Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) is one of the most significant poets in all times. His poetry, revolutionary or loving, remains deep marks in the mind with its ideas and in in the soul with its great expressions and picturesque images and in heart with its striking emotions and deep sentiments. Percy Bysshe Shelley is outstanding representative of the late Romantic poets from the late 18th and the beginning of the 19th century.
Romanticism has some typical characteristics which determine its essence. In the first place it is its medievalism, longing to the past and fascination with the glamour of the middle ages. Escapism is very often met in the poetry of Romantic poets. They want to escape from reality, to take refuge in the glorious past, in utopian future, or in a distant exotic present. They want to save themselves from the industrial cities, to go to oasis, where harmony exists.
Romanticists believe in progress although they don’t like the reality and its modern face. They assume that destiny of man is dynamic, evolutionary, progressive. They are sure that there is development from the negative to the positive. They believe in the man. They are rebels and protest against dogmatism of the church, scientific impersonality and inhumanity. They deny rationalism. In fact the Romantic school is reaction to the Enlightenment, which main feature is the cult of reason.
As a political orientation and sight for the order of life they are republicans. They have hostility towards monarchical structure. This idea of human equality and democracy they take from John Locke and the Age of Reason and fill it with emotional fervor. But the sense of freedom is accompanied with sense of pessimism, which leads them to despair, world grief and pain.
Inherited the idea of equality of man Romantics believe in the inherent worth of every man and his uniqueness. This belief shows them as great humanists. They believe in the human hearth. They preach that the hearth, the emotion, the goodness and humanity are more important than intellect. Evil is associated with intelligence.
With Romantics comes the worship of originality and individualism. The poet for Romanticists is the man gifted with creative imagination and originality. The major subject of the Romanticists is himself, the individual, his confessions, his emotions, his feelings. They enjoy emotion for its own sake. They fall in bottomless emotional depths in their poems.
They see the purpose of art as purgative and artist as one who must be purified trough art. Art is seen as necessary relief after the sufferings and terror, a final result after the purgation of the artist as Aristotle claimed.
In their poems they show love towards the wild and the picturesque, towards nature, which they depict vividly and with strong emotion. Their hatred towards civilization is obvious as their love to nature. In their poetry often are praised beautiful and unforgettable images of nature, which impress with their reality and lyricism.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley was the son of a prosperous squire. He entered Oxford in 1810, where readings in philosophy led him toward the study of the empiricists and the modern skeptics, notably William Godwin. In 1811 he and his friend Thomas Jefferson Hogg published their pamphlet, „The Necessity of Atheism”, which resulted in their immediate expulsion from the university. The same year Shelley eloped with 16-year-old Harriet Westbrook, by whom he eventually had two children, Ianthe and Charles.
Supported reluctantly by their fathers, the young couple traveled through Great Britain. Shelley’s life continued to be dominated by his desire for social and political reform, and he was constantly publishing pamphlets. His first important poem, „Queen Mab”, privately printed in 1813, set forth a radical system of curing social ills by advocating the destruction of various established institutions.
In 1814 Shelley left England for France with Mary Godwin, the daughter of William Godwin. During their first year together they were plagued by social ostracism and financial difficulties. However, in 1815 Shelley’s grandfather died and left him an annual income. „Laon and Cynthna” appeared in 1817 but was withdrawn and reissued the following year as „The Revolt of Islam”. It is a long poem in Spenserian stanzas that tells of a revolution and illustrates the growth of the human mind aspiring toward perfection.
After Harriet Shelley’s suicide in 1816, Shelley and Mary officially married. In 1817 Harriet’s parents obtained a decree from the lord chancellor stating that Shelley was unfit to have custody of his children. The following year Shelley and Mary left England and settled in Italy. By this time their household consisted of their own three children and Mary’s half-sister Claire Claremont and her daughter Allegra (whose father was Lord Byron). On July 8, 1822, Shelley was drowned while sailing in the Bay of Spezia, near Lerici.
Ode to the West Wind
Percy Bysshe Shelley composed the poem "Ode to the West Wind" in 1819 and published it in 1820. Some have interpreted the poem to be an expression of the speaker lamenting his current situation, but at the same time rejoicing in the fact his/her written works will have influence over people in the same situation. More than anything else, Shelley wanted his message of reform and revolution spread, and the wind becomes the trope for spreading the word of change.
The poem “Ode to the West Wind” consists of five cantos written in tetra rime. The Ode is written in iambic pentameter. The poem begins with three cantos describing the wind's effects upon earth, air, and ocean. The last two cantos are Shelley speaking directly to the wind, asking for its power, to lift him like a leaf, or a cloud and make him its companion in its wanderings. He asks the wind to take his thoughts and spread them all over the world so that the youth are awoken with his ideas.
