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The Neglected Shelley

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 1 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM The Nineteenth Century Series General Editors’ Preface

The aim of the series is to reflect, develop and extend the great burgeoning of interest in the nineteenth century that has been an inevitable feature of recent years, as that former epoch has come more sharply into focus as a locus for our understanding not only of the past but of the contours of our modernity. It centres primarily upon major authors and subjects within Romantic and Victorian literature. It also includes studies of other British writers and issues, where these are matters of current debate: for example, biography and autobiography, journalism, periodical literature, travel writing, book production, gender, non-canonical writing. We are dedicated principally to publishing original monographs and symposia; our policy is to embrace a broad scope in chronology, approach and range of concern, and both to recognize and cut innovatively across such parameters as those suggested by the designations ‘Romantic’ and ‘Victorian’. We welcome new ideas and theories, while valuing traditional scholarship. It is hoped that the world which predates yet so forcibly predicts and engages our own will emerge in parts, in the wider sweep, and in the lively streams of disputation and change that are so manifest an aspect of its intellectual, artistic and social landscape.

Vincent Newey Joanne Shattock University of Leicester Copy

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Edited by Alan M. Weinberg University of South Africa, RSA

and

Timothy Webb University of Bristol, UK

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 3 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM © Alan M. Weinberg, Timothy Webb and the contributors 2015

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.

Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Wey Court East 110 Cherry Street Union Road Suite 3-1 Farnham Burlington, VT 05401-3818 Surrey, GU9 7PT USA

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

The Neglected Shelley / edited by Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. pages cm. — (The nineteenth century series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-6564-1 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4724-6565-8 (ebook) — ISBN 978-1-4724-6566-5 (epub) 1. Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1792–1822—Criticism and interpretation. I. Weinberg, Alan M. (Alan Mendel) editor. II. Webb, Timothy, editor. PR5438.N35 2015 821’.7—dc23 2015015369 ISBN: 9781472465641 (hbk) ISBN: 9781472465658 (ebk – PDF) ISBN: 9781472465665Proof (ebk – ePUB) Copy

Printed in the United Kingdom by Henry Ling Limited, at the Dorset Press, Dorchester, DT1 1HD

The Neglected Shelley.indb 4 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM To the memory of Geoffrey Matthews, whose lifelong and passionate dedication to the better understanding of Shelley has paved the way for many future scholars and researchers.

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 5 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM The Neglected Shelley.indb 6 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Contents 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 Illustration ix 5 6 Notes on Contributors xi 6 7 Acknowledgments xv 7 8 List of Abbreviations xvii 8 9 Editorial Note xix 9 10 10 11 Introduction 1 11 12 Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg 12 13 13 14 1 An Uncelebrated Facility: The Achievement of Shelley’s Letters 13 14 15 Timothy Webb 15 16 2 Symmetrical Forms and Infuriate Paroxysms: Observing the Body in 16 17 Percy Shelley’s 35 17 18 Diego Saglia 18 19 19 3 harps, Heroes and Yelling Vampires: The 1810 Poetry Collections 51 20 20 David Duff 21 21 22 4 The Notes to and Shelley’s Spinozism 77 22 23 Timothy Morton 23 24 5 ‘His left hand held the lyre’: Shelley’s Narrative Fiction Fragments 95 24 25 Stephen C. Behrendt 25 26 26 27 6 ’s Text(s) in Shelley’s 27 28 11728 29 Charles E. Robinson 29 30 7 Shelley’s Second Kingdom: Rosalind and Helen and ‘Mazenghi’ 137 30 31 Jack Donovan 31 32 32 8 Shelley’s Work in Progress: ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ and the 33 33 Unfinished Draft of ‘Prince Athanase’ 157 34 34 Alan M. Weinberg 35 35 36 9 Satyr Play in a Radical Vein: Shelley’s ‘Cyclops’ 177 36 37 MariaProof Schoina Copy 37 38 10 The Sensitive-Plant and the Poetry of Irresponsibility 199 38 39 Richard Cronin 39 40 40 41 11 ‘Infinitely comical’: Italianizing the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ 215 41 42 Timothy Webb 42 43 43 44 44

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12 ‘Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream’: Shelley’s Art of Ambivalence in 1 1 239 2 2 Michael O’Neill 3 3 4 13 Shelley, Jews and the Land of Promise 261 4 5 Nora Crook 5 6 14 Shelley’s Italian Verse Fragments: Exploring the Notebook Drafts 281 6 7 Alan M. Weinberg 7 8 8 9 Bibliography 307 9 10 Index 329 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 8 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Illustration 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 3.1 Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire. 1810. Page 11. Text, 5 6 with pencil annotation probably by Shelley. The Carl H. 6 7 Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, The New 7 8 york Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 8 9 Pforz 557L 04 53 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 10 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Notes on Contributors 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 Stephen C. Behrendt is George Holmes Distinguished University Professor 5 6 of English at the University of Nebraska. Among his books are Shelley and His 6 7 Audiences (1989), Reading (1992), Royal Mourning and Regency 7 8 Culture (1997), and British Women Poets and the Romantic Writing Community 8 9 (2009), as well as several collections of original poetry, including most recently 9 10 Refractions (2014). He is also the author of many interdisciplinary essays and 10 11 articles on Romantic-era literature, art and culture, and on the relations among the 11 12 arts generally. 12 13 13 14 Richard Cronin is Emeritus Professor at the University of Glasgow. He has 14 15 published widely on nineteenth-century literature. His most recent books are 15 16 Romantic Victorians: English Literature 1824–1840 (2002), Paper Pellets: British 16 17 Literary Culture after Waterloo (2010), and Reading Victorian Poetry (2012). 17 18 With Dorothy McMillan he edited Emma for the Cambridge Edition of the Works 18 19 of Jane Austen (2013), and works of Robert Browning in the Twenty-First 19 20 Century Author series (2015). 20 21 21 22 Nora Crook is Professor Emerita of English at Anglia Ruskin University, 22 23 Cambridge. She has published widely on both Shelleys. She has edited two volumes 23 24 of the Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, and 12 volumes (as General Editor) of the 24 25 novels and works of . She is a co-general editor of The Complete 25 26 Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and editor of the forthcoming Volume VII, which 26 27 will consist chiefly of Shelley’s posthumous poems. 27 28 28 29 Jack Donovan was formerly Reader in English at the University of York. He 29 30 was one of the editors of The Poems of Shelley, Volumes 2 (2000), 3 (2011) and 4 30 31 (2013) in the series Longman Annotated English Poets and is currently part of the 31 32 editorial team preparing Volume 5. 32 33 33 34 David Duff is Professor in at Queen Mary University of London. 34 35 His previous work on Shelley includes Romance and Revolution: Shelley and 35 36 the Politics of a Genre (1994), and a number of essays on Shelley’s early poetry 36 37 publishedProof in The Wordsworth Circle, The OxfordCopy Handbook of Percy Bysshe 37 38 Shelley (2012) and The Unfamiliar Shelley (2009). He is author of the award- 38 39 winning Romanticism and the Uses of Genre (2009), co-editor of Scotland, 39 40 Ireland, and the Romantic Aesthetic (2007) and editor of The Oxford Handbook 40 41 of British Romanticism (2016). He is currently editing The Oxford Anthology of 41 42 Romanticism and writing a literary history of the Romantic prospectus. 42 43 43 44 44

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Timothy Morton is Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English at Rice University. He gave 1 1 the Wellek Lectures in Theory in 2014. He is the author of Dark Ecology: For a 2 2 Logic of Future Coexistence (forthcoming), Nothing: Three Inquiries in Buddhism 3 3 and Critical Theory (forthcoming), Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after 4 4 the End of the World (2013), Realist Magic: Objects, Ontology, Causality (2013), 5 5 The Ecological Thought (2010), Ecology without Nature (2007), Shelley and the 6 6 Revolution in Taste (1994). He is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to 7 7 Shelley (2006). He has published five other books and 120 essays on philosophy, 8 8 ecology, literature, music, art, design and food. He blogs regularly at http://www. 9 9 ecologywithoutnature.blogspot.com. 10 10 11 Michael O’Neill is Professor of English at Durham University. His books include 11 12 The Human Mind’s Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley’s Poetry 12 13 (1989), Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem (1997) and The All-Sustaining 13 14 Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American, and Irish Poetry 14 15 since 1900 (2007). He is the editor of The Cambridge History of English Poetry 15 16 (2010). His recent publications include, as co-author with Michael D. Hurley, 16 17 Poetic Form: An Introduction (2012), as co-editor (with Anthony Howe and with 17 18 the assistance of Madeleine Callaghan), The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe 18 19 Shelley (2013) and Gangs of Shadow (2014), his third collection of poems. He is 19 20 part of the editorial team for the Johns Hopkins UP edition of The Complete Poetry 20 21 of Percy Bysshe Shelley, volume 3 of which appeared in 2012. 21 22 22 23 Charles E. Robinson, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of 23 24 Delaware, has published a number of books and articles on the English Romantic 24 25 writers, including Shelley and : The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight 25 26 (1976), Mary Shelley’s Collected Tales and Stories (1976; 1990), and 26 27 His Contemporaries (1982), The Mary Shelley Reader (1990), The Frankenstein 27 28 Notebooks (1996) and The Original Frankenstein (2008; 2009). He is currently 28 29 preparing a new edition of ‘The Letters of William Hazlitt’. 29 30 30 31 Diego Saglia teaches English Literature at the University of Parma (Italy) and 31 32 his research centres on the Romantic period. In the field of Gothic studies, he 32 33 has published on Ann Radcliffe, William Beckford, drama and melodrama, and 33 34 narrative verse. He is responsible for the first critical edition of Robert Southey’s 34 35 Roderick, the Last of the Goths (2012), and has recently contributed to the special 35 36 issue of GothicProof Studies on ‘Eighteenth-Century Copy Gothic’ (2012); Ann Radcliffe, 36 37 Romanticism and the Gothic (eds Dale Townshend and Wright, 2014); and 37 38 The Gothic World (eds Glennis Byron and Dale Townshend, 2014). His chapter on 38 39 ‘The Gothic Stage: Visions of Instability, Performances of Anxiety’ in Romantic 39 40 Gothic: An Edinburgh Companion (eds Dale Townshend and Angela Wright) is 40 41 forthcoming in 2015. 41 42 42 43 Maria Schoina is Assistant Professor in the School of English at Aristotle 43 44 University of Thessaloniki, Greece. She is the author of Romantic ‘Anglo- 44

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Italians’: Configurations of Identity in Byron, the Shelleys, and the Pisan Circle 1 1 (2009) and co-editor of The Place of Lord Byron in World History: Studies in His 2 2 Life, Writings, and Influence. Selected Papers from the 35th International Byron 3 3 Conference (2012). She has also contributed a chapter on Shelley’s reception 4 4 in Greece for The Reception of P.B. Shelley in Europe (2008). She is currently 5 5 working on a book project on Mary Shelley and Greece. 6 6 7 Timothy Webb was for some years Winterstoke Professor and Head of the 7 8 Department of English at the University of Bristol where he is now a Senior 8 9 Research Fellow and an Emeritus Professor. As well as a pioneering edition of 9 10 Yeats’s poetry for Penguin and an introduction to English Romantic Hellenism, he 10 11 has published six books on Shelley (three jointly authored or edited), including The 11 12 Violet in the Crucible, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood and Shelley’s Poems and 12 13 Prose. He was for 18 years editor of Keats- Bulletin (later retitled 13 14 Keats-Shelley Review) and a founding editor of Romanticism. He has written and 14 15 lectured widely, on Romantic topics and writers and on Irish matters. Recently, 15 16 he completed a two-volume annotated edition of ’s Autobiography for 16 17 Oxford University Press. 17 18 18 19 Alan M. Weinberg is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of South 19 20 Africa. He is the author of Shelley’s Italian Experience (1991), has edited Volume 20 21 XXII, Parts 1 and 2, of the Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts (1997) and has co- 21 22 edited (with Romaine Hill), the bicentenary collection The Most Unfailing Herald 22 23 (1995), and (with Timothy Webb) The Unfamiliar Shelley (2009), the first volume 23 24 of essays on the poet’s neglected works. He has published numerous essays on 24 25 Shelley across a wide range of interdisciplinary subjects, including revolutionary 25 26 and reform politics, the Italian cultural precedent, and the creative process. He 26 27 is planning further editorial work and studies on unfamiliar aspects of Shelley, 27 28 especially the poet’s large extant corpus of literary fragments. 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 14 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 Acknowledgments 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 We would like to thank The Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His 5 6 Circle, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations for 6 7 permission to reproduce an annotated page from Original Poetry; by Victor 7 8 and Cazire; and the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for permission to 8 9 reproduce a sketch from the Bodleian Shelley manuscripts. 9 10 Our thanks to all our fellow contributors for their kind acknowledgements of 10 11 editorial assistance, their dedication, energy, enthusiasm, and their great willingness 11 12 to review and revise earlier drafts at all stages of the project; to Ann Donahue, 12 13 commissioning editor at Ashgate Publishing, for expressing her continued interest 13 14 in the project, and for accommodating and warmly encouraging communiqués; 14 15 to Seth F. Hibbert and Laura Kopp at Ashgate for their meticulous 15 16 and copy editing of the proofs; to the reader at Ashgate for a valuable assessment 16 17 of the MS; to other members of the Ashgate team, especially Michael Bourne 17 18 and Elizabeth Hoff for processing and indexing of the typescript; to Elizabeth 18 19 Denlinger, Curator of The Carl Pforzheimer Collection, Dr Christopher Fletcher, 19 20 Keeper of Special Collections and Tricia Buckingham, Principal Library Assistant 20 21 at the Bodleian Library, for their prompt and courteous assistance with illustrations; 21 22 to Dawie Malan, Subject Reference Librarian at the University of South Africa, 22 23 for his help in tracing and acquiring texts, and the University of South Africa for 23 24 resources which have helped to advance important stages of the project, including 24 25 first The Unfamiliar Shelley and now its successor, The Neglected Shelley. 25 26 We also continue to be very grateful to families, friends and colleagues who 26 27 have supported us in our endeavour. 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 16 9/11/2015 4:29:18 PM 1 List of Abbreviations 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 References to the following primary sources are abbreviated as follows. 5 6 6 7 BSM The Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts, ed. Donald H. Reiman et 7 8 al. 23 vols. New York: Garland, 1986–2001; New York and 8 9 London: Routledge, 2002. 9 10 10 11 CPPBS The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Donald H. 11 12 Reiman and Neil Fraistat (vols 1–2); Donald H. Reiman, Neil 12 13 Fraistat and Nora Crook (vol. 3). Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins 13 14 University Press, 2000–12. 14 15 15 16 Letters The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Frederick L. Jones. 2 16 17 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. 17 18 18 19 MS Journals The Journals of Mary Shelley 1814–1844, eds Paula R. Feldman 19 20 and Diana Scott-Kilvert. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987; 20 21 one-vol. edn, Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 21 22 1995. 22 23 23 MWS Letters The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. Betty T. 24 24 Bennett. 3 vols. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University 25 25 Press, 1980–88. 26 26 27 MYR The Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics: Percy Bysshe 27 28 Shelley, ed. Donald H. Reiman et al. 9 vols. New York: Garland, 28 29 1985–96. 29 30 30 31 Prose The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E.B. Murray, vol. 31 32 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. 32 33 33 34 PP Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, [ed. Mary Shelley]. 34 35 London, 1824. 35 36 36 37 PS ProofThe Poems of Shelley, edsCopy Geoffrey Matthews and Kelvin 37 38 Everest (vols 1–2); Jack Donovan, Cian Duffy, Kelvin Everest 38 39 and Michael Rossington (vol. 3); Michael Rossington, Jack 39 40 Donovan and Kelvin Everest (vol. 4). London, New York, 40 41 Harlow: Longman, 1989–2011; London: Routledge, 2014. 41 42 42 43 PW The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Mrs Shelley. 4 43 44 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 1839. 44

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SC Shelley and His Circle, eds Kenneth Neill Cameron (vols 1 1 1–4); Donald H. Reiman (vols 5–8); Donald H. Reiman and 2 2 Doucet Devin Fischer (vols 9–10). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 3 3 University Press, 1961–2001. 4 4 5 SPP Shelley’s Poetry and Prose, eds. Donald H. Reiman and Neil 5 6 Fraistat. Rev. edn. New York: Norton, 2002. 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 18 9/11/2015 4:29:19 PM 1 Editorial Note 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 The contents of the volume are conceived in accordance with the full span of the 5 6 poet’s career (1808–22) and its diversity of achievement. 6 7 7 8 8 9 On the Use of Editions and Titles for Shelley’s Works 9 10 10 11 An important feature of the present volume (as it was of The Unfamiliar Shelley, 11 12 its predecessor) is its recognition of the heterogeneous nature of adequate textual 12 13 sources for the study of Shelley. Although good progress is being made in the 13 14 field of editing, no one scholarly text or collection of texts presently suffices to 14 15 encompass the range of editions which have provided a sound textual basis for 15 16 discussion. Each essay has had to find its own way through a forest of notebooks, 16 17 facsimiles, transcripts and published editions. Each chapter will accordingly 17 18 signpost the editions upon which the discussion is based, often with indications 18 19 of MS sources. 19 20 Because Shelley did not live to see the publication of a large portion of his 20 21 extant writing – a fact not often appreciated – and because much of that writing 21 22 was unfinished and perhaps never intended for publication, the editors have chosen 22 23 to distinguish typographically between published and unpublished compositions. 23 24 Published texts are signalled in italics (for example Zastrozzi, Hymn to 24 25 Intellectual Beauty, Rosalind and Helen, The Sensitive-Plant, Hellas) and 25 26 unpublished texts in quotation marks (for example ‘The Assassins’, the translations 26 27 of ‘Cyclops’ and ‘Hymn to Mercury’, ‘The Witch of Atlas’, ‘The Tower of 27 28 Famine’, ‘A Defence of Poetry’, ‘The Zucca’, ‘’) irrespective 28 29 of whether these are long or short works, finished or unfinished. It is hoped that 29 30 this signal will serve as a continued reminder of the fluid nature of the Shelleyan 30 31 corpus, so much of it experimental, provisional and expressive of a creative drive 31 32 that seldom (if ever) sought publication for its own sake, but which yet did, on 32 33 occasion, and often against the odds, find an immediate audience. 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

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The Neglected Shelley.indb 20 9/11/2015 4:29:19 PM 1 Introduction 1 2 2 3 3 4 Timothy Webb and Alan M. Weinberg 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 When we conceived the first volume of essays on neglected/marginalized texts 8 9 which we entitled The Unfamiliar Shelley,1 we were primarily motivated by the 9 10 sense that, for all his celebrity, the scope of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s achievement 10 11 as a writer was only narrowly recognized and his literary virtues had not been 11 12 carefully analyzed. We had no doubt, though, that in certain circles Shelley was, 12 13 or had been, widely acknowledged as a quintessential poet. His achievement 13 14 seemed unquestionable, although often unquestioned. For example, ‘when 14 15 William Carlos Williams was in his last illness he asked Robert Lowell, “Tell 15 16 me honestly, Cal. Am I as good a poet as Shelley?”’2 The sudden conjunction of 16 17 Williams and Shelley is as unexpected as the implication that Shelley represented 17 18 something whose value was beyond dispute to both poets. Lowell himself had 18 19 serious difficulties with Shelley and admitted in a letter to that 19 20 Shelley ‘suffered from that universal European romantic rhetoric, grand without 20 21 observation, humor or the heart-breaking loving-kindness of Hardy’; some, at 21 22 least, of these objections might be queried, but it is also worth noting that Lowell 22 23 (‘America’s Shelley’, as The Economist once called him3) confessed to a reluctant 23 24 admiration for Prometheus Unbound since ‘scattered through it are many of his 24 25 lovely verses’.4 Wallace Stevens, who might be thought to occupy the opposite 25 26 polarity to Williams, could not bring himself to believe in what appeared to be 26 27 Shelley’s unqualified optimism that ‘the structure of nature’ could be altered; 27 28 yet in a letter of 27 August 1940 he admitted that, in spite of such reservations, 28 29 he was a believer: ‘Apples will always be apples, and whoever is a ploughman 29 30 hereafter will be what the ploughman has always been. For all that, the astral and 30 31 the Shelleyan will have transformed the world.’5 31 32 These tributes, which could easily be multiplied, are even more telling because 32 33 they have been deliberately collected from three poets who are distinctively 33 34 34 35 35 1 36 Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb, eds. The Unfamiliar Shelley. Farnham: 36 37 Ashgate, 2009.Proof Copy 37 2 38 Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets (1998). London: Phoenix [Orion Books], 1999, 38 p. 443. 39 39 3 The title of an anonymous review of Lowell’s Collected Poems. The Economist, 3 40 40 July 2003 (Books and Arts), available at: http://www.economist.com/node/1893038. 41 4 Words in Air: The Complete Correspondence between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert 41 42 Lowell, ed. Thomas Travisano. London and New York: faber and faber, 2008, p. 560. 42 43 5 Letters of Wallace Stevens, ed. Holly Stevens. Berkeley: University of California 43 44 Press, 1966, p. 367. 44

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American and different from each other. Although each of the three may have 1 1 been looking back to the canonical expression of the poetic in their own youth, 2 2 such enduring admiration can hardly be explained, or explained away, on the 3 3 grounds that it represents a taste or a predilection they had all outgrown. Even 4 4 among his own contemporaries, Shelley attracted the respect of Byron and in 5 5 1827 the endorsement of Wordsworth, who cannot have shared many of his ideas 6 6 but acknowledged the force of his poetry: ‘Shelley is one of the best artists of 7 7 us all: I mean in workmanship of style.’6 One of Shelley’s other voices (what 8 8 he called the exoteric) has exercised its force in a diversity of twentieth-century 9 9 contexts: for instance, and in strikingly different circumstances, the German poet 10 10 and playwright Bertolt Brecht and the Irish poet Thomas Kinsella have both been 11 11 indebted to the example of ‘The Mask of Anarchy’. Much more recently, Michael 12 12 Schmidt (another American, best known, perhaps, as an inventive and determined 13 13 publisher of modern poetry) has stated that Shelley ‘was a poet first and last’ and 14 14 claimed that he still has a value for those who are prepared to listen: ‘A serious 15 15 and questing poet will recognize in Shelley a more challenging mentor [than in 16 16 the more obviously popular, or even populist, Byron], and one who will give only 17 17 private instruction.’7 18 18 The message from this variety of reactions seemed to be clear. Shelley was 19 19 not to be ignored; in fact, Shelley seems to have been a favourite with poets, 20 20 playwrights, novelists, philosophers, scientists, reformers, perhaps because 21 21 he was not content with limited horizons but was forever exploring as well as 22 22 extending the boundaries of the possible. Yet, although he needed to be revalued or 23 23 revisited or perhaps even unbound, his reputation, especially in England, was still 24 24 based on some received though often unexamined responses; critical evaluations 25 25 were usually affected by the confusion of biography and criticism, by political 26 26 anxiety or even hostility, and by the fact that judgements were often founded on 27 27 unexamined prejudice and the study of an increasingly small number of poems. 28 28 Some university courses in English literature even avoided Shelley altogether. It 29 29 was common to be afraid of Shelley for his habit of exploring subjects which 30 30 were too uncompromisingly intellectual or dangerous and to dismiss him with 31 31 contempt as politically naïve, or adolescent and confused. For a century and a half, 32 32 Shelley’s unusual gifts as a lyric poet have comfortably and conveniently served 33 33 to deflect attention from his longer and more difficult poems, with the possible 34 34 exception of ‘The Triumph of Life’, an undoubtedly great though unfinished and 35 35 unpublished poem, which has seemed to conform to a variety of current critical 36 36 concerns.Proof Ironically ‘The Triumph’ is intricately Copy tied to the copious and diverse 37 37 volume of work that Shelley produced before it – in short to the epic scope of his 38 38 work and ideas – and may best be understood (or at least explored) in relation to it. 39 39 40 40 41 6 An oral judgement, recorded by Christopher Wordsworth; see The Critical Opinions 41 42 of William Wordsworth, ed. Markham L. Peacock, Jr. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 42 43 1950, reprinted 1969, p. 349. 43 44 7 Schmidt, Lives of the Poets, pp. 446, 451. 44

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A critical industry mainly in academic circles tends to focus on a narrow range 1 1 of poems, thus excluding the larger and extraordinarily diverse corpus. The recently 2 2 published Oxford Handbook, edited by Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe, 3 3 is a wide-ranging attempt to offset this tendency, as is The Unfamiliar Shelley. 4 4 Although he may have been prompted by the vagaries of classical and biblical 5 5 scholarship, Shelley seems to have anticipated such fluctuations in reputation 6 6 when in his ‘Dedication’ to ‘Peter Bell the Third’ (itself a study in the making of 7 7 literary reputation) he predicted a time ‘when some transatlantic commentator will 8 8 be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism, 9 9 the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges, and their historians’ (that is, 10 10 Wordsworth, John Hamilton Reynolds, Shelley himself, , to whom 11 11 Shelley’s poem [not published until 1839] is jokingly but sincerely dedicated – as 12 12 well as those who kept their names alive). 13 13 In the face of such ignorance and such prejudice, we felt impelled to go against 14 14 the prevailing tendency and to secure for Shelley a second hearing, not necessarily 15 15 uncritical, but based as far as possible on facts and on the best texts available. Our 16 16 task was greatly simplified by the gradual publication of theG arland Shelley which 17 17 made the manuscripts of Shelley’s notebooks, both in serviceable facsimile and in 18 18 careful transcription and together with enabling technical annotation, available to 19 19 a general reading public which could not be expected to pursue the originals on 20 20 their own account. This milestone in the understanding of Shelley (if one can think 21 21 of a milestone as animated and in constant motion) coincided with or stimulated 22 22 two very different editions of Shelley’s complete poetry – Poems of Shelley (5 23 23 vols, Longman-Routledge) and The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley (8 24 24 vols, Johns Hopkins). So challenging and complicated is the editorial assignment 25 25 that neither edition has yet been concluded, but the eventual completion of these 26 26 two editions and the second volume of Shelley’s highly various prose (including 27 27 translations and mostly unpublished at his death) will eventually ensure that, if one 28 28 also includes the two volumes of letters and the large variety of associated material 29 29 published in Shelley and his Circle, we will for the first time possess the full range 30 30 of materials for an informed understanding of Shelley’s achievement. 31 31 As our plans for the first volume evolved, we were able to make use of many of 32 32 these new materials: in particular, the Garland notebooks were frequently referred 33 33 to and furnished evidence for the evolution of a number of Shelley’s texts. They 34 34 also provided material for a number of illustrations both of pages in draft and of 35 35 Shelley’s highly characteristic doodles and sketches. All of this was intended to 36 36 bring the reader, whether experienced or relatively innocent, into closer touch with 37 Proof Copy 37 the complicated workings of Shelley’s mind and poetic imagination as recorded 38 38 in his notebooks and with the often challenging realities of being a Shelley editor. 39 39 This first volume addressed a number of topics which have not always been at 40 40 the centre of Shelley scholarship or an understanding of his work and are usually 41 41 neglected: the verse letter, plays, prose essays, satire, pamphlets, political verse, 42 42 prefaces, translations from the Greek, artistic representations, fragments and early 43 43 writings. This polymathic Shelley was a notable translator of Plato (his version 44 44

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of The Symposium was shown to be a highly accomplished one which – in its 1 1 unstilted and unaffected diction and fluent style – can be compared to its advantage 2 2 with other, more reputable, scholarly translations); a practising and ambitious 3 3 playwright (the unfinished ‘Charles the First’ was now explored in detail so that, 4 4 for all its obvious differences and the difficulties of its draft, it could seriously be 5 5 set alongside the better-recognized ); in the best sense, a propagandist 6 6 whose prefaces are in themselves an impressive contribution to Romantic prose 7 7 and an unparalleled introduction to many of his works; a satirist whose political 8 8 objectives do not detract from that rich and scarcely acknowledged sense of 9 9 humour, which runs throughout the under-considered ‘Peter Bell the Third’ and the 10 10 rarely-revisited Oedipus Tyrannus; or Swellfoot the Tyrant, as it informs ‘Letter to 11 11 Maria Gisborne’, which is witty and charmingly self-deprecating but haunted by 12 12 a sense of darker realities. 13 13 This Shelley is the author of copious ‘fragments’ which are now examined 14 14 from a more panoramic perspective, informed by a sense of Shelley’s own poetic 15 15 objectives and by the findings of more recent engagements with the phenomenon 16 16 of fragmentation. As students of his writing would recognize, he is also the author 17 17 of a number of essays on philosophical and religious topics, mostly unfinished 18 18 and unpublished, and an explorer of political issues, which are here accorded 19 19 more coherent scrutiny; in particular, ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’, left to 20 20 posterity in notebook draft and not published until 1920, and then only in limited 21 21 copies, is granted some of the attention it deserves both for its own perceptive 22 22 analysis of ‘force and fraud’ in the course of history and the state of contemporary 23 23 society and as an attempt to provide a prose dimension to the study of those issues 24 24 which inform the lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound.8 Parts of Shelley’s little- 25 25 read epic poem Laon and Cythna are taken seriously and examined in the context 26 26 of Rousseau and Godwin, both of whom the young Shelley had absorbed in his 27 27 reading. A projected ‘Volume of Minor Poems’ is reconstructed in detail and, 28 28 almost for the first time, poems dismissed as ‘Juvenilia’ are read carefully both for 29 29 what they might reveal about informing contexts and as indications of the vigorous 30 30 and dedicated apprenticeship which grounded Shelley’s later achievements. The 31 31 visual evidence of the notebooks is examined and various theories are proposed 32 32 as to the ways in which they might relate to larger patterns of creativity. Much of 33 33 this exploration is new to Shelley criticism or, at the least, very uncommon; the 34 34 book also engages with ‘unfamiliarity’ by suggesting that received readings of 35 35 poems we think we know, need to be seriously revised. So, for example, Queen 36 36 Mab and ‘PoliticalProof Greatness’ are examined fromCopy new perspectives and in the light 37 37 of a variety of contexts; much the same might also apply to early poems, Laon 38 38 and Cythna, ‘Peter Bell the Third’, ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, and even some of 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 8 Credit must be given to Steve Behrendt, Michael Scrivener, Terence Allen 42 43 Hoagwood, Jerrold Hogle – and earlier Kenneth Neill Cameron and Paul Dawson – for 43 44 championing this still generally neglected treatise. 44

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the fragments. Under this scrutiny, even the apparently familiar Shelley becomes 1 1 much less predictable or unthreateningly familiar than one might have expected. 2 2 It is not for contributors to the first volume to claim that we have succeeded in 3 3 changing attitudes or in causing more people to read a wider range of Shelley and 4 4 to take him more seriously. At the least, it will require some time for any effects to 5 5 be felt or for people’s attitudes and practices to alter significantly. A recent review 6 6 in the authoritative pages of the Times Literary Supplement of a volume in the 7 7 Johns Hopkins Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests that many of the 8 8 old prejudices are still vigorously alive.9 It was prepared to ignore the fastidious 9 9 and pioneering scholarship of the edition by questioning Shelley’s right to such 10 10 careful consideration, focusing narrowly on presumed poetical inadequacies and 11 11 Shelley’s supposedly limited grasp of more complicated realities. Such attitudes 12 12 indicate that critical opinion, even when well informed, has not yet achieved 13 13 that general shift which might have been hoped for or unlocked that informed 14 14 generosity of interpretation which might have been expected. Whatever the 15 15 ultimate effects of the first volume, though, one of the consequences of uncertainty 16 16 was to make us think of the necessity of a second. Both editors recognized that, 17 17 if ‘unfamiliarity’ or ‘neglect’ were the central criterion, there was still much work 18 18 to be done. Notwithstanding an initial foray into the domain of the ‘neglected’ 19 19 or ‘unfamiliar’, a surprising number of works (in both verse and prose) still 20 20 remain quite outside the canon of the known or established Shelley. There were 21 21 opportunities for interesting continuities between the first and the second volumes. 22 22 The various verse and prose fragments, brief and extensive, examined in (1) could 23 23 be followed with an examination of further fragments in (2); the verse ‘Letter to 24 24 Maria Gisborne’ (in 1), with the prose letters more generally (2); the translation of 25 25 The Symposium, with other translations from the Greek in verse; the collection of 26 26 unpublished ‘Minor Poems’, with Shelley’s first publications of verse and prose 27 27 (including his Gothic romances); the verse of Queen Mab, with the Notes; the 28 28 prefaces to poems, with the Preface to Frankenstein (which Shelley wrote for his 29 29 wife); some experimental dramas, with Hellas; philosophical writings generally, 30 30 with ideas often specifically concerned with Spinoza, whom Shelley recurrently 31 31 translated; the 1817 Laon and Cythna, with immediately contemporary works, 32 32 Rosalind and Helen and ‘Prince Athanase’ that mark the move from England to 33 33 Italy; ‘Peter Bell the Third’, with other parodic styles in early and later writings. 34 34 One of the pleasures of commissioning this book and working our way through 35 35 the editorial process is that we have now come to recognize even more clearly than 36 36 before that, although all contributions engage in some way or other with the topic 37 Proof Copy 37 of unfamiliarity, there can be no simple or single definition. Take, for example, the 38 38 romance Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue which was published in 39 39 a volume with other poems as early as 1819 and follows Laon and Cythna; or, The 40 40 41 41 42 9 Peter McDonald, ‘For Impious Gold’: review of The Complete Poetry of Percy 42 43 Bysshe Shelley, vol. 3, eds Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat and Nora Crook. TLS (Times 43 44 Literary Supplement) 5734 (22 February 2013), pp. 11–12. 44

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Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century and its modified 1 1 and more ‘diplomatic’ version, The Revolt of Islam; A Poem, in Twelve Cantos. 2 2 Like both its predecessors, this volume was published by the Ollier brothers. 3 3 Rosalind and Helen might be equally paired with the slightly later ‘conversation 4 4 poem’, ‘’, so if we include Laon and Cythna, we have a variety 5 5 of gender relationships represented in sequence,10 as well as a diversity of literary 6 6 forms (epic, eclogue and conversation – Horace’s sermo pedestris), each of which 7 7 has its own dialogic mode or raison d’être. Yet few readers of Romantic poetry 8 8 have noted the care Shelley takes to explore appropriate genres and styles, arriving 9 9 in the case of Rosalind and Helen at distinct as well as interesting results. In fact, 10 10 most readers might even be pressed to identify the author of this eclogue, although 11 11 its generic definition looks back to Southey (and much earlier to Virgil) and forward 12 12 to Tennyson. Jack Donovan situates this work within the complicated pattern of 13 13 Shelley’s life and work and identifies its main thematic structures. In addition to 14 14 unravelling an authorial code, the essay places the poem in a variety of creative 15 15 contexts, especially that of its seemingly unlikely but probable connections with 16 16 Dantean pilgrimage, and engages with its generic identity. While conscious of the 17 17 poem’s limitations, Donovan is also alert to its larger implications. This reading 18 18 establishes Shelley’s poem as part of a more extensive canon from which it has 19 19 been too easily and too unquestioningly excluded. 20 20 Donovan’s essay links Rosalind and Helen with the unfinished ‘Mazenghi’, 21 21 finding in both poems variations on a Dantean narrative of suffering and 22 22 redemption. ‘Mazenghi’ (apparently, Shelley’s deliberate adjustment of the 23 23 historical ‘Marenghi’) is also given attention in Alan Weinberg’s chapter on the 24 24 Italian verse fragments in which he examines their experimental nature – signs of 25 25 the poet’s growing mastery and appropriate use of verse-form, and of a network of 26 26 inseparable interests infusing his poetry – and his engagement with various Italian 27 27 points of inspiration. Together, these two readings of an understandably neglected 28 28 poem help to place ‘Mazenghi’ in the graph of Shelley’s poetic development and 29 29 to suggest that it contains many striking stanzas and has not yet been granted the 30 30 recognition which it deserves. Much the same might be said about the other poems 31 31 which Weinberg explores: ‘Athanase’ and ‘Prince Athanase’ (in a separate chapter), 32 32 ‘Fiordispina’, ‘Ginevra’, ‘The Boat on the Serchio’, as well as the ‘Tasso’ and 33 33 ‘Pisan fragments’. ‘Athanase’, was completed for publication but was conflated 34 34 with the fragments of ‘Prince Athanase’ when Mary Shelley published them 35 35 all under the heading of ‘Prince Athanase’ in 1824. This deliberately enigmatic 36 36 narrative,Proof wherein virtue is both inextricably Copyand inexplicably linked to suffering, 37 37 has much in common with Alastor and ‘Julian and Maddalo’ but, almost from 38 38 the start, its identity and its apparent intentions were confused by Mary Shelley’s 39 39 well-meaning editorial intervention. Of course, as this sad history indicates, 40 40 despite Shelley’s efforts, ‘Athanase’ itself (which Shelley generically sub-titled 41 41 42 42 43 10 Notably the draft of ‘Prince Athanase’ has the alternative title, ‘Pandemos and 43 44 Urania’. 44

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‘A Fragment’, perhaps to complicate and conceal its origins) did not appear 1 1 in print during his lifetime and, apart from its faithful transcription by Donald 2 2 Reiman in Shelley and His Circle, has still to be published as a unique poem quite 3 3 distinct from ‘Prince Athanase’, resulting in an unfortunate confusion between 4 4 the two versions. Weinberg underlines the integrity of the work, its absence of 5 5 resolution and insistent self-closure which intentionally ward off easy answers. 6 6 The rough draft indicates Shelley’s originally broader conception suggestive of 7 7 an unrealizable Platonic quest, and its fragmentary sequence (or design) – which 8 8 has been an obstacle to its critical reception – is made intelligible through close 9 9 examination of the manuscript. Weinberg shows that, intriguingly, the disrupted 10 10 and finally aborted narrative prolongs the mystery of Athanase’s grief, even while 11 11 attempts are made by the poet to explain it. 12 12 Not one of the other poems in question – the ‘Italian’ verse fragments – was 13 13 published either, or even completed, with the result that Weinberg’s attempt to 14 14 engage critically with their poetic significance, by focusing on the manuscript 15 15 drafts, necessarily depends on the results of reconstructive scholarship. Not 16 16 surprisingly, there were other obstacles. For instance, ‘Fiordispina’ has too easily 17 17 been interpreted and dismissed as a quarry for while (in spite 18 18 of the pioneering editorial efforts of Nora Crook and, more recently, Michael 19 19 Rossington) responses to the refreshing and lively, though slightly ominous travel- 20 20 journal of ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ are usually still hampered by fundamental 21 21 questions concerning its dialogue and structure. Not many years ago, few (if 22 22 any) of these cases could have been unravelled with such confidence. The longer 23 23 fragments emerge as products of Shelley’s extraordinary poetic fertility and, like 24 24 the shorter ones, indicate a temperament acutely responsive to Italy in exile – 25 25 a source both of inspiration and disillusionment. Together the works indicate a 26 26 rather different picture from the one that overdetermines his ideological concerns. 27 27 Above all, perhaps, these exercises in reclamation (to use an image which Shelley 28 28 found especially resonant)11 point to the uncertainties and dilemmas which, as a 29 29 conscientious artist, he confronted but could leave deliberately unresolved, and 30 30 have resulted in an expansion of the Shelley canon. 31 31 This new version of Shelley also necessarily includes a rich dimension of prose. 32 32 The absence of an authoritative collection of all Shelley’s prose has not helped his 33 33 cause; nor has the fact that many of his prose works were left unpublished; nor 34 34 has the traditional generic distinction between poetry and prose which Shelley 35 35 sometimes advanced in his earlier days, but which was emphatically superseded 36 36 by a wider definition in ‘A Defence of Poetry’. 37 Proof Copy 37 Unlike the previous volume, which found a good deal of space for Shelley’s 38 38 political essays, the present selection mainly focuses on other elements in Shelley’s 39 39 prose, though his politics are never far away, even in his Gothic novels. Nora Crook’s 40 40 essay on Shelley and the Jews interweaves his ambivalent conception of Jews 41 41 (among them figures such as Spinoza, Jesus and Ahasuerus), Jewish moneylenders 42 42 43 43 44 11 To which one might add the discussion of ‘Prince Athanase’. 44

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and Jewish communities, with analyses of two short prose pieces, both unfinished, 1 1 which engage with Jewish topics. The first focuses on the Arch of Titus, generally – 2 2 though mistakenly – included with Shelley’s descriptive notes on classical statues 3 3 in Florence. But it is actually an address to Jews, evoking the fall of Jerusalem, 4 4 articulated by a supposed Jew, and expressing a point of view strongly antipathetic 5 5 to Roman depredations and sympathetic to the Jewish cause. The second fragment 6 6 – possibly a companion piece (an uncollected and little-known MS now housed in 7 7 the University of Tokyo) – calls for a Jewish homeland, and gives expression to a 8 8 point of view with which Shelley is not usually associated. On the basis of these 9 9 two fragments and a range of allusions, Crook queries the view that Shelley was 10 10 concerned with Jews exclusively in relation to scripture or legend, and establishes 11 11 a foundation for the understanding of an element in Shelley’s political thinking – 12 12 touching too on religion and philosophy – which has usually been ignored. 13 13 Timothy Morton’s essay on the notes to Queen Mab starts from a position 14 14 which is strikingly different because the notes were, in several instances, 15 15 constructed as essays which accompanied the text of Shelley’s poem, to which 16 16 they have always been accorded a subordinate place. Unlike the short pieces 17 17 from which Shelley’s views on the Jewish question may be extrapolated, these 18 18 ‘notes’ are full and complete and even appeared in print, at first relatively early in 19 19 Shelley’s literary career and later in pirated editions. In the case of the notes, as 20 20 elsewhere, Morton celebrates the exceptional level of knowledge and the dazzling 21 21 virtuosity of the writing; he argues that the notes should not be seen (as they so 22 22 often have been) as a trivial appendix to the poem or to Shelley’s ideology, but as 23 23 a central expression of his most profound beliefs and forming a body of material 24 24 that may be considered separate from the verse (they subvert their own status as 25 25 notes). While the influence of Spinoza is a key point in the discussion, the range 26 26 of subjects eloquently demonstrates the comprehensiveness of Shelley’s concerns. 27 27 What this volume also helps to show is that Shelley’s interest in prose went 28 28 beyond the dimension of essays, pamphlets and shorter reflections, and involved 29 29 a commitment to fiction, especially in his earlier days. While he was still very 30 30 young, he published two Gothic novels, which brought him more success in the 31 31 marketplace than his later, more considered works. These novels have often been an 32 32 embarrassment to those who admire his poetry and have usually been written about 33 33 dismissively or even comically or in a manner which is reductively psychological. 34 34 While not claiming an unrecognized greatness, Diego Saglia has looked at these 35 35 ‘romances’ (as they were called) particularly in connection with the contexts of the 36 36 Gothic novel,Proof and as texts worthy of attention Copy in their own right. In many cases, 37 37 he is able to examine Shelley’s recurrent concerns, especially with displays of the 38 38 body, in terms of prevailing Gothic conventions and in relation to theories of life 39 39 and medicine that foreshadow Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which, surprisingly, 40 40 might be considered an offspring – or relative – of these early works). 41 41 In this willingness to scrutinize with appropriate seriousness these significant 42 42 but youthful productions and to bring to bear many of the advances of Romantic 43 43 scholarship, Saglia’s discussion has much in common with that of David Duff 44 44

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who builds on a chapter in the first volume by exploring the contexts of two very 1 1 early collections of poems. In Duff’s case as in that of Saglia, the investigation of 2 2 unexpected sources and models, and of conventions widely prevailing but now 3 3 largely forgotten, makes possible a reappraisal of what might be thought of as 4 4 merely juvenile, and presents young Shelley as a writer, much better read, more 5 5 thoughtful and genuinely experimental than has traditionally been supposed. 6 6 Shelley is shown to be very alive to fashionable trends, including various forms 7 7 of Gothic and of literary minstrelsy, which he exploits, subverts and ridicules. 8 8 Running through his early works, especially his highly allusive and at times 9 9 provocatively plagiaristic poetry, is a marked thread of intertextuality which 10 10 readers have not reckoned with or have chosen to ignore. What both treatments 11 11 reveal is an unfamiliar or neglected Shelley who is strikingly different from his 12 12 general reputation. 13 13 This volume also investigates a number of Shelley’s other prose writings 14 14 which add substantially to his output. Stephen Behrendt explores his other fictions, 15 15 all unfortunately unfinished or lost, but worthy of consideration, not least in the 16 16 light of Shelley’s poetic achievements. Stories known as ‘The Assassins’ and ‘The 17 17 Coliseum’ are perhaps even more mysterious because they are seriously lacking 18 18 further development; in a different way, much the same might be said about 19 19 ‘Una Favola’ which reveals the influence of Italian models and, in its frustrating 20 20 incompletion, might be set alongside the dark and compelling terza rima of ‘The 21 21 Triumph of Life’. Like so many of his prose works and his poetry (see, for example, 22 22 the two chapters by Alan Weinberg and Michael Bradshaw’s analysis in the first 23 23 volume) these pieces must be handled with an almost archaeological care and 24 24 allowed to speak for themselves, while necessarily contributing to a larger picture. 25 25 Behrendt traces a number of similar configurations and concerns in all three 26 26 extant prose fragments. If, as he argues, Shelley was impatient with the ordinary 27 27 conventions of narrative fiction, the poetic contours of the fragments might well 28 28 have prompted his development of new forms better suited to his imagination. 29 29 Behrendt therefore encourages us to believe that Shelley was not unsympathetic 30 30 to the novel or its shorter forms, or incapable of bringing a story to completion. 31 31 Possibly the most unsuspected perspective on Shelley’s work as a prose writer, 32 32 in some ways also the most apparently familiar, is provided by Charles Robinson’s 33 33 enquiry into Shelley’s role in the creation of Frankenstein. Robinson demonstrates 34 34 that Percy Shelley advised Mary Shelley on some parts of the plot and that he was 35 35 responsible for a number of passages (precisely indicated) and for a considerable 36 36 accumulation of local choices of word or phrase. As Robinson carefully documents, 37 Proof Copy 37 at certain points Frankenstein bears traces of vocabulary which is unexampled 38 38 elsewhere in the writings of Mary Shelley but carries unmistakeable evidence of 39 39 Percy Shelley’s influence. Despite proving that Percy Shelley collaborated with 40 40 Mary Shelley in the writing of Frankenstein, Robinson also provides evidence that 41 41 Percy must not be considered as the ‘co-author’ (and certainly not the ‘author’) 42 42 of the novel. Nevertheless, Percy influenced the novel in a number of significant 43 43 ways; and, guided by Robinson’s chapter, we may approach the seemingly 44 44

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established summit of Frankenstein from a new perspective and, at the same time, 1 1 gain a new understanding of the nature of literary collaboration. 2 2 Perhaps the most obvious example of Shelley’s continued work as a writer 3 3 of prose is the record of his correspondence. Though incomplete, the standard 4 4 2-volume Oxford edition of the letters presents a various and vivid picture of his 5 5 life and thought, and of the various places he visited in his travels throughout 6 6 Britain and, in later years, in Italy. His literary friendships (with, for example, 7 7 Byron, Peacock, Hunt) and the needs that arose from them are especially notable 8 8 in correspondence. Somehow, as Timothy Webb argues, these letters have never 9 9 been accorded much attention in their own right. Yet, as Webb suggests, the 10 10 achievement of Shelley’s letters compares very favourably with that of literary 11 11 contemporaries. Shelley’s imagination is strongly in evidence, in recording his 12 12 observations, in subtly registering and transforming matters of everyday, or in the 13 13 gestures of friendship, in which he repeatedly accommodates or aligns himself 14 14 with the attitudes and opinions of his correspondents. While any analysis of letters 15 15 cannot escape entirely from the biographical, it is more than time that we began 16 16 to evaluate the nature of their achievement. Perhaps, this too is, or would be, an 17 17 exercise in constructive unfamiliarity or in repairing an unjustified neglect; most 18 18 readers will certainly not recognize the letters, in the first place, although even 19 19 those who do might now begin to reflect on their wider significance. 20 20 For some years, Shelley has been acknowledged as an important translator 21 21 but, for the most part, his translations have been hard to access or they have been 22 22 marginalized. Yet, the range of Shelley’s work as a translator is considerable and 23 23 would be recognizably even more significant, if we could discover his missing 24 24 version of Spinoza (a philosopher whose marked influence on Shelley is gradually 25 25 being recognized). Shelley’s translations are often important in their own right; we 26 26 have already mentioned his fine version of the Symposium; his translations of the 27 27 Homeric Hymns, of scenes from Calderón and Goethe’s Faust, of Euripides and 28 28 Dante are notable not only in themselves and as indications of early nineteenth- 29 29 century taste, but as clear signs of the European catholicity of Shelley’s sensibility 30 30 and interests. As this current collection of essays argues, many of the translations 31 31 also need to be seen not simply as passive renditions of their originals (if there is 32 32 such a thing) but as intimately linked to Shelley’s own creativity. This is reflected 33 33 in his choice of lesser-known originals that appealed to the light-hearted and 34 34 playful side of Shelley’s personality, and his affinity for pagan mythology. Both 35 35 Maria Schoina’s analysis of the little-considered version of Euripides’s satyr play, 36 36 Cyclops, andProof Timothy Webb’s account of the Copyadmired but little-analyzed Homeric 37 37 ‘Hymn to Mercury’ insist that these translations should not be interpreted as neutral 38 38 renderings but recognized as part of Shelley’s often radical critique of the society 39 39 in which he lived and its prevailing orthodoxies. In both cases, experience of the 40 40 Italian countryside (rather than that of Greece) seems to have left its mark, while the 41 41 Shelley version is more fundamentally and playfully engaged with the limitations 42 42 of urban culture than has been generally understood. Verse-form is important here 43 43 and, in particular, Shelley’s decision to translate the Hymn into ottava rima, rather 44 44

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than more traditional couplets, should be seen both as an inspired choice which, by 1 1 heightening the comic element, transforms the poem, and as an admission that he 2 2 approached his work as translator informed and stimulated by the poetic examples 3 3 of Italian predecessors. Comedy too is manifest in the Cyclops, and Maria Schoina 4 4 shows how Shelley intensifies incongruities in the original, exposing the civilized 5 5 Odysseus to laughter and perhaps ridicule by making him less sympathetic than 6 6 his arch-opponent, the monster Cyclops (Polypheme), who in Shelley’s conception 7 7 seems to bear traces of the creature in Frankenstein. In the case of the ‘Hymn to 8 8 Mercury’, the extraordinary self-possession of the thieving infant-god Mercury is 9 9 both amusing and instructive, in ways that reflect Shelley’s own pagan sympathies 10 10 (in contrast to his antipathy towards Christian divinities). 11 11 Not surprisingly, these two essays focus on Shelley’s engagement with ancient 12 12 Greece. They concentrate on a strand in his sensibility which has often been 13 13 acknowledged but which has tended to be regarded as ‘safer’ than it actually is. 14 14 Often, they can be linked to other chapters in the book,12 and not least to Michael 15 15 O’Neill’s account of Hellas which demonstrates that this ‘improvise’ is much less 16 16 obviously triumphalist than has generally been thought and much less comfortable 17 17 and conformist, even to a radical and philhellenic programme. As O’Neill shows, 18 18 Shelley is (with the finest art) able to hold in the balance positive and negative 19 19 outcomes, as if a firm decision either way would falsify the complexity and 20 20 uncertainty of life. Although not explicitly stated, his reading brings Hellas closer 21 21 in spirit to ‘The Triumph of Life’, a composition which it precedes by just six or so 22 22 months. Yet, with whatever qualifications, this drama, too, looks toG reek example 23 23 as the guiding spirit of liberal and expansive thought. 24 24 It could be argued, then, that the main intention of this book is to encourage 25 25 readers to abandon preconceptions and to approach Shelley with unprejudiced 26 26 eyes. The neglected deserves full scrutiny. Of course, all the contributors are 27 27 united by an urgent belief that Shelley more than deserves fuller and closer 28 28 consideration. Perhaps, that can be seen as a prejudice; but in the book as a whole, 29 29 essay speaks to essay, sometimes confirming or supplementing what the other has 30 30 said, sometimes expressing another point of view. As already noticed, no single 31 31 definition of unfamiliarity or neglect informs the whole; but an aspect of oversight 32 32 characterizes the critical legacy of all the texts considered in this volume; and the 33 33 cumulative force of the contributions attests to the versatility of the ‘unfamiliar’ 34 34 and its capacity to open up the unexpected. Naturally, this procedure involves the 35 35 introduction of parts of Shelley’s work which lie beyond the normal boundaries; 36 36 at least one result of these investigations is to draw attention to parts of Shelley’s 37 Proof Copy 37 oeuvre which have been generally neglected. More than once, though, this process 38 38 also involves examining again texts which are now comfortably established as 39 39 part of the canon: for example, most readers know Hellas (in so far as they do) 40 40 41 41 42 12 See also Nora Crook’s comparison of Jewish and Greek independence (Chapter 13), 42 43 and Alan Weinberg’s discussion of ‘Prince Athanase’ and its Platonic (or more generally 43 44 Grecian) reverberations (Chapter 8). 44

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through the words of some of its choruses, but Michael O’Neill has discovered 1 1 even in these set-pieces more compelling poetic life than is normally identified; 2 2 other parts of the play have been approached which do credit to Shelley’s poetic 3 3 invention and succeed in making even the apparently familiar challengingly and 4 4 excitingly unfamiliar. A similar but slightly different procedure marks Richard 5 5 Cronin’s chapter on The Sensitive-Plant. This ‘famous’ poem (especially popular 6 6 in the early nineteenth century) is, in fact, much less well known than might be 7 7 supposed. Cronin’s attention to oscillations of language or verse-form strips the 8 8 varnish from Shelley’s poem and exposes it to the possibility of a full critical 9 9 scrutiny. We discover (or for some re-discover) a poem that refuses to yield its 10 10 secret, prompting the recognition of a certain kind of ‘irresponsibility’ in Shelley 11 11 – a refusal on his part to be cut-and-dried or to package a prescriptive or easily 12 12 digestible message – that the reader will find echoed in many parts of this book. 13 13 This is the Shelley who is not the eternal optimist of popular belief but rather, as 14 14 Cronin points out, one who does honour to Keats’s ‘negative capability’. 15 15 The final words can be granted to Shelley himself. In a letter to Leigh Hunt 16 16 written from Florence on 27 September 1819 he celebrates the many creative 17 17 virtues of Boccaccio. Among other things, he says: ‘What descriptions of nature 18 18 are those in his little introductions to every new day. It is the morning of life stript 19 19 of that mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to us.’13 Even here, Shelley’s 20 20 smooth slide from the implications of ‘every new day’ to ‘the morning of life’ 21 21 requires careful attention. He is not admiring what is merely an alienation effect, 22 22 designed to startle readers out of their complacency, but he is acknowledging the 23 23 power of a great creative writer to act like the sun and disperse that obscuring 24 24 ‘mist of familiarity’ which blunts the sharp edges of reality. A similar point is made 25 25 less specifically and more rhapsodically in ‘A Defence of Poetry’: ‘It [Poetry] 26 26 awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand 27 27 unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden 28 28 beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.’14 29 29 The central image is now more obviously sexualized but, in both cases, the effect 30 30 of great literature is to introduce an enabling unfamiliarity which dissolves the 31 31 comforting surfaces of custom. According to this way of thinking, unfamiliarity 32 32 is an agent both radical and positive. New perspectives may not only serve to 33 33 rescue the neglected and accord them a justified attention but may also enable us 34 34 to recognize the range of Shelley’s interests, his lifelong commitment to the craft 35 35 of writing and the nature of his literary achievement with a fresh vision unaffected 36 36 by preconceptions.Proof Copy 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 13 Letters II: 122. 43 44 14 SPP: 517. 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 12 9/11/2015 4:29:20 PM 1 Chapter 1 1 2 2 3 An Uncelebrated Facility: 3 4 The Achievement of Shelley’s Letters1 4 5 5 6 6 7 Timothy Webb 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 I 11 12 12 13 Like many of his contemporaries, Shelley was an assiduous and inventive writer 13 14 of letters. For 50 years now, we have had the resource of the two-volume edition 14 15 of his correspondence edited by Frederick L. Jones, which runs to 721 letters 15 16 (including fragments, postscripts and accompanying notes, although not the five 16 17 fragmentary letters to Emilia Viviani in Italian, which Jones prints as an appendix); 17 18 subsequently, this core has been slightly supplemented and partly revised,2 but the 18 19 correspondence is still too rarely recognized in its own right rather than as a mere 19 20 corollary, or corrective, or supplement, to contemporary letters and journals, or as 20 21 a useful tool for critics and biographers. 21 22 Jones’s edition of the letters provides enriching insights into Shelley’s life, 22 23 especially his intellectual development, and establishes indispensable contexts 23 24 for his frequent travels in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, in France and 24 25 Switzerland and, from April 1818, in Italy. In the early letters, particularly, 25 26 it allows us to observe Shelley struggling to understand and articulate the 26 27 fundamental problems of philosophy and theology and the challenging facts of 27 28 English society and contemporary politics. These letters enable us to reconstruct, 28 29 at least partially, the circumstances of his day-to-day existence in Oxford, London 29 30 (at many addresses), Cwm Elan, Edinburgh, York, Keswick, Dublin, Nantgwillt, 30 31 Lynmouth, Tanyrallt, Bishopsgate, Geneva, Bath, Marlow, Milan, Bagni di 31 32 Lucca, Este, Naples, Rome, Livorno, Florence, Pisa and neighbouring Bagni di 32 33 33 34 1 All quotations from Shelley’s letters, unless specifically indicated otherwise, are 34 35 cited by volume and page number from Letters. 35 2 36 See, for example: John Buxton, ‘On the Text of Some Letters by Shelley’, The 36 37 Bodleian LibraryProof Record 8.6 (June 1972), pp. 338–42;Copy Neville Rogers, ‘An Unpublished 37 38 Shelley Letter’, Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 24 (1973) pp. 20–24; David M. Stocking 38 and Marion Kingston Stocking, ‘New Shelley Letters in a John Gisborne Notebook’, Keats- 39 39 Shelley Memorial Bulletin 31 (1980), pp. 1–9 (especially pp. 2–4); John Freeman, ‘Shelley’s 40 40 Letters to his Father’, Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 34 (1983), pp. 1–15; B.C. Barker- 41 Benfield, ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers of 1810–12’, The Bodleian Library Record 14.1 (October 41 42 1991), pp. 14–29; Christopher Goulding, ‘An Unpublished Shelley Letter’, RES, N.S. 42 43 52 (2001), pp. 233–7 (the Shelley letters in question have been purchased by University 43 44 College, Oxford and can be seen at the Bodleian); Shelley and his Circle (SC), passim. 44

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Pisa (San Giuliano Terme), Ravenna, and finally in Lerici (at numerous other 1 1 locations, such as Como, Venice or Bologna, he produced little or no surviving 2 2 correspondence). They trace his attitudes to the writing of numerous philosophers 3 3 and influential thinkers such as the French sceptics and the historians of the French 4 4 Revolution; and writers of other generations and sometimes of other cultures, such 5 5 as Shakespeare, Milton, Homer, the Greek tragedians, Plato, Dante, Boccaccio, 6 6 Tasso, Ariosto, Calderón and Goethe. They capture his changing critical 7 7 assessments of celebrated literary contemporaries such as Godwin, , 8 8 Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, Peacock, Keats, Byron and Hunt (all, except Scott 9 9 and Wordsworth, known to him personally and receivers of his correspondence). 10 10 And, recurrently if incompletely, they illuminate, directly and indirectly, his 11 11 complicated and frequently disappointing relations with publishers and critics, 12 12 his literary intentions and plans for publication and his own progress as a writer, 13 13 primarily of poetry and plays but also, significantly, of essays and prose. 14 14 The record of letters is necessarily partial, imperfect and sometimes 15 15 misleading. Even a quick glance at recent discoveries indicates how unpredictable 16 16 is the discovery of letters which were previously unknown and how, although 17 17 they sometimes confirm what we thought we knew, they also may disturb the 18 18 established surface of the canon. Writing from Pisa in August 1821, Shelley gently 19 19 and jokingly chides his cousin for a failure to be realistic about 20 20 the inevitable postal frustrations and inadequacies (II: 341). The disconcerting 21 21 rule of the arbitrariness of what letters survive certainly applies to the whole of 22 22 Shelley’s life, not least to the correspondence of earlier years when there was no 23 23 difficulty with Italian post offices or leaving letters to be collected; for instance, 24 24 Nicholas Joukovsky records that most of Peacock’s English letters to Shelley have 25 25 disappeared, some perhaps used as paper boats, others left behind among Shelley’s 26 26 papers at Marlow. 27 27 Not surprisingly, the principle also holds good for the years in Italy, when 28 28 communication was necessarily more precarious. Joukovsky calculates that, 29 29 although on 24 August 1819 Shelley very gently reminded Peacock that his letters 30 30 had still not reached Livorno, ‘it would appear that even since 13 January Peacock 31 31 had written him a dozen or more letters’. Conversely, but entirely as one might 32 32 expect, some of Shelley’s letters to Peacock have also disappeared. Joukovsky 33 33 soberingly concludes that, although Peacock claimed that Shelley had written him 34 34 ‘scarcely less than fifty’ letters from Italy (Peacock’s own figure), most have never 35 35 appeared in print, while others were probably done away with by Peacock himself 36 36 since theyProof referred to business matters. In addition,Copy says Joukovsky, ‘he is likely 37 37 to have destroyed his own letters for the same reasons that he destroyed some of 38 38 Shelley’s. Thus Peacock appears to have succeeded in manipulating both sides of 39 39 the epistolary record of his most important friendship’.3 40 40 41 41 42 3 The case is discussed in some detail in The Letters of , ed. 42 43 Nicholas A. Joukovsky. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, vol. 1, pp. lv–lxi (quotation, p. lx); 43 44 see also p. 175 (n. 2). 44

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Surviving correspondence is always subject to these and other distortions; yet, 1 1 even with the proviso that the testimony of letters must always be approached 2 2 with exceptional caution, Shelley’s extant correspondence is of great value. At 3 3 the least, it supplements the letters and journals of (an intimate 4 4 though occasional member of the Shelley party, the exact nature of whose 5 5 closeness to Shelley still remains controversial) and especially of Mary Shelley, 6 6 whom Shelley had first addressed as MaryG odwin (14 extant letters) and later as 7 7 his wife (18 extant letters), who usually stayed at home in various parts of Italy to 8 8 look after their child or children and did not accompany him on his expeditions; 9 9 to this arrangement we owe his first description of Venice, his detailed account 10 10 of Byron at Ravenna and of parts of the city, the report of his visit to (the 11 11 young daughter of Byron and Claire Clairmont) at the Convent of St Anna, and 12 12 his thoughtful but unknowingly final letter from Pisa (II: 34–5, 321–4, 334–5, 13 13 443–4). 14 14 Underneath all these letters, as in every collection of correspondence, there 15 15 is the graph of the writer’s own life, unknown and still evolving at the time but 16 16 now unchangeable (even if subject to a variety of interpretations), which leaves 17 17 its mark on his day-to-day existence. This can reflect both private life and public; 18 18 sometimes, as with Shelley, this distinction can often be maintained only with 19 19 difficulty. 20 20 Few readers can be ignorant of Shelley’s final destiny or fail to recognize the 21 21 retrospective irony of a passage written in a letter of 18 June: 22 22 23 Williams is captain, and we drive along this delightful bay in the evening wind, 23 24 under the summer moon, until earth appears another world. Jane brings her 24 25 guitar, and if the past and the future could be obliterated, the present would 25 26 content me so well that I could say with Faust to the passing moment, ‘Remain 26 27 thou, thou art so beautiful’. (II: 435–6) 27 28 28 29 Less than three weeks later, Shelley and Edward Williams were to drown in the 29 30 same bay, while the suddenly widowed Jane Williams, whose guitar had recently 30 4 31 been purchased for her by an admiring Shelley, was soon to play a tragic and 31 32 unrehearsed part in Mary Shelley’s bewildered reactions. Shelley had been filling 32 33 his notebook with sketches of sailing boats and translating Faust, and the recipient 33 34 of this letter appropriately was John Gisborne, who had been his chief instructor 34 35 in German. In themselves, these facts assume a contour which is inevitably 35 36 bittersweet, even more so when the tense is irrevocably past and the recorder so 36 37 innocent ofProof his own immediate future; what providesCopy them with an even sharper 37 38 definition is the consciousness and skill of the writer, with which they are so vividly 38 39 and unforgettably informed. These qualities are evident in letters reporting on a 39 40 wide range of matters; for instance, there is his expulsion from Oxford; his brief 40 41 41 42 4 See Bruce Barker-Benfield,Shelley’s Guitar: A bicentenary exhibition of manuscripts, 42 43 first editions and relics of Percy Bysshe , Shelley Catalogue by B.C. Barker-Benfield. 43 44 Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1992, Item 148 (p. 176) and, for illustration, frontispiece. 44

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engagement in Irish politics; his gradual disenchantment with Harriet Westbrook, 1 1 followed shockingly by her unexpected suicide; his attraction and eventual 2 2 marriage to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin; his legal loss of two children by Harriet; 3 3 his imaginatively energizing visit to the lakes and mountains of Switzerland; his 4 4 translation to Italy, not intended to be permanent but ultimately leaving a shaping 5 5 impress on many of his works and achieving an irrevocable finality; his sojourns 6 6 in and visits to various cities in Italy; his responses to the distant echo of British 7 7 disturbances and his alertness to the immediacies and changing pattern, with all 8 8 its hopes and disappointments, of European, and especially Italian, political life. 9 9 Shelley’s letters often exhibit qualities of their own which are strongly 10 10 distinctive: a gracious consideration for his correspondents and a diplomatic 11 11 intuition, almost a special dimension of sensitivity (closely connected, perhaps, 12 12 with what Shelley himself might have described as a chameleon quality),5 which 13 13 sometimes caused him to be chosen as go-between in difficult situations, such 14 14 as the tangled relations between Claire Clairmont and Byron; an unmistakable 15 15 charm and elegance but with no sense of self-consciousness or assumed social 16 16 superiority; an unusual metaphorical capacity, sometimes combined with an 17 17 acute metaphysical intelligence; a descriptive immediacy in reporting on persons 18 18 and places which brings them vividly alive; an active political curiosity and an 19 19 informing set of determined political opinions (‘You know my passion for a 20 20 republic, or anything which approaches it’, II: 180); a disarming self-deprecation 21 21 often aimed at his own rhetorical excesses (‘So far the Preacher’, II: 191, following 22 22 a denunciation of Ollier, his publisher), or ‘But not to ascend in my balloon’ (II: 23 23 192, after he explains a theory to Peacock according to which everything a man 24 24 does contains ‘an allegorical idea of his own future life’); a recurrent good humour 25 25 (not without moments of sadness) and a strong sense of humour (see, for example, 26 26 the prolonged description of John Gisborne’s nose – ‘it weighs on the imagination 27 27 to look at it, – it is that sort of nose which transforms all the gs its wearer utters 28 28 into ks’, II: 114). The letters often throw an illuminating light on his character, 29 29 not always instantly evident from his prose and his poetry, and also enable his 30 30 readers to reconstruct what it might have been like to share his experiences in 31 31 the early years of the nineteenth century. Many of these letters are necessarily 32 32 connected to Shelley’s work as a writer (especially as a poet) and register with 33 33 melancholy exactness the fluctuations of his own attitude and his responses to 34 34 the recent successes of contemporaries and the unmatchable achievements of 35 35 their predecessors. This catalogue of attributes (which could easily be extended) 36 36 suggests thatProof Shelley’s correspondence deserves Copy careful consideration and might 37 37 profitably be compared not only with that of Byron, Keats and Coleridge but often 38 38 39 39 40 40 5 Letters II: 308: ‘Poets, the best of them – are a very camaeleonic race: they take the 41 colour not only of what they feed on, but of the very leaves under which they pass.’ Some 41 42 months later, in a letter to Byron, he implied a more complicated model when praising the 42 43 language of the Fifth Canto of as ‘a sort of cameleon under the changing sky of 43 44 the spirit that kindles it’ (II: 358). 44

