PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

[Anonymous No.11359175]

This is the first discussion thread for the Shelley reading group. These threads are weekly, so the next thread will be Friday.

This week's thread covers "Song: To the Men of England," "Ozymandias," and "The Masque of Anarchy." I'm sure many of you are already familiar with these poems, so if you want to join the discussion, feel free.

The following is a very tentative reading schedule. Feel free to make suggestions if you think some works should be added, removed, or shifted around on the schedule. I'd like to make it official as soon as possible:
WEEK 1: (That's this week. See works already mentioned.)
WEEK 2: Discussion for "Mont Blanc," Song of Apollo," Ode to the West Wind," and "The Cloud"
WEEK 3: Discussion for "To a Sky-Lark," "Adonais," and "Mutability"
WEEK 4: Discussion for "Alastor; Or the Spirit of Solitude," and "Queen Mab"
Week 5: Discussion for "Prometheus Unbound"
Week 6: Discussion for "Hellas"

[Anonymous No.11359765]

>>11359175
Will be posting in this once I'm off and home, ca. 2hrs-

[Anonymous No.11360014]

Beautiful.
Quick bump. Would love to know what people who have read much Shelly think of the three first poems OP has listed.
WIll post in an hour or so as well.

[Anonymous No.11360610]

>Ozymandias
>And on the pedestal, these words appear:
Who was it who wrote down the mocking lines on the pedestal?
Was it the ones who destroyed the statue? destroyed his kingdom? or some late wanderers who found this ruin?

[Anonymous No.11360617]

>>11359175
I commend the gentlemen of this thread for their contributions. Will look for it later and hope to take part.

[Anonymous No.11360628]

Took me far too long to realise his wife wrote Frankenstein

>>11360610
I always took it as Ozymandias writing the inscription as a testament to his own enduring might and the irony being that his broken statue is all that is left

[Anonymous No.11360637]

>>11359175
Not an easy thread to begin, but here goes--
I'll say first that I was a little suspect of the three selections before re-reading them (it's been awhile) but afterwards must commend OP on a job well done--
Had it been up to me I would've chosen the very early Alastor, just a brilliant poem (if arguably the crown of his juvenalia) and the latter day A Defense of Poetry, which is Shelley's major statement of what poets and poetry even are. I now don't think this so good a plan as OP's FWIW.
>Giant Forms and forms of power
What's left of Ozymandias is no hefty spirit form striding through a verse, but the remains of what was actually an earthen 'giant form,' or idol or statue, of which remains an inscribed pedestal, legs and a head (briefly Rilke's poem of Apollo's torso came to mind, as if to supply a missing piece- to complete the statue one would need to look no further than the Aeneid's first word- Arma..)-- I found this interesting because giant (spirit) forms are all over the Mask of Anarchy-- from Murder through Hope to ..Panic, whom 'the people' beckoned toward martyrdom (for Liberty) are counseled to ignore. And yet the statue in Oz is representative of a time when Ramses ii loomed even larger over his people than Castlereigh could have even hoped for, and serves to state Shelley's idea in all three poems that 'power' resides solely in the minds of those who are (read: who allow themselves to be) oppressed. Though those in power would commend themselve to laws and statuary, what (they) possess both actually and ultimately is as empty as the desertscape that concludes Oz. By 'actually' I mean power at the time of its actual possession (per Shelley), which of course is the impetus of Shelley's Song to the Men of England-- This (power) is Nothing, stand up for yourselves or dig your graves.
I know this is a poor beginning. My mind is going in too many different directions right now to make much sense even to myself. I will say that I rarely think of Blake when reading Shelley but that he really comes to the fore here. Though poets from Shakespeare to Dickinson are fond of using giant spirit forms, Blake employs them most explicitly throughout his verse.

[Anonymous No.11360641]

>>11360628
This

[Anonymous No.11360693]

>>11360628
This. Part of the irony is that the work of an anonymous sculptor endured while the empire of one of antiquity's most famous rulers didn't. I interpret as a statement on the longevity of art, although that is probably not the main theme nor the intended message.

[Anonymous No.11360761]

>>11360628
Do you have a personal reasoning as to why you think this is the case since it doesn't seem to go with the general theme of other Shelly poems where the arrogant self-rigtheous elite gets reminded he too is mortal or temporary.