The poem can be divided in two parts: the first three cantos are about the qualities of the ‘Wind’; the fact that these three cantos belong together can visually be seen by the phrase ‘Oh hear!’ at the end of each of the three cantos. Whereas the last two cantos give a relation between the ‘Wind’ and the speaker, there is a turn at the beginning of the fourth canto; the focus is now on the speaker, or better the hearer, and what he is going to hear.
First Canto
The first stanza begins with the alliteration ‘wild West Wind’. The reader gets the impression that the wind is something that lives, because he is ‘wild’ – it is a kind of personification of the ‘wind’. Even after reading the headline and the alliteration, one might have the feeling that the canto might somehow be positive. The first few lines consist of a lot of sinister elements, such as ‘dead leaves’. The inversion of ‘leaves dead’ in the first canto underlines the fatality by putting the word ‘dead’ at the end of the line so that it rhymes with the next lines. The sentence goes on and makes these ‘dead’ leaves live again as ‘ghosts’ that flee from something that panics them. The colorful context makes it easier for the reader to visualize what is going on – even if it is in an uncomfortable manner. ‘Yellow’ can be seen as the ugly hue of ‘pestilence-stricken’ skin; and ‘hectic red’, though evoking the pace of the poem itself, could also highlight the pace of death brought to multitudes. There is also a strange synchronous in the color ‘black’ and the adjective ‘pale’ (ominous symbols).
In the word ‘chariotest’ the ‘est’ is added to the verb stem ‘chariot’, probably to indicate the second person singular, after the subject ‘thou’ . The ‘corpse within its grave’ in the next line is in contrast to the ‘azure sister of the Spring’ – a reference to the east wind – whose ‘living hues and odors plain’ evoke a strong contrast to the colors of the fourth line of the poem that evoke death. The last line of this canto (‘Destroyer and Preserver’) refers to the west wind. The west wind is considered the ‘Destroyer’ because it drives the last signs of life from the trees. He is also considered the ‘Preserver’ for scattering the seeds which will come to life in the spring.
Second Canto
The second canto of the poem is much more fluid than the first one. The sky’s ‘clouds’ are ‘like earth’s decaying leaves’. They are a reference to the second line of the first canto (‘leaves dead’). Through this reference the landscape is recalled again. The ‘clouds’ are ‘Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean’. This probably refers to the fact that the line between the sky and the stormy sea is indistinguishable and the whole space from the horizon to the zenith is covered with storm clouds. The ‘clouds’ can also be seen as ‘Angels of rain’. In a biblical way, they may be messengers that bring a message from heaven down to earth through rain and lightning. These two natural phenomena (ocean and sky) bring a transformation – a storm is emerging to evoke the change.
Line 21 begins with ‘Of some fierce Maenad ...’ and again the west wind is part of the second canto of the poem; here he is two things at once: first he is ‘dirge/Of the dying year’ and second he is “a prophet of tumult whose prediction is decisive”; a prophet who does not only bring ‘black rain, and fire, and hail’, but who ‘will burst’ it. The ‘locks of the approaching storm’ are the messengers of this bursting.
Shelley in this canto “expands his vision from the earthly scene with the leaves before him to take in the vaster commotion of the skies”. This means that the wind is now no longer scatter only the leaves but has risen, getting more destructive, promising storm.
Third Canto
The question that comes up when reading the third canto at first is what the subject of the ‘blue Mediterranean’. It is said that ‘he lay, / Lulled by the coil of this crystalline streams, /Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay, / And saw in sleep old palaces and towers’. This is obviously a slight ironical remark of the exotic and perfect place for escape, where the loving feelings overtake the poet, which Shelley often visits. He doesn’t want anymore the safe place of illusions and beauty. He comes to reality and depicts the world with all its harshness. The ‘wind’ – ‘saw’ the city, which may lead to the association of the human civilization and its glorious past with its great palaces and towers, symbol of power and strength, which now are mere reflection in the water.
The ‘wind’ appears as something that plays the role of a Creator and of a changing power. It comes and transforms the world, bringing the new and the truthful, the new birth of the Spring. It creates the new beginning and the desired change, blowing away the old and exhausted.
Whereas Shelley had accepted death and impending storm in the first and second canto, he now turns to the fear which the awaited change evokes. From line 26 to line 36 he gives an image of nature. Line 36 begins with the sentence ‘So sweet, the sense faints picturing them’. And indeed, the picture Shelley gives us here seems to be ‘sweet’. ‘The sea-blooms’ are probably the plants at the bottom of the ocean and give a peaceful picture of what is under water. But if we look closer at line 36, we realize that the sentence is not what it appears to be at first sight. This shows that the idyllic picture is not what it seems to be and that the harmony will certainly soon be destroyed. A few lines later, Shelley suddenly talks about ‘fear’. This again shows the influence of the west wind which announces the change of the season.