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to his credit with the letters of Blake, William Wordsworth, Southey, Godwin, 1 1 Moore, Hazlitt, Peacock, Felicia Hemans, Mary Shelley and many lesser writers 2 2 of the period.6 3 3 4 4 5 II 5 6 6 7 The evidence of early letters clearly suggests that, at least at this stage of his 7 8 life, Shelley used his epistolary opportunities with playful and dramatic skill.7 For 8 9 example, under the name of ‘an elderly clergyman, highly-beneficed, and signing 9 10 himself Charles Meyton’, he gave spiritual guidance to Rev. George Stanley Faber 10 11 who had been troubled by a pamphlet entitled . The irony 11 12 of this position and its potential for strengthening his own argumentative position 12 13 must have been evident to Shelley. In spite of his emotional commitment, he was 13 14 capable of assessing the situation with acidulous clarity: once in a letter to Thomas 14 15 Jefferson Hogg he classified Faber as one of ‘the Armageddon-Heroes [who] 15 16 maintain their posts with all the obstinacy of cabalistical dogmatism. How I pity 16 17 them, how I despise, hate them’ (I: 45).8 As Bruce Barker-Benfield has discovered, 17 18 in the assumed character of Meyton, Shelley offered Faber detailed advice, part of 18 19 which Faber reported, with obvious discomfort, as follows: 19 20 20 21 a sixth enormous lie consisted in his saying, that he had himself visited Palestine; 21 22 that it resembled a stone-quarry more than any thing else; and that neither angels 22 23 nor martyrs should ever convince him, contrary to the evidence of his senses, 23 9 24 that it had ever been a fertile land. 24 25 25 6 26 Fairly recent exceptions which suggest that Shelley’s letters are finally being taken 26 27 more seriously can be found in: Benjamin Colbert, Shelley’s Eye: Travel Writing and 27 Aesthetic Vision. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008; Daisy Hay, ‘Shelley’s Letters’, in The Oxford 28 28 Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe. Oxford: 29 29 Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 208–22. Reproductions of letters by Shelley and his 30 circle can be seen in Barker-Benfield, Shelley’s Guitar; Stephen Hebron and Elizabeth C. 30 31 Denlinger, Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family. Oxford: Bodleian 31 32 Library, 2010. The continuing importance in this respect of Shelley and his Circle should 32 33 not be forgotten: it has printed in facsimile texts of many letters by Shelley and the 33 34 Shelley circle (many of them new), and accompanied them with responsible transcriptions 34 35 and detailed commentary. The tendency is necessarily to increase our understanding of 35 36 biographical and intellectual contexts, but other considerations are taken into account and 36 37 the resource is unique and increasingly invaluable. 37 7 Proof Copy 38 In exploring this side of Shelley’s epistolary character, I am greatly indebted to 38 B.C. Barker-Benfield, ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers of 1810–12’ (details in n. 2 above). For one 39 39 suggestive example of the other side of Shelley’s youthful correspondence, see Nicholas 40 40 A. Joukovsky’s essay, ‘Robert Parker’s “Letters on Atheism”: An Early Response to 41 Shelley’s The Necessity of Atheism’, RES 63.261 (September 2012), pp. 608–33. 41 42 8 See also I: 52 (postmarked 17 February 1811): ‘If any letter comes directed to the 42 43 Revd. Charles Meyton, it is mine. All the Bishops have the Atheism.’ 43 44 9 Barker-Benfield, ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers’, p. 16. 44

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If he was ‘Meyton’, Shelley was also, rhymingly, ‘Peyton, which will be my nom 1 1 de guerre [and] will easily swallow up Mr. Shelley’. The assumed identity must 2 2 have pleased him since, shortly afterwards, he told Hogg, who was living in York, 3 3 ‘I shall come & live near you as Mr Peyton’ (I: 118, 131). 4 4 As Frederick Jones explains it: ‘he adopted various pseudonyms, and often had 5 5 his letters posted by [Edward Fergus] Graham in London and the replies addressed 6 6 to Graham’s lodgings. The subjects at Oxford seem always to have been matters of 7 7 religious doctrine and faith, and the victims of this hoax clergymen, both eminent and 8 8 ordinary’ (I: 22 n. 2). There were other targets and other gratifying ingenuities. For 9 9 example, on 21 November 1810 he informed Graham of his latest impersonation: 10 10 ‘The letter I sent t{o} be put in the Post, is a most beautiful Joke, it is from a French 11 11 girl to the king of the Methodists’ (I: 22). Again, on 13 March 1811 he wrote a 12 12 long and remarkable letter to the young poet Felicia Browne (now better known 13 13 by her married name as Felicia Hemans); this letter was signed ‘Philippe Sidney’, 14 14 a signature which carries Shelley’s own initials but is mysteriously translated into 15 15 French. As Bruce Barker-Benfield argues, it is also ‘mere cheek’ because, although 16 16 Shelley was genuinely related to the Sidney family, he has ‘tricked Felicia and 17 17 her mother into believing that they are indeed corresponding with a family of 18 18 Sidneys at an address in London’.10 The content of this closely argued letter is 19 19 also designed to be provocative; among other things, the supposed Philippe Sidney 20 20 confesses: ‘I examined the grounds upon which Theism is founded, they appeared 21 21 to me weak, thro’ deficiency of proof I became an Atheist.’11 This sentence is 22 22 doubly autobiographical, since it provides an account of intellectual positioning 23 23 which clearly applies to Percy Shelley (whatever may be said of Philippe Sidney); 24 24 even more pointedly, although the unsatisfactory nature of theism is not directly 25 25 articulated in the pamphlet, the final formulation (‘Thro’ … Atheist’) had recently 26 26 appeared on the title-page of the anonymous The Necessity of Atheism. 27 27 Shelley’s role-playing is often linked to a variety of factors or interests: the 28 28 Regency practice of ‘bamming’ (that is, hoaxing or tricking), an excess of youthful 29 29 high spirits and an impatience with conventional questions of ‘identity’. Especially, 30 30 it shapes the Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, a sequence of poems 31 31 attributed to the deranged woman who had attempted to assassinate George III 32 32 (discussed elsewhere in this book by David Duff, who has much to say about 33 33 Shelley’s proclivity for the ludic, for deliberately confusing impersonation and for 34 34 provocative literary jokes and games). All these connections may be significant, 35 35 but the direct link of the Felicia Browne letter to the pamphlet and the recurrent 36 36 need to argueProof with clergymen and bishops alsoCopy suggest that, at least for Shelley, a 37 37 process of apparent indirection may be associated with the most serious concerns. 38 38 As Hogg and other students of Shelley have pointed out, there may also be a 39 39 link here with the lessons about influencing the reading public which Shelley had 40 40 41 41 42 10 Barker-Benfield, ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers’, pp. 29, 26. 42 43 11 Barker-Benfield, ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers’, p. 24. The complete text of the letter, 43 44 which does not appear in the Jones edition, is printed on pp. 23–5. 44

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absorbed from Dr Lind at Eton. Although there seems to have been no further 1 1 attempt at role-playing through the medium of correspondence, Shelley retained, 2 2 at least for some years, a more than usually acute sense of the power of individual 3 3 readers to influence or even alter public opinion; see, for example, the long and 4 4 carefully itemized list of influential politicians, public figures, newspaper editors 5 5 and political organizations he selected to receive copies of A Proposal for Putting 6 6 Reform to the Vote Throughout the Kingdom (I: 533–4), or the much shorter list 7 7 of those who should automatically receive copies of all his publications (II: 118; 8 8 a catalogue of supporters which has much in common with the list of friends in 9 9 ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’). It is worth noting, too, that the Hymn to Intellectual 10 10 Beauty was published under the name of ‘Elfin Knight’ while the slightly later 11 11 review of Godwin’s Mandeville employed the initials ‘E.K’. Probably for political 12 12 or legal reasons, the author of A Proposal did not identify himself as Percy Bysshe 13 13 Shelley but chose the evasive title of ‘The Hermit of Marlow’, a name which he 14 14 retained when he published An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess 15 15 Charlotte. At the end of March 1822, when Shelley wanted Claire Clairmont to 16 16 communicate with him at Pisa, keeping the letters secret from his wife, he returned 17 17 to this kind of youthful assumption of identity when he selected the deliberately 18 18 unlikely name of ‘Joe James’ (II: 402). 19 19 20 20 21 III 21 22 22 23 Shelley’s early correspondence includes a number of letters to his father, whom 23 24 he usually approached with reassurances of his own obedience or sense of duty, 24 25 although a growing sense of irritation and emotional distance on both sides 25 26 becomes increasingly evident after his expulsion from Oxford. The shift can be 26 27 traced in letters to friends and contacts as the apparently genial ‘Il Padre’ of an 27 28 early letter is transformed to the more threatening caricatures of ‘old Killjoy’12 or 28 29 ‘the old buck’ (I: 3, 86–7, 118). In two verse letters to Graham, written in May 29 30 and June 1811, was transformed into a caricature of a tyrannical 30 31 father, ‘eaten up with Jealousy / His brows so dark his ears so blue!’ (‘To EFG 31 32 #1’, ll. 4–5; Letters I: 86); in his son’s gleeful but vindictive imagining, the squire 32 33 now became a grotesque and joyless figure who desired ‘That an horn on his 33 34 dark frowning brow were implanted’ (‘To EFG #2’, l. 34)’.13 In one letter (later 34 35 in September 1811), Shelley asks his father with provoking directness (I: 142): 35 36 ‘Father are you a Christian? [a question which Shelley has already posed only 36 37 two sentencesProof before] judge not then lest youCopy be judged.’ The use of the Biblical 37 38 quotation against the apparently orthodox had probably been deployed to trouble 38 39 Faber or to impose on his credulity. It now appears to become a characteristic 39 40 strategy, and the admonitory sentence from Matthew’s gospel is soon cited again 40 41 41 42 12 See ‘this killjoy, as I name him’ (I: 93). Shelley also referred to his father as 42 43 ‘Killjoy’ five times in the first verse letter to Graham (I: 86–7). 43 44 13 See CPPBS I: 140, 144. 44

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in another letter (I: 146–7), in which Shelley questions Sir Timothy’s authority as a 1 1 head of the family who continues to believe in obedience, even though he is ‘liable 2 2 to be misled by passion and prejudice like others’. Shelley confirms his alienation 3 3 by asserting both his own superiority and the intellectual limitations of his father: 4 4 ‘I confess it is almost natural for minds not of the highest order to value even the 5 5 errors whence they derive their importance.’ 6 6 What is probably the next letter begins ‘Dear Father’ (in itself this phrasing 7 7 seems to indicate a cooling in relations since all previous letters had been initiated 8 8 by ‘My dear Father’); but even this attempt at courtesy soon breaks down into 9 9 a terrifying affirmation of Shelley’s hostility (‘You have treated me ill, vilely’) 10 10 and an almost paranoiac sense of alienation which so explicit an epistolary 11 11 acknowledgment can hardly have improved (I: 149): 12 12 13 When I was expelled for atheism you wished I had been killed in Spain. 13 14 The desire of its consummation is very like the crime … I shall take the first 14 15 opportunity of seeing you – if you will not hear my name, I will pronounce 15 16 it. Think not I am an insect whom injuries destroy – had I money enough I 16 17 would meet you in London, & hollow in your ears Bysshe, Bysshe, Bysshe – aye 17 18 Bysshe till you’re deaf. 18 19 19 20 Sir Timothy may have been obstinate, difficult and unduly concerned with 20 21 orthodoxies, but he must have been startled by the intensity and hostility of this 21 22 communication. Immediately subsequent letters are not so theatrical, nor so 22 23 threatening, nor so extreme, but they clearly indicate the gulf between father and 23 24 son since they begin ‘My d[ea]r Sir’ and ‘Dear Sir’, an unfamilial (and unfamiliar) 24 25 mode of address only partially repaired in Shelley’s last two letters to his father 25 26 which revert, perhaps surprisingly, to the form of ‘My dear Father’. 26 27 Shelley’s correspondence with his father, which was concentrated in the 27 28 early years and apparently concluded as early as 1814, suggests something of 28 29 his personality at this relatively early stage of his life. It is dramatic (sometimes 29 30 melodramatic), argumentative, frequently self-regarding, provoking, rebellious, 30 31 confrontational, mischievous, and often difficult. Many, perhaps all, of these 31 32 characteristics can be found elsewhere in the letters of his earlier years, although 32 33 the protracted conflict with his father can be seen as providing a continuing and 33 34 troubling context for other concerns. There are letters where Shelley worries at 34 35 philosophical problems, and others (scattered throughout his career) where he 35 36 engages with political issues. Here, as elsewhere, foundations laid in England 36 were developedProof in Italy; but the intensity andCopy range is perhaps more evident in 37 37 38 Shelley’s essays than in his correspondence; even if this generalization must be 38 39 qualified by his response to the royal banquet at Carlton House (I: 105–6, 110). 39 40 There are didactic letters (notably a cluster of 47 to Elizabeth Hitchener, the first 40 41 written on 5 June 1811 and the last on 18 June 1812), in which he exercises his 41 42 penchant for exploring philosophical and theological issues and for authoritative 42 43 and directive statement. Like his youthful friend Edward Fergus Graham, who 43 44 received a sequence of eight letters in 1810, followed by four in the same year 44

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and eight more by July of the following year, including an exuberant verse letter 1 1 (I: 86–7), Elizabeth Hitchener was the subject of a brief but intense attachment, 2 2 before she was transformed from ‘Portia’ to ‘the Brown Demon’ and banished 3 3 from the Shelley household. 4 4 There are letters to bankers, at least one correspondent who specialized in life 5 5 insurance, money-lenders, agents (the otherwise obscure William Bryant received 6 6 at least 10 brief letters within a short space of time), various ‘tradesmen’, solicitors 7 7 and lawyers. A sustained focus on this aspect of Shelley’s correspondence would 8 8 confirm the central importance of money at this stage of his career and how much 9 9 he depended on such unliterary figures; it would certainly provide a suggestive 10 10 alternative to the more conventional narrative of poetic genius. As he once told 11 11 Mary Godwin, truthfully, if unromantically (I: 419): ‘my letters are full of money, 12 12 whilst my being overflows with unbounded love, & elevated thoughts.’ On one 13 13 occasion (I: 553–5), there is even a letter (drafted by one of Shelley’s solicitors) 14 14 addressed to the Lord Chancellor, who had separated Shelley from the children 15 15 of his first marriage; and on another, long after he had moved to Italy, tothe 16 16 clergyman (II: 264–5) to whose care, eventually, they had been committed. During 17 17 the years in England and later in Italy, Shelley wrote copious letters to his bankers 18 18 Brookes & Co. (35, plus 7 cheques), with whom he communicated, though briefly, 19 much more frequently than with friends such as Peacock or Leigh Hunt (or so 19 20 the records suggest). There are numerous letters to booksellers and publishers, 20 21 especially in the early days to John Joseph Stockdale (11) and to Peacock’s friend 21 22 Thomas Hookham (14). On at least four occasions Shelley writes to John Murray, 22 23 once offering his own poems, and three times when acting as intermediary for 23 24 Byron; on one occasion (I: 511) he complains that he had not received proofs of 24 25 the Third Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and , which 25 26 had been entrusted to his care. 26 27 There are letters to his two wives. Several to Harriet Westbrook consider 27 28 the end of their married relationship (‘Our connection was not one of passion 28 29 & impulse. Friendship was its basis’), one unrealistically suggests that she join 29 30 Shelley and the young Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on tour in Switzerland, and 30 31 one unfeelingly and absurdly informs her that ‘I am in want of stockings, hanks 31 32 & Mrs. W[ollstonecraft]’s posthumous works’ (I: 389, 391–2, 400). As noted 32 33 above, many letters are directed to Mary Godwin herself (who from 30 December 33 34 1816 was Mary Shelley), marking the growth of their mutual commitment and the 34 35 points of their separation, and suggesting both his strong powers of reportage and 35 36 the depth of their shared affection. 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 IV 39 40 40 41 Much of this correspondence seems to have been confined to Shelley’s English 41 42 years. Many of the Italian letters continue the concerns of the earlier period 42 43 but carry surprisingly little of that tortured and sometimes egotistical intensity 43 44 which often marks the first volume. Perhaps by the end of March 1818, and 44

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for all his struggles and anxieties, Shelley had achieved a clearer sense both of 1 1 his objectives and of his identity. Growing maturity, frequent switches of scene 2 2 and the liberating advantages of distance seem to have effected some dramatic 3 3 changes and significantly altered the balance of his personal connections. Many 4 4 of those to whom he had written before now disappear entirely from the record of 5 5 his correspondence or become little more than marginal figures. William Whitton 6 6 (Sir Timothy’s solicitor), his father, mother and two sisters, the Grove family, 7 7 Edward Fergus Graham and Elizabeth Hitchener had long been consigned to 8 8 epistolary oblivion; like the publishers Stockdale and Thomas Hookham and a 9 9 range of lawyers, money-lenders and ‘tradesmen’, they were not resurrected in 10 10 Italy. had been a powerful intellectual and political influence 11 11 on the young Shelley, who treated him as an unmatchable authority (see the draft 12 12 introduction to Laon and Cythna) and even, at times, as a surrogate father; during 13 13 the English years, he had been the recipient of 41 letters, an index of his almost 14 14 unrivalled status, but now he was Shelley’s father-in-law, and grumpily confined 15 15 to another country, he only received two more. Another notable figure affected 16 16 by the move to Italy was , shared-author of The Necessity 17 17 of Atheism, friend of both Shelleys and classically inclined lawyer. In spite of 18 18 growing differences, both temperamental and ideological, he had continued to be 19 19 one of Shelley’s closest friends while Shelley was still in England and received 20 20 76 letters; now, although his movements and sayings were sometimes relayed by 21 21 Hunt and Peacock, he received only six letters from Shelley during almost four 22 22 years. 23 23 The places of these correspondents were taken by a company which was 24 24 largely different. There was Thomas Medwin, a cousin and, like Hogg, an early 25 25 biographer; and there was Shelley’s sister-in-law Claire Clairmont, who frequently 26 26 lived in the Shelley household, and whose separate residence (mainly in Florence) 27 27 brought her 14 letters in 1821 and 7 more in Shelley’s final year. Above all, there 28 28 were John and Maria Gisborne, who singly and together received 39 letters from 29 29 Shelley; all of these letters were necessarily written in Italy since the Gisbornes and 30 30 the Shelleys were unknown to each other until they met at Livorno in May 1818. 31 31 The Gisbornes, who owe much of their enduring celebrity to their association with 32 32 Shelley, are in a special category since they were also recipients of Shelley’s fluent 33 33 and disarming verse letter, now usually known as ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’. Their 34 34 cases also demonstrate that, especially after their move to Italy, both Shelleys 35 35 sometimes communicated separately by letter with joint friends; Maria Gisborne, 36 36 for instance,Proof was the recipient of at least 80 lettersCopy from Mary Shelley.14 37 37 Occasionally, though, an epistolary connection was continued, and sometimes 38 38 strengthened, even after Shelley moved abroad. A particularly good example of 39 39 40 40 41 14 See Timothy Webb, ‘Scratching at the Door of Absence: Writing and Reading 41 42 “Letter to Maria Gisborne”’, in The Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy 42 43 Webb (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 119–36 (pp. 121–2 on correspondence, p. 122 on 43 44 letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley). 44

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this is provided by Leigh Hunt, whom Shelley had known since 1812 and who, 1 1 together with his wife Marianne, had exchanged long visits with the Shelleys. For 2 2 whatever reason, the English record only includes four letters to Hunt himself and 3 3 a postscript to his wife; the Italian years generated 24 letters to Leigh and one to 4 4 Marianne (the same period also produced 30 letters from Mary Shelley – who for 5 5 some months after Shelley’s death shared the Hunt house at Albaro – followed by 6 6 another 23 in just over four years after Shelley’s drowning). This correspondence 7 7 was unusual in that it involved all four members of the group, although Marianne 8 8 Hunt contributed much less than the other three. Shelley entertained a particular, 9 9 and strongly reciprocated, affection for Hunt with whom he discussed poetic 10 10 matters, publication (Hunt often seems to have acted as Shelley’s agent in London), 11 11 the attractions of Italy (the Shelleys regularly tried to persuade the Hunts to visit) 12 12 and contemporary English politics (which, as editor of The Examiner, Hunt was 13 13 ideally placed to interpret). In a letter dating from the second half of November 14 14 1819 (II: 151–3), in which he also asks for news of ‘The Mask of Anarchy’, 15 15 Shelley expresses his anxieties and his temperamental preference for some kind of 16 16 viable and carefully calculated equilibrium: ‘I fear that in England things will be 17 17 carried violently by the rulers, and that they will not have learned to yield in time 18 18 to the spirit of the age. The great thing to do is to hold the balance between popular 19 19 impatience and tyrannical obstinacy; to inculcate with fervour both the right of 20 20 resistance and the duty of forbearance.’ 21 21 Another regular target of Shelley’s correspondence was Thomas Love Peacock, 22 22 classicist, poet, novelist and employee of the East India Company, a close friend of 23 23 Shelley but a strikingly different personality. In 1816 Peacock had received four 24 24 letters, two of which constituted long, detailed and richly atmospheric travelogues, 25 25 a description of sailing on with Byron and, from Chamonix, an account 26 26 of a mountain expedition (I: 480–88, 495–502); both of these letters, though with 27 27 significant variations from the original, eventually formed a significant element in 28 28 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817), which was published by Thomas Hookham 29 29 and the Ollier brothers. Now in 1818 alone Peacock was sent 17 letters, many of 30 30 them substantial, supplemented by 5 more by the end of the following September. 31 31 Peacock in Great Marlow received a series of letters in which Shelley described 32 32 his reactions to Italian scenes and experiences with great vividness. Although 33 33 Shelley never declares any explicit intention, this concentrated letter-writing may 34 34 have been primarily intended to record his first impressions of Italy, perhaps even 35 35 (though secondarily) to serve as the foundation of a travel book. Shelley himself 36 36 said nothing to this effect but Mary Shelley asked Peacock to retain the letters so 37 37 Proof15 Copy that she could transcribe them. Shelley even made it clear that the letters were 38 38 not private; he expected Peacock to share them because ‘I do not like writing 39 39 twice over the same things’ (II: 66–7); as he says in a later letter to Hunt: ‘Perhaps 40 40 Peacock has shewn you some of my letters to him’ (II: 112). 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 15 MWS Letters I: 82. 44

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Sometimes, as he reported to Peacock, Shelley allowed himself indulgences 1 1 which were part of the normal tourist experience:16 for instance, he enjoyed a 2 2 moonlight walk through Bologna (‘a city of Colonnades’, where ‘the effect of 3 3 moonlight is strikingly picturesque’, II: 53). A boat trip in the Bay of Naples 4 4 eventually left its traces on . Shelley’s regular pleasures at 5 5 Rome included a delighted and contemplative routine (II: 86–7): ‘I see the radiant 6 6 Orion thro the mighty columns of the temple of Concord, & the mellow fading 7 7 light softens down the modern buildings of the Capitol the only ones that interfere 8 8 with the sublime desolation of the scene.’ His concentration on the classical past 9 9 rather than the modern was likely to be received sympathetically by Peacock17 10 10 (and their mutual friend Hogg), while the perspective through the columns of the 11 11 temple was an obvious, if gratifying, exercise in the picturesque. 12 12 Shelley reported to Peacock on his experience of other notable places: in the 13 13 earlier part of his travels, Milan, Lake Como, life at Bagni di Lucca, and Ferrara 14 14 where he encountered a penitent ‘completely enveloped in a ghost like drapery of 15 15 white flannel’, whose face was concealed by a network visor, and who ‘past rattling 16 16 his wooden box for charity’; ‘this kind of exhibition’, Shelley informs Peacock, ‘is 17 17 a striking instance of the power of the Catholic superstition over the human mind’ 18 18 (II: 48). At Ferrara he also observed the tomb of Tasso (a celebrated destination 19 19 for travellers) and manuscripts of Ariosto and Tasso, who furnished the subject 20 20 for an unfinished play18 and seems to have informed the composition of ‘Julian 21 21 and Maddalo’ (‘The hand writing of Ariosto is a small, firm & pointed character 22 22 expressing as I should say a strong & keen but circumscribed energy of mind, that 23 23 of Tasso is large free & flowing except that there is a checked expression in the 24 24 midst of its flow’, II: 47). When Shelley visited Tasso’s prison, he sent Peacock 25 25 ‘a piece of the wood of the very door which for seven years divided this glorious 26 26 being from the air & the light’ (II: 48); Peacock disagreed with Shelley’s sanguine 27 27 view that dungeons were no longer in use, but he ‘laid up in consecrated paper the 28 28 morsels of Tasso’s dungeon door’.19 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 16 See Nicola J. Watson, The Literary Tourist: Readers and Places in Romantic and 32 33 Victorian Britain. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2006. 33 34 17 In one of his letters to Hogg (Letters of Thomas Love Peacock, vol. 1, p. 150), 34 35 Peacock admitted: ‘I think there can be little in the “bel paese” to compensate the trouble 35 36 of visiting it; still less the expence: least of all the loss of Greek incurred in travelling 36 from inn toProof inn and hearing bad Italian spoken byCopy ugly and filthy people. I have myself no 37 37 38 aspirations that way and had rather sail the Vaga over Pont-y-casyllty [an aqueduct built 38 by Thomas Telford] than spur up my flea-bitten over the Appenines.’H ogg’s attitudes were 39 39 even less attuned to the trials of foreign experience than those of Peacock. This letter seems 40 40 to indicate that, although Peacock enjoyed hearing from Shelley, he preferred to stay at 41 home and could not match the openness of his friend. 41 42 18 For a more detailed analysis, see Alan Weinberg’s chapter on the Italian verse 42 43 fragments, pp. 281–306. 43 44 19 Letters of Thomas Love Peacock, vol. 1, p. 155. 44

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Other Italian points of reference included Venice (‘I can only compare [the 1 1 gondolas] to moths of which a coffin might have been the chrysalis’, II: 42); the 2 2 approaches to Naples, Naples itself and the changing Italian landscape, especially 3 3 its trees and vegetation (‘external nature in these delightful regions contrasts 4 4 with & compensates for the deformity & degradation of humanity’, II: 60). At 5 5 Naples he witnessed a street-assassination, which provided another instance of 6 6 that ‘barbarian ferocity’ so painfully at odds with ‘the wild beauty of the scenery’ 7 7 (II: 60). There was an ascent of Vesuvius and a descent by torchlight (II: 62–3). 8 8 Shelley was troubled by the guides, but he also admitted that ‘Nothing can be 9 9 more picturesque than the gestures & physiognomies of these savage people’ and 10 10 admired the ‘fine’ ‘effect’ whenever ‘in the of night they unexpectedly 11 11 begin to sing in chorus some fragment of their wild & but [sic] sweet national 12 12 music’.20 As this response suggests, Shelley’s radicalism did not prevent him 13 13 from occasionally ignoring the facts of peasant life and indulging, like so many 14 14 visitors, in the pursuit of the aesthetically gratifying. This bittersweet experience 15 15 was followed by a visit to Pompeii (II: 71–5), where the Forum was haunted by the 16 16 presence of the volcano (‘Behind was the single summit of Vesuvius rolling forth 17 17 volumes of thick white smoke whose foamlike column was sometimes darted into 18 18 the clear dark sky & fell in little streaks along the wind’, II: 73). 19 19 Like most visitors, he was impressed by many aspects of Rome, whose 20 20 inhabitants ‘seem much superior to any in Italy’ (II: 70); he was highly responsive 21 21 to many aspects of ‘this capital of the vanished world’ (II: 54) and celebrated a 22 22 number of its features including the ruined Baths of Caracalla, soon to appear in 23 23 the Preface to Prometheus Unbound (‘Never was any desolation more sublime & 24 24 lovely’, II: 84). ‘The Coliseum’, he told Peacock, ‘is unlike any work of human 25 25 hands I ever saw before’ and, like the Pantheon and many buildings at Pompeii, 26 26 was ‘open to the sky, & it was the clear & sunny weather of the end of November 27 27 in this climate when we visited it day after day’ (II: 58–9). Rome was a ‘city as 28 28 it were of the dead, or rather of those who cannot die, & who survive the puny 29 29 generations which inhabit & pass over the spot which they have made sacred to 30 30 eternity’ (II: 59). 31 31 Another example of epistolary continuity is provided by Byron whom the 32 32 Shelleys had got to know well in Switzerland in 1816 and whom Shelley now 33 33 visited first in Venice and then in Ravenna; the 10 letters of the first period were 34 34 now supplemented by 19 more. Shelley provides detailed descriptions at different 35 35 stages of Byron’s Italian odyssey: his account of Byron at Venice (II: 58) is vivid 36 36 but disapproving (‘Countesses smell so of garlick that an ordinary Englishman 37 Proof Copy 37 cannot approach them’), but by the time of his visit to Ravenna (II: 322–3, 349), 38 38 Shelley himself had mellowed and, at least according to his estimation, Byron 39 39 was ‘greatly improved in every respect’. By this stage, Shelley was much more 40 40 tolerant of Byron’s eccentricities, perhaps because Byron seemed to have settled 41 41 42 42 43 20 For a general account, see Gillian Darley, Vesuvius: The Most Famous Volcano in 43 44 the World. London: Profile Books, 2011; for Shelley’s expedition, see pp. 106–11. 44

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into a steady relationship (II: 324): ‘Here are two monkies, five cats, eight dogs 1 1 & ten horses – all of whom (except the horses) walk about {the} house like the 2 2 masters of it.’ In a letter to Peacock (II: 330–31) some of the details are slightly 3 3 altered and Shelley adds to the list an eagle, a crow and a falcon, concluding in a 4 4 postscript: ‘I have just met on the grand staircase five peacocks, two guinea hens, 5 5 and an Egyptian crane. I wonder who all these animals were before they were 6 6 changed into these shapes’ (an earlier reference to ‘this Circean Palace’ indicates 7 7 that he was thinking of magical transformations in the Odyssey). 8 8 In spite of these unsettling presences, and the obvious unconventionality, 9 9 Shelley was always conscious of what he regarded as his own poetic inferiority (II: 10 10 323): ‘I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may: and there is no other with 11 11 whom it is worth contending.’ Shelley suspected that his friendly persuasion and 12 12 his insistence on Byron’s poetic potential might have helped. For instance, he had 13 13 enthusiastically praised parts of Canto 1 of Don Juan (‘Dante hardly exceeds it’) 14 14 but, as he told Byron, he was also affronted by ‘the bitter mockery of our common 15 15 nature’ (II: 198) since he recognized that the poem itself provided evidence of 16 16 better instincts: ‘The power and the beauty and the wit, indeed, redeem all this 17 17 – chiefly because they belie and refute it.’ In Ravenna, as he informed his wife, 18 18 his respect for Byron’s achievement was less qualified and generously lacking in 19 19 self-reference (II: 323): 20 20 21 He has read to me one of the unpublished cantos of Don Juan [Canto V], which 21 22 is astonishingly fine. – It sets him not above but far above all the poets of the 22 23 day: every word has the stamp of immortality … . This canto is in style, but 23 24 totally, & sustained with incredible ease & power, like the end of the second 24 25 canto: there is not a word which the most rigid assertor of the dignity of human 25 26 nature could desire to be cancelled: it fulfills in a certain degree what I have long 26 27 preached of producing something wholly new & relative to the age – and yet 27 28 surpassingly beautiful. 28 29 29 This modulation from a traveller’s impressions of Ravenna and the intimate 30 30 portrait of Byron to an analysis of Don Juan may be characteristic of the apparently 31 31 unplanned structure of many letters; certainly, it is a recurrent feature of Shelley’s 32 32 letter-writing, which often moves in and out of acute literary criticism, without 33 33 formality or preamble. Shelley was determined to continue exercising his good 34 34 influence. Several months later, he wrote to Byron from Pisa to thank him for a 35 35 copy of Cantos III–V of Don Juan (II: 357–8): ‘This poem carries with it at once 36 36 the stampProof of originality and a defiance of imitation.Copy Nothing has ever been written 37 37 like it in English – nor, if I may venture to prophesy, will there be.’ Like a rigorous 38 38 tutor, he also added some criticism and claimed some credit: ‘This sort of writing 39 39 only on a great plan & perhaps in a more compact form is what I wished you to do 40 40 when I made my vows for an epic.’ 41 41 The relationship with Byron troubled Shelley in other ways, which can also 42 42 be traced in the correspondence. His tact was often stretched to the limits. In his 43 43 long letter to Mary Shelley from Ravenna he reveals (II: 324) that he had spoken 44 44

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to Byron about ‘poor Hunt’ who, as usual, was in great need of money, although, 1 1 in spite of the fact that he and Byron were ‘excellent friends’, ‘something’ in him 2 2 made it impossible to ask Byron for ‘a contribution’. With an unillusioned eye to 3 3 himself as well as to Byron, he generalizes about the difficulty of personal relations: 4 4 ‘The demon of mistrust & of pride lurks between two persons in our situation 5 5 poisoning the freedom of their intercourse. – This is a tax and a heavy one which 6 6 we must pay for being human.’ The paragraph concludes with two sentences which 7 7 illuminate the reflexive basis of Shelley’s psychological curiosity: ‘I hope that in 8 8 the next world these things will be better managed. – What is passing in the heart 9 9 of another rarely escapes the observation of one who is a strict anatomist of his own 10 10 –’ (the final sentence might make a suggestive epigraph to ‘Julian and Maddalo’). 11 11 Shelley also acted as intermediary between Byron and Claire Clairmont, with 12 12 whom his relations were extremely close but whose behaviour, not unlike that of 13 13 Byron, he was also prepared to analyze from a distance with sympathy edged with 14 14 epigrammatic and sometimes exasperated acuteness (II: 236): ‘poor thing, she is 15 15 very unhappy & in bad health, & she ought to be treated with as much indulgence 16 16 as possible. – The weak & the foolish are in this respect like Kings: they can do no 17 17 wrong.’ In particular, he recognized that his only rights over the young daughter 18 18 of Byron and Claire (‘little Allegra’) were derived from ‘my feelings and those of 19 Mary’: yet he admitted his own lack of authority when he declared to Byron that ‘I 19 20 am spared the pain of being an interlocutor in a matter over which, I believe, I have 20 21 no influence either as it regards her or you’ (II: 198). His description (previously 21 22 mentioned) of his visit to Allegra (II: 334–5), which involves some exchanges in 22 23 Italian, is peculiarly touching; Shelley records that ‘Before I went away she made 23 24 me run all over the convent like a mad thing’ and that ‘on returning Allegra began 24 25 ringing the bell which calls the nuns to assemble’ – with predictable results. 25 26 26 27 27 28 V 28 29 29 30 Perhaps the most unexpected correspondence was that with Leigh Hunt’s friend 30 31 Charles Ollier, which had begun in England and was continued in Italy. With his 31 32 brother, Ollier had already published Laon and Cythna and The Revolt of Islam and 32 33 two volumes of prose. An early cause of tension was Ollier’s original reluctance 33 34 to publish Laon and Cythna, a weakness which (in Shelley’s view) would only 34 35 encourage the agents of government to arrest the parties involved, ‘as criminals 35 36 already convicted by their own fears’ (I: 579). Shelley was acutely conscious 36 37 of the dangersProof of a friendship with Hunt, whichCopy might involve both Ollier and 37 38 especially Shelley himself (in January of that year Hunt had demonstrated their 38 39 closeness when accompanying Shelley to the custody hearing by Lord Eldon, 39 40 while Mary Shelley’s journal records in detail the closeness of the two families 40 41 later in the year). 41 42 Yet, in spite of these anxieties and a number of suspicions, this business 42 43 connection continued after Shelley had moved to Italy. In October 1819 he relaxed 43 44 his hostility sufficiently to end a longish letter to Ollier in London with enquiries 44

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for the safety of Hunt and a reference to the concluding passage in John Taylor 1 1 Coleridge’s review of The Revolt of Islam (title of the revised Laon and Cythna). 2 2 Exhibiting, perhaps, that ‘taste for humour and drollery’ which he admitted that he 3 3 was acquiring (II: 123), Shelley exaggeratedly transposed this animated paragraph, 4 4 presenting himself as ‘swearing and cursing in all comic and horrid oaths, like a 5 5 French postillion on Mount Cenis’ (II: 128).21 The self-deprecatory humour and the 6 6 capacity for developing an image, in this case to comical proportions (‘pretending 7 7 not to be drowned myself when I am drowned; and, lastly, being drowned’), 8 8 is more typical of the mature Shelley and his correspondence than is usually 9 9 conceded. J.T. Coleridge’s vividly imagistic and exaggerated criticism seems to 10 10 have made a special mark on Shelley’s consciousness; he refers to it again in a 11 11 later letter to Ollier where he expresses amusement at the review’s claim that his 12 12 ‘chariot-wheels’ were broken and suggests that it would be a ‘comical thing’ if an 13 13 advertisement were issued in which Mr Charters of Bond Street (Shelley’s unpaid 14 14 coachmaker, whose real name was Thomas Chartres) ‘begs to assure the public 15 15 that they [that is, the wheels], after having carried him through Italy, France, and 16 16 Switzerland, still continue in excellent repair’ (II: 163). 17 17 In a characteristic switch of tone, the same letter also addresses more 18 18 pragmatic issues: directions for publication of The Cenci (which is to be kept in a 19 19 box until the receipt of appropriate instructions); the dedication of Shelley’s play 20 20 to Hunt; and the concluding enquiry about the parcel which Hunt was supposed 21 21 to have sent, the date of posting, the name of the ship and its captain, and details 22 22 concerning the immediate despatch (‘by return of post’) of the bill of lading (II: 23 23 128). Since Shelley’s poetry has often been criticized for its weak grasp on the 24 24 actual, his competent analysis of this situation and his ability to combine attention 25 25 to detail with good-humoured self-description should be registered. A similar hard- 26 26 headedness often marks his grasp of business affairs – see, for example, his detailed 27 27 instructions to Hookham (I: 350) about the despatch of books, including ‘all Kants 28 28 works’ to an address in Wales, or his directions to Ollier (I: 532–4) concerning 29 29 the distribution of A Proposal to booksellers and how copies were to be sent to 30 30 a catalogue of influential parties, including editors of specified newspapers. Four 31 31 and a half years later, a similar practicality and shrewdness informs his report to 32 32 Byron (II: 343) on renting and furnishing a palazzo at Pisa and finding additional 33 33 stables – at one point, he is even self-confidently directive (‘You come out on the 34 34 Pisa road about ten miles on the other side of Florence’). In another letter from 35 35 36 36 21 AlthoughProof neither of the Shelleys record Copythis crossing in detail, Claire Clairmont 37 37 38 does: ‘Next Morning we begin the ascent of Mont Cenis. and Shelley sung all the way / 38 “Now Heaven neglected is by Men / And Gods are hung upon every tree / But not the more 39 39 for loss of them / Shall this fair world unhappy be.[”] / and asserted that the Mountains 40 40 are God’s Corps de Ballet of which the Jung fraue is Mademoiselle Milanie [celebrated 41 ballerina whom Shelley had admired in London]. We dine on the top of Cenis & bless 41 42 Napoleon for the passage must have been dreadful before the new Road was made’. The 42 43 Journals of Claire Clairmont 1814–1827, ed. Marion Kingston Stocking. Cambridge, 43 44 Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968, pp. 88–9. 44

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this time he informs Horace Smith (II: 349): ‘I have just taken the finest palace in 1 1 Pisa for him, and his luggage, and his horses’ and even suggests to Smith that he 2 2 should be prepared to travel from Paris: ‘I have marked down several houses in 3 3 Florence, and one especially on the Arno, a most lovely place, though they asked 4 4 rather more than perhaps you would have chosen to pay – yet nothing approaching 5 5 to an English price.’ These pragmatic characteristics are also strongly evident in 6 6 his letters to Leigh Hunt about the financial arrangements for the establishment of 7 7 The Liberal, the furnishing of his rooms in Pisa, the hiring of an Italian cook and 8 8 the most convenient way and time of year to sail from England to Italy (II: 344, 9 9 355–6, 380–81). 10 10 11 11 12 VI 12 13 13 14 This period seems to have stimulated Shelley to the writing of public letters, a 14 15 kind of proclamation or even self-advertisement which might have been thought 15 16 to have attracted a younger version of himself but which features only once 16 17 in the first volume of his correspondence. This category includes letters to the 17 18 editors of various journals, mostly not completed and usually not sent, such as 18 19 two defences of Keats (II: 130, 251–3). A lively communication to Charles Ollier, 19 20 as editor of Ollier’s Literary Miscellany (II: 272–4) required three drafts, in spite 20 21 of its shortness, and is both a critique of Peacock’s The Four Ages of Poetry 21 22 and an introduction to ‘A Defence of Poetry’, an essay which was intended for 22 23 publication in Ollier’s periodical and might easily have originated in the form 23 24 of a public letter. A letter of June 1821 to the editor of The Examiner publicly 24 25 disclaims Queen Mab, which had been a primary factor in Shelley’s loss of his 25 26 first two children and which had now been piratically reprinted (II: 304–5). With 26 27 whatever undeclared motivation, the author now renounces this youthful poem as 27 28 a work ‘written … with unreflecting enthusiasm’ and ‘perfectly worthless in point 28 29 of literary composition’. He even sent a copy of his letter to Ollier, asking him to 29 30 have it printed in the Morning Chronicle (II: 305). 30 31 Another, earlier, letter to The Examiner (II: 136–48) engages in detail with 31 32 the trial of the publisher Richard Carlile (some years later to publish a pirated 32 33 edition of Queen Mab), who had been fined and sentenced to three years in prison 33 34 for printing passages from Paine’s Age of Reason and for republishing Palmer’s 34 35 Principles of Nature. Shelley’s detailed and passionate account of the Carlile 35 36 affair (‘in which’, as he later told Hunt, ‘I was considerably interested’) did 36 37 not appearProof in print until 1880 and, with restoration Copy of all its significant deleted 37 38 passages (except for its signature, which had been cut out), not until 1926. This 38 39 is yet another example of Hunt’s editorial caution, which was sometimes perhaps 39 40 well-intentioned, sometimes nervous of yet another prosecution, but which 40 41 often unfortunately blunted Shelley’s immediate effectiveness and significantly 41 42 damaged and distorted his reputation (compare Hunt’s tactical withholding of 42 43 ‘Peter Bell the Third’, ‘’ and ‘The Mask of Anarchy’). Hunt’s 43 44 editorial strategies and the resulting silences helped to produce an image of Shelley 44

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in keeping with Hunt’s own influential figuring but significantly more accepting 1 1 of conventional orthodoxies and less edged and radical than the determined and 2 2 awkward biographical and poetical reality. 3 3 The essay on Carlile is a persuasive piece of argument on the constitution 4 4 of juries (invoking, among others, Paine, Godwin, Bentham, Hume, Drummond, 5 5 Hone, Christ and Socrates); surprisingly, it does not feature in David Lee Clark’s 6 6 edition of the prose, not presumably because of its radical case, but perhaps 7 7 because it is ostensibly couched in the form of a letter. Yet to disqualify it on 8 8 such generic grounds is to ignore the fact that, as in the case of the earlier A 9 9 Letter to Lord Ellenborough (published separately as a pamphlet in 1812), Shelley 10 10 intended it as a contribution to a public debate. This was in spite, or even perhaps 11 11 because, of its pointed implication of friendly ties with Leigh Hunt (‘My dear 12 12 Friend’ at the beginning, and a further personalized address near the conclusion: 13 13 ‘These, my dear Hunt, are awful times’) and its expressions of admiration for 14 14 Hunt’s task of ‘opposing the great & various resources of your accomplished mind 15 15 to the de {accidental gap in MS but presumably ‘feat of’} tyrants & impostors 16 16 who surround you’ (II: 148). Shelley’s tribute has something in common with the 17 17 praise of Hunt’s virtues in the Dedication to The Cenci (also addressed to ‘My dear 18 18 friend’), which Shelley had written a few months previously, a very public letter 19 19 in the form of a carefully calculated act of homage, which itself derives from a 20 20 heavily revised private communication. As Donald H. Reiman correctly observes: 21 21 ‘In making these revisions, Shelley transformed a candid personal letter into a 22 22 graceful public dedication not open to the kind of criticism that the Quarterly 23 23 Review directed at Hunt’s Dedication of Foliage to Sir John Swinburne.’22 24 24 25 25 26 VII 26 27 27 28 Many of Shelley’s Italian letters display a metaphorical capacity which is much 28 29 more than merely descriptive and demonstrates both Shelley’s imaginative powers 29 30 and an unusual faculty for selecting images which are appropriate both to the 30 31 context and to his correspondent.23 Take for example his epistolary relations 31 32 with Maria Gisborne, who had introduced him to the plays of Calderón. A good 32 33 epistolary instance of this engaging metaphorical tendency can be found in 33 34 Shelley’s use of the Gisborne dog Oscar, which is delicately appropriate to the 34 35 occasion. In a letter to Mary Shelley (itself a response to another letter), Maria 35 36 Gisborne Proofhad reported that Oscar had marked Copy the departure of the Shelleys from 36 37 Villa Valsovano by ‘running by your side, waving his long slender tail’ and that he 37 38 ‘continued for several days at dinner-time to howl piteously, and to scratch with 38 39 all his might at the door of your abandoned house’ (II: 123–4 n.). Percy Shelley 39 40 40 41 22 Donald H. Reiman, ‘Dedication of The Cenci to Leigh Hunt’, SC VI: 872. (The 41 42 whole text and Reiman’s commentary are printed in SC VI: 865–74.) 42 43 23 See Daisy Hay’s claim that Shelley’s letters are ‘shaped in complicated ways by 43 44 their recipients’ (Hay, ‘Shelley’s Letters’, p. 208). 44

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exploits this image, not for its canine possibilities but as a courteous way of 1 1 regretting a separation (II: 124): ‘His importunate regret is however a type of ours 2 2 as regards you. Our memory – if you will accept so humble a metaphor – is forever 3 3 scratching at the door of your absence.’ As an elegant expression of regret and 4 4 an embodiment of absence, the dog scratching at the door of absence translates, 5 5 with whatever hesitation, Maria Gisborne’s original image to a more ambitious 6 6 level and reminds us how powerful Shelley can be as a poet of the intangible or 7 7 the invisible or the abstract (see, for instance, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty or Ode 8 8 to the West Wind or To a Sky-lark). In this case, Maria Gisborne’s prosaic ‘the 9 9 door of your abandoned house’ is transformed into the much more challenging, 10 10 but immediately intelligible, ‘the door of your absence’ and, of course, it is the 11 11 isolated Shelleys who remember, at least for the time being, the elusive Gisbornes, 12 12 who continue to resist all invitations to visit. 13 13 Another example occurs in a letter of 13 November 1819 addressed to both 14 14 Gisbornes; here Shelley announces that he is turning his attention to the writing of 15 15 ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’, a detailed account of political history which was 16 16 not published in his lifetime but constitutes a striking prose parallel to Prometheus 17 17 Unbound. This change of direction is announced after a detailed account of a threat 18 18 to the public funds which might be damaging to the investments of John Gisborne. 19 Near the end of his letter, Shelley dismisses these financial concerns, modulating 19 20 to a cluster of images which evoke a rather different world and are strategically 20 21 calculated to please both John Gisborne and, presumably, his wife (II: 150): 21 22 22 23 I have deserted the odorous gardens of literature to journey across the great 23 24 sandy desert of Politics; not, you may imagine, without the hope of finding some 24 25 enchanted paradise. In all probability, I shall be overwhelmed by one of the 25 26 tempestuous columns which are forever traversing with the speed of a storm 26 27 & the confusion of a chaos that pathless wilderness. You meanwhile will be 27 28 lamenting in some happy Oasis that I do not return. 28 29 29 In spite of this demonstration of ‘Calderonizing’,24 Shelley was apologetic and was 30 30 anxious not to be mistaken for somebody who paraded his poetic qualifications: 31 31 ‘This’, he self-defensively told the Gisbornes (II: 150), ‘is out-Calderonizing 32 32 Muley’ (a rhetorically self-indulgent character in El principe constante). 33 33 Only a few weeks later, Shelley wrote again to Maria Gisborne and once more 34 34 celebrated the achievement of Calderón in a letter which employs the Spanish 35 35 playwright as a pretext for attempting a kind of prose-poetry which would be 36 36 recognized by both parties (II: 154): 37 Proof Copy 37 38 I have been lately voyaging in a sea without my pilot, & although my sail has 38 39 often been torn, my boat become leaky, & the log lost, I have yet sailed in a kind 39 40 of way from island to island, some of craggy & mountainous magnificence, some 40 41 clothed with moss & flowers & radiant with fountains, some barren desarts. – I 41 42 have been reading Calderon without you. 42 43 43 44 24 See MWS Letters I: 116. 44

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Here again, his admiration for Calderón is gently and obliquely demonstrated by the 1 1 lengthy postscript which quotes four stanzas of eight lines each and asks, without 2 2 need of an answer, ‘Is there any thing finer in Petrarch than the 2d. stanza[?]’ So 3 3 it appears that the carefully structured concentration of images with which the 4 4 letter begins is designed as a tribute both to the poetic texture of Calderón and to 5 5 the literary judgement of the ‘amiable and accomplished’ Maria Gisborne, whom 6 6 Shelley admired for her ‘freedom from certain prejudices and the gentleness of her 7 7 manners’ (II: 105). This letter also demonstrates that liberation of the imagination 8 8 and freedom from the constraints of normality which is a recurrent element of the 9 9 verse letter and which also features in a later prose letter to both Gisbornes (II: 10 10 172) in which Shelley tells them: ‘The stage direction on the present occasion 11 11 is (exit Moonshine) & enter Wall; or rather four walls, who surround & take 12 12 prisoners the Galan & Dama –’.25 This sentence allows a switch from the world of 13 13 Shakespeare to that of Spanish drama; it is also an invitation (or at least a strongly 14 14 expressed hope) that the Gisbornes would finally condescend to leave their house 15 15 near Livorno and visit the Shelleys at Pisa. Here, as in the previous examples, 16 16 Shelley is not primarily concerned to demonstrate his own literary knowledge or 17 17 abilities except as a compliment to the tantalizingly absent Gisbornes. 18 18 These passages must stand as examples of much that is impressive in the Italian 19 19 letters. The Gisbornes seem to have provided Shelley with the necessary pretexts 20 20 for introducing into the body of his letters poetic intensities which are deliberately 21 21 self-conscious: see, for instance, his enthusiastic and imaginative response to 22 22 a ‘volcanic description of the birth of the cylinder’ by Henry Reveley, Maria 23 23 Gisborne’s son, and his teasing application of this model to the creation of the 24 24 universe (‘God sees his machine spinning round the sun & delights in its success, 25 25 & has taken out patents to supply all the suns in space with the same manufacture’ 26 26 (II: 158); or his later hope that Henry would ‘write me an adamantine letter, flowing 27 27 not like the words of Sophocles with honey, but molten brass & iron, & bristling 28 28 with wheels & teeth’ (II: 203). This tendency may have been particularly liberated 29 29 by the Gisbornes but it also can be found in letters to other correspondents: see, 30 30 for example, his wistful admission to Peacock that his memories of certain English 31 31 scenes could easily extinguish even the spectacular delights of Italian scenery 32 32 (II: 114): ‘How we prize what we despised when present! So the ghosts of our 33 33 dead associations rise & us in revenge for our having let them starve, & 34 34 abandoned them to perish.’ Here the Gothic imaginings are granted force by their 35 35 psychological acuity and their intimations, however disguised and displaced, of a 36 36 darker andProof more troubling personal narrative. Copy 37 37 Recurrently, and characteristically, many of these letters are informed by a 38 38 political consciousness. In January 1820, shortly after the Peterloo Massacre and 39 39 the passing of the repressive Six Acts, and only a few months after his unpublished 40 40 public letter to The Examiner, Shelley addresses Thomas Medwin in Geneva 41 41 42 42 43 25 Here Shelley may have had in mind either El galan sin dama or perhaps El galan 43 44 fantazma. 44

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(II: 169): ‘Perhaps you belong to the tribe of the hopeless & nothing shocks or 1 1 surprises you in politics – I have enough of unrebuked hope remaining to be 2 2 struck with horror at the proceedings in England.’ This unrebuked hope allows 3 3 him to find some consolations even in the apparent triumph of a system which he 4 4 holds in contempt: ‘Yet, I reflect, as a last consolation that oppressi{ons} which 5 5 authorize, often produce resistance’ (a text perhaps for understanding ‘The Mask 6 6 of Anarchy’, which also dates from the last months of 1819). There is also, claims 7 7 Shelley, some compensation for those who follow a poetic career, even in the face 8 8 of such discouragement: ‘These are not times in which one has much spirit for 9 9 writing Poetry; although there is a keen air in them that sharpens the wits of men 10 10 and makes them imagine vividly even in the midst of despondence’ (II: 169). 11 11 These may seem to be strange considerations to figure so strongly in what 12 12 appears to be only his second letter to his cousin, in which he advances an 13 13 invitation to stay in Italy with the Shelleys; yet even here there is no escape from 14 14 the grip of darker paradoxes since the same letter refers to Italy as ‘The Paradise 15 15 of exiles – the retreat of Pariahs’ (II: 170; the first phrase had, of course, featured 16 16 in the dialectics of ‘Julian and Maddalo’). A similar seriousness marks his letter of 17 17 27 September 1819 to his old friend Leigh Hunt, who as editor of The Examiner 18 18 was more obviously implicated in the politics of reform than Medwin. Hoping that 19 19 the Hunts will join the Shelleys in Florence, to which they were on the point of 20 20 moving, he proffers his analysis of a city which so far he only knows superficially 21 21 (II: 121): ‘I have not yet seen Florence, except as one sees the outside of the streets, 22 22 but its phisiognomy indicates it to be a city, which though the ghost of a republic, 23 23 yet possesses most amiable qualities.’ Once again, the emphasis on ghosts is a 24 24 reminder of Shelley’s predilection for the Gothic (compare his descriptions of 25 25 Rome, Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum); it also looks ahead to poems about 26 26 Pisa26 and demonstrates how much Shelley’s interpretation of cities or buildings 27 27 was affected by his reading of history, politics and literature (see, for instance, his 28 28 analysis of the Bank of Ireland and the Palace of Versailles). This letter articulates a 29 29 theory about the intimate relation between literature and politics which would later 30 30 be central to ‘A Defence of Poetry’. It celebrates Petrarch, Dante and especially 31 31 Boccaccio, ‘this most divine writer’, considering all three as ‘productions of the 32 32 vigour of the infancy of a new nation, as rivulets from the same spring as that 33 33 which fed the greatness of the republics of Florence and Pisa’ (II: 122). 34 34 Shelley’s invitation is also a delicate and implicit tribute to Hunt, who shared 35 35 his appreciation of Boccaccio and was generally regarded as responsible for 36 36 importing this literary taste into Georgian England (II: 121): ‘I wish you could 37 Proof Copy 37 meet us there in the spring, and we could try to muster up a “lieta brigata” [happy 38 38 band] which leaving behind them the pestilence of remembered misfortunes, 39 39 might act over again the pleasures of the interlocutors in Boccaccio.’ Here again, 40 40 the literal is translated to the level of metaphor as, perhaps in tribute to the central 41 41 context of the Decameron, the plague becomes ‘the pestilence of remembered 42 42 43 43 44 26 See Alan Weinberg’s chapter on Italian verse fragments, esp. pp. 290–3. 44

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misfortunes’, and here, as in the letters to the Gisbornes, Shelley introduces a 1 1 writer who is specially associated with his correspondent. The phrase ‘act over 2 2 again’ is particularly suggestive; among other things, it implies a constructive 3 3 function for great literature and for the therapeutic repetitions of literary homage. 4 4 Yet, even if this invitation and the later, extended account of Boccaccio’s 5 5 virtues may seem to provide a respite, what emerges even more strongly is a 6 6 political reading of contemporary Florence which (for all its obvious pleasures and 7 7 unlike so many contemporaries) Shelley interprets as something greatly different 8 8 from a mere luststadt or a concentration of museums and galleries. This political 9 9 consciousness (or perhaps it might more justly be called ‘conscience’) never really 10 left Shelley and continues to appear in his letters. For instance, in March 1821 he 10 11 told Peacock (II: 276): ‘We are surrounded here in Pisa by revolutionary volcanoes, 11 12 which as yet give more light than heat: the lava has not yet reached Tuscany. But 12 13 the news in the papers will tell you far more than it is prudent for me to say; and 13 14 for this once I will observe your rule of Political Silence.’ In August 1821 he again 14 15 informed Peacock, without obvious sentimentality (II: 331): ‘the accursed cause 15 16 to the downfall of which I dedicated what powers I may have had – flourishes 16 17 like a cedar and covers England with its boughs.’ One of his last letters, written 17 18 to Horace Smith (a correspondent who seems to have elicited from him letters 18 19 which were engagingly courteous and unaffectedly frank), is clearly affected by 19 20 the grim vision which also darkened ‘The Triumph of Life’. Here Shelley admits 20 21 (II: 442) that ‘England appears to be in a desperate condition, Ireland still worse’ 21 22 and provides a detailed analysis of general culpability in which morals and politics 22 23 are inextricably and fatally connected: ‘all, more or less, subdue themselves to 23 24 the element that surrounds them, & contribute to the evils they lament by the 24 25 hypocrisy that springs from them.’27 This crisis required every man to speak the 25 26 truth ‘whatever that may be’ (a characteristic blend of sceptical uncertainty and 26 27 unshakeable moral confidence): ‘if every man said what he thought, it [the system] 27 28 could not subsist a day.’ Such a possibility was, he recognized, merely idealistic 28 29 (‘You talk Utopia!’28). 29 30 In the circumstances, he could only resort to more material pleasures, yet even 30 31 they were tainted. At Lerici, just nine days before his drowning, towards the end 31 32 of his chastened letter to Horace Smith he remarked (II: 443): ‘We have some 32 33 friends on a visit to us, & my only regret is that the summer must ever pass, or 33 34 that Mary has not the same predilection for this place that I have, which would 34 35 induce me never to shift my quarters.’ This sentence is necessarily partial but 35 36 it may serveProof as a demonstration not only ofCopy the limitations of pleasure, and the 36 37 retrospective ironies of correspondence, but also of the inescapable way in which 37 38 even the most thoughtful and expressive letters cannot be wholly abstracted either 38 39 from the concerns of biography or from the literary intelligence which brought 39 40 them into being. 40 41 41 42 27 See Shelley’s Prose or The Trumpet of a Prophecy, ed. David Lee Clark (1953). 42 43 New York: Fourth Estate, 1988, p. 341. 43 44 28 ‘Julian and Maddalo’, line 179 (Maddalo to Julian). 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 34 9/11/2015 4:29:21 PM 1 Chapter 2 1 2 2 3 Symmetrical Forms and 3 4 Infuriate Paroxysms: 4 5 5 6 Observing the Body in Percy Shelley’s 6 7 7 8 Gothic Fiction 8 9 9 10 Diego Saglia 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 His triumphant persecutor bore him into the damp cell, and chained him to the 15 wall. An iron chain encircled his waist; his limbs, which not even a little straw 15 16 kept from the rock, were fixed by immense staples to the flinty floor; and but 16 17 one of his hands was left at liberty, to take the scanty pittance of bread and 17 18 water which was daily allowed him … He scarcely now shuddered when the 18 19 slimy lizard crossed his naked and motionless limbs. The large earth-worms, 19 20 which twined themselves in his long and matted hair, almost ceased to excite 20 21 sensations of horror.1 21 22 22 23 Such is the intolerable condition of the unfortunate Verezzi in the opening of 23 24 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s romance Zastrozzi (1810), which thus throws into high 24 25 relief its Gothic credentials from the outset: a victim enclosed in a claustrophobic 25 26 space, descriptions filled with painterly details, a crescendo of physical and mental 26 27 tortures, and a surplus of horror that eventually results in insensitivity. Through 27 28 this image, with its clear Promethean overtones, the young author conjures up 28 29 a classic Gothic scene teeming with well-established, though no less disturbing, 29 30 topoi, placing both character and readers in the midst of a web of instantly 30 31 recognizable images. 31 32 As is well known, Shelley wrote Gothic at a time when this fictional form was 32 33 reaching the point of exhaustion. In the 1810s, while other subgenres gradually 33 34 emerged as popular favourites, works of horror and terror went into a steady 34 35 decline, falling ‘from 199 Gothic titles published in the 1800s (25.6 per cent) to 89 35 2 36 in the 1810s (13.3 per cent), [and] waning to 6.6 per cent at its lowest in 1814’. 36 37 Proof Copy 37 1 38 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Zastrozzi, A Romance & St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian: A 38 Romance, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2002, pp. 62, 63. Both 39 39 works were published anonymously, Zastrozzi with the initials PBS, and St. Irvyne as by 40 40 ‘A Gentleman of Oxford’. All further references to the individual romances are drawn from 41 this edition and abbreviated as Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, respectively. For summaries of both 41 42 works, see Behrendt’s ‘Introduction’, pp. 22–5. 42 43 2 See Anthony Mandal, Jane Austen and the Popular Novel: The Determined Author. 43 44 Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, p. 22. 44

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Hyperbolic, belated and adolescent, Shelley’s Gothic fiction has long been seen as 1 1 ticking all the wrong boxes. Peddling in nearly dead bodies, Zastrozzi (composed 2 2 in 1809, published in March 1810) and St. Irvyne; or, the Rosicrucian (composed 3 3 1809–10, published in December 1810, but dated 1811 on the title-page) hardly 4 4 caused a stir in the contemporary literary scene and have been traditionally 5 5 considered, together with much of his early work, a marginal portion of his output. 6 6 Accordingly, these texts have often been dismissed as manifestations of what the 7 7 poet himself called his ‘unrestrained’ sentiments and ‘passion for the wildest and 8 8 most extravagant romances’ in his letter to William Godwin of 10 January 1812.3 9 9 Despite their persistent neglect, critics have recently started to reappraise them as 10 valuable combinations of a popular aesthetic and literary code with the author’s 10 11 own nascent ideological concerns. Scholars such as Tilottama Rajan, Peter Finch 11 12 and Stephen Behrendt have suggested ways of re-evaluating Shelley’s romances 12 13 as ‘“serious” experiments with the form and conventions of Gothic fiction’, and 13 14 have addressed ‘both the close relation of the early romances to Shelley’s later 14 15 work and the often surprising literary and intellectual sophistication that underlies 15 16 them’.4 This essay contributes to this ongoing reassessment by focusing on 16 17 Shelley’s Gothic narratives as thematically and structurally rich texts that hold a 17 18 crucial place in his early production. A possible key, I would like to suggest, lies 18 19 in passages such as the one quoted in the opening. 19 20 If, as Timothy Morton remarks, Shelley was ‘very actively and vigorously 20 21 concerned with re-imagining the body’ throughout his literary career, he 21 22 emphatically inaugurated his protracted inscription of the physical in his early 22 23 Gothic romances.5 As a matter of fact, fraught and problematic bodies are 23 24 distinctive appurtenances of Gothic fiction and of one of its main sources, the 24 25 literature of sensibility.6 Shelley’s models present several comparable moments 25 26 of close scrutiny of the body, most evidently Matthew Lewis’s The Monk (1796) 26 27 and Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, or the Moor (1806), where horror also emerges 27 28 through carefully detailed evocations of desired, victimized and tortured human 28 29 29 30 3 Letters I: 227. Notably it was still the very young Shelley who, under the influence 30 31 of Godwin, expressed such critical restraint. 31 32 4 See Behrendt’s ‘Introduction’, in Shelley, Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne, pp. 13, 12. See 32 33 also Tilottama Rajan, ‘Promethean Narrative: Overdetermined Form in Shelley’s Gothic 33 34 Fiction’, in Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World, eds Betty T. Bennett and Stuart 34 35 Curran. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 240–52; 35 36 and Peter Finch, ‘Monstrous Inheritance: The Sexual Politics of Genre in Shelley’s St. 36 Irvyne’. Keats-ShelleyProof Journal 48 (1999), pp. 35–68.Copy 37 37 5 38 Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. Cambridge: 38 Cambridge University Press, 1994, p. 9. In his pioneering study, Morton remarks that ‘not 39 39 enough attention has been paid to the body in the criticism of Percy Shelley’ (p. 9). Nora 40 40 Crook and Derek Guiton gave a first, ground-breaking contribution to the study of this 41 topic in Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. See also 41 42 Sharon Ruston, Shelley and Vitality. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 42 43 6 See G.J. Barker-Benfield,The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth- 43 44 Century Britain. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1992, pp. 1–36. 44

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frames.7 Based on obsessive thematic and lexical repetitions, depictions of the 1 1 body in Shelley’s Gothic romances illuminate these works as significant crucibles 2 2 of his interests and concerns at a turning point in his development as a committed 3 3 writer and intellectual. By portraying the body as a tortured or diseased structure, 4 4 Shelley’s romances reflect his interest in the medical sciences during his last 5 5 period at Eton and after he was sent down from Oxford, as well as his fascination 6 6 with revolted, exorbitant selves that question conventions and defy control. As 7 7 irrepressibly ‘paroxystic’ entities, such bodies convey rebellious and subversive 8 8 energies; at the same time, they are subjected to medical and scientific interventions 9 9 aimed at containing their excessive outbursts. 10 Affected, diseased and tortured human frames characterize many of Shelley’s 10 11 later works – such as Prometheus Unbound, The Cenci or ‘The Triumph of Life’ – 11 12 as well as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This essay, however, intentionally limits 12 13 such interpretative flashforwards in order to focus on the romances as structured 13 14 performances reflecting the author’s early adoption of unconventional intellectual 14 15 positions. More than confused reinterpretations of Gothic clichés, Shelley’s 15 16 depictions of the physical (and related psychic/spiritual) dimension emphasize his 16 17 ‘knowing’ treatment of a familiar novelistic subgenre and testify to the gradual 17 18 clarification of his preoccupations as a writer and activist in the making. 18 19 19 20 20 21 The Body as Spectacle 21 22 22 23 The tormented body in the opening quotation to this essay is, to adapt Stephen 23 24 Bruhm’s words, a spectacularly ‘afflicted, severed, cut’ object that arrestingly 24 8 25 ‘proclaims its primacy, its irrepressibility, its material existence’. The Gothic body 25 26 is ‘that which is put on excessive display’ in narratives that often privilege the act 26 9 27 of ‘watching a pained object’. In this perspective, Shelley’s narratives treat the 27 28 human or ‘superhuman’ body as a hyperbolic, repeatedly staged and obsessively 28 29 scrutinized entity. They represent it in the throes of intolerable, often mysterious 29 30 and inexplicable physical paroxysms which, in turn, induce psychic paroxysms 30 31 and consign the human subject to situations of utter incomprehension and isolation. 31 32 This state of illegibility pervades Shelley’s romances as they exuberantly run the 32 33 gamut of the puzzling and elliptical features of Gothic. 33 34 34 35 35 7 36 On Shelley’s models for his Gothic texts, see Diane Long Hoeveler, ‘Prose Fiction: 36 37 Zastrozzi, St.Proof Irvyne, The Assassins, The Coliseum Copy’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy 37 38 Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe, with Madeleine Callaghan. 38 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 193–207 (pp. 199–201). 39 39 8 Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction. Philadelphia: University 40 40 of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, p. xv. More generally, on Romantic-period intersections 41 between literary and medical discourse, and on the relevance of the body in Romantic 41 42 poetry, see James Robert Allard, Romanticism, Medicine, and the Poet’s Body. Aldershot 42 43 and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2007. 43 44 9 Bruhm, Gothic Bodies, p. xx. 44

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Both narratives invite us to recognize familiar tropes and devices represented 1 1 in such sensational forms as to verge on the parodic. Undeniably, Shelley’s 2 2 interweaving of emphatic scenes in rapid succession reads as an amused debunking 3 3 of Gothic conventions. A sense of youthful mischievousness hovers over both 4 4 romances, which thus invest heavily in the ‘irreverent, inconsequential, and even 5 5 silly’ nature of parody.10 In the opening quotation, for instance, tragic and sublime 6 6 intensity is stretched to such an extent that it very nearly tips over into the playful 7 7 mockery of parodic rewriting. This approach, however, is inextricable from 8 8 Shelley’s recourse to parody as a way of denaturalizing cultural norms rooted in 9 9 authoritative discourse, both parodic mechanisms being ultimately in unison with 10 10 Gothic’s subversive and transgressive tendencies.11 Also in view of this double- 11 11 edged strategy, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne constantly thwart our ability to interpret 12 12 events and characters. And so the bodies they depict may be read as seemingly 13 13 straightforward instances of a well-worn Gothic convention which bear traces 14 14 of contemporary scientific and medical discourses, or alternatively as enigmatic 15 15 and opaque objects that paradoxically make visible the ambiguities pervading 16 16 Shelley’s Gothic romances. 17 17 In the opening passage from Zastrozzi, the victimized hero’s body is in full sight, 18 18 the narrative focus carefully zooming in on its details and emphasizing its sheer 19 19 materiality – its physical presence and physiological functions (as in the reference 20 20 to ‘bread and water’). Based on a deceptively simple alternation of hyperbolic 21 21 and blunt language, the depiction of Verezzi’s body transcribes the physical as 22 22 a supremely intricate structure. In this light, Shelley’s Gothic reworks the awe- 23 23 inspiring yet ultimately decipherable complexity of the body that had been posited 24 24 and investigated by the sciences of the Age of Reason and given philosophical 25 25 purchase by materialist thinkers such as Julien Offroy de la Mettrie in his 26 26 (scandalous and blasphemous) notion of l’homme machine from his homonymous 27 27 treatise of 1748. For La Mettrie, the human body is a mechanism composed of 28 28 actions and reactions, a physical and physiological object that invalidates any 29 29 discussion about the existence of the soul.12 This position represented one specific 30 30 culmination of a much wider-ranging cultural development that, starting from the 31 31 late seventeenth century, had brought the sciences of the human body to privilege 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 10 36 Simon Dentith, Parody. London and New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 37. 36 11 OnProof parody as criticism, see Dentith, Parody Copy, pp. 32–8; on Gothic and humour, see 37 37 38 Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnick, ‘Comic Gothic’, in A New Companion to the Gothic, ed. 38 David Punter. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2012, pp. 321–34. 39 39 12 On Shelley’s links to the French materialists (d’Holbach, Cabanis and La Mettrie), 40 40 see Ann Thomson, Bodies of Thought: Science, Religion, and the Soul in the Early 41 Enlightenment. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 234. On Shelley 41 42 and La Mettrie, see Seamus Deane, The French Revolution and Enlightenment in England, 42 43 1789–1832. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988, pp. 102–6, and Ruston, Shelley 43 44 and Vitality, p. 152. 44