[Anonymous No.11361328]

[Anonymous No.11361446]

>>11360693
>endured
as a ruin. But if so the irony extends to the Parthenon and whatever else endures from the deep and not so deep past as a representation of power. I personally think the poem's more ambiguous than that--
>Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
>Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
>The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
The imperious passions both survive in general (as the two other poems reveal) and as expressively carved in rock. To mock is both to represent (to ape) and to deride- but intentionally? To feed (the heart that fed) is both to sustain (the tyranny, as the workmen sustain their oppressors' rule in The Song) and even to draw 'inspiration' or nourishment from- it. This was no free artist, in other words, but an anonymous court lackey. Seeing his production as anything other than an empty ruin is a mistake, or an anachronism. There was no Apelles, no Myron at work here. Nothing at all reveals a thing about the work's quality.

[Anonymous No.11361460]

Why Shelley, though? Why not Keats?

Why Shelley? He's a glorified and inane flower; all ornaments without substance or suffering. The epitome of pretentious and affected. Raze this thread and make a Keats one; you'll learn more.

[Anonymous No.11361469]

>>11359175
Holy shit, a reading group I'm actually interested in!

I won't be posting tonight since it's late where I am but I'll definitely post some stuff tomorrow if the threads still up. Fucking love Shelley man, maybe my favourite poet

[Anonymous No.11361478]

>>11361469
And may I ask you why he's your favorite poet? Do you like overly sentimental and mawkish descriptions of idealized fantasy lands?

[Anonymous No.11361483]

>>11361469
Alright I said I wasn't going to post tonight but I'm gonna ask something that I've always wondered about. The fact that the bulk of Ozymandias is reported speech by a "traveler from an antique land", is that just to diminish the authority of Ozymandias, that his reign and his monument are mere hearsay by a stranger, or is there something else that I'm missing?

What are your thoughts on this part of the poem?

[Anonymous No.11361494]

>>11361483
To me it just feels like Shelley (the poet) is admitting he doesn't get out much; his testimony is from someone who actually lives life and explores it; he just takes other people's ideas and wraps them up prettily in romantic sentimentalism. To be caught up in such a minute detail means you need to get back to Keats. Find my thread in the catalog

[Anonymous No.11361502]

>>11361460
>a glorified and inane flower
The Eve of St. Agnes
Isabella and the Pot of Basil
La Belle Dame sans Merci....
-don't get me wrong, I love Keats. But Shelley's four extra years of life made all the difference so far as a sustained quality of output is concerned. This isn't even the good stuff (except Ozymandias) much less the great. Just a fact.

[Anonymous No.11361505]

>>11361502
Okay, sure. List those poems, ones of lesser quality.

Now I raise you Keats's Odes.

Does anything Shelley have come close to his Odes (capitalized for power)?

[Anonymous No.11361526]

>>11361505
Prometheus Unbound, easily.
Shall we compare the Otho the Great fragment with The Cenci? Uh- We can't- because there is no fucking comparing the two!
Keats just didn't have enough time. But again, I like him enormously.

[Anonymous No.11361543]

>>11361526
Prometheus Unbound? Truly? That mess of a composition? What exactly draws you to it? It's overly stylized and prim and proper. It's just beautiful descriptions of landscapes entirely removed from reality. It's overly romantic and idealized. It's mythological and fantastical. It's nothing, it blows in the wind; and how he loves to refer to genii, to dews, to trees, to stars. Oh rubbish, honestly.

Keats was already heading toward Shakespeare levels at 25. If he had lived to 52, he would have been the greatest writer who ever lived

[Anonymous No.11361552]

>>11361478
Yes I do!

But on a serious note, I don't object to the fantastic tones of Shelley's poetry. There's a phrase in Mont Blanc, where he describes "gleams from a remoter world", which as always struck me as an accurate description of the feeling of reading his poetry. Shelley was very fascinated with some notion of poetic forms, of a immaterial aesthetic realm, and whether you sympathize with that belief (I don't really), the airiness and phantasmality of his poetry captures this fascination perfectly. It's a beutiful vision of a higher world of which this world is a mere reflection, which leads us to imagine what such a world might be like. And if such a thing is illusory, this imagining is an exercise in stretching the poetic consciousness beyond its outer limits.

As for the sentimentality and mawkishness, I don't have a problem with that at all. I find the sincerity of romantic poetry more attractive than any subsequent movement. If you posted (>>11361460) then I'd like to agree with your recommending Keats, who is also masterful, though far more concrete in some ways than Shelley, and far airier in other ways also.

