PART II: 6/21/07 Lecture notes on P. B. Shelley by E. Heroux
Welcome back. We promised to move on from “Adonais” to say a few quick things about that “Ode to the West Wind” (p 772). (Review your notes from last week on another “ode” by Keats for the meaning of “ode” and its close cousins, “apostrophe” and “personification”.)
Form
Let your eyeballs glance over the whole structure of this poem. Only 5 stanzas instead of 50 this time. Yet in some ways this ode is more complex and intricate. Let’s check out the form first. Each stanza is a fourteen-line sonnet in terza rima (triplet rhyme) aba bcb cdc ded ee. Check now to see if you can match this rhyme scheme.
The groups of three lines are technically called “tercets”. The challenge of this form is that you need a lot of English words that rhyme, since each tercet is linked to the next tercet by one rhyme, up until the final rhymed couplet for every stanza. This is a tough form to fulfill.
But it is easier to compose in terza rima in Italian, since so many word endings use “o” or “a” or “i” in Italian. In fact, Shelley wrote this ode while in Italy. Probably he chose to write in the Italian style therefore – and most famously, the Italian, Dante, wrote The Divine Comedy and invented the terza rima form for it. If the very form of “Adonais” echoed Keats’s poetry, then the form of this “Ode” echoes Dante, as if to mark its origin in Italy.
Structure
Aside from the poetic form, this ode has an overarching structure. The first three stanzas show how the stormy wind affects the land, then the sky in the 2nd stanza, and then the sea in the 3rd. Stanza 4 introduces the lyric “I” which by convention can be read as Shelley himself, (or you can always say “thespeaker” of the poem who addresses the West Wind directly as “thou”). Here the lyric “I” or Shelley is described as in contrast with the wind / spirit, which seems more powerful. The final stanza is a sort of prayer to unite the power of that wind / spirit with the speaker’s spirit; an appeal for inspiration and a way toward renewal.
Spirit
Notice that the root word of in-spira-tion = spirit, and also that “spirit” overlaps with “breath” and “wind” etymologically in several languages, as the footnote in The Norton suggests. These links are varied and complex. What does all this mean for Shelley? If you recall that he was kicked out of Oxford University for writing an article in favor of atheism (specifically against the Biblical theism), then perhaps “Ode to the West Wind” demonstrates how to pray to the cosmos or to Nature in a way that evokes ancient pre-christian spirituality and pre-monotheistic pantheism.[1]
Setting & Theme
I noted above that Shelley wrote this in Italy in 1819, while walking in the woods near the Arno River, not far from Florence. He wrote a short note about this, which is partly quoted in a footnote in The Norton. His note also mentions a dramatic, wild storm of lighting and thunder and even hail. Ouch! Seems he got caught outside in quite a sublime shock. As the storm just began to start up, he could sense the air change, to tip suddenly from summer to cool wet autumn, the cyclical fall – death and destruction, but only temporary if we have faith in the natural cycle of the seasons. Ironically, this destruction helps to prepare for renewal in springtime. Shelley is standing in the middle of this “tempest” wind and trying to identify with both its power and its ecological role in wiping away the old to prepare for the new. Of course, he poetically transfers the strictly natural function of the autumn storm out to a much more general meaning about destruction / renewal processes of both historical revolution and personal growth. What sort of renewal does he want for historical progress and personal development? A full study of his life and works shows that he wanted a utopian anarchism.[2]
Rhetorical address
Any published poem is not merely a private prayer, since it is intended to be read by the public audience. He’s not just shouting into the empty wind, his voice drowned out by the thunder and hail. What then does Shelley want us to hear in this prayer to the personified Wind? Why does he want us to overhear his prayer for inspiration, or for identification with the destructive-renewal cyclical powers of nature? How much of this is merely playing with poetic conventions, such as apostrophe, personification, etc., and how much of this did Shelley devoutly believe? Is he announcing the goal or program of his poetics in general, not only for this but also for future poems? Why does this ode refer to itself in the reflexive line 65? What does Shelley imply by the final rhetorical question at line 70? None of these questions about the rhetoric of this ode have definite answers. You can interpret these somewhat variously according to how you take the author’s tone, how you attribute importance to this aspect or that aspect. You should be able to begin tentatively to do so now, giving “close” details from the poem to illustrate how you arrive at your interpretation of this purpose. (Hint: there is after all a final exam coming soon!)