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the ‘bare Mechanical causes of things’ and thus to invest in mainly ‘mechanistic 1 1 views of physiology’.13 2 2 Shelley’s Verezzi is a machine that continues to function, though feebly 3 3 and intermittently, even in the harshest conditions. In the opening passage, the 4 4 possibility of movement left to his hand – the single moving part of an otherwise 5 5 immobilized and passive frame – dramatically sets out the focal importance of the 6 6 entire body. Moreover, Verezzi is the site of movements or shifts from the physical 7 7 to the immaterial dimension of feelings and passions. The text carefully traces 8 8 how the contact with the slimy, slithering reptile transmits itself to Verezzi’s body 9 9 (his naked limbs, his hair), converges to the centre of perception and translates into 10 10 a psychic state (horror), to which, nevertheless, the enfeebled subject is almost 11 11 oblivious. The passage represents the physical in its external manifestations 12 12 and inner repercussions through the shift from initial sensation to feeling as 13 13 perception, the emergence of feeling as reaction and passion, and the eventual 14 14 near disappearance of both sensation and feeling. Shelley’s figuration of psychic 15 15 torments is inseparable from, and indeed subordinate to, an overwhelmingly 16 16 material body. 17 17 In the romances, it is the bodies of the protagonists, Verezzi and , and 18 18 those of their antagonists, Zastrozzi and Ginotti, that are the most conspicuously 19 19 spectacular and painstakingly mapped. And yet, male physical frames do not 20 20 monopolize Shelley’s Gothic discourse of the body. If the plots initially centre 21 21 on male characters, their focus soon changes to women whose bodies are as 22 22 closely examined as those of their male counterparts. In Zastrozzi, Matilda is a 23 23 figure of exceptional physical beauty, her body being repeatedly described as a 24 24 ‘symmetrical form’;14 but, as the novel’s main desiring subject, she is mostly an 25 25 active, observing character. Instead, Megalena in St. Irvyne is the object of the 26 26 lustful gaze of Wolfstein, who competes for her ‘grace and loveliness’ with the 27 27 banditti chief Cavigni, ‘whose dark eye wandered wildly over [her] beauties’; 28 28 and, once again, the language conveying Wolfstein’s violent desire insists on 29 29 Megalena’s ‘most exact symmetry’.15 30 30 Unsurprisingly, Shelley’s Gothic antecedents present similar situations and 31 31 lexical features. In Lewis’s Monk, Ambrosio feasts his eyes upon the beauties of 32 32 the sleeping Antonia, ‘devouring’ ‘all the charms of the lovely Object before him 33 33 … with his eyes’.16 In Dacre’s Zofloya, Berenza gazes on Victoria ‘with the eye of 34 34 an enraptured amateur’ and lustfully contemplates a figure which ‘was symmetry 35 35 itself’.17 Collectively, these works draw on a well-established neoclassical 36 36 precedent and cultural myth founded on such aesthetic icons as the Venus de’ 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 13 See Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, pp. 3, 7. 39 39 14 Zastrozzi, p. 82. 40 40 15 St. Irvyne, p. 167. 41 16 Matthew Lewis, The Monk, ed. Howard Anderson. Oxford and New York: Oxford 41 42 University Press, 1990, p. 300. 42 43 17 Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya, or The Moor, ed. Kim Ian Michasiw. Oxford and New 43 44 York: Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 76. 44

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Medici.18 In addition, Shelley’s ‘symmetry’ relates the attractive female body 1 1 to contemporary discourses of the physical aimed, as Paul Youngquist notes, at 2 2 the ‘cultural consolidation of a proper body’, that is one encapsulating culturally 3 3 validated notions of physical normality.19 Shelley’s definition of ‘symmetry’ as the 4 4 yardstick of an attractive norm is thus in keeping with contemporary interest in the 5 5 shape of the body, in its ‘normal’ and ‘aberrant’ manifestations, as demonstrated 6 6 by such phenomena as collections of phrenological specimens, the creation of the 7 7 Hunterian Museum and the display of extreme bodily structures like those of the 8 8 ‘Irish Giant’ or the ‘Hottentot Venus’.20 9 9 That Shelley’s Gothic fiction should apply this type of normative language 10 10 to female bodies certainly deserves attention. The female physique is central to 11 11 the romances’ transformation of bodies into spectacles capable of stimulating the 12 12 curiosity of a scrutinizing audience. The narratives repeatedly examine the female 13 13 body in its segments and as a whole, for instance when the narrator summarizes 14 14 Wolfstein’s observation of Megalena’s attractive body parts in the final vision of 15 15 their ‘resistless tout ensemble’.21 Even so, we are far from a neat and unproblematic 16 16 identification of the female with a passive object of sexual desire. In Zastrozzi, 17 17 Matilda is the desiring subject and sexual predator, whereas Verezzi is endowed 18 18 with a ‘symmetrical form’.22 This inversion is evidently in unison with Matilda’s 19 19 masculine traits and the fact that, much like Dacre’s Vittoria di Loredani, she takes 20 20 on the role of the Gothic villain and persecutor. In St. Irvyne, instead, Wolfstein, 21 21 whose shape looks ‘towering and majestic’ to the infatuated Olympia, is more 22 22 usually dwarfed and rendered powerless (indeed, emasculated) by ‘the gigantic 23 23 form of Ginotti’, who in the conclusion aptly into an enormous 24 24 skeleton.23 25 25 If this play with physical and gender conventions reflects the tendency of 26 26 Gothic to transgress established norms, it also sustains Shelley’s representation 27 27 of bodies as deregulated entities, repeatedly unsettled by ‘contending passions’, 28 28 ‘convulsions’, ‘delirium’, and ‘infuriate paroxysms’.24 Through these interacting 29 29 strategies, Shelley’s fictions give full visibility to the characters’ bodies, their 30 30 31 31 32 18 See Kamilla Eliott, Portraiture and British Gothic Fiction: The Rise of Picture 32 33 Identification, 1764–1835. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012, pp. 88–9. 33 34 On the Venus de’ Medici, see Robert W. Jones, Gender and the Formation of Taste in 34 35 Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Analysis of Beauty. Cambridge: Cambridge University 35 36 Press, 1998, pp. 23–6. 36 19 PaulProof Youngquist, Monstrosities: Bodies andCopy British Romanticism. Minneapolis and 37 37 38 London: The University of Minnesota Press, 2003, p. xv. 38 20 See Youngquist, Monstrosities, pp. 3–27, and Tim Fulford, Debbie Lee and Peter 39 39 J. Kitson, Literature, Science and Exploration in the Romantic Era: Bodies of Knowledge. 40 40 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 127–48. 41 21 St. Irvyne, p. 168. 41 42 22 Zastrozzi, p. 79. 42 43 23 St. Irvyne, pp. 197, 193. 43 44 24 Zastrozzi, pp. 75, 93; St. Irvyne, p. 170. 44

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torments and pathological conditions. Represented as overwhelmingly material 1 1 objects, human frames amount to an ambivalent spectacle that inspires curiosity 2 2 and desire, as well as horror and repulsion. As fascinating organic machines 3 3 afflicted with a multiplicity of distempers, they are unstable entities undermined 4 4 by conflicting tensions and mirroring an aberrant fictional universe impervious to 5 5 the restoration of order. 6 6 7 7 8 Fevers, Paroxysms and the Medical Gaze 8 9 9 10 In Shelley’s Gothic romances bodies function as targets of and tools for a variety 10 11 of controlling, corrective and therapeutic practices. Towering over and subjugating 11 12 the other characters, the enormous frames of the villains Zastrozzi and Ginotti are 12 13 instruments of domination. Alternatively, as in the cases of Verezzi and Megalena, 13 14 the human frame is an object of control through close scrutiny. Both situations 14 15 delineate scopic moments of great intensity in which the reader joins either the 15 16 subjugated characters in their awestruck contemplation of the villains’ bodies, or 16 17 the desiring subjects in their adoration of the objects of their lust. Yet Shelley’s 17 18 romances complicate further these conventional Gothic scenes by endowing the 18 19 observers’ points of view with a scientific, and specifically medical, perspective. 19 20 In Zastrozzi, Verezzi’s body is the main object of this medical gaze. The 20 21 excerpt quoted at the beginning of this essay centres on the striking image of 21 25 22 his emaciated limbs and the ‘immense staples’ holding them in place. His body 22 23 is both in full view and in perspective, in focus and scaled down, in a multiple 23 24 vision analogous to the distorted sublime vistas of Piranesi’s carceri d’invenzione 24 (1745–61). This detail and its suggestive dissonance throw the human frame 25 25 into relief as the converging point of the central tensions and preoccupations in 26 26 the text. Throughout the narrative Verezzi’s body falls apart, recovers and then 27 27 becomes ill again in an iterated process which the narrator carefully monitors and 28 28 transcribes through medical language. At the beginning, his frame is covered in 29 29 ‘wounds’ and then debilitated by a wasting fever, the ‘ravages’ of which cause the 30 30 progressive decay of his whole frame. Even so, the outcome is positive since, as 31 the narrator confirms, ‘in the crisis of the fever which then occurred, his youth and 31 32 good constitution prevailed’.26 The medical terminology in this section culminates 32 33 in a pronouncement that echoes a doctor’s summary of the course of a patient’s 33 34 condition. 34 35 In this and other anatomies of diseased and affected physiques, Shelley 35 36 transposes the actual fevers, as well as the hypochondria and more general 36 37 preoccupationProof with illness, which became distinctiveCopy obsessions for him from 37 38 his years at Eton.27 These passages, however, also recycle a recurrent episode in 38 39 eighteenth-century and Romantic sentimental fiction in which the plot comes to 39 40 40 41 25 Zastrozzi, p. 63. 41 42 26 Zastrozzi, pp. 64, 65. 42 43 27 See James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins 43 44 University Press, 2008, pp. 66–7. 44

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a standstill when a character, generally the heroine, develops a life-threatening 1 1 disorder. In these cases, the most familiar of which is Marianne Dashwood’s 2 2 dangerous illness in Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility (1811), authors deploy 3 3 more or less specifically medical terminology that tracks the ascending curve of 4 4 the character’s disease (usually a ‘fever’), the intervention of a physician or related 5 5 professional, the climactic ‘crisis’ and its (often positive) resolution.28 In these 6 6 episodes language functions as a probe that tests and subsequently records the 7 7 changes in the affected body; and in Shelley’s romances it is the narrator and a few 8 8 selected characters who wield this specialized language, the knowledge it implies 9 9 and the power it awards. 10 At the beginning of Zastrozzi the narrator notes that Verezzi’s ‘exhausted 10 11 condition’ has been caused by a ‘brain fever’. As he starts to recover, ‘[a] physician’ 11 12 declares that the fever has passed, so that his ‘mind’ gradually regains ‘that firm 12 13 tone which it was wont to possess’.29 Then, in chapter 8, Shelley introduces the 13 14 figure of a second and much more effective physician in what is one of the central 14 15 episodes in an otherwise rather threadbare plot. Defining Verezzi’s frame as the 15 16 object of close and protracted medical scrutiny, this chapter revolves around the 16 17 medicalized body. As the plot comes to a halt, the body and its alternate states 17 18 of crisis (or ‘delirium’)30 and recovery are effectively the only ‘events’ in it. 18 19 Furthermore, in this long scene, which Shelley orchestrates by rehearsing the stock 19 20 fever episode of Romantic-period fiction, the obsessive focus on the human frame 20 21 is related to the equally obsessive repetition of the term ‘physician’. Praising the 21 22 work of the ‘humane physician’, the narrative carefully follows the different stages 22 23 of this character’s intervention – from his arrival, which brings relief to a worried 23 24 Matilda, to his observation of Verezzi’s symptoms and diagnosis, the onset of the 24 25 ‘decisive crisis’ and eventually his prognosis and advice to ensure his patient’s 25 26 quick recovery.31 His actions prove so influential as to inspire Matilda to monitor 26 27 Verezzi’s changes through a medical routine in which she takes ‘his hand’, counts 27 28 ‘pulses [that] yet beat with feverish violence’, ‘gaze[s] upon his countenance’ and 28 29 observes how ‘the hectic colour which had flushed his cheek was fled’.32 29 30 As a ‘man of penetration and judgement’33 the physician is a quasi-saintly 30 31 personification of reason and a scientifically sanctioned, and thus entirely secular, 31 32 power of good in the midst of the narrative’s torments and horrors. An idealized 32 33 depositary of medical wisdom, this character is modelled on Dr James Lind, with 33 34 whom Shelley became acquainted during his last two years at Eton, possibly when 34 35 he sought treatment for a venereal infection. An experimental ‘natural philosopher’, 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 28 38 On fevers, illnesses and ‘sympathetic practitioners’ in the culture of sensibility, see 38 Candace Ward, Desire and Disorder: Fevers, Fictions, and Feeling in English Georgian 39 39 Culture. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 2007. 40 40 29 Zastrozzi, pp. 65, 66, 65, 67. 41 30 Zastrozzi, p. 93. 41 42 31 Zastrozzi, pp. 94, 95, 98. 42 43 32 Zastrozzi, pp. 96, 98–9. 43 44 33 Zastrozzi, p. 98. 44

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Lind accompanied Sir Joseph Banks on the Royal Society expedition to Iceland in 1 1 1772 and corresponded with such luminaries as William Herschel and Benjamin 2 2 Franklin. Acting as an unofficial tutor, he supervised Shelley’s translation ofa 3 3 considerable portion of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, and possibly introduced him to 4 4 the works of Paracelsus, as well as Godwin’s Political Justice (1793) and St Leon 5 5 (1799). He was also an early influence on Shelley’s hatred of political orthodoxy 6 6 and received authority, as he taught him to George III (whose personal 7 7 physician he had been) with an oath which Shelley then modified and applied to 8 8 his own father.34 Albeit indirectly, Lind influenced Shelley’s interest in a medical 9 9 career after he was expelled from Oxford, and thus laid the ground for his possible 10 first acquaintance with William Lawrence at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in early 10 11 1811, where Lawrence worked as John Abernethy’s demonstrator.35 As a fictional 11 12 recreation of Dr Lind, the physician in Zastrozzi embodies beneficial lay values, 12 13 as well as wielding a language that makes sense of the body and the scientific 13 14 knowledge that may heal it.36 14 15 Although its dramatis personae do not feature any doctors, St. Irvyne sets up a 15 16 comparable perspective on the body as the object of quasi-medical scrutiny. From 16 17 the outset, Shelley delineates Wolfstein as an analogue of Verezzi, that is, as the 17 18 principal target of a deliberately relentless observation, despite the fact that he is a 18 19 much less passive character. We encounter ‘his youthful figure reclined against a 19 20 jutting granite rock’.37 There follows a wild mental and physical struggle against 20 21 God and the elements. Whereas, in the earlier narrative, Verezzi is passive from 21 22 the start (he appears ‘chained to a piece of rock which remained immovable’38), 22 23 Wolfstein violently expostulates with the divinity in an apostrophe that prefigures 23 24 a number of similar outbursts in Shelley’s later works: ‘Art thou the God then, 24 25 the Creator of the universe … and sufferest thou thy creatures to become the 25 26 victims of tortures such as fate has inflicted on me?’39 Subsequently, ‘his frame … 26 27 27 28 28 34 See Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 67. 29 29 35 See Ruston, Shelley and Vitality, p. 80. 30 36 Bieri lists further reincarnations of Dr Lind in Laon and Cythna and Athanase 30 31 (correctly ‘Prince Athanase’), Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 67–9. 31 32 37 St. Irvyne, p. 159. 32 33 38 Zastrozzi, p. 64. 33 34 39 St. Irvyne, p. 160. This passage re-echoes Zastrozzi’s and Matilda’s discussion of 34 35 divine power in chapter 9 of Zastrozzi, as well as anticipating The Necessity of Atheism 35 36 (published in February 1811). Moreover, it anticipates Prometheus’s opening apostrophe in 36 37 PrometheusProof Unbound (I, 1–30) and the Creature’s Copy moving address to his creator in vol. 2, 37 38 chapter 2 of Frankenstein: ‘Remember, that I am thy creature … Will no entreaties cause 38 thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion’, 39 39 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text, ed. Marilyn Butler. 40 40 Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 77–8. On the links between 41 Shelley’s Gothic romances and later works (from Prometheus Unbound to The Cenci), see 41 42 Behrendt, ‘Introduction’, in Shelley, Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne, pp. 12–13. Bruhm discusses 42 43 tortured bodies in Zastrozzi (both Verezzi’s and Zastrozzi’s) as anticipations of similar 43 44 themes in The Cenci (Gothic Bodies, pp. 101–3). 44

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conquered by the conflicting passions of his soul … sank to the earth’; and finally, 1 1 ‘his bosom throbbed with the tide of life: returning animation once more illumed 2 2 his eye’.40 This type of language reprises expressive patterns seen in Zastrozzi and 3 3 establishes similar connections between mental and physical paroxysms. The last 4 4 sentence, in particular, reveals Shelley’s incipient fascination with contemporary 5 scientific debates on the life principle and anticipates its later and fuller treatment 5 6 in Mary’s Frankenstein.41 In deploying medical language and the medical gaze, 6 7 his early romances take a materialist view of life as what allows the body-as- 7 8 machine to function, for instance in the reference to Verezzi’s ‘every spark of life’ 8 9 being ‘extinguished’.42 In addition, life is the essence of existence and identity – 9 10 what Zastrozzi specifically wants from Verezzi (‘His life must not be lost … I have 10 11 need of it’), or the object of Ginotti’s blasphemous aspirations to eternity.43 11 12 12 13 13 14 Fiction as Anatomical Theatre 14 15 15 16 Whether passive or active, mutinous or temporarily submissive, Shelley’s Gothic 16 17 bodies function as textual guinea pigs placed under the multiple and criss-crossing 17 18 gaze of reader, narrator, physician and the other characters. Confined in restricted 18 spaces, they move restlessly around in states of anguish and pain, unable to escape 19 19 the scrutiny of their observers. In Zastrozzi, in particular, as the targets of the 20 20 physician’s scientific knowledge, these bodies inhabit a fictional dimension that is 21 21 metaphorically akin to an anatomical theatre. 22 22 Tilottama Rajan has already perceptively remarked on the theatricality of 23 23 Shelley’s early romances, stressing how this is precisely what ‘puts their credibility 24 under erasure’.44 In a more constructive perspective, what we may term the scopic 24 25 economy of Shelley’s Gothic romances is comparable to that of a medical and 25 26 scientific space for the study and observation of (dead) bodies. To be sure, in this 26 27 respect, the romances prefigure the obsessive anatomy of feelings and thoughts 27 28 in The Cenci (the ‘self-anatomy’ which Orsino describes as ‘a trick of this same 28 29 family / To analyse their own and other minds’),45 as well as the actual presence 29 30 of anatomical theatres in Victor Frankenstein’s preparatory studies at Ingolstadt, 30 31 the seat of the renowned Alte Anatomie building. Yet Shelley’s early fiction also 31 32 presents a wholly specific degree of complexity by interweaving literal and 32 33 metaphorical references to this space for the mise en scène of the body. 33 34 34 35 40 St. Irvyne, p. 161. 35 36 41 The ‘vitality debate’ between Lawrence and Abernethy broke out in 1814. These 36 references Proof in the romances also significantly prefigureCopy Shelley’s fragmentary essay ‘On 37 37 38 Life’ (composed in 1819). On Shelley and the vitality debate, see Ruston, Shelley and 38 39 Vitality, pp. 10–15, Butler, ‘Introduction’, in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, pp. xv–xxi, and 39 Ross Wilson, Shelley and the Apprehension of Life. Cambridge, Cambridge University 40 40 Press, 2013. 41 42 Zastrozzi, p. 93. 41 42 43 Zastrozzi, p. 65; St. Irvyne, p. 238. 42 43 44 ‘Promethean Narrative’, p. 243. 43 44 45 II, ii, 108–10, in SPP: 162. 44

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Proving once again the more explicit of the two texts, Zastrozzi displays what 1 1 is perhaps the most emphatic example of this situation in its conclusion. Having 2 2 been theatrically murdered by Matilda in a scene based on Lilla’s death in Zofloya, 3 3 Julia’s body is exposed to the eyes of the judges and the public during the final trial. 4 4 Here, the novel’s exhibition of bodies reaches its climax: ‘The superior pointed to 5 5 the ground: the officials deposited their burden, and produced, to the terror-struck 6 6 eyes of the gazing multitude, Julia, the lovely Julia, covered with innumerable and 7 7 ghastly gashes.’46 This religious and forensic tableau may be described as a type of 8 8 ‘ostension’, that primary theatrical device which ‘involves the showing of objects 9 9 and events … to the audience, rather than describing, explaining or defining them’.47 10 10 A feature of Classical drama with which Shelley might already have been familiar, 11 11 ostension is a distinctive component of his fictional anatomical theatre that is at 12 12 its most visible in the conclusion to Zastrozzi. Placed in full view, Julia’s body 13 13 provides the clinching piece of evidence against Matilda and Zastrozzi and brings 14 14 the proceedings of justice to a halt. As Julia’s corpse personifies the outcome of 15 15 Matilda’s impiety and Zastrozzi’s insidious ‘sophistry’,48 after its exhibition, 16 16 words become redundant rehearsals of principles and actions that are now under 17 17 everyone’s eyes. In the anatomical theatre of the Inquisition’s court of law, Julia’s 18 18 corpse de facto embodies the effects of the violence permeating the distempered 19 19 world of Shelley’s Gothic romances. 20 20 St. Irvyne similarly presents multiple ostensions of the body, starting from the 21 21 ‘post mortem’ of the corpse of the banditti leader Cavigni, when a ‘robber, skilled 22 22 in surgery, opened a vein; but no blood followed the touch of the lancet’.49 Readers 23 23 are then treated to the succession of dead bodies dotting Wolfstein’s career, from 24 24 ‘the murdered Olympia’ to ‘the pale corpse … of Cavigni’.50 Finally, the last chapter 25 25 depicts a ghastly mass of cadavers consisting of Megalena’s body, ‘motionless and 26 26 without life’, which Wolfstein proceeds to ‘[raise] … in his arms’ and then ‘[dash] 27 27 … convulsively on the earth’; Ginotti’s ‘figure … wasted almost to a skeleton’, 28 28 yet retaining ‘its loftiness and grandeur’, and ultimately metamorphosing into ‘a 29 29 gigantic skeleton’; and Wolfstein’s ‘[b]lackened’ corpse.51 30 30 As seen above, these inflections of the medical gaze and the anatomical theatre 31 31 relate to Shelley’s connection with Dr Lind and record the author’s early passion 32 32 for medicine.52 They also resonate with the obsessive anxiety about his own 33 33 34 34 35 46 Zastrozzi, p. 152. 35 47 36 Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. London: Methuen, 1980, p. 26. 36 48 37 Zastrozzi, p. 118. 37 49 Proof Copy 38 St. Irvyne, p. 182. 38 50 St. Irvyne, p. 222. 39 39 51 St. Irvyne, pp. 251, 252. 40 40 52 See Crook and Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody, pp. 21–2; Michael Henry 41 Scrivener, Radical Shelley: The Philosophical Anarchism and Utopian Thought of Percy 41 42 Bysshe Shelley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 42; Nora Crook, ‘Shelley 42 43 and the Solar Microscope’. Keats-Shelley Review 1 (1986), pp. 49–59; and Bieri, Percy 43 44 Bysshe Shelley, pp. 65–70. 44

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body characterizing his letters from this period. Significantly, on 1 January 1811, 1 1 Shelley wrote to Thomas Jefferson Hogg speculating on what would happen ‘were 2 2 this frame rendered eternal, were the particles which compose it both as to intellect 3 3 & matter indestructible, and then to undergo torments such as now we should 4 4 shudder to think of even in a dream … ’.53 Fraught with Promethean intimations 5 5 and a preoccupation with the Christian notion of hell, these thoughts encapsulate 6 6 some of the central themes in Shelley’s Gothic fiction: the body as a material 7 7 structure, its interpenetration of matter and spirit, the enigma of the life principle, 8 8 the possibility of immortality and unutterable physical suffering. Through such 9 9 instances of anatomic (self)scrutiny, Shelley couples his materialist conception of 10 10 the body with a fascination with eternal life that is the central theme of Godwin’s 11 11 St. Leon, one of the main inspirations for his Gothic tales, as well as underlying his 12 12 various representations of the legend of the Wandering Jew. 13 13 Indeed, it is no coincidence that his narrative poem The Wandering Jew; or, 14 14 the Victim of the Eternal Avenger, presumably written in the winter of 1809–10 15 15 and thus contemporaneous with the prose romances,54 features similar figurations 16 16 of the body. Human frames are in full view in a narrative that depicts the female 17 17 protagonist Rosa’s ‘perfect grace and symmetry’, as well as the lustful Victorio’s 18 18 ‘gestures strange’, ‘varying face’, ‘rapid step’ and ‘frantic haste’ (I, 152; IV, 50; IV, 19 19 72).55 The poem also offers several episodes of paroxysms, tracing the characters’ 20 20 perturbed state from the beginning, when Rosa flees from her initiation as a novice 21 21 ‘shriek[ing] aloud’, ‘dash[ing] from the supporting nun’ and ‘plung[ing] amid the 22 22 crowd’ (I, 185, 186, 188).56 Paulo, the Wandering Jew, shows symptoms of an 23 23 equally troubled physical and mental condition, as he stops her frantic career by 24 24 taking her in his ‘eager grasp / In firmest yet in wildest clasp’ (I, 192–3).57 In a 25 25 reprise of the topos of the fever episode, Rosa is eventually overcome by a ‘death- 26 26 like trance’, for her ‘frame’ cannot ‘sustain, / The chill that pressed upon her brain’ 27 27 (I, 238; I, 248–9).58 The plot of The Wandering Jew proceeds from (fraught) calm 28 28 to crisis and, then, a return to a relative calm announcing a new crisis. Because 29 29 of this structure and its emphatic display of disturbed bodies, the poem covers 30 30 much of the same ground as Shelley’s Gothic romances. Just like his prose fiction, 31 31 it concentrates on bodies that, in Bruhm’s words, are ‘on excessive display’ and 32 32 symptomatic of deeper thematic preoccupations. Yet the poem also highlights one 33 33 of the outstanding peculiarities of the romances, particularly how they enrich this 34 34 figuration of the physical by way of medical and scientific references and a virtual 35 35 anatomical space that are absent from The Wandering Jew. 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 53 Letters I: 34. 40 40 54 The poem was possibly redrafted later in 1810 (see CPPBS I: 189–90). 41 55 CPPBS I: 48, 76. 41 42 56 CPPBS I: 49. 42 43 57 CPPBS I: 49. 43 44 58 CPPBS I: 51. 44

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In a proleptic perspective, instead, it is in connection with Mary’s Frankenstein, 1 1 and particularly Percy’s Preface for the first edition of 1818, that the romances’ 2 2 medicalized representations of bodies acquire specific resonance. The Preface 3 3 does not explicitly mention the body and its machine-like structure, nor does it 4 4 feature any overt reference to vitalism, yet it tellingly insists on the physical nature 5 5 of the pivotal episode in the plot: ‘The event on which this fiction is founded has 6 6 been supposed, by Dr [Erasmus] Darwin, and some of the physiological writers of 7 7 Germany, as not of impossible occurrence.’59 Percy’s remark about the reanimation 8 8 of a cento of dead fragments as a scientific possibility evidently draws on his and 9 9 Mary’s knowledge of medical and scientific debates. It also reactivates themes and 10 10 concerns from his early Gothic fiction, where, as seen above, animation already 11 11 plays a significant role. Taking over Mary’s voice, Percy asserts that the author 12 12 does not intend to be seen as lending credence to ‘imagination’ (here a synonym 13 13 for fantastic beliefs) and declares: ‘I have not considered myself as merely weaving 14 14 a series of supernatural terrors.’60 Setting the novel apart from ‘mere tale[s] of 15 15 spectres or enchantment’, Shelley states that, ‘however impossible as a physical 16 16 fact’ it might be, the central episode in Frankenstein ‘affords a point of view to the 17 17 imagination for the delineating of human passions’.61 The Creature’s impossible 18 18 body makes possible the psychological and moral concerns in the novel. As Shelley 19 19 rejects Gothic ghosts, he shifts his focus onto material bodies so that, though not 20 20 actually present in the 1818 Preface, the Creature’s frame tantalizingly pervades it. 21 21 Adapting and reworking the scopic scenes in Percy’s early Gothic, the Preface 22 22 defines Mary’s novel as the collected observations of a scientist/doctor piecing 23 23 together a creature in the real and symbolic space of an anatomical theatre, and 24 24 invites readers to adopt a similar stance and scrutinize the evolution and destiny 25 25 of this aberrant body.62 If, as Timothy Morton suggestively remarks, Mary’s 26 26 Frankenstein and are ‘caught up within the same programmatic 27 27 reconfigurations of the body as found in Percy Shelley’s writing’, it is tohis 28 28 Gothic fiction that we must look for some of the foundational instances of such 29 29 reconfigurations and their crucial narrative and thematic relevance.63 30 30 Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne cast bodies as sites of abnormality and transgression 31 31 where conventions are suspended or altogether abolished. The human frame 32 32 appears as the target of a ‘humane’ medical and scientific agency that should 33 33 restore it to a balanced, healthy state (a recognizably Shelleyan concern), whilst 34 34 also functioning as the pivot of a revolt against conventional codes of behaviour 35 35 36 36 59 37 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 3. 37 60 Proof Copy 38 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 3. 38 61 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 3. 39 39 62 On the medical gaze and anatomy in Mary’s novel, see Tim Marshall, Murdering to 40 40 Dissect: Grave-robbing, Frankenstein, and the Anatomy Literature. Manchester and New 41 York: Manchester University Press, 1995. 41 42 63 Shelley and the Revolution in Taste, p. 10. See also the emphasis Shelley lays on 42 43 the Creature’s aberrant body, and on physicality in general, in the unfinished review of his 43 44 wife’s novel, probably written in early 1818 (Shelley, Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne, pp. 303–5). 44

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and orthodox beliefs, as in Zastrozzi’s and Matilda’s debate on divine power in 1 1 chapter 9 of Zastrozzi or Wolfstein’s questioning of God’s will in the opening of St. 2 2 Irvyne. And this is yet another instance of how Shelley’s fictions deal withG othic 3 3 narrative conventions and, specifically, their oscillation between a fascination with 4 4 chaos and transgression, on the one hand, and a final reinstatement of order, on 5 5 the other.64 Shelley’s problematic bodies require the restorative intervention of 6 6 medicine, but cannot ultimately be returned to a stable condition and succumb 7 7 to their pernicious, yet irresistible, appetites and desires.65 Thus, through these 8 8 arresting incarnations located in the fictional anatomical theatres of Zastrozzi and 9 9 St. Irvyne, Shelley represents and explores forms of normality and abnormality, as 10 10 well as orthodoxy and rebellion against it, which will continue to resonate in his 11 11 writings for years to come. 12 12 13 13 14 Bodies as Focusing Devices 14 15 15 16 Shelley’s letter to Godwin of 10 January 1812 seems to contradict the relevance 16 17 of the Gothic romances for which I have been arguing so far. There, he introduces 17 18 himself as the author of two works of fiction, which, albeit of recent publication, 18 19 are ‘quite uncharacteristic of me as now I am’; he also informs the venerable 19 20 philosopher that, although he ‘shall desire them to be sent to you’, Godwin should 20 21 ‘not however consider this as any obligation to yourself to misapply your valuable 21 22 time’.66 If these are dismissive expressions, their tone is remarkably ambivalent 22 23 since they belittle and set store by the romances at one and the same time. However 23 24 ‘uncharacteristic’ they may now be, Shelley still wants Godwin to receive his 24 25 works, for they mark an important stage in the progressive sharpening of his 25 26 powers and the delineation of his field of textual and intellectual intervention. 26 27 Organized through strategies of ‘calculated excess’, in Stephen Behrendt’s apt 27 28 phrase, these works revolve around obsessively scrutinized bodies that function as 28 29 structurally crucial, thematically rich and ideologically relevant features.67 Akin 29 30 to textual anatomical theatres where scientific and medical discourses resonate, 30 31 Shelley’s narratives define readers as the privileged observers of tortured figures 31 32 consummating their own self-destructions and staging forms of rebellion that 32 33 elude resolution and containment. As they encapsulate conflicting principles and 33 34 concerns, these bodies are points of convergence or, even better, focusing devices 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 64 38 On this feature of Gothic, see for instance Fred Botting, Gothic. London and New 38 York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 6–13. 39 39 65 Remarking on these texts’ sympathetic presentation of disorder and concurrent 40 40 endorsement of order, Michael O’Neill has noted how Shelley targets ‘an audience whose 41 orthodox views need to be both flattered and disrupted’. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Literary 41 42 Life. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989, p. 12. 42 43 66 Letters I: 227. 43 44 67 Behrendt, ‘Introduction’, in Shelley, Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne, p. 14. 44

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that individuate and throw into relief Shelley’s preoccupations at this moment in 1 1 his development. 2 2 Far from being escapist flights into a fanciful ‘ideal world’,68 Zastrozzi and 3 3 St. Irvyne compound a whole range of interests, passions and aspirations. As 4 4 landmarks in a field of conflicting forces of order and disorder, the shocking bodies 5 5 of their dramatis personae emphasize the imperiously physical nature of the 6 6 body with its primacy over the mind and spirit. They also invite us to explore the 7 7 power of sexual desire (Matilda’s desire for Verezzi, Wolfstein’s for Megalena de 8 8 Metastasio) and its unrestrainedly destructive effects. In particular, the romances’ 9 9 physical and scopic economy questions the gender-specific nature of desire, since 10 10 Shelley’s male and female characters subvert any conventional distribution of 11 11 active and passive roles. Together with the treatment of religious tenets, these 12 12 themes illuminate the author’s budding preoccupation with forms of authority and 13 13 prescription. Finally, by way of his Gothic bodies, Shelley focuses on another set 14 14 of concerns soon to become central in his cultural and intellectual trajectory – life 15 15 and the life principle, their origins and reproduction, as well as eternal life and 16 16 physical suffering.69 17 17 Somewhere between youthful extravaganzas, parodic treatments of Gothic 18 18 and intimations of a conscious literary and intellectual commitment, Zastrozzi 19 19 and St. Irvyne are both early and transitional works in Shelley’s output. Their 20 20 irregular and, in Rajan’s term, ‘overdetermined’ structures allow us to see – as 21 21 through a focusing device or in an anatomical theatre – the gradual unfolding of 22 22 the author’s literary and scientific interests in the context of a physical economy 23 23 that emerges repeatedly in his later output and significantly informs his 1818 24 24 Preface to Frankenstein.70 In this perspective, the dysfunctional organisms at the 25 25 centre of both romances may be read as early indications of what Timothy Morton 26 26 describes as the mature Shelley’s distinctive ‘ability to model society as a body 27 27 and simultaneously as a machine’, and therefore of his redirected aspirations from 28 28 ‘medical’ physician to moral and socio-political ‘therapist’.71 29 29 One may object that the romances are complicated by melodramatic hyperbole 30 30 and parody, as well as plain contradictions, as in the contrast between the praise 31 31 lavished on the doctor’s intervention and the irrational Gothic phantasmagoria of 32 32 physical and mental suffering. Yet it is precisely because of this inchoate status 33 33 that the bodies function as useful focusing devices. Paradoxically, thanks to their 34 34 physical paroxysms and irrational outbursts, they testify to a significant moment in 35 35 Shelley’s definition of his intellectual engagement and purpose as a writer. Placed 36 36 37 37 68 Proof Copy 38 Letters I: 228. 38 69 On materialism, physicality and immortality in Shelley, see Ruston, Shelley and 39 39 Vitality, pp. 151–6. 40 40 70 Rajan usefully suggests that the romances are relevant specifically because they 41 ‘seem to be in excess of what they are’ (‘Promethean Narrative’, pp. 242–3). 41 42 71 Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste, pp. 134–5, 9. See also Morton’s 42 43 chapter on ‘Nature and Culture’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shelley, ed. Timothy 43 44 Morton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 185–207. 44

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in fictional anatomical theatres, the human frames in the romances point to a new, 1 1 and dimly perceived, world of ‘duties to perform’72 that gradually manifests itself 2 2 to the young author during the crucial years when his imaginative and ideological 3 3 interests find an appropriate form of expression in the physical and psychological 4 4 excesses of the Gothic aesthetic. 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 72 Letters 1: 228. 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 50 9/11/2015 4:29:22 PM 1 Chapter 3 1 2 2 3 Harps, Heroes and Yelling Vampires: 3 4 The 1810 Poetry Collections 4 5 5 6 6 7 David Duff 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 I 11 12 12 13 Shelley’s career as a published poet began in 1810 with two pseudonymous 13 14 collections, the first of which has been described as ‘a practical joke from beginning 14 15 to end’1 and the second as ‘a defiant undergraduate prank’.2 Original Poetry; by 15 16 Victor and Cazire, a slim quarto published in September 1810 by the London firm 16 17 of John Joseph Stockdale, was a joint production with Shelley’s sister Elizabeth. 17 18 The joke, if such it was, consists in its multiple plagiarisms, which begin with 18 19 Elizabeth’s pseudonym ‘Cazire’ (the name of the heroine in Charlotte Dacre’s 19 20 novel, Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer [1805]) and include an entire 120- 20 21 line poem, ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’, taken from Tales of Terror (1801), a volume 21 22 of Gothic horror ballads commonly, though probably erroneously, attributed to 22 23 M.G. Lewis. When Stockdale discovered the plagiarism, a copyright violation 23 24 and potential fraud which could have opened both publisher and authors to legal 24 25 prosecution,3 he confronted Shelley, withdrew the volume from sale and destroyed 25 26 all remaining copies, amounting to 1,480 of the very large print run of 1,500. Apart 26 27 from one poem that resurfaced in his Gothic romance St. Irvyne in December 27 28 1810 and another that he reworked two years later for his unpublished ‘Volume 28 29 of Minor Poems’, Shelley makes no further reference to Original Poetry, the text 29 30 of which did not come to light again until 1898, when a copy was located and a 30 31 facsimile printed.4 There are currently four known copies, the most recent to come 31 32 to light, in 2013, being a presentation copy given to Shelley’s cousin Thomas 32 33 Medwin which contains pencil annotations – probably Shelley’s – indicating 33 34 who wrote each of the 17 poems (though the ‘Victor’/Shelley attributions include 34 35 ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’, suggesting that even close relatives were victims of the 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 1 38 James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography. Youth’s Unextinguished Fire, 38 1792–1816. Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2004, p. 116. 39 39 2 CPPBS I: 241. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from Shelley’s poetry are 40 40 from this edition. 41 3 Tilar Mazzeo, Plagiarism and Literary Property in the Romantic Period. 41 42 Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, pp. 70–73. 42 43 4 Percy Bysshe Shelley and Elizabeth Shelley, Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire, 43 44 ed. Richard Garnett. London: J. Lane, 1898. 44

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deception).5 A further point of interest in the Medwin copy, now in the possession 1 1 of the Pforzheimer Collection in the New York Public Library, is a pencilled note 2 2 on page 11, almost certainly by Shelley,6 urging secrecy about another of the 3 3 volume’s indiscretions, a passage in the second of Elizabeth’s verse epistles (‘To 4 4 Miss —— —— [Harriet Grove] From Miss ——– ——– [Elizabeth Shelley]’) 5 5 which alludes jokingly to their cousin Charlotte Grove’s rumoured liaison with 6 6 a military officer (Figure 3.1). This allusion caused great offence in the Grove 7 7 household, adding the charge of family betrayal to the scandal of the plagiarism. 8 8 Shelley’s second collection, another elegant quarto containing just six poems 9 9 and bearing the title Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; Being Poems 10 10 Found Amongst the Papers of that Noted Female Who Attempted the Life of the 11 11 King in 1786. Edited by John Fitzvictor, was published by John Munday of Oxford 12 12 in November 1810, one month after Shelley went up to the University. The notion 13 13 that this publication, too, was a ‘hoax’ originated with Shelley’s college friend 14 14 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who later claimed that he found Shelley reading proofs 15 15 of some poor-quality poems and persuaded him that they would work better as 16 16 burlesques. According to Hogg, the two therefore altered the poems to make 17 17 them ‘more and more ridiculous’, cutting and pasting passages in order to give 18 18 the poems a ‘dithyrambic character’ and turn them into parodies of contemporary 19 19 radical verse. To clinch the joke, Hogg suggested that the poems be attributed to 20 20 ‘Peg’ Nicholson, the ‘mad washerwoman’ who had attempted to assassinate King 21 21 George III in 1786 and been confined to Bedlam.7 The accuracy of Hogg’s account 22 22 has been disputed – he overstates his own role, while underestimating the genuine 23 23 political motive behind the collection (which, though fictitious, pays tribute to the 24 24 real Margaret Nicholson, an aggrieved domestic servant and needlewoman who 25 25 provides a mask for Shelley’s own anti-monarchical sentiments) – but biographers 26 26 and editors have accepted that the volume has an element of parody and was 27 27 intended to amuse as well as to shock. Reiman and Fraistat observe that the 28 28 mischief starts with the ‘game of misnomers in the title’ (Nicholson was still alive 29 29 in 1810 and lived for another 18 years) and takes its most controversial form in the 30 30 ‘Fragment. Supposed to Be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte 31 31 Cordé’, a ‘sexually risqué schoolboy burlesque’ which includes some lines about 32 32 33 33 34 5 The attributions largely confirm those of Reiman and Fraistat, with the exception of 34 35 the ‘Song. Hope’, marked as Victor’s, and the ‘Song. Cold, cold is the blast’, the one poem 35 36 left unassigned in the Pforzheimer copy. 36 6 TheProof Pforzheimer copy also carries an inscription Copy in ink on the title page which reads 37 37 38 ‘Thos Medwin – a present from one of the authors’, and ink corrections to several of the 38 poems. In the absence of corroborating evidence, attribution cannot be certain and more 39 39 than one hand may be involved, but the balance of probability strongly favours Shelley 40 40 as the author of all the manuscript additions, the handwriting of the ‘secrecy’ note being 41 the most readily identifiable as his. My thanks to Elizabeth Denlinger for access to the 41 42 Pforzheimer copy, and to both her and Nora Crook for advice on the attribution. 42 43 7 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Moxon, 43 44 1858, vol. 1, pp. 261–9. 44

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1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 Fig. 3.1 Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire, page 11, with annotation 41 42 probably by Shelley (Medwin’s dedication copy). The footnote reads 42 43 ‘Now for God’s sake be secret / you will understand why I / wish you 43 44 to be particularly so’. 44

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fellatio.8 Shelley’s suggestion in a letter that the lines were a late addition and ‘the 1 1 production of a friends mistress’ was probably another ruse, but there is no reason 2 2 to doubt his claim that he included them to make the book ‘sell like wildfire’.9 3 3 Two hundred and fifty copies were printed and there is anecdotal evidence that 4 4 the book achieved, temporarily, the notoriety Shelley sought among his fellow 5 5 undergraduates. However, the second edition he predicted during the initial flurry 6 6 of sales never materialized, and after his expulsion from the university four months 7 7 later he displayed no further interest in the volume. As with Original Poetry, the 8 8 book disappeared from view for many years until a copy was located and a type- 9 9 facsimile published circa 1870;10 five copies of the original 1810 printing are 10 10 known to survive today. 11 11 Apart from biographical and editorial work, and a brief discussion of 12 12 Posthumous Fragments in an influential study of the fragment form,11 the two 13 13 poetry collections have not thus far received much critical attention, and their 14 14 plagiaristic, or ludic, qualities are generally seen as reasons for not taking them 15 15 seriously. A case can be made, however, for treating these collections not simply 16 16 as embarrassing pieces of juvenilia, or as spoof publications, but as committed 17 17 attempts by the young Shelley to make his mark on the literary scene of the 18 18 time, and to experiment with available poetic forms and techniques. One reason 19 19 why Shelley’s early poetry is yet to come into focus for modern readers is that 20 20 the poetics that governs them is poorly understood. That poetics was not of 21 21 Shelley’s own invention, and his deployment of it needs to be viewed against the 22 22 background of the writers who were its primary architects. This means exploring 23 23 areas of Romantic literary culture which, until recently, have been neglected by 24 24 mainstream scholarship, and registering the influence of contemporary poets such 25 25 as M.G. Lewis, Walter Scott and Thomas Moore, as well as earlier figures like 26 26 Thomas Chatterton and James Macpherson. 27 27 To speak of ‘influence’ here may be misleading. As the plagiarism scandal 28 28 forcibly demonstrates, the young Shelley’s creative engagement with contemporary 29 29 balladry and song follows none of the protocols normally associated with literary 30 30 allusion and borrowing, nor can it be explained by the more complex theories of 31 31 influence developed by Harold Bloom, whose work on Shelley largely ignores 32 32 his pre-1815 poetry. Yet the techniques of assimilation and appropriation Shelley 33 33 employed were by no means uncommon: as this chapter will show, plagiarism 34 34 and forgery were themselves part of the poetics he adopted, as were the many 35 35 other forms of pastiche and parody which are characteristic of his early work. To 36 36 recognizeProof the provenance of these techniques, Copy and the uses to which they had been 37 37 38 38 8 CPPBS I: 241, 249. 39 39 9 To Edward Fergus Graham, 30 November 1810 (Letters I: 23). 40 40 10 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson. Facsimile 41 reprint, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd (issued c. 1870). A second facsimile, based on 41 42 Shepherd’s, was published by H.B. Forman in 1877. 42 43 11 Marjorie Levinson, The Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form. 43 44 Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1986, pp. 139–50. 44

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put by other writers, is to understand, too, how the hoaxing and game-playing 1 1 found in certain of Shelley’s poems can co-exist with the more serious artistic and 2 2 political purposes evident elsewhere in the 1810 collections – sometimes in the 3 3 same poems. Moreover, although his compositional methods and literary tastes 4 4 subsequently changed radically, Shelley’s apprenticeship to this collaborative, 5 5 plagiaristic poetics left a lasting mark on his work and contributed to the more 6 6 sophisticated intertextuality of his later poetry. Shelley’s tendency to inhabit 7 7 existing genres and, through a process of imaginative and stylistic intensification, 8 8 to push them to breaking point is a recurrent feature of his work, and there is 9 9 evidence that this pattern begins in these early collections. 10 10 Another aspect of his early work whose significance this chapter will explore 11 11 is his fascination with the act of book-making. The sheer number of his publishing 12 12 projects in 1810, the year he turned 18, is indicative of this: in addition to the 13 13 two poetry collections and his two Gothic romances, Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, 14 14 he also submitted for publication his long poem The Wandering Jew (rejected 15 15 by Ballantyne’s of Edinburgh and then by Stockdale, and not actually published 16 16 until 1829 and 1831) and co-wrote a small book of verse with his other sister, 17 17 Hellen, which, she later recalled, was printed but ‘bought up and destroyed’.12 18 18 The following February saw the publication of his and Hogg’s The Necessity of 19 19 Atheism, the pamphlet that got them both expelled from Oxford, and in March 20 20 1811 he published his Poetical Essay on the existing State of Things (partially 21 21 co-authored with Elizabeth), a copy of which has finally come to light.13 Most of 22 22 this precocious publishing activity was made possible by his family wealth: his 23 23 grandfather Sir Bysshe funded the printing of some of his books, and his father’s 24 24 first action when accompanying Shelley to Oxford was to take him to Munday’s 25 25 and ask the publisher to indulge his son’s ‘printing freaks’14 – an action which he 26 26 doubtless came to regret. 27 27 Yet it is not simply the quantity of publications that is impressive. As his letters 28 28 and other sources demonstrate, Shelley took a keen interest in all aspects of the 29 29 publication and printing process, from editorial presentation to the selection of 30 30 fonts and formats, the setting of type, the distribution of review copies, the placing 31 31 of newspaper advertisements, and dubious – but common – marketing techniques 32 32 such as the bribing (or ‘pouching’) of reviewers to write favourable reviews or 33 33 34 34 35 12 Letter from Hellen Shelley, quoted in Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. 1, p. 16. For other 35 36 lost or unpublished works from this time, see Kenneth Neill Cameron, The Young Shelley: 36 37 Genesis of a Radical. London: Gollancz, 1951, pp. 301–2 n. 109. 37 13 Proof Copy 38 Text as yet unpublished; for a brief description and extracts, see H.R. Woudhuysen, 38 ‘Shelley’s Fantastic Prank’, Times Literary Supplement, 12 July 2006. The reference to 39 39 ‘prank’ is misleading: Shelley wrote this poem to defend the freedom of the press, as part 40 40 of a fund-raising campaign for the Irish journalist Peter Finnerty, imprisoned for libel for 41 criticizing the British government’s foreign policy. See Cameron, The Young Shelley, pp. 41 42 49–51. 42 43 14 As recalled by Munday’s partner, Henry Slatter, in an 1835 memoir quoted in 43 44 CPPBS I: 237. 44

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the publishing of spoof attacks on his work in order to draw attention to it. None 1 1 of these efforts resulted in commercial success – all of his publications were 2 2 loss-making – but Shelley was rich enough to sustain the losses, even if some of 3 3 the printers’ bills went unpaid, and he seems to have been more concerned with 4 4 creating an impact than with making a financial return. In this respect, his literary 5 5 apprenticeship was served on very privileged terms. While immersing himself 6 6 in the business of authorship, he reminded his friend and musical collaborator 7 7 Edward Fergus Graham that ‘we are no grub street gareteers’, and planned to make 8 8 this clear to his London booksellers by turning up at their premises ‘in a posse … 9 9 in Mr. Groves barouche & four’15 – a characteristically flamboyant gesture that 10 10 reveals the delight he took in shocking the establishment to which he nonetheless 11 11 belonged. 12 12 13 13 14 II 14 15 15 16 Undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to critical appreciation of this early phase of 16 17 Shelley’s career is the persistent plagiarism.16 If the borrowing of the name Cazire 17 18 scarcely qualifies as plagiarism (the use of recycled, exotic-sounding names was a 18 19 stock technique in Gothic literature, and Dacre’s own pen-name in Confessions of 19 20 the Nun of St. Omer, ‘Rosa Matilda’, is a conflation of two names fromL ewis’s The 20 21 Monk – a coded tribute rather than a theft17), the inclusion, without authorization 21 22 or attribution, of a complete long poem from Tales of Terror emphatically does. 22 23 Though none of the contemporary reviewers spotted it, it is the blatancy of this 23 24 plagiarism that has led modern commentators to pronounce it a hoax. Reiman 24 25 and Fraistat, while not rejecting this theory, make the point that without ‘Saint 25 26 Edmond’s Eve’ the collection would have lacked sufficient material for a quarto 26 27 volume, and that there are signs that printing may have begun before composition 27 28 of the poems was complete, necessitating a last-minute act of plagiarism to fill 28 29 out the pages.18 This is plausible but it hardly explains why Shelley should have 29 30 chosen for padding an easily recognizable poem from a well-known anthology 30 31 that had been reprinted as recently as 1808, nor why he chose the title Original 31 32 Poetry, as if to dare readers to discover the theft. 32 33 33 34 34 35 15 To Fergus Graham, 1 April 1810 (Letters I: 6). 35 16 36 For recent work on the broader topic of Romantic plagiarism and forgery, see 36 Margaret Proof Russett, Fictions and Fakes: Forging Copy Romantic Authenticity, 1760–1845 . 37 37 38 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006; Mazzeo, Plagiarism and Literary Property; 38 and Nick Groom, The Forger’s Shadow: How Forgery Changed the Course of Literature. 39 39 London: Picador, 2002. 40 40 17 Dacre’s novel is dedicated to Lewis, making the debt explicit; ‘Rosa Matilda’ 41 also carries Della Cruscan resonances. See Lisa M. Wilson, ‘Female Pseudonymity in the 41 42 Romantic “Age of Personality”: The Career of Charlotte King/ Rosa Matilda/ Charlotte 42 43 Dacre’. European Romantic Review 9.3 (1998), pp. 393–420. 43 44 18 CCPBS I: 153–4, 157–9. 44

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Another possibility, not thus far considered by editors, is that Shelley was 1 1 knowingly exploiting a poetics of appropriation and fabrication which was 2 2 intrinsic to the horror ballad genre to which ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’ belongs. Several 3 3 bibliographical facts are relevant here. The first is that both the book from which 4 4 Shelley plagiarized, the anonymous Tales of Terror, and the collection to which 5 5 it was assumed to be a sequel, Lewis’s Tales of Wonder, from which Shelley also 6 6 borrowed extensively, were themselves embroiled in textual controversy. Despite 7 7 its frequent attribution to Lewis, he was probably not the editor of Tales of Terror, 8 8 nor the author of most of the poems; and Tales of Wonder, a two-volume anthology 9 9 published the previous year (though dated 1801 on the title page) by the same 10 10 publisher, Joseph Bell, was considered to have so little original material in it, and 11 11 to be so cavalier in matters of intellectual property, that it became known as ‘Tales 12 12 of Plunder’.19 13 13 Lying behind this charge is Lewis’s previous reputation as a plagiarist, and a 14 14 long-standing association, dating back to Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto 15 15 (1764), between Gothic literature and textual inauthenticity or fraudulence. In his 16 16 novel The Monk (1796), Lewis had raised the stakes by explicitly referring to his 17 17 ‘plagiarisms’ in a prefatory ‘Advertisement’, listing several of them while admitting 18 18 that ‘many more may be found, of which I am at present totally unconscious’.20 The 19 19 ‘plundering’ in Tales of Wonder took a different form, the reprinting of anthology 20 20 pieces readily available elsewhere, along with more recent works republished 21 21 without, in some cases, their author’s permission. Lewis’s inclusion of multiple 22 22 versions of certain ballads – notably Gottfried Bürger’s ‘Lenore’, which (if its 23 23 Scottish antecedents and later adaptations are counted) appears in five separate 24 24 forms – added to the impression of redundancy, highlighting the practices of 25 25 replication, historical falsification and cross-cultural trafficking that underpin the 26 26 genre. The editorial subtitles and headnotes in Tales of Wonder made the problem 27 27 of origins and authenticity even more visible, foregrounding the fact that many 28 28 of the supposed ‘originals’ are actually reworkings of other texts, and that the 29 29 ‘translations’ are often at several removes from the source language. 30 30 Another controversial feature of Tales of Wonder was its juxtaposition of 31 31 straight and burlesque ballads, illustrated by the inclusion of Lewis’s self-parody 32 32 ‘Giles Jollup the Grave, and the Brown Sally Green’ alongside his celebrated 33 33 Bürger imitation, ‘Alonzo the Brave, and the Fair Imogine’, both reprinted from 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 19 Proof Copy 38 Wordsworth’s recollection, quoted in Matthew Gregory Lewis, Tales of Wonder, 38 ed. Douglass H. Thomson. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2010, p. 26. Thomson’s edition 39 39 also contains selections from Tales of Terror and discusses the (still unresolved) question 40 40 of attribution. 41 20 Matthew Lewis, The Monk, ed. Howard Anderson. Oxford: Oxford University 41 42 Press, 1973, p. 6. For Lewis’s shifting attitude to plagiarism, see Lisa M. Wilson, ‘“Monk” 42 43 Lewis as Literary Lion’. Romanticism on the Net 8 (1997), available at: www.erudit.org/ 43 44 revue/ron/1997/v/n8/. 44

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The Monk.21 Walter Scott, a contributor to Tales of Wonder who also edited his 1 1 own collection, An Apology for Tales of Terror (1799), later complained that 2 2 Lewis’s ‘attempts at what is called pleasantry’ were a conspicuous failure which 3 3 had helped to destroy the credibility of the ballad form.22 Others, though, saw 4 4 the two types as symbiotically related, and indeed inseparable: the critic Francis 5 5 Jeffrey astutely defined Lewis’s characteristic style as a ‘mixture of extravagance 6 6 and jocularity’ which produced ‘a sort of farcical horror’,23 while Robert Southey, 7 7 another contributor to Tales of Wonder, remarked how ‘in general these Beelzebub 8 8 stories require a mixture of the ludicrous with the terrific, which it is difficult, if 9 9 possible, to avoid’.24 The tonal instability of the Gothic horror ballad – the capacity 10 10 for self-deflation at moments of high intensity – was one of the genre’s defining 11 11 features: a Gothic equivalent of the self-subversion techniques of Romantic irony, 12 12 as well as confirmation of the psychological truth that humour cleanses the palate 13 13 for more horror. 14 14 Tales of Terror takes this deflationary impulse even further, incorporating 15 15 a higher proportion of mock-ballads, to the point where the whole volume is 16 16 sometimes seen as a parody of Tales of Wonder. This is palpably not the case, 17 17 as is made clear by the several genuine horror ballads it contains and by its 18 18 ‘Introductory Dialogue’, which offers a serious defence of ‘Imagination’s darkest 19 19 powers’ as well as a playful rebuttal of them, the mingled ‘terror and delight’ 20 20 referred to in line 77 being a more accurate summary of the volume’s aesthetic 21 21 effects. It is the tonally mixed character of Tales of Terror that made it a structural 22 22 model for Original Poetry, a heterogeneous collection of songs and Gothic ballads 23 23 which encompasses an even broader tonal spectrum, and which includes its own 24 24 ‘introductory dialogue’ in the form of the two verse letters by Elizabeth which 25 25 open the collection (the first includes a playful survey of contemporary literary 26 26 fashions). 27 27 The poem that Shelley chose to plagiarize from Tales of Terror exemplifies 28 28 both the tonal ambiguity of the horror ballad genre and the textual controversy 29 29 30 30 31 21 ‘Alonzo the Brave’ was published in the first edition of The Monk. ‘Giles Jollup’ 31 32 was added for the much-altered fourth edition (1798); Lewis admits in a headnote that 32 33 it was inspired by a newspaper parody, lines from which he incorporates in italics into 33 34 his own, thereby foregrounding further the plagiaristic, recyclable quality of Gothic (and 34 35 mock-Gothic) writing. For the controversy caused by Lewis’s self-parody, see André 35 36 Parreaux, The Publication of The Monk: A Literary Event, 1796–1798. Paris: Librairie 36 Marcel Didier,Proof 1960, p. 60. Copy 37 37 22 38 ‘Essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballad’ (1830), quoted by Douglass H. Thomson, 38 ‘Walter Scott and M.G. Lewis’, appended to his online edition of Scott’s Apology, available 39 39 at: www.walterscott.lib.ed.ac.uk/works/poetry/apology/introduction.html. 40 40 23 Review of James and Horace Smith, The Rejected Addresses. Edinburgh Review 41 20 (November 1812), pp. 434–51 (p. 445), quoted in Tales of Wonder, ed. Thomson, p. 30. 41 42 24 To William Taylor, [c. 3 February 1800], in The Collected Letters of Robert Southey, 42 43 Part 2: 1798–1803, eds Ian Packer and Lynda Pratt. Romantic Circles Electronic Edition, 43 44 2011, available at: www.rc.umd.edu/editions/southey_letters. 44

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of the volume from which he took it. Shelley calls it ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’, but 1 1 in the Tales this is its subtitle; the full title is ‘The Black Canon of Elmham; or, 2 2 Saint Edmond’s Eve. An Old English Ballad’. The genre label implicates the poem 3 3 immediately in the falsification of origins which was endemic to ballad-editing, 4 4 and which the fashion for Gothic had taken to new extremes. This is a modern 5 5 ballad not an ‘old’ one (as is made clear in a footnote), and the claim of Englishness 6 6 is misleading too, since, while the setting (North-Elmham, in Norwich) is English, 7 7 the style is unmistakably Germanic, the poem’s exaggerated rhetoric, crude sound 8 8 effects and melodramatic story-telling making it a classic example of the type 9 9 of sensationalist ballad associated with Bürger, Lewis and the ‘German school’. 10 10 Part of the attraction of the poem for Shelley was undoubtedly its subject matter, 11 11 involving illicit sex, cross-dressing, the violation of holy rites (the marriage of a 12 12 nun and a monk) and other extreme acts of transgression, including murder, all 13 13 performed against the background of a corrupt Catholic church – themes which 14 14 recur in Shelley’s own poems and novels, and would have had a satiric, subversive 15 15 force for him as well as a narrative appeal. The plot material, though, was also 16 16 complicit in the textual controversy, since the story is an adaptation of the tale of 17 17 the Bleeding Nun from The Monk, a tale which Lewis admits to having plagiarized 18 18 from German sources. Adding further layers of plagiarism, the poem conflates this 19 19 legend with Lewis’s pseudo-Spanish story of Don Raymond and Agnes and with 20 20 the novel’s main plot about the monk Ambrosio and his demon-lover Matilda, 21 21 borrowing for its finale – in which the ‘black canon’ is swallowed up into a marble 22 22 tomb – the conclusion of Lewis’s ballad ‘Alonzo the Brave’. 23 23 ‘The Black Canon of Elmham’, in short, is a poetic distillation of the ur-text of 24 24 Gothic horror, The Monk, whose most controversial thematic and textual features it 25 25 presents in an abbreviated and concentrated form. Like Lewis’s novel, too, and like 26 26 many Gothic horror ballads, the poem, while delivering the requisite frissons, also 27 27 contains a strong undercurrent of the ludicrous, not only in its outlandish storyline 28 28 but also in bathetic phrasing as when the canon’s brow is said to be ‘gloom’d 29 29 with care’ (l. 16).25 The comically portentous epigraph, a quotation from Horace’s 30 30 Satires, ‘– Hic Niger est!’ (This man is black), underlines the tonal ambivalence, 31 31 highlighting of the poem’s theme while simultaneously mocking it 32 32 (the pretentious redundancy of the Latin reference to ‘black’, already contained 33 33 in the title, is part of the irony). The footnote to the title is in a similar vein, 34 34 arguing with mock-pedantry for the plausibility of the poem’s local geography, 35 35 while assuring the reader that ‘This tale, if it be not given with the spirit, is at 36 36 any rate versified with the irregularity of an ancient ballad’ (a parodic echo of 37 Proof Copy 37 the description of ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’ in the ‘Advertisement’ to 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 25 Tales of Terror; With an Introductory Dialogue. 2nd edn. London: R. Faulder et al., 43 44 1808, p. 105. 44

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Lyrical Ballads [1798] as ‘professedly written in imitation of the style, as well as 1 1 of the spirit of the elder poets’).26 2 2 In plagiarizing ‘The Black Canon’ for Original Poetry, Shelley was not, 3 3 therefore, stealing a legitimate piece of literary property from a reputable source; 4 4 he was reproducing a counterfeit ballad published anonymously in a spin-off 5 5 collection trading on the success of a previous compilation by a self-confessed 6 6 plagiarist; a poem, moreover, that, whether or not written by the notorious ‘Monk’ 7 7 Lewis (as Shelley’s publisher believed), borrowed the plot of his novel and 8 8 recycled his own plagiarized material. Although Shelley disguises the source by 9 9 altering the title, modernizing the spelling and removing the paratexts that identify 10 10 the genre, the poem was of a type, part-serious, part-humorous, that embodied 11 11 the contradictions of the Gothic mode and made its fake medievalism a source 12 12 of amusement even while aiming to shock through its scandalous subject matter. 13 13 Shelley’s ‘hoax’, then, seems less an adolescent prank, or an eleventh-hour 14 14 attempt to fill some empty pages in a partially printed book, than the action of an 15 15 intelligent young author who correctly understood that inauthenticity, impropriety 16 16 and textual fraudulence were the essence of the literary mode to which he had 17 17 apprenticed himself, and who took that insight to its logical conclusion. By 18 18 plagiarizing the entire poem more or less verbatim, he outdid all previous users 19 19 of this transgressive poetics, including Lewis himself, and drew attention to the 20 20 paradoxes inherent in it by publishing the poem in a volume entitled Original 21 21 Poetry, thereby inviting discovery of his plagiarism, exactly as Lewis had done in 22 22 his ‘Advertisement’ to The Monk. The fact that Shelley appears to have executed 23 23 the plagiarism not by copying a printed text but by writing the poem down from 24 24 memory27 has a further symbolic appropriateness: his method of reproducing 25 25 this fake traditional ballad involves a parodic re-enactment of an oral mode of 26 26 transmission, just as the collaboration with his sister in the volume as a whole 27 27 involves a playful re-enactment of a communal balladic creativity. Their quasi- 28 28 Gothic pseudonyms add another layer of falsity and paradox, ascribing ostensibly 29 29 ‘original’ poems to fictitious characters whose names are traceable to contemporary 30 30 novels – in the case of ‘Cazire’, to a Gothic novel by a writer engaged in her own 31 31 game of pseudonymity and her own intertextual homage to Lewis.28 Charlotte 32 32 Dacre may, indeed, have influenced Shelley’s broader naming strategy, by using 33 33 different pseudonyms (including ‘Dacre’ itself, not her real name) for different 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 26 38 Tales of Terror, p. 104; [Wordsworth and Coleridge], Lyrical Ballads, With a Few 38 Other Poems. London: J. & A. Arch, 1798, p. v. 39 39 27 Established by Reiman and Fraistat through an analysis of the variants: CPPBS I: 40 40 178–9. 41 28 ‘Victor’ was a more common literary name (and pseudonym), e.g. François 41 42 Guillaume Ducray-Duminil, Victor, or, The Child of the Forest (1796, trans. 1802); Sophia 42 43 King [sister of Charlotte Dacre/King], The Adventures of Victor Allen (1805); Helen St 43 44 Victor [pseud.?], The Ruins of Rigonda, or, The Homicidial Father (1808). 44

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publications, and renaming poems from her novel when reworking them for her 1 1 poetry collection, tactics Shelley emulates.29 2 2 Although the most extreme case, ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’ is by no means the only 3 3 plagiarism in Original Poetry, and other examples show how completely Shelley 4 4 has assimilated the plagiaristic, textually transgressive aspects of Gothic. ‘Ghasta; 5 5 or, The Avenging Demon!!!’ is, in many respects, a companion piece to ‘Saint 6 6 Edmond’s Eve’, a semi-serious horror ballad that follows similar conventions 7 7 and is likewise heavily indebted to Lewis. The plot, a complicated revenge story 8 8 involving a medieval warrior, his jilted lover (now a succuba), a stranger who 9 9 turns out to be the Wandering Jew, and the eponymous chief of the avenging 10 10 demons, is based, once again, on the story of the Bleeding Nun from The Monk. 11 11 It is from this source, too, that Shelley takes the wording of the revenant’s curse, 12 12 ‘Thou are mine and I am thine’, a formula repeated several times (as in the novel), 13 13 foreshadowing the sinister denouement. The verse form of the poem, a variant 14 14 of the traditional ballad quatrain, is that of Lewis’s ‘The Sword of Angantyr’, a 15 15 ‘Runic’ ballad (based ultimately on an Icelandic ) from Tales of Wonder which 16 16 is echoed elsewhere in Original Poetry. Unsurprisingly, ‘Ghasta’ acknowledges 17 17 none of these debts, but instead includes a Lewisesque headnote stating that ‘The 18 18 idea of the following tale was taken from a few unconnected German Stanzas’, 19 19 a pseudo-acknowledgment that is so far from the truth as to qualify as another 20 20 piece of editorial hoaxing. The triple exclamation mark of the subtitle confirms 21 21 the comic intent, signalling the mixture of extravagance and jocularity which, as 22 22 Jeffrey noted, had become the hallmark of the Gothic horror ballad. 23 23 Nothing prepares us, however, for the inspired piece of plagiarism that opens 24 24 the poem, an omen-laden quatrain lifted not from Lewis, nor from a German 25 25 source, but from the English master-forger Thomas Chatterton. The lines are from 26 26 the ‘Mynstrelles Songe’ in Aella, a ‘tragycal enterlude’ fictitiously ascribed to the 27 27 fifteenth-century poet-priest Thomas Rowley: 28 28 29 Harke! the ravenne flappes hys wynge, 29 30 In the briered delle belowe; 30 31 Harke! the dethe-owle loude dothe synge, 31 32 To the nyghte-mares as heie goe; (ll. 865–8)30 32 33 33 34 34 35 29 Her real name was Charlotte King. After disguising herself as ‘Rosa Matilda’ in her 35 36 early newspaper verse and her first novel, Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer (1805), she 36 37 adopted theProof new pseudonym ‘Charlotte Dacre’ for Copyher poetry collection, Hours of Solitude 37 38 (also 1805), and for later novels such as Zofloya (1806) and The Libertine (1807). The 38 opening poem in Hours, ‘The Triumph of Pleasure’, is a renamed version of ‘The Dangers 39 39 of Love’, a lyric by the heroine Cazire woven into the plot of Confessions. Its amended title 40 40 is echoed in Shelley’s ‘Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience’, a strongly Dacre-esque 41 poem from Original Poetry recycled (without a title) in St. Irvyne. For Dacre’s naming 41 42 strategy and her general influence on Shelley, see Wilson, ‘Female Pseudonymity’. 42 43 30 Thomas Chatterton, Poems, Supposed to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas 43 44 Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth Century. 2nd edn. London: T. Payne, 1777, p. 137. 44