>>11361494
Shelley had one of the more eventful lives out of all the romantics, topped only by Byron. He certainly got out more than most poets. The fascination is how little he chose to draw on his own experience, when it was so ready for poeticization. He chose intstead to focus on that which was dreamlike and incorporeal, which is usually the repose of those who have never tasted life. For me, this is all the more reason to take Shelley's poetry seriously, since he must have felt a serious vocation to describe these dreamscapes and fantasies when his own life was so concretely fascinating.

[Anonymous No.11361586]

>>11361552
Yes, hum, truly, prithee, my dear. You really do slobber and slime over this man, don't you? He was lost in the heavens and the stars because he had no suffering at all in his life; he was perfect; educated at the top university (like Shakespeare's contemporaries had been); lived above the commoners and the poor; was protected from disaster, penury, toil, work; lived a life of writing poetry. Of course his works are going to be incorporeal and mythical and fantastical; it reflects how carefree and lavish his life was, above all. He knew nothing, was nothing; he read deeply and had a fancy for literature, and that's it. I want you to read his works and tell me, knowing this, how you don't throw up once he hits the train of describing overly some river in beautified and cloying fashion; how he can gape and gawp at some mythical Greek gods because he had the time and leisure to study them extensively; Prometheus Unbound is an exercise in pompous pretentiousness; he was a bumptious school-boy, and Shakespeare and Keats shit all over him because they were not educated yet had natural genius. Strip away Shelley's education and you have some average intellect making silly rhymes without the needless allusions. Save it; go read Keats and Shakespeare; it'll save you time.

[Anonymous No.11361589]

>>11361483
Actually, it's just a good point. It's reportage, even rumor. Perhaps it qualifies or underscores power's chief mechanism regardless of time period. Despite his atheism Shelley's in a direct line from Jesus to Gandhi on how most effectively to deal with power. Fortunately or not his answer is martyrdom- as The Mask of Anarchy makes clear.

[Anonymous No.11361593]

Keatsfags, resentful and envious just like Keats

[Anonymous No.11361608]

>>11361593
I'm sorry; point me to the direction where Keats was envious; perhaps inspired; perhaps spurred to compete; but envious? wherefore do you get this notion, and where? I don't understand it; his mind was of its own volition, alone and aloof; he was completely unique and failed to see it in his lifetime; and never call me envious; I'm not living vicariously through him; I strike my own paths.

[Anonymous No.11361615]

>>11361593
what do you mean envious and resentful? what did he have to resent? he penned the best odes of his generation; and for generations after remained king; do kings envy? do kings envy contemporary dukes? is that how the hierarchy functions? let me ask you, where is the envy? if he envied anyone it was Shakespeare; and we all envy him.

[Anonymous No.11361620]

>>11361608
>wherefore
You're using this incorrectly

[Anonymous No.11361625]

>>11361608
hello mister semi colon

[Anonymous No.11361628]

>>11361620
really? one word? one word? pick'd and pluck'd out of the whole arrangement? please, never strike at musical compositions; you would pull one note out of a masterpiece and say it is too sharp this way or too flat the other; you would make a mockery out of a single word in a passage; you would deface an idol for a small blot on its surface; you would go up to sculptures and pick out some dust particles and ask, "wherefore is this called the greatest piece if it can obtain dust on its surface?" that's what you are to me.

[Anonymous No.11361629]

>>11361543
I don't disagree about Keats, but tell me- what of Milton's Agonistes? It's not, for instance, one of five odes or an incomplete Hyperion..
but a- what?
Where the fuck's your patient negative capability, Keats-anon! Does it go on holiday when scanning Shelley? I'll reserve all commenting on Promethius until (we) get to it, out of respect for OP.

[Anonymous No.11361640]

>>11361586
>Yes, hum, truly, prithee, my dear. You really do slobber and slime over this man, don't you
I've had a couple of drinks tonight, and I'm in a bit of a slobbering sliming mood.

>He was lost in the heavens and the stars because he had no suffering at all in his life; he was perfect; educated at the top university (like Shakespeare's contemporaries had been); lived above the commoners and the poor; was protected from disaster, penury, toil, work; lived a life of writing poetry
Pure ressentiment. Your objection is nothing more than that Shelley was privileged. Of course, I'm sure that being raised on a diet of ancient poetry and classical philosophy would do *nothing* for one's aesthetic sensibilities. It's simply inconceivable that being raised within the classical tradition would help rather than hinder one's poetic abilities.

