SHELLEY, A SATIRIST

Shelley, A Satirist: To comment upon Shelley’s sarcasm, Peter Bell The Third is the apt example. It is a satire on Wordsworth, a “dull” poet and recalls the earlier Wordsworth, a man of false ideals who composed poems on ‘moor and glen and rocky Lake/And on the heart of man’. Shelley criticizes the reactionary politician who once welcomed revolution and the dull poet, Wordsworth himself, who was very famous.

Though Shelley had not much natural aptitude for satire, yet he was successful in his attempts. In Mask of Anarchy (1819) and Swellfoot (1820) he shows his skill in handling the theme of politics also.

The Letter to Maria Gisborne (1820) displays his ability to write an easy, natural, yet poetical conversation. The Witch of Ailas (1820) composed in the ottava rima like that of Byron’s best poems, is a contrast to his other works for it is a long poem of pure escape of fancy weaving a myth of deliverance from Shelley’s imagined troubles, personal and human, where he gives his imagination free play.

In The Sensitive Plant he finds out a new symbol for his own ‘love of love’. In Adonais (1821) the great elegy on Keats, he reincarnates the Greek pastoral lament and reveals his faith in the spiritual reality.
Shelley’s famous and short poems The Ode to the West Wind, The Cloud, The Skylark are written in verse forms of his own innovation, about the divinity of Nature and the Supreme Power.

The Letter to Maria Gisborne celebrates his intellectual friendship without any imitation and it is poetry of fun with human thought and common sense.

Epipsychidion (1821) is a poem inspired by his admiration for Emilia Viviani, an Italian girl who was imprisoned in a convent at Pisa. It is also an expression of that “high, sweet, mystic doctrine of love” taught by Plato in the Symposium and Dante in the Vita Nuovcz though marred, as Swinburne has justly pointed out, by “such mere personal allusions as can only perplex and irritate the patience and intelligence of a loyal student.” It’s a personal poem which demonstrates his weaknesses and strong points more than any other poem does.

Hellas (1821), the lyrical drama is described by Shelley as a sort of imitation of the Personae of Aeschylus. He wrote this to celebrate the outbreak of the Greek war of Independence. Though much slighter than Prometheus Unbound, it is marked for Shelley’s most beautiful and finished lyrical verse. The lyrical movement of the “Chorus”, marks the highest form of Shelley’s rhythmical invention.

In 1821, a slight change came over the tone of the shorter lyrics, but the achievements of 1821 were scarcely inferior to those of 1819.

In 1821, Peacock wrote The Four Ages of Poetry, attacking the poetry of his own age and to defend it, Shelley wrote his greatest prose A Defence of Poetry which ranges far beyond the scope of literature. It expresses a profound philosophy of art, and is equally valuable as a critical work of universal application, and as a revelation of Shelley’s own theory and practice of poetry. It reveals the extraordinary power and beauty of the language.

Last Achievement: His last achievement is The Triumph of Life (1821) which is a fragment as he died before completing it. Here he states his philosophy of life that “Life is what triumphs over Nature, triumphs over imagination. Life is death -in-life, cold, common hell in which we wake to weep”. It’s in the form of Italian ‘terza rima’, strongly influenced by Dante and Petrarch. Some are of the opinion that had this work been finished, it might have been one of the greatest English poems.

Conclusion. Some may claim that Shelley’s poetry stands less high in recent English estimation than it did even before the war. But to Saintsbury he is nevertheless the quintessential poet and to Herford as to A. C. Bradley and Gilbert Murray, he is still both poet and prophet