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Modernized and adjusted by Shelley (as if to highlight their fake archaism), 1 1 Chatterton’s lines become: 2 2 3 Hark! the owlet flaps her wing, 3 4 In the pathless dell beneath, 4 5 Hark! night ravens loudly sing, 5 6 Tidings of despair and death. – (ll. 1–4) 6 7 7 8 For a raven, Shelley substitutes an owl; for a ‘dethe-owl’, ‘night ravens’; and 8 9 instead of a ‘briered’ dell, he gives us a ‘pathless’ one. The verbal changes may 9 10 be an attempt by Shelley to disguise his source or to make the lines his own. 10 11 What is important is that he has invoked Chatterton at all, recognized him as the 11 12 presiding spirit of Gothic and the éminence grise of the poetics of inauthenticity.31 12 13 The plagiarized lines both initiate and encapsulate the story of ‘Ghasta’, a tale 13 14 that gives grim fulfilment to the premonition they voice. But they also epitomize 14 15 the horror ballad genre as a whole, a darkness-visible world where worst fears are 15 16 confirmed and ‘nyghte-mares’ become starkly literal, as in the midnight ghost-rides 16 17 in ‘Lenore’ and ‘Alonzo the Brave’ or (the other sense of the word ‘nightmare’) the 17 18 nocturnal visitations of the succuba in ‘Ghasta’, whose ‘coldest touch congealed 18 19 my soul – / Cold as the finger of the dead’ (ll. 118–19). 19 20 If ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’ takes the plagiaristic tendencies of Gothic to their 20 21 logical extreme and ‘Ghasta’ reveals its tutelary deity, Shelley’s distinctive handling 21 22 of the mode can be traced further through his deployment of a single Gothic 22 23 motif derived from another master-forger, James Macpherson. Macpherson’s 23 24 contribution to Gothic rests in part on a wildly imaginative idea expressed in the 24 25 ‘Song of the Six Bards’ from ‘Croma’, one of the ‘Ossian’ poems: ‘Ghosts ride on 25 26 the storm to-night. Sweet is their voice between the squalls of wind. Their songs 26 27 are of other worlds.’32 As Macpherson explains elsewhere in a footnote, this motif 27 28 is based on a popular superstition in the north of Scotland that storms were raised 28 29 by the ghosts of the deceased, ‘who transport themselves, in that manner, from one 29 30 place to another’.33 30 31 Not by chance, this piece of local folklore, or Macpherson’s literary rendition 31 32 of it, took the fancy of another young poet brought up in the north of Scotland, 32 33 Byron, who repeats it both in his formal imitation of Macpherson, ‘The Death 33 34 of Calmar and Orla’, and in his autobiographical lyric ‘’. In the 34 35 latter, the ghost-rider motif becomes a symbol of Byron’s own sense of place and 35 36 tradition:Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 31 Hogg notes how Shelley ‘would often exult in the successful forgeries of Chatterton 39 39 and Ireland’, demonstrating his ‘sly relish of a practical joke’, especially of a literary kind 40 40 (Life of Shelley, vol. 1, p. 263). 41 32 James Macpherson, The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. Howard Gaskill, 41 42 with an introduction by Fiona Stafford. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996, 42 43 p. 190. 43 44 33 Macpherson’s footnote to ‘Conlath and Cuthóna’, in Poems of Ossian, p. 443 n. 9. 44

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‘Shades of the dead! have I not heard your voices 1 1 Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale?’ 2 Surely the soul of the hero rejoices, 2 3 And rides on the wind, o’er his own Highland vale: (ll. 17–20)34 3 4 4 5 Byron’s lines, with their Ossianic underpinnings, in turn caught the attention of 5 6 the young Shelley, who expanded them into a 16-line lyric he included in St. 6 7 Irvyne. Within the plot of the novel, the lyric is spontaneously composed by the 7 8 imprisoned Megalena as she reflects on the probable death of her missing father: 8 9 9 10 Ghosts of the dead! have I not heard your yelling 10 11 Rise on the night-rolling breath of the blast, 11 12 When o’er the dark ether the tempest is swelling, 12 And on eddying whirlwind the thunder-peal past? (ll. 1–4)35 13 13 14 14 That Shelley should rework and recontextualize Byron’s lines in this way is 15 15 another illustration of the recyclable quality of Gothic writing, an expressive 16 16 mode which operates at times as a kind of collective creativity, subordinating 17 17 individual authorship to a collaborative poetics which makes common property 18 18 of its imaginative materials. This may, indeed, have been part of the attraction of 19 19 Gothic for Shelley, foreshadowing in the sphere of popular culture his theory of 20 20 the ‘great poem’ to which all poets across time contribute.36 Plagiarism is the limit 21 21 case of this collaborative poetics, but the St. Irvyne lyric is not strictly speaking 22 22 plagiarized, as Reiman and Fraistat state,37 because on this occasion Shelley 23 23 identifies his source, scrupulously acknowledging in a footnote that the poem is 24 24 ‘Taken almost word for word from the poem of Lachin y Gair in Byron’s Hours 25 25 of Idleness, Newark, 1807, p. 130. – Ed’.38 In fact, only the first two lines are 26 26 taken verbatim, but the rest of the poem is an elaboration of them, with certain 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 34 Lord Byron, The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann. 7 vols. Oxford: 31 32 Clarendon Press, 1980–93, vol. 1, p. 103. 32 33 35 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Zastrozzi, A Romance; St. Irvyne: or, The Rosicrucian: 33 34 A Romance, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2002, p. 174. 34 35 36 ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (SPP: 522). For commentary on this seminal Shelleyan 35 36 idea, see my Romanticism and the Uses of Genre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, 36 37 pp. 195–7. 37 37 Proof Copy 38 CPPBS I: 269. 38 38 Behrendt, ed., Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, p. 174 n. 1. Later in St. Irvyne, Shelley 39 39 incorporates into another of his inset poems (‘Song. How swiftly through heaven’s 40 40 wide expanse’) two lines from Byron’s ‘Stanzas. I would I were a careless child’, an 41 autobiographical lyric added to for its expanded and retitled edition, 41 42 Poems, Original and Translated. Newark: S. and J. Ridge, 1808. Shelley’s footnote (p. 42 43 212 n.) misattributes the lines to Hours of Idleness, but the borrowings confirm that he was 43 44 familiar with both versions of Byron’s collection, an important detail overlooked by editors. 44

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other details being supplied by Byron’s other Ossianic imitations and possibly by 1 1 Macpherson’s Poems of Ossian itself – a book we know Shelley possessed.39 2 2 Comparing the St. Irvyne lyric with these earlier texts, what is also notable is 3 3 Shelley’s amplification of his source material, both in Gérard Genette’s sense of 4 4 a thematic and stylistic expansion,40 and in a more literal, acoustic sense. Shelley 5 5 has, as it were, turned up the volume on this Ossianic motif: in Macpherson’s 6 6 ‘Croma’, the ghosts of the dead speak in the wind, and their voice is a ‘sweet’ 7 7 one; in Byron’s poem, the voices rise in the gale, but they are voices of rejoicing. 8 8 Shelley’s ghost-voices, by contrast, both rise and yell, their ‘murmurs of death’ 9 9 echoed by the ‘howling’ winds of line 9 and the whirlwind that ‘roars’ in line 13. 10 10 Once established in Shelley’s poetic vocabulary, the yelling-ghosts motif recurs 11 11 with remarkable frequency. In ‘Ghasta’, for example, there is both the avenging 12 12 demon himself, ‘Yelling dreadful o’er the heath’, and a chorus of subsidiary ghosts 13 13 singing ‘Tidings of despair and death!’ (ll. 157–60), a reprise of the opening stanza. 14 14 In ‘Revenge’, another Gothic horror ballad featuring a ghost-ride through the sky, 15 15 there are the ‘fierce yelling fiends’ who exult as the hero’s bride is dragged into 16 16 (ll. 53–6). In ‘Fragment, or the Triumph of Conscience’, the final poem in 17 17 Original Poetry, it is the Chattertonian ‘night-ravens’ who are ‘yelling’: here, the 18 18 playful exaggeration that produces the tautology ‘bodingly presaged destruction 19 19 and woe!’ (ll. 4–5) acts as an ironizing device, making the motif self-consciously 20 20 literary and parodic. The ‘loud yell … on the rising blast’ in ‘Saint Edmond’s Eve’ 21 21 (ll. 91–2) is another semi-parodic deployment, a likely model for Shelley’s. 22 22 In Posthumous Fragments, to which the concluding ‘Fragment’ in Original 23 23 Poetry forms a bridge, the ghostly ‘shrieks’ and ‘yells’ multiply, not only in 24 24 properly Gothic contexts but also in political poems such as ‘Ambition, power and 25 25 avarice’, where they serve to symbolize the call for revenge from dead victims of 26 26 oppression. Another figurative application of the motif is in poems of psychological 27 27 torment such as ‘Despair’ and the fragment ‘Yes! all is past’, the latter wholly built 28 28 around the image of ‘unearthly howling’, now an emblem of mental derangement 29 29 (furthering the Margaret Nicholson theme, though probably also drawing on 30 30 personal trauma). The ghostly cacophony reaches its climax in ‘The Spectral 31 31 Horseman’, the penultimate poem in Posthumous Fragments and Shelley’s final 32 32 exercise in the hyper-Gothic mode. For this farewell to the genre, Shelley was 33 33 determined, as Matthews and Everest observe, ‘to pack as many miscellaneous 34 34 gothicisms into it’, from as many different cultures, as he could manage.41 These 35 35 include, among others, the Scottish banshee, the Faustus legend, the supernatural 36 36 huntsman,Proof the phantom rider, the Wandering Copy Jew, and the dragon killed by the 37 37 legendary Irish hero Cuchullin. The result is sheer burlesque, an exuberant medley 38 38 39 39 40 40 39 Shelley’s copy of The Poems of Ossian. London: Cadell and Davies, 1807 is in the 41 Pforzheimer Collection. 41 42 40 Gérard Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, trans. Channa 42 43 Newman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998, p. 262. 43 44 41 PS I: 125. 44

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illustrative not only of Shelley’s extensive reading in the literature of Gothic but 1 1 also of an imaginative desire to saturate himself so completely in the conventions 2 2 of the genre as to obliterate it. The technique, not quite captured in Genette’s 3 3 typology of textual transformations, is the opposite of the logician’s reductio ad 4 4 absurdum but is, rather, an ampflicatio ad absurdum, a multiplication of premises 5 5 that exposes no less decisively the paradox of ‘farcical horror’ which, in its 6 6 decadent phase at least, is the contradictory essence of Gothic. 7 7 Once again, though, it is the acoustic sense of amplificatio that best describes 8 8 what is happening here, because ‘The Spectral Horseman’ is built around the sounds 9 9 of Gothic rather than its visual images, and the sound is at maximum volume. 10 10 The poem begins and ends with Shelley’s favourite Gothic motif, a ghostly shriek 11 11 heard on the ‘fitful blast of the wind’ (l. 3). ‘What was that shriek … ?’ the speaker 12 12 asks, and the rest of the poem is a search for the answer, an inquiry which takes 13 13 the form of a ghoulish identity parade in which, one by one, the Gothic 14 14 perform their ‘shriek’, or ‘moan’, or ‘howl’, or ‘yell’, and the speaker considers 15 15 whether that was the sound he had heard. The correct answer, of course, does not 16 16 matter, because the point of this parade is simply to put the conventions of Gothic 17 17 on display. Special mention, though, should be made of the ‘yelling vampire 18 18 reeking with gore’ (l. 13), not because he is the source of the mysterious shriek (he 19 19 is not) but because the detail of a vampire who yells contrasts so strikingly with 20 20 the vampires we are now familiar with. In this noisy version of Gothic, it is not the 21 21 hidden fangs, nor the sepulchral charms, of the vampire that compel attention, it is 22 22 the raucous voice. For all its imaginative extravagance, Shelley’s poem assumes 23 23 an ironic distance from its material, assembling the stock materials of Gothic in a 24 24 controlled display of excess that marks the point at which his deployment of the 25 25 mode collapses into absurdity. 26 26 27 27 28 III 28 29 29 30 Shelley’s early attraction to Gothic and the mark that it left on his work have 30 31 long been recognized by critics, even if the precise nature of the attraction and of 31 32 its effects has often eluded explanation. By contrast, his youthful immersion in 32 33 the culture of minstrelsy and song, though equally formative, has passed almost 33 34 totally unremarked. The origins of the Romantic song revival and the cult of the 34 35 minstrel, like the ballad revival with which they are closely connected, lie in the 35 36 1760s with the publication of Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry 36 37 (1765), DavidProof Herd’s Ancient and Modern ScotsCopy Songs (1769) and other influential 37 38 anthologies, but it was in the early 1800s that minstrelsy and song became a 38 39 dominant presence in Romanticism, when Walter Scott turned aside from Gothic 39 40 horror ballads to produce his more ‘respectable’ anthology Minstrelsy of the 40 41 Scottish Border (1802–03) and the first of his hugely successful verse romances, 41 42 The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805). The equivalent moment in the popularization 42 43 of Irish song was the first number of Thomas Moore’s Irish Melodies (1808), 43 44 44

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which established a new form of song anchored in older traditions but attuned 1 1 to modern sensibilities and musical tonalities. As the craze for Germanic horror 2 2 ballads subsided, and the new species of ‘lyrical ballad’ introduced by Wordsworth 3 3 and Coleridge struggled to establish its popular appeal, it was the narrative poems 4 4 of Scott, the lyric songs of Moore and, more generally, what Erik Simpson calls 5 5 the ‘minstrel mode’42 that occupied the centre ground of British literary culture, 6 6 for roughly 10 years from 1802. 7 7 These were exactly the years in which Shelley served his poetic apprenticeship, 8 8 and the 1810 collections are crucially shaped by this contemporary literature, 9 9 with its distinctive forms, textures and national resonances. Shelley signals his 10 10 engagement with it by taking as his epigraph for Original Poetry three lines 11 11 from The Lay of the Last Minstrel. If Shelley’s implicit self-characterization as a 12 12 doomed latter-day bard (the quoted lines read: ‘Call it not vain: – they do not err, 13 13 / Who say, that, when the Poet dies, / Mute Nature mourns her worshipper’43) sits 14 14 somewhat uneasily alongside his Gothic pseudonym ‘Victor’ and other features of 15 15 the collection, there are many other allusions to Scott’s poems, here as elsewhere 16 16 in Shelley’s early writings, which confirm his imaginative and technical influence. 17 17 An even stronger influence is Moore’s Irish Melodies, and it is no coincidence 18 18 that 11 of the 17 poems in Original Poetry are explicitly labelled ‘Song’, nor 19 19 that the word ‘Melody’ (a musical term which Moore turned into the name of a 20 20 type of poetry) enters into the title of one of the Posthumous Fragments, ‘Melody 21 21 to a Scene of Former Times’, a poem containing many verbal echoes of Moore. 22 22 These are not actual songs, however, but what Terence Hoagwood calls ‘pseudo- 23 23 songs’, poems which refer to or imitate music without actually supplying it. 24 24 Ubiquitous in the Romantic period, the pseudo-song is a genre which shares with 25 25 the Gothic horror ballad a large element of inauthenticity and, in Hoagwood’s 26 26 phrase, a ‘kaleidoscopic intertextuality’ involving every kind of appropriation, 27 27 replication and forgery.44 That Shelley should bring together these two ersatz 28 28 genres in so determined a fashion suggests, once again, that their transgressive 29 29 textual characteristics are precisely what attracted him, making possible forms of 30 30 expression, including political expression, that more authentic traditions and more 31 31 tightly policed genres might preclude. 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 42 Erik Simpson, Literary Minstrelsy, 1770–1830: Minstrels and Improvisers in 35 36 British, Irish, and American Literature. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pp. 1–26. 36 See also MaureenProof N. McLane, Balladeering, Minstrelsy, Copy and the Making of British Romantic 37 37 38 Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008; and Kirsteen McCue, ‘The Culture 38 of Song’, in The Oxford Handbook of British Romanticism, ed. David Duff. Oxford: Oxford 39 39 University Press, 2016. 40 40 43 CPPBS I: 3, quoting the opening lines of Canto 5 of Scott’s Lay. 41 44 Terence Allan Hoagwood, From Song to Print: Romantic Pseudo-Songs. New 41 42 York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, p. 35. For a similarly sceptical appraisal of ‘actual’ song 42 43 in this period, see Dave Harker, Fakesong: The Manufacturing of British ‘Folksong’ 1700 43 44 to the Present Day. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1985. 44

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Shelley’s interest in contemporary song was not, in fact, purely verbal. We know 1 1 from his correspondence that he experimented in this period with the writing of real 2 2 songs, offering several of his poems to be set to music by Edward Fergus Graham, 3 3 or by Graham’s teacher, the distinguished Austrian musician Joseph Wölfl, then 4 4 living in London.45 Shelley may also have collaborated with Graham on the writing 5 5 of an opera, and one of his letters playfully imagines them combining forces, ‘thou 6 6 … as the bard of old’ with ‘an harp of fire’ and ‘I as the poet of other times’ with ‘a 7 7 pen of honey’, in order to combat the tyranny of kings (the same letter contains his 8 8 translation of the ‘Marseillaise’, later included in his ‘Minor Poems’ collection).46 9 9 However, none of the musical settings survives, and the songs in Original Poetry 10 10 are all, in Hoagwood’s term, ‘simulacra’. Two of them, one by Elizabeth, the other 11 11 by Shelley, have an added element of fabrication in that they present themselves 12 12 as, respectively, ‘Translated from the Italian’ and ‘Translated from the German’, 13 13 though neither is, these being examples of yet another fashionable genre, pseudo- 14 14 translation. Elizabeth’s ‘Italian’ song, indeed, adds a third layer of fabrication 15 15 by incorporating a plagiarized stanza from the once-popular but now forgotten 16 16 English Lyricks of William Smyth, a minor Cambridge don.47 The switching of 17 17 national provenance (‘Italian’ for ‘English’), like the plagiarism and the false claim 18 18 of translation, is part of the collaborative game-playing, but the Europeanization 19 19 of the source material suggests a resistance, characteristic of the 1810 collections, 20 20 to the English insularity of which Smyth’s poems are a product, even if Elizabeth’s 21 21 tame continuation of the borrowed passage does not sustain this challenge. 22 22 Shelley’s ‘Song. Translated from the German’ is more openly transgressive, 23 23 his choice of German (a language he probably did not understand at the time) as 24 24 his putative source signalling, as in the headnote to ‘Ghasta’, his wish to exploit 25 25 the controversy surrounding German literary imports which dates back to the 26 26 1790s. Part erotic lyric, part Lewisesque revenge fantasy, this characteristically 27 27 hybrid composition makes explicit the connection hinted at by conservative 28 28 literary reviewers between Germanic ‘horror-breeding Bards’ and revolutionary 29 29 politics.48 With its ‘dire dagger’ and decree of vengeance for some unspecified 30 30 crime, the poem opens in high Gothic mode, but promptly politicizes its revenge 31 31 theme, calling for a young hero to ‘defend the firm cause of justice and truth’ and 32 32 ‘give up the oppressor to judgment and Hell’ (ll. 6, 8). In the final stanzas, the 33 33 poem then modulates into a sexual idiom, depicting a passionate reunion between 34 34 the hero and his mistress in which ‘The rewards of the brave are the transports of 35 35 love’ (l. 16). 36 36 37 37 45 Proof Copy 38 Jessica K. Quillin, Shelley and the Musico-Poetics of Romanticism. Farnham: 38 Ashgate, 2012, pp. 8–10. 39 39 46 To Graham, ?19 June 1811 (Letters I: 106). 40 40 47 William Smyth, English Lyricks. Enlarged edn. 2 vols. London, 1806, vol. 2, p. 40. 41 48 Anti-Jacobin Review 8 (March 1801), quoted in Tales of Wonder, ed. Thompson, p. 41 42 289. For the controversy over German imports, see Peter Mortensen, British Romanticism 42 43 and Continental Influences: Writing in an Age of Europhobia. New York: Palgrave 43 44 Macmillan, 2004. 44

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Most of the other songs in Original Poetry have a more obviously personal 1 1 content, and editors and commentators have generally offered biographical 2 2 readings, connecting the poems to Shelley’s relationship with Harriet Grove. The 3 3 song that stands out as having a more complex, and impersonal, frame of reference 4 4 is ‘The Irishman’s Song’. Dated ‘October 1809’, this is Shelley’s first political 5 5 poem on a specific theme, his adoption of an Irish persona signalling, evenat 6 6 the very outset of his career, his desire to challenge parochial Englishness and 7 7 awaken cosmopolitan sympathies. Cameron traces Shelley’s early interest in Irish 8 8 political affairs to his father’s and grandfather’s Whiggish support for Catholic 9 9 Emancipation and to the influence of the radical M.P. Sir Francis Burdett,49 but the 10 10 inspiration of ‘The Irishman’s Song’ is as much literary as political. The poem’s 11 11 metre and rhyme scheme, its plaintive tone, the conventionalized lament for 12 12 Ireland’s fallen heroes, the desolate landscape with ruined buildings, the use of 13 13 the mythological name ‘Erin’, the symbol of the harp (now mute), the pledge that 14 14 the Irish cause must never be forgotten, even the mode of address (a collective 15 15 ‘we’ addressing the personified Irish nation in an extended apostrophe) are all 16 16 modelled directly on Moore’s Irish Melodies. Shelley reproduces, too, the strange 17 17 temporality of the Irish Melodies – suspended between an unspecified present and 18 18 an equally vague past, but suffused with the sufferings of both – and also their 19 19 distinctive intertextuality, which centres on recurring allusions to Macpherson’s 20 20 Ossian, the pseudo-ancient, pseudo-Gaelic prose poems which underlie so much 21 21 of the ‘national’ poetry and song of the period (in this case, one of the clearest 22 22 echoes is of the ubi sunt sequence in the ‘Bards’ Song’ in ‘Croma’: ‘Where are our 23 23 chiefs of old? Where our kings of mighty name?’).50 24 24 Shelley, though, offers not a mere replication of Moore’s style, but a calculated 25 25 intensification of it. The first stanza reworks the decaying-stars imagery of Moore’s 26 26 ‘How oft has the Benshee cried’,51 but gives it, as Reiman and Fraistat note,52 a 27 27 more cosmic, apocalyptic sweep: 28 28 29 The stars may dissolve, and the fountain of light 29 30 May sink into ne’er ending chaos and night, 30 31 Our mansions must fall, and earth vanish away, 31 32 But thy courage, O Erin! may never decay. (ll. 1–4)53 32 33 33 34 As in Moore’s poem, the dissolving stars emblematize Ireland’s decline, but rather 34 35 than simply lamenting, Shelley assigns a political reason for it, the fallen mansions 35 36 of line 3 Proofhinting at the English government’s Copy scorched-earth policy in the post- 36 37 37 38 38 49 Cameron, The Young Shelley, p. 46. 39 39 50 Poems of Ossian, p. 192. 40 40 51 A Selection of Irish Melodies, with Symphonies and Accompaniments by Sir 41 John Stevenson Mus.Doc. and Characteristic Words by Thomas Moore Esq. 2nd number. 41 42 London: J. Power, 1808, p. 67. 42 43 52 CPPBS I: 174. 43 44 53 In the Pforzheimer copy, the ambiguous ‘may’ of line 4 is altered to ‘shall’. 44

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1798 reprisals. The second stanza extends the anti-colonial theme, surveying 1 1 the ‘wide wasted ruin’ that Ireland has become, a land where the corpses of its 2 2 heroes ‘lie stretched on the plain’ and its foes ‘ride in triumph throughout our 3 3 domain’, like the horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the third stanza Shelley invokes 4 4 the symbol of the ‘dead’ harp, but immediately interrupts its silence with the 5 5 ‘clangour of spears’, a ‘war note’ announced by ‘the dread yell of Sloghan’ (ll. 6 6 11–12). Interestingly, this last detail is drawn not from the Irish Melodies but from 7 7 The Lay of the Last Minstrel, in one of whose battle scenes Scott had revived 8 8 the ancient Scots word slogan (from Gaelic sluagh-ghaim, ‘war-cry’). Shelley 9 9 echoes Scott’s phrasing54 but gives the motif a modern application, to announce an 10 10 imminent present-day conflict. The poem turns from elegiac lament into rebellious 11 11 prophecy as the Irishman’s song becomes itself a battle-cry, calling for retribution 12 12 against the unnamed oppressor (here, England or the Protestant overlord) for the 13 13 sufferings inflicted on his countrymen. 14 14 The last stanza moves more fully into fantasy mode, developing the revenge 15 15 theme in an increasingly violent and macabre scenario. The apocalyptic undertones 16 16 of Shelley’s revolutionary song are given a startling new twist as he imagines the 17 17 slaughtered Irish heroes rising from their graves and forming a ghostly chorus 18 18 chanting for revenge: 19 19 20 Ah! where are the heroes! triumphant in death, 20 21 Convulsed they recline on the blood-sprinkled heath, 21 22 Or the yelling ghosts ride on the blast that sweeps by, 22 23 And ‘my countrymen! vengeance!’ incessantly cry. (ll. 13–16) 23 24 24 25 To articulate his fantasy of revenge, Shelley turns again to the language of Gothic, 25 26 this time in an altogether serious register: here, once more, are the convulsing 26 27 corpses and ‘yelling ghosts’ of the horror ballads, but they are now ghosts with 27 28 a political mission, their message spelt out in the bloodthirsty slogan of the final 28 29 line, with its chilling revision of the traditional Irish rallying cry, Erin go brach 29 30 (Ireland for ever!). 30 31 Just how far the poem has travelled from the benign pastiche with which it 31 32 began can be gauged by recalling the well-known passage in Moore’s ‘Prefatory 32 33 Letter’ (1810) where he describes Irish music as ‘the truest of all comments upon 33 34 our history’: 34 35 35 36 The tone of defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency – a burst of 36 turbulence dying away into softness – the sorrows of one moment lost in the 37 Proof Copy 37 levity of the next – and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness, which is 38 38 naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament to shake off, or forget, 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 54 ‘And heard the slogan’s deadly yell’: Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel: A 43 44 Poem. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1805, p. 13 (Canto 1, stanza vii). 44

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the wrongs which lie upon it, – such are the features of our history and character, 1 1 which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music …55 . 2 2 3 Nothing could be more different from the emotional trajectory outlined here than 3 4 the one enacted in Shelley’s ‘Irishman’s Song’, which excludes the indulgent mirth 4 5 and reverses the flow of feeling, beginning in despondency or pathos and ending in 5 6 a tone of defiance so strident that the poem modulates into a completely different 6 7 idiom, drawn not from Irish folksong or Scottish border romance but from the 7 8 German horror ballad. In Hoagwood’s terms, this takes the ‘artistry of simulation’56 8 9 to a new level, producing a confection of literary idioms that has nothing to do 9 10 with music but is illustrative of Shelley’s syncretic verbal imagination, and of the 10 11 powerful uses to which he could put it, even at this early stage in his career. 11 12 Politically speaking, the conflation of historical commentary with Gothic 12 13 balladry produces a lethal cocktail, and the eruptive violence of the poem does 13 14 not bode well for Shelley’s future intervention in the political affairs of Ireland 14 15 (William Godwin found even his far more moderate Address to the Irish People of 15 16 1812 dangerously inflammatory, liable ‘to light again the flames of rebellion and 16 17 war’57). Yet, for all its lack of restraint and the admixture of personal fantasy which 17 18 is a recurrent feature of Shelley’s early political verse, the poem does, nonetheless, 18 19 register an aspect of Irish political sentiment that is missing from Moore’s Irish 19 20 Melodies. In the eyes of many Irish republicans, Moore’s songs, which were 20 21 intended mainly for an English audience, offered a sanitized, sentimental and 21 22 ultimately defeatist response to the catastrophe of the 1798 rebellion against 22 23 British rule and to the centuries of colonial oppression which preceded it.58 By 23 24 contrast, Shelley’s ventriloquized ‘Irishman’s Song’, while lacking the lyric grace 24 25 of the best of the Irish Melodies, uses the language of Gothic to capture the horror 25 26 of the Irish situation, an historical trauma so great as to generate not only grief but 26 27 also vindictive anger of a kind that finds expression in other ‘Irish JacobinG othic’ 27 28 writing of this period.59 28 29 None of the personal songs in Original Poetry has the emotional force and 29 30 complexity of ‘The Irishman’s Song’, and it was not until his visit to Dublin in 30 31 spring 1812 that Shelley was again to write lyric poems on Irish themes (the most 31 32 important of these, ‘The Tombs’ and ‘On Robert Emmet’s Tomb’, have interesting 32 33 33 34 34 35 55 ‘A Prefatory Letter to The Marchioness Dowager of D[onegall]’, in A Selection of 35 36 Irish Melodies. 3rd number. London: J. Power, 1810, p. 1. 36 56 Hoagwood,Proof From Song to Print, p. 140. Copy 37 37 57 38 Letter to Shelley, 4 March 1812, in Collected Novels and Memoirs of William 38 Godwin, gen. ed. Mark Philp. 8 vols. London: Pickering and Chatto, 1992, vol. 1, p. 70. 39 39 58 The political complications of Moore’s legacy are discussed by Leith Davis, Music, 40 40 Postcolonialism, and Gender: The Construction of Irish National Identity 1724–1874. 41 Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006, chs 6 and 7. 41 42 59 See Niall Gillespie, ‘Irish Jacobin Gothic, c.1796–1825’, in Irish Gothics: Genres, 42 43 Forms, Modes, and Traditions, 1760–1890, eds Christina Morin and Niall Gillespie. 43 44 Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp. 58–73. 44

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points of connection with ‘The Irishman’s Song’, though they eschew the Gothic 1 1 possibilities of their graveyard setting and adopt a more measured, meditative 2 2 tone).60 There is one poem in the Posthumous Fragments volume, however, 3 3 which effects an even bolder juxtaposition of genres and styles, and in which 4 4 political emotion finds more daring expression, the ‘Fragment. Supposed to be 5 5 an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Cordé’. This is the rhetorical 6 6 centrepiece of the Posthumous Fragments collection, the poem that relates most 7 7 closely to the Margaret Nicholson theme and the one on which Shelley pinned 8 8 most of his hopes of commercial success. It is also the one text that bears out, 9 9 to some degree, Hogg’s bizarre account of the composition process,61 in that its 10 10 fragmentary and ‘dithyrambic’ quality – involving abrupt metrical shifts, sudden 11 11 switches of tone and register, and odd typographical features such as the use 12 12 of multiple rows of asterisks for missing lines – may be the result of deliberate 13 13 cutting and splicing. 14 14 Hogg falsifies, though, the character of the poem when he describes it simply as 15 15 a practical joke and claims that its purpose was ‘to ridicule the strange mixture of 16 16 sentimentality with the murderous fury of revolutionists, that was so prevalent in 17 17 the compositions of the day’.62 Though burlesque is one of its registers, the blend 18 18 of sexual eroticism and revolutionary violence that lies at the heart of the poem 19 19 is a calculated act of taboo-breaking consistent with the shock tactics of the 1810 20 20 collections, and with some of Shelley’s later poetry. Like the ‘Song, Translated 21 21 from the German’ in Original Poetry, whose ‘extatic confusion’ of sexual and 22 22 political desire it takes to a new level of explicitness, the ‘Epithalamium’ uses 23 23 genre-mixing and intertextual collage not to scramble but to sharpen its ideological 24 24 message (an early example of the ‘rough-mixing’ technique practised in some of 25 25 his later poetry63). 26 26 Shelley’s title invokes the Classical tradition of the epithalamium (from Greek 27 27 epi-thalamos, ‘at the bridal chamber’), a type of ceremonial love poetry which 28 28 in its most literal form involved a nuptial song to be sung outside the room in 29 29 which a bride and bridegroom – often of royal or aristocratic lineage – were 30 30 consummating their marriage. Particularly popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth 31 31 centuries, the genre ranged from relatively decorous celebrations of the marriage 32 32 ceremony such as Spenser’s Epithalamion (1595) and Prothalamion (1596) to 33 33 semi-pornographic poems like the Epithalamium of the Dutch neo-Latin writer 34 34 Johannes Secundus (1511–36), which seems to have served as Shelley’s primary 35 35 36 36 37 37 60 Proof Copy 38 For the circumstances of his 1812 Dublin visit, the first of two, see Timothy Webb, 38 ‘“A Noble Field”: Shelley’s Irish Expedition and the Lessons of the French Revolution’, in 39 39 Robespierre & Co., ed. Nadia Minerva. 3 vols. Bologna: Edizione Analisi, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 40 40 553–76; and Paul O’Brien, Shelley and Revolutionary Ireland. London: Redwords, 1992. 41 61 See above, p. 52. 41 42 62 Hogg, Life of Shelley, vol. 1, pp. 267, 265. 42 43 63 For the distinction between ‘rough-mixing’ and ‘smooth-mixing’, and some other 43 44 Shelleyan examples, see my Romanticism and the Uses of Genre, pp. 176–200. 44

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model.64 This important source has been overlooked by editors, but Shelley’s 1 1 controversial description of oral sex has been traced to another well-known piece 2 2 of Renaissance erotica, the anonymous ‘Fragment. To Lydia’ usually attributed to 3 3 Cornelius Gallus, a translation of which had been published alongside Secundus’s 4 4 Epithalamium in John Nott’s popular parallel-text edition of Secundus’s Basia, 5 5 or Kisses.65 In fact, the provenance of this passage is more interesting still, 6 6 Shelley’s notorious ‘sucking’ lines being a mosaic of translated phrases from 7 7 Secundus and Gallus together with phrasing from Thomas Moore’s poem ‘The 8 8 Kiss’, itself a reworking of Nott’s Gallus.66 This more recent source, though also 9 9 missed by editors, is particularly significant, because it was Moore who led the 10 10 way for Shelley’s generation in the adaptation of Classical erotic verse for modern 11 11 readers, first in his Odes of Anacreon (1800), then in his best-selling collection 12 12 The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little, Esq. (1801), which includes ‘The 13 13 Kiss’, and again in Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (1806). Moore’s lead proved 14 14 crucial for Byron, who later claimed that he knew the ‘Thomas Little’ poems by 15 15 heart by the age of 15 (in 1803), and told its author that ‘all the mischief I have 16 16 ever done, or sung, was owing to that confounded book of yours’.67 The literary 17 17 impact on Shelley was comparable, and his early poetry is as full of echoes of 18 18 Moore’s libertine poems as it is of the Irish Melodies, their racy lyricism and art 19 19 of sexual innuendo providing him with yet another way of shocking bourgeois 20 20 sensibilities. Like Moore, too, Shelley conceals his authorship of the Posthumous 21 21 Fragments through an elaborate pseudonymity involving the posthumous editing 22 22 of an unpublished poet.68 In Shelley’s case, there are further layers of disguise, 23 23 since the real Margaret Nicholson (who had written poems in Bedlam, at least one 24 24 of which survives69) was not in fact dead, and the name of her fictitious nephew 25 25 26 26 27 27 64 [John Nott, trans.], Kisses: A Poetical Translation of the Basia of Joannes Secundus 28 28 Nicolaïus. With the Original Latin, and an Essay on his Life and Writings. And the 29 29 Epithalamium Newly Translated. 2nd edn. London: J. Bew, 1778. It is this new translation 30 of the Epithalamium, rather than the more coy one Nott included in the first edition of 1775, 30 31 that Shelley echoes. By 1810, there were numerous other editions of Nott’s book. 31 32 65 See previous note. Shelley’s use of the ‘Lydia’ fragment was first detected by Nora 32 33 Crook and Derek Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University 33 34 Press, 1986, pp. 42–3. Nott reassigns the fragment to Maximianus Gallus. 34 35 66 [Thomas Moore], The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little, Esq. London: J. 35 36 Carpenter, 1801, p. 43. 36 67 ToProof Thomas Moore, 9 June 1820, in Byron’s Copy Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. 37 37 38 Marchand. 12 vols. London: Murray, 1973–82, vol. 7, p. 117. See Jeffrey W. Vail, The 38 Literary Relationship of Lord Byron and Thomas Moore. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 39 39 University Press, 2001, pp. 14–40. 40 40 68 Moore’s naming strategy and its aesthetic and commercial motivations are analysed 41 by Justin Tonra, ‘Masks of Refinement: Pseudonym, Paratext, and Authorship in the Early 41 42 Poetry of Thomas Moore’. European Romantic Review 25.5 (2014), pp. 551–73. 42 43 69 Included in a letter of petition to the King and Prince of Wales, now in the 43 44 Pforzheimer Collection (CPPBS I: 239). 44

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and editor, ‘John Fitzvictor’, is a veiled allusion to Shelley’s previous pseudonym 1 1 in Original Poetry (the ‘Fitz’ prefix meaning ‘son of’). 2 2 This fictive paratextuality carries over into the title of the poem in question, 3 3 a ‘Fragment’ which is ‘Supposed to be an Epithalamium’ rather than necessarily 4 4 being one, an editorial rubric that echoes the title of Chatterton’s Poems, Supposed 5 5 to Have Been Written at Bristol, by Thomas Rowley, and Others, in the Fifteenth 6 6 Century, thus invoking once again the literary tradition of pseudonymity and 7 7 forgery. Chatterton’s telescoping of time may also have provided a hint for one of 8 8 Shelley’s boldest strokes, the idea of a celestial union between François Ravaillac, 9 9 the assassin of Henry IV of France in 1610, and Charlotte Corday (or Cordé, the 10 10 less common spelling Shelley uses70), a Girondin sympathizer who, at the height 11 11 of the French Revolution in July 1793, murdered the Jacobin journalist and despot 12 12 Jean-Paul Marat.71 Though the political resonances of this imaginary love match 13 13 are complex (and Shelley adds a further complication by adopting the anglicized 14 14 form of Ravaillac’s first name, ‘Francis’, making him sound like an English 15 15 gentleman72), the fact that the poem shows the would-be English regicide Margaret 16 16 Nicholson fantasizing in a dream-vision about the post-mortem bliss of two French 17 17 assassins from different centuries brings together sex, politics and history in a way 18 18 that radically disrupts the conventions of the epithalamium, replacing aristocratic 19 19 eulogy with revolutionary martyrology and converting Secundus’s matrimonial 20 20 erotica into something more comprehensively provocative. The metaphysical 21 21 conceit of ‘Congenial minds’ who ‘seek their kindred soul’ across the gulf of time 22 22 (ll. 42–3) provides a perfect metaphor for Shelley’s sense of an unextinguishable 23 23 tradition of which he too is part, an idea aptly couched in recycled phrasing from 24 24 Moore’s ‘The Grecian Girl’s Dream of the Blessed Islands’ (from Epistles, Odes, 25 25 and Other Poems) – a model for the poem’s dream-vision and a key source for 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 70 Precedents for this spelling include Robert Southey’s poem ‘July Thirteenth. 30 31 Charlotte Cordé Executed for Putting Marat to Death’, published in the Morning Post in 31 32 1798, and James Gillray’s cartoon, ‘The Heroic Charlotte la Cordé, upon her Trial, at the 32 33 bar of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris’ (1793). 33 34 71 For contemporary interest in Corday, a figure who in Shelley’s female martyrology 34 35 prefigures Beatrice Cenci, see Adriana Craciun, ‘The New Cordays: Helen Craik and 35 36 British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793–1800’, in Rebellious Hearts: British 36 37 Women WritersProof and the French Revolution, eds A.Copy Craciun and Kari E. Lokke. Albany: 37 38 State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 193–232. 38 72 This anglicization may derive from The Trial of Francis Ravaillac, appended to 39 39 Charlotte Lennox’s much-reprinted translation of the Memoirs of Maximilian de Bethune, 40 40 Duke of Sully, Prime Minister of Henry the Great. 3 vols. London: A. Millar, 1756, or from 41 the account of Ravaillac’s trial and execution in W.H. Dilworth’s The Royal Assassins. 41 42 London: W. Anderson, 1759, a set of biographical sketches intended ‘for the improvement 42 43 and entertainment of the British youth of both sexes’. Shelley’s poem subverts the tradition 43 44 of condemnation, imaginatively resurrecting and celebrating Ravaillac. 44

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Shelley’s lifelong interest in the theme of paradise.73 Nicholson’s dream, though, 1 1 also has a nightmare aspect: the kingless heaven where ‘pleasures … never can 2 2 cloy’ is set against a hell where ‘despots’ are consigned to ‘the avenging deep’ (ll. 3 3 34, 13), making Shelley’s ‘Epithalamium’ a quasi-apocalyptic poem, the first and 4 4 most bizarre in a long line of eschatological prophecies that includes Queen Mab, 5 5 Laon and Cythna and Prometheus Unbound, all of which project a future state of 6 6 bliss from which tyrants are forcibly excluded. 7 7 Other devices add to the generic disruption and collage. -vision 8 8 proper does not begin until line 24, the opening section of the poem consisting 9 9 instead of a storm scene which involves yet another deployment of the Gothic 10 10 motif of the ghostly ‘yell’ (l. 10). The unidentified yell, indeed, provides one 11 11 of the poem’s main unifying themes, since Shelley returns to this same motif 12 12 in his closing lines, revealing that the sound in question is the death-cry of his 13 13 protagonists’ victims: 14 14 15 Bu t t wa t is sweeter to revenge’s e ar 15 16 Than the fell tyrant’s last expiring yell? 16 17 Yes, than love’s sweetest blisses ’tis more dear 17 18 To drink the floatings of a despots knell. 18 19 I wake – ’tis done – ’tis o’er. * * 19 20 * * * * * * * * * 20 21 * * * * * * * * * (ll. 109–15) 21 22 22 23 Whether or not the typographical misalignment that produced the obscene word 23 24 ‘twat’ in the original printing of line 109 was another piece of mischief-making on 24 74 25 Shelley’s part (as Reiman and Fraistat conjecture ), the poem’s ending makes clear 25 26 that its ultimate message is a political one. Even as he spells this out, however, 26 27 Shelley engages in intertextual trickery and subversion. The lines about it being 27 28 ‘sweeter than revenge’s ear’ to ‘drink the floatings of a despot’s knell’, with their 28 29 blunt vindication of tyrannicide, are largely borrowed from Walter Scott’s ballad 29 30 ‘Cadyow Castle’ (from Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border), a safely historical poem 30 31 by an author whose political views were the opposite of Shelley’s. The Shandyesque 31 32 asterisks that form the last two and a half lines are a final act of corrective 32 33 intertextuality: in Shelley’s parodic reworking, Sterne’s famous innuendo device 33 34 becomes ironically redundant, since this outspoken poem has left nothing to the 34 35 imagination, and the dream-vision by now is already ‘o’er’ and ‘done’. 35 36 One last aspect of the poem’s form that deserves comment is its musical 36 dimensionProof – a conventional feature of epithalamia Copy given new visibility here through 37 37 38 the use of capitalized subheadings such as ‘Chorus of Spirits’ and ‘Symphony’ 38 39 39 40 40 73 The echoes are noted in PS I: 118–22. For Moore’s broader influence on Shelley, 41 see Kelvin Everest, ‘Shelley and His Contemporaries’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy 41 42 Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe, with Madeleine Callaghan. 42 43 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 513–29 (pp. 518–21). 43 44 74 CPPBS I: 254–5. 44

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(the latter term used in its early sense, now rare, of an instrumental interlude in 1 1 a vocal composition, as in Stevenson’s settings of the Irish Melodies).75 Editors 2 2 plausibly connect this element with Shelley’s collaboration with Fergus Graham, 3 3 suggesting that the antiphonal songs of Charlotte and Francis may have grown 4 4 out of his experiments in the writing of operatic lyrics.76 As elsewhere in the 1810 5 5 collections, though, Shelley provides a simulacrum of music rather than actual 6 6 music, and the unheard melodies merely throw into relief the steamy love-talk 7 7 and death-cries which are the poem’s dominant sounds. The overall effect of this 8 8 auditory layering is not, as in ‘The Spectral Horseman’, burlesque, but something 9 9 more disquieting. Shelley’s parody of the conventional wedding-song, and of 10 10 the social and religious values it encodes, reinforces rather than undermines the 11 11 poem’s libertarian theme, making this a more powerful political statement than the 12 12 overtly polemical poem (‘Ambition, power, and avarice’) that precedes it. In its 13 13 shifting tonality, its promiscuous intertextuality and its audacious experimentation 14 14 with form and genre, the ‘Epithalamium’ is Shelley’s most artistically complex 15 15 poem to date, and his most purposeful deployment of the poetics of inauthenticity. 16 16 17 17 18 IV 18 19 19 20 Far from being mere pranks or spoofs, then, Original Poetry and Posthumous 20 21 Fragments represent a vital stage in Shelley’s literary development, reflecting 21 22 a fascinating but under-explored phase in the broader culture of Romanticism. 22 23 His next poetry collection, the unpublished ‘Volume of Minor Poems’ of 1813, 23 24 looks in many ways like a repudiation of the artistic values that govern the 1810 24 25 collections. Although prepared for press when he was just 20, the ‘Minor Poems’ 25 26 collection was intended to be a retrospective review of his emotional and creative 26 27 life, published under his own name and assembling representative poems from 27 28 his past and present in order to provide a Wordsworthian ‘picture of the mind’ at 28 29 the different stages of his development.77 Yet, although he includes several other 29 30 poems from 1809–10, there is almost nothing from Original Poetry or Posthumous 30 31 Fragments, as if Shelley were editing these out of the narrative of his life and 31 32 indicating that they were not representative of his output at that date. 32 33 There is one exception, however, and it puts matters in a somewhat different 33 34 light. The poem which begins ‘Cold, cold is the blast when December is howling’, 34 35 dated ‘July 1810’ and entitled ‘Song’ in Original Poetry, is reworked for the 35 36 ‘Minor Poems’ and assigned a new date of ‘1808’, a date which now also forms 36 37 its title.78 ForProof a volume that professes to be anCopy authentic autobiographical record, 37 38 38 39 39 75 See the title cited in note 51 above. 40 40 76 CPPBS I: 252. 41 77 See my ‘“The Casket of my Unknown Mind”: The 1813 Volume of Minor Poems’, 41 42 in The Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 42 43 2009, pp. 41–68 (pp. 61–2). 43 44 78 CPPBS I: 11–13; CPPBS II: 112–14. 44

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this re-dating and re-titling constitute a significant falsification, as do the many 1 1 small verbal changes that Shelley makes to the poem. There is an irony, too, in 2 2 his choosing this particular poem as a picture of his mental state in 1808 because 3 3 we know that in November 1810 he had transcribed it for Hogg and pretended 4 4 it was by Elizabeth in an attempt to promote an intimacy between them.79 This 5 5 piece of reverse plagiarism or forgery – attributing to someone else a composition 6 6 that was really by him – suggests that this poem, rather than being a simple act of 7 7 self-portraiture, was inescapably implicated in the poetics of inauthenticity. It was 8 8 implicated, too, in the poetics of Gothic, as may be inferred from the very first line, 9 9 since when the ‘blasts’ are ‘howling’ (for the ‘Minor Poems’ they are pluralized), 10 10 we can be certain that ghosts are not far behind. And indeed they make their 11 11 appearance in the final stanza, alongside those familiar props, a ‘yelling’ tempest, a 12 12 ‘storm-blasted yew’ and a desolate grave. To note the recurrence of these motifs is 13 13 not to doubt the sincerity of Shelley’s rejection in 1813 of ‘fashionable literature’, 14 14 as he now disparagingly calls it, nor his desire, after entering into correspondence 15 15 with William Godwin, to draw a line under his ‘votary of Romance’ phase (a 16 16 reference to his Gothic novels rather than his engagement with verse romance, 17 17 which was on-going and would shortly result in Queen Mab).80 But the literary 18 18 experiments of 1810 – an adventure in writing and book-making involving every 19 19 kind of transgression, textual, political and legal – had a formative effect on his 20 20 work, the traces of which he could never fully erase. 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 79 For the version presented to Hogg, reprinted in his Life of Shelley, see CPPBS II: 41 42 114–15. The false attribution to Elizabeth is discussed in CPPBS I: 166. 42 43 80 To Thomas Hookham, 2 January 1813; to William Godwin, 10 January 1812 43 44 (Letters I: 348; 227). 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 76 9/11/2015 4:29:24 PM 1 Chapter 4 1 2 2 3 The Notes to Queen Mab and 3 4 Shelley’s Spinozism 4 5 5 6 6 7 Timothy Morton 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 This essay considers the notes to Queen Mab as a sequence unto themselves. 11 12 The poem after all is called Queen Mab; A Philosophical Poem: with Notes. So 12 13 richly allusive and so replete with citations are these notes that most scholars have 13 14 helpfully waded through their apparatus, providing notes to the notes, in effect. 14 15 Not many have looked at them directly, and almost none have considered them as 15 16 a complete sequence. 16 17 Reading the notes as a coherent text produces all kinds of resonances, a dance 17 18 of thinking which Shelley orchestrated by deliberately placing them at the end of 18 19 the edition he oversaw. I suggest we look at them almost as a separate work, well 19 20 worth reading on their own, even without reference to the poem they shadow and 20 21 enrich with vast, strange and terrifying depths and incisive political passion. 21 22 From the first paragraph of Note 1 on the speed of light (and its wavelike and 22 23 particle-like qualities), to the last, concerning vegetarianism, the notes still seem 23 24 to have been written in our future and to have been beamed back into the present. 24 25 Shelley’s hypothesis in ‘A Defence of Poetry’ that ‘We want the creative faculty to 25 26 imagine that which we know’ is given a run for its money here, demonstrating the 26 27 ‘knowledge’ on the basis of which Queen Mab does the ‘imagining’.1 And what 27 28 knowledge. Extraordinarily, Shelley was only 19 when he started writing Queen 28 29 Mab and 21 when he published it. He wrote the 17 notes after the main body of the 29 30 text, from December 1812 onwards. To write the notes last is to suggest ongoing 30 31 conversations and thoughts in progress. 31 32 By adding notes to an already vast and complex poem, Shelley joins poets 32 33 such as Robert Southey and Erasmus Darwin, whose Botanic Garden is furnished 33 34 with ‘Philosophical Notes’. Indeed, the full subtitle (‘A Poem. With Philosophical 34 35 Notes’) is almost identical to Shelley’s, the only difference being Shelley’s calling 35 36 the poem, not the notes, ‘Philosophical’.2 The length of such poems and their 36 37 Proof Copy 37 annotation resists the iconographic, monolithic readings that are easy to teach in 38 schools and universities. Such readings rely on short, highly metaphorical, vivid 38 39 poems that can be read in the span of an hour. Shelley’s text thought-provokingly 39 40 resists fixating on single, vivid images and instead encourages colossal leaps of 40 41 thought and grand sweeps of imagery. The imagination at work is Neoplatonic 41 42 42 43 1 SPP: 530. 43 44 2 The Botanic Garden; a Poem, in Two Parts. London: Printed for J. Johnson, 1790–91. 44

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or Kantian, zooming far, far out into the Universe and away from the supposed 1 1 singularity of the present moment. This zoom provides the place from which one 2 2 could move the Earth, as the epigraph from Archimedes puts it.3 3 3 As a separate work, we may read the notes not as part of the poem, but rather 4 4 as coordinated with the poem. The coordination of poetry and notes is a stunning 5 5 example of constructivist form. Constructivism, associated with revolutionary 6 6 Soviet art, may also apply to one strand of Romantic and post-Romantic poetic 7 7 practice, in particular practice having to do with avant-garde attempts to change 8 8 society through art. Constructivism views the poem as a mental architecture, a 9 9 construct, an open scaffolding for thinking. It is supposed to elude our grasp, to be 10 10 bigger than us – hence the use of long lineation (think of Whitman) and long forms, 11 11 such as blank verse paragraphs, and annotation. We cannot take in constructivist 12 12 form all at once, a syndrome that opens our cognitive powers. The poem becomes 13 13 a sort of operating software for politics. It might not tell you exactly what to 14 14 think (though Queen Mab is very much in the business of telling you so); rather it 15 15 shows you how to think. It performs the Copernican spadework of wrenching our 16 16 localized, embedded, imprisoned mind into a vaster, more unsettling frame. 17 17 Shelley’s disorientation tactic announces itself as such, like Kant’s self- 18 18 proclaimed ‘Copernican’ revolution in Critique of Pure Reason.4 But in a 19 19 significant way it is more Copernican than Kant, who restricts philosophy to the 20 20 correlation between human and world. Shelley resolutely tries to push human 21 21 thinking outside its oppressive bonds, outside human domination of nonhumans, 22 22 outside Earth, even outside the Solar System. 23 23 The constructivist frame undermines so-called common sense. The Neoplatonic 24 24 quality of Queen Mab – the fairy Mab whisks the soul of the sleeping Ianthe away 25 25 to the brilliant edge of the Universe in a magical spacecraft, about as far away 26 26 from the world of earthbound shadows as possible – is an objective correlative 27 27 for the constructivist form of the poem at large. The otherworldly psychedelic 28 28 imagery is curiously congruent with the poem’s scientific and rationalist view. 29 29 It serves a function in a world where common sense tells you to join the Church 30 30 and King mob and destroy Joseph Priestley’s house. Common sense, which in 31 31 Humean fashion Shelley calls custom, has a lot to answer for. (On this theme, 32 32 Shelley’s notes on feminism and vegetarianism are of especial interest.) In the age 33 33 of Galileo and Copernicus, common sense informed one that the Sun revolved 34 34 around Earth once a day. Now consider the astonishing impact of Note 1: ‘Light 35 35 consists either of vibrations propagated through a subtle medium, or of numerous 36 36 minute particlesProof repelled in all directions from Copy the luminous body.’5 Shelley even- 37 37 handedly allows the competing theories of Newton (corpuscular) and Huygens- 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 3 CPPBS II: 163. 41 42 4 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith. Boston and 42 43 New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1965, p. 22. 43 44 5 CPPBS II: 239. 44

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Fresnel (wave). The speed of light, while not yet known in the Einsteinian sense, 1 1 evokes a defamiliarizing temporality and spatiality. 2 2 The Romantic period was the heyday of what David Simpson calls ‘the 3 3 encyclopedic long poem’, a lost genre that has ‘geopolitical’ valences.6 Charlotte 4 4 Smith’s Beachy Head provides a startling counter to the contemplative blank verse 5 5 in a sequence of notes that offer Latin names for plants and numerous accounts of 6 6 historical interest on places and features explored in the poem. Robert Southey’s 7 7 Thalaba, of which Shelley was a fan, sets a precedent for the disturbing, mind- 8 8 opening use of extensive notes. Peacock’s Palmyra (1806) and The Genius of the 9 9 Thames (1810) are also precedents with which Shelley was familiar. The long 10 10 annotated poem disrupts the absorption and fixation poetry might generate.7 Queen 11 11 Mab’s blank verse is the most open form possible before Whitman and Mallarmé, 12 12 since five (in the sense of five stresses per line) is the lowest prime number that is 13 13 not immediately tight and symmetrical to the human ear. But the notes expand this 14 14 already open form. Eyes and fingers must move and work across pages or up and 15 15 down a single page to piece the text together. As Simpson writes: 16 16 17 What is a footnote? Above all … it is a demand or an invitation to lift our eyes 17 18 off the page, to disturb the contemplative spell that good poetry weaves around 18 19 us as we read, and to look outside a main text … for significant information. It 19 20 is … having to do with the movements of the body and the persistence of the 20 21 attention span, a technique of estrangement even as it can promise to render 21 22 something more familiar and more assured in its pedigree or provenance. It 22 23 sends us elsewhere, without really settling in advance what we will find when 23 24 we go there. It threatens the uncanny even as it may actually deliver nothing 24 8 25 more alarming than a title and a page number. 25 26 26 Shelley employs the still more drastic form of endnotes. Placing the notes at the 27 27 end of the official edition, he compels the reader to operate the text, to splay it 28 28 open, to shuffle back and forth, to dismantle the potentially hypnotic power of 29 29 rhythm and rhyme. It is a miniature exercise in liberation. Reading becomes an 30 30 act of encounter and participation, an act that Shelley would have known to be 31 31 political on many levels. 32 32 This is a republican (small r) aesthetic with which Henry James was also 33 33 familiar. By operating the complex machine of the annotated poem, readers are 34 34 not simply educating themselves. They are participating in creation, a fact that 35 35 any maker of hypertext or interactive CDs and DVDs knows. The text becomes an 36 36 open-ended object the reader must orchestrate, more like architecture than poetry. 37 Proof Copy 37 One has to stroll through it, unable to take the structure in as a whole at any one 38 38 39 39 40 40 6 David Simpson, ‘Small Print’ (unpublished work in progress). 41 7 See Lawrence Lipking, ‘The Marginal Gloss’. Critical Inquiry 3.4 (Summer 1977), 41 42 pp. 609–55; Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History. Cambridge: Harvard 42 43 University Press, 1999. 43 44 8 Simpson, ‘Small Print’. 44

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moment. Some of Shelley’s notes themselves have notes, such as the seventeenth 1 1 and final note on vegetarianism. These notes-within-notes provide yet another 2 2 dimension of hypertextual openness. 3 3 Throughout his authorized edition of Queen Mab, Shelley places indicator 4 4 hands, eight in all. These hands, as Neil Fraistat has argued, send the reader on 5 5 a number of puzzling and at times hilarious wild-goose chases, since in the days 6 6 of dangerous radical publication, indicator hands often anonymously referred to 7 7 another compositor’s work. With the fake hands, Shelley deflects attention from 8 8 himself, but also draws attention to the radical underground and to the political 9 9 oppression that creates the need for an underground.9 Shelley knows that the notes 10 10 present a sort of machine for thinking, and the hands exist to entice and vex a 11 11 thoughtful reader. They introduce a layer of play. Despite the obvious playfulness 12 12 of the title, the wicked humour of Queen Mab is often missed. 13 13 Precisely because poems are written in shifting, liquid figurative language, 14 14 they contain reserves of meaning and pleasure that might not yet have occurred 15 15 to us. Why else read poems, anyway? Shelley’s genius was to make the poem and 16 16 its notes into a message in a bottle from a future, more enlightened age. The well- 17 17 educated person whom Shelley imagined reading it, perhaps a young adult, would 18 18 eventually reach the notes and rediscover the poem’s meanings in a nitty gritty, 19 19 scientifically detailed way. The poem would have prepared her or him by opening 20 20 up the mind and making it receptive to new information. Thus the poem is always 21 21 reaching into the future, whether it is the rather proximate future of the moment at 22 22 which the reader comes to the endnotes, or the final utopia glimpsed in the closing 23 23 ninth section, or indeed the future of more mundane political projects that might 24 24 seek to embody some of the poem’s revolutionary energy on Earth, as per the 25 25 instructions in Part IX: ‘O happy Earth! Reality of heaven!’ (IX, 1). 26 26 The forward-flowing torrent of prose keeps on pouring out of the end of the 27 27 text, defying closure. There are 17 notes, with addenda in Latin and Greek, and 28 28 they stand alone as polished essays in their own right. Note 17 (on vegetarianism) 29 29 and Note 13 (on atheism) were published separately and slightly differently as A 30 30 Vindication of Natural Diet and The Necessity of Atheism, the former around the 31 31 time of the poem’s publication, the latter published in 1811 (the circumstances of 32 32 its publication famously resulting in Shelley’s expulsion from Oxford). Scholars 33 33 argue that Shelley’s later work was more developed or mature, somehow, and by 34 34 implication or explicitly relegate Queen Mab (let alone the notes) to the place 35 35 given it in the Oxford Standard Authors edition – juvenilia.10 36 36 Who, Proofon average, changes that much betweenCopy the ages of 19 and 30 (when 37 37 Shelley drowned)? The brilliance of Shelley’s first masterpiece ensured that its 38 38 tropes and topics were elaborated and repeated throughout his all too brief life. The 39 39 40 40 41 9 Neil Fraistat, ‘The Material Shelley: Who Gets the Finger in Queen Mab?’ 41 42 Wordsworth Circle 33 (2002), pp. 33–6. 42 43 10 The definitive refutation of this category has been given by Timothy Webb,in 43 44 ‘Shelley’s Editorial Due’. Text 16 (2006), pp. 207–8. 44

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later work is perhaps more delicately nuanced. But everything in the later work 1 1 is here, from carefully worked-out literary topics to sequences of philosophical 2 2 thinking on a variety of themes that would preoccupy Shelley for the rest of his 3 3 life: the physical Universe and the human place in it, politics and the state, gender 4 4 and sexuality, God and religion, diet and ethics. And over all hangs the spectre of 5 5 Spinoza. 6 6 7 7 8 Shelley’s Spinozism 8 9 9 10 Fully to understand Shelley’s materialism and atheism, and politics, is to 10 11 engage with his deep intuition that Spinoza was the one single most important 11 12 philosopher of the modern age. Shelley’s allegiance puts in perspective his rather 12 13 uncompromising remarks about Judaism, which some interpret as anti-Semitism. 13 14 As Rachel Goldstein writes concerning Spinoza, ‘what can be more characteristic 14 15 of a Jewish thinker than to use the Jewish experience as a conduit to universality?’11 15 16 It was indeed Spinoza whose work inaugurated the radical Enlightenment, the 16 17 somewhat underground, often risky and even life-threatening world of texts, 17 18 friendships and communities that sought freedom from oppressive ideologies 18 19 such as monarchism and theism, both upgraded but still basically hailing from 19 20 the Bronze Age. Jonathan Israel has charted the long history of engagements with 20 21 Spinoza, from the more theistic thought of Leibniz (also present in Queen Mab) to 21 22 the materialism of Holbach (present as well).12 22 23 It is to Spinoza that the finely tuned poetry speaks when it tells of the Universe 23 24 from a perspective vast enough to see it as something like a gigantic substance, 24 25 infinitesimally variegated and colourful, rippling with life and energy. To see the 25 26 Universe like this is to begin to see it, as Spinoza himself might write, sub specie 26 27 aeternitatis, with a due sense of its ‘necessity’ (one of the poem’s favourite terms).13 27 28 Spinoza receives special treatment in the notes, including direct citation. There is 28 29 strong evidence that Shelley maintained his interest in Spinoza throughout his life, 29 30 translating him not only in 1817, but also in 1820, and again in 1821.14 Shelley’s 30 31 excitement about Spinoza equalled his enthusiasm for Plato. 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 11 Rebecca Goldstein, Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity. 35 36 New York: Random House, 2009, p. 178. 36 12 37 In RadicalProof Enlightenment: Philosophy andCopy the Making of Modernity 1650–1750 . 37 38 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. See also Charly Coleman, ‘Spinoza’s Ghost’ 38 in The Virtues of Abandon: An Anti-Individualist History of the French Enlightenment, 39 39 Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014, pp. 125–58. This book, which discusses the link 40 40 between Holbach and Spinoza, questions Israel’s formulation of a ‘radical’ Enlightenment, 41 suggesting that matters were more complex than he suggests. 41 42 13 Spinoza uses the phrase in Ethics, trans. Edwin Curley. London: Penguin, 2005, 42 43 p. xii. 43 44 14 MS Journals: 182–4, 383 n. 1. 44

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What we are dealing with in Shelley’s Spinozism is becoming more 1 1 widespread as science begins fully to grasp the implications of quantum theory 2 2 and relativity, and materialisms of all kinds (Marxism included) begin a long 3 3 and difficult process of backing away from the mechanistic Newtonian view of 4 4 matter as little solid ping pong ball–like objects, externally related to one another 5 5 in an absolute spacetime, a box with uniform sides. Shelley’s Spinozism is an 6 6 expanded materialism that finds little difference between matter and information: 7 7 ‘the minutest atom comprehends / A world of loves and hatreds’ (IV, 145–6). Thus 8 8 there appears a flowing welter of energies and forms at the edge of the Universe – 9 9 how strangely like the microwave background radiation that modern instruments 10 10 can now analyze are these ‘glittering billows’ and ‘light and crimson mists’ (II, 11 11 44, 47). 12 12 So many Spinozan terms, so little time – harmony, necessity, superstition 13 13 for instance – but ‘necessity’ is the one term that makes itself most prominently 14 14 felt. Take a look at , with its extraordinary opening: ‘The everlasting 15 15 universe of things / Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves’ (ll. 1–2). 16 16 Notice how ‘things’ and ‘mind’ interpenetrate, for in a Spinozist universe, there is 17 17 no fundamental difference. Notice also the ‘flow’ and the rolling, evidently ways 18 18 for Shelley to pay homage to Wordsworth’s pantheist (and thus Spinozist) passage 19 19 in Tintern Abbey (‘A motion and a spirit … [that] rolls through all things’, ll. 20 20 100–102). Steven Shaviro has recently reclaimed Mont Blanc for a speculative, 21 21 Spinozist realism that shows how much nonhuman entities possess an agency and 22 22 a sentience that is all their own.15 Marjorie Levinson’s groundbreaking essay on 23 23 Spinoza in Romanticism demonstrates how influential he was in the Romantic 24 24 period in general.16 25 25 26 26 27 Notes 1 and 2 27 28 28 29 The first two notes concern the speed of light and ‘The plurality of worlds’: ‘the 29 30 indefinite immensity of the Universe is a most awful subject of contemplation.’17 30 31 Without warning, the notes eject us from Earth and put us close to Sirius, which 31 32 ‘is supposed to be at least 54, 224, 000, 000, 000 miles from the earth’.18 The 32 33 mathematical real is upon us. Such a vast number is rather humiliating. Infinity 33 34 in a sense is easier than this very large finitude. This is a Spinozan universe, 34 35 an ‘infinite machine’ of ‘Millions and millions of suns’ that extends far beyond 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 15 Steven Shaviro, ‘The Universe of Things’, in Object-Oriented Ontology, eds Levi 39 39 Bryant and Ian Bogost (Open Humanities Press, forthcoming). Also available at shaviro. 40 40 com. 41 16 ‘A Motion and a Spirit: Romancing Spinoza’. Studies in Romanticism 46.2 (Winter 41 42 2007), pp. 367–408. 42 43 17 CPPBS II: 239. 43 44 18 CPPBS II: 240. 44

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the human realm.19 If it exists (the neuter deliberately evokes the impersonality 1 1 Shelley and Spinoza see in the concept of god), the god of such a universe – the 2 2 god that for Spinoza is the universe as such – cannot be a local deity, an old man 3 3 with a beard or a petty vindictive tyrant. Impersonality does not mean the universe 4 4 is insensible. It means that the guiding forces of the universe are not human. Hence 5 5 Shelley’s harsh words on ‘the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews’ and 6 6 the ‘miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor’: against scientific 7 7 ‘knowledge of the stars’, claims to universality based on ethnicity ring hollow.20 8 8 The extraordinary sentence, ‘the work of his fingers have borne witness against 9 9 him’, evokes the self-contradictoriness of God, as if it were constantly undoing 10 10 what it had woven, and had forged botched creations. As if God’s fingers were 11 11 acting independently of its mind – which would of course be impossible if God 12 12 were omnipotent. The sentence is allusive to the Bible (‘borne witness against’ 13 13 rings Biblical) but to no passage in particular, as if Shelley were adding his own 14 14 serpentine, gnostic apocryphon to the Bible’s normative text. 15 15 The evocative language about light lays competing theories side by side, 16 16 perhaps through the influence of the well-written entry on light in volume 4 of 17 17 William Nicholson’s Encyclopedia.21 We saw earlier that for Newton, light is a 18 18 corpuscular particle, while for Huygens and Fresnel, it appears as a wave. Shelley’s 19 19 reluctance to choose between these theories now looks insightful. 20 20 21 21 22 Note 3 22 23 23 24 Given the hollowness of human power against this vast backdrop, Note 3 assaults 24 25 it through ridicule. Soldiery is mocked as the policing of state authority: ‘a soldier 25 26 is, of all the descriptions of men, the most completely a machine.’22 Soldiers are 26 27 puppets of power, swaggering with the force of external authority, absurd and 27 28 menacing at the same time.23 The harmonious operation of the machinery of the 28 29 Universe puts the machinery of the state to shame. In quick succession human 29 30 society becomes a mummery (the travesty of religion), a puppet show, and then, 30 31 as if to perform something like mummery or puppetry, an allegorical dialogue in 31 32 verse between Falsehood and Vice closes out the third note. Shelley meshes his 32 33 prose with a quotation from Godwin. 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 19 CPPBS II: 240. 39 39 20 CPPBS II: 240. 40 40 21 William Nicholson, The British Encyclopedia, or Dictionary of Arts and Sciences; 41 Comprising an Accurate and Popular View of the Present Improved State of Human 41 42 Knowledge. 6 vols. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1809, vol. 4, pp. 1–15. 42 43 22 CPPBS II: 241. 43 44 23 CPPBS II: 241. 44