> I want you to read his works and tell me, knowing this, how you don't throw up once he hits the train of describing overly some river in beautified and cloying fashion; how he can gape and gawp at some mythical Greek gods because he had the time and leisure to study them extensively;
Easy! I can save myself form throwing up because I love beauty. I can save myself from throwing up because his life was likely no easier than your or mine, historically speaking, and you and I have the same luxury he did to contemplate the form of beauty.

>he was a bumptious school-boy, and Shakespeare and Keats shit all over him because they were not educated yet had natural genius
Hmm, you seem to find Shelley's education to be a sticking issue. As if you harbour some kind of envy towards his immersion from a young age in the classics.

>Strip away Shelley's education
see above point

>Save it; go read Keats and Shakespeare; it'll save you time.
If it's recommendation time, I'd suggest, if you're having trouble appreciating Shelley's poetic sensibility, immersing yourself in classical works as anyone with a literary interest should do at some point. Shelley is nothing less than the most classically minded artist on this side of Christ's birth, and failure to appreciate that can be due to nothing more than unfamiliarity with your Greeks.

Look man, I appreciate the argument, and your posts are very nicely written, but your umbridge with Shelley's education is weird and your dismissal of his aesthetics is a dismissal of classical aesthetics frankly

[Anonymous No.11361647]

yall motherfuckers be typing gay itt

[Anonymous No.11361659]

>>11361629
You'll have to forgive me; I have not read Agonistes by Milton; I've read Paradise Lost; it shows him to be a master of blank verse above all besides Shakespeare; Shelley's pen doesn't even reach a mile near it with his blank verse in Prometheus Unbound; so don't bring up Agonistes; it's one of his lesser poems and I have neither the time nor the patience to read anything other than magnum opuses in older writers (save Shakespeare, Keats, Donne etc); he's not really my thing, my taste; but I enjoyed Lost, I did;
and negative capability? familiarize me with it; I haven't had the time to read his letters; but I know Keats wanted his art to be transcendent; wanted it to evoke pain; wanted it to somehow give off pain or some sort of sensory pain; is that it? negative, it sound rather negative to me, subtracting; so perhaps negative as in life? we'll get there when we get there. save it.

>>11361635
of course he was. all good writers are aware of the absurdity of life; they know that true art is tragicomic; read more Shakespeare; believe in your name in the sand, because it shifts away; he was intimately aware, Keats was, of how fickle fame is and he was in it for the art; he sacrificed his medical career, do you know that? he did, for his art; and it shows, it really does; he spent the last years on his odes perfecting the form;

[Anonymous No.11361688]

>>11361640
Oh joy, what a joy it is in the world; to be arguing with someone who has imbibed already in his Friday-night revelries some alcohol; so this will be an uphill battle from the start getting my points across; please, anon, save the niceties and compliments; I disdain your amity for classical aesthetics; as if all of our notions, ideas, sentiments, forms, opinions should be based on the aesthetics formulated hundreds of years ago by privileged (yes, prithee, I say it), privileged men; because they decided that a Jove was a Jove and a Prometheus a Prometheus; that we are now inured by their myths and fashions forever because they were first; you, like Shelley, display some kind of ripe, mellow, mawkish and oversentimental obsession with past forms and stories; as if, forever, forever in eternity, we should be indebted to those stories; that we must rely on them for our senses of what art is; that allusions to them qualify the burning sparks of a work or wash it o'er like waves against the unnumber'd pebbles on the verge; please, please; how many times did Shakespeare refer to the Greeks in his plays; in small, minikin amounts; briefly and only when necessary; I can count on my fingers the times he refers to them in his plays; there's maybe a Hecat, a Jove, a Cytherea, a Venus, a Cupid; really obvious and known allusions; he doesn't swim in them or immerse himself in them; he doesn't show off or impress like Jonson (who actually called Shakespeare of a man with little Latin and less Greek); and that really aboves him above the rest; and why Shelley is inferior to him and to Keats; they made beauty without looking back to the past; they created beauty on their own; they MADE their idols and myths; they made their characters; Shelley has no characters; he simply plucks them out of books and puppets them with his own ghastly and perverted idealizations of his privileged worldview; and yes, I harp on privileged because he is; he stinks of it; he rots of it; he had his nose in a book his whole life and never should have put pen to paper; prithee.

