Things Worth Remembering: Shelley’s Enduring Heart

[Valin]

Free Press

The poet’s body exited this world in a white-hot funeral pyre, save for a remnant of his soul.

Douglas Murray

June 11, 2023

Like Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley is one of the hardest poets to write about, because he is among the most touching. It is not just the output, but the life, the purity of ideas as well as the person: his radical pamphlet, “The Necessity of Atheism,” got him expelled from Oxford. He thought it was worth it.

What did they think they were doing, the Romantic revolutionaries like Shelley? In a way, he and other Romantics were the precursors of the European Revolutions of 1848, Karl Marx, and more. They believed society could be reformed by critics and poets, the “unacknowledged legislators” of mankind, as Shelley put it in his 1821 essay, “A Defence of Poetry.” Yet while the old gods were dying, the Romantics were just a little too early for the new ones.

Even if you wanted to be cross with Shelley for his idealism, or where it led (as if any of us has any idea where our ideas might lead), it is hard to remain cross with him because he pursued his ideas with such pure intention. He was touched neither by the utter innocence of Keats nor the utter cynicism of Byron. He was trying to create something new. It was just never clear exactly what that was. 

His work is sometimes bizarre, convoluted, and unrewarding, like “The Revolt of Islam” (which is not about Islam). 

It is also sometimes so devastatingly simple you wonder how two works could come from the same head. He could write a great poem like “Ozymandias,” for instance, filled with unforgettable imagery. No one can go through a desert kingdom, or see any toppled statue, and not have that poem in their head once they have read it.

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Every Sunday Free Press has Douglas Murray posts a Palate Cleanser. Generally about a poet. The Comments are ALWAYS well worth the time.

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Jan 10, 2023

A conversation between esteemed author Andrew Klavan and Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas regarding Mr. Klavan's recent book: The Truth and Beauty: How the Lives and Works of England's Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus. This event took place at the Union League Club in New York City in September 2022.

Learn more about Socrates in the City at socratesinthecity.com.