Dear Romanticists,
Two
of the most innovative and influential theories of poetry come from the
Romantic period. One is the “Preface”
to Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical
Ballads. The other is “A
Defence of Poetry.” Like the “Preface,”
the “Defence” lays out its author’s most deeply held beliefs about what makes
good poetry and what role poetry plays in the wider social world. You will notice some common interests
between the two, for example the importance of individual perception and
imagination, and the spontaneous nature of poetic inspiration. Read, then, for what Shelley adds to
Wordsworth’s (and Coleridge’s) ideas.
For one thing, we know that one particularly Shellean tactic is the
string of metaphors, so you might consider the importance of metaphors in his
essay.
Also read the assigned
poems; we will be examining these to see how Shelley’s poetic theory plays out
in practice.
Happy reading,
Prof. M.
Some skylarking for your amusement, by the British Romantic painter and writer Samuel Palmer.
Shelley is what I’d probably venture to call an “aesthetic poet”-- he’s enamored by the beauty of things, especially the elusive beauty that is nearly intangible, and he attempts to catch that and pin it down with his words. However, in addition to nature, sentience and imagination containing an aesthetic pleasure, he seems to attribute a sense of inherent morality to the world. Not only does he give nature morality, and by extension poetry, but he called poetry itself “divine”-- which strikes me as interesting, as he identifies as an atheist. I would classify Byron as an agnostic, and I am tempted to do the same with Shelley, as he is completely convinced that there is a higher power out there in the world, merely that it is not that of the being worshipped in the various churches across Europe. But the greater difference between Byron and Shelley is that the former cared not a whit for morals whatsoever, and clashed with them whenever he could (either because it rubbed against his inner system, or simply to spite convention), while the latter finds morality and goodness everywhere he looks; Byron flitted in the realm of passively seeking something greater, while it is as if Shelley simply had no need for a deity because everything he saw in life embodied a spark of something greater, and he therefore saw no need for the covenants and scriptures and belief systems of organized religion--as organization squelched the unbridled beauty of reality.
ReplyDeleteShelley's "A Defence of Poety" is the opposite of Wordsworth's opinion of the essence of poetry. According to Wordsworth, poetry (his poetry, and the best that there is, obviously) is "emotion recalled in tranquility" but then "contemplated" until the personal emotion or story the poet is thinking of changes, becomes more pleasant, and is something that other people can relate to. It is a deliberate process in which the poet creates something.
ReplyDeleteShelley believes that poetry is not a conscious, deliberately formed story or emotion. Nay, rather, the poet is so exquisitely delicate that he is a pathway for the zeitgeist to flow into the world. The poets don't even realize that "They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age." As such, poets, or perhaps they are demi-gods, are "the wisest, the happiest, and the best, inasmuch as he is a poet, is equally incontrovertible: the greatest poets have been men of the most spotless virtue, of the most consummate prudence, and, if we would look into the interior of their lives, the most fortunate of men." Really? Because according to the facts we have been discussing for the entire semester, this is pure hooey. Forget about all the other purposely immoral poets who led lonely, short lives--Shelley himself was an adulterer! And even if Shelley didn't believe what he did was immoral, surely it is cruel to cause another person to commit suicide. I hope that as Shelley drowned he realized that he was receiving measure for measure. Unfortunately, it's more likely he thought about how the end of his life is like a final poem expressing the deepest meaning of the universe blah blah blah. Or maybe simply, How pathetic to drown, for I had hoped to commit dramatic suicide or waste away happily from consumption.
The "Stanzas" drips with Shelley's thoughts, as he expressed them in his "Defense," on the poet's use of language to create out of ink and paper a new world. Everything and nothing feels familiar about "Stanzas written in Dejection."
ReplyDeleteIt starts with brightly evocative imagery of "The sun is warm, the sky is clear" - the beginning to, oh, 1000 penny novels - and then slips into this new, but, yet, equally reflexively graspable description of "The purple noon's transparent light." With his manipulation of stranger language, Shelley is sinking us into what will son emerge as the incongruity between the happy "Waves...dancing fast and bright," and the "Solitude" we will soon be meeting.
Then, talking a sharp left turn, Shelley introduces the I, and harps on the I, pounds in the I, for the rest of the poem. Whereas in the first stanza the imagery was of Universe - and nothing specific - here, we get painfully specific.
The colors which were happy, bright, easy before, are now sinister and disturbing - "green and purple seaweeds strown." Light is not "clear" or physically weightless as it was in stanza 1. Now, it is "thrown." It is "lightning" that "Is flashing round me," the poet. The speaker's vulnerability, fear, and total inability to alter the situation is palpable.
"Alas! I have nor hope nor health" - interesting choices for the first items to mention in stanza 3 as reasons for sadness. But, upon reflection, they are apt choices. It is hope and the health to have hope, and to see that hope come to some meaningful end/fruition that makes life not "dejection" and "solitude," but exciting, worthwhile. They not only makes life endurable, but hope and health make life wholly feasible. To be without either is profoundly, singularly miserable.
The poem's title is so interesting. Been trying to make sense of it: stanzas written in dejection... that word "in" can have multiple permutations - the poet was dejected at the time of the writing, or the stanzas are seeped in dejection... Then, the very specific use of the word "Stanza." As one quickly realizes in "Defense," Shelley likes to use very, very specific language, and, will often provide many alterations and iterations of as idea, but, each metaphor, simile, description does elucidate his point further. There must be something significant in his exacting choice of "Stanzas." It's so obvious - this a poem, there will be stanzas. Yet, at the same time, strikes me as somehow profound. These are parts and wholes, pieces coming together, playing with one another - they are Stanzas of a Poem.