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Notes 4 and 5 1 1 2 The fourth note is a straight quotation from Ecclesiastes, one of the most 2 3 contemplative texts of Judaeo-Christian scripture. Is this one of the works of 3 4 God’s ‘fingers’ that Shelley so deftly indexes in the prior note? (And on that point, 4 5 we might wonder whether the typographical fingers to nowhere that pepper the 5 6 first edition of Queen Mab allude mockingly to the nonexistent or incompetent 6 7 fingers of God.) 7 8 Shelley seems to have excerpted this text precisely for what it fails to say – 8 9 that God is a person, or unique to humans, or to a certain group of humans. The 9 10 quotation is about impermanence, and could be found in any number of religions, 10 11 including nontheistic Buddhism. There are no people in the quotation, unless 11 12 ‘generation’ is taken figuratively to mean a cohort of related human families. The 12 13 final image of rivers running to the ocean is a suitably Spinozan, monistic image 13 14 of a single source, ‘the place whence the rivers come’.24 Shelley erases pampered 14 15 human individuality and uniqueness. 15 16 Note 5 continues this theme, quoting from The Iliad about human generations 16 17 as myriad leaves growing from and falling from trees. Notes 4 and 5 perform a 17 18 cross-cultural syncretic reading of the vanity of human wishes (as Ecclesiastes 18 19 and Samuel Johnson put it); a decisive placement of the human amidst vast 19 20 physical phenomena (biology and the water cycle); a deliberate, persistent elision 20 21 of polytheistic and monotheistic sources; and an elegiac emphasis on human 21 22 mortality. This final emphasis is one way Shelley can signal his radical atheism. 22 23 For him, there is no transcendent being that escapes death and impermanence.25 23 24 Shelley’s choice of Homer displays his subtle understanding of the importance 24 25 of the Greek verb phuein (from which English derives words such as physics): in 25 26 context this means something like ‘emergence’ or ‘arising’ – quite a Spinozan way 26 27 of thinking about birth and death, arising from and falling back into something, 27 28 like the water cycle in the previous note. The ‘leaves on a tree’ and ‘rivers into the 28 29 ocean’ images are repeated in this part of the poem in which the emotions are said 29 30 to ‘variegate the eternal universe’ – like the colours of a leaf (IV, 150). A certain 30 31 ecological imagination is at work here. The thorough immanence of Shelley’s 31 32 materialism allows him to be a panpsychist, to claim in all honesty that ‘Every 32 33 grain / Is sentient both in unity and part’ (IV, 143–4). Alfred North Whitehead, a 33 34 fan of Mont Blanc, advocated a form of panpsychism, and this view is beginning 34 35 to be taken seriously again, having been seen as absurd in the twentieth century, 35 36 the era of Proofthe death of metaphysics. Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 24 CPPBS II: 246. 42 43 25 Shelley here anticipates the recent arguments in Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: 43 44 Derrida and the Time of Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 44

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Note 6 1 1 2 Vast imagery that sees body and mind as a single continuum, like leaves on a 2 3 tree, is brought into sharp philosophical focus in Note 6. The note is a quotation 3 4 from Lucretius that acidly underscores the line in the poem about ‘The mob of 4 5 peasants, nobles, priests, and kings’ (V, 58). Lucretius transmitted the teachings of 5 6 Democritus and Epicurus to Latin readers, keeping alive a tradition of materialism 6 7 that ran underground until Shelley’s beloved Holbach and others revived it in 7 8 the French Enlightenment.26 In the quotation, Lucretius describes the pleasures 8 9 of philosophy, which he holds capable of rescuing us from the stormy waves of 9 10 mortal suffering and strife. 10 11 The imagery of seeing a storm at sea from afar resonates with the oceanic and 11 12 emergence imagery of the preceding two notes, and with the cosmic viewpoint of 12 13 Mab and Ianthe. At the same time, the quotation talks to the poem that at this point 13 14 is busy depicting feudal oppression as a kind of turbulence, a ‘mob’ that the note 14 15 reads as a violent storm. By moving from the poem to the note, the reader performs 15 16 what the quotation promises concerning philosophy – reaching out beyond human 16 17 antagonism towards a safe harbour in which to reflect on it, just like Mab and 17 18 Ianthe. Yet by talking to the previous notes, the quotation also contributes to the 18 19 imagery of monism and emergent life, the ocean of stars that constitute the Milky 19 20 Way making humans appear as tiny ripples on its surface: ‘That which appears 20 21 only like a thin and silvery cloud streaking from heaven, is in effect composed 21 22 of innumerable clusters of suns, each shining with its own light, and illuminating 22 23 numbers of planets that revolve around them.’27 23 24 As well as balancing the frenzied mob back in the poem, the Lucretius quotation 24 25 in Note 6 provides a breather. Such multilayered contrapuntal effects stem from 25 26 Shelley’s embrace of a hypertextual form in which we can read in at least two 26 27 dimensions simultaneously: up and down (into and out of the poem) and back and 27 28 forth (between the notes). And what a good guess about exoplanets. Twenty-first- 28 29 century astronomy is now able to confirm what Shelley posited with the aid of a bit 29 30 of Milton and some spiritual-political pluck. Only Milton’s Raphael had spoken 30 31 so explicitly in English verse on the existence of planets beyond the Solar System 31 32 (Paradise Lost VII, 617–25; VIII, 40–158). Giordano Bruno, a possible source for 32 33 Shelley’s thinking along with Spinoza, was after all burned at the stake for such 33 34 statements, and although the source deployed here is more explicit than the verse, 34 35 Nicholson’s Encyclopedia was able to dampen the intensity of the thought, which 35 36 the pulsation of poetry can only make more vivid.28 In all this internationalism, and 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 26 See Hugh Roberts, Shelley and the Chaos of History: A New Politics of Poetry. 40 40 University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997, pp. 412–17. 41 27 CPPBS II: 240. 41 42 28 See Nora Crook and Derek Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: 42 43 Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 163: both Spinoza and Bruno are likely candidates 43 44 for thinking about (intelligent) life on other planets. 44

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indeed interplanetary-ism, we glimpse some reasons why Shelley’s relationship 1 1 with mainstream ‘Englishness’ has been so vexed. 2 2 3 3 4 Notes 7–10 4 5 5 6 These notes are concerned with social issues: labour, religion, marriage. Shelley’s 6 7 overarching emphasis in this sequence is on unnaturalness or distortion. Workers 7 8 are exploited unfairly; religion drives you mad; marriage binds together the 8 9 unloving. Shelley cleaves to Godwinian anarchism in his critique of institutions on 9 10 the basis of their unjust restrictions on human freedom. His argument is empiricist. 10 11 Not all people are empirically equal: ‘I will not insult common sense by insisting 11 12 on the doctrine of the natural equality of man.’29 The doctrine is transcendental: 12 13 people have inalienable equality simply from being people, not because of their 13 14 empirical qualities. Shelley’s rejection of the doctrine accords with his monist 14 15 materialism: ability is a matter of more and less, not of kind but of degree. Workers 15 16 are over-worked, not structurally, fundamentally exploited. For a physical problem 16 17 Shelley offers an empirical solution: make everyone work two hours a day.30 17 18 The way religion can drive a person crazy is also an empirical matter: ‘every 18 19 physician’ will have access to a case ‘parallel’ to the one he discusses, of ‘a lady 19 20 of considerable accomplishments … whom the Christian religion has goaded to 20 21 incurable insanity’ (Note 8).31 Lucretius warns the reader in Latin that the threat of 21 22 death and hell will drive people to betray their parents, friends and country. 22 23 Religion, marriage and habits of labour – I hesitate to say class since Shelley 23 24 studiously avoids the word – are seen as vast presences that loom over people. 24 25 Prostitution is seen as a social symptom, a scapegoat profession that is the flip 25 26 side of rigid marriage laws. The digression on the ‘state of society’ and the 26 27 ‘morality’ of religion interweaves these elements into the argument (Note 9).32 The 27 28 backwardness of modern society is measured against the Lucretian eudaemonism 28 29 of ‘happiness, the sole end of the science of ethics’. We recall the injunction to 29 30 Ianthe, ‘Learn to make others happy’ (II, 64), an injunction whose lack of gender 30 31 specificity is surely congruent with the pro-feminism of this note. 31 32 In accord with the disorienting vastness of Queen Mab, Note 10 propels us 32 33 again from the immediate human sphere into the far future. Laplace, Cabanis and 33 34 Bailly provide Shelley with a curious form of geological utopianism, a sort of 34 35 secular account of fall and redemption. The Earth will gradually cease to tilt on 35 36 its axis, andProof this will accord with ‘the progress Copy of the intellect’ or ‘the moral and 36 37 physical improvement of the human species’. Shelley cites evidence of changing 37 38 terrestrial climates, such as ‘Bones of animals peculiar to the torrid zone … found 38 39 in the north of Siberia’ and evidence of climate change in Britain, Germany and 39 40 40 41 29 CPPBS II: 249. 41 42 30 CPPBS II: 250–51. 42 43 31 CPPBS II: 251. 43 44 32 CPPBS II: 252. 44

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France (they were ‘much colder than at present’).33 Whatever we may now think 1 1 of this theory, it is evident that this note is another performance of displacement, 2 2 of opening up human coexistence to the vast objects and processes in which it 3 3 unfolds. (Contemporary global warming theory does allow for shifts in the axis of 4 4 Earth – though not all for the good.) 5 5 6 6 7 Note 11 7 8 8 9 Note 11 jumps from macro to micro, as Shelley quotes Holbach’s Système de la 9 10 nature.34 Holbach uses atomic turbulence as an analogy for revolution. Holbach 10 11 is playing with Spinozan necessity. For Spinoza, randomness is only a sort of 11 12 perspective trick. There is no true randomness, only higher levels of order. It is a 12 13 complex order, filled with material ‘turbulence’ as the poetry to which this note 13 14 is affixed puts it (VI, 171–3). But it is an order nonetheless, one with which old 14 15 thinking and old hierarchies cannot deal. Revolutionary action is seen by analogy 15 16 as the Lucretian swirling of dust particles (‘un tourbillon de poussière’), a perfectly 16 17 regular function of matter. If we could only see it sub specie aeternitatis, we would 17 18 see that the fervid boiling of mobs and executions and war has as much necessity 18 19 and logic to it as a square peg fitting into a square hole. Thus Shelley brilliantly 19 20 intertwines the two major themes of the notes to Queen Mab: human society and 20 21 cosmological order. 21 22 The employment of French in this note, as elsewhere Shelley uses Greek and 22 23 Latin, serves to make multilingualism analogous to cosmic displacement. The 23 24 reader is forced to dissolve the barriers of her or his parochialism. 24 25 25 26 26 27 Note 12 27 28 28 Thus we proceed smoothly to Note 12, which explores the notion of necessity 29 29 on which cosmological order depends. Shelley can now reference ‘the moral and 30 30 material universe’ in one breath. The phrase works, since by this point those two 31 31 terms have become coordinated: a Spinozan mingling. This passage, for instance, 32 32 could have come straight from Spinoza’s Ethics: 33 33 34 The conviction which all feel, that a viper is a poisonous animal, and that a 34 35 tyger is constrained, by the inevitable condition of his existence, to devour men, 35 36 does not induce us to avoid them less sedulously, or, even more, to hesitate in 36 37 destroyingProof them: but he would surely be of Copya hard heart, who, meeting with a 37 38 serpent on a desart island, or in a situation where it was incapable of injury, 38 39 should wantonly deprive it of existence. A Necessitarian is inconsequent to his 39 40 own principles, if he indulges in hatred or contempt; the compassion which he 40 41 feels for the criminal is unmixed with a desire of injuring him: he looks with 41 42 42 43 33 CPPBS, II: 256. 43 44 34 CPPBS II: 257–8. 44

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an elevated and dreadless composure upon the links of the universal chain … 1 1 whilst cowardice, curiosity and inconsistency only assail him in proportion to 2 the feebleness and indistinctness with which he has perceived and rejected the 2 3 delusions of free-will.35 3 4 4 5 The enmity we feel towards ‘dangerous’ animals is contextual, not an inevitable 5 6 result of some intrinsic nature. The more one knows that reality is a contextual affair, 6 7 the more one can be open and compassionate. Since there is no transcendental, 7 8 metaphysical evil, only confusion and suffering, one can love one’s enemies as 8 9 the New Testament enjoins, without what Shelley would have considered to be 9 10 superstitious beliefs. An Islamic story concludes the note, presenting us, within 10 11 an Abrahamic religion, with a ‘fifty thousand years’ span of time before Adam 11 12 was created to sin. How, asks Adam, can Moses (his interlocutor) accuse him of 12 13 sinning of his own accord? The stage is set for Note 13, in which Shelley brings 13 14 out the heavy guns of atheism. Shelley is implicating God in the sin of Adam and 14 15 the birth of ‘evil’, insofar as it can be said to exist, which for a Spinozan only 15 16 means confusion rather than some ontological condition. 16 17 ‘The delusions of free-will’: it is a striking phrase, and a Spinozan one. Shelley 17 18 replaces free will with ‘motives’, which sounds much more like the impelling force 18 19 of Spinoza’s conatus: for Spinoza, a term that means striving and that sometimes 19 20 indicates what we mean by desire, such that rigid distinctions between living and 20 21 nonliving, sentient and nonsentient, seem to waver. One of the delusions of free 21 22 will is that only humans have something like it. Conatus, by contrast, is in effect in 22 23 spoons and tigers and galaxies as much as in humans. The freedom of the free will 23 24 is, sub specie aeternitatis, a ‘delusion’. By no means does this suggest that there is 24 25 no will at all, or that everything is pre-programmed. It is simply that from a wide 25 26 enough perspective, there are not free agents acting on unfree ones, but instead a 26 27 push–pull of forces in a vast system. 27 28 The free will problem also relates to Shelley’s Humean thoughts about 28 29 empathy and imagination, modulated through Dugald Stewart.36 In this sense, free 29 30 will is overrated: we make ethical decisions because we feel along with those who 30 31 suffer, not because we decide to condescend to help them from the VIP lounge 31 32 of absolute freedom. Shelley’s hymn to necessity in the poem is to a female, not 32 33 a patriarch: ‘Necessity! thou mother of the world!’ (VI, 199). The material bond 33 34 between mother and child speaks to this lack of condescension. Necessity is as 34 35 it were the world’s matrix (‘mother’) in whose substance we all find ourselves, 35 36 without metaphysicalProof hierarchies. Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 35 CPPBS II: 261. 42 43 36 Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. London: Strahan, 43 44 Cadell and Creech, 1792, p. 247. 44

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Note 13 1 1 2 With cosmic vastness, the first paragraph of Note 13 picks up on the implications 2 3 of the previous note: ‘This negation [of theism] must be understood solely to affect 3 4 a creative Deity. The hypothesis of a pervading Spirit coeternal with the universe, 4 5 remains unshaken.’37 Spinoza lives. Indeed, Shelley appends a rich slice of his 5 6 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus at the end of a group of citations (Holbach, Pliny). 6 7 Note 13 is substantially The Necessity of Atheism. Shelley’s refusal to 7 8 answer questions about it got him expelled from Oxford after he had displayed 8 9 it prominently in the bookstore and sent it to the university authorities. Shelley 9 10 begins his argument with epistemology. Instead of looking at the existence of God, 10 11 we should first study the nature of belief.H ow and in what sense do we believe in 11 12 God? The weaponry of Kantianism – its ‘Copernican’ turn towards the mind and 12 13 away from supposed things in themselves – is brought to bear. Kant provides the 13 14 deep reason for Hume’s demolishing of causality theories. Hume had argued that 14 15 what reason has to go on in thinking cause and effect is only statistical correlation. 15 16 The underlying reason for that, argued Kant, was that we only know phenomena, 16 17 not things in themselves. In this sense, belief in a god is simply a phenomenon, 17 18 one that bears no necessary relation to an actual god. In preparing for the essay, 18 19 Shelley probably filtered Kant through William Drummond and Dugald Stewart.38 19 20 The appendices, added for the notes to Queen Mab and consisting of Holbach, 20 21 Pliny and Spinoza, back up this line of thinking with less recent authorities. 21 22 It would be tempting to read these appendices as a historical return to the 22 23 source of radical Enlightenment, Spinoza himself. Spinoza’s Latin leaves us where 23 24 we began, with a divine universe (or only a universe, without divinity, depending 24 25 on how one reads it). Shelley’s Spinoza argues that God is wheeled on like a deus 25 26 ex machina to make sense of those parts of the universe that humans fail yet to 26 27 understand.39 Since ‘the power of nature is the power of God’, to bring in God to 27 28 explain things only means ‘we are unacquainted with [their] natural cause’, which 28 29 is precisely and paradoxically ‘the power of God’.40 One hardly notices the teasing 29 30 sleight of hand with which God’s status is radically diminished here – God just is 30 31 reality, so there is no need for (separate, gendered) God. 31 32 The Spinozan theme sounds at several points in the note, but perhaps nowhere 32 33 as resoundingly as in the second reason for questioning evidence for the existence 33 34 of a deity: ‘whatever is not eternal must have had a cause … it is necessary to 34 35 prove that [the universe] was created: until this is clearly demonstrated, we may 35 36 reasonably suppose that it has endured from all eternity. We must prove design 36 37 Proof41 Copy 37 before we can infer a designer.’ The sureness with which Shelley breaks the 38 38 39 39 37 CPPBS II: 263. 40 40 38 William Drummond, Academical Questions. London: Cadell and Davies, 1805; 41 Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 41 42 39 CPPBS II: 277. 42 43 40 CPPBS II: 277, my translation. 43 44 41 CPPBS II: 265. 44

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argument from design down to Creationism is remarkable, a point not lost in an 1 1 age of atheist biology (Richard Dawkins) that regularly presses on the notion of 2 2 design. Hume is equally in play with Spinoza: Hume’s posthumous work moves 3 3 towards similar conclusions concerning atheism and design. 4 4 The arc-like structure of Note 13, with its feet in Spinoza, announces that it’s 5 5 something very special in the sequence: the very zenith of the notes considered 6 6 as a through-composed form. All the previous ones can be read as steps towards 7 7 this atheist climax. The subsequent notes are the wind-down, concluding with the 8 8 eminently practical yet political activism of vegetarianism – a fascinating way to 9 9 exit. Since we begin with the speed of light and the vast Universe, and end with 10 10 the human stomach and human appetite, it is as if we come back to Earth, as does 11 11 the character Ianthe in the final part ofQueen Mab. 12 12 13 13 14 Note 14 14 15 15 16 Into this stately and harmonious form, in which the cosmic and the corporeal 16 17 are so seamlessly linked, shambles the figure of the Wandering Jew (Note 14). 17 18 The Wandering Jew preoccupied Shelley, who had written a poem entitled The 18 19 Wandering Jew (composed in 1810, published 1829). The very note seems out of 19 20 joint, as does the text that Shelley uses: he tells us at the end that it is a ‘fragment’ 20 21 and a ‘translation’, moreover of ‘part of some German work, whose title I have 21 22 vainly endeavoured to discover’.42 The very body of the text is haphazard and 22 23 broken. Shelley emphasizes the physical condition of the original: ‘I picked it 23 24 up, dirty and torn, some years ago, in Lincolns-Inn fields.’43 (This allows him to 24 25 omit the story’s close, in which Ahasuerus is reconciled with God.) It is as if the 25 26 text itself is the Wandering Jew, a man condemned to eternal life for driving Jesus 26 27 away on his walk to crucifixion. This is eternal life, but not as we would wish it. 27 28 The Wandering Jew and the ‘dirty and torn’ book fall inside and outside of the 28 29 poem and the notes, liminal figures like dirty scapegoats. (Shelley is referring to 29 30 an English translation of Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart’s Der ewige Jude.) 30 31 The note on Ahasuerus, as Shelley and others call the Wandering Jew, and the 31 32 Wandering Jew’s narrative itself, seem like a human stain on the brightly polished, 32 33 infinite and infinitesimal machine that is Queen Mab and its notes. Like an 33 34 oppressive regime, the text reduces the Wandering Jew to what Giorgio Agamben 34 35 calls ‘bare life’, a being deemed outside the law, waiting for destruction at the 35 36 hands of the state.44 If there is anti-Semitism in Shelley’s text then surely it is 36 Proof Copy45 37 here, more so than in the earlier ‘God of the Jews’ note (2). The ultimate object 37 38 of sadism is a body that can magically survive fire and slaughter, like a cartoon 38 39 39 40 40 42 CPPBS II: 283. 41 43 CPPBS II: 283. 41 42 44 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford 42 43 University Press, 1998. 43 44 45 CPPBS II: 240. 44

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character. The Wandering Jew, invented at the height of a wave of pogroms in the 1 1 thirteenth century, is one such body. 2 2 But Shelley uses the anti-Semitism of the story to indict Abrahamic theism 3 3 altogether. Christian hegemony sentenced Ahasuerus (and the Jews for which 4 4 he stands) to eternal diaspora. Ahasuerus tells the tyrants of the Earth (‘Nero … 5 5 Christiern … Muley Ismail’) that they are ‘bloodhound[s]’.46 The Wandering 6 6 Jew pronounces the judgment of the abject and wretched of the Earth upon its 7 7 oppressors. He is attacked with ‘arrows and spears … The Saracen’s flaming 8 8 sword … lightnings of battle … The mine, bit with destructive power … I fell 9 9 on heaps of smoking limbs, but was only singed’.47 Shelley the vegetarian has a 10 10 curious appetite for carnage, and Note 14 gives us a taste of the final note, with its 11 11 lazar houses and butchery. 12 12 Ahasuerus’s indictment of power mirrors his indictment in the poem. It is the 13 13 first and only time in the notes in which we encounter a first-person narrative. 14 14 Things return somewhat to normal with the ‘establishing shot’ of Note 15, in 15 15 which Shelley takes aim at the Bible, the book on whose basis the Wandering Jew 16 16 was concocted. There is a strangely seamless dovetail between the tattered copy 17 17 of the story that Shelley ‘picked … up’ in the final paragraph of Note 14, and the 18 18 first paragraph of the next note, which begins: ‘A book is put into our hands when 19 19 children, called the Bible … .’48 The adult Shelley stumbles across an anti-Semitic 20 20 myth, based on stories in the Bible; the child Shelley has a founding myth of 21 21 Abrahamic religion thrust into his hands. These unplanned encounters with dirty 22 22 books of lies and hate differ so from the clean-as-a-whistle scientific register of the 23 23 other notes, illuminated by starlight and decorated with atomic structures. At the 24 24 beginning of Note 14 we don’t know that we are reading a quoted text: ‘Ahasuerus 25 25 the Jew crept forth from the dark cave … .’49 The mini-arc that happens between 26 26 Notes 14 and 15 involves a process of disillusionment, of realizing that we are 27 27 being duped by religious texts that we find placed into our susceptible child-hands. 28 28 This is Shelley doing a Thomas Paine (The Age of Reason), and doing it with 29 29 characteristic intensity. 30 30 31 31 32 Note 15 32 33 33 34 A defamiliarization occurs in the muddy puddle of time between Notes 14 and 34 35 15, in which the Bible is made strange: ‘The belief in all that the Bible contains, 35 36 is called Christianity.’50 Shelley splits Jesus into enlightened reformer (the actual 36 37 Jesus) andProof tool of despotism (the Christian version).Copy Shelley uses the argument 37 38 that modern atheists have honed since: ‘Either the Christian religion is true, or 38 39 39 40 40 46 CPPBS II: 282. 41 47 CPPBS II: 280–81. 41 42 48 CPPBS II: 284. 42 43 49 CPPBS II: 278. 43 44 50 CPPBS II: 284. 44

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it is false: if true, it comes from God, and its authenticity can admit of doubt 1 1 and dispute no further than its omnipotent author is willing to allow.’51 Hume is 2 2 brought to bear upon miracles: it is easier to believe that a miraculous story is a 3 3 lie than that the laws of physics have been broken.52 Locke is brought to bear on 4 4 enthusiasm: pity the fool who sacrifices his reason for revelation, since he thus 5 5 ‘puts out the Light of both’ (to quote Locke).53 6 6 It is hard to do justice to this note, so rich and so intense is its attack on 7 7 Christianity from every possible angle – historical, philosophical, political. We 8 8 could linger on Shelley’s elegant explanation for the ossification of Christianity 9 9 into dogma: the addition of Plato and Aristotle, which beefed up Christianity in the 10 10 Middle Ages.54 We could trace Shelley’s powerful arguments against miracles and 11 11 prophecy and prayer. We could marvel at the belittling comparison of Christianity 12 12 to the religion of ‘The Mahometan … the Indian … the Hottentot … the Negro 13 13 … the Mexican’ with their various devotional practices in apparently descending 14 14 order: to die ‘fighting for his ’, to kill oneself ‘at the chariot-wheels of 15 15 Brahma’, to worship an insect, or a bunch of feathers, or to sacrifice ‘human 16 16 victims!’55 The coup de grâce is a Latin poem by Claudian on the Virgin Birth, 17 17 which a disgusted Shelley decries as self-refuting in its total absurdity.56 18 18 It is also difficult not to observe the rage that contemporary writers such as 19 19 Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris all perform, with admittedly a far less deft and 20 20 magical style than Shelley’s. Maybe this is hardly fair: the other side is committing 21 21 genocide and sexual abuse, while the atheists are mocked for being opposed to 22 22 that side. It would be easy to dismiss Note 15 as a classic example of adolescent 23 23 ranting; or to ignore such things, like Matthew Arnold, and kick Shelley upstairs 24 24 into the impotent heaven of ineffectual angels. But we can safely say this: both 25 25 this note and the final one (the vegetarian one) fall within what is now recognized 26 26 as a style, a genre, a mode of atheist or vegetarian prose composition. We would 27 27 hardly accuse Dawkins of adolescent fury. Since Dawkins can get away with it, 28 28 why not Shelley – unless we hold one of the first exponents to a strangely different 29 29 standard. Shelley is touching a live wire, yet he does not do so alone. Paine, Godwin 30 30 and Hume at least are precedents for Shelley’s anti-religious incandescence and 31 31 mordant wit. Scholarship should give him the benefit of the doubt. 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 51 CCPBS II: 288. 39 39 52 CCPBS II: 290. 40 40 53 CPPBS II: 292–3. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. 41 Peter Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988, IV.19 §4 (p. 698). 41 42 54 CPPBS II: 285. 42 43 55 CPPBS II: 293. 43 44 56 CPPBS II: 293. 44

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Note 16 1 1 2 Note 16 returns to the Spinozist radical Enlightenment. The theme of the 2 3 experiential nature of time is just right for the penultimate note. This is especially 3 4 so since the final one enjoins us to live our lives ethically: while we have time we 4 5 should act in the best possible way. The effect is not unlike the first line of John 5 6 Lennon’s ‘Imagine’ – ‘Imagine there’s no heaven’.57 The chilling realism of the line 6 7 immediately compels us to think about how we would spend life down on Earth. 7 8 The Universe is not the same for everyone, since different minds experience time 8 9 differently, a fact that is now gathering biological weight as it becomes clear how 9 10 small mammals and insects inhabit different kinds of temporality than humans.58 10 11 Shelley adds, in Godwinian perfectibilist mode, that humans might experience 11 12 eternity in time by a ‘future improvement of [the mind’s] sensibility’.59 Thus 12 13 the Neoplatonic realm of forms is brought into contact with the Earth. We can 13 14 experience eternity here and now, at least in theory. Shelley is trying to land the 14 15 spacecraft of Queen Mab softly back on Earth, without damaging its cosmic cargo. 15 16 16 17 17 18 Note 17 18 19 19 20 And down to Earth we come in Note 17, with its passionate and reasoned defence 20 21 of vegetarianism. Shelley published this one separately too as A Vindication 21 22 of Natural Diet, but the note has all kinds of extras, especially in closing. The 22 23 emphasis is on the ethics and politics of diet, an emerging theme in the late 23 24 eighteenth century, as earlier work of mine has shown.60 It is about what Greeks 24 25 called diaitia or what we call culture – a way of life, not just what not to eat. We 25 26 know from Shelley’s annotations to his beloved copy of Joseph Ritson’s An Essay 26 27 on Abstinence from Animal Food that these were the dominant themes, though 27 28 health is inextricably interlinked with them.61 28 29 This is typical of a Spinozan, for whom the body expresses the virtues of the 29 30 mind. (For a Spinozan, the Fall story was not a story about evil, but something 30 31 like how God should have put a health warning on the apple.) It is also typical of 31 32 a republican, for whom one’s private life should reflect one’s public convictions, 32 33 and vice versa (the notion of integrity). Note again that Shelley was as Spinozist as 33 34 he was Platonist: a fascinating combination, since Plato is the ultimate philosopher 34 35 35 36 36 57 37 John Lennon, ‘Imagine’, Imagine. Apple, 1971. 37 58 Proof Copy 38 Jakob von Uexküll, A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans; with A Theory 38 of Meaning, trans. Joseph D. O’Neil, introduction by Dorion Sagan, afterword by Geoffrey 39 39 Winthrop-Young. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. 40 40 59 CPPBS II: 294. 41 60 For instance, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste: The Body and the Natural World. 41 42 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. 42 43 61 Timothy Morton, ‘Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley and the Making of Romantic 43 44 Vegetarianism’. Romanticism 12.1 (2006), pp. 52–61. 44

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of transcendence for whom no physical or aesthetic form is a perfect embodiment 1 1 of the Ideas, which remain forever beyond access; while Spinoza is the ultimate 2 2 philosopher of immanence, for whom outside the One that is either Nature or God 3 3 (deus sive natura), there is not even nothing. 4 4 These powerful ancestors must have pulled him in radically different directions, 5 5 though one could read Shelley’s career as an increasingly successful attempt to 6 6 integrate the philosophies. By the time we get to ‘A Defence of Poetry’, Shelley 7 7 has synthesized the two insofar as he can assert that poetry is both the ‘root’ of 8 8 physical reality, embodying its immanent material form, and at the same time its 9 9 ‘blossom’, expressing a not-yet-arrived utopia whose transcendence is not quite 10 10 otherworldly, but rather futural, an earthly ideal in whose name it is compulsory to 11 11 break the chains of oppression. 12 12 With all that carnage and leprosy Note 17 recapitulates the others, even the 13 13 ‘abject’ ones. Revolution is there: Shelley declares, with his tongue firmly not in 14 14 his cheek, that the excesses of the Terror would have been avoided had Robespierre 15 15 abstained from animal food, the embodiment of humanity’s insensitivity to 16 16 nonhumans.62 Enlightenment philosophy and science are there. Given empirically 17 17 discoverable historical lines from meat factories to car factories to death camps 18 18 in the twentieth century, the statement seems less absurd the further scholarship 19 19 advances towards understanding the links between human-on-human and human- 20 20 on-nonhuman violence. 21 21 Note 17 ends with injunctions against meat and alcohol – direct orders rather 22 22 than arguments: prescriptive, not descriptive language, a fitting end for a didactic 23 23 poem. We might be apt to see this as ridiculous: all those hundreds of lines of verse 24 24 and prose just to close with an advert for vegetarianism? But this would be grossly 25 25 to underestimate the force of vegetarianism in this historical moment, and the 26 26 way in which it weaves together the themes of which this underrated and complex 27 27 didactic poem consists. 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 62 CPPBS II: 303. 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 94 9/11/2015 4:29:25 PM 1 Chapter 5 1 2 2 3 ‘His left hand held the lyre’: 3 4 Shelley’s Narrative Fiction Fragments 4 5 5 6 6 7 Stephen C. Behrendt 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 Introduction: Real and Virtual Tales 11 12 12 13 attributed his prose writings to ‘my left hand’, whose productions 13 14 he distinguished from those which he associated with the Poet’s ‘soaring in the 14 15 high region of his fancies’, identifying them instead with ‘the cool element of 15 16 prose’.1 Scholars have occasionally regarded Shelley’s very considerable prose 16 17 oeuvre in analogous fashion, its intellectual brilliance notwithstanding. While 17 18 prose works like ‘A Defence of Poetry’ are undisputed masterpieces, critical 18 19 response to Shelley’s narrative prose fiction in particular has always been mixed. 19 20 Overshadowed by the great poetry that followed his early Gothic romances, 20 21 Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, his early attempts at fiction and the fragmentary prose 21 22 narratives he wrote during the rest of his life hover at the margins of the Shelley 22 23 canon. Scholarly commentary has been scarce and, until relatively recently, largely 23 24 dismissive; while the romances have generated some discussion, little has been 24 25 written about the fragments.2 Nevertheless – and this would have tickled Shelley 25 26 immensely – Zastrozzi made a splash in popular culture during the final quarter of 26 27 the twentieth century when in 1977 the Toronto Free Theatre company premiered 27 28 Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s adaptation, Zastrozzi: The Master of 28 29 29 30 The quotation in my title is from ‘Hymn to Mercury’ (Shelley’s translation of Homer’s 30 31 Hymn to Hermes), l. 560. 31 32 1 John Milton, The Prose of John Milton, ed. J. Max Patrick. Garden City, N.Y.: 32 33 Anchor Doubleday, 1967, p. 107; The Reason of Church-Government Urg’d against Prelaty 33 34 (1641), Book II. 34 35 2 Some notable recent studies include Timothy Clark, ‘Shelley’s “The Coliseum” and 35 36 the Sublime’. Durham University Journal 85 (1993), pp. 225–35; Bryan Shelley, Shelley 36 37 and ScriptureProof. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Copy1994, pp. 1–14; Kevin Binfield, ‘“May 37 38 they be divided never”: Ethics, History, and the Rhetorical Imagination in Shelley’s “The 38 Coliseum”’. Keats-Shelley Journal 46 (1997), pp. 125–47; Cian Duffy, ‘Revolution or 39 39 Reaction? Shelley’s Assassins and the Politics of Necessity’. Keats-Shelley Journal 52 40 40 (2003), pp. 77–93 and Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime. Cambridge: Cambridge 41 University Press, 2005, pp. 51–61, 125–47, 163–73. See also Charles Robinson, Shelley 41 42 and Byron: The Snake and Eagle Wreathed in Fight. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University 42 43 Press, 1976; Jerrold E. Hogle, ‘Shelley’s Fiction: The “Stream of Fate”’. Keats-Shelley 43 44 Journal 30 (1981), pp. 78–99. 44

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Discipline. Rendered as a sado-masochistic psychological thriller set in Europe 1 1 in 1893, Walker’s play features an obsessive Dostoyevskian Zastrozzi, a criminal 2 2 mastermind who, goaded on by a whip-toting Matilda, relentlessly pursues a 3 3 hapless Verezzi, whom Walker transforms into a religiously infatuated painter 4 4 in this brutal commentary on both fin-de-siècle and more contemporary values.3 5 5 Not to be outdone, Britain’s commercial Channel 4 television subsequently 6 6 commissioned from Channel Four Films its own four-part miniseries written and 7 7 directed by David G. Hopkins, with music by the prolific Martin Kiszko.Zastrozzi 8 8 – A Romance appeared on the screen in 1986.4 Hopkins turned Shelley’s text, to 9 9 whose plot, characters and spirit both writers remained remarkably faithful, into 10 10 a vehicle for scathing social, political and moral commentary on contemporary 11 11 society. 12 12 I have written elsewhere about Shelley’s prose fiction (especially Zastrozzi 13 13 and St. Irvyne; or, The Rosicrucian5), and scholars including Jerrold Hogle, 14 14 Tilottama Rajan and Diane Long Hoeveler have glimpsed in these adolescent 15 15 works intimations of principles and procedures that we associate with the ‘later’ 16 16 Shelley. Since Diego Saglia discusses the two early romances in another essay 17 17 in this collection, I shall examine here those several works that are definably 18 18 fragmentary in nature: ‘The Assassins’ (1814–15/16), ‘The Coliseum’ (1818), and 19 19 ‘Una Favola’ (1821–22).6 Although Shelley’s poetry and prose are both notable 20 20 for ‘the narrative experimentation that marks every phase of his career’,7 I argue 21 21 that Shelley appears finally to have found the vehicle of prose fiction too limiting 22 22 for the manner of story-telling that most interested him. In effect, when it comes 23 23 to his prose fiction (as opposed to his narrative verse) I agree with Diane Long 24 24 Hoeveler’s opinion that ‘Shelley was far less interested in character development, 25 25 convincing plot, and actions than he was in the play of language, imagery, and 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 3 Performed in a variety of academic and commercial theatres over some thirty-plus 30 31 years, Walker’s play reached the stage of the prestigious Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 31 32 Ontario in 2009, to generally positive reviews. 32 33 4 The mini-series was subsequently repackaged in the United States by Boston’s 33 34 WGBH for American public television. 34 35 5 Stephen C. Behrendt, ‘Introduction’, in Percy Bysshe Shelley, Zastrozzi, A Romance; 35 36 St. Irvyne: or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance, ed. Stephen C. Behrendt. Peterborough, Ont.: 36 BroadviewProof Press, 2002, pp. 9–53. Quotations follow Copy this edition. 37 37 6 38 ‘A True Story’, a semi-autobiographical narrative published in Leigh Hunt’s 38 Indicator in 1820, was attributed to Shelley by Walter Peck, Shelley: His Life and Work. 39 39 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1927, vol. 1, pp. 5–7. The tale’s attribution remains 40 40 uncertain and its importance questionable, despite its apparent connections with the themes 41 of ‘Una Favola’ and the details of an 1816 poem (‘The Sunset’) which Mary Shelley says 41 42 ‘was written in the spring of the year, while still residing at Bishopsgate’; PW III: 35. 42 43 7 Jack Donovan, ‘The storyteller’, in The Cambridge Companion to Shelley, ed. 43 44 Timothy Morton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, pp. 85–103 (p. 85). 44

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symbolism in itself’,8 and that he subsequently invested more heavily in the 1 1 vehicle of verse. Still, the extant fragments of prose fiction reveal the skill with 2 2 which Shelley constructed and manipulated complex verbal textures in prose no 3 3 less than in verse. That the fragments are not numerous and are, as narratives, just 4 4 as ‘unfinished’ as poems like the early ‘Henry and Louisa’ or the later ‘Prince 5 5 Athanase’, ‘Mazenghi’ or ‘Ginevra’ lends them a sort of intermediate status that is 6 6 nevertheless instructive, both about how these works do their business and about 7 7 what Shelley may have intended for them as tales. Still, given the amount of poetry 8 8 (and intellectual prose) that Shelley left unfinished, such works are probably best 9 9 regarded as experimental, having within them the seeds that bore fruit elsewhere. 10 10 There is, however, one prose work that the modern technological age might 11 11 call ‘virtual’: ‘Hubert Cauvin’, the Godwinian novel of ideas on which Shelley 12 12 was working before he and Harriet Shelley set off for Ireland in 1812. All traces 13 13 of Shelley’s draft have vanished. Moreover, after referring to the novel in late 14 14 January 1812, Shelley, who often recycled his materials,9 never mentioned it again 15 15 in any extant letter, journal or recorded conversation. 16 16 So what became of ‘Hubert Cauvin’? Shelley wrote Elizabeth Hitchener on 17 17 2 January 1812 that he had completed ‘about 200 pages’ of this ‘tale in which I 18 18 design to exhibit the cause of the failure of the French Revolution, and the state 19 19 of morals and opinions in France during the latter years of its monarchy’.10 Two 20 20 hundred pages is a substantial manuscript,11 which suggests that he had already 21 21 invested considerable time in the project. Writing to William Godwin eight days 22 22 later, and slyly alluding to the full title of Godwin’s famous Political Justice, 23 23 Shelley called his tale ‘an inquiry into the causes of the failure of the French 24 24 revolution to benefit mankind’.12 How different in nature it must have been from 25 25 his Gothic romances is suggested by his declaration to Hitchener that while ‘some 26 26 of the leading passions of the human mind will of course have a place in its fabric’ 27 27 there would be none of their inflamed sexuality: ‘I design to exclude the sexual 28 28 29 29 30 8 Diane Long Hoeveler, ‘Prose Fiction: Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne, The Assassins, The 30 31 Coliseum’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and 31 32 Anthony Howe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 193–207 (p. 206). 32 33 9 Phyllis Zimmerman claims that Shelley furnished his friends with novels and 33 34 other fiction to help establish them in writing careers; Shelley’s Fiction. Los Angeles: 34 35 Darami Press, 1998. See also Charles Robinson’s essay in this volume regarding Percy’s 35 36 contributions to Frankenstein. 36 10 37 Letters I: 218. 37 11 Proof Copy 38 For instance, the fair-copy manuscript pages of ‘The Assassins’, mostly in Mary 38 Shelley’s hand, typically contain from 30 to 45 tightly written lines, or approximately 270 39 39 to 400 words per page. Shelley’s letters from the period, on the other hand, generally run 40 40 to about 20 lines per page, and his larger handwriting translates to roughly 200 words per 41 page. Even conservatively, then, a 200-page ‘Hubert Cauvin’ in Shelley’s own hand might 41 42 have comprised between 40,000 and 50,000 words. A modern double-spaced typescript of 42 43 that length would comprise some 120 to 150 pages. 43 44 12 Letters I: 229; my emphases. 44

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passion & think the keenest satire on its intemperance will be complete silence 1 1 on the subject.’13 Shelley explained that his unseen tale exhibited ‘expediency[,] 2 2 insincerity, mystery’, which he specifically (albeit obtusely) says do not provide 3 3 even ‘the remotest occasions of violence and blood in the French revolution’, 4 4 despite their association with every occurrence of ‘vice and misery’.14 Perhaps 5 5 Shelley regarded ‘expediency’, ‘insincerity’, and ‘mystery’ as the sources (or the 6 6 causes) of the revolution’s failure ‘to benefit mankind’ that he had told Godwin 7 7 was his novel’s principal subject. 8 8 Shelley intended that ‘Hubert Cauvin’ ‘be printed cheaply’, like his Address 9 9 to the Irish People and unlike the collection of poems he envisioned (the Esdaile 10 10 Notebook poems) and the volume of prose essays (‘my metaphysics’), both of 11 11 which he wanted printed ‘expensively’, so that money might be ‘squeezed out of 12 12 the rich’.15 Shelley’s plan for an inexpensive edition indicates that he was aiming 13 13 his ‘novel’ (as he now called it) at a mass audience like that which patronized the 14 14 circulating libraries where he had encountered many of the Gothic romances, often 15 15 in cheap popular chapbook formats, that had fascinated him earlier. Shelley’s scanty 16 16 references to ‘Hubert Cauvin’ date from this brief period while he and Harriet were 17 17 in Keswick, where he had visited (and been underwhelmed by) Southey. Perhaps, 18 18 like the precious box of Mary Shelley’s papers and manuscripts that was left 19 19 behind when she, Shelley and Claire Clairmont left the Hôtel de Vienne in Paris in 20 20 1814 for Switzerland,16 Shelley’s novel was simply lost in transit. It seems unlike 21 21 him to have dropped entirely a project in which he had invested so much writing 22 22 time; if his interest was waning, however, or if the circumstances he found in 23 23 Ireland were more compelling (or unsettling) by comparison, or if he simply found 24 24 himself unable to pay the cost of printing a long novel, then the ‘disappearance’ of 25 25 the manuscript might have provided a convenient excuse for abandoning ‘Hubert 26 26 Cauvin’, which he might have concluded was not worth rewriting in light of his 27 27 brief but energetic involvement in revolutionary Irish politics. 28 28 One thing seems certain: ‘Hubert Cauvin’ was to be a cautionary tale about 29 29 the dangers of violent social change. He wrote to Elizabeth Hitchener: ‘I desire to 30 30 establish on a lasting basis the happiness of human-kind. Popular insurrections and 31 31 revolutions I look upon with discountenance; if such things must be I will take the 32 32 side of the People, but my reasonings shall endeavor to ward it from the hearts of 33 33 the Rulers of the Earth, deeply as I detest them.’17 While Shelley’s comment would 34 34 seem to overestimate his personal capacity for reforming, almost singlehandedly, 35 35 36 36 13 LettersProof I: 218. James Bieri observes thatCopy Shelley apparently retained no such 37 37 38 reservations when it came to Laon and Cythna (1817), in which ‘the sexual passion’ is 38 ‘audaciously featured’ in the poem’s text and texture. Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography. 2 39 39 vols. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2004, vol. 1, p. 221. 40 40 14 Letters I: 223. 41 15 Letters I: 235. 41 42 16 Anne K. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters. New York: 42 43 Methuen, 1988, p. 23. 43 44 17 Letters I: 221. 44

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an unsatisfactory world, this seemingly exaggerated – but no less firm – self-belief 1 1 remained a part of Shelley’s intellectual make-up throughout his life. At the same 2 2 time, Shelley’s comment also signals his ambivalence about the capacity of ‘the 3 3 Rulers of the Earth’ for redemption. Even the oppressors, Shelley hints, ought to 4 4 be spared if possible in the interest of some general good in which even they might 5 5 participate, a sentiment that recurs later in ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’. The 6 6 vehicle for producing change, it seems, is what Shelley calls ‘my reasonings’, 7 7 by which we may understand not just his logical argument for change but also 8 8 his tale itself. Throughout his career, but especially early on, Shelley envisioned 9 9 his works in somewhat eighteenth-century fashion as seductively subversive 10 10 polemics capable of circumventing conventional objections and censorships while 11 11 still accomplishing their salutary purposes. It is a strategy he later associates with 12 12 Jesus in particular (in ‘On Christianity’, c. 1817) and with other antinomian free- 13 13 thinkers like Socrates and Cicero. 14 14 15 15 16 ‘The Assassins’: A Fragment of a Romance 16 17 17 18 Whatever his reasons for abandoning ‘Hubert Cauvin’, Shelley did not abandon 18 19 the vehicle of prose fiction, but returned to it in 1814 in ‘The Assassins’, begun 19 20 in August at Lake Lucerne with Mary and Claire and then dropped, apparently, in 20 21 September before being resumed briefly about a year later or possibly in 1816.18 21 22 The Assassins: A Fragment of a Romance (the title Mary Shelley later gave it) 22 23 is a utopian narrative grounded in Godwinian principles and illustrating how 23 24 altruistic individual personal and collective self-regulation furnishes a mechanism 24 25 for effective government, an ideal that Shelley seems never to have abandoned. 25 26 Among several possible influences, E.B. Murray suggests as particularly likely 26 27 Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and the Abbé Augustin Barruel’s 27 28 Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du Jacobinisme, the latter of which the Shelleys 28 29 had been re-reading on 23 and 25 August 1814.19 Barruel’s influential anti-Jacobin 29 30 work portrayed the French Revolution as the culmination of a vast subversive 30 31 conspiracy (in which the Illuminati were prominent) to overthrow the monarchy 31 32 and its associated aristocratic society. Hugh Roberts speculates that, despite 32 33 any misgivings about Barruel’s anti-Jacobin paranoia, Shelley would have been 33 34 attracted by Barruel’s explanation of ‘how an intellectual class can work to 34 35 35 36 36 18 37 Prose I: 384–5, Weinberg, BSM XXII (2): 21. 37 19 Proof Copy 38 Prose I: 385. See Murray’s extensive editorial commentary (pp. 384–90) and textual 38 notes (pp. 541–5). The Shelleys read from an English translation by R. Clifford entitled 39 39 Memoirs Illustrating the History of Jacobinism (1797–98). See MS Journals I: 18–19. 40 40 Shelley already knew Barruel well enough in 1812 to tell Elizabeth Hitchener that although 41 the Memoirs is ‘worth reading’ it is also ‘half filled with the vilest and most unsupported 41 42 falsehoods’ (Letters I: 264). See Hugh Roberts, ‘Setting Minds Afloat: Shelley and Barruel 42 43 in Ireland’, in A Brighter Morn: The Shelley Circle’s Utopian Project, ed. Darby Lewes. 43 44 Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2003, pp. 1–17. 44

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prepare the ground for massive social, political, and cultural change’, particularly 1 1 by systematically delegitimizing the principles upon which the existing cultural 2 2 order rests.20 For Shelley this could mean both a campaign ‘on the ground’, like 3 3 the one he tried to instigate in Ireland, and another waged in print, to which he 4 4 increasingly committed himself. 5 5 The breakaway Christian sect of the Assassins in Shelley’s ‘Romance’,21 6 6 having abandoned Jerusalem at the time of the Roman siege that destroyed that 7 7 city (now considered the signal event that split Christianity from Judaism and 8 8 reflected later in Shelley’s ‘Arch of Titus’), has established in the wilderness of 9 9 Lebanon a ‘utopian republic’22 of peace and mutual benevolence. Shelley implies 10 that they have prospered for six centuries by rejecting complex socio-political 10 11 machinations like those that Barruel associates with the French Revolution, 11 12 which had devolved into the bloody Reign of Terror and the subsequent horrors 12 13 of international Napoleonic imperialism. As Shelley explains in his second 13 14 paragraph, ‘acknowledging no laws but those of God they modelled their conduct 14 15 towards their fellow men by the conclusions of their individual judgement on the 15 16 practical application of these laws’.23 This ‘unostentatious community of good and 16 17 happy men’ who are ‘attached from principle to peace’24 is penetrated in the third 17 18 chapter when the young Albedir encounters a mangled man impaled on a broken 18 19 cedar branch and beset by a ravenous serpent. This sufferer appears to be another 19 20 version of the Wandering Jew (Ahasuerus) figure who appears in Queen Mab and 20 21 elsewhere in Shelley’s early writings (and later in Hellas) and who may represent an 21 22 effort on Shelley’s part to reconcile Judaic and Christian traditions humanistically 22 23 while denigrating them theologically. This figure’s ambivalent nature is revealed 23 24 through an initial Promethean (and Zastrozzian) outburst of violent rhetoric that is 24 25 succeeded by the apparently loving manner in which he interacts with Albedir, his 25 26 mate Khaled and their young children, who in the final passage of the manuscript 26 27 are playing happily with ‘their favourite snake’.25 Indeed, the conspicuous absence 27 28 of any explicit Satan or Devil figure from Shelley’s scene moves the edenic world 28 29 of the sect he is depicting away from the outlines of Christian Manichaeism and 29 30 toward those of Gnosticism. 30 31 Shelley’s tale breaks off here without further hints about its resolution. Mary 31 32 Shelley later wrote in her note to Prometheus Unbound: ‘[t]he prominent feature 32 33 of Shelley’s theory of the destiny of the human species was, that evil is not 33 34 inherent in the system of the creation, but an accident that might be expelled. … 34 35 Shelley believed that mankind had only to will that there should be no evil, and 35 36 there wouldProof be none.’26 It is not that simple, ofCopy course, as they both knew, for such 36 37 37 38 38 20 Roberts, ‘Setting Minds Afloat’, p. 7. 39 39 21 The word is Mary Shelley’s, MS Journals I: 19. 40 40 22 Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, p. 56. 41 23 ‘The Assassins’, in Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne, ed. Behrendt, Appendix A, p. 254. 41 42 24 ‘The Assassins’, p. 255. 42 43 25 ‘The Assassins’, p. 268. 43 44 26 ‘Note on the Prometheus Unbound’, PW II: 133. 44

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intellectual millennialism requires the stated and enacted conviction not just of 1 1 the utopian dreamers but rather of everyone: as soon as anyone opts out, the entire 2 2 enterprise begins to collapse. On the other hand, the meliorist in Shelley never 3 3 relinquished the conviction that individuals and institutions alike are susceptible 4 4 of reform. While one might imagine the stranger’s mixed essence gradually 5 5 poisoning the paradisal arrangement (rendering the snake poisonous, the gentle 6 6 parents acrimonious, the children belligerent, the entire community polluted and 7 7 doomed), one might equally imagine the virtuous communal principles of the 8 8 Assassin community reflected in the benign family instead exerting a remedial, 9 9 restorative effect upon the stranger. As it is, Shelley’s tale does neither. Indeed, 10 Cian Duffy claims that by the point the tale breaks off ‘Shelley had backed himself 10 11 into a political corner’ where it was impossible to reconcile or resolve the political 11 12 and intellectual impasse between ‘quietism and revolution’.27 Many of these 12 13 elements of Shelley’s tale reappear four years later in the setting, situation and 13 14 even ‘characters’ (including the snake and eagle) with which Shelley furnishes 14 15 the opening dream-vision of Laon and Cythna, which may be profitably read as 15 16 a redeployment of textual and thematic materials introduced in ‘The Assassins’. 16 17 Reading ‘The Assassins’ is an exercise in readerly absorption; the careful 17 18 and deliberate texturing of Shelley’s language in the first two chapters produces 18 19 an aesthetic effect analogous to that at which composers of musical tone poems 19 20 frequently aim. The descriptive passages are densely, even luxuriously, written in 20 21 the sort of ‘painterly’ fashion frequently associated with Ann Radcliffe’s novels. 21 22 They exhibit the lavish piling-up of images and modifying clauses that typify 22 23 early poems like ‘Mont Blanc’ and Alastor, in which this rich texture is integral 23 24 to the design of the narrative it simultaneously supports and advances. To this 24 25 fabric of lush description Shelley counterposes the rhetorically and imagistically 25 26 violent prose of the third chapter, which introduces both the wounded stranger and 26 27 the idyllic household into which he is taken. Shelley’s third chapter particularly 27 28 exploits conventional Gothic hyperbole in the stranger’s defiant exclamations 28 29 and in the unexpectedly lurid descriptive details, both of which Shelley revised 29 30 extensively, as the manuscript reveals. Of course, Shelley’s tale does not reduce 30 31 neatly into mere high-contrast juxtapositions, owing in part to a narrative (or 31 32 narratorial) voice best described as that of a partisan moral commentator whose 32 33 Godwinian bias in favour of enlightened self-government is readily apparent. The 33 34 tale also reveals a strong moral echo of Spinoza, whose works Shelley had ordered 34 35 from Thomas Hookham in 1813, and whose Tractatus Theologico-Politicus 35 36 (1670) expressed that philosopher’s conviction that Nature is the power of God 36 37 made manifestProof to the natural senses of humans, Copy which would seem to make G od’s 37 38 divine power co-equal with Nature, His essence.28 The rhetorical structure of 38 39 39 40 40 27 Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, p. 60. 41 28 MS Journals I: 182. Beginning in 1817, Shelley more than once resumed translating 41 42 this treatise. See also Merle A. Williams, ‘Contemplating Facts, Studying Ourselves: 42 43 Aspects of Shelley’s Philosophical and Religious Prose’, in The Unfamiliar Shelley, eds 43 44 Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 199–219 (p. 209). 44

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‘The Assassins’ anticipates that of ‘Julian and Maddalo’, in which the two central 1 1 characters’ voices are mediated by a comparatively subjective speaker whose 2 2 prose preface frames the poem as a sceptical debate, a rhetorical form of which 3 3 Shelley was always fond. Like that poem, too, this early ‘fragment’ concludes 4 4 without resolving the issues it introduces. The Romantic ‘fragment’ was of course 5 5 a familiar device for engaging its readers in its completion by following out the 6 6 author’s embedded hints and suggestions, as happens for instance in Coleridge’s 7 7 ‘Kubla Khan’ and ‘Christabel’, where what the poet declares to be a ‘fragment’ 8 8 proves to be ‘complete’ by virtue of its very incompleteness (‘Kubla Khan’) or 9 9 contains enough iconographic and other information to enable the reader to project 10 10 an (unwritten) denouement (‘Christabel’). ‘The Assassins’, however, is simply a 11 11 fragment, an editorial construct that Shelley neither completed nor attempted to 12 12 publish. 13 13 ‘The Assassins’ was undeniably intended as a vehicle for Shelley’s moral, 14 14 political and philosophical opinions. Richard Holmes, who also reads the tale 15 15 ‘seriously’, observes that ‘with its grim and fantastic gothic imagery, and its fiery, 16 16 energetic, hate-filled language, it brings Shelley one step further towards his best 17 17 political poetry’.29 The stranger’s first speech anticipates the exoteric poems of 18 18 1819: ‘The great Tyrant is baffled even in success … Joy! Joy to his tortured foe! 19 19 Triumph to the worm whom he tramples under his feet! … Thou createst … ’tis 20 20 mine to ruin and destroy … design … execute … I was thy slave … I am thine 21 21 equal and thy foe’.30 The Promethean defiance of oppression and brutality here (and 22 22 in both Queen Mab and the early political prose, and again, later, in Prometheus 23 23 Unbound) is a Byronic touch, but the touch is cautionary, warning against the 24 24 dangerous potential for inciting or enacting violence upon others that is initially 25 25 moderated and mitigated by the influence of Albedir’s family but which remains 26 26 latent. Like St. Irvyne in particular, ‘The Assassins’ stages a contest between an 27 27 idealized selfless (and therefore redemptive) love and a dynamic but inherently 28 28 dangerous passion that seems incapable of definition except in relation to some 29 29 projected, spectral other. Nowhere is this apparently irreconcilable contradiction 30 30 between virtue and violence clearer than in a passage near the end of Chapter Two: 31 31 32 No Assassin would submissively temporize with vice, and in cold charity 32 33 became [sic, for become] a pandar to falsehood and desolation. His path thro’ the 33 34 wilderness of civilized society would be marked with the blood of the oppressor 34 35 and the ruiner. The wretch whom nations tremblingly adore would expiate in his 35 36 throttlingProof grasp a thousand licensed and venerable Copy crimes.31 36 37 37 38 Shelley would wrestle for his entire life with this insoluble problem, and while he 38 39 does not manage to work out even a tentative resolution in ‘The Assassins’, he does 39 40 at least dramatize the conflict. That may in fact have been all that he considered 40 41 41 42 29 Richard Holmes, Shelley: The Pursuit. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975, p. 246. 42 43 30 ‘The Assassins’, p. 264. 43 44 31 ‘The Assassins’, p. 262. 44

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necessary for him from a frankly experimental fragment at this formative moment 1 1 in his literary career. 2 2 Alan Weinberg has insightfully discussed the manuscripts of ‘The Assassins’ 3 3 and what they reveal about Shelley’s process, tracing in the fair-copy manuscript 4 4 the evolution of Shelley’s subject matter and his process of composition and 5 5 revision.32 Percy apparently dictated ‘The Assassins’ to Mary, whose immediate 6 6 manuscript copy was corrected and revised in a process of collaborative authorship33 7 7 that anticipates the process by which the 1816 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour and, 8 8 later, Mary’s Frankenstein subsequently evolved. The manuscript pages reveal 9 9 a complex creative process involving a ‘constant practice of revision, including 10 10 fair copying and spurts of redrafting, indicating the writer’s struggle to articulate 11 11 his thoughts, his readiness to express volatile ideas in the heat of the moment, 12 12 which, through the process of modification and correction, arrive at a provisional 13 13 intelligibility and coherence’.34 This ‘vehement style’,35 which characterizes 14 14 Shelley’s exoteric poems of 1819 and the strident though classically modulated 15 15 rhetoric of the Ode to Liberty (1820), is audible already in the conclusion of 16 16 the preface to Alastor. In Shelley’s dramatic works, too, like The Cenci and 17 17 Swellfoot the Tyrant, vehement rhetoric reflects volatile thought. Indeed, this 18 18 volatility suggests the verbal, emotional and intellectual pyrotechnics of the Sturm 19 19 und Drang movement in Germany that had produced works like Schiller’s Die 20 20 Räuber (The Robbers, 1781), a work that Shelley very likely knew from one of its 21 21 English translations from the 1790s and which casts interesting light on works as 22 22 seemingly different as Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, on one hand, and The Cenci, on 23 23 the other. Beatrice’s tormented speech in Act III of The Cenci, for example, echoes 24 24 both that genre and Shelley’s own prose romances: 25 25 26 What are the words which you would have me speak? 26 27 I, who can feign no image in my mind 27 28 Of that which has transformed me. I, whose thought 28 29 Is like a ghost shrouded and folded up 29 30 In its own formless horror. Of all words, 30 31 31 32 32 Alan Weinberg, ‘Making Space for the Conditional: Some Reflections on Shelley 32 33 Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library’ (‘The First Ernest Pereira Lecture’). The English 33 34 Academy Review 13 (December 1996), pp. 121–39. See also Weinberg’s meticulous 34 35 transcription and editorial commentary on both ‘The Assassins’ and ‘The Coliseum’ in BSM 35 36 XXII (2): 21. 36 33 37 Weinberg,Proof ‘Making Space for the Conditional’, Copy p. 124, and BSM XXII (2): 21. In 37 38 the latter Weinberg observes that in the manuscript ‘Composition, dictation, transcription, 38 and revision interact in a fluid process that indicates the Shelleys’ mutual interest in the 39 39 narrative’ (21). According to Weinberg, Shelley returned to the 1814 draft after a year, 40 40 generating four more pages of fair copy, from which combined manuscript Mary produced 41 the edited (and expurgated) version she published in her 1840 edition of her husband’s 41 42 prose (22). 42 43 34 Weinberg, ‘Making Space for the Conditional’, p. 127. 43 44 35 Weinberg, p. 128. 44

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That minister to mortal intercourse, 1 1 Which wouldst thou hear? For there is none to tell 2 My misery: if another ever knew 2 3 Aught like to it, she died as I will die, 3 4 And left it, as I must, without a name. 4 5 Death! Death! Our law and our religion call thee 5 6 A punishment and a reward … Oh, which 6 7 Have I deserved?36 (The Cenci, III, i, 107–19) 7 8 8 9 Beatrice Cenci is trapped in an existential endgame, her seemingly heroic idealism 9 10 checked at every turn by the dearth of viable options. Like both Beatrice and the 10 11 stymied characters we encounter in ‘The Assassins’, Shelley faced a comparable 11 12 endgame; in the prose fragments he simply left the conflict unresolved although 12 13 he never abandoned the crisis of conscience at its heart, as later works like The 13 14 Cenci prove. 14 15 15 16 16 ‘The Coliseum’ 17 17 18 ‘The Coliseum’ is Shelley’s last significant prose narrative fragment composed 18 19 in English. He began ‘his tale of the Coliseum’ on 25 November 1818, after he 19 20 and Mary had been in Rome for a week.37 The brief, simple action unfolds in a 20 21 setting that recalls Sophocles’s Oedipus at Colonus. An old, blind man and his 21 22 daughter Helen enter the Coliseum on ‘the feast of Passover’, which coincides 22 23 with ‘the great feast of the Resurrection’,38 a layering of Roman-Christian and 23 24 Judaic backgrounds that is reminiscent of ‘The Assassins’ and that cannot be 24 25 merely coincidental. There they meet an emaciated youth in whom, Shelley’s 25 26 cousin Thomas Medwin tells us, Shelley ‘meant to have idealised himself’.39 26 27 Possessed of ‘exquisite grace’ despite his condition, the young man combines in 27 28 his appearance ‘a timid expression of womanish tenderness and hesitation’ with 28 29 ‘the abstracted and fearless character that predominated in his form and gestures’.40 29 30 He appears at first glance to be another of the seemingly androgynous figures in 30 31 whom Shelley repeatedly epitomizes that quintessential selfless and self-reflecting 31 32 ‘Love’ about which he wrote in poetry and prose alike,41 although he turns out to 32 33 33 34 34 35 36 SPP: 166. 35 37 36 MS Journals I: 239. This is the only mention of the tale in her journals. 36 38 ‘TheProof Coliseum’, in Zastrozzi & St. Irvyne ,Copy ed. Behrendt, Appendix B, pp. 270–71. 37 37 39 38 Medwin published part of the tale in the Athenaeum in September 1832 and 38 reprinted it in his Shelley Papers (1833). Medwin’s words are quoted from The Complete 39 39 Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Roger Ingpen and Walter E. Peck. The ‘Julian Edition’. 40 40 10 vols. London: Ernest Benn, 1926–30, vol. 6, p. 372 n. 41 40 ‘The Coliseum’, pp. 271–2. 41 42 41 See especially his essay, ‘On Love’, written in late July 1818, several months 42 43 before ‘The Coliseum’. The idealized love relationship figures in the poetry as early as 43 44 Alastor (1816) and is particularly central to Epipsychidion (1820–21). 44

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be both an imperfect and an incomplete representative. Perhaps alarmed by the 1 1 youth’s ambiguous sexuality, the Roman citizens avoid him, referring to him as 2 2 Il Diavolo di Bruto, a name that reflects Shelley’s fondness for real or ostensibly 3 3 diabolic figures. More pointedly, the name may be Shelley’s reference tothe 4 4 ominous ghost of Caesar that appears to Brutus on the eve of his defeat at Philippi, 5 5 and whose apparition is also remarked by Plutarch and Shakespeare alike.42 6 6 When he recognizes that the old man is blind, the younger man falls silent 7 7 and listens as Helen describes to her father the present deteriorating state of the 8 8 Coliseum, that luogo celebrato famously memorialized earlier in 1818 by Byron 9 9 in Canto IV of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, whose tone and spirit Shelley had 10 10 found distasteful. While both Robinson and Duffy discuss the two poets’ use of 11 11 the same Roman site, Duffy emphasizes that both poets are responding to the 12 12 Coliseum specifically as a ruin.43 Duffy’s point is that Shelley treats the site 13 13 as an instance of the architectural sublime, which makes it an analogue to the 14 14 sublime natural environment Shelley describes in ‘The Assassins’ and which, 15 15 Duffy plausibly argues, exerts an inevitable and unavoidable salutary influence 16 16 upon everyone who resides there. The Coliseum’s sublime grandeur, which the 17 17 old man’s daughter describes to his sightless eyes (and which he must therefore 18 18 ‘imagine’ into existence) and with which the young man has also already grown 19 19 familiar, is in Duffy’s opinion ‘intended to challenge and revise the reactionary 20 20 public “record” of Italy’s most famous ruin, to replace Byron’s historically 21 21 pessimistic “code” with a progressive, melioristic interpretation of the “awful” 22 22 ruins of power’.44 23 23 In Shelley’s tale, the crumbling Coliseum demonstrates how ‘grand human 24 24 artifacts are assimilated to their natural surroundings’45 as Nature gradually 25 25 restores an organic harmony to this massive but troublingly ambiguous monument 26 26 to human violence and cruelty, on one hand, and the ‘majestic records of the 27 27 powers of [humanity’s] kind’,46 on the other. Interestingly, both the old man and his 28 28 daughter Helen replicate this ‘naturalizing’ of the architecture in their descriptions 29 29 of the scene, which develop analogies with natural features and phenomena, 30 30 overcoding them with the rhetoric of the sublime. This analogizing culminates in 31 31 Helen’s description of the structure as 32 32 33 a nursling of man’s art, abandoned by his care, and transformed by the 33 34 enchantment of Nature into a likeness of her own creations, and destined to 34 35 partake their immortality! Changed into a mountain cloven with woody dells, 35 36 which overhang its labyrinthine glade, and shattered into toppling precipices. 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 42 In Julius Caesar, IV, iii, 279, the ghost calls himself ‘Thy evil spirit, Brutus’ in a 39 39 scene based upon Plutarch’s account in his Life of Brutus. 40 40 43 Robinson, Shelley and Byron, p. 79. Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, 41 pp. 163–4. 41 42 44 Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, p. 164. 42 43 45 Weinberg, BSM XXII (2): 18–19. 43 44 46 ‘The Coliseum’, p. 276 44