Intertext
Back in Part 1 of this lecture, I mentioned that the same “breath” or windy storm that Shelley evoked at the end of “Adonais” is an allusion to his own “Ode to the West Wind”. Now that you’ve seen more about this Ode, look back again at this intertextual connection to the later elegy for Keats. Stanza 55 (p. 835). I can’t help but feel some alarm at his psychological confession there, of becoming a sort of Byronic hero. He’s literally saying that the destructive spirit of the fall Wind has indeed possessed him: “I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar” from the rest of society, the “trembling throng” on shore who are afraid to go that far. His wish in this elegy is to go along with Death, with “what Death can join together” (line 477), to join Keats in death, to risk everything for a Romantic apocalypse. This desperate passion is there offset or meliorated[3] by another belief throughout his poetry: “that sustaining Love / Which through the web of being” continues to shine forth and join everything since we “all thirst” for love. Nevertheless, Shelley was indeed deeply depressed by several tragedies, both personal and social, during his final years before drowning in the tempest storm that he … well, predicted.
Postscript
What I’ve tried to model for you here is not in itself a close reading of the “Ode to the West Wind” but rather to outline the major parts of such a reading. If we had more time, and more breath, we would then flesh this skeleton out with more meaty details from the poem itself. I’ll have to leave that up to your own skills.
Next, we must make a little time to glance over one of the most famous essays about poetry in English.
“A Defence of Poetry”[4]
The editor’s intro to this on page 837 is interesting about the context of Shelley’s essay – especially how it is an extended rejoinder[5] to the position published by Thomas Love Peacock (great name!!) which argued satirically that Romantic poetry was useless in the new age of science, and economic progress through technology, and the growing practical, secular culture. Does Shelley give persuasive reasons to defend the poets’ belief in the importance of Imagination? This is a question you should seek to answer for yourself. Do the Taiwanese practice Peacock’s world or Shelley’s world more? That’s a rhetorical question.
For Shelley, the real topic is not poems, but rather poetics.[6] And poetics for him comes to assume all kinds of creative imagination. So immediately you should recognize that he isn’t defending the quality of this or that poem, but rather the entire enterprise of artistic creation and even further, of the power of imagination for humanity – as opposed to only practical and rational interests.
But why an essay rather than a poem for this? Does writing a prose essay automatically capitulate to the supposed uselessness of poetry, since whatever isn’t poetry is called prose? Paradoxically, Shelley is pulled by the nature of[7]this argument with Peacock and the whole cultural drift of the times into rationalism, materialism, and economics to a compromise in which he must address the unwilling reader in their preferred mode of prose, giving a rational justification for the import of imagination. In some ways, then, Shelley is already pushed on the defence and unable to assume that the reader values poetic modes at all. But he tries to persuade the reader, using their own values, that poetic imagination is also useful, and all the moreso in an era that cannot see this.
Launching into the opening paragraph, Shelley “takes the high road” and establishes a rather sophisticated discourse, with no apology for its difficulty. He demands that the reader be serious, as this is not satire. To give a schematic of his argument in the opening paragraph, I’ll give you yet another binary chart:
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Reason vs.
Contemplating relations
between thoughts, such as cause and effect. Analysis – look at parts or how something works. Logic or to logizein. Enumeration of known quantities. Focus on differences. Tool or instrument. Secondary.
Imagination
Composing new thoughts by adding to them with the mind itself. Synthesis – put together in new ways or see a whole system beyond the sum of the parts. Making or to poiein. Perception of quality not quantity; perceiving values. Focus on similarities. Empathy, harmony. Agent or Subject. Primary.