[Anonymous No.11361713]

>>11361647
SHUT THE FUCK UP; wherefore do you mean gay? why gay? wherefore gay? please, tell

[Anonymous No.11361743]

>>11361688
To be honest with you man, it's an uphill battle for me to type at this point in my "Friday-night revelries". Prithee, let me sleep and I'll answer you in the morning, Keatsanon, when I can reliably put one leg in front of the other

[Anonymous No.11361750]

>>11361688
>>11361460
>>11361494
>>11361543
>>11361586
>>11361608
>>11361628
>>11361659
>>11361688
based semicolon brandishing keatsfag

[Anonymous No.11361752]

>>11361688
Ew, go shave and wash what is probably your very hairy and nasty puss-puss

[Anonymous No.11361757]

>>11361752
Don't bully keatsanon you fucking pleb

[Anonymous No.11361758]

>>11361743
prithee, have good rest; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, my hamlet!

>>11361750
most reverend, i thank thee;

>>11361752
o, sorry; prithee, i forgot to mention; i possess myself a penis, not a vagina; you must have me confused for the woman you grudgingly and woefully meet every night; the images are vivid; i can smell her from here; tell her to wash it, too

[Anonymous No.11361778]

>>11361758
>prithee, have good rest; and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest, my hamlet!
Thankee, I shall. And rise with combative words worthy of our dispute, no pun intended

[Anonymous No.11361787]

>>11361778
I duly and do appreciate it, Shelley-anon; perchance and mayhaps you will show me the way to appreciate the man; I eagerly await your return; and wish you good rest, good fortunes, good fate; and perhaps and alack even we'll shrug off dispute and combat and call it peace; I eagerly await it; and will wait right here for you

[Anonymous No.11362373]

buh-damp

[Anonymous No.11363165]

>>11359175
Bumping

[Anonymous No.11363215]

>>11359175
Nice I just started reading him, just finished Queen Mab. I'll start on this schedule instead.

[Anonymous No.11363828]

>>11359175
I'm the drunken shelleyfag who was posting last night. I'm busy most of today, but I'll try to write something fairly longish about The Masque of Anarchy tonight, and drop that in this thread.

Great hopes for this reading group!

[Anonymous No.11363872]

Would anyone be interested in reading A Defence of Poetry?

[Anonymous No.11363881]

>>11363872
Maybe add that as an optional read for the group. It's really not that impressive, despite being quite nicely written.

[Anonymous No.11363902]

>>11363872
No, let's go ahead and read "To Autumn" instead.

>>11363828
and a good morning to you! i hope today you've rested off those Lethe-wards that sunk your clarity yesterday; prithee!

[Anonymous No.11363905]

>a romanticist poetry thread turns into a catfight of two neckbeards affecting a lofty diction
why is this so unsurprising

[Anonymous No.11363933]

>>11363905
okay? and who's eliot; let me ask you that; who's eliot; he has, what, two poems in the whole canon that mean anything; and what are they?; edits by a Pound, Ezra; is that all he has; and yet we see his criticisms and opinions on every artist; we get his commentary on every piece; we exult him; he is as snobbish and affected as the romantics; as vain and conceited as byron; a poet who gained fame from the genius of pound; now pound that into your skull

[Anonymous No.11364359]

>>11360628
>I always took it as Ozymandias writing the inscription as a testament to his own enduring might
You are absolutely wrong and what you say goes completely against the undeniable theme of the poem.
What you say does not at all agree with the lines:
>Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
>Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
>The lone and level sands stretch far away.
All around him he is abandoned, deserted and alone, which is the exact opposite of might.
The writings on the pedestal are written mockingly and the irony is enjoyed by the late travellers passing by not him.

[Anonymous No.11364435]

>>11363905
>modernfag too autistic to understand self-parody
why is *this* so unsurprising

[Anonymous No.11364448]

>>11363905
based. romanticism was a mistake.

[Anonymous No.11364527]

>>11364359
>All around him he is abandoned, deserted and alone, which is the exact opposite of might.
I would have thought the irony is more in the idea that he once had these words written as a testament to his great kingdom, yet now nothing remains but sand all around. It's like a reminder to people that no great power or might can be eternal.

[Anonymous No.11364556]

>>11363881
>really not that impressive
sez?
the thread concerns Shelley, and as his major prose document, polemic, it should be read and discussed by the group
--at any rate would afford an opportunity to point its want of 'impressiveness' by whatever standard
--this comment's not only bogus, it elected to be so. In terms of what is/isn't 'impressive' with respect to his subject- poetry, poets, value- support this opinion, lad.

[Anonymous No.11364561]

>>11363872
Yes, it should be read.