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Even the clouds, intercepted by its craggy summit, feed its eternal fountains 1 1 with their rain.47 2 2 3 Not the gloomy record of civilization’s dark and deteriorating condition over which 3 4 Byron broods in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, in other words, the Coliseum is for 4 5 Shelley (and for his speakers here) something else entirely. It is both a physical 5 6 and a symbolic icon of the self-renovating nature of human achievement itself, 6 7 a reminder of the ‘natural’ greatness that is inherent in humanity and to which 7 8 Nature repeatedly points. 8 9 Just after the tale’s midpoint the old man interrupts the narrative with a 9 10 passionate philosophical discourse on the nature of love. It is the tale’s longest 10 11 paragraph, perhaps betraying Shelley’s primary didactic interest by reprising 11 12 his practice in Zastrozzi, St. Irvyne and ‘The Assassins’ of devoting markedly 12 13 longer paragraphs to crucial philosophical declarations. The speech is in some 13 14 respects an initially ‘private’ reflection (the old man is blind) that proceeds from 14 15 the (necessarily imaginative) contemplation of a monumental historical artefact. 15 16 In another utopian vision of how human integration might be achieved, the 16 17 old man explains that human experience comprises two ‘circles’: one of these 17 18 includes ‘all things which feel’, while the other excludes them. He explains that, 18 19 for every individual, ‘public and private happiness consist in diminishing the 19 20 circumference [of the circle] which includes those resembling himself, until they 20 21 become one with him, and he with them’. While we do this, he continues, we 21 22 simultaneously ‘enter into the meditations, designs and destinies of something 22 23 beyond ourselves’, absenting ourselves from our private selves and participating 23 24 in a mutual interchange with the whole universe of sentient beings. This process 24 25 of sympathetic interchange of self and other, he declares, ‘is Love’, ‘the religion of 25 26 eternity, whose votaries have been exiled from among the multitude of mankind’.48 26 27 Exiles of this sort – paradoxical victims of their own best impulses – are precisely 27 28 the sort that Shelley had already figured in the sect of the Assassins. 28 29 It is not entirely clear where Shelley may have intended to take his narrative, 29 30 which breaks off much sooner than ‘The Assassins’ does. Indeed, Duffy attributes 30 31 Shelley’s decision to abandon the project to the tale’s ‘central dilemma’, which 31 32 is the apparently irreconcilable tension between ‘a revolutionary and a gradualist 32 33 interpretation of the ruin’, a dilemma Shelley would confront again in Prometheus 33 34 Unbound in weighing the relative merits of cataclysmic alterations of power 34 35 structures (as happened in the French Revolution), on one hand, and less precipitous 35 36 ones (likeProof the more measured pace of reform Copy he advocates in ‘A Philosophical 36 37 View of Reform’), on the other.49 In other words, according to Duffy, Shelley was 37 38 unable in ‘The Coliseum’ to reconcile his wish for the sudden and presumably 38 39 violent superseding of the old, broken state of affairs (as had occurred with the 39 40 40 41 41 42 47 ‘The Coliseum’, p. 274. 42 43 48 ‘The Coliseum’, p. 275. 43 44 49 Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, pp. 164–6. 44

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French Revolution) with the gradualist and non-violent philosophical revolution 1 1 he embraces in those two great later works. 2 2 This is not to suggest, however, that Shelley shrank from deliberate 3 3 indeterminacy, which he recognized as a thoroughly ‘modern’ epistemological 4 4 tension. Another ostracized ‘stranger’, like the wounded visitor in ‘The Assassins’, 5 5 the young man begins to explain to the elder the reasons for his essentially unsocial 6 6 behaviour, which he credits to what he perceives as the intolerance of others 7 7 for his own ‘meditations’, by which we are apparently to understand his ideas 8 8 or principles, both intellectual and moral. Ironically, he seems not to recognize 9 9 his own complicity in his exclusion, to which he has at least partly contributed. 10 10 Sensing that the blind man and Helen are kindred spirits, the sort of ‘intelligent 11 11 and affectionate beings’ for whose company he has longed, the young man hints 12 12 that he will explain to them ‘the cause of the dress I wear, and the difference 13 13 which I perceive between my language and manners, and those with whom I have 14 14 intercourse’.50 Clearly, he is mired in the very circle of exclusion about which the 15 15 old man has just spoken, and these narrative hints dropped at the fragment’s end 16 16 suggest that Shelley had in mind a parable whose outlines would be much like 17 17 those of his own life and which might be seen to voice (even unconsciously) his 18 18 anxiety about his own contributions to his status as a pariah. 19 19 One of Shelley’s recurrent themes is the public world’s perennial hostility 20 20 to pacifist utopian thinkers (like the old man here) who preach the mutual 21 21 interdependence of all things and beings, including the works of man (art) and 22 22 God (nature). Kevin Binfield argues that in ‘The Coliseum’ Shelley provides an 23 23 alternative to Byron’s gloomy vision of humanity’s downward spiral, offering 24 24 instead a redemptive vision grounded in ‘an awareness of the life beyond the 25 25 narrow circle of self, maintained in the relationship between the blind father 26 26 and his daughter’.51 The rectitude of the old man’s (and Shelley’s) conviction 27 27 of the power of the instinctive and intuitive community Shelley sketches in 28 28 ‘The Assassins’ is demonstrated toward the fragment’s end. The blind man’s 29 29 passionate counsel corresponds to Shelley’s own frequent admonitions about the 30 30 need for selfless communion with others and the importance of repudiating the 31 31 inevitably destructive (and self-destructive) conduct grounded in exaggerated self- 32 32 importance. Ironically, the young man’s scanty hints about his own experience 33 33 suggest that he has unfortunately acquired too thin a skin, too great a sense of self- 34 34 importance (perhaps rooted in a repressed selfish motive like revenge), to enable 35 35 him to interact as effectively with others as do exemplary androgynous figures with 36 36 whom Shelley seems to associate him. Hence the social (and spiritual) isolation 37 Proof Copy 37 that prompts his solitary habitation of ruins and other melancholy sites. Indeed, 38 38 this psychological and social profile recalls that of the well-meaning and idealistic 39 39 but fatally narcissistic young solitary who pines away during his anti-social – but 40 40 not revengeful – eremitic quest in Alastor (1816). The fragmentary ‘Coliseum’ 41 41 42 42 43 50 ‘The Coliseum’, p. 278. 43 44 51 Binfield, ‘“May they be divided never”’, p. 129. 44

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resonates with a curious and pervasive irony that underscores its philosophical 1 1 and narrative irresolution alike: the old seer is blind, his seemingly naïve young 2 2 daughter is possessed of remarkable transformative vision, and the young man’s 3 3 potential for salutary human interaction is undercut by his mocking soubriquet of 4 4 Il Diavolo del Bruto. 5 5 Duffy sees ambiguities elsewhere, as for instance in the old man’s apostrophe 6 6 to the Coliseum, to whose implicit contradictions, Duffy claims, Shelley alerts 7 7 us through his own ‘tellingly contradictory’ footnote to the apostrophe. That 8 8 footnote, he says, ‘advocates a purely aesthetic – that is a wholly depoliticized 9 9 – response to the ruin, an aesthetic response which effectively elides both the 10 10 amphitheatre’s historical function and the process of its ruination’.52 Perhaps 11 11 there is less of a contradiction here than Duffy believes, though. ‘The Coliseum’ 12 12 may stand as Shelley’s ‘test case’ concerning the viability of reading a man-made 13 13 architectural structure in terms of the purely ‘natural’ structure of Nature itself. 14 14 Shelley is indeed ‘answering’ Byron here, but he is also attempting to separate the 15 15 purely physical artefact from the secular and spiritual uses to which it had been put 16 16 in its ‘own’ (historical) time, in the intervening years, and in Shelley’s historical 17 17 ‘present’. The ruination of the physical structure that is contemporaneous with its 18 18 gradual encroachment – and reclamation – by Nature is reminiscent of the statue 19 19 of (a figuration, like the Coliseum, of imperial power), and furnishes 20 20 a philosophical object lesson about the necessary humility and selflessness with 21 21 which individuals must approach others in the melioristic utopia for which Shelley 22 22 yearns. Like the wounded stranger in ‘The Assassins’ and Il Diavolo del Bruto 23 23 in ‘The Coliseum’, Shelley may have believed Byron and other pessimistic 24 24 misanthropes had much to learn from Nature’s difficult but universally evident 25 25 ways, which opinion informs Mont Blanc as well. 26 26 27 27 28 ‘Una Favola’ 28 29 29 30 Shelley’s last prose narrative fragment,53 the untitled allegorical tale known as 30 31 ‘Una Favola’, dates from 1821–22 and complements in prose his examination 31 32 of the theme of ideal love in Epipsychidion, composed early in 1821. It is 32 33 33 34 34 35 52 Duffy, Shelley and the Revolutionary Sublime, p. 168. There is some uncertainty 35 36 about the footnote. Medwin omitted it when he published ‘The Coliseum’ in the Shelley 36 Papers (1833),Proof and Jack Donovan questions whether Copy it was intended for ‘The Coliseum’ at 37 37 38 all; see the edition of Shelley’s work he is preparing for Penguin Press. 38 53 I have excluded from this essay ‘The Elysian Fields’, subtitled ‘A Lucianic 39 39 Fragment’ by H. Buxton Forman when he published it in 1879. ‘The Elysian Fields’ is 40 40 a politico-philosophical ‘letter’ composed probably in 1815 or 1816 in the guise of an 41 unidentified Whiggish fictional speaker (Forman suggested Charles James Fox)and 41 42 apparently directed to Princess Charlotte Augusta, daughter of the Prince of Wales (then 42 43 Prince Regent) and presumptive heir to the British throne. The brief work is ‘fiction’ only 43 44 in the sense of its having a fictive author and setting. 44

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indebted, according to Timothy Webb, to Dante and especially to Petrarch’s 1 1 Trionfi, a principal model for ‘The Triumph of Life’,54 left unfinished at his death 2 2 and marking the culmination of Shelley’s increasing interest in late medieval 3 3 allegorical models of life like Dante’s and Petrarch’s. ‘Una Favola’ is an example 4 4 of what is frequently called the ‘problematic’ fable, a variety of this didactic genre 5 5 that typically ‘feature[s] moral dilemmas or enigmatic presentation’ and that may 6 6 include ‘unreliable or playful narration, verbal ambiguity, abstruse metaphors, and 7 7 symbolism’.55 It is widely assumed that this fragment, which Shelley composed 8 8 not in English but rather in halting Italian that is ‘full of errors in grammar and 9 9 spelling’, seems subsequently to have been ‘improved’ (in Italian) by Richard 10 10 Garnett and then translated into English by him.56 The original may have been 11 11 written for Teresa Emilia Viviani, to whom Epipsychidion is addressed and for 12 12 whom Shelley was at the time also translating passages from his own poetry. He 13 13 may have intended simply an exercise in Italian composition, or perhaps he hoped 14 14 to impress Emilia with the conspicuous ardency of his infatuation.57 ‘Una Favola’ 15 15 is, both in the original faulty Italian and in its English renditions, essentially a 16 16 prose poem that demonstrates Shelley’s continuing experimentation with genre 17 17 and with the intersections of verse and prose. Indeed, as Jack Donovan observes, 18 18 Shelley routinely and intentionally crosses traditional generic boundaries among 19 19 narrative, dramatic and lyric verse ‘in order to consider the specific working of 20 20 narrative in any one of them or across them all’, which in turn reinforces Shelley’s 21 21 conviction that all poetry is in fact ‘original imaginative composition whether in 22 22 verse or in prose’.58 James Bieri suggests from both its descriptive details and its 23 23 (auto)biographical intimations that Shelley’s fable reflects his personal experience 24 24 as an Etonian. In this view, Bieri seconds the earlier proposition by Nora Crook 25 25 and Derek Guiton that the work constitutes Shelley’s veiled account of an early 26 26 27 27 54 Timothy Webb. The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation. Oxford: 28 28 Clarendon Press, 1976, pp. 305–6. 29 29 55 The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, eds Roland Greene et al. 4th 30 edn. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012, p. 476. See also Annabel Patterson, whose 30 31 socio-political assessment of the fable tradition concludes that especially in post-Aesopian 31 32 fables like La Fontaine’s widely popular ones (1668), ‘social and political analysis was 32 33 frequently conducted … in a symbolic vocabulary’, a point clearly relevant to Shelley’s 33 34 writing in ‘Una Favola’ and elsewhere. Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political 34 35 History. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991, p. 42. 35 56 36 For the detailed textual history of Shelley’s tale, which involves several fragmentary 36 37 drafts and copies,Proof see Parks C. Hunter, ‘Textual DifferencesCopy in the Drafts of Shelley’s “Una 37 38 Favola”’. Studies in Romanticism 6.1 (Autumn 1966), pp. 58–64. Working from Shelley’s 38 faulty original draft, Richard Garnett produced both the editorially ‘improved’ Italian text 39 39 and its English translation, publishing them in his Relics of Shelley (London: Edward Moxon, 40 40 1862). They were reprinted in Harry Buxton Forman’s eight-volume edition of Shelley’s 41 poetry and prose (1880) and again in Ingpen and Peck’s ‘Julian’ edition (1926–30). 41 42 57 See Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, Mass.: 42 43 Harvard University Press, 1974, p. 604 n. 91. 43 44 58 Donovan, ‘The storyteller’, p. 86. 44

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disillusioning sexual relationship, perhaps with Harriet Grove, in which he may 1 1 have contracted venereal disease.59 2 2 But ‘Una Favola’ also reinscribes and refines an allegorical plot line that 3 3 features repeatedly in Shelley’s writing: the dangerous pursuit of an impossibly 4 4 idealized beloved who comprises the individual’s perfect counterpart – what 5 5 Shelley calls ‘this soul out of my soul’ in Epipsychidion (l. 238) – a pursuit whose 6 6 fulfilment produces what he describes there as ‘one / Spirit within two frames, 7 7 … / One passion in twin-hearts’ (ll. 573–5). The utter elusiveness of this ideal 8 8 is of course what marks it as the pearl of incomparable value. That the quest 9 9 pursued by the youth in ‘Una Favola’ recalls those of both Alastor’s young poet 10 10 and Epipsychidion’s poet-persona (as well as Prince Athanase) underscores its 11 11 persistence in Shelley’s thinking. The edenic garden setting is likewise familiar 12 12 from these and other poems, including The Sensitive-Plant (1820), in which a 13 13 female figure combines the roles played in ‘Una Favola’ by Life and Death in 14 14 animating and then apparently abandoning the living forms with which that poem’s 15 15 garden is replete.60 Like The Sensitive-Plant, too, ‘Una Favola’ revolves around an 16 16 apparent alteration in external phenomena that both originates in and reflects the 17 17 youth’s internal changes. Significantly, only after the presiding allegorical figure 18 18 of Love (whom Shelley tellingly casts as male, in keeping with Italian tradition61) 19 19 leaves the scene at the instigation of the female figure of Life do the ‘great troop 20 20 of female forms’ who had initially accompanied Love and who are now ‘released 21 21 from his government’ reveal themselves as repulsive ‘mocking and threatening’ 22 22 ones.62 Disillusioned, the youth turns to Life’s sister, Death, whose rejection of 23 23 his adulation makes her hateful to him – which turn of events, paradoxically, 24 24 leaves her attracted to him. Distraught, he discovers a third female figure behind 25 25 him, weeping compassionately, with whom he is now joined with Life’s dubious 26 26 blessing. The manuscript breaks off in mid-sentence with a hint that the couple’s 27 27 torment will be irreconcilable, and that neither can trust Life or Life’s designs. This 28 28 ambivalent, noncommittal mid-sentence ‘ending’ suggests that Shelley recognized 29 29 that he had once again reached an artistic (or creative) impasse, a formal dilemma 30 30 for whose evidently complex, challenging solution the conventional linear prose 31 31 narrative apparently offered no attractive or practicable options. 32 32 Like his poems, Shelley’s prose fragments reflect his unwavering commitment 33 33 to human ‘communion’ as an antidote to the world’s hostilities. This lesson is 34 34 as relevant at the circumference of the circle (the broader social and political 35 35 historical community of humanity) as it is at its centre (the individual and his or her 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 59 38 Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography, [vol. 1], pp. 92–3. Nora Crook and 38 Derek Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; 39 39 esp. pp. 36–7, 150–53. 40 40 60 See also Richard Cronin’s essay elsewhere in this volume. 41 61 In this, as Alan Weinberg has suggested in correspondence, Shelley follows the 41 42 precedents of Dante in the Vita Nova and the Convivio and of Petrarch in the Canzoniere, 42 43 both of whom Shelley imitates. 43 44 62 Complete Works (‘Julian’ edn), vol. 6, pp. 283–4. 44

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intellectual and spiritual self). At every stage of both external and internal history, 1 1 Shelley repeatedly contends, individuals possess the capacity – the potential 2 2 – for that redemptive human dignity that is the reward of selfless benevolence 3 3 and expansiveness of spirit. At the same time, though, as Shelley demonstrably 4 4 appreciates, this ideal objective is ultimately unrealizable in its fullness in the 5 5 flawed mortal world without encountering serious – often fatal – consequences.63 In 6 6 his ‘Defence of Poetry’ (1821) Shelley praises the enlightened human communion 7 7 that characterizes, for one example, the self-sacrificing gestures Shelley admired 8 8 (in the ‘Defence’ and elsewhere, like his essay ‘On Christianity’) in the figures of 9 9 Socrates, Cicero and Jesus, neatly conflating the Classical and the Judaeo-Christian 10 10 traditions. In the ‘Defence’ he writes that ‘the great secret of morals is Love; or a 11 11 going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful 12 12 which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own’.64 This community of 13 13 sympathy is the ideal toward which Shelley repeatedly points his readers, whether 14 14 by providing demonstrations of its consummation (as in Prometheus Unbound) 15 15 or by showing the (more predictably) disastrous consequences of the failure of 16 16 community. 17 17 18 18 19 Shelley’s Turn from Narrative Prose Fiction 19 20 20 21 Some thirty years ago Jerrold Hogle responded to critical sniping about 21 22 Shelley’s nearly indistinguishable characters, ‘repetitious’ and obsessive prose, 22 23 ‘nonsensical’ plotting and a virtual absence of ‘linear cohesion’ in his prose 23 24 fiction by proposing that Shelley was in fact exploring an alternative notion of 24 25 narrative.65 Hogle discovers in Shelley’s prose fiction a common thread with 25 26 The Monk, Melmoth the Wanderer, Frankenstein, Zofloya and St. Leon in their 26 27 exploration of alternative structures that pit the sequentiality of conventional linear 27 28 narrative against narratives of ‘circularity’. Indeed, Shelley hints at narrative’s 28 29 potential as a ‘prismatic and many-sided mirror’ in describing, in ‘A Defence of 29 30 Poetry’, how the imagination interreflects the diverse ‘rays of human nature’.66 30 31 Shelley had suggested such prismatic circularity already in ‘On Life’ (1819) in 31 32 describing the nature of all human life and being: ‘Each is at once the centre and 32 33 the circumference; the point to which all things are referred, and the line in which 33 34 all things are contained.’ This condition (whose geometrical metaphors suggest 34 35 that Shelley has ancient Greek thought in mind), Shelley observes, is incompatible 35 36 with conventional notions of ‘transience and decay’; it is a condition of ‘existing 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 63 The point is strikingly made in ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’. Shelley argues 39 39 that ’That equality in possessions which Jesus Christ so passionately taught is a moral rather 40 40 than a political truth and is such as social institutions cannot without mischief inflexibly 41 secure’ (Complete Works [‘Julian’ edn], vol. 7, p. 42). 41 42 64 ‘A Defence of Poetry’, SPP: 517. 42 43 65 Hogle, ‘Shelley’s Fiction’, pp. 78–9. 43 44 66 Hogle, ‘Shelley’s Fiction’, p. 82. 44

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but in the future and the past’, of ‘being, not what he is, but what he has been and 1 1 shall be’.67 2 2 The conception of time (and therefore of ‘narrative’) that Shelley articulates 3 3 here is Blakean in its insistence on the imaginative annihilation of empirically 4 4 structured ‘time’. In Blake’s epic prophecies like Milton and Jerusalem, moments 5 5 of historical time that are ostensibly widely separated are reported as transpiring 6 6 virtually simultaneously, in a moment of ‘visionary time’ that is equivalent to ‘the 7 7 pulsation of the artery’. Indeed, in Milton Blake declares that 8 8 9 Every Time less than a pulsation of the artery 9 10 Is equal in its period & value to Six Thousand Years. 10 11 For in this Period the Poet[’]s Work is Done: and all the Great 11 12 Events of Time start forth & are conceivd in such a Period 12 13 Within a Moment: a Pulsation of the Artery. 13 14 (Milton, plate 28, ll. 62–3; plate 29, ll. 1–3) 68 14 15 15 16 In the manner of typological grand-style history painters whose works furnished 16 17 his models (for poems no less than for pictures), Blake ‘stages’ events that 17 18 collapse narrative time into ‘moments’ like these, allowing him to assemble 18 19 in individual scenes widely diverse and ahistorical characters, events and 19 20 iconographic associations that restructure ‘time’ (including narrative time) around 20 21 inner significances (or significations) rather than external empirical details. Even 21 22 before Hogle’s study, David Halliburton had insightfully suggested (without 22 23 entirely following through on his own suggestion) that the distance from the prose 23 69 24 fiction to Prometheus Unbound ‘is really not such a long step’. But Hogle went 24 25 beyond analogous surface features among works to deeper structures, concluding 25 26 that Shelley turns associated, progressive and for the most part causally related 26 27 incidents into ‘versions of the same event’, indicating by calculatedly repetitious 27 28 language their essential sameness. These prismatically reflected iterations of 28 29 the same basic moment therefore appear both ‘superimposed on each other’ 29 30 and ‘converging on each other’, an effect that conventional narrative is largely 30 70 31 incapable of producing, as ‘The Triumph of Life’ amply demonstrates. 31 32 Several decades ago Shelley’s writings became attractive to poststructuralist 32 33 theorists, in part because they are so often as much about themselves as they are 33 34 about their ostensible subject matter. Shelley’s works frequently illustrate what 34 35 they purport to ‘tell’, generating in the process a metatextual commentary on 35 36 the interrelated processes of composition and reading (including cognition). The 36 embeddedProof intellectual and philosophical principles Copy are disclosed to the perceptive 37 37 38 38 39 39 67 Complete Works (‘Julian’ edn), vol. 6, p. 194. 40 40 68 The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. David V. Erdman. Rev. edn. 41 Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. 41 42 69 David Halliburton, ‘Shelley’s Gothic Novels’. Keats-Shelley Journal 16 (1967), 42 43 pp. 39–49 (p. 49). 43 44 70 Hogle, ‘Shelley’s Fiction’, p. 95. 44

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reader both through their ‘content’ and by means of the formal ‘container’ in 1 1 which they are packaged. Many of Shelley’s works are ‘performances’ in the 2 2 sense that they stage for us – in the medium of print – their author’s struggle to 3 3 work out the possibilities and limitations of various poetic and prose-narrative 4 4 forms, and indeed of genres themselves. Like Hogle, Tilottama Rajan has (more 5 5 recently) taken Shelley’s prose narratives ‘seriously’ because, as she writes, ‘their 6 6 seriousness is indicated by the way in which they seem to be in excess of what 7 7 they are’, and because Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne in particular ‘do not so much 8 8 convey a content as they suggest the form that such a content might take’.71 Rajan, 9 9 too, recognizes that conspicuous performativity to which I have already alluded, 10 10 suggesting that their ‘flamboyantly dramatic’ character and their total unreality 11 11 situate both of Shelley’s Gothic romances within the category of ‘hyperrealism’. 12 12 Their performativity, she argues, constitutes ‘the condition of possibility for our 13 13 rewriting them in the theater of our own minds’.72 Rajan observes a comparable 14 14 performativity (perhaps also verging on the flamboyant) operating in works of 15 15 acknowledged ‘greatness’ like Prometheus Unbound, where the doubling of 16 16 characters, settings and incidents offers an (albeit more sophisticated) analogue to 17 17 Shelley’s practice in the prose narratives. 18 18 Why did Shelley stop writing prose fiction, then? First, it is not clear that he 19 19 actually did stop. When we recall that he drowned at the age of 30, we are reminded 20 20 that his was a brief life that had not yet achieved what today might be called its 21 21 ‘career trajectory’. He was not done writing, in other words, and his recurrent 22 22 fitful efforts in narrative prose fiction, even within a year of his death, suggest 23 23 that Shelley had not made a definitive break with the genre, that he stood ready 24 24 to use the form whenever he felt that circumstances required it.73 And then there 25 25 is the question of the earlier and ‘now-lost’ ‘Fragment of a Ghost Story’, which 26 26 Mary Shelley claimed he had begun in July 1816 as part of the famous ghost story 27 27 competition among the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori.74 There is also the vexed 28 28 question of how fairly to assess Percy’s very considerable contributions to the 29 29 composition of Frankenstein, which collaborative authorship Charles Robinson 30 30 discusses in his essay in this volume. Moreover, as literary history demonstrates, 31 31 32 32 33 71 Tilottama Rajan, ‘Promethean Narrative: Overdetermined Form in Shelley’s Gothic 33 34 Fiction’, in Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World, eds Betty T. Bennett and Stuart 34 35 Curran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995, pp. 240–52; 320–21. 35 72 36 Rajan, ‘Promethean Narrative’, p. 321. 36 73 37 ‘TheProof Arch of Titus’, for example, reveals theCopy beginnings of an embedded narrative 37 38 that is thematically related to ‘The Coliseum’. See Nora Crook’s discussion of this fragment 38 in Chapter 13, ‘Shelley, Jews and the Land of Promise’. 39 39 74 Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Biography, [vol. 1], p. 377. Mary Shelley mentions 40 40 in the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein that Shelley ‘commenced’ a prose tale ‘founded 41 on the experiences of his early life’, Frankenstein: The Original 1818 Text, eds D.L. 41 42 Macdonald and Kathleen Scherf. 2nd edn. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 1999, p. 355. 42 43 Given that no manuscript is known, his tale may have been more talk than text, perhaps an 43 44 improvisational ‘talk-through’ that he never actually committed to paper. 44

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the novel was at the time of Shelley’s death experiencing a remarkable growth, 1 1 both in the numbers of volumes written and published and in the numbers of 2 2 readers that authors might address, especially as literacy expanded throughout the 3 3 kingdom. One thing we know with certainty about Shelley: for his entire short 4 4 life he eagerly embraced a stunning array of literary genres and forms, producing 5 5 a constellation of diverse works calculated – indeed deliberately crafted – to his 6 6 expectations about readers both actual and virtual, and about both their literary 7 7 tastes and their cultural and ideological ‘flash-points’ or ‘trigger mechanisms’.75 It 8 8 is not at all unreasonable to conclude that Shelley might have returned to narrative 9 9 prose fiction, both for its appropriateness for addressing particular designated 10 10 audiences and for its growing financial reward. 11 11 At the same time, though, as I have suggested here, Shelley the creative artist 12 12 seems to have grown impatient with the limitations and impediments that came 13 13 with composition in narrative prose, even when it was intellectually and artistically 14 14 rich and highly nuanced. In light of the imaginative sweep that characterized his 15 15 poetic vision and his thought processes alike, almost from the start, narrative as 16 16 mere ‘story’ was probably too confining, especially given a large and diverse 17 17 audience that was either unable or unwilling to wrestle with the sort of narrative 18 18 complexities that fascinated him. The greatest liability of narrative, after all, is the 19 19 sheer linearity it imposes upon the content. No matter how one arranges, disrupts 20 20 or reshuffles the narrative details, author and reader alike must proceed through 21 21 the text in strictly linear fashion. To use a visual and spatial analogy, I suggest that 22 22 Shelley grew increasingly interested in constructing complex narrative structures 23 23 requiring their reader to superimpose one element upon another in various 24 24 and flexible combinations and then to approach the stack vertically rather than 25 25 horizontally, looking ‘through’ layers that are fashioned as ‘semi-transparent’ in 26 26 order to facilitate such three-dimensional consideration. In a real sense, Shelley 27 27 seems to have been working to move beyond ‘mere’ representation in his art and in 28 28 the direction of a more overtly interventional mode that would place increasingly 29 29 greater demands upon his audiences. 30 30 Shelley’s later prose narrative fragments suggest that he was also moving 31 31 away from the sort of plots that we find in Zastrozzi and St. Irvyne, in which 32 32 surface ‘action’ carries the burden of engaging the reader, rather in the way that 33 33 medieval allegorical fables figurally embed their moral and intellectual import (or 34 34 signification) within the dramatization itself. The combination of fiction, essay and 35 35 vision in those fragments suggests instead the quasi-allegorical discursiveness of 36 36 works likeProof Volney’s Ruins of Empire, the idealized Copy history of the French Revolution 37 37 in which a dispirited ‘traveller’ is reinvigorated by a ‘Genius’ who tells him a long 38 38 tale of political and cultural evolution that culminates in a bloodless revolution 39 39 that empowers the masses against their oppressors, whom they subsequently 40 40 defeat. The Ruins, whose contents the Shelleys knew well and used in their own 41 41 42 42 43 75 I have written about this matter at length in Shelley and His Audiences. Lincoln: 43 44 University of Nebraska Press, 1989. 44

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works,76 provides a model for Laon and Cythna, most obviously, but its influence 1 1 is strongly evident already as early as Queen Mab in the manipulation of vantage 2 2 points and the overall account of history. And, later, the utopian socio-political 3 3 revisionism of The Ruins informs works as diverse as Prometheus Unbound and 4 4 The Mask of Anarchy. Narratives of this sort, which employ ‘story lines’ as the 5 5 merest scaffolding upon which to construct social, political or philosophical 6 6 commentary, suggest the sort of narratives that works like ‘The Assassins’ and 7 7 ‘The Coliseum’ aspired to be. 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 76 Thomas Medwin and Thomas Jefferson Hogg both reported Shelley’s fondness for 41 42 The Ruins as early as Shelley’s Oxford years, while Mary Shelley writes in the De Lacey 42 43 section of Frankenstein that Felix instructed Safie from this book. (This might be PBS’s 43 44 interpolation.) See Cameron, Golden Years, p. 621 n. 12. 44

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02.07.2008

The Neglected Shelley.indb 116 9/11/2015 4:29:27 PM 1 Chapter 6 1 2 2 3 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Text(s) in 3 4 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein1 4 5 5 6 6 7 Charles E. Robinson 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein may be judged one of the most 11 12 ‘neglected’ or, more precisely, most ‘overlooked’ of Percy Bysshe Shelley texts, 12 13 PBS2 having written over 4,000 (and probably over 5,000) of the novel’s 72,000 13 14 words. His many words and phrases and occasional sentences and extended 14 15 passages, scattered through the text of the novel, are contextualized by his other 15 16 compositions in prose and poetry written between mid-June 1816 (when MWS 16 17 began her story of Frankenstein) and November/December 1817 (when the novel 17 18 was finally printed after the corrections and additions were made in the proofs 18 19 and revises). In effect, we should be able to hear in Frankenstein echoes of PBS’s 19 20 works from Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and Mont Blanc (written June and July 20 21 21 22 22 23 1 In this essay, I have attempted to offer new discoveries about or perspectives on 23 24 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s contributions to the manuscripts of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 24 25 Frankenstein. For my earlier judgments on the collaboration between the two Shelleys, 25 26 consult the following: ‘Texts in Search of an Editor: Reflections on The Frankenstein 26 Notebooks and on Editorial Authority’, in Textual Studies and the Common Reader: Essays 27 27 on Editing Novels and Novelists, ed. Alexander Pettit. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 28 28 2000, pp. 91–110 – rpt. in Textual Editing and Criticism: An Introduction, ed. Erick Kelemen. 29 New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008, pp. 363–83; ‘Introduction’ and ‘Frankenstein 29 30 Chronology’, in The Frankenstein Notebooks, MYR IX (1&2): xxv–cx – hereafter cited 30 31 as Frankenstein Notebooks; ‘Introduction’, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus: 31 32 The Original Two-Volume Novel of 1816–1817 from the Bodleian Library Manuscripts, 32 33 by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (with Percy Bysshe Shelley). Oxford: Bodleian Library, 33 34 2008; New York: Vintage Books, 2009, pp. 16–37 – hereafter cited by the title on the cover, 34 35 Original Frankenstein; ‘Collaboration and Ventriloquism in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein’, 35 36 in La Questione Romantica (Mary Shelley Special Issue in Memory of Betty T. Bennett). 36 37 Napoli: LiguoriProof Editore, 2009, pp. 29–39 (containing Copy some of the same illustrations of 37 Percy Shelley’s contributions to Frankenstein that are found in this present essay). For 38 38 other perspectives, consult Anne K. Mellor, Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her 39 39 Monsters. New York: Methuen, 1988, pp. 219–24; and Nora Crook, ‘Did Mary Shelley 40 Write Frankenstein? Or Did Percy Shelley Spoil It?’, in A Milestone of Shelleyan Scholarly 40 41 Pursuits in Japan: Essays Commemorating the 15th Anniversary of the Founding of Japan 41 42 Shelley Studies Center, ed. Tatsuo Tokoo et al., Publication of the Japan Shelley Studies 42 43 Center. Tokyo: Eihosha, 2007, pp. 3–18. 43 44 2 Hereafter PBS and MWS will be used to denominate the two Shelleys. 44

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1816) through History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (this collaborative work published in 1 1 November 1817) and Laon and Cythna (published in December 1817) – and even 2 2 from his Alastor volume (published in February 1816).3 3 3 That PBS contributed to Frankenstein should not surprise most students of 4 4 the English Romantics, but the degree of his involvement will surprise many. Not 5 5 only did he counsel MWS on the story and edit numerous passages in the text, 6 6 but he also wrote the Preface for the 1818 edition as well as a review of it, these 7 7 two additional documents totalling nearly 1,500 words of PBS’s critical prose that 8 8 nicely frame the novel and influence our interpretation of it. In the Preface (written 9 9 by PBS as if he were MWS), he refers to the events in mid-June 1816 when he, Lord 10 10 Byron and (with MWS and presumably Claire Clairmont 11 11 nearby) discussed philosophical doctrines on the principle of life. MWS and her 12 12 ‘Two other friends’ (Byron and PBS himself, the ‘two friends [who afterwards] 13 13 left [MWS] on a journey among the Alps’) ‘crowded around a blazing wood fire’ 14 14 at Byron’s , read ‘some German stories of ghosts’, and then ‘agreed to 15 15 write each a story, founded on some supernatural occurrence’.4 Their story-telling 16 16 ultimately led to MWS’s Frankenstein and Byron’s and Polidori’s vampire stories. 17 17 PBS’s story, if ever finished, is not extant. 18 18 PBS’s various contributions to the production of Frankenstein are made 19 19 evident by the following chronology:5 20 20 15 June–21 June 1816: PBS may have discussed MWS’s tale as she began to 21 21 develop it. 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 3 These echoes result from PBS’s specific and separate contributions to what is 27 27 essentially MWS’s novel (as evidenced by the nature of his corrections in the manuscripts 28 and by the biographical records of the Shelleys and their associates). That is to say, I do not 28 29 subscribe to the arguments of the four individuals who believe that MWS was merely the 29 30 amanuensis for PBS’s novel Frankenstein (some of which arguments extend to PBS writing 30 31 most of MWS’s fiction). See Selwyn Jones, unpublished manuscript; Phyllis Zimmerman, 31 32 Shelley’s Fiction. Los Angeles: Darami Press, 1998; John Lauritsen, The Man Who Wrote 32 33 Frankenstein. Dorchester, Mass.: Pagan Press, 2007; and Scott Douglas de Hart, Shelley 33 34 Unbound: Discovering Frankenstein’s True Creator. Port Townsend, Wash.: Feral House, 34 35 2013. 35 4 36 Original Frankenstein, p. 433. For a convenient reprinting of PBS’s Preface and 36 review togetherProof (and for quotations from both textsCopy in this essay), see pp. 432–6. 37 37 5 38 For additional information (including sources of quotations) about the Shelleys’ 38 collaboration that is outlined in this chronology, consult ‘Frankenstein Chronology’ 39 39 in Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. lxxvi–cx (or the same ‘Chronology’ online at http:// 40 40 shelleygodwinarchive.org/contents/frankenstein/frankenstein-chronology). Otherwise, the 41 reader may consult the original sources for most of this information: for PBS, Letters and 41 42 Prose; for MWS, MS Journals and MWS Letters and MWS’s ‘Introduction’ to the revised 42 43 one-volume edition of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Henry Colburn 43 44 and Richard Bentley, 1831, pp. v–xii. 44

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22 June–30 June 1816: PBS toured Lake Geneva with Byron and, on 23 June, 1 1 wrote into his Notebook Diary a 60-word passage about the river Drance that 2 2 MWS would later copy nearly verbatim into the Draft of her novel (401/216).6 3 3 July–August 1816: PBS most likely discussed with MWS her tale during 4 4 this period, and his descriptions of their excursion to Chamouni on 21–27 July 5 5 (in a letter to Peacock, possibly transcribed by MWS on 23 July) influenced her 6 6 descriptions of Victor Frankenstein’s journey to the Valley of Chamouni); PBS did 7 7 in fact ‘talk about [her] story’ with MWS on 21 August, at the very least offering 8 8 his ‘incitement’ that she continue and urging her to expand a shorter, possibly 9 9 novella-length tale, into the novel as we have it now.7 10 10 September 1816–17 April 1817: PBS acted as editor by making corrections or 11 11 additions on nearly every page of the Draft of the novel, the manuscript evidence 12 12 suggesting that he made his comments not on one reading near the end of the 13 13 process but on separate readings of individual chapters as MWS continued to draft 14 14 the novel; on 26 October 1816 he noted in MWS’s Journal that she ‘writes her 15 15 book’. 16 16 3 January–9 April 1817: Sometime between these dates, more likely in March/ 17 17 April than in January/February, PBS objected to MWS’s plot in which Victor 18 18 Frankenstein’s father Alphonse had suggested to Victor that he accompany Henry 19 19 Clerval to England, PBS’s objection and counter-suggestion communicated by the 20 20 following marginal note in the Draft: ‘I think the journey to England ought to be 21 21 Victor’s proposal. – that he ought to go for the purpose of collecting knowledge, for 22 22 the formation of a female. He ought to lead his father to this in the conversations 23 23 – the conversation commences right enough’ (see 250, n. 82); MWS accepted the 24 24 advice and sometime between 9 and 17 April inserted an important passage about 25 25 Victor ‘obtaining [his] father’s consent’ (174/359), cancelled two and a half pages 26 26 of the original Draft, and then drafted four and a quarter substitute pages.8 27 27 April 1817: PBS by this time assisted MWS in doing the marginal computations 28 28 in the Draft by which they restructured the 33 chapters of the two-volume Draft 29 29 into the 23 chapters of a three-volume Fair Copy that became the basis for the 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 6 34 Quotations from the text of the Draft will be taken from Original Frankenstein 34 35 and followed by page numbers in my text (but without p. or pp.). The reader will at times 35 36 encounter a double page number (e.g., 347/161), indicating that a quotation may be 36 consulted in the MWS version (printed second in order) and/or in the MWS/PBS version 37 Proof Copy 37 (printed first) of the Draft. 38 38 7 MWS explained in her Introduction to the 1831 Frankenstein that ‘At first [she] 39 39 thought but of a few pages – of a short tale; but Shelley urged me to develope the idea at 40 greater length’ (p. xi). For my conjecture that MWS added the frame tale and the innermost 40 41 tale about Safie’s education to increase the length of her story, see‘Hypothetically 41 42 Reconstructing an Ur-Text of Frankenstein’, Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. lx–lxii. 42 43 8 For additional information on these changes, see Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. xlii, 43 44 lxxxv, 416–41. 44

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three-volume first edition (which Shelley initiated this structural change we do not 1 1 know, but PBS made most of the computations).9 2 2 18 April–13 May 1817: PBS witnessed MWS making the Fair Copy of the 3 3 novel and, on or around 10–14 May, he embellished MWS’s prose as he himself 4 4 transcribed the conclusion of the Draft into the last 12 and ¾ pages of the Fair 5 5 Copy (that transcription may have been what MWS referred to in her Journal when 6 6 she recorded on 14 May that ‘S … corrects F’). 7 7 May–August 1817: PBS assisted MWS by submitting the novel (‘which has 8 8 been consigned to my care by a friend’ – see PBS to Charles Ollier on 3 August) 9 9 to various publishers, including John Murray, Charles Ollier, and Lackington and 10 10 Company, the last of these accepting the novel for publication; and on 22 August 11 11 PBS informed Lackington that ‘As to any mere inaccuracies of language [he] 12 12 should feel [him]self authorized to amend them when revising proofs’. 13 13 September 1817: As if he were MWS, PBS wrote the Preface to the 1818 first 14 14 edition (the 1818 Preface dated September by MWS in the 1831 edition), but he 15 15 had not received proofs of that Preface by 28 November. (Because of similarities 16 16 in the phrasing of the Preface and the review PBS wrote for the novel, it is possible 17 17 that he also wrote the review at the same time.10) 18 18 24 September 1817: By this date, proofs of Frankenstein were being sent to 19 19 the Shelleys, and PBS received from MWS ‘carte blanche’ to make ‘alterations’ 20 20 to remove ‘some abruptnesses’ in part of the initial proofs supplied by Lackington 21 21 (MWS having been occupied by caring for her daughter Clara, born just three 22 22 weeks earlier).11 23 23 24 24 9 25 For a chart that shows the restructuring, see Original Frankenstein, p. 30. For more 25 on the mathematical computations, see Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. lxiii–lxv. 26 26 10 PBS’s anonymous review was not published during his lifetime. It was first 27 27 published as Shelley’s by Thomas Medwin in The Athenæum: Journal of English and 28 28 Foreign Literature, Science, and the Fine Arts, 10 November 1832, p. 730 – rpt. verbatim 29 in Thomas Medwin, Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley; and Original Poems and Papers by 29 30 Percy Bysshe Shelley: Now First Collected. London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Co., 1833, pp. 30 31 165–70. For a version of the review that takes into account manuscript evidence, see Prose 31 32 I: 282–4, together with commentary and collations on pp. 489–92, 533, 565. 32 33 11 The most likely alteration PBS made to the early proofs is an addition to the 33 34 beginning of Draft Volume I, Chapter 2 (for which no Fair Copy manuscript is extant). 34 35 In the Draft MWS had written (with PBS correcting) that ‘Those events which materially 35 36 influence our future destiniesare often caused by slight or derive thier [a characteristic PBS 36 misspelling]Proof origin from a trivial occurences’ (259/63; Copy see also Frankenstein Notebooks , pp. 37 37 38 16–17). However, by the first edition, the passage has been altered to ‘ … I must not omit 38 to record those events which led, by insensible steps to my after tale of misery: for when I 39 39 would account to myself for the birth of that passion … I find it arise, like a mountain river, 40 40 from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; … it became the torrent which, in its course, 41 has swept away all my hopes and joys’ (Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. 3 vols. 41 42 London: Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818, vol. 3, pp. 50–51 – hereafter 42 43 1818). Although it is possible that these changes were made in the Fair Copy rather than the 43 44 proofs, either way the river imagery here suggests PBS as the author and recalls his 1817 44

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23 October 1817: PBS in London wrote to the publisher Lackington that he had 1 1 ‘paid considerable attention to the correction of such few instances of baldness of 2 2 style as necessarily occur in the production of a very young writer’, and he asked 3 3 that the proofs be directed to Marlow to which he was returning, suggesting that 4 4 he had been the one correcting proofs in London. 5 5 28 October 1817: PBS from Marlow wrote to Lackington and informed him 6 6 of ‘considerable alterations’ that were made to the proofs of what are most likely 7 7 the first two gatherings of Volume III of the first edition, one of these alterations 8 8 (adding a substantial passage about Henry Clerval, for which see below) probably 9 9 made by PBS. 10 10 2 January 1818: In a letter to Walter Scott accompanying the three-volume 11 11 novel of Frankenstein that had been published on 1 January, PBS indicated that 12 12 his ‘own share in [the volumes] consists simply in having superintended them 13 13 through the press during the Author’s absence’, this phrasing suggesting that PBS 14 14 had a major part in correcting the proofs. PBS’s ‘own share’, as the outline above 15 15 suggests, was considerably more than just correcting the proofs: his discussions 16 16 on the nature of life apparently influenced MWS’s dream that inspired the novel; 17 17 his prose (and his poetry) appeared in the text; he advised MWS about the length 18 18 and direction of her narrative a number of times (indeed, MWS wrote in 1831 19 19 that PBS was responsible for ‘the form in which [the novel] was presented to 20 20 the world’); he enhanced the concluding scenes of the novel by rewriting many 21 21 of MWS’s sentences into the Fair Copy; he revised some or possibly most of 22 22 the proofs and oversaw two substantial additions in the revises; and, as we shall 23 23 see, he contributed 4,000–5,000 of his own words to the novel, some of which 24 24 are printed below in an attempt to demonstrate the extent and the nature of his 25 25 involvement with the novel. 26 26 Many of the words that PBS contributed to Frankenstein resulted from his 27 27 corrections to MWS’s diction and syntax in the Draft, and his words are made 28 28 typographically visible in my two previous editions: The Frankenstein Notebooks 29 29 (1996), a photofacsimile and type facsimile edition of both the Draft and Fair 30 30 Copy of the novel (accompanied by a diplomatic edition or literal transcript 31 31 of 1818);12 and The Original Frankenstein (2008; 2009), an edition that prints 32 32 33 33 34 remarks in the draft notebook for Laon and Cythna about a person giving ‘a faithful history 34 35 of his being from the earliest epochs of his recollection’, about men beholding ‘thier own 35 36 recollections … thier shadowy hopes & fears’, about thought being ‘like a river whose rapid 36 37 & perpetualProof stream flows outwards’ from the ‘caverns Copy of the mind’ (see Tokoo, BSM XIII: 37 164–5). Moreover, the ‘insensible’ in the passage above may be another signature PBS 38 38 word, not used by MWS in Frankenstein but certainly used once by PBS when he changed 39 39 MWS’s ‘my eyes were shut’ to ‘my eyes were insensible’ (274/79). 40 40 12 The Garland 1996 edition, MYR IX (1&2), is now partly available as the first 41 offering in the Shelley-Godwin Archive (see http://shelleygodwinarchive.org). This TEI- 41 42 based version of The Frankenstein Notebooks offers photo facsimiles of the Draft and Fair 42 43 Copy and TEI-encoded diplomatic transcriptions of each manuscript page (but without the 43 44 lineation achieved in the printed edition). Although this TEI version does not yet reproduce 44

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two texts of the novel based on the Draft, in the first of which PBS’s words are 1 1 contradistinguished from MWS’s by being set in italics (the other text removes 2 2 all of PBS’s interventions in the Draft and restores MWS’s original words that 3 3 PBS had cancelled). Most of his interventions reveal that he was a good editor. As 4 4 his Preface and his review of the novel suggest, MWS was an inexperienced and 5 5 young writer who benefited from most of his editorial corrections and suggestions, 6 6 many of which were stylistic: 7 7 8 1] PBS added or corrected punctuation and capitalization; 8 9 2] he corrected misspellings: e.g., changing ‘igmmatic’ to ‘enigmatic’ (330/136); 9 10 3] he corrected errors in fact: e.g., instructing MWS to change ‘Lord Chancellor 10 11 Bacon’ to ‘Friar [Roger] Bacon’ (184 and 251, n. 95); and changing her 11 12 ‘above two centuries before’ (which had initially been ‘above a century 12 13 before’) to the more correct ‘above a century and a half before’ (369/183);13 13 14 4] he frequently changed ‘that’ to ‘which’ to introduce restrictive clauses (see, 14 15 e.g., 345/159); 15 16 5] he corrected grammar: e.g., changing an incorrect nominative ‘he’ to the 16 17 objective ‘him’ (347/161 and 349/164); or changing ‘school where I studied’ 17 18 to ‘school in which I had studied’ (340/154);14 18 19 6] he added or deleted words to make a phrase more meaningful or graceful 19 20 or exact: e.g., MWS’s ‘I determined to remain that night at Secheron. The 20 21 night was very fine’ became ‘I determined to remain that night at Secheron,a 21 22 village half a league to the eastward of the city. The sky was serene’ (295/99); 22 23 her ‘surrounded by ice still in imminent danger’ became ‘surrounded by 23 24 mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of being crushed in their conflict’ 24 25 (420/235); her ‘he said on one of these’ became ‘was legible in one of these 25 26 inscriptions’ (412/227); and her ‘you will feel the misery of cold & frost but I 26 27 shall not for cold is sweeter to me than heat’ became ‘you will feel the misery 27 28 of cold and frost to which I am impassive’ (412/227); 28 29 29 30 the accompanying literal transcript of 1818 and the footnotes from the 1996 Frankenstein 30 31 Notebooks, it can run complex searches on the text of the Draft and Fair Copy – and can 31 32 enlarge each page image to facilitate study of the differences between MWS’s and PBS’s 32 33 hands. Most of the introductory front matter and all of my ‘Frankenstein Chronology’ are 33 34 also made available in this TEI version that is produced by MITH (The Maryland Institute 34 35 for Technology in the Humanities). 35 13 36 For both of these changes that concern the years after Charles I collected his 36 forces in OProofxford, consult Frankenstein Notebooks Copy, pp. 458–9: PBS’s change placed the 37 37 action of Frankenstein in the 1790s, a decade confirmed by other chronological hints in the 38 38 narrative. See ‘Other Numbers and the Dates in The Frankenstein Notebooks’, Frankenstein 39 39 Notebooks, pp. lxv–lxvi. 40 40 14 PBS in many ways acted as modern-day copy editor – e.g., he also eliminated 41 prepositions at the end of clauses: MWS’s ‘replace those whom fate has deprived us of’ 41 42 became PBS’s ‘replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived’ (398/213); and 42 43 MWS’s ‘By the Sacred earth I kneel on’ became PBS’s ‘By the sacred earth on which I 43 44 kneel’ (409/224). 44

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7] he often cancelled the wordy ‘And’ or ‘But’ that MWS used to connect her 1 1 narrative sentences; in doing so, he sometimes changed her coordination to 2 2 a more complex subordination, introducing causal and other relationships to 3 3 events or ideas: e.g., changing ‘&’ to ‘whilst’ (328/134), ‘whilst’ also being 4 4 one of his signature words;15 5 5 8] he reduced wordiness or simplified syntax: e.g., changing the subordinate 6 6 clause ‘while we were there’ to the grammatically simpler phrase ‘during our 7 7 stay’ (368/183); 8 8 9] he improved MWS’s unparallel constructions: e.g., her ‘some bat, or the 9 9 harsh and interrupted croaking of the frogs’ became his ‘some bat, or the 10 10 frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking’ (310/115); and her ‘found on 11 11 the trees or lying on the ground’ became his ‘found hanging on the trees or 12 12 lying on the ground’ (322/128); 13 13 10] he used more specific nouns, especially adding a noun after MWS’s potentially 14 14 vague ‘this’: e.g., her ‘This obtained’ became his ‘This deficiency obtained’ 15 15 (325/131); her ‘concealed this by an appearance’ became his ‘concealed 16 16 my feelings under an appearance’ (399/214); and her ‘after this’ became his 17 17 ‘after the arrival of Elizabeth’s letter’ (397/212); 18 18 11] he used adjectives to intensify meaning: e.g., MWS’s ‘pain & misery’ became 19 his ‘this insupportable misery’ (347/161); 19 20 12] he transformed mere description (Victor’s ‘cheek was pale’) into narrative 20 21 (Victor’s ‘cheek had grown pale’) (273/78); 21 22 13] he intensified Victor’s emotional torment (and sometimes redirected22 the 23 reader from the past to the future): e.g., MWS’s Victor remarked on ‘those 23 24 cares and fears … which I had forgotten while on the water’, but PBS’s 24 25 Victor remarked on ‘those cares and fears … which soon were to clasp me 25 26 and cling to me for ever’ (401/216); 26 27 14] he used more precise or emphatic diction: e.g., her ‘chemical machines’ 27 28 became his ‘chemical instruments’ (270/74); her just-created monster 28 29 ‘muttered some words’ whereas his ‘muttered some inarticulate sounds’ 29 30 (277/82); her ‘hut’ became his ‘hovel’ (326/132) and her ‘house’ became 30 31 his ‘retreat’ (327/133); ‘with the men of that country’ became ‘with the 31 32 philosophers of that country’ (361/176); and ‘remorse took away every hope’ 32 33 became ‘remorse extinguished every hope’ (311/115), the word ‘extinguish’ 33 34 being added by PBS in six additional places (see 68, 113, 118, 169, 197, 217). 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 15 Proof Copy 38 In addition to PBS revealing his voice in the novel by using ‘which’ (rather than 38 MWS’s ‘that’) to introduce restrictive clauses, he was more likely to use ‘whilst’ rather than 39 39 ‘while’ (see 62, 68, 79, 129, 134; see also 74 for the one time he penned ‘while’), whereas 40 40 MWS wrote the word ‘whilst’ only once in the extant Draft (see 178; she used the word 41 ‘while’ dozens of times). PBS again wrote the word ‘whilst’ three times in his concluding 41 42 section of the Fair Copy of the novel (Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. 758–9, 762–3, 764–5), 42 43 but only the last of these was retained in 1818. All told, the word ‘whilst’ appeared 11 times 43 44 in 1818, two of these probably resulting from PBS’s correcting proofs. 44

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Some of the most significant changes that PBS made to the text were his 1 1 removing of MWS’s colloquial phrasings, which he made more formal and/or 2 2 more Latinate – and, in the process, usually more specific and/or intense – but at a 3 3 sacrifice of a voice that might have been more in keeping with the character of the 4 4 speaker. Note the following changes from MWS’s to PBS’s phrasings: 5 5 6 1] Victor’s ‘should go to the university’ became ‘should become a student at the 6 7 University’ (263/67); 7 8 2] Victor’s remark about entering a sick chamber ‘before it was safe’ became 8 9 entering a sick chamber ‘before the danger of infection was past’ (263/67); 9 10 3] Victor’s ‘I had plenty of leisure’ became ‘I had sufficient leisure’ (266/70); 10 11 4] Victor’s ‘He began his lecture with a kind of history of chemistry’ became ‘He 11 12 began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry’ (267/72); 12 13 5] the monster’s ‘a great deal of wood’ became ‘a great quantity of wood’ 13 14 (324/130); 14 15 6] De Lacey’s ‘my children are out’ became ‘my children are from home’ 15 16 (344/158); 16 17 7] Robert Walton’s remark that Victor’s dream reveries were ‘peculiarly 17 18 interresting [sic]’ became ‘almost as imposing and interesting as truth’ 18 19 (417/232); 19 20 8] in speaking of his mother’s death, MWS’s Victor lamented that ‘the 20 21 brightness of a loved eye can have faded’, which PBS changed to ‘can have 21 22 been extinguished’ (264/68), further emphasizing the finality of death. 22 23 23 24 PBS also made a few substantial additions to the novel, developing and 24 25 deepening MWS’s ideas on matters domestic, scientific, political and metaphysical. 25 26 Each of these additions, which reveal that PBS could preserve and add to MWS’s 26 27 narrative (rather than replace it with something of his own liking), is important 27 28 enough to record here in full (with PBS’s words again identified by italics). 28 29 29 30 1] In Draft Volume I, Chapter 1, PBS’s Victor deepened our understanding of the 30 31 psychological differences between himself and Elizabeth: ‘Every one adored 31 32 Elizabeth. If the servants had any request to make, it was always through 32 33 her intercession. We were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. 33 34 For, although there was a great dissimilitude in our characters, yet there was 34 35 an harmony in that very dissimilitude. I was more calm and philosophical 35 36 thanProof my companion. Yet I was not so mildCopy or yielding. My application was 36 37 of longer endurance, but it was not so severe whilst it endured. I delighted 37 38 in investigating the facts relating to the actual world – she busied herself 38 39 in following the aerial creations of the poets. The world was to me a secret 39 40 which I desired to discover – to her it was a vacancy which she sought to 40 41 people with imaginations of her own’ (62).16 41 42 42 43 16 The conclusion to this passage recalls PBS’s final lines to his poemMont Blanc: ‘If 43 44 to the human mind’s imaginings, / Silence and solitude were vacancy?’ 44

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2] In Draft Volume I, Chapter 4, PBS added two passages to suggest more of 1 1 Victor’s reflections on the ways that modern scientific study at the University 2 2 of Ingolstadt had taken the magic out of the pioneer science of Agrippa and 3 3 Paracelsus, with PBS’s Victor (and his Professor Waldman) nevertheless 4 4 asserting the value of all scientific learning: ‘But nowthe scene was changed: 5 5 the ambition of the enquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those 6 6 visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required 7 7 to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur, for realities of little worth … 8 8 . [Waldman] heard my little narration concerning my studies with attention 9 9 and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without 10 10 the contempt that M. Krempe had exhibited. He said that “these were men 11 11 to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of 12 12 the foundations of their knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, 13 13 to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which 14 14 they to a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The 15 15 labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever failed 16 16 in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind”’ (71, 72–3). 17 17 3] In Draft Volume I, Chapter 8, PBS’s Elizabeth reminded MWS and the readers 18 18 of the novel that Geneva was more republican and egalitarian than France or 19 19 England: ‘My aunt observed this and, when Justine was twelve years old, 20 20 prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at our house. The republican 21 21 institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than 22 22 those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there 23 23 is less distinction between the classes into which human beings have been 24 24 divided: and the lower orders, being neither so poor nor so despised, are 25 25 more refined and moral. A servant at Geneva does not mean the same thing 26 26 as a servant in France or England – Justine was thus received into our family 27 27 to learn the duties of a servant, which in our fortunate country does not 28 28 include a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being’ (89). 29 29 4] In Draft Volume I, Chapter 15, MWS described the Frankensteins’ journey 30 30 to the Valley of Chamouni in terms that echoed PBS’s descriptions of the 31 31 Shelley party’s own journey to the Valley of Chamouni in July 1816 that are 32 32 recorded in his letter of 22 July–2 August to Thomas Love Peacock.17 In the 33 33 midst of one such description of Mont Blanc and Montanvert, PBS’s Victor 34 34 further echoed that letter by juxtaposing the sea of ice with the icy summits 35 35 that seem to unite Heaven and Ocean with a metaphysics and epistemology 36 36 that also recall his poem Mont Blanc: ‘From that side where I now stood, 37 Proof Copy 37 Montanvert was exactly opposite at the distance of a league, and above it 38 38 39 39 40 40 17 See Letters I: 495–502; also see that letter in the Shelleys’ History of a Six Weeks’ 41 Tour. London: T. Hookham, Jun., and C. and J. Ollier, 1817, pp. 140–72. A productive 41 42 essay could be written on the Shelleys’ collaborations in both Frankenstein and History of 42 43 a Six Weeks’ Tour, the latter published on 6 November 1817, exactly eight weeks before 43 44 Frankenstein was published on 1 January 1818. 44

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rose Mont Blanc in awful majesty. I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing 1 1 on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of 2 2 ice, wound among its dependant mountains whose aerial summits hung over 3 3 its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in sunlight over the clouds. 4 4 My heart, which before was sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy. 5 5 I exclaimed – “Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander and do not rest in your 6 6 narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness or take me as your companion 7 7 away from the joys of life”’ (121–2). 8 8 9 In addition to these interpolations by PBS into the text of MWS’s Frankenstein, 9 10 MWS herself directly inserted two of PBS’s previously written texts (a prose 10 11 extract from his 1816 journal; and two poetry stanzas from the Alastor volume) 11 12 into her novel. The journal extract that she copied repeats his imagery that speaks 12 13 to his epistemological concerns and to the ontological interrelations between 13 14 Heaven and Ocean – in this case the Alps and river and lake as described by 14 15 Victor during his and Elizabeth’s excursion to Evian on their wedding night (Draft 15 16 Volume II, Chapter 16). As the parallel passage in the footnote demonstrates, 16 17 MWS was transcribing a text taken directly from PBS’s journal entry during his 17 18 journey with Byron on 23 June 1816 at the same spot: 18 19 19 20 we passed by the river Drance & observed its path through the chasm of the 20 21 mountains & the glens of the lower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake 21 22 & we approached the amphitheatre of mountains that forms its eastern boundary. 22 23 The spire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it & the range of 23 24 mountain above mountain which overhung it. (401; see also 216)18 24 25 25 26 The number of times and the ways in which MWS and/or PBS copied this particular 26 27 passage between June and October 1816, which are outlined in the entry for 23 27 28 June 1816 in the ‘Frankenstein Chronology’, speak to the complex interrelations 28 19 29 of the collaborative texts produced by the two Shelleys at this time. 29 30 PBS’s poetical extract that MWS imported into Frankenstein, which appears 30 31 in Draft Volume I, Chapter 15 (together with the description of the ascent 31 32 of Montanvert, for which see above), is a quotation of eight lines from PBS’s 32 33 ‘’ that had appeared in the Alastor volume, published in February 1816: 33 34 34 18 35 Compare PBS’s Geneva Diary entry for 23 June 1816: ‘I/We could observe its [the 35 36 river Drance’s] path thro the chasm of the mountains & the glens of the lower hills, until 36 The mountainsProof here came closer to the lake, & weCopy could see the eastern boundary enclose 37 37 its waters so that & we approached the amphitheatre which of mountains which forms 38 38 its eastern boundary. The spire of Evian shone in/under the woods that surrounded & the 39 39 range of mountain above mountain which overhung it’ (see Erkelenz, BSM XI: 126–7 – or 40 Frankenstein Notebooks, p. 561 and n.). It is worth noting here the collaborations between 40 41 the two Shelleys in 1816 involved PBS occasionally writing passages in MWS’s Journal 41 42 (see MS Journals I: 110–42). 42 43 19 See Frankenstein Notebooks, p. lxxix; also see PBS’s letter to Peacock of 17 July 43 44 1816 in SC VII: 25–49, especially p. 29 for the river Drance. 44

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We rest, A dream has power to poison sleep 1 1 We rise one wandering thought pollutes the day 2 We feel conceive, or reason – laugh or weep 2 3 Embrace fond woe or cast our cares away 3 4 4 5 It is the same – for be it joy or sorrow 5 6 The path of its departure still is free 6 7 Mans yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow 7 20 8 Nought may endure but mutability. (316; see also 121) 8 9 9 10 Such lines, here represented as they appear in the Draft manuscript, not only 10 11 epitomize Victor’s ‘necessary’ (316/121) condition that made him subject to the 11 12 vicissitudes of human nature and to inevitable melancholy and grief, but they 12 13 also anticipate the manner in which mutability is figured in PBS’s Mont Blanc. 13 14 Moreover, these lines may be related to Victor’s rejection of the monster (the 14 15 ‘dream’ that ‘poison[s] sleep’ and ‘pollutes the day’), whose narrative begins the 15 16 following chapter, Draft Volume II, Chapter 1. 16 17 The monster is not just a ‘dream’; he is a flesh-and-blood being whose17 18 namelessness forces the reader to define the monster’s character and his relationship18 19 to Victor – and thereby to confront the central moral issues of Frankenstein. In 19 20 my teaching and writing, I have always called Victor’s creation a ‘monster’ (the 20 21 word used 35 times in the Draft to denote the creature: 24 times by Victor, 5 by 21 22 the monster himself, 3 by Walton, 2 by William, and 1 by the magistrate). No 22 23 other denomination (e.g., in frequency of use, ‘fiend’ or ‘wretch’ or ‘creature’ or23 24 ‘dæmon’ or ‘devil’) is used as much as the word ‘monster’ in the Draft (or in the 24 25 1818 edition, in which the word appears 32 times). But my choice of the word 25 26 ‘monster’, in the absence of any proper name for him, signifies that he was a 26 27 callous murderer, whereas Betty Bennett, with whom I edited The Mary Shelley 27 28 Reader, always insisted that the creation be called ‘creature’, thereby removing 28 29 the stigma of ‘monster’ and suggesting that he was not morally responsible for 29 30 these murders, having been driven to the deeds by his creator Victor. In effect, 30 31 Bennett was taking the lead provided by PBS himself, who called the creature a 31 32 ‘Being’, a word PBS used five times in his review of Frankenstein. The first of32 33 these references makes clear that PBS wanted us to read MWS’s narrative with a 33 34 particular moral point of view: 34 35 35 Nor are the crimes and malevolence of the single Being, though indeed withering 36 and tremendous, the offspring of any unaccountable propensity to evil, but flow 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 20 The lineation and punctuation of this extract of the third and fourth stanzas of 39 39 ‘Mutability’ follow the Draft manuscript (Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. 250–51), which 40 40 differs from the way the poem is printed in 1818 or printed in Alastor; or, The Spirit of 41 Solitude: and Other Poems. London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1816, pp. 59–60 – or even 41 42 printed in Original Frankenstein. MWS later in Draft Volume II, Chapter 6, adapts one of 42 43 PBS’s lines from this fourth stanza when she describes the effects of the monster’s reading 43 44 of The Sorrows of Werter: ‘The path of my departure was free’ (153). 44

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irresistibly from certain causes fully adequate to their production. They are the 1 1 children, as it were, of Necessity and Human Nature. In this the direct moral of 2 the book consists; and it is perhaps the most important, and of the most universal 2 3 application, of any moral that can be enforced by example. Treat a person ill, and 3 4 he will become wicked. Requite affection with scorn; – let one being be selected, 4 5 for whatever cause, as the refuse of his kind – divide him, a social being, from 5 6 society, and you impose upon him the irresistible obligations – malevolence and 6 7 selfishness. (435, my bold) 7 8 8 9 PBS universalized these moral lessons about the novel’s fictional ‘Being’ by 9 10 reference to any real ‘being’ or ‘a social being’ who has been victimized by his 10 11 fellow beings. 11 12 PBS in this review clarified his reading of the novel by calling the creature 12 13 ‘Being’ in four additional places: ‘The Being in “Frankenstein” is, no doubt, a 13 14 tremendous creature’; ‘The scene between the Being and the blind De Lacey in 14 15 the cottage, is one of the most profound and extraordinary instances of pathos 15 16 that we ever recollect’; ‘The encounter and argument between Frankenstein and 16 17 the Being on the sea of ice, almost approaches, in effect, to the expostulations of 17 18 Caleb Williams with Falkland’; ‘The scene in the cabin of Walton’s ship – the 18 19 more than mortal enthusiasm and grandeur of the Being’s speech over the dead 19 20 body of his victim – is an exhibition of intellectual and imaginative power, which 20 21 we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom been surpassed’ (435–6, my 21 22 bold). In each of these passages that underlines what MWS had accomplished, 22 23 PBS studiously avoided the name of ‘monster’ or ‘dæmon’ or ‘devil’ – as well as 23 24 any enumeration or mention of any specific ‘crimes and malevolence’; indeed, 24 25 PBS wanted the reader to be sympathetic towards this ‘wicked’ Being. 25 26 That sympathy for the Being is increased by the changes that PBS made in the 26 27 Draft and in the Fair Copy of the novel. Consider his additions to MWS’s prose 27 28 that described the ‘reward of [the monster’s] benevolence’ when he was shot after 28 29 saving a young girl from drowning. In each addition, here again represented by 29 30 italics, PBS made the Being a more sympathetic creature (or, at least, a character 30 31 expecting more sympathy): ‘I now writhed under the miserable pain of my a 31 32 wound which shattered the flesh and bone. … My sufferings were augmented 32 33 also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. My 33 34 daily prayers vows rose for revenge – a deep and deadly revenge, such as would 34 35 alone compensate for the horrors of my situation outrages and the anguish I had 35 36 endured. … all joy was but a mockery to me, which insulted my desolate state’ 36 (351–2/166).Proof21 By these revisions, PBS did Copynot change MWS’s portrayal of the 37 37 38 Being as a victim, but he clearly made that victimhood all the more emphatic. In 38 39 so doing, PBS also emphasized Victor’s responsibility: MWS had the Being blame 39 40 Victor for his raging passion: ‘you are the cause’; but PBS’s ‘you are the sole cause 40 41 41 42 42 43 21 For the manuscript evidence of these changes, see Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. 43 44 390–93. 44