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I think that we could sum up these opposites by saying that Reason functions to figure out a means, while Imagination functions to figure out the ends. “Means to an end” as we say. Reason is an instrument that is good at finding out “how to” do something, but it is poor at finding out “the best goal” or what ought we to aim at. As a semantic argument, you can name these two whatever you like, yet the distinction remains very relevant today. We are becoming powerful at figuring out how DNA works, how to re-engineer organisms genetically, e.g., yet we feel lost about whether or not it is ultimately the best end. Morality in other words is based on values, and those values cannot be derived from objective facts. Quality is not quantity. Facts are not values. But when this type of reason dominates and makes all the decisions, we lose Agency, the freedom to choose not to employ means toward an end, even though we have figured out how to do so. Instrumental reason dominates dangerously when we live as if everything that we figure out how to do then automatically gets done. But we don’t spend enough energy searching for things that we should stop doing, and instead imagine other goals. This is the upshot of Shelley’s essay, most of which is about how we arrive at a morality.
Speaking of energy, we are out of that and also time -- and also space. So I recommend that if you can’t read the whole essay, then at least skim and dip into it here and there. See if you can’t find something interesting and quotable. Many of the sentences are crafted as aphorisms.[8] The essay is so quotable that we have a long tradition of quoting some parts of it. E.g, “Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds” (847). Can you find one that you like? The most famous and oft-quoted sentence of this whole essay is the last one: “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the World.” [9]
So to conclude, let’s read the conclusion, the final paragraph (850):
“For the literature of England, an energetic development of which has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will, has arisen as it were from a new birth. In spite of the low-thoughted envy which would undervalue contemporary merit, our own will be a memorable age . . . .”
One thing clear there is that Shelley knew that his period was historically special and would be remembered as such. He was right, judged in hindsight from the 21st century. It is an odd contemporary myth among scholars today that the Romantics didn’t know that they were Romantics; that the whole notion was invented by later critics but is dubious since, as you saw in our course, Byron isn’t like Wordsworth, and Blake isn’t like Keats, and so forth. But this myth is due to current scholarly “Reason” that focuses more on differences and forgets about what Shelley called “similitude” and “sympathy” and “harmony” beyond those differences. Shelley would say that my colleagues lack Imagination when they say this. (These scholars also forgot to read French and German Romantics who likewise knew that they were Romantics.) Nevertheless, as this passage and numerous similar passages of that era show, the Romantics knew that they were Romantics, not only in poetry, but also as Shelley mentions here, in philosophy, the arts, music, politics, etc. Their individual work was “less their spirit than the spirit of the age” as Shelley argued (850). As you noticed, they all knew each other. They saw themselves as departing from the staid neoclassical writers of the earlier 18th century, and away from the old regimes of status quo hierarchy and oppression. They saw themselves as “makers” of a new world of liberty, equality, and fraternity; and as explorers of the spirit of Nature; as cultivators of feeling and individuality, open to exploring both the exotic and the dark side; and they were pioneers of consciousness through imagination.
If this sounds like a generic summing up of a survey of Romanticism, then that’s because it is.
ENDNOTES
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[1] “Monotheistic” (adj) for mono – (only one) and theos [Deus] god. Any religion that believes that there is only one God or Creator. What I have been calling “the desert religions” are monotheisms. In contrast, “pantheistic” (adj) or pantheism (n) is any religion or spiritual belief that there are many gods or at least spirits everywhere within nature. This is very close to and overlaps a lot with “animism” – the belief that the whole universe and everything in nature is in animated by a soul or spirit, e.g., the soul of the mountain, the soul of the tree, the soul of the wind. Look again at how Shelley uses these ancient traditions in a specific way that can best be called “Romanticism.”
[2] A very respected study of this is in the book, Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Michael H. Scrivener (Princeton University Press, 1982).
[3] “Meliorate” (v) to make better, to gradually improve, as in progress. Also, “ameliorate”.
[4] “Defence” is the British spelling for “defense” in American English. Both spellings are OK, and don’t let anyone bully you about that. There’s no reason to get defensive.
[5] “Rejoinder” (n) is a mode of argument responding to and against a position with sharp wit.
[6] “Poetics” (n) any theory about poetry in general. Often prescriptive rather than descriptive. Notice that Shelley too is prescribing, not just describing, a poetics for humanity.
[7] Do review the distinction in English between “nature” and “the nature of…” something.
[8] “Aphorism” (n) a short, neatly phrased assertion that is so well-said that it can become a common saying.
[9] A very informed and interesting explication of Shelley’s most famous sentence appears in a study titled The Unacknowledged Legislator: Shelley and Politics by P.M.S. [unfortunate name!] Dawson (Oxford University Press, 1980) :