[Anonymous No.11364566]

>>11364359
>reading comprehension
That is what I was implying. Well done for spelling it out.

[Anonymous No.11364569]

>>11364556
The reason I said it should be optional was that I found it to be a slog and not particularly illuminating regarding his poetic philosophy. I read it a very long time ago so I may be misremembering, but I don't particularly want to alienate people from the reading group by suggesting a long piece of romantic prose (romantic prose being the worst prose ever written) if the benefits are mild

[Anonymous No.11364592]

>>11364527
Given the fact that he's known otherwise as Ramses II (you) read nothing into the poem that isn't otherwise- historically- correct. Your intuition's correct, anon.

[Anonymous No.11364656]

>>11364569
It's reasonably short. I read it as a kid as well and it had the opposite effect. I gave it some care and it really impressed me. Perhaps a balance will be struck.
It's too assertive to have philosophical value, but as a personal statement it does possess occupational value. It's a testament not a treatise. His manifesto.

[Anonymous No.11364669]

>>11359175
23's a good group, OP. Well done

[Anonymous No.11364681]

>>11364359
What the fuck are you on about? It's fairly obvious that the inscription was written when the statue was built. There's no irony otherwise.

[Anonymous No.11365131]

>>11363902
Good morning chief, and good afternoon and evening too whatever the time may be where you are now! Drinking deeply of the Lethe I find does more to lift my clarity than sink it, and I think you'll find my dry posts more muddled than my wet posts.

>>11363828
Alright, I said I was going to autism out over Masque of Anarchy a little bit. I haven’t had much time, but here are some thoughts I’ve thrown together about the poem.
The first thing worth noting in the Masque, is that the role played by masks in the opening stanzas is reversed. Instead of people wearing masks which invoke a concept or idea, abstract entities have donned the masks of recognizable public figures.
>I met Murder on the way
>He had a mask like Castlereagh
This reversal is, to my mind, Shelley’s way of diminishing the power of these public figures, suggesting they are merely the “mask”, the superficial form of far greater abstract forces. There’s an echo here of Tolstoy’s dismissal of the Great Man in War and Peace, where the most powerful historical figures are in fact the most bound by greater historical forces, their freedom diminished by their power. This opposition between freedom and power is a counterintuitive idea, but one which shouldn’t be readily dismissed.
The title of the poem directs us towards its sharpest reversal, the paradox that “Anarchy”, lawlessness and chaos, assume the mask primarily of “God, and King, and Law”, those institutions which we would assume guarantee order in society. Shelley’s anti-authoritarianism is far better developed than some might realize. Here, he intuitively understands something about sovereignty which has been discussed in 20th century political philosophy: the authority of these social institutions comes from their being outside society. They are able to dictate social law and custom, and demand power over the lives of citizens, purely on the basis that they are not bound by any law, and exist outside any social bond. As in Hobbes, the sovereign does not quite leave the State of Nature, and it is this kernel of animality, of readiness towards conflict, that allows for the creation of States other than that of Nature.

Beyond that, the poem shows an understanding that violent reciprocity is a dangerous thing. Even though “we are many, they are few”, Shelley still cautions against violence. And the reasons for doing so are implicit in the poem. After all, Shelley speaks highly of freedom, but is tentative with regard to power, understanding these as at least somewhat opposed, and thus that violence is not an effective guarantee of freedom at all. I’ve spent the last few weeks reading Girard’s “Violence and the Sacred” which deals with violence as a contagion, which threatens to spiral out and consume all. If there is any writer who can make you take non-violence seriously as a practice, that would be Girard.

(1/2)

[Anonymous No.11365133]

>>11365131

Anyway, I don’t know if any of that is of interest. Some of it is a little shallow, since I didn’t have much time to look over the poem, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
What do you think of Shelley’s views on non-violent revolt in the poem?
Any further thoughts on the role of masks, or on the carnivalesque atmostphere of the first few stanzas?
What problems, if any, do you have with the poem? Did you like it, did you hate it?

(2/2)

[Anonymous No.11365167]

>You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and ‘load every rift’ of your subject with ore. The thought of such discipline must fall like cold chains upon you, who perhaps never sat with your wings furl’d for six months together.

Keats, writing advice to Shelley after being invited to stay with him in Europe during his illness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag1o3koTLWM

[Anonymous No.11365291]

>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jIpoAhDiY

Why the FUCK would David say the line

>Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

implying himself to be the king of kings, just to have Walter set up to fucking b-b-bbbbabababa-aba-bab-ababa-BASKET him with the next lines FROM THE SAME POEM:

>Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
>Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
>The lone and level sands stretch far away.

saying that David will fall to dust with the apparent great works he created. I like how they used this poem otherwise but Jesus this upset me. He is asking to b- wait, was he baiting him. oh fugg, I too, would have been outwitted by David. Damn sun.

