Percy Bysshe Shelley

Got my copy of Paul Foot’s Red Shelley today. A completely banged up, partially moldy, certainly water damaged paperback but I’m stoked.

Shelley and I have never played well together, largely because when I wished to learn how to be a poet I strenuously rejected both his style and his persona as examples I wanted to emulate. Under the circumstances, I could never read him for pleasure because I was constantly resisting him.

bysshe don't kill my vibe

I read Richard Holmes' Shelley: The Pursuit in December: he was a horror as a husband and father but what a liberal. And I love "Mont Blanc," "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," and the addled parts of Prometheus Unbound more than I did in college. The Cenci should be part of any lit class on tragedy.

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

is red shelley any good treesh, i have always avoided it (though i like the way paul foot wrote as a journalist and once saw him visiting a neighbour and then again in a hospital where i too was waiting to be seen abt something) (his thing turned out to be much more serious than mine tho)

this book is good. it's very straightforward and more about placing Shelley in his historical/political milieu than it is about opening up the texts in an innovative way. however, that's OK because it is a fascinating period -- England in the wake of the french revolution, when all the forces of reaction were being marshalled to quell workers' rebellions -- and you end up getting all the historical references in the poems.

the big takeaway is that almost all of shelley's poems are direct responses to current events and historical figures. sometimes he actually names the people he is calling out, like take this selection from the masque of anarchy:

II

I met Murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven blood-hounds followed him:

III

All were fat; and well they might
Be in admirable plight,
For one by one, and two by two,
He tossed the human hearts to chew
Which from his wide cloak he drew.

IV

Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Eldon, an ermined gown;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.

V

And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.

VI

Clothed with the Bible, as with light,
And the shadows of the night,
Like Sidmouth, next, Hypocrisy
On a crocodile rode by.

castelragh, edon and sidmouth were real historical figures who oversaw repressive policies during shelley's lifetime.

sorry, that was a belated response to mark s

The Metternich bio I just finished treats his friendship w/Castlereagh as if they were two bros on a lawn sipping sparkling wine deciding whom to kill next.

wait, what?

lol I overplayed that but yeah they were bros

That whole Napoleon thing, you know.

oh metternich as in klaus metternich. i thought someone with that last name wrote a bio of shelley.

Thanks for the Queen Mab reminder. I need a long poem to read this week.

np. it's a great one.

that opening

I have lost my (unread) copy of The Pursuit somehow. I've turned the house upside down looking for it; it's not like it's small. Maddening!

A little domestic drama, there. (My long poem is going to be the Wreck of the Deutschland.)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/28/twitter-rips-into-jeremy-corbyns-pretentious-poetry-except-its-actually-by-shelley