in love with Godwin’s daughter
Mary Wollstonecraft, whom he was eventually able to marry, and who is now remembered primarily as
the author of Frankenstein.

 IDEAS
 Vegetarianism
 Shelley wrote several essays on the subject of vegetarianism, the most prominent of which were "A
Vindication of Natural Diet" (1813) and "On the Vegetable System of Diet".
Shelley was a strong advocate for social justice for the "lower classes". He witnessed many of the same
mistreatments occurring in the domestication and slaughtering of animals, and he became a fighter for
the rights of all living creatures that he saw being treated unjustly.In Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem
(1813) he wrote about the change to a vegetarian diet:
"And man ... no longer now
He slays the lamb that looks him in the face,
And horribly devours his mangled flesh."

 Idealism
 Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising idealism, combined with his strong disapproving
voice, made him an authoritative and much-denigrated figure during his life and afterward. He became
an idol of the next two or three or even four generations of poets, including the important Victorian and
Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Algernon Charles
Swinburne, as well as Lord Byron, Henry David Thoreau, W. B. Yeats, and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and
poets in other languages such as Jan Kasprowicz, Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy.

 Shelley's idealism falls under three subheadings. Revolutionary, Religious and Erotic
(i)Revolutionary Idealism: His revolutionary idealism is mainly due to French Revolution. Through
his Queen Man, The Revolt of Islam, and Prometheus Unbound, he inspired people to revolt against by
scorning at the tyranny of state, church and society and hoping for a golden age.
(ii) Religious Idealism: Though Shelley was a rebel, he was not an atheist. He believed in the super
power of God, and he imagined God as supreme 'Thought' and 'Infinite Love'.
(iii) Erotic Idealism: Shelley believed in the abstract quality of love and beauty -- love as infinite and
beauty as intellectual. He celebrates love as a creator and preserver in his "Symposium"; and beauty as
Supreme Spirit in "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty".

 Nonviolence
Henry David Thoreau's civil disobedience and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's passive resistance were
influenced and inspired by Shelley's nonviolence in protest and political action. It is known that Gandhi
would often quote Shelley's Masque of Anarchy, which has been called "perhaps the first modern
statement of the principle of nonviolent resistance."
 Shelly as a Rebellion
 Revolution is a dominant spirit in almost all the romantic poets. Percy Bysshe Shelley, a Romantic poet,
is also called rebel for his idea of revolution in his poetry. As The French Revolution dominated all
politics in those years, unlike Wordsworth or Coleridge, Shelley never abandoned the ideals of the
revolution, though he was appalled by the dictatorship of Napoleon. Shelley only experienced the
revolution at second hand through the books of various writers and was influenced by Rousseau,
William Godwin etc. His long poem, The Revolt of Islam, written at the height of his powers, is clear on
one matter above all else- that the ideas of progress, which inspired the revolution, will triumph once
again.

 In the "Ode to The West Wind" Shelley is seen as a rebel and he wants revolution. He desires a social
change and the West Wind is to his symbol of change. He asks the wind to take his thoughts and spread
them all over the world so that the youth are awoken with his ideas. In the first stanza of this poem,
Shelley says that the West Wind drives away the last sign of life in trees and also helps to rejuvenate the
world by allowing the seeds to grow in the spring. In this way the West Wind acts as a destroyer and
preserver.

 Hellenism
The world of classical Greece was important to the Romantics. Shelley wrote "Hellas" which is the
ancient name of Greece. "Ozymandias" (1817) is an ancient Greek name for Ramses II of Egypt. Shelley
was mainly influenced by Platonism. Plato thought that the supreme power in the universe was the spirit
of beauty. Shelley borrowed this conception from Plato and developed it in his metaphysical poem
"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty". Intellectual Beauty is omnipotent and man must worship it. The last
stanza of "The Cloud" is Shelley's Platonic symbol of human life.
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.

In fact, Shelley frequently turned to Greece as a model of ideal beauty, transcendent philosophy and
democratic politics.

 Shelley wrote this long poem as an elegy for Shelley’s close friend and fellow poet John Keats, who
died in Rome of tuberculosis at the age of 26. The mood of the poem begins in dejection, but
ends in optimism—hoping Keats’ spark of brilliance reverberates through the generations of
future poets and inspires revolutionary change throughout Europe. Adonis is the stand-in for
Keats, for he too died at a young age after being mauled by a boar. In Shelley’s version, the
“beast” responsible for Keats’s death is the literary critic, specifically one from London’s
Quarterly who gave a scathing review of Keats’ poem “Endymion”.

 Ghosts and Spirits

 Shelley’s interest in the supernatural repeatedly appears in his work. The ghosts and spirits in his poems
suggest the possibility of glimpsing a world beyond the one in which we live. In “Hymn to Intellectual
 Beauty,” the speaker searches for ghosts and explains that ghosts are one of the ways men have tried to
interpret the world beyond. The speaker of “Mont Blanc” encounters ghosts and shadows of real natural
objects in the cave of “Poesy.” Ghosts are inadequate in both poems: the speaker finds no ghosts in
“Hymn to Intellectual Beauty,” and the ghosts of Poesy in “Mont Blanc” are not the real thing, a
discovery that emphasizes the elusiveness and mystery of supernatural forces.