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of its excesses’ (355/170) made Victor more of the villain and the Being more of 1 1 the victim.22 2 2 PBS’s preference for the neutral word ‘being’ is also apparent in the Draft of 3 3 the novel: ‘I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to make him the being of a 4 4 gigantic stature’ (77/273); ‘Unable to endure the aspect of the creature being I 5 5 had created’ (81/277); ‘I considered the wretch being whom I had cast in among 6 6 mankind and endowed with the will and the power to effect purposes of horror, 7 7 such as the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my vampire, my 8 8 own spirit let loose from the grave and forced to destroy all who were dear to me’ 9 9 (101/297); ‘A creature being, whom I myself had created’ (101/297). Some of 10 10 these changes merely avoided awkward repetitions (MWS twice wrote ‘creature 11 11 … created’), but PBS also seems to have used the word in order to emphasize 12 12 the common denominator between the created ‘being’ and the human beings 13 13 who bedevilled him. To that end, PBS altered MWS’s version of the creature’s 14 14 desire for justice from Victor: ‘But on you only had I any claim, and from you I 15 15 determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from your fellow 16 16 creatures any other being that wore the human form’ (164/350). 17 17 In like manner, PBS revealed his presence in MWS’s novel by his special 18 18 use of the word ‘series’ (twice linked with ‘being’ and sometimes suggesting an 19 19 inevitable or necessary sequence of items, whether material or immaterial). Note 20 20 his use of this particular word (in bold below) in the Draft and Fair Copy of the 21 21 novel as well as in his Preface to and review of the novel. 22 22 23 1] The monster in Draft Volume II, Chapter 6, explained to Victor that he had 23 24 found the ‘papers’ of his scientific and personal journals: ‘Every thing24 is 25 related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole 25 26 detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set 26 27 in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person is 27 28 given in language which painted your own horrors and has rendered mine 28 29 ineffaceable’ (155/341), PBS’s additions again creating further sympathy for 29 30 the monster by explaining the cause of his rage. 30 31 2] Victor in Draft Volume II, Chapter 14, during his imprisonment in Ireland 31 32 remarked that ‘The whole series of my life appeared as a dream. I sometimes 32 33 doubted if indeed it was not all true, but it never presented itself to my mind 33 34 with the force of reality’ (201/386). 34 35 3–4] The monster in PBS’s embellishments to the conclusion of the Fair Copy 35 36 of Volume III explained to Walton that ‘the miserable series of my being is 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 22 It should be emphasized here that PBS explores rather than excuses the Being’s 39 39 wickedness. In many ways, the Monster is like the victimized Beatrice Cenci, for whom, 40 40 nevertheless, ‘Revenge, retaliation, atonement, are pernicious mistakes’. To continue the 41 analogy using the text of PBS’s Preface to The Cenci (1819), ‘It is in the restless and 41 42 anatomizing casuistry with which men seek the justification of [the Being], yet feel that 42 43 [he] has done what needs justification … that the dramatic character of what [he] did and 43 44 suffered, consists’ (PS II: 730–31). 44

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wound to its close’23 and that ‘Neither yours nor any mans death is needed 1 1 to consummate the series of my being’,24 these two instances, which became 2 2 part of the first edition, also using the word ‘being’ in its universalist sense. 3 3 5–6] Further evidence of this signature word may be found in PBS’s Preface 4 4 to the novel: ‘I have not considered myself as merely weaving a series of 5 5 supernatural terrors’ (432). Moreover, his review of the novel confirms his 6 6 partiality for the word: ‘We debate with ourselves in wonder, as we read 7 7 [the novel], what could have been the series of thoughts – what could have 8 8 been the peculiar experiences that awakened them – which conduced, in the 9 9 author’s mind, to the astonishing combinations of motives and incidents, and 10 10 the startling catastrophe, which compose this tale’ (434).25 11 11 12 By isolating ‘series’ as a word peculiar to PBS, we are able to hear PBS in one of 12 13 the extended sections of Frankenstein for which no manuscript is extant, namely 13 14 the first four introductory letters from Robert Walton to his sister Margaret Saville 14 15 (together with the first part of Chapter 1). At the end of Letter IV to his sister, 15 16 Walton does not ‘doubt that my tale conveys in its series internal evidence of 16 17 the truth of the events of which it is composed’ (58). Because MWS did not use 17 18 the word ‘series’ in this manner, it is very likely that PBS contributed most or all 18 19 of this sentence to the novel. How much more PBS wrote of these introductory 19 20 Walton letters is impossible, without further evidence, to determine – but he may 20 21 have been responsible for (or directly influenced) much of it. 21 22 PBS’s diction suggests that he might have had a hand in the other section of the 22 23 novel for which no manuscript is extant: namely, Volume II, half of Chapter 3 and 23 24 all of Chapter 4, the section beginning with the monster’s inability to understand 24 25 spoken and written words: ‘I did not even understand the sounds for which they 25 26 [words on a page] stood as signs’ (139). This section of the novel deals with the 26 27 monster learning the ‘science’ (139) and the ‘art of language’ (141) – and the 27 28 ‘science of letters’ (144) as it was taught to Safie. How much PBS contributed 28 29 to this section for which the manuscript is missing we may never know, but it 29 30 contains his signature word ‘whilst’: ‘My days were spent in close attention, that 30 31 I might more speedily master the language; and I may boast that I improved more 31 32 rapidly than the Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken 32 33 accents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that was 33 34 spoken’ (144, my bold). PBS’s presence in this section of the novel may also 34 35 35 36 36 23 FrankensteinProof Notebooks, pp. 754–5; 812. Copy 37 37 24 Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. 768–9; 816. MWS had written in the Draft: ‘It needs 38 38 not yours or any mans death to consumate it [my work]’ (see Frankenstein Notebooks, p. 39 39 816, for the comparison of the two texts). 40 40 25 At the same time, PBS used the word ‘series’ in his Preface to The Revolt of 41 Islam (published 8 December 1817): ‘Such is the series of delineations of which the Poem 41 42 consists’ (CPPBS III: 114); and in his letter to Godwin of 11 December 1817: ‘My Poem 42 43 was produced by a series of thoughts which filled my mind with an unbounded & sustained 43 44 enthusiasm’ (Letters I: 577). 44

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be evident in the words that are used nowhere else in Frankenstein, such as 1 1 ‘arbiters’, ‘declamatory’, ‘degeneration’, ‘exhortations’, ‘hapless’, ‘hemisphere’, 2 2 ‘lichen’, ‘mortification’, ‘nocturnal’, ‘radiance’ (although MWS used ‘radiant’ 3 3 twice), ‘sallies’, ‘scion’, ‘stealth’, ‘transparent’, ‘unsullied’, and ‘vagabond’ (138– 4 4 46).26 Although MWS may have written some of these words or may even have 5 5 written the PBS-like sentence about ‘the division of property, of immense wealth 6 6 and squalid poverty; of rank, descent, and noble blood’ (145), PBS most likely 7 7 contributed the monster’s expression of the star-flower metaphor, which is almost 8 8 a cliché in PBS’s poetry: 9 9 10 In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and the green 10 11 banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the scent and the eyes, 11 12 stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods; the sun became warmer, the 12 13 nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal rambles were an extreme pleasure 13 14 to me, although they were considerably shortened by the late setting and early 14 15 rising of the sun. (144)27 15 16 16 17 Elsewhere in this section for which no manuscript is extant, either MWS or 17 18 PBS had the monster twice interrogate his own nature: ‘And what was I? Of my 18 19 creation and creator I was absolutely ignorant’ (145–6); ‘I had never yet seen a 19 20 being resembling me, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The 20 21 question again recurred, to be answered only with groans’ (147). The word ‘being’ 21 22 in this second illustration suggests that PBS may have written this sentence; but 22 23 we know for a fact that, two chapters later (Draft Volume II, Chapter 6), PBS did 23 24 extend the monster’s question of ‘What was I’, thus: ‘My person was hideous, and 24 25 my stature gigantic. What did this mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I 25 26 come? What was my destination? These questions continually recurred, but I was 26 27 unable to solve them’ (339/153). PBS’s added questions about whence and whither 27 28 recall his sceptical inquiry in his recent poetry, especially Alastor, in which the 28 29 Poet asked: ‘O stream! / Whose source is inaccessibly profound, / Whither do thy 29 28 30 mysterious waters tend? / Thou imagest my life’ (ll. 502–5). 30 31 31 32 26 Another word, ‘conciliating’ (141), is used only in this section and in Letter IV 32 33 (55), also for which there is no extant manuscript. 33 34 27 For the star-flower imagery in PBS poems written during the same period as34 35 Frankenstein, see ‘the parasites, / Starred with ten thousand blossoms’ (Alastor, ll. 439–40); 35 36 ‘With strange and star-bright flowers’ (Laon and Cythna, XII: xviii); ‘flowers burst forth 36 37 like starry beams’Proof (‘Athanase’, Detached Passages Copy(b) l. 9); ‘Then I … saw strange flowers, 37 / And the stars methought grew unlike ours’ (Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue, ll. 38 38 1201–2; quotations from PBS’s poetry are taken from PS I–II). The star-flower imagery 39 39 becomes central to the symbolism of two later poems, The Sensitive-Plant and . 40 40 28 These questions also anticipate the frequent inquiries about ‘whence’ and ‘whither’ 41 in PBS’s ‘The Triumph of Life’ (1822), especially Rousseau’s ‘Shew whence I came, and 41 42 where I am, and why –’ (l. 398Shew whence I came, and where I am, and whyShew whence 42 43 I came, and where I am, and why—Shew whence I came, and where I am, and why— in 43 44 SPP: 495). 44

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PBS’s additional questions about whence and whither do not alter MWS’s 1 1 representation of the monster’s attempt to define himself, but they do deepen the 2 2 novel’s inquiry into the metaphysical (and physical) causes of life and death: ‘I 3 3 paused, examining and analyzing all the minutiæ of causation as exemplified in the 4 4 change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst of this darkness 5 5 a sudden light broke in upon me’ (271/75–6).29 In his inquiries, PBS occasionally 6 6 offered more secular phrasing for MWS’s suggestions of a Christian cosmology 7 7 or teleology: for example, changing the monster’s ‘prayers … for revenge’ to 8 8 ‘vows … for revenge’ (352/166). Death for PBS was an impenetrable mystery 9 9 that could not be solved by such glib names as ‘God, and ghosts, and Heaven’ 10 10 (Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, l. 27); accordingly, after MWS’s Victor reflected on 11 11 his mother’s death with ‘we must … bless God if nothing worse happens’, PBS 12 12 offered the following revision: ‘we must … learn to think ourselves fortunate, 13 13 whilst one remains whom the spoiler [Death] has not seized’ (264/68). This change 14 14 makes the point less theological and more metaphysical, more in keeping with 15 15 PBS’s other reflections on the mystery of life as defined by the impenetrability of 16 16 death. PBS made other such changes in the Draft: MWS’s Victor was intent on the 17 17 destruction of the monster ‘as a task enjoined by heaven’, but PBS’s Victor added 18 18 a parallel construction, ‘as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I was 19 19 unconscious’ (412/227); whereas MWS’s Walton reported that Victor’s dreams 20 20 about the dead Clerval and Elizabeth ‘were not the creations of his fancy but the 21 21 real beings that he beheld and conversed with’, PBS’s Walton reported instead that 22 22 these ‘real beings [did] visit him from the regions of a remoter world’ (417/232).30 23 23 That ‘remoter’ world was addressed in an apostrophe to the dead Clerval that 24 24 is not in the Draft, but that was added to proofs of the novel, almost certainly by 25 25 PBS, just two months prior to the publication of the first edition on 1 January 26 26 1818.31 Victor, after recalling his and Clerval’s trip down the Rhine and being 27 27 reminded of Clerval’s ‘wild and enthusiastic imagination [that] was chastened by 28 28 the sensibility of his heart’, lamented Clerval’s death: 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 29 34 I here correct the mistranscription in Original Frankenstein in which I mistakenly 34 35 represented ‘minutiæ of causation’ as PBS’s addition to the text. He did marginally pen the 35 36 phrase but only to replace what he had cancelled in MWS’s clause. 36 30 Again,Proof PBS’s phrasing here recalls linesCopy from his Mont Blanc: ‘Some say that 37 37 gleams of a remoter world / Visit the soul in sleep’; also compare ‘voice from some sublimer 38 38 world’ in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 39 39 31 This important addition to the text of Frankenstein was one of two substantial 40 40 changes in proofs that PBS sent to Lackington on 28 October 1817 (for evidence of these 41 changes, see Original Frankenstein, p. 250, nn. 85 and 89; and ‘Frankenstein Chronology’ 41 42 for 20 and 28 October 1817, Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. xc–xci). The other substitution, 42 43 most likely written by MWS, contained a description of John Hampden’s monument that 43 44 was based on MWS’s visit there on 20 October 1817. 44

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And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost for ever? Has 1 1 this mind so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent … has this 2 2 mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory?32 3 3 4 These questions about the existence of the body and mind after death that were 4 5 added in the late October proofs echo PBS’s earlier changes at the conclusion of 5 6 the novel in April and May 1817. On the final page of the Draft, MWS’s monster6 7 promised to ascend his funeral pile triumphantly with a hope that ‘the flame that7 8 consumes my body will give rest & blessings to my mind’. PBS, apparently 8 9 dissatisfied with a phrasing that might suggest a Christian afterlife, revised the 9 10 sentence to conclude that the consuming flame ‘will giveenjoyment or tranquillity 10 11 to my mind’ (429/244). But even that intervention seems not to have satisfied PBS: 11 12 in fair-copying the last 12 and ¾ pages of the Draft (the final scene of the novel 12 13 that is published in the last 16 pages of the 1818 first edition), he made a number13 14 of substantive changes to again emphasize the finality of death. Consider 14 the 15 following changes from MWS’s Draft to PBS’s Fair Copy: Walton’s description 15 16 that Victor’s ‘eyes closed’ became ‘eyes closed forever’; Walton’s remark on ‘the 16 17 death of this glorious creature [Victor Frankenstein]’ was changed to ‘the untimely 17 18 extinction of this glorious spirit’; the monster’s ‘when I die’ was changed to ‘when 18 19 I shall be no more’. In each of these revisions, PBS (as he had done in Alastor) 19 20 emphasized death to the exclusion of any Christian afterlife. That finality of death20 21 or, at least, the uncertainty about death is also emphasized in PBS’s addition to 21 22 the monster’s final words as he proposed to ascend his funeral pile and ‘exult in 22 23 the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away. 23 24 My ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; 24 25 or if it thinks will surely not think thus. Adieu’.33 As an afterthought in the proofs, 25 26 26 27 27 32 1818 vol. 3, pp. 18–19. These questions recall PBS’s reflections on the death of 28 28 the Poet in Alastor (see especially the concluding lines, 703–20). Even if PBS was the 29 one, as is likely, who asked these questions about Clerval, MWS could have been the one 29 30 who answered them in the very next sentence: ‘No, it is not thus; your form so divinely 30 31 wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles 31 32 your unhappy friend.’ In fairness to both Shelleys, it is impossible to determine, without 32 33 further evidence, who was responsible for this late change in the text of the novel. However, 33 34 the word ‘imaginations’ (meaning not the faculty of the mind but the product of that faculty) 34 35 in this quotation seems to be another PBS signature word: compare his other uses of the 35 36 word in the Draft: ‘it was a vacancy which she sought to people with imaginations of her 36 37 own’ (62); Proof‘I learned from Werter’s imaginations Copydespondency and gloom’ (154); ‘would 37 he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in itself’ (177); ‘with 38 38 the first imagination of danger’ (237). See also PBS’s Fair Copy of the final scene: ‘the 39 39 heart in which the imagination of it was concieved [sic]’ (Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. 40 768–9, 815) and his second sentence of the Preface to the novel (432). MWS used the word 40 41 ‘imaginations’ only once in this way (‘Filled with dreary imaginations’ [363]), and she 41 42 could have learned that use from PBS. 42 43 33 See ‘Appendix A: Parallel Texts of Draft and Extant Fair Copy’, Frankenstein 43 44 Notebooks, pp. 810, l. 36; 811, ll. 1–3; 816, l. 18; 817, ll. 20–24. 44

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apparently realizing that the monster’s final word of ‘Adieu’ was not in keeping 1 1 with the uncertainty about the monster’s life after death, either MWS or PBS 2 2 replaced PBS’s ‘Adieu’ with ‘Farewell’ so that 1818 ends without the monster 3 3 pointing himself ‘To God’.34 4 4 PBS’s own last words about Frankenstein were voiced in the anonymous 5 5 review that he wrote for his wife’s anonymously published novel. In that review, 6 6 not published until 1832, he defined the novel’s subjects and themes, much as he 7 7 had done in his Preface to the first edition in which he had used almost identical 8 8 phrasing about MWS’s (and his) achievements. In the review, he insisted that 9 9 Frankenstein dealt with ‘the working of passion out of passion’ and the ‘elementary 10 10 feelings of the human mind’ (compare the ‘delineating of human passions’ and the 11 11 ‘elementary principles of human nature’ in the Preface); with ‘domestic manners’ 12 12 (compare ‘domestic affection’ in the Preface); with ‘moral sensibility’ (compare 13 13 ‘moral tendencies’ in the Preface); and with ‘original goodness’ (compare ‘the 14 14 excellence of universal virtue’ in the Preface).35 As we have seen, PBS not only 15 15 found but also, by his revisions, focused or extended these psychological and 16 16 moral and metaphysical elements in the novel – and hence his review (and his 17 17 Preface), at least in part, commented on his own contributions to the novel. 18 18 That MWS published Frankenstein anonymously, that PBS was responsible 19 19 for portions of that novel, that PBS impersonated MWS in writing the anonymous 20 20 Preface to the 1818 edition, and that PBS wrote a review of that novel on which 21 21 he collaborated – all of these circumstances point to a set of voices that need 22 22 to be disentangled as we attempt to understand not only the novel but also the 23 23 circumstances of the Shelleys’ collaboration that led to its publication. The final 24 36 24 sentence of the review itself suggests the complications of the mixed voices 25 25 involved in the phenomenon we call Frankenstein. PBS wrote that ‘The scene in 26 26 the cabin of Walton’s ship – the more than mortal enthusiasm and grandeur of the 27 27 Being’s speech over the dead body of his victim – is an exhibition of intellectual 28 28 and imaginative power, which we think the reader will acknowledge has seldom 29 29 been surpassed’ (436). PBS’s praise for MWS’s genius here (and elsewhere in the 30 30 review) seems to be heartfelt and merited, even though any reader of this review in 31 31 1832 (which Medwin published as PBS’s) would have sensed a disingenuousness 32 32 in a husband who had anonymously praised the work of his wife. But a critical 33 33 reader in the twenty-first century will recognize that PBS is here praising MWS 34 34 for a ‘scene’ and a ‘speech’ that were heavily rewritten by PBS himself: nearly 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 34 Vol. 3, p. 192. In his letters, PBS many times used the word ‘Adieu’ in its secular 38 38 meaning of ‘Farewell’, without suggesting any kind of Christian teleology or eschatology; 39 in fact, in an 1810 letter to Thomas Jefferson Hogg, he used the word (ironically?) twice 39 40 to embrace ’s attack on Christianity: ‘Adieu. – Ecrasez l’infame ecrasez l’impie 40 41 in which endeavour your most sincere friend will join his every power, his every feeble 41 42 resourse [sic] – Adieu’ (Letters I: 29). 42 43 35 See the Preface and the review in Original Frankenstein, pp. 432–6. 43 44 36 Cited on pp. 127–8 above to illustrate PBS’s use of ‘Being’. 44

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one-third of the words in this conclusion to the novel (beginning with Walton’s 1 1 exclamatory ‘Great God’ in his letter to his sister) were written by PBS as he 2 2 fair-copied and embellished the final pages of MWS’s Draft. I suspect that PBS 3 3 recognized his own self-interest in this review: he was praising not only his 4 4 wife’s accomplishments but also his own ‘intellectual and imaginative power’ 5 5 that contributed to the collaborative achievement known as Mary Shelley’s 6 6 Frankenstein. 7 7 One final word on this collaboration, the nature of which is complicated by 8 8 what I have elsewhere called the ‘ventriloquism’37 within this novel: that is, in its 9 9 narrative point of view and in its collaborative composition. As we increase our 10 10 understanding of the frame tale, we realize that there is an editorial fluidity inside 11 11 the narrative. We initially judge that the novel is filtered through Robert Walton’s 12 12 consciousness or point of view: he tells us (and his sister Margaret Saville) the 13 13 story of encountering Victor Frankenstein who then tells us his story and that of 14 14 the monster, who tells us the stories of the De Laceys and Safie. And our judgment 15 15 is confirmed when we encounter Walton’s statement to his sister that hewill 16 16 ‘record, as nearly as possible in [Victor’s] own words, what he has related during 17 17 the day’, the voice, as it were, ‘from his own lips’ (58). We seem on fairly secure 18 18 interpretative ground until we read later in the text that Victor discovered Walton’s 19 19 record of these words and that Victor ‘himself corrected and augmented them 20 20 in many places, … principally in giving the life and spirit of the conversations 21 21 he held with his enemy’, for he did not wish ‘that a mutilated [account of these 22 22 words] should go down to posterity’ (232/417). So whose narrative are we reading? 23 23 Possibly Margaret’s version of certainly Walton’s version (certainly corrected by 24 24 Victor) of Victor’s version of the monster’s version of his own and the De Lacey 25 25 and Safie narratives. And whose novel are we reading? At least once, in the last 26 26 16 pages of the 1818 edition for which PBS fair-copied the Draft (PBS’s changes 27 27 retained in MWS’s re-copying of his Fair Copy38), we are reading PBS’s and/ 28 28 or MWS’s revises of the proofs of MWS’s Fair Copy of PBS’s embellished Fair 29 29 Copy of MWS’s Draft (which already contained some of PBS’s revisions) of the 30 30 text at the end of the novel. It is very easy to get lost in the fun house of different 31 31 characters’ voices in this text – and in the Shelleys’ collaborative voices. 32 32 To ask again: whose novel are we reading? Although we know that PBS, like 33 33 Victor, ‘corrected and augmented’ MWS’s text, all of the evidence presented in this 34 34 essay, both from the manuscript itself and from the Shelleys’ letters and journals 35 35 (as well as from the records of their contemporaries) leads us to conclude that it is 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 37 See n. 1 above for ‘Collaboration and Ventriloquism in Mary Shelley’s 40 41 Frankenstein’. 41 42 38 For this complicated sequence of events (MWS recopying PBS’s Fair Copy of 42 43 MWS’s Draft), see Frankenstein Notebooks, pp. xlvii, lxii–lxiii, lxxxv–lxxxvii (especially 43 44 the entry for [?10–13] May 1817), and 774–7. 44

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MWS’s novel with corrections and additions by PBS.39 Are there more ‘neglected’ 1 1 PBS texts still to be uncovered in Frankenstein? Probably, and I have suggested a 2 2 few in this essay, especially in those places for which we lack extant manuscript 3 3 evidence and in which we can detect PBS’s ‘signature’ words and phrases. And 4 4 even the possibility of an earlier ur-text suggests that the collaboration between 5 5 the two Shelleys may have been more extensive than outlined in this essay. But 6 6 lacking that ur-text and having an extant Draft and Fair Copy (and 1818 text) 7 7 that reveals the youthful (and in some cases immature) voice of MWS (by 1823 8 8 she herself complained that the first edition’s first two chapters had ‘tame and ill- 9 9 arranged’ incidents and ‘childish’ language40), we cannot but conclude that MWS 10 10 wrote Frankenstein, a novel that in many ways benefited from PBS’s editing and a 11 11 novel that evidences their collaborative and sometimes blended voices. 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 39 I wish to emphasize this point with this note because the Wikipedia entry on PBS 27 27 has for a number of years misrepresented my previous arguments about the collaboration 28 28 between the two Shelleys. The title page of my 2008/2009 Original Frankenstein does 29 NOT proclaim PBS as ‘co-author’ of Frankenstein – nor does my Introduction; instead, I 29 30 purposefully subordinated PBS to MWS on the title page by using a ‘with’ and parentheses 30 31 and a smaller font to represent PBS’s involvement in their collaboration: 31 32 by 32 33 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 33 34 (with Percy Bysshe Shelley). 34 35 If an analogy is needed, PBS’s relation to the text of the novel may be compared to a 35 36 dissertation director’s relation to a PhD student’s dissertation: no director who contributed 36 4,000–5,000Proof words to a text of 72,000 words wouldCopy claim to be (or should be claimed to 37 37 be) a ‘co-author’ of that text. 38 38 40 As quoted in Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus: The 1818 Text (with 39 39 variant readings, an Introduction, and Notes), ed. James Rieger. Chicago: The University of 40 40 Chicago Press (Phoenix Edition), 1982, p. 43 n. This important edition (initially published 41 in the Library of Literature, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1974) was the first 41 42 not only to print the ‘Collation of the Texts of 1818 and 1831’ but also to record MWS’s 42 43 autograph corrections to and comments on the first edition in the so-called ‘Thomas’ copy 43 44 of 1818, housed in the Pierpont Morgan Library (STC 16799). 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 136 9/11/2015 4:29:28 PM 1 Chapter 7 1 2 2 3 Shelley’s Second Kingdom: 3 4 Rosalind and Helen and ‘Mazenghi’ 4 5 5 6 6 7 Jack Donovan 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 Now of that second Kingdom I will speak 11 12 In which the human mind is cleansed and made 12 13 Worthy to climb the Heavens. 13 14 (Shelley’s translation of Dante, Purgatorio I, 4–6).1 14 15 15 16 16 I 17 17 18 Published in April 1819, Shelley’s first book of verse to appear since the removal 18 19 to Italy a year earlier, Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other Poems 19 20 was preceded by an ‘Advertisement’ which makes a decidedly inauspicious 20 21 prelude to the Italian phase of his career. Readers are forewarned that the title- 21 22 poem is ‘not an attempt in the highest style of poetry’, aiming only to amuse the 22 23 imagination by inspiring a pleasing melancholy which might prepare the mind for 23 24 ‘more important impressions’.2 There follows an elementary aesthetic rationale 24 25 for the poem’s chosen mode – narrative of sentiment – which is part apologia, 25 26 part guide for an appropriate response to the example in question. Story, style, 26 27 anticipated effect on readers, we are informed, have all been generated by feelings 27 28 the author has himself experienced; and as feelings are in their nature variable and 28 29 resistant to control, a text composed under their sway will naturally manifest in 29 30 the tenor and ordering of its parts, and down to the particulars of its versification, 30 31 traces of its origin in the spontaneous movements of its author’s affective life. The 31 32 resulting formal ‘irregularity’, though it may offend against strict poetic canons, 32 33 at least guarantees authenticity of expression. Self-deprecating and somewhat 33 34 cryptic, the Advertisement nonetheless distinctly affirms the poem’s character as 34 35 a species of sentimental autobiography, a feature that is a principal concern of the 35 36 present essay. 36 37 Proof Copy 37 This frank exercise in the lowering of expectations, which is dated 20 38 December 1818 from Naples, formalizes Shelley’s earlier estimate of the poem 38 39 in his letters home of the preceding summer. From Bagni di Lucca on 16 August 39 40 he had announced to Peacock the completion of his ‘little poem … Its structure 40 41 41 42 42 43 1 PS III: 346. 43 44 2 References to Rosalind and Helen are to PS II: 266–305. 44

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is slight and aëry; its subject ideal’.3 And the same day, to his publisher Charles 1 1 Ollier, he had doubted finding readers for the 2 2 3 little poem, which I took advantage of ten days of dubious inspiration to finish 3 4 … if it have little merit it has as much as it aspires to.4 4 5 5 6 Shelley’s display of authorial candour as to the poem’s status, aims, value and 6 7 prospects reaches only so far; he maintains a conspicuous silence on the sources 7 8 of both characters and story. The ‘ideal melancholy’ and ‘imaginations’ of the 8 9 Advertisement and the assurance that the subject is ‘ideal’ (i.e. imaginary) in the 9 10 letter to Peacock in fact mask the substantial indebtedness of Rosalind and Helen 10 11 to actual persons and events in the Shelleys’ private and public lives from their 11 12 elopement in summer 1814 through the early weeks of their residence in Italy, 12 13 which began on 30 March 1818. 13 14 The poem’s composition is itself closely implicated with these individuals and 14 15 events. It appears to have been written over about two years, at irregular intervals.5 15 16 Begun, possibly, as early as summer 1816 in Switzerland, the ‘Modern Eclogue’ 16 17 was taken up again in autumn 1817 and soon left aside. Evidently returned to 17 18 later that autumn and in the early weeks of 1818, the completed portion had been 18 19 enlarged sufficiently by 19 February to make up a manuscript which could be 19 20 sent to the printer pending an imminent conclusion. It would appear to be the 20 21 proofs of as much of the poem as was then completed, though not concluded, that 21 22 Shelley requests Peacock to revise in a letter from Milan in April. Between then 22 23 and the letter of 16 August 1818 a conclusion was added. It remains possible that 23 24 passages were composed at other moments in the summer 1816–summer 1818 24 25 period. Precisely how much of the poem was written in one country or the other is 25 26 not clear, though the concluding movement (ll. 1240–318) seems almost certain to 26 27 have been composed in Italy. 27 28 Rosalind and Helen’s ample and intricate biographical dimension originates in 28 29 attachments formed by Mary when she was 14 and 15 years old.6 During two visits 29 30 to Scotland between summer 1812 and spring 1814 she formed a close friendship 30 31 with Isabel, youngest daughter of her father’s friend William Baxter, a radical 31 32 dissenter. Together the girls visited on three occasions in nearby Newburgh, Fife, 32 33 the family of Isabel’s oldest sister Margaret and her husband David Booth, a 33 34 brewer and autodidact of prodigious learning and imposing demeanour. Following 34 35 Margaret’s untimely death, Booth took Isabel as his second wife in 1814 although 35 36 she was nearlyProof 30 years younger than him. CopyScottish law deemed their marriage 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 3 Letters II: 29 40 40 4 Letters II: 31. 41 5 The principal references are: Letters II: 4, 29, 31, 94, 387, 396; MWS Letters I: 43, 41 42 65; MS Journals I: 194, 223; PW III: 159–60; BSM XI: xv–xxxi; PS II: 266–9. 42 43 6 Frankenstein, eds James Kinsley and M.K. Joseph. Oxford: Oxford University 43 44 Press, 1980, pp. v–vi. 44

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illegal, indeed technically incestuous.7 Under the terms of an Act of 1567, which 1 1 founded its authority in the book of Leviticus 18: 6–17, Isabel, though unrelated 2 2 to Booth by blood, was regarded as his sister by affinity on account of his prior 3 3 marriage to Margaret. Their union therefore fell within the legally prohibited 4 4 degrees of kinship for partners in wedlock. (Such a marriage was not then an 5 5 offence in English Common Law although it was contrary to the Canon Law of 6 6 the Church of England – advertized as such on the final page of the Book of 7 7 Common Prayer – which had exercised effective legal control of matrimony since 8 8 the Marriage Act of 1753.) In consequence, Isabel and David Booth and William 9 9 Baxter were expelled from the Dundee congregation of Glasites, an exclusive 10 10 Calvinist sect which exercised a close control over the social lives of its members.8 11 11 On Mary’s side complicated and even more scandalous domestic arrangements 12 12 also date from the year 1814 when she eloped with the already-married Shelley in 13 13 July. Subsequently, Mary’s attempt to renew her correspondence with Isabel was 14 14 rebuffed. David Booth opposed any resumption of their intercourse, disapproving 15 15 of Mary’s alliance with a married man and resenting the offence and distress their 16 16 irregular union continued to cause Godwin, who was his friend as well as Baxter’s. 17 17 Even following Mary’s marriage to Shelley in December 1817 her attempts to 18 18 resume contact with Isabel were rejected. A different tack was then taken: through 19 19 William Baxter, who had come to think his son-in-law Booth an ‘ill-tempered and 20 20 jealous’ husband and Isabel unhappy in the marriage,9 the Shelleys invited Isabel 21 21 to go with them to Italy. Isabel, for her part, wished ‘very much to accompany 22 22 them’ provided her husband concurred with her father’s favourable opinion of 23 23 Shelley and Mary.10 24 24 Opportunities for David Booth to form his opinion soon arose.11 In November 25 25 1817, Baxter and the Booths were invited to meet Shelley, Mary and Claire, 26 26 together with Godwin. Clearly the Shelleys, with Godwin’s help, were making 27 27 a final attempt to repair the three years’ rift between Mary and Isabel in the hope 28 28 that it might issue in a period of intimacy in Italy which would allow them to re- 29 29 establish their friendship in the absence of the disapproving Booth. A vivid and 30 30 detailed account of the two gatherings is rendered in the letters of Shelley, Booth 31 31 and Baxter. On the first evening Shelley read aloud the just-completed Preface 32 32 to Laon and Cythna (and perhaps some of the poem). In the circumstances this 33 33 was at the least an undiplomatic, not to say a provocative, gesture. The resonant 34 34 preliminary formulation of the work’s ethical foundation – ‘Love is celebrated 35 35 everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world’ – might well 36 36 have been construed by those present as authorizing freedom of erotic exchange 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 7 Scottish Law Commission, The Law of Incest in Scotland. Edinburgh: Her Majesty’s 39 39 Stationery Office, 1981, pp. 1–3. 40 40 8 SC II: 558–9. 41 9 MWS Letters I: 41. 41 42 10 SC V: 341. 42 43 11 This and the following paragraph draw upon documents and commentary in SC V: 43 44 332–42; 371–94. 44

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between individuals.12 And if Shelley’s reading included the final paragraph of the 1 1 Preface in which the incest between the brother and sister of the title is qualified 2 2 as a ‘crime’ only of ‘convention’, Booth can hardly have failed to see in this the 3 3 author’s self-justification for his own rumoured position in respect of Mary and 4 4 Claire (see below), as well as taking Shelley’s sentiments – liberal and tolerant as 5 5 they were – as an unwarranted allusion to his own marital situation. 6 6 The social benefits and disadvantages of matrimony were strenuously debated 7 7 by Shelley and Booth; Shelley’s loss of the custody of his two children by Harriet 8 8 because of his critical opinions on marriage as an institution was also aired. Writing 9 9 to Baxter on 30 December Shelley as well as admits he had lost the argument with 10 10 the older man as far as the social utility of marriage was concerned, while insisting 11 11 that the right conduct of individuals in particular cases is not to be determined 12 12 by the application of abstract ethical canons but should be governed by natural 13 13 sentiment: 14 14 15 [Booth’s] keen & subtle mind, deficient in those elementary feelings which 15 16 are the principles of all moral reasoning, is better fitted for the detection of 16 17 error than the establishment of truth … In matters of abstract speculation we 17 18 can readily recur to the first principles on which our opinions rest … But in the 18 19 complicated relations of private life, it is a practice difficult, dangerous, & rare, 19 20 to appeal to an elementary principle.13 20 21 21 22 As for David Booth, he came away from the two encounters fortified in his 22 23 conviction that the Shelleys’ society could only be harmful in its influence and 23 24 was unsuitable for Isabel. His account of the meetings in a long letter to her 24 25 reveals his persuasion that, having married Mary, Shelley’s principled opposition 25 26 to marriage was hypocritical; that Shelley was sexually intimate with Claire as 26 27 well as with Mary; that Alba, Claire’s daughter by Byron, was Shelley’s child; 27 28 and that Shelley’s flagrant display of opinions outrageous to prevailing morality 28 29 irrespective of consequences could only be regarded as a symptom of the insanity 29 30 that Baxter had earlier imputed to him from reports of his behaviour and that Isabel 30 31 herself felt she had discerned in her reading of Alastor. Her wish to visit Italy in 31 14 32 such company must now appear a ‘foolish dream’. William Baxter, evidently 32 33 under his son-in-law’s direction, now altered his mind yet again, writing to Shelley 33 34 that henceforth he wished all intimacy between his own family and the Shelleys to 34 35 cease. And cease it did, apart from an exchange of letters (and possibly a meeting) 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 12 PS II: 47. 40 40 13 SC V: 383; Letters I: 588. The historian of philosophy, Robert Blakey, noted Booth’s 41 ‘captious and disingenuous mode of arguing and thinking’ and his (then) thoroughgoing 41 42 scepticism in matters of religion in a report of a conversation they had in 1832: Memoirs of 42 43 Dr Robert Blakey. London: Trübner, 1879, pp. 75–7. 43 44 14 SC V: 391. 44

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between Mary and Isabel in early March, until Mary’s return to England in 1823 1 1 after Shelley’s death.15 2 2 Such was the impasse that the Baxters and Booths on one side and the Shelley 3 3 household on the other had reached at the end of November 1817 – around the 4 4 time that Shelley appears to have returned to composing Rosalind and Helen. Ever 5 5 since Dowden’s biography of Shelley the accepted view has been that the features 6 6 of Mary and Isabel, Shelley and Booth are recognizable in the four principal 7 7 characters of the poem.16 (Rosalind retains the name Isabel in the surviving lines of 8 8 the draft.)17 Some commentators have judged, not without reason, that the pressure 9 9 of personal lives is only too palpable in the poem; that, had their details been 10 10 better assimilated, the whole would have had a more coherent texture and shape.18 11 11 It is true that one can sense Shelley’s aim to resolve in fiction what had proved 12 12 intractable in life: repair the shortcomings of the actual, conclude unfinished 13 13 business, find occasion to rehearse cherished themes, even settle scores. While 14 14 such an enterprise carries risks, it also has the potential to generate the animation 15 15 of writing that draws on intensely lived experience. But the challenge Shelley 16 16 faced in incorporating biographical details into Rosalind and Helen can perhaps be 17 17 more usefully conceived in the terms of his letter reporting his debate on marriage 18 18 with Booth in November 1817 – as an opposition between abstract moral logic 19 19 and those ‘elementary feelings which are the principles of all moral reasoning’. In 20 20 order to quicken the affective power of the latter Shelley elaborates a narrative of 21 21 personal adversity and affliction directly appealing to sentiment. 22 22 The two episodes involving incest in Rosalind and Helen (ll. 146–66, 276– 23 23 314) may serve as primary examples. Their presence elicited the most extreme 24 24 reaction from early reviewers, one of them (published in several periodicals) 25 25 exasperated at what he took to be an attempt to raise a frisson by what had become 26 26 a hackneyed theme of the ‘new school’ of poets, evidently intending Byron and 27 27 Leigh Hunt. The review in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, more generous and 28 28 more appreciative of Shelley’s powers, nonetheless also wondered at the inclusion 29 29 of ‘two stories of this sort – altogether gratuitous – and, as far as we can discover, 30 30 illustrative of nothing’, going on to deplore the effect of ‘degrading and brutifying 31 31 humanity’ by representing such ‘unnatural wickedness’ within a narrative ‘of real 32 32 human life’.19 33 33 34 34 35 15 MWS Letters I: 60–61, 380; MS Journals I: 458. 35 16 36 The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, 1886, vol. 36 37 2, pp. 130–31. 37 17 Proof Copy 38 Erkelenz, BSM XI, provides a facsimile of the draft: pp. 3–9, 13–49, 63, 65–77. 38 18 For example: SC V: 506–7; Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of 39 39 the Poet in Shelley. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 160. 40 40 19 Newman Ivey White, The Unextinguished Hearth: Shelley and His Contemporary 41 Critics. Durham: Duke University Press, 1938; rpt New York: Octagon Books, 1966, pp. 41 42 153–64. The Blackwood’s review is attributed to J.G. Lockhart by Alan Lang Strout, A 42 43 Bibliography of Articles in Blackwood’s Magazine Volumes I through XVIII 1817–25. 43 44 Library Bulletin No. 5. Lubbock: Texas Technical College, 1959, p. 53. 44

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On the face of it, the reviewer has a point: the place of the two narratives of 1 1 incest in the larger thematic economy of the poem is not immediately evident. 2 2 Clearly enough, they owe much to the experiences of the Shelleys and Booths, 3 3 and it is worth calling attention to how peculiar these experiences were. Each 4 4 of the two families had suffered in its different way from prejudices attaching 5 5 to a construction of ‘incest’ founded in religious tradition and arbitrary in its 6 6 proscriptions. The Shelley-Mary-Claire ménage à trois had been the subject 7 7 of scandalous rumours which seemed to be borne out by the presence in the 8 8 household of Claire’s daughter Alba. This presumed sexual promiscuity, which 9 9 had notoriously been styled a ‘league of incest’ – and was held by some to involve 10 10 Byron as well – derived its ‘incestuous’ character from the same prohibition of 11 11 marriage or sexual intimacy between brother and sister-in-law as had caused 12 12 David and Isabel Booth and William Baxter to be expelled from their religious 13 13 sect. So Shelley was not simply aiming at sensational horror or gratuitous outrage 14 14 in including the two episodes in question. He was certainly taking up a theme that 15 15 had become fashionable in recent poetry but employing it so as to address issues of 16 16 large social import.20 To that end he modifies actual circumstances and assimilates 17 17 them to a literary medium that significantly alters their impact. 18 18 19 19 20 II 20 21 21 22 Although the pair of contrasted couples in Rosalind and Helen display evident 22 23 similarities to their ‘originals’, they were clearly not intended to be received as 23 24 individual portraits. In the behaviour of Rosalind’s nameless despotic husband, 24 25 for example, Medwin claimed to recognize Sir Timothy Shelley’s fits of tyrannical 25 26 severity towards his children;21 while the fictional spouse’s narrowness of mind, 26 27 27 28 28 20 John Donovan, ‘Rosalind and Helen: Pastoral, Exile, Memory’. Romanticism 4.2 29 29 (1998), pp. 241–73 (pp. 253–4); Lawrence Stone, Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987. 30 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, chapter V. Rosalind and Helen has attracted little 30 31 commentary. Recent criticism includes: Anthony Howe, ‘Shelley’s “Familiar Style”’, in 31 32 The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe. 32 33 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 311–15; Teddi Chichester Bonca, Shelley’s 33 34 Mirrors of Love: Narcissism, Sacrifice and Sorority. New York: State University of New 34 35 York Press, 1999, pp. 79–124; Stuart Peterfreund, Shelley Among Others. Baltimore: Johns 35 36 Hopkins University Press, 2002, pp. 181–200. Earlier assessments include Mary Shelley’s 36 Note on theProof poem in PW; Leigh Hunt’s review inCopy The Examiner 593 (9 May 1819), pp. 37 37 38 302–3; Hunt’s and other contemporary reviews are given in Shelley: The Critical Heritage, 38 ed. James E. Barcus. London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, pp. 144–62; 39 39 H. Buxton Forman, ‘Introduction’ to Rosalind and Helen, A Modern Eclogue; with Other 40 40 Poems. London: Reeves and Turner, 1888; R.D. Havens, ‘Rosalind and Helen’, JEGP 30 41 (1931), pp. 218–22; K.N. Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 41 42 University Press, 1974, pp. 252–5. 42 43 21 Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. H. Buxton Forman. Oxford: 43 44 Oxford University Press, 1913, pp. 102–3. 44

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malevolence and consuming desire for gold do not seem to have counted among 1 1 David Booth’s vices. Apart from managing a brewery, he had worked as a 2 2 schoolmaster and pursued the uncertain rewards of the literary marketplace as a 3 3 scholar and professional writer on an extensive range of subjects. The enlivening 4 4 and entertaining qualities of his conversation were recognized by Shelley himself.22 5 5 It is perhaps not stretching the comparison too far to suggest that Godwin’s chilling 6 6 domestic influence on his children and relentless soliciting of funds from Shelley 7 7 might have contributed something to the character as well. As for Helen’s husband 8 8 Lionel, his ‘great wealth and lineage high’ (l. 614), his country estate, his return 9 9 home from three years abroad ‘stricken deep / With some disease of mind’ (ll. 10 10 741–2), his liberal politics and the satirical verses he writes (though their anti- 11 11 clerical attack is characteristically Shelleyan) suggest Byron, as they did to one 12 12 author of a widely-disseminated review.23 As for Lionel’s imprisonment, it finds 13 13 its equivalent not in Shelley’s own life, but, to take an obvious instance from 14 14 his circle, in Leigh Hunt’s two years’ sentence for slandering the Prince Regent. 15 15 Strategic adjustments to source material such as these broaden the scope and 16 16 impact of the personal relations that formed the poem’s first matter, following a 17 17 procedure, familiar enough, that Shelley was to adopt later in the year in ‘Julian 18 18 and Maddalo’. In Rosalind and Helen the additions and modifications in respect 19 19 of actual persons serve to conjoin them and their actions to familiar Shelleyan 20 20 themes: the baleful duopoly of gold and oppression, the league of interest between 21 21 religion and political power, the persecution that afflicts those who challenge 22 22 established regimes. Such variations and amplifications are common literary 23 23 practices. Rosalind and Helen’s surprises, its undoubted strangeness and the 24 24 challenge it sets its readers lie elsewhere: in its construction as a generic hybrid, in 25 25 the ordering of the series of narratives that set its direction and development, in its 26 26 mixture of styles. These closely interrelated features of the poem function to shape 27 27 and specify its major thematic concerns, as I shall try to show. 28 28 The most striking of these features is the thoroughgoing feminine perspective 29 29 it adopts. In this regard it is intriguing to notice a peculiar and out-of-the-way 30 30 literary work that Shelley may have had in mind when composing the poem. 31 31 Between Mary’s first attempt to resume contact with Isabel in 1814 and the second 32 32 in 1817 David Booth had published the collection Eura and Zephyra, A Classical 33 33 Tale: with Poetical Pieces.24 The bulk of Booth’s original verses in the volume are 34 34 unremarkable exercises in conventional style and sentiments. But the prose tale 35 35 of the title is an oddity that arrests the attention. Cast as a miniature theogony, it 36 36 relates the birth and deeds of the two minor deities Eura, daughter of a Naiad by 37 Proof Copy 37 the east wind Eurus, and adopted child of Juno; and Zephyra, daughter of the west 38 38 wind Zephyrus and the Flora. By a decree of Destiny Eura becomes the 39 39 40 40 41 22 SC V: 383; Letters I: 588. 41 42 23 White, The Unextinguished Hearth, p. 156. 42 43 24 London: Gale and Fenner, 1816. Page references in the text are to the second 43 44 edition with additions (London: Saunders and Otley, 1832). 44

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‘Evil Genius of Mankind’, the embodiment of an unruly female principle which by 1 1 its agency in women’s minds ‘shall prove the torment of the human race’ (p. 31). 2 2 This ordained role she carries out by provoking women to claim for themselves 3 3 an authority to which the narrowness of their experience allows them no title. For 4 4 the ‘education and habits of woman must forever keep her behind the other sex 5 5 in the pursuit of knowledge’ (pp. 32–3). Zephyra, on the contrary, personifies the 6 6 goodness and wisdom that are possible for woman when she remains within her 7 7 proper maternal and domestic sphere. The contrast with Rosalind and Helen is 8 8 intriguing and suggestive. Each title links the names of two female characters: 9 9 Booth’s allegorical figures enforce a narrowly conservative view of the nature 10 10 and status of women as the intellectually inferior sex; Shelley’s female friends, 11 11 bearing common names, and actors in a largely realistic narrative, recover such 12 12 happiness and equilibrium as is possible after having been wronged in a world 13 13 ordered according to masculine structures of politics and law. There is no record of 14 14 Shelley or Mary having read Eura and Zephyra though they might have heard of 15 15 it. As for Booth, holding such an opinion on the role of women, he can hardly have 16 16 refrained from acting on it in the course of his two marriages,25 perhaps even put it 17 17 forward in the discussion on marriage with the Shelleys and Godwin. 18 18 Whether or not Shelley was specifically goaded to respond to these convictions 19 19 in Rosalind and Helen, he adopts the point of view of the women characters who 20 20 between them narrate the poem’s principal events retrospectively, the fictional 21 21 present being allotted to an anonymous narrator. In relation to the personal 22 22 experiences that initially suggested the eclogue, this is Shelley’s pivotal artistic 23 23 decision, subjecting as it does the account of the two marriages that substantially 24 24 constitute the friends’ conversation to an exclusively feminine outlook. The two 25 25 episodes involving incest, which were regarded as offensive and misplaced by 26 26 reviewers, and whose tenor could not be inferred from biographical sources alone, 27 27 offer an occasion to examine the implications of this privileging of the feminine 28 28 mind and sensibility. 29 29 The first, which aims to realize imaginatively the place of narration on the shore 30 30 of Lake Como as a refuge where sympathetic exchange can operate, is presented 31 31 in an intricate narrative form that calls for close attention. We learn that tradition 32 32 has attached to the spot a macabre and unsettling story which evidently needs to be 33 33 told and assimilated before the women can open their confidences. This traditional 34 34 tale is delivered by a ‘speaker’, identified only as such but evidently a native of 35 35 the vicinity, who has acquainted Helen with a local legend concerning a ‘hellish 36 36 shape’ thatProof regularly appears at midnight leading Copy 37 37 38 The ghost of a youth with hoary hair, 38 39 And sate on the seat beside him there, 39 40 Till a naked child came wandering by, 40 41 When the fiend would change to a lady fair. (ll. 151–4) 41 42 42 43 25 In his Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1912) Booth’s grandson James Stewart 43 44 noted that his grandfather was known for ruling his household with ‘a rod of iron’ (p. 82). 44

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The haunting by this enigmatic group is then accounted for by the ‘speaker’ as 1 1 the residual manifestation of ‘a monstrous curse’, the incest of a brother and sister 2 2 which was ‘solemnized’ in this their secret meeting-place. For their crime the 3 3 sister and her child were pursued there and murdered by an outraged mob while 4 4 the brother, at the instigation of a priest, was burned in the market-place to gain 5 5 God’s favour. Strategically inset as prelude to the women’s personal narratives, 6 6 the ‘speaker’s’ report both invites exegesis and eludes any decisive interpretation. 7 7 The relation that is alleged by this obviously credulous and superstitious informant 8 8 between the ghostly apparitions and their tragic antecedents is presented as, at 9 9 the least, doubtful. The connection he makes between the two – between actual 10 10 events and their spectral afterlife – is anything but compelling on the basis of the 11 11 narrative details he provides; while his reaction of mixed abhorrence and pious 12 12 vindictiveness is challenged by Helen’s compassionate response.26 She finds in 13 13 the fate of the murdered parents and child an occasion not of revulsion but of 14 14 sympathetic identification, a benevolent exercise of the moral imagination towards 15 15 an act traditionally held to be abominable and polluting – as against the savagery 16 16 of mass bigotry and religious superstition. 17 17 Rather than offering a lesson in the imponderables of interpretation, the incest 18 18 episode in Rosalind’s autobiography is constructed so as to foreground narrative 19 19 irony. While she and her betrothed are standing at the altar her father arrives 20 20 unexpectedly from abroad to reveal that they are siblings, each of them his child 21 21 by a different mother. Apparently spared from the imminent catastrophe of an 22 22 incestuous union, the bridegroom dies of shock and Rosalind is forced to enter 23 23 into a marriage of necessity which proves to be a prison-house of loveless tyranny 24 24 from which she and her children escape only on the death of her husband, the 25 25 conditions of whose will deprive her of her children and condemn her to a life 26 26 of wandering. The complex ironies of the situation emerge from a reversal of 27 27 readers’ expectations and a revision of literary tradition. The recognition scene 28 28 that delivers knowledge of kinship too late to prevent catastrophe in Oedipus the 29 29 King, to take that paradigmatic example, in Rosalind and Helen supplies similar 30 30 information, and apparently in good time, only to result in personal calamity and 31 31 eventual exile, as in Sophocles’s tragedy.27 32 32 Refashioning such as this is Shelley’s characteristic procedure in Rosalind 33 33 and Helen. He carries it through largely by adapting traditional literary matter to 34 34 the poem’s dominant mode, a sentimental realism deployed with the critical edge 35 35 of such feminist works of the 1790s as Mary Wollstonecraft’s novels Mary and 36 36 Maria; or the Wrongs of Woman – combined with the plangent recollections of 37 Proof Copy 37 Southey’s English Eclogues and Botany Bay Eclogues. In the English Eclogues 38 38 39 39 40 40 26 The passage in question has elicited different readings; see Nora Crook and Derek 41 Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 41 42 161–3; Donovan, ‘Rosalind and Helen: Pastoral, Exile, Memory’, pp. 248–50. 42 43 27 Mary read Sophocles’s ‘Oedipus Tyrannos’ in August 1817 and Shelley read it to 43 44 her in September 1818: MS Journals I: 178, 226–7. 44

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a variety of country folk converse on the tragic events of their locality against 1 1 a background of hardship, poverty and warfare; the dramatic exchanges of the 2 2 Botany Bay poems take place between transported convicts who recall their 3 3 lives in England, its unequal laws and brutal conditions of military service, with 4 4 regret and resignation. Rosalind and Helen seems clearly indebted to both Mary 5 5 Wollstonecraft and Southey in its insistence on the suffering occasioned, to women 6 6 in particular, by the established social injustices of law and custom. It sets itself off 7 7 from each of them by the nature of the narrative conclusion it introduces. 8 8 The women’s reconciliation passes through successive stages for which the 9 9 telling of that part of the life-history of each that has been unknown to the other 10 10 – their marriages – lays the groundwork. Immediately following that, the poem 11 11 moves to its end in two phases. The first involves the repossession of a common 12 12 home, later to be shared by Helen’s son and Rosalind’s daughter who, we are 13 13 told, will marry – following the precedent of pastoral narrative, Shakespeare’s in 14 14 particular, in which children are endowed with the power to repair the calamities 15 15 of their parents’ lives. Here too Shelley proceeds by nicely calculated revision, in 16 16 this case of one of Wordsworth’s lyrics written in 1802, published without title in 17 17 1807, but later entitled ‘The Emigrant Mother’.28 In Wordsworth’s poem a French 18 18 emigrée in England during the French revolution pays daily visits to the cottage of 19 19 farm labourers where she addresses endearments and regrets to their baby, a girl 20 20 who reminds her of her own infant son left behind in France. Fondly imagining 21 21 the child to be hers and sister to her son, she sheds tears which fall upon its face 22 22 while denying the common superstition that these will prove unlucky for the child. 23 23 Shelley would appear to have adopted from Wordsworth the figure of the exiled 24 24 mother whose tears fall as token of maternal affection upon the child of another. 25 25 The restoration of a complete life-history to each of the friends is consecrated 26 26 by a blending of identity as Rosalind’s tears fall upon the face of Helen’s son (ll. 27 27 1270–74) and wake him as their common child in an act of ritual rebirth. 28 28 29 29 30 III 30 31 31 32 A passage of ‘The Emigrant Mother’ (ll. 56–64) was cited as an example of 32 33 ‘disharmony in style’ by Coleridge in Biographia Literaria which Shelley 33 34 read in December 1817.29 His remark in a letter to Peacock of April 1819 as 34 35 Rosalind and Helen was printing – ‘The concluding lines are natural’ – suggests 35 36 that he hadProof taken warning from Coleridge’s Copy strictures in adopting the distinctly 36 37 Wordsworthian idiom of the narrative voice that delivers the closing movement 37 38 of the poem (ll. 1240–314). Its ‘natural’ effects are achieved by exchanging the 38 39 39 40 40 28 Wordsworth’s Poems of 1807, ed. Alun R. Jones. London: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 41 117–19. 41 42 29 Biographia Literaria, eds James Engell and W. Jackson Bate. 2 vols. Collected 42 43 Works of 7. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983, pp. 43 44 123–4; MS Journals: 186. 44

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largely octosyllabic verse of Helen’s tale for an iambic pentameter with deftly 1 1 varied stresses, an irregular pattern of rhymes, and a tone modulating from the 2 2 relaxed to the formal as the matter and the scene shift from the ordinary to the 3 3 elevated. Wordsworthian too is the domestic tableau sketched in ll. 1255–74, set 4 4 in a cottage on the shore of a wooded lake, from which the developing calm and 5 5 resignation of the characters move towards a consolatory resolution in which their 6 6 inner lives and the natural landscape grow into images of one another. 7 7 Into this tranquil and solemn movement Shelley introduces symbolic elements 8 8 deriving from Dante, in particular the Purgatorio. For both the Shelleys the 9 9 Purgatorio had a personal connection with Lake Como where the scene of 10 10 Rosalind and Helen is laid and whose rocky and wooded shores and surrounding 11 11 mountains are evoked in the opening lines of the concluding passage (ll. 1240– 12 12 54). This was the first Italian landscape to impress them with its combined beauty 13 13 and grandeur after their passage of the Alps at the end of March 1818, just as 14 14 the Purgatorio and Tasso’s pastoral drama Aminta were the first Italian literature 15 15 that Shelley read in Italy. From Milan he and Mary travelled to Como and thence 16 16 sailed to the Tremezzina district on the lake’s western shore where they spent 17 17 10 and 11 April searching for a house they might take for the summer, a plan 18 18 that was never realized. A week later Shelley sent a lyrical description of the 19 19 lake and its spectacular setting in a letter to Peacock. It was in the period (11–19 20 20 April) between leaving the Tremezzina and writing to Peacock that he read the 21 21 Purgatorio.30 Mary appears to be recalling this association between text and place 22 22 when in summer 1840 she revisited Italy for the first time in 17 years to make a 23 23 stay of eight weeks in the Tremezzina with her son Percy Florence and two of his 24 24 friends. The meditative letters dealing with their life at Cadenabbia on the lake 25 25 shore in her Rambles in Germany and Italy reveal that Dante’s Purgatorio and 26 26 Paradiso were her books of choice, consolatory companions for her inner struggle 27 27 with tragic memories of both Italy and England. She writes of the peace and 28 28 resignation she managed at intervals to attain, her evening reveries overlooking 29 29 the lake, her affectionate concern for her son, the prospect of ‘the constellations 30 30 as they hang above the mountain ridges’ (as in Rosalind and Helen, ll. 1298–304). 31 31 These, together with the pervasive melancholy of recognizing afresh how much 32 32 of her life had been lost with the loss of her husband, make it seem as if she were 33 33 inhabiting the persona of the fictional Helen which she had originally inspired.31 34 34 Shelley particularly admired the passage in Purgatorio II, 1–51 in which the 35 35 souls of the dead are carried to purgatory in a boat piloted by an angel with outspread 36 36 wings, as well as that other in Canto XXVIII (lines 1–51 of which he translated) 37 Proof Copy 37 describing Dante’s meeting with the figure of Matilda as she gathers flowers in the 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 30 MS Journals: 186–7; Letters II: 6–7. 41 42 31 Rambles in Germany and Italy, in The Novels and Selected Works of Mary Shelley, 42 43 ed. Jeanne Moskal. 8 vols. London: William Pickering, 1996, vol. 8 (Travel Writing), pp. 43 44 101–28. 44

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earthly paradise.32 Mary will have remembered reading the Purgatorio together 1 1 with Shelley in August 1819 at a time of great personal distress following the 2 2 death of their son William two months previously.33 A quarter of a century later 3 3 she recalled these favourite passages of his, adding her own (which he will have 4 4 shared), ‘The Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits – the whole tone of 5 5 hope’.34 Taken as a sequence, the scenes they especially valued map in outline the 6 6 complete narrative of Dante’s canticle, its beginning, middle and end – the passage 7 7 of the souls by boat, the divinely-guided ascent of Mount Purgatory, the attainment 8 8 of the earthly paradise. In its progression from sea to land, shore to mountain-top, 9 9 motion to rest, the Purgatorio’s fable of penitence constructs an exemplary union 10 10 of topography with spiritual significance and moral value – each soul passing from 11 11 the uncertainty and apprehension of displacement, through arduous gradations of 12 12 chastisement (in its etymological sense of ‘making pure’) to a true understanding 13 13 of its past, the mental condition of liberation from it. 14 14 Shelley’s variation on this master-pattern provides the conclusion of Rosalind 15 15 and Helen (ll. 1240–318) with both its narrative logic and an important point 16 16 of reference for its symbolic details.35 Beginning on the lake shore, ‘where red 17 17 morning through the woods / Is burning o’er the dew’ (recollecting Purgatorio 18 18 II, 13–14; I, 121–9), it finishes on an Alpine cliff to the north, above whicha 19 19 constellation presides – as so often in Dante. In the Purgatorio such a pattern of 20 20 stars invariably functions as celestial emblem of a spiritual reality which indicates 21 21 the significance of the scene below. ThePurgatorio begins under such a symbolic 22 22 constellation (I, 19–24) while the seven stars of another, Ursa Minor, are invoked 23 23 in the description of the pageant in Canto XXX, 1–6. The ‘charioteers of Arctos’ 24 24 that Shelley imagines circling the point of Rosalind’s pyramidal tomb resists 25 25 precise interpretation because it is not possible to determine unequivocally the 26 26 constellation to which it refers. He may intend Ursa Major, the Great Bear (the 27 27 Greek word Arctos = bear), the seven brightest stars of which form Charles’s Wain 28 28 and might have suggested the wheeling motion Shelley attributes to it. Or Arctos 29 29 may be an abbreviated form of Arcturus (from the Greek ‘bear guardian’), the 30 30 brightest star in the constellation Boötes – variously known as the Waggoner or 31 31 the Herdsman – and which, situated close to Ursa Major, was traditionally viewed 32 32 as driving the bear round the pole.36 In either case, the import of this, Rosalind and 33 33 Helen’s grand concluding image, lies less in any mythical associations it might 34 34 35 35 32 36 Letters II: 112; PS III: 478–84. The passage from the Purgatorio is considered in 36 detail by AlanProof Weinberg, ‘Shelley and the Italian Copy Tradition’, in The Oxford Handbook of 37 37 38 Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe. Oxford: Oxford University 38 Press, 2013, pp. 444–59 (pp. 452–3). 39 39 33 MS Journals: 294–5. 40 40 34 MWS Letters III: 160. 41 35 The concluding passage is examined in detail in Donovan, ‘Rosalind and Helen: 41 42 Pastoral, Exile, Memory’, pp. 259–69. 42 43 36 C.D. Locock, ed., The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 2 vols. London: Methuen, 43 44 1911, p. 585, prefers Boötes; PS II: 305 Ursa Major. 44

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suggest than in the boundary it defines. The household on the lake shore where the 1 1 two friends regain the youthful happiness they enjoyed before their estrangement 2 2 domesticates that prototype in the Purgatorio which allows the soul of the penitent 3 3 to recover its prelapsarian innocence in the earthly paradise, purgatory’s highest 4 4 level, from which humanity was excluded by the sin of Adam and Eve. As with 5 5 the souls in purgatory, it is the reordering of their memories, accomplished by 6 6 living through the most painful of their past experiences in acts of sympathetic 7 7 reconciliation, which necessarily precedes their recovered innocence. This renewal 8 8 also proceeds according to a Dantean paradigm. The pilgrim Dante is directed by 9 9 Matilda to drink first fromL ethe, then Eunoè (XXVIII, 121–32), opposite sides of 10 10 a stream whose waters erase the memory of sin and restore that of good actions. 11 11 After this ultimate regulation of his mind, he becomes in the final line of the 12 12 Purgatorio ‘puro e disposto a salire a le stelle’ (‘Pure and made apt for mounting 13 13 to the stars’ in Cary’s translation)37 – that is, fitted for the ascent toH eaven he will 14 14 undertake in the Paradiso. For Dante both Hell and Heaven are absolute states to 15 15 which there is entrance but no exit, while purgatory is transitional, functioning 16 16 only as a preparation for Heaven, without which it would have no reason to 17 17 exist. Inasmuch as Rosalind and Helen adapts major elements of the purgatorial 18 18 narrative, its ending stands out as significantly incomplete, despite tentatively 19 19 gesturing at a succeeding condition. Earlier in the poem Rosalind, following a 20 20 speculation of her deceased lover, had mused upon an afterlife among the winds, 21 21 snows and storms and under the stars and lightnings of an Alpine summit visible 22 22 from the lake shore: 23 23 24 Who knows, if one were buried there, 24 25 But these things might our spirits make, 25 26 Amid the all-surrounding air, 26 27 Their own eternity partake? (ll. 555–8) 27 28 28 29 To this tentative, and notably secular, supposition on a form of posthumous 29 30 existence Shelley adds another in the last three lines of the poem: 30 31 31 32 And know, that if love die not in the dead 32 As in the living, none of mortal kind 33 33 Are blessed, as now Helen and Rosalind. (ll. 1316–18) 34 34 35 Each of the possibilities invoked – a continuation of life through natural 35 36 sublimation, a perpetuation of identity in the love of immortal spirits – Shelley is 36 37 Proof Copy38 37 careful to qualify as an hypothesis of desire, and no more. The significance of 38 38 39 39 37 Dante, The Divine Comedy: The Vision of Dante, trans. Henry Cary, ed. Ralph Pite. 40 40 London: J.M. Dent, 1994, p. 241. 41 38 Shelley considers the question of posthumous existence in the prose essay ‘A 41 42 Future State’ which appears to date from late 1818–early 1819 (Jones, BSM XV: 176) and 42 43 is available in Shelley’s Prose, ed. David Lee Clark (1954, corr. 1966). London: Fourth 43 44 Estate, 1988, pp. 175–8 – where it is incorrectly dated 1812. 44

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closing Rosalind and Helen thus in conjectural mode is also clarified in relation to 1 1 the Purgatorio, the theological and moral basis of which is that the ascent of the 2 2 penitential mountain brings a gradual increase of sanctity which expands the soul’s 3 3 capacity to love, fitting it at last to share the eternity of Divine Love. The poem’s 4 4 final three lines address this Dantean faith so as to end on a calculated ambiguity. 5 5 The authoritative voice that is dramatically assumed (‘And know … ’) first lays 6 6 down an indemonstrable condition, then states the conclusion that would follow if 7 it were true. So that, logically considered, the poem’s conclusion is inconclusive, 7 8 and conspicuously so. Rhetorically, the lines are more affirmative. By virtue of 8 9 their position, the final line and a half, speculating that the two friends may now 9 10 enjoy a beatitude that is not accessible to mortals, acquire a force that challenges 10 11 their prior qualification. In ‘none of mortal kind / Are blessed, as now Helen and 11 12 Rosalind’ readers would also notice a revisionary allusion to the Angel’s words 12 13 to the Virgin Mary in Luke 1: 28, ‘blessed art thou among women’. The poem’s 13 14 last word is thus its ultimate transformation of a religious idea, a redefinition of 14 15 beatitude as potentially emerging from suffering endured, recalled and shared in 15 16 this life rather than conferred by an inscrutable decree of the divine will. 16 17 17 18 18 19 IV 19 20 20 21 It is surprising on a review of Rosalind and Helen to reckon the number of deaths 21 22 it includes, in particular those of the four characters originally inspired by actual 22 23 individuals, all of whom were alive when the poem was sent to England for 23 24 publication. Shelley’s decision to end their lives in fiction invites some enquiry. 24 Only Helen lives to old age; the other three die prematurely, each death being 25 25 likened to the destruction of a plant by pest or disease (ll. 432, 695–8, 1292–4). In 26 26 addition, the deaths of the women’s spouses are presented as a direct consequence 27 27 of the lives they’ve lived: miserly fears have sapped the vitality of Rosalind’s 28 28 husband; Lionel is cut off when his hopes are destroyed by post-revolutionary 29 29 reaction. Though their moral natures are poles apart, the physical death of each 30 30 results from exhaustion of spirit. Not so Rosalind. She ‘died ere her time’ because 31 ‘when the living stem / Is cankered in its heart, the tree must fall’ (ll. 1292–4). No 31 32 other cause is offered in explanation. We may infer that debilitating sorrow has 32 33 shortened her life, or that she suffers from an unnamed infirmity. In either case, 33 34 hers remains a summary dismissal. 34 35 Rosalind’s life is peculiar from another perspective, too: the circumstances it 35 36 shares withProof Shelley’s. She is deprived of herCopy children on accusations of adultery 36 37 and irreligion, as he was. Counting her symbolic relation to Helen’s son, she has 37 38 four children, as Shelley did at the time of completing the poem, two of whom 38 39 remain in England, as his children by Harriet did. On being reminded of home by 39 40 Helen’s cottage in the English style, 40 41 41 42 dim memory 42 43 Disturbed poor Rosalind: she stood as one 43 44 Whose mind is where his body cannot be. (ll. 1261–3) 44

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Her disorientation is that which Shelley himself experienced in the early months 1 1 of his Italian residence and which he describes vividly in the letter to Peacock 2 2 that includes the account of his and Mary’s visit to Lake Como.39 Perhaps the 3 3 most suggestive connection is that the ‘pyramid of lasting ice’ that is Rosalind’s 4 4 tomb and the memorial ceremonies that Helen and their children annually 5 5 perform at it (ll. 1298–311) allude to the tributes paid to dead English poets by 6 6 living ones: the ‘star-ypointing pyramid’ of Milton’s sonnet ‘On Shakespeare’, 7 7 and the compensatory emblem of unfulfilled literary promise represented by the 8 8 unfading amaranth flowers (l. 1308) which had been awarded by Spenser to Sir 9 9 Philip Sidney in The Faerie Queene (III, vi, 45) and by Milton to Edward King in 10 10 Lycidas (l. 149).40 11 11 These links between author and character bring forward two additional 12 12 peculiarities of a poem which is not without its share of them. Shelley appears 13 13 to have divided those of his personal experiences that served as original material 14 14 for the narrative between two characters, one male and one female. Lionel, poet 15 15 and political activist, in each of these roles an idealized part-sketch of Shelley 16 16 himself, dies when the love that is, we are told, his vital principle (ll. 621–5) 17 17 is frustrated and his hope destroyed by political reaction, denying him a social 18 18 outlet for either of these virtues (ll. 764–79). Rosalind resembles her author in the 19 19 infamy he had acquired, unjustly he felt, for offences against religious orthodoxy 20 20 and conventional sexual morality and for which she is deprived of her children, as 21 21 he had been. After an initial struggle with the divided consciousness of the exile, 22 22 she is compensated by finding in a reconstituted family the sober content that he 23 23 himself might hope for in the domestic sphere. Her funerary monument on an 24 24 Alpine summit at Italy’s northern gateway, taken together with Lionel’s death, 25 25 would represent Shelley’s farewell to a literary career of unrealized potential, but 26 26 also a token of fame hoped for and as yet unachieved. 27 27 In portraying Rosalind as innocent of offences that she, and the poet himself, 28 28 had been accused of, and which in any case he regarded as acts of liberation from 29 29 the deadening weight of custom, Shelley confronts his readers with a paradox: the 30 30 character whose story appears most influenced by the narrative trajectory of the 31 31 Purgatorio bears no burden of guilt. Variations on a figure that must pass through 32 32 a period of exile and suffering to expiate a transgression, thereby fully realizing 33 33 his capacity for good, occur in Shelley’s poetry both before and after Rosalind 34 34 and Helen. Laon and Prometheus are pre-eminent examples. But a figure who is 35 35 insistently represented as innocent yet subjected to an ordeal of penitential exile 36 36 occurs only in the period of just less than a year following the Shelleys’ arrival 37 Proof Copy 37 in Italy at the end of March 1818 during which the uncompleted Rosalind and 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 39 Letters II: 6–7; see also II: 26–7. 42 43 40 The amaranths in Rosalind and Helen (ll. 1307–11) seem also to recall those of 43 44 Paradise Lost III, 360–64. 44