[Anonymous No.11365416]

>>11365291
David was too arrogant to realise he would eventually have a downfall, and thought that only the line he uttered was relevant to him. David literally regarded himself in higher stature than the creators of his creators, his grand-creator if you will, all because he was able to surprise genocide another one of the engineer’s creations

[Anonymous No.11365868]

>>11365131
good-den to you, too; i see escaping the drunkenness of the lethe has not made you scape praising and worshipping shelley; what, still piping on the timbrels of this flower, this hawthorn, this rose-blossom, this musk-rose, this eglantine, this rosemary? really? has a day of sobriety and clear mind not actually turned thee toward a true poet like keats? still on shelley's case? he's self-affected, pretentious, useless, mundane; he describes rivers as if they were wonders of the world; could write thee a dissertation on an obscure mountain no one knows; could spend an essay or two on a single rose petal only to describe it superficially and then add in some allusions to some flower-gods or floral titans; please, oh please, give it up; today i was influenced by the debacle of last night's argument to give him (shelley) another go before i dismissed him to the dust and dwelling of a forgotten shelf in my library; where, opening my selected texts oxford edition, i perused queen mab gently; and there he went, and went, and went; talking of fairies in some sylvan and pastoral scene; weaving in some beautified and ornate images of the landscape and flowers; it took me all of my strength not to get a bag to regurgitate my lunch into; it was awful; and so i picked up donne again and went off on it; please, for the sake of yourself, your sanity, your writing, put him off; pluck shelley out of your conscience; let him go; he's a saint and a god of overblown and sticky stuff; saccharine to the touch, cloying and dripping; it's like drinking pure sugar through the eyes, his words being the aqua vitae; put him off, i say; put but money in thy purse, truly; i really say, put but money in thy purse, roderigo; because you could make so much money in the time it takes you to get through shelley's stupid and inane achievements

[Anonymous No.11365934]

>>11365868
BASED semicolon-brandishing keatsfag

[Anonymous No.11366356]

>>11365868
>overblown
thy substantive model?

[Anonymous No.11366439]

>>11365868
Why Mab and not with respect to the program, anon? Why not contribute? Mask's only five or so pp.

[Anonymous No.11366596]

>>11366356
no; that's for you; you affected effete mountebank; you apothecary of sinful iniquitous poison we label ignorance and stupidity; away with thee; your presence bewitches my sight to some doomsday vision; i don't want your portents; your ugliness blights out fairer sights; go, go; never come to; never, never; if i see you again in here, in this demesne, i'll blot your fucking eyes out; as they did gloucester; i'll blot thine eyne out with a dagger before mine eye, motherfucker

>>11366439
fine, i'll give masque a go; and i'll spare you for calling it "mask"; for a proprietor and hauteur of shelley, you should know he spells it masque; masque, as opposed to mask; like masque, rhymes with damask roses; really, just read it on an article

[Anonymous No.11366774]

>>11366596
Though the sense of masque(rade) is present in the poem (it proceeds through England before presuming to alight on London town) there are masks aplenty worn throughout and I assure (you) my old Mary Shelley edition, with her exclusive lovingly penned notes, settles decisively on Mask. Though Comus is John and Inigo's Masque, Anarchy is Shelley's Mask.
Really. I'm very surprised this doesn't perversely please.. thee.

[Anonymous No.11367903]

>>11365167
Thanks for this.

[Anonymous No.11367941]

>>11365868
based semicolon abuser

[Anonymous No.11368899]

Bump for Anarchy

[Anonymous No.11369322]

>>11359175
Who then is the mysterious warrior rising from the mist to rescue Hope and slay Anarchy and his kinsmen in The Mask/Masque (Both Shelleys used Mask, but Leigh Hunt introduced Masque in the first edition- it's literally been back and forth ever since- Everyman's Library employs Masque, but Modern Library sticks with Mask...FWIW)?
My guess is that it's the Warrior Spirit of Poetry.