BEAUTY
 Beauty is another element of Romanticism in Shelley's poetry. Beauty, to Shelley, is an ideal in itself and
a microcosm of the beauty of Nature and he calls it "Intellectual Beauty". He celebrates Beauty as a
mysterious power. In the Hymn to intellectual Beauty, he says that when Intellectual Beauty departs this
world becomes a "dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate" and if human heart is its
temple, then man would become immortal and omnipotent:
“Man were immortal and omnipotent
Did'st thou, unknown and awful as thou art, 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state
Within his heart.” 

 Shelley’s intense feelings about beauty and expression are documented in poems such as “Ode to the
West Wind” and “To a Skylark,” in which he invokes metaphors from nature to characterize his
relationship to his art. The center of his aesthetic philosophy can be found in his important essay A
Defence of Poetry, in which he argues that poetry brings about moral good. Poetry, Shelley argues,
exercises and expands the imagination, and the imagination is the source of sympathy, compassion, and
love, which rest on the ability to project oneself into the position of another person

 VIEW ON NATURE
 Love for Nature is one of the key – notes of his poetry. Shelley in his poem nature is love for him. The
finest of Shelley’s poems, are his lyrics, ‘The Skylark’, and ‘The Cloud’ are among the most unique and
dazzling of all the outbursts of poetic genius. ‘On Love’ Shelley reflects colorful Nature imagery and
glorification of nature. He shows fruition and fulfillment in his poem and we find his poem related with
Nature in which we find a profusion of Nature.

 Shelly in his poetry, appears as a Pantheist also. Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature.
He presents the changing and indefinite moods of Nature in his poetry, like Clouds, Wind, Lightening,
etc,.  ‘Adonais’ reflects the most striking examples of Shelley’s pantheist.

 Shelley sets many of his poems in autumn, including “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and “Ode to the
West Wind.” Fall is a time of beauty and death, and so it shows both the creative and destructive
powers of nature, a favorite Shelley theme. As a time of change, autumn is a fitting backdrop for
Shelley’s vision of political and social revolution. In “Ode to the West Wind,” autumn’s brilliant colors
and violent winds emphasize the passionate, intense nature of the poet, while the decay and death
inherent in the season suggest the sacrifice and martyrdom of the Christ-like poet.
 Shelley finds Nature alive, capable of feeling and thinking like a human organism. In “Ode to the
Westwind”, he hopes for the best and is confident that “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His
nature treatment is multidimensional; scientific, philosophic, intellectual, mythical and of course human.

 Shelley refers to this unifying natural force in many of the poems, describing it as the “Spirit of Beauty”
in “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” and identifying it with Mont Blanc and the Arve River in “Mont Blanc”.
For Shelley, Mont Blanc—the highest peak in the Alps—represents the eternal power of nature. Mont
Blanc has existed forever, and it will last forever, an idea he explores in “Mont Blanc.” The mountain fills
the poet with inspiration, but its coldness and inaccessibility are terrifying.This force is the cause of all
human joy, faith, Goodness and pleasure, and it is also the source of poetic inspiration and divine truth.

   In Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills Shelley displays a mystic involvement with Nature. He finds
in Nature a never-ending source of delightful images. The sun is to him not just a nature phenomenon,
but something, “broad, red, radiant, half-reclined on the level quivering line of the waters
crystalline.” The surrounding scenic beauty of the Euganean Hills succeeds in soothing his melancholy
for the moment and fills him with a radiant optimism heightened by his musings on the so-called islands
of Delight.
 Nature imagery: Images drawn from Nature are abundant in Shelley’s Poetry. His images often produce
a pictorial quality not to be derived even form paintings. His portrait of the Cloud is more vivid, more
picturesque than the cloudscapes painted by Constable or Turner. The image of the sunrise in The
Cloud  is unequalled in its splendour:
“The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes Outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead.”

 In Adonais  “pansies” have been used to symbolizes the fate of Shelley’s poetry while “violets” stand for
his modesty and innocence. The sky, stars, sun, moon, wind and the river have frequently been used by
Shelley as symbols of eternity. In Adonais,  we find such a reference to the immortality of stars :
“Is gathered into death without a dawn,
And the immortal stars awake again.”

 CONCLUDE
Critics were extremely polarized between views of his work as otherworldly and all too earthly.
Romantic-period reviewers motivated by political animosity described Shelley's work as a 'common
sewer' or a 'dish of carrion' and the poet himself, someone doomed to sink '“like lead” to the
bottom'.Shelley was able to believe that poetry makes people and society better; his poetry is suffused
with this kind of inspired moral optimism, which he hoped would affect his readers sensuously,
spiritually, and morally, all at the same time. Shelley’s ashes were buried in the Protestant cemetery in
Rome, and the stone bears the inscription
“Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.”