Fourth Canto
The fourth canto shows – in comparison with the previous cantos – a turning-point. Whereas the cantos one to three begin with ‘O wild West Wind’ and ‘Thou...’ and are clearly directed to the wind, there is a change in the fourth canto. The focus is no more on the ‘wind’, but on the speaker who says ‘If I...’ Until this part, the poem has appeared very anonymous and was only concentrated on the ‘wind’ and its forces so that the author of the poem was more or less forgotten. It becomes more and more clear that what the author talks about now is himself. That this must be true, shows the frequency of the author’s use of the first-person pronouns ‘I’, ‘my’ and ‘me’. These pronouns appear nine times in the fourth canto. Certainly the author wants to dramatize the atmosphere so that the reader recalls the situation of canto one to three. He achieves this by using the same pictures of the previous cantos in this one. Whereas these images, such as ‘leaf’, ‘cloud’ and ‘wave’ have existed only together with the ‘wind’, they are now existing with the author. The author thinks about being one of them and says ‘If I were a ...’ Shelley here identifies himself with the wind, he wants to be liberated from the gloomy lot. He wishes he was young, filled with hope and faith. He says ‘Oh, lift me up as a wave, a leaf, a cloud’. He knows that this is something impossible to achieve, but he does not stop praying for it. He says: ‘I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!’ He confesses he is damaged by life and unable to fight (he is bleeding), but also confesses that once he was like the Wind (“one too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.”).
At the end of the canto the poet tells us that ‘a heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed’. This may be a reference to the years that have passed and ‘chained and bowed’ the hope of the people for the change. Confronting that, the West Wind becomes the opposite. The wind is the ‘uncontrollable’ who is ‘tameless’.
One more thing that one should mention is that this canto sounds like a kind of prayer or confession of the poet. This confession does not address God but beside this sounds very personal.
Shelley also changes his use of metaphors in this canto. In the first cantos the metaphors are frequent. Now the metaphors are only weakly presented – ‘the thorns of life’. Shelley also leaves out the fourth element: the fire. In the previous cantos he wrote about the earth, the air and the water. The reader now expects the fire – but it is not there. This leads to a break in the symmetry of the poem because the reader does not meet the fire until the fifth canto.
Fifth Canto
Again the wind is very important in this last canto. The wind with his ‘mighty harmonies’ becomes an artist or a Creator of sounds. At the beginning of the poem the ‘wind’ was only capable of blowing the leaves from the trees – a small storm, enlarging gradually through the poem; it receives its climax in the fifth canto.
Everything that had been said before was part of the elements – wind, earth and water. Now the fourth element comes in: the fire. In this way the poem is accomplished and gives the feeling of wholeness and completeness of the meanings. The “ashes and sparks” incline that the fight will start soon, after the Wind scatters the words of the poet among the mankind.
It is also necessary to mention that the first-person pronouns again appear in a great frequency; but the possessive pronoun ‘my’ predominates. Unlike the frequent use of the ‘I’ in the previous canto that made the canto sound self-conscious; this canto might now sound self-confident. The canto is no more a request or a prayer as it had been in the fourth canto – it is a demand.
The poet becomes the wind’s instrument – his ‘lyre’. This is a symbol of the poet’s participation towards the wind; he becomes his musician and the wind’s breath becomes his breath. The poet’s attitude towards the wind has changed: in the first canto the wind has been an ‘enchanter’, now the wind has become an ‘incantation’.
And there is another contrast between the two last cantos: in the fourth canto the poet had articulated himself in singular: ‘a leaf’, ‘a cloud’, ‘A wave’ and ‘One too like thee’. The last canto differs from that. The poet in this canto uses plural forms, for example, ‘my leaves’, ‘thy harmonies’, ‘my thoughts’, ‘ashes and sparks’ and ‘my lips’. By the use of the plural, the poet is able to show that there is some kind of multitude that brings safety and certainty. It even seems as if he has redefined himself because the uncertainty of the previous canto has been blown away. The ‘leaves’ merge with those of an entire forest. The ‘Will’ is ushered by “mighty harmonies”. The use of this ‘Will” is certainly a reference to the future. That something new will come with the transcendent will and world-shattering spirit of the wind.
At last, Shelley again calls the Wind in a kind of prayer and even wants him to be ‘his’ Spirit: he says: ‘My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!’ Like the leaves of the trees in a forest, his leaves will fall and decay and will perhaps soon flourish again when the spring comes. That may be why he is looking forward to the spring and asks at the end of the last canto ‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ This is of course a rhetorical question because spring does come after winter and another renewal – spring - will come anyway. Thus the question has a deeper meaning and does not only mean the change of seasons, but is a reference to death and rebirth as well. It also indicates that after the struggles and problems, there would always be a new beginning. But the most powerful call to the Wind are the lines: "Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!" Here Shelley is imploring - or really chanting to - the Wind to blow away all of his useless thoughts so that he can be a vessel for the Wind and, as a result, awaken the Earth.
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