[Anonymous No.11370176]

>>11366596

[Anonymous No.11370218]

>>11366774
>>11370176
and i say it's masque; really, and truly, i do; i say it's masque; as in, it's a kind of dilettante thespian diversion appreciated by the aristocracy; of which, i assure you, you two are not included in

[Anonymous No.11370267]

>>11359175
One common theme I noticed throughout all three of the aforementioned poems is the rejection of power, or the futility of ephemeral human authority in the face of Nature, who is the real monarch of mankind. In "Ozymandias," the distinction is ironic, as all that remains of this supposedly powerful ruler is a hunk of statue (whose parts have eroded over time) and an inscription proclaiming his authority over all beings, now rendered half-visible in the shifting sands.

In the other two poems, the rejection is more obvious, as these are reminiscent of the protest songs sung by hippies protesting Vietnam in the 60s. (And I don't find this surprising, given that Shelley was in truth a kind of proto-hippie.) They very well could be set to a folk tune, or recorded by Bob Dylan or Pete Seeger.

Would you folks say that Shelley was a proto-Socialist as well? I'd say he had sympathies that were in the libertarian-left department of the political spectrum, but I wouldn't say his view was entirely Socialist in its ideals, though it was utopian.

[Anonymous No.11370272]

>>11370218
Nice. Except that it isn't. A bas your shit, btw. Except the Schoenberg (I bumped him once) -but he seems to have disappeared?

[Anonymous No.11370756]

>>11370267
I don't think Shelley's proto-ANY political stance, although certainly this poem lends itself rather easily to those of Workers' Party persuasions, etc. I do know that Thoreau knew it, and that Gandhi liked it enough to read it at gatherings rather often, for whatever that's worth.
Shelley's early faith was archaically bardic; i.e. he believed (though he gradually lost this belief) in the 'power' of his verse to motivate men out of what he deemed their miserable conditions. Indeed- the spiritual warrior that forms in the mist to slay Anarchy and his cronies must be the bardic- read spiritual- power of Poesy. A classicist through and through Shelley believed in courage and ultimately in martyrdom, a term far more indicative of stubborn Shelley's belief than what it has become as a term: passive resistance. In Mask he pulls no punches- much is made of the many's presumed willingness to die and more than a single instance of their getting cut down 'in spirit' is displayed-
>Let the horsemen's scimitars
>Wheel and flash, like sphereless stars
>Thirsting to eclipse their burning
>In a sea of death and mourning.
..Passive resistors would rather live, I think.

[Anonymous No.11371306]

>>11370756
An important thing to keep in mind is that the Romantics were inspired heavily by the French Revolution. Its ideals and their realization/culmination in Bonaparte weighed heavily on the minds of the Romantics.

[Anonymous No.11371978]

>>11371306
>Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive
>But to be young was very heaven
Indeed. Mesmerized Wordsworth to such a degree that he hiked over the alps and throughout the French countryside during its early stages, planted Liberty trees and attended rallies, wild parties and impregnated Annette Vallon. All but the last detail receive sufficient attention in the Prelude, the 1805 version being the one to read. It's perhaps a little strange to view the first wave of English Romantics as 'the hippies' because they all became so conservative later on- or maybe not when considers the Reagan/Thatcher '80's.
At any rate a chief difference of the 2nd wave (Byron, Shelley, Keats, etc.) is that its late youth and early adulthood coincided with the Empire.
At any rate it is as (you) say a good thing to keep in mind, and may go some way toward explaining why what's been called 'the greatest political poem in English letters' is a little squeamish about assuming some actual, identifiable political stance.

[Anonymous No.11372832]

>>11361460
Cause you can read Keats' good stuff in an hour.

[Anonymous No.11373838]

>>11361659
Wow. Surprised this thread's still up. But anyway-
Agonistes is very much like Promethius in feel and form. Though it may be a 'lesser work' it's also perhaps one of the more honestly enjoyable longer pieces Milton wrote. A lesser work by one of the greatest poets in any language is well worth reading. Of course I think the Promethius worth reading as well, but clearly (you) disagree.

[Anonymous No.11374681]

>>11371978
>at any rate a chief difference of the 2nd wave (Byron, Shelley, Keats, etc.) is that its late youth and early adulthood coincided with the Empire.

Yup. Plus, Shelley and Byron and Keats (as well as Leigh Hunt, who was a political prisoner at some point if memory serves) were writing in contrast to the trend of reactionary authority and critics that swelled up to quell Napoleon's conquest of Europe. One of Shelley's earliest poems is about the Battle of Austerlitz, and he refers to the Emperors of Russia and Austria as "Coward Chiefs" who watched while Napoleon was in the thick of the fight.