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Helen was finished and the narrative poem ‘Mazenghi’, which offers a revealing 1 1 comparison with it, written and left incomplete.41 2 2 3 3 4 V 4 5 5 6 Shelley found in Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge a 6 7 few sentences recounting a dramatic exploit accomplished at the beginning of the 7 8 fifteenth century by Pierre Marenghi (as Sismondi gives the name) while banished 8 9 from his native Florence under pain of death. From the shore near Pisa, Marenghi 9 10 caught sight of a vessel laden with supplies for the relief of the city, then under 10 11 siege by Florentine troops. Swimming out to the ship while holding aloft a lighted 11 12 torch, he managed to set fire to the prow despite being wounded by the arrows 12 13 of the Pisan sailors. The ship was consumed by the blaze and he was recalled 13 14 with honour to Florence.42 Shelley will have recognized in this historical sketch 14 15 the contours of a prototypical narrative of virtuous exile. The Roman statesman 15 16 Marcus Furius Camillus who (tradition held) had gone into banishment after an 16 17 unjust accusation against him, yet answered a summons to lead Rome to victory 17 18 against the besieging Gauls in 387–86 B.C. Camillus went on to have a long career 18 19 distinguished for moderation and probity in public office, frequently in the face of 19 20 political intrigue and popular discontent, and was celebrated as the second founder 20 21 of Rome after Romulus. Shelley refers to him as ‘that most perfect & virtuous of 21 22 men’ in a letter of 23 March 1819 and styles him ‘Saintly Camillus’ in ‘Ode to 22 23 Liberty’ l. 98.43 23 24 Sismondi says nothing of Marenghi’s crime or of his period of banishment, nor 24 25 does he provide the Florentine with an inner life, leaving Shelley with complete 25 26 licence to imagine all these. His inventions furnish a summary account with both an 26 27 elementary political rationale and a richly intriguing personal dimension. He first 27 28 credits Mazenghi (Shelley alters the name thus) with an unspecified ‘high and holy 28 29 deed’ in the service of liberty for which the ungrateful Florentines expel him from 29 30 the city and threaten with death any who might offer him so much as a cup of water 30 31 (ll. 66–77). Then, he devotes more than half the poem (ll. 78–170) to Mazenghi’s 31 32 exile. This, like that of Rosalind and Helen on the shores of Lake Como, is centred 32 33 on an actual Italian landscape which is evoked in detail, the Maremma Pisana, a 33 34 malarial swamp near both Pisa and Livorno. The Shelleys visited Pisa on 7 and 8 34 35 35 36 36 41 In ProofPP: 259 (Posthumous Poems, 1824) MaryCopy Shelley dates ‘Mazenghi’ ‘Naples 37 37 38 1818’ where the Shelleys spent the months of December 1818 and January–February 1819; 38 PS II: 352–3 prefers May 1818. The December–February range seems the more likely. See 39 39 p. 154 below. See also Alan Weinberg’s essay on ‘Italian Verse Fragments’, Chapter 14, 40 40 p. 286). References are to PS II: 352–61. 41 42 J.C.L. Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge. 16 41 42 vols. Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1818, vol. 8, pp. 142–3. 42 43 43 Livy, History of Rome V, xxxii, 8–9; xlvi, 4–8; xlix, 7; Plutarch, Life of Camillus, 43 44 passim. 44

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May 1818, and stayed in Livorno from 9 May to 11 June; and they will have been 1 1 reminded of the Maremma when they crossed the infamous Pontine marshes in 2 2 November on their way from Rome to Naples.44 3 3 Like Rosalind and Helen’s exile, too, Mazenghi’s is a purgatorial ordeal, 4 4 though completed in a location which, synonymous with disease and death, had 5 5 traditionally been imagined as infernal.45 So much is clear from a comparison 6 6 with the moral geography established by Dante in the Commedia, in which 7 7 marshes and swamps are invariably represented as places of spiritual suffering and 8 8 punishment.46 Perhaps the defining analogy of this type occurs in Inferno XXIX, 9 9 40–51 in the final valley of the ninth circle of Hell where the sowers of schism 10 10 and discord, together with the givers of scandal and falsifiers, are condemned to 11 11 grotesque bodily mutilations as appropriate sanction for creating social, political 12 12 and religious division. To convey in their full horror the torments the fraudsters 13 13 must undergo Dante invokes three notoriously pestilential locations: 14 14 15 Qual dolor fora, se de li spedali 15 16 di Valdichiana tra ’l luglio e ’l settembre, 16 17 e di Maremma e di Sardigna, i mali 17 18 fossero in una fossa tutti ’nsembre: 18 19 tal era quivi, e tal puzzo n’usciva 19 20 qual suol venir de le marcite membre. (ll. 46–51) 20 21 21 22 (‘As the pain would be if the diseases from the hospitals of Valdichiana between 22 23 July and September, and from Maremma and Sardinia, were all gathered in a ditch, 23 24 giving off a stench like that from putrefying limbs’ – my translation.) Shelley may 24 25 have recalled these passages when in April 1818, reading the Purgatorio, he came 25 26 upon a character at the end of Canto V who addresses the Pilgrim: 26 27 27 ricorditi di me, che son la Pia; 28 28 Siena mi fé, disfecemi Maremma: 29 salsi colui che ’nnanellata pria 29 30 disposando m’avea con la sua gemma (ll. 133–6) 30 31 31 32 (‘remember me, I am Pia; Siena made me, Maremma unmade me; he knows that 32 33 who, wedding me, gave me his ring and jewel’ – my translation.) The death of Pia, 33 34 a Sienese noblewoman who was the object of her husband’s implacable jealousy, 34 35 was commonly attributed to the malignant atmosphere of the place in which he 35 36 had forcibly confined her. Reviewing a new commentary on Dante together with 36 37 Cary’s translationProof of the Commedia in the FebruaryCopy 1818 issue of the Edinburgh 37 38 Review, Ugo Foscolo wrote: 38 39 39 40 40 44 MWS Letters I: 83; MS Journals I: 240. 41 45 A popular rhyme warned against staying long in the Maremma lest one leave 41 42 one’s skin there (Journals of Claire Clairmont, ed. Marion Kingston Stocking. Cambridge, 42 43 Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 158. Entry for 23 July 1820). 43 44 46 Graphic examples occur in Inferno VII, 106; VIII, 63; and XXV, 16–21. 44

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Her husband brought her into the Maremma, which, then as now, was a district 1 1 destructive to health … He patiently waited till the pestilential air should destroy 2 2 … this young lady. In a few months she died.47 3 3 4 The Edinburgh Review for February 1818 was published in May. Peacock sent a 4 5 copy to the Shelleys in a parcel of books in late June; they did not receive it until 5 6 the end of January 1819, in Naples, though Shelley might have seen Foscolo’s 6 7 review before then, in Venice for example, where in October he and Mary were 7 8 able to read the Quarterly Review for January 1818.48 And it seems likely that 8 9 ‘Mazenghi’ was composed as late as January–February 1819, as BSM III suggests 9 10 (p. xv), a possibility that gains support from the Shelleys’ reading of both the 10 11 Inferno and Sismondi during these months.49 11 12 So, when he chose the Maremma as theatre for the decisive phase of Mazenghi’s 12 13 exile from Florence, Shelley was adopting a place that literary tradition had 13 14 invested with a sinister moral dimension in the likeness of its malignant physical 14 15 one. The task he sets himself is thus revisionary, and not only in respect of 15 16 location. Exemplary public chastisement of criminals (labouring in the street in 16 17 chains) and a sinner (begging in a penitential garment) was for both the Shelleys 17 18 a troubling spectacle in their early travels in Italy in 1818.50 Self-imposed penance 18 19 was equally repugnant to Shelley. From Bologna, he sent Peacock a description 19 20 of a picture of St Bruno in the desert by Guercino in which the monk appears as 20 21 ‘an animated mummy’.51 The image of the Christian hermit’s morbid asceticism 21 22 as well as the public exhibition of prisoners condemned to punitive labour were 22 23 quite recent observations when Shelley came to elaborate Mazenghi’s experience 23 24 of exile in a ‘desart’ which had long served as a defining emblem of sin as disease. 24 25 As Shelley devises it, Mazenghi’s interval in the Maremma is far removed from 25 26 either imposed punishment or fanatical austerity. Instead the exile is made to 26 27 undergo, in clearly demarcated stages, a comprehensive remaking of the self 27 28 whose foundation is sympathetic integration with his natural surroundings. In the 28 29 process he discovers not the morbidity but the vitality of the Maremma, inuring 29 30 himself to the hardships of an initially inhospitable environment, then learning to 30 31 live in communal exchange with the native creatures of the marshland, to feed on 31 32 wild berries and roots, to recognize the beauty of his surroundings, to reaffirm his 32 33 dedication to Liberty in response to the sublimity of distant mountains, to expand 33 34 his mental scope by contemplation of the heavens. This schooling in the ways and 34 35 35 36 36 47 EdinburghProof Review 58 (February 1818), pp.Copy 453–74 (p. 459). Shelley may have 37 37 38 remembered Pia’s fate when he included in Cenci’s curse on his daughter Beatrice: ‘Heaven, 38 rain upon her head / The blistering drops of the Maremma’s dew’ (The Cenci IV, i, 130–31). 39 39 48 The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. Nicholas A. Joukovsky. 2 vols Oxford: 40 40 Clarendon Press, 2001, vol. 1, pp. 128, 130. Letters II: 65–6, 76; MWS Letters I: 85, 87; 41 MS Journals I: 233. 41 42 49 MS Journals I: 246–9. 42 43 50 MWS Letters I: 67; Letters II: 48. 43 44 51 Letters II: 52, and see PS III: 11–12. 44

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appearances of nature nourishes inner powers which both cheer his solitude and 1 1 fit him to cope with visitations of memory’s ‘deepening shade’ (l. 153). Further, 2 2 such an eminently Wordsworthian course of psychic healing in and by nature 3 3 removes any inward obstacle to recovering integrity of self and eventually returns 4 4 Mazenghi to thoughts of ‘his own kind’ (l. 168). Not, however, before his season 5 5 in the Maremma is broken in upon by sight of a ship. This is not Sismondi’s vessel 6 6 carrying supplies to Pisa. Shelley has transformed the ship in his source into a 7 7 decidedly Coleridgean vision, a black phantom in full sail outlined against the 8 8 orange and crimson of sunset, which quickens Mazenghi’s wonder, reminds him 9 9 of his own social past and prompts the reader to recall the two cardinal episodes 10 10 in The Ancient Mariner that are appropriated here – the appearance of the spectre- 11 11 ship and the Mariner’s blessing of the water-snakes (1805 text: ll. 165–78, 266– 12 12 85). As refashioned by Shelley into a single incident, they turn Mazenghi’s mind 13 13 at last to humanity and his native country, so completing his moral rehabilitation.52 14 14 Shelley renders the ship with anthropomorphic detail (it appears to ‘walk’, then 15 15 to be ‘striding’); and as the ‘dark ghost of the unburied even’ (l. 166) it makes a 16 16 suggestive emblem of what remains unresolved in Mazenghi’s mind in relation 17 17 to his former life. The two uncompleted stanzas that precede and follow the one 18 18 in which the ship appears (ll. 162–7) evidently introduce the final phase of his 19 19 personal evolution, though without deciding it. Both the troubling agitation of 20 20 mind that is the lot of the committed reformer (ll. 157–61) and the philanthropy 21 21 and patriotism that motivate him (ll. 168–70) are invoked but not developed. 22 22 Shelley’s narrative breaks off at this point; he imagines no heroic feat and no 23 23 triumphant return for Mazenghi. The secular anchorite is denied the reward of the 24 24 civic crown that Sismondi’s account had bestowed on him. 25 25 Any attempt to assess Shelley’s intentions in respect of a conclusion to 26 26 Mazenghi’s story is complicated by the state of the manuscript, which is clearly 27 27 unfinished. Several stanzas lack words, phrases, even a line or more, while the 28 28 narrative of exile ends abruptly in mid-stanza (l. 170). There follows a blank page 29 29 in the notebook in which Shelley drafted the poem; on the next page is a fair draft 30 30 of a six-line stanza in the metre of ‘Mazenghi’ and in a variant (ababaa) of its 31 31 rhyme-pattern (ababcc).53 Whether Shelley intended this stanza as a conclusion 32 32 to the poem or as an independent lyric (Mary Shelley published it as such in the 33 33 1839 PW) in the style of ‘Mazenghi’ is impossible to determine confidently.54 He 34 34 might have left the blank page to accommodate a transition between the end of the 35 35 narrative and an ultimate stanza offering a definitive commentary on the poem’s 36 36 major concerns, or the gap might signal their separate status. In any case, as the 37 Proof Copy 37 fragment stands, Mazenghi’s moral evolution finishes not as public rehabilitation 38 38 39 39 40 40 52 An episode inspired by The Ancient Mariner performs a similar psychic function in 41 Rosalind and Helen, ll. 1195–209. 41 42 53 PS II: 361; Dawson, BSM III: 197, 355. 42 43 54 PS II: 361 considers it a conclusion, BSM III: 355 the beginning of an independent 43 44 poem. 44

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but as spiritual reconstruction, the terms of which had been set out in the first 1 1 stanza where he is exhibited as morally exemplary for having overcome pride 2 2 and the impulse to revenge. Whatever its intended status, the stanza adopts the 3 3 authoritative and generalizing tone of a conclusion which is not without bearing 4 4 on ‘Mazenghi’. Making no specific reflection on the circumstances of the 5 5 protagonist’s history, it consigns ‘wealth and dominion’ to ‘the great sea of human 6 6 right and wrong’. From this temporal flux only love endures because, in another 7 7 Dantean appropriation – qualified possibly to allow for Mazenghi’s intervention 8 8 in a treacherous war that entailed loss of liberty for Pisa and contributed to its 9 9 continuing decline – ‘love, though misdirected, is among / The things which are 10 10 immortal’ (ll. 174–5). 11 11 The resolution of Mazenghi’s story shows interesting similarities to Rosalind’s. 12 12 Each confirms through the ordeal of exile the innocence of one who hasbeen 13 13 unjustly accused. Each character must confront and purge the deadening weight of 14 14 memory to prepare for reintegration to family or to the larger human community. 15 15 Each gestures at the power of the central Dantean faith in the endurance of love, 16 16 as symbolized in a human monument – Rosalind’s tomb, Mazenghi’s legend and 17 17 ‘urn’ (l. 6). In time the narrative of each acquires the contours of secular sanctity: 18 18 Mazenghi’s afterlife shapes him as an exemplar of civic virtue on the classical 19 19 model; the annual pilgrimage to Rosalind’s tomb honours heroic suffering in the 20 20 domestic sphere while indirectly hinting at the eminence of renown only partially 21 21 achieved. The intimate relevance of these two life-stories to Shelley himself at the 22 22 critical juncture of his individual history and career as a poet that is marked by the 23 23 removal to Italy in spring 1818 is clear enough. Family tragedy, personal infamy, 24 24 legal sanction, the rarity of any sympathetic response to his poetry – were so many 25 25 bitter remnants of his past. In the early months in Italy memories of his life in 26 26 England combine with his immediate response to Italian landscape, art and social 27 27 practice, as well as his reading in Italian literature and history, to create a theatre 28 28 for redemptive narratives in which the weight of these personal preoccupations is 29 29 clearly to be discerned. The central assertion on which the stories are founded – 30 30 the capacity of love to overcome time and clarify history – furnishes them with a 31 31 transcendent dimension opening, with due circumspection, towards the future. We 32 32 may sense in that assertion the author’s act of faith in chapters yet to be written. 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 156 9/11/2015 4:29:30 PM 1 Chapter 8 1 2 2 3 Shelley’s Work in Progress: 3 4 ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ and the 4 5 5 6 Unfinished Draft of ‘Prince Athanase’ 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 10 Alan M. Weinberg 10 11 11 12 12 13 Although seminal in its representation of a Shelleyan prototype, ‘Prince Athanase’ 13 14 (as the work has been traditionally called) has over the years received sparse critical 14 15 attention, being largely used as a resource by biographers keen to extrapolate from 15 1 16 its poetic idealism clues about Shelley’s life as a poet, or his self-image. It is 16 17 generally noted that the work instances the Shelleyan blueprint of the isolated, 17 18 aggrieved, highly sensitive intellectual or poet-figure in quest of his ideal which 18 2 19 recurs in many compositions. Its comparative neglect might be attributed to its 19 20 uncertain status as a fragment that, lacking assurance in its use of terza rima, 20 21 fails to develop the narrative convincingly and appears to break down into several 21 22 further fragments until discarded by the poet. When the work was first published 22 23 by Mary Shelley in Posthumous Poems (1824) there was a disjunction between 23 24 its first 124 lines, presented integrally in the earlier main part of the anthology, 24 25 and entitled ‘Prince Athanase: A Fragment.’, and several incomplete or cancelled 25 26 passages presented towards the end of the volume in a section called ‘Fragments’, 26 3 27 and grouped together under the title ‘Prince Athanase Part II’. While any sense of 27 28 narrative continuity was lost, the publication had the virtue of giving precedence 28 29 29 30 1 The most important critical contributions are: James A. Notopoulos, The Platonism 30 31 of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind (1949). New York: Octagon Books, 31 32 1969, pp. 48–54, 224–9, passim (links with Plato); Donald H. Reiman, ‘Shelley as 32 33 Athanase’, in SC VII: 110–62 (1986; diplomatic transcript of ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ and 33 34 commentary); Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution: The Figure of the Poet in Shelley. 34 35 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, pp. 166–74; and Kelvin Everest, ed., ‘Athanase’. Keats- 35 36 Shelley Review 7.1 (1992), pp. 62–84 (edition of text with commentary, mostly repeated 36 37 as headnoteProof in PS II: 311–28). Reiman’s discussion Copy is heavily biographical, and its 37 38 speculations, reliant on debatable dating, recur in James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley: A 38 Biography (Exile of Unfulfilled Renown, 1816–1822). Newark: University of Delaware 39 39 Press, 2005, pp. 145–7. 40 40 2 Most famously in Alastor (1816), but also notably in figures such asL aon (Laon and 41 Cythna), Lionel (Rosalind and Helen), the maniac (‘Julian and Maddalo’), Rousseau (‘The 41 42 Triumph of Life’), and in the personae of ‘The Retrospect’ (1812), Epipsychidion, Adonais 42 43 and ‘Una favola’. 43 44 3 See PP: 103–10; 249–56. 44

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in its major section to those 124 lines of ‘Press Copy’ which Shelley had himself 1 1 overseen for publication, and which he had sent to Ollier in December 1819, in the 2 2 hope that it would be published with ‘Julian and Maddalo’, an intention that did 3 3 not materialize for either poem.4 4 4 While editors since C.D. Locock in 19035 were able to fine-tune Mary Shelley’s 5 5 editing and to accurately represent more of the MS draft (which is located in the 6 6 notebook Bod. MS Shelley e. 4, fols 83v–68v rev.),6 the distinction between 7 7 Press Copy and MS draft, a few sections of which are in intermediate fair copy 8 8 – or between what was prepared by the poet for publication and what lacked that 9 9 preparation – remained obscure owing to the disappearance of the Press Copy 10 10 Manuscript. Attempts were made, notably by Neville Rogers, to establish a degree 11 11 of narrative continuity among the several ‘fragments’, but at the expense of 12 12 confusing the two versions of the text. With the rediscovery of the Press Copy (SC 13 13 VII, item 582) and the transcription of it by Donald Reiman (SC VII: 132–42), 14 14 with extensive commentary, the way was laid open to reinstate the Press Copy 15 15 as a poem in its own right – a poem to which Shelley gave the title ‘Athanase: A 16 16 Fragment’ – distinct from the incomplete though lengthier draft which the poet 17 17 provided with alternative titles, ‘Pandemos and Urania’ and ‘Prince Athanase’ 18 18 (the latter repeated just above the first tercet on f. 82v). Throughout his finely 19 19 detailed commentary, Reiman correctly treats the Press Copy as an integral work, 20 20 and makes almost no reference to the MS draft, which is by implication considered 21 21 a subsidiary document, like any other draft.7 However, his determination to date 22 22 composition of the work to the period July 1818 to November 1819 conflicts both 23 23 with Posthumous Poems, where ‘Part I’ is dated December 1817 and ‘Part II’ 24 24 Marlow 1817, and with references in the extended MS draft that reflect the first 25 25 month of residence in Italy (March–April 1818). James Notopoulos provides 26 26 strong evidence that ‘Prince Athanase’ emerged out of Shelley’s reading of the 27 27 Symposium and Peacock’s Platonic fable, Rhododaphne, at Marlow in late 1817,8 28 28 though it is possible that Shelley only began the work on arrival in Italy.9 Whatever 29 29 the exact date of composition, the fragment is like Rosalind and Helen a work of 30 30 transition, expressing concerns which Shelley carried over from England to Italy. 31 31 32 32 33 4 See SC 554, VI: 1100–104. Both parts, still clearly demarcated, were subsequently 33 34 placed together in PW II (1839): 39–54. This further obscured the Press Copy, which Mary 34 35 Shelley no longer had in her possession. Unless otherwise specified, all references to SC 35 36 are to vol. VII. 36 5 An ProofExamination of the Shelley Manuscripts Copy in the Bodleian Library. O xford: 37 37 38 Clarendon Press, 1903, pp. 50–60. 38 6 For facsimile, transcription and brief commentary, see Dawson, BSM III: 333–274 39 39 rev., xiv–xv, 356–7. 40 40 7 Timothy Clark, Embodying Revolution, p. 169, usefully observes the distinction, 41 limiting his brief analysis to the ‘Press Copy’. 41 42 8 The Platonism of Shelley, pp. 48–54. 42 43 9 A well-reasoned estimate of the dating is given in PS II: 311–12. See also Dawson, 43 44 BSM III: xiv–xv. 44

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Ironically, in what might be considered the most authoritative edition of 1 1 the poem to date, that in PS II (earlier published in Keats-Shelley Review), the 2 2 distinction to which I am here drawing attention is not upheld. The work is retitled 3 3 Athanase: A Fragment, as if it were the shortened poem; but it is presented as 4 4 a combination of Press Copy (including line 124 [SC l. 13610] which Shelley 5 5 added to round off the piece) and a newly edited version of the largely rough 6 6 draft, resulting in over 300 lines of verse, incorporating some alternate or detached 7 7 passages.11 The conflation of different kinds of text reverts to a once popular 8 8 editorial practice and unfortunately confuses two different kinds of fragment, the 9 9 one a literary fiction that Shelley was fond of using from the outset of his career,12 10 10 and the other the incomplete draft in MS Shelley e. 4. There are then, it needs to be 11 11 emphasized, two distinct works in question, a literary ‘fragment’ which is a poem 12 12 in itself (comprising 41 terza rima stanzas and a concluding line) and a longer 13 13 draft fragment in terza rima which is essentially provisional and incomplete.13 14 14 The approach outlined here correlates with la critique génétique, which places 15 15 emphasis on the genesis and process of composition, through its various stages, 16 16 and on the importance of the different layers of textual production. The concern is 17 17 not limited to the final product, the established text; more broadly it encompasses 18 18 the coming into being or making of that text (which is itself provisional), its 19 19 emergence from and reconstitution of preparatory material which has its own 20 20 importance. Faithful at all times to textuality, the approach respects the aesthetic 21 21 conditions of writing as well as the nature of the text at hand, and teases out their 22 22 significance. In the succeeding sections of this chapter, I will first be examining 23 23 an artefact or end-product intended for publication, ‘Athanase: A Fragment’, and 24 24 subsequently (in the second part) I shall be looking at the material from which 25 25 it derived, and the extended passages which were drafted but never published – 26 26 or prepared for publication – by the author. These two approaches maintain the 27 27 28 28 29 29 10 SC is numbered 1–136 inclusive of the author’s prose note and interlineations. All 30 references to PS are to vol. II, unless otherwise indicated. 30 31 11 Earlier in 1975, Neville Rogers had obscured distinctions among fragments and 31 32 cancellations, numbering lines consecutively 1–317. See The Complete Poetical Works of 32 33 Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, vol. 2 (1814–17), pp. 277–91. 33 34 Shelley’s numbering of terzinas following line 123 indicates continuity of the draft up to 34 35 line 197 but is not a justification for the conflation of texts attempted in PS II (as is argued 35 36 in the headnote, p. 312). 36 12 37 TheProof designation appears in the title of severalCopy works, such as ‘Fragment; or the 37 38 Triumph of Conscience’ in Original Poems of Victor & Cazire; ‘Fragment. Supposed To Be 38 an Epithalamium … ’, in The Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson; ‘The Daemon 39 39 of the World: A Fragment’, in Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude: And Other Poems. 40 40 13 The draft in fact comprises a number of fragments. The ‘fragment’ is arguably the 41 exemplary romantic form. See Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms of Ruin. 41 42 Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981, p. 7: ‘Incompleteness, fragmentation, 42 43 and ruin – ständige Unganzheit – not only receive a special emphasis in Romanticism but 43 44 also in a certain perspective seem actually to define that phenomenon.’ 44

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integrity of the two versions – which might be said to exist on different planes 1 1 of composition – though they also point to their relatedness. What they reveal is 2 2 Shelley’s deployment and nuanced consciousness of fragmentation – as a fictional 3 3 device, as a resource of that fiction, and as a fluid domain of experiment and 4 4 creativity. 5 5 6 6 7 A. ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ 7 8 8 9 Cued to the title, and appearing prominently at the head of Shelley’s transcript of 9 10 lines 1–124 – the Press Copy sent to Ollier – is the following note: 10 11 11 12 The Author was pursuing a fuller developement of the ideal character of 12 13 Athanase, when it struck him that in an attempt at extreme refinement & analysis, 13 14 his conceptions might be betrayed into the assuming a morbid character. – The 14 reader will judge whether he is a loser or gainer by this diffidence. – (SC 4–7, 15 15 1–2)14 16 16 17 This note provides an apparently factual basis for the use of ‘fragment’ in Shelley’s 17 18 title. There is more to the ‘fragment’ than the reader is given to know, and the 18 19 question is whether the reader would want a fuller development of Athanase than 19 20 the poet has chosen to reveal. That would seem to indicate that some tendency 20 21 towards morbidity in the ‘fragment’ itself is really the issue to which Shelley is 21 22 directing his reader. He certainly doesn’t wish to intensify that tendency – the 22 23 reader would not gain by it – but already it might be such that it could not sustain 23 24 further treatment. As it happens – and we know this from the MS draft which 24 25 is now accessible to us in scholarly editions and transcripts – the narrative, as 25 26 it progresses beyond line 124, actually becomes less oppressive or ‘morbid’ in 26 27 that it is less singularly focused on Athanase’s state of mind, less claustrophobic. 27 28 We receive an account of the enriching friendship between the serene old man, 28 29 Zonoras, and his gifted protégé, Prince Athanase, and there are pointers towards 29 30 an elucidation of the strange grief which besets the protagonist who – as Shelley 30 31 readily implies – is nevertheless an idealization of virtue. 31 32 It appears that the threat of morbidity in writing excluded from the ‘fragment’ 32 33 is a ruse, which induces the reader to accept or at least accommodate the 33 34 oppressiveness of Athanase’s grief in the ‘fragment’.15 The text from which 34 35 the ‘fragment’ has apparently been severed exists (as we know today) but is 35 36 fictionalized,Proof and this transfers itself Copy back to the publishable fragment, which 36 37 appears in turn to be a fictional construct that allows the poet to explore his subject 37 38 38 39 39 14 In the discussion of ‘Athanase: A Fragment’, primary reference is to the transcribed 40 40 Press Copy (SC) with line numbers following. An accompanying reference, in square 41 brackets, is to the recently edited text (PS). For reproduction of the texts, see SC VII: 132– 41 42 42 and PS II: 314–19. 42 43 15 Timothy Clark rightly observes that Shelley’s note ‘need not be taken at face value’ 43 44 (Embodying Revolution, p. 168). 44

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without feeling obliged to fill in the empty spaces, or to develop his subject beyond 1 1 a certain point – to search in other words for answers (answers which he may not 2 2 have or may not wish to reveal). In his preparatory remarks Shelley seals off his 3 3 abbreviated text, the term ‘A Fragment’ in the title above it serving to reinforce 4 4 the insulation. The further events of the draft are in a sense out of bounds, and 5 5 frankly irrelevant. The frame of reference of the ‘fragment’ debars knowledge of 6 6 the protagonist or indeed anything else external to it.16 Moreover, nothing else is 7 7 known of him: he is a unique and original figure who has no prior characterization 8 8 and whose relationship to the poet or his poetry is internalized and not made 9 9 explicit.17 In Athanase we appear to see many of the elements of Shelley’s ideal 10 10 self (with some self-pity superadded), but idealization itself – whether or not it be 11 11 personally based – is in keeping with the fictional construct, being a very definite 12 12 fabrication, a refinement of the imagination quite distinct in character from the 13 13 poet’s personal life. The hermetic nature of the fragment – divorced as it were 14 14 from the broader scope of the MS draft – lends itself to idealization, a fact which 15 15 may have some bearing on the failed development of the draft (as we shall see 16 16 later). The more narrativized and embodied the picture of Athanase, the more 17 17 threateningly circumscribed (or compromised) is the ideal. 18 18 19 19 Unexplained Grief 20 20 21 21 As has been intimated above, separation and isolation are the conditions of 22 22 fragmentation that close off Athanase’s grief from whatever may be its cause. The 23 23 focus of attention in ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ as, in a sense, a severed text, is not 24 24 therefore on any determination to explain, elucidate or interpret the protagonist’s 25 25 grief, which may indeed have lain behind Shelley’s personal impulse to compose 26 26 the piece, and which finds some measure of expression later in the MS draft, as we 27 27 shall observe. The text repeatedly, almost obsessively, comes round to the same 28 28 point from which it begins, showing that it is hemmed in, unable to venture beyond 29 29 the boundaries of its own fragmentation. Moreover, the variety of innovative 30 30 descriptions of grief – each instance a startling and disturbing image – points to its 31 31 infinite and unreachable depths. 32 32 The ‘restless griefs’ that beset Athanase, ‘withering up his prime’ (SC 10, 11 33 33 [PS 3, 4]), are mentioned immediately in the first tercet, marking themselves as 34 34 35 35 16 36 In Marjorie Levinson’s categorization, this poem is a deliberate fragment in 36 37 which irresolutionProof is ‘the precise and uniquely appropriateCopy expression of its doctrine’, The 37 38 Romantic Fragment Poem: A Critique of a Form. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 38 Press, 1986, p. 50. 39 39 17 In accordance with the Shelleyan blueprint mentioned earlier, correspondences 40 40 between Athanase, the Poet in Alastor, Laon in Laon and Cythna, and Lionel in Rosalind 41 and Helen (to name the most obvious), exist quite separately on the plane of intertextuality. 41 42 In this regard, Athanase is a distinct instance of the prototype, fashioned experimentally 42 43 according to specific conditions laid out for this character, and does not fit into a mould 43 44 already designed for him, which would therefore explain his actions. 44

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an idée fixe recurring throughout the ‘fragment’. In the seventh tercet, the ‘Sorrow 1 1 deep & shadowy & unknown’ (SC 26 [PS 19]) picks up the thread, even as the 2 2 narrator wonders helplessly what sorrow it could be. Other lines touch on this 3 3 theme, leading to a pause and the question: ‘What sadness made that vernal spirit 4 4 sere?’ (SC 67 [PS 57]), or later, ‘What was this grief which ne’er in other minds 5 5 / A mirror found, he knew not – none could know –’ (SC 86–7 [PS 75–6]). The 6 6 different shades of distress identify a state which none can name. Athanase’s solitary 7 7 incomprehension is accompanied by his need to disguise from the perception of 8 8 others ‘the grief within that burned’ (SC 90 [PS 79]). While the narrator is privy 9 9 to Athanase’s state of mind, he has no superior knowledge that might assist the 10 10 reader, who is left stranded, unable to arrive at a satisfactory cause. This collapsing 11 11 of space between narrator and protagonist intensifies the solipsistic circle that 12 12 seems to fence in the protagonist’s state of mind. It distances or displaces the 13 13 friends who, in the closing passages of the ‘Fragment’ (SC 102–20 [PS 90–108]) 14 14 offer their contrasting opinions on the cause of Athanase’s plight: that it is 15 15 madness, recollection of a far happier antenatal life, the supremacy given to love 16 16 which invokes ‘God’s displeasure’, or an ‘obscure dream’ which extinguishes joy. 17 17 These very disparate views, though possibly well meant, are merely speculative, 18 18 and might be compared to the similarly inefficacious speculation regarding the 19 19 madman (a companion in woe who seems better to understand his condition) 20 20 in ‘Julian and Maddalo’. Ironically, each assumption intertextually reinscribes 21 21 a phase in the Alastor-poet’s quest for self-fulfilment18 while reference to the 22 22 primacy of love points to an ideal that, similarly to his predecessor, may well 23 23 reflect Athanase’s unhappiness, though it doesn’t necessarily determine it.H is is a 24 24 separate case, and may not be at the mercy of his precursor’s plight. The reference 25 25 signals a Platonic influence – that of theSymposium – whose development later in 26 26 the draft is, through deliberate fragmentation, excluded here. 27 27 Though Athanase still respects this talk, Socratically ‘Question[ing] & 28 28 canvas[sing] it with subtlest wit’, as a philosopher would, he is galled by its failure 29 29 to assist him, and seemingly further cut off from his friends by ‘this converse vain 30 30 & cold’19 (SC 128, 131 [PS 116, 119]). There is an absence of understanding that 31 31 might lead Athanase towards self-knowledge and towards the needful articulation 32 32 of his state of mind that is answered in an ‘other’ – an absence that, in the MS draft, 33 33 is at least partially filled by his older mentor Zonoras (an exemplary father figure). 34 34 The idea that there is a readily assignable or definitive cause of grief is itself an 35 35 oppression, indicating the glibness of those who cannot come to terms with the 36 36 inexplicableProof20 – with that ‘degree zero’ of meaningCopy which resists the tyranny of 37 37 38 38 18 Noted by Barry John Capella, Shelley’s Quest Poems. PhD Dissertation. City 39 39 University of New York, 1980, pp. 104–8. 40 40 19 Cf. ‘– but the cold world shall not know’, the last inconclusive words of ‘Julian 41 and Maddalo’. 41 42 20 The link with Hamlet is apparent. In the context of inordinate grief and the 42 43 simplistic explanations at the court, his admission – ‘I have that within which passeth show’ 43 44 (I, ii, 85) – might yet be said to exceed his own understanding. The dropping of ‘Prince’ 44

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language and conceptualization. No such glibness is allowed the reader of the 1 1 poem, as if the weight of suffering must, to do it justice, be registered as such. 2 2 With the monotonous insistence of a suffocating dead end, underlining the failure 3 3 of reason and absence of any relief from a condition without a name and without 4 4 a cure, the ‘Fragment’ concludes fatally: 5 5 6 For like an eyeless nightmare grief did sit 6 7 7 8 Upon his being; a snake, which fold by fold 8 9 Pressed out the life of life, a clinging fiend 9 10 Which clenched him if he stirred with deadlier hold 10 11 And so his grief remained – let it remain – untold. (SC 132–6 [PS 120–24]) 11 12 12 13 A late addition (inserted in the MS draft in preparation for the Press Copy), the 13 14 extra fourth line ends the fragment with a circumscribing couplet (and quatrain) 14 15 – sealed as it were by the closed rhyme ‘hold … untold’ – silencing the dark 15 16 future even while announcing it. What is projected beyond the fragment – an 16 17 unmitigated grief – is abruptly short-circuited, ensuring that the poem contains 17 18 – one might say ‘locks away’– its own mystery. Other works of the period do 18 19 likewise. Notably, as John V. Murphy observes, ‘Shelley’s general inclination is 19 21 20 to leave us with unanswered questions and feelings of doubt and ambiguity’. 20 21 He ruffles complacency and inspires imaginative conjecture and puzzlement that 21 22 draws the reader into the vortex of the work’s ‘incompletion’. This characteristic 22 23 in Shelley points to a more deliberate use of ‘fragmentation’ or incompletion than 23 24 meets the eye, or than Shelley has always been given credit for. 24 25 25 26 The Paradox of Grief and Virtue 26 27 27 28 A tenet of Shelley’s thinking, apparent even in his earliest compositions, is the 28 22 29 disinterestedness of virtue. Whatever is virtuous is practised for its own sake 29 30 alone. In his fragmentary essay ‘On Christianity’, likewise drafted (and in the same 30 31 notebook as ‘Prince Athanase’) in late 1817 or early in 1818, Shelley provides a 31 32 deconstruction of Christ’s blessing, that ‘the pure in heart … shall see God’. He 32 33 remarks: 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 for the title Proofof the fragment underplays the allusion Copy to Hamlet, which might otherwise have 37 38 seemed too obvious. It also further removes Athanase from any rootedness in time and 38 space. For an imaginative account of Shelley’s interest in Hamlet, see ‘Byron and Shelley 39 39 on the Character of Hamlet’. The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal 29. 2 (1 July 40 40 1830), pp. 327–36: authorship attributed to Thomas Medwin. 41 21 The Dark Angel: Gothic Elements in Shelley’s Works. Cranberry, N.J.: Associated 41 42 University Presses, 1975, p. 110. 42 43 22 Cf. ‘The essence of virtue is disinterestedness’, Proposals for an Association of 43 44 Philanthropists (1812), Prose I: 50. 44

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What! after death shall their awakened eyes behold the King of Heaven, shall 1 1 they stand in awe before the golden throne on which he sits, and gaze upon 2 the venerable countenance of the paternal Monarch. Is this the reward of 2 3 the virtuous and the pure? These are the idle dreams of the visionary or the 3 4 pernicious representations of imposters who have fabricated from the very 4 5 materials of wisdom a cloak for their own dwarfish and imbecile conceptions. 5 6 Jesus Christ has said no more than the most excellent philosophers have felt and 6 7 expressed – that virtue is its own reward.23 7 8 8 9 It is notable that in the early part of ‘Athanase: A Fragment’, Shelley immediately 9 10 establishes the protagonist’s virtue and underscores his disinterestedness. His 10 11 ‘soul’ ‘wedded [to] Wisdom’ (SC 39 [PS 31]), Athanase is transparent in speaking 11 12 ‘What he dared do or think’ (SC 53 [PS 44]) – a fearless activist by temperament 12 13 – and divides equally, among ‘the poor & wise / His riches & his cares’ (SC 49–50 13 14 [PS 41–2]). There is no suggestion in Athanase of the least interested motive that 14 15 might compromise his actions. Indeed we have it on record: 15 16 16 For none than he a purer heart could have 17 17 Or that loved good more for itself alone … . (SC 23–4 [PS 16–17]) 18 18 19 The parallel with the prose commentary ‘On Christianity’ is plain: Athanase 19 20 embodies the Christian idea in its de-theologized Socratic form, as Shelley 20 21 translates it. In so doing, he emulates Christ without being burdened by divine 21 22 signification. In fact Athanase is unafraid of the distorted Christian fable which 22 23 posits the terrors of Hell. In this regard he is ‘Philosophy’s accepted guest’ (SC 23 24 22 [PS 15]), a phrase implying the independent love of truth characteristic of 24 25 Plato’s banquet (Symposium). As with the participants in that dialogue, Athanase 25 26 ‘owned no higher law / Than love, love calm, steadfast, / By mortal 26 27 fear or supernatural awe’ (SC 107–9 [PS 95–7]). In his characterization of ‘Jesus 27 28 Christ’ (as he is fond of calling him), Shelley celebrates, above all, the man of 28 29 complete virtue – of disinterested love – whose divinity is an open question, not 29 30 an indisputable fact. Athanase is certainly an idealization, but then, so (on this 30 31 account) is Christ. The conception alone of such a person is remarkable, stripped 31 32 of the superstition which from the very beginning has disguised his true nature. 32 33 To be regarded as wholly beneficial, dedication to virtue might, one imagines, 33 34 entail an inward contentment, in so far as, by its very nature, it reflects some benign 34 35 presence or purpose in the world to which one is aligned or connected. Shelley 35 36 seems to alludeProof to this in the essay, by indicating Copy that virtue, in Christ’s teaching, 36 37 is in harmony with a principle of good (God) pervading the universe. But pleasure 37 38 brings some personal or ulterior motive into account, and it is this that Shelley will 38 39 not allow in his depiction of Athanase – as if he were putting the Christian and 39 40 Platonic ideal to the test. We now understand why the emphasis is relentlessly on 40 41 misery, on an internal and unquenchable sorrow endured by Athanase – himself 41 42 tormented by his mind and heart – and not on some personal benefit. Any advantage 42 43 43 44 23 Prose I: 250–51. Cf. draft in Shelley Bod. MS Shelley e. 4, f. 10r. 44

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to Athanase will call his virtue into question, whereas paradoxically, the idea of 1 1 his suffering and wasting away in spite of his generous acts is consistent with his 2 2 idealization: that is, it confirms his virtue. A similar logic prevails with regard to 3 3 the depiction of Christ who, because eminently virtuous, is (in the words of Isaiah 4 4 become Christian prophecy) ‘a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’ (Isaiah 53: 5 5 3), and destined to die young. The groundwork is being laid for the conception 6 6 of Prometheus who suffers ceaseless torment because he is the benefactor of 7 7 mankind. His misery is ultimately vindicated by his resistance to compromise, 8 8 and by the intervention of Asia, his soul-mate. Yet in the ‘Fragment’ the paradox 9 9 remains, and it is this, it seems to me, that Shelley, ever the philosophical poet, is 10 10 exploring here, in the manner of a negative dialectician. This necessarily puts to 11 11 one side the question of the source of Athanase’s misery, and makes it a distractor 12 12 – at least in the ‘deliberate fragment’. Possibly his elevated conception of love 13 13 defeats him but there is no indication why this should be so. His name (A-thanase 14 14 = immortal) points to a ‘thirst for immortality’ (Preface to Hellas) that is perhaps 15 15 insatiable and tragic, as is the case with the Alastor-poet. Even so, speculation on 16 16 this flimsy basis must lead nowhere in the ‘Fragment’. An explanation of the cause 17 17 of Athanase’s state of mind of whatever kind would neutralize the paradox and 18 18 not sustain it. It would nullify the argument and cheapen the idealization (which 19 19 is itself deliberate). That there is no positive outcome or resolution represents 20 20 for Shelley the point of resistance to ideology and empiricism. As in existential 21 21 drama, Shelley juxtaposes extreme states, and by playing the one off against the 22 22 other, understands their compatibility on the one hand, and irreconcilability on the 23 23 other: unresolvable and unwanted misery proves Athanase’s acts to be selfless as 24 24 well as conflictual, incongruous or even absurd. 25 25 We observe the dialectical alternation of sorrow and virtue throughout the 26 26 ‘Fragment’, and this is especially pronounced in a line which seems to echo 27 27 the gospels: ‘He loved, & laboured for his kind in grief’ (SC 34 [PS 26]). An 28 28 unbreachable divide between virtue and happiness corresponds to the situation 29 29 of the maniac in ‘Julian and Maddalo’ (a poem overtly dialectical in conception 30 30 and structure). The maniac’s misery is incontestable, the consequence of 31 31 disappointment in love,24 but, like Athanase, he retains his idealism by refusing to 32 32 become vindictive or proud. He is thus, in this sense, incorruptible. In madness, 33 33 he cohabits simultaneously the two worlds of faith and disappointment in 34 34 humanity, experiencing as it were both ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’. The terms of reference 35 35 in this poem are Dantean, made explicit in sustained allusions to the Inferno.25 36 36 ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ anticipates ‘Julian and Maddalo’ in its signalling of a 37 Proof Copy 37 Dantean presence, most noticeably in the adoption of terza rima, Shelley’s first 38 38 major attempt in this form, and simulation of the Dantean canto in its length and 39 39 40 40 41 24 To preserve its integrity as companion poem, the ‘Fragment’ represses any 41 42 suggestion of personal disappointment that might be intimated in the draft. 42 43 25 For further comment on the Dantean reference in ‘Julian and Maddalo’, see Alan 43 44 Weinberg, Shelley’s Italian Experience. London: Macmillan, 1991, pp. 59–66. 44

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final closing rhyme.26 Although Shelley’s stanzas tend not to form composite 1 1 units of meaning, as in Dante, their rather halting progression – reinforced by 2 2 erratic pauses within the stanza, seldom end-stopped, and given over mostly to 3 3 characterization rather than narrative line – serves another purpose in dislocating 4 4 the assured sense of an ordered and meaningful verse structure that in Dante’s epic 5 5 poem is analogous to a gradually comprehensible universe. Taking its cue from the 6 6 very brief as well as sonic assertion, ‘He knew not’, the impressively controlled 7 7 31-line sentence27 (SC 68–101 [PS 58–89]) – anchored by a clausal sequence in 8 8 ‘Though [repeated to hold together the protracted thought] … But … So … For’, 9 9 and propelled forward by enjambments and unstopped terzinas, each opening out 10 10 to the next – traverses a path leading but to a cul de sac that halts any progression 11 11 with reiteration of ‘he knew not’, ‘He knew not’ (SC 87, 90 [PS 76, 79]), finally 12 12 sealing this impasse with the idea of an ‘adamantine veil’ drawn ‘Between his heart 13 13 & mind’ (SC 99–100 [PS 87–8]). Shelley’s lucid and spare, uncluttered phrasing, 14 14 tending towards a slightly archaic and therefore distancing simplicity, suited to 15 15 an idealized portrait, belies an absence of the comprehensible in ‘Athanase’. This 16 16 fragment, re-conceived as an hermetic fictional construct (which actually has been 17 17 extracted from a longer series of fragments), presents in isolation the prototype 18 18 of an unresolvable internalized conflict which draws the domains of ‘heaven’ and 19 19 ‘hell’ inwards (the at once good and unhappy soul) and collapses them into each 20 20 other. 21 21 22 22 23 B. ‘Prince Athanase’ (MS Shelley e. 4, fols 83v–68v rev.) 23 24 24 25 The Draft 25 26 26 27 Restored to the MS draft from which it derives, the lines constituting ‘Athanase: 27 28 A Fragment’ appear in a rougher state and are but the prelude to an extended 28 29 analepsis – recall of the younger Athanase under the tutelage of Zonoras, and 29 30 prolepsis – intimations of a quest for later fulfilment in love. The narrative is 30 31 dialectically projected into the past (origin) and the as yet unrealized future 31 32 (destination) in the manner of an epic, and is therefore much broader in scope.28 32 33 The draft provides every indication of a work in progress, of a manuscript that 33 34 is unsure of its direction and that, over a period of possibly several months of 34 35 composition twice retraces its steps, only to break down into a further series of 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 26 38 Importantly Shelley closes off his ‘fragment’ whereas Dante’s alternate rhyme 38 announces a pause in the narrative. 39 39 27 PS converts Shelley’s semi-colon at SC 101 to a full stop to mark the grammatical 40 40 close of the sentence. In the Press Copy, however, there is no formal end stop for 52 lines 41 (SC 68–120). 41 42 28 The sequential pattern of present-past-future is a Shelleyan trademark, discernible 42 43 in such diverse mythopoeic works as Queen Mab, Alastor, Laon and Cythna, Prometheus 43 44 Unbound and Epipsychidion, all of which incorporate a quest motif. 44

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smaller disconnected fragments. Finally the draft serves as the basis for the Press 1 1 Copy, abridged, lightly revised and corrected for publication, which was realized 2 2 posthumously. Distinct from the Press Copy, the less finished draft is also less 3 3 accommodating, as when Prince Athanase is described as ‘wasting’ (f. 80v: 3a)29 4 4 (rather than the gentler ‘failing’ of the revision [SC 69]), or when, in the late 5 5 insert of a closing line, ‘& must remain [ … ] untold’ (f. 78r: 7) contrasts with 6 6 the Press Copy’s finally revised ‘let it remain – untold’ (SC 136 [PS 124]) which 7 7 calls for, rather than insists on, compliance with the narrator’s will. Prefacing the 8 8 commencement of the draft, a provisional title, ‘Pandemos and Urania’, appearing 9 9 at the base of f. 83r together with ‘Prince Athanase’ below it, points to a Platonic 10 10 contrast between earthly and celestial love,30 given the briefest indication in two 11 11 notes at the top of the folio and the one preceding (f. 83v). These refer to a lady in 12 12 disguise met in a ship and a lady who answers to the prince’s soul only in death.31 13 13 The material with which the draft eventually finds itself in company, in MS 14 14 Shelley e. 4, much of it similarly incomplete, dates from late 1817 continuing into 15 15 the Italian period and certainly extending to late 1819, when the Press Copy of 16 16 ‘Athanase: A Fragment’ was prepared from the MS draft. ‘Prince Athanase’ (or 17 17 ‘Pandemos and Urania’) and the fragmentary essay, ‘On Christianity’, are written 18 18 from opposite ends of the notebook, and were perhaps begun at much the same 19 19 time.32 Eventually ‘Prince Athanase’ or the last fragment associated with it is met 20 20 (on f. 68v) by the draft of the translation of Euripides’s Cyclops which, filling 21 21 in pages left blank or mostly blank, was written in the opposite direction, after 22 22 ‘Mazenghi’ and the Virgil translations, and probably at Naples in the early months 23 23 of 1819.33 The now congested notebook seems to signal the final abandonment of 24 24 the ‘Prince Athanase’ draft and any attempt to find an appropriate scaffolding or 25 25 superstructure to resurrect the crumbling narrative. 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 In the MS draft, ‘wasting’ replaces the even harsher ‘withering’, which is scored 29 29 through. 30 30 Shelley draws on Peacock’s Neoplatonic distinction in Rhododaphne (I, 14 and 30 31 n. 1). In the Symposium, Pausanias identifies Pandemos with heterosexual and Urania 31 32 exclusively with homosexual love, the latter being considered far more elevated, and 32 33 dedicated to the pursuit of virtue. The relationship between Athanase and Zonoras derives 33 34 from the latter model, though understating any trace of sexual interest. In his revisionist 34 35 essay, ‘A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient Greeks relative to the subject of Love’ 35 36 (July 1818), intended to show the Greeks ‘precisely as they were’ (text, Notopoulos, The 36 37 Platonism ofProof Shelley, p. 407), Shelley identifies maleCopy refinement, albeit premised on female 37 38 slavery, as a standard for conditions of greater equality between the sexes, thus indicating 38 his broader categorization of ‘Uranian’ love. 39 39 31 See PS II: 313 for citation of Shelley’s prose notes and Mary Shelley’s probable 40 40 adoption of these for her assumed synopsis of the story in PW III: 46 (1839). Some details 41 in her very brief note, such as Athanase’s search ‘through the world’ for ‘the One who he 41 42 may love’ (my italics) seem superadded and should not be accepted uncritically. 42 43 32 Murray’s approximate date for the essay is ‘?Mid– to? late 1817’. See Prose I: 459. 43 44 33 See Maria Schoina’s essay (Chapter 9). 44

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A Cancelled Sequence 1 1 2 2 Despite its fragmentation and very uncertain progress – factors which (as I said 3 3 earlier), probably account for the work’s neglect – it is possible to trace some 4 4 sense of development that radically alters the impression of closure (however 5 5 mysterious) that Shelley strengthened in the Press Copy of lines 1–124. While 6 6 Poems of Shelley II continues the first narrative sequence to line 197 (PS) in 7 7 accordance with the MS draft, the placing thereafter of a cancelled sequence 8 8 (correctly designated and signalled as ‘following line 129’34 but not scored through 9 9 on the page as Shelley had done) does not register at once the process by which 10 10 Shelley composed but then rejected it, in favour of a less digressive structure. 11 11 Zonoras, immediately introduced at line 125 as his ‘beloved friend’ (f. 78r: 8) 12 12 (the type of serene aged companion based, like the hermit in Laon and Cythna, 13 13 on Shelley’s admired friend and mentor at Eton, Dr James Lind), offered Shelley 14 14 the opportunity to shift attention away from Prince Athanase, lighten to a degree 15 15 the oppressive mood, and by means of reflection on Zonoras’s solitary, nomadic 16 16 and exilic past – a time leading up to his sudden arrival at the child prince’s 17 17 lodgings – bring him into relation with Greece and its implied ancestry, establish 18 18 the pattern of the exemplary, isolated sage, and advance an element of ‘story’ that 19 19 has up to this point barely got off the ground. In this passage, Zonoras provides 20 20 a foretaste of the education best suited to his protégé. But the passage goes too 21 21 far in the opposite direction, becoming over-engaged with Zonoras’s wisdom – 22 22 his eventual ‘calm’ and ‘majestical’ aspect (f. 76v: 8) in despite of adversity and 23 23 old age – at the expense of the prince’s anticipated dilemma; and in just 34 lines 24 24 (PS), rather too intricately condenses several turns in the narrative, encompassing 25 25 Zonoras’s hermit-like self-education, wanderings (in the face of conquest) and 26 26 homecoming. The type-casting of Zonoras at the outset as a surviving mariner – 27 27 ‘one who finds / A fertile island in the barren sea’ (f. 77v: 2–3) – echoes the self- 28 28 reflexive Petrarchan image-cluster that recurs in other poems written in the first 29 29 year in Italy.35 This stabilizing image united with a favourite citation from Paine 30 30 – ‘The mind becomes that which it contemplates’ (f. 77v: 8)36 – points to qualities 31 31 of resilience and self-transcendence that might later be instructive for the tutor’s 32 32 student but might elude him – and so might diminish the prince’s exemplary 33 33 character or inner conflict. The grief of Athanase’s mother on discovering his 34 34 father’s death does at least reinstate the note of overwhelming misery – the news 35 35 ‘Smote Struck her body & soul as with a slow swift disease mortal blight’ (f. 76v: 36 36 1/1a), butProof there is nothing exceptional about Copy it and, taking place too soon in this 37 37 38 38 39 39 34 PS II: 323. 40 40 35 Cf. Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills (ll. 1–4ff.; October 1818) and 41 ‘Mazenghi’ (l. 32ff.; December 1818–January 1819). 41 42 36 Cf. ‘Mazenghi’ (l. 144), Prometheus Unbound (I: 450). Cf. also ‘The Coliseum’ in 42 43 Stephen Behrendt, ed., Zastrozzi, A Romance & St Irvyne: or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance. 43 44 Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2002, p. 275. 44

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biographical flashback to have any weight (Athanase is then just three years old), 1 1 is understandably abandoned, along with the rest of the passage. 2 2 3 3 A First (Revised) Sequence 4 4 5 5 As always in composition, a false start or digression has its uses, in the present 6 6 instance directing Shelley back to f. 78r: 12, ‘Shone like the reflex of a thousand 7 7 [ … ] minds’ (PS 129),37 the second line of an incomplete tercet, and alerting him 8 8 to the need to develop the relationship between companions, so that the prince 9 9 remains centre stage, and his mentor’s qualities are not celebrated in themselves 10 10 (as is the case in the cancelled passage), but as they impact on himself. Shelley’s 11 11 idea, it seems, was to find a way back to Prince Athanase’s present condition (as 12 12 described in lines 1–123 [PS; f. 82v: 1–f. 78r: 6]) by illustrating both the excellence 13 13 of his education under Zonoras’s guidance – Socratic in its dialectical interaction 14 14 between sage and gifted disciple and in its chaste representation of ‘celestial 15 15 love’38 – and its inefficacy in that, virtuous though it be, it leaves Athanase’s 16 16 misery untouched, if it doesn’t actually promote it by prompting awareness of 17 17 some unrealizable ideal. There is a consistency in the argument that is all the 18 18 more forceful, in that not even foundational insight mutually shared in admiring 19 19 friendship across the spectrum of age,39 and in fine natural Mediterranean settings, 20 20 and indeed put to great advantage by the disciple – since ‘The youth [ … ] soon 21 21 outran / The His teachers & did teach with native skill / Strange truths & new to 22 22 that experienced man’ (f. 76r: 11–14) – can offset what Prince Athanase himself 23 23 calls his ‘strange load’ (f. 74v: 9). He is left without recourse as the nightingale, 24 24 representing nature’s self-delight and power to soothe the distraught sufferer, is 25 25 impotent in the case of one whose sense of alienation remains oppressive, both 26 26 exacting and perplexing. The paradox outlined in the opening verses is strongly 27 27 reinforced, even as the poem breaks free of its insistent earlier confinement 28 28 (solidified in the Press Copy ‘Fragment’), encompassing a larger time-scale, and 29 29 spatially anchoring itself in an iconic Grecian landscape and in the formative 30 30 experience of Prince Athanase and his guide. 31 31 While the Press Copy ‘Fragment’ makes no allowance for a resolution, 32 32 establishing thereby its own mystique and interest sufficient to itself – the eventual 33 33 ‘final’ outcome of a process of composition – by contrast the source MS draft, 34 34 committed to narrative progression, eventually seeks out the unfulfilment or ‘lack’ 35 35 in the protagonist that ‘virtue’ (as it is represented earlier) cannot alone satisfy. 36 36 That ‘seeking’ is the motive force that drives the poem forward, keeping open 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 37 An ellipsis within square brackets signals my omission of words, in many instances 39 39 cancelled, in the MS draft. 40 40 38 Socrates exemplifies the lover who, transcending sexuality, is in intellectual pursuit 41 of beauty. The ladder of love (scala amoris) reincorporates previous claims (for example, 41 42 of Pausanias) at a higher level. 42 43 39 The ‘A’ of Athanase and ‘Z’ of Zonoras symbolically representing two ends of the 43 44 spectrum. 44

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possibilities for development. (The poem’s ‘desire’ corresponds as well to the 1 1 reader’s thirst for elucidation.) This is evident both in the Platonic title and ‘plot’, 2 2 which suggest a choice between opposite embodiments or emanations of love, and 3 3 in what remains of the narrative, which in its first attempt at clarification breaks 4 4 off at f. 73v: 9 (see PS 197). Zonoras, acting now in the more defined role of guide 5 5 that seems in part modelled on Virgil’s assistance to the Dante-pilgrim at the outset 6 6 of Inferno, apprehends the gloom that overcomes Prince Athanase and recalls their 7 7 reading of Plato’s Symposium (‘the story of the feast’, f. 73v: 1) together a year 8 8 previously. This recollection signals a revitalization of antiquity and its modern 9 9 Greek re-enactment. The lingering effect of ‘Platos page words of light’ (f. 74r: 10 10 12b) drawn into analogy with lingering moonlight, both as the moon sets and as 11 11 it rises, conveys the reflected illumination (philosophy of love) which teacher and 12 12 disciple shared in their contemplation of Plato’s dialogue. The sense that Agathon 13 13 and Diotima had become intimate presences actualizes their philosophy: this is 14 14 identified by Zonoras as the knowledge of ‘love divine’, a phrase that, assimilating 15 15 Agathon’s divine ‘Eros’ into ‘celestial love’ (Urania Aphrodite), points forward to 16 16 the outcome of the narrative just as it abruptly, though emphatically, aborts it, as 17 17 if the insight had an importance of its own beyond further illustration. Zonoras 18 18 appears to have identified the absence which is the root cause of the youth’s 19 19 misery. He has the Platonic credentials to do so, unlike Athanase’s other friends. 20 20 But in glossing over the divergence in opinion between Agathon and Diotima, 21 21 and the dialectical victory of the latter in the Socratic dialogue (ladder of ascent),40 22 22 Zonoras seems in part to confuse the issue, especially as Diotima will claim that 23 23 love (eros) is ultimately a desire for the ideal form (love for the divine) – as we 24 24 see internalized in Alastor – and not the ideal itself, which is what Agathon and 25 25 Zonoras suggest.41 In Diotima’s elucidation, Eros is a daemon,42 neither mortal 26 26 nor immortal, and not a god. As a medium, love conducts towards that state of 27 27 transcendence to which the name ‘Athanase’ might seem directed. Together with 28 28 doubt regarding the nature or status of ‘divine love’, its freedom from self-interest 29 29 is yet to be demonstrated. These were concerns that confronted Dante, specifically 30 30 in the Purgatorio and Paradiso, and Shelley in several later works, but are here left 31 31 in abeyance, unresolved.43 Fragmentation at a decisive point of transition – which 32 32 33 33 34 40 A victory acknowledged and reinforced in a fragment connected with Epipsychidion. 34 35 See Goslee, BSM XVIII: 194–5; PS IV: 183. 35 41 36 Diotima explains, ‘“That which does the loving” is striving to reach “that which 36 is worthy ofProof love”’, Suzanne Stern-Gillet, ‘Poets Copyand Other Makers: Agathon’s Speech in 37 37 38 Context’. Dionysius 26 (December 2008), pp. 9–27 (p. 19). Diotima departs from and also 38 redefines Agathon’s argument. 39 39 42 The ‘alastor’ is of course an avenging daemon by contrast with the ‘daemon of 40 40 the world’ (an opposition underlined in the Alastor volume, 1816 [see CPPBS III: 3–66]). 41 Shelley was particularly interested in Socrates’s daemon who guides his thoughts and might 41 42 be considered a divine messenger. See Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, pp. 159–60, 42 43 passim. 43 44 43 Like the Symposium, Dante’s poem traces a love ascent. 44

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is possibly deliberate – lays bare the complexity of representation and withholds 1 1 that striving towards resolution that might compromise the issues at stake. 2 2 3 3 An Alternative Sequence 4 4 5 5 The succeeding ‘Alternative Sequence’ (so described by Everest and Matthews),44 6 6 written back-to-front in MS Shelley e. 4, f. 71v–f. 72r rev., reduces ll. 125–97 (PS) 7 7 to a much briefer section of just 28 consecutive lines.45 There is no cancellation of 8 8 the earlier sequence, but it is possibly superseded by the later redaction. Shelley’s 9 9 reworking shows his meticulous revision of the draft, in the direction of increasing 10 10 fluency, conciseness and relevance. Moreover, it is possibly the most elegant 11 11 passage in the poem, and is written out in MS as fair copy, with few cancellations 12 12 or revisions – presenting an advanced editing of the six tercets that were retained 13 13 (deftly welding l. 135 to l. 129 to complete another tercet). Condensation heightens 14 14 intensity, and brings out the irregular interweaving of lines and stanzas that will 15 15 become a trademark of Shelley’s handling of terza rima. 16 16 In the section drawn from the earlier sequence (f. 71v [PS Alternative 17 17 Sequence 1–18]), distracting details regarding Zonoras’s receptivity to Truth are 18 18 excised and subsequent episodes are wholly omitted. The bond between friends 19 19 who, paradoxically, ‘mark the extremes of lifes discordant span’ (f. 71v: 19) is 20 20 now in sharp relief. A vast difference in age and experience, it is to be understood, 21 21 is no obstacle to powerful communion. Yet while the old man’s insight inspires the 22 22 youth to outreach him, his serenity, by virtue of the disparity, necessarily eludes his 23 23 pupil. The remaining tercets and one further unfinished line (PS 19–28)46 entirely 24 24 replace the subsequent tercets of the earlier sequence (PS 148–97). The prince’s 25 25 plight is suddenly and effectively reintroduced – now indicated as having arisen at 26 26 a singular moment of maturation, the imagery pointing both to sickness (‘blight’ 27 27 damaging ‘the green / Leaves of his opening manhood’, f. 72r: 2a, 1a/1–2) and 28 28 to a process rooted tragically in the destructive element of nature. Supportive of 29 29 each other, youth and age subvert the barrier of authority and dominion – always 30 30 the sign in Shelley of oppression. But their perspectives, given the moderation 31 31 that comes with age, remain prototypically and inevitably divided. In this regard 32 32 Zonoras’s serenity might reflect both his advocacy of Platonic love and some 33 33 degree of compromise with necessity, the acceptance of earthly limits. 34 34 The narrative seems too strictly curtailed to match the gradual unfolding of the 35 35 introduction.47 Nevertheless, in the concluding tercets a moment of clarity seems 36 36 to resolve the poem’s enigma and then suspend or abort further progression, as 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 44 See PS II: 324. 39 39 45 See PS II: 324–5. Previous editors (including Dawson, BSM III: xxii) did not 40 40 identify the reverse sequence which follows a consistent pattern of terza rima. The passages 41 on f. 72r and f. 71v were incorrectly considered separate fragments; f. 72r may at first have 41 42 continued from f. 75v: 3 (line 147, PS). 42 43 46 PS restores the cancellation in l. 28: ‘Then I will tell thee all I know’. 43 44 47 One possible reason the preceding sequence was left uncancelled. 44

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if the discovery were alone significant for the poet (who, one observes, had not 1 1 arrived at it earlier). Following the pattern of the earlier sequence, Zonoras again 2 2 provides the insight, showing his guiding influence, affectionately signalled in 3 3 ‘old old man’ (f. 71v: 2). All explicit reference to Plato is discarded, providing a 4 4 less intrusive and determinate Platonic framework that would safeguard authorial 5 5 independence, and Zonoras, aware from experience that ‘one grief alone’ can ruin 6 6 delight, identifies the source of the prince’s sorrow: 7 7 8 Thou lovest, and thy lonely secret heart is laden 8 9 With feelings which should not be unrequited (f. 72r: 5/5a–6) 9 10 10 11 The smile this elicits from Prince Athanase, before the passage finally breaks off 11 12 at f. 72r: 10, might indicate an intuitive accord, perhaps the flash of recognition; 12 13 though a certain disquiet seems also present, as the simile that follows images a 13 14 lover ‘oerladen / [ … ] With iron chains’ (f. 72r: 7–8) and a beloved’s subjection 14 15 to another. That the cause is love (and not its absence) makes perfect sense in 15 16 Socratic terms, as the lover seeks his elusive, transcendent ideal. Alastor shows 16 17 a similar pattern (as do other earlier poems), with a tragic outcome that seems 17 18 destined for Prince Athanase too, notwithstanding Zonoras’s sense of just requital. 18 19 Athanase might find his soul companion, as the prefatory note indicates, but he 19 20 does so only on ‘his death bed’ (f. 83r: 1). On this account, the ideal is unattainable 20 21 in life. Suffering and virtue go hand in hand. 21 22 In the closing lines of the ‘Alternative Sequence’, the prince’s smile and his 22 23 desire to ‘tell thee [Zonoras] all I know’ (f. 72r: 10) might unite the companions 23 24 to a single cause, but the cancellation diminishes that possibility and grief, 24 25 momentarily alleviated perhaps, is in no sense overcome. The difference is that 25 26 the mystery and paradox that are the poem’s foundation and generative force 26 27 are dissipated. The suffering of the hero has become explicable. That might, 27 28 from Shelley’s point of view, have been too high a price to pay, and it might 28 29 have finally induced him to exclude this or the first sequence from ‘Athanase: A 29 30 Fragment’ – to restore, in a published work, the notion of inscrutability by means 30 31 of which experience of sorrow exceeds definition and comprehension and so 31 32 discountenances reason and the Utopian ideal. Such irresolution, earlier noted as 32 33 a general feature of Shelley’s writing, is a presiding theme in much of Shelley’s 33 34 serio-comic verse of 1820.48 Yet an irony remains of which Shelley was assuredly 34 35 aware: left fragmented, ‘Prince Athanase’ preserves its indeterminacy. Like its 35 36 sister poemProof in terza rima, ‘The Triumph of LCopyife’, its outcome is forever uncertain. 36 37 Following the ‘Alternative Sequence’, there remain a few disconnected fragments 37 38 in terza rima, faint intimations of how Shelley might have wished to proceed with 38 39 composition of the poem. 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 48 Cf. e.g. ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, and ‘The Witch of Atlas’. See also Richard 43 44 Cronin’s essay (Chapter 10, pp. 214). 44

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Four Detached Passages 1 1 2 2 As is seen in ‘Mazenghi’, ‘Ginevra’, ‘The Triumph of Life’ and other draft 3 3 fragments, the narrative of ‘Prince Athanase’ (in either sequence) comes to a 4 4 halt at a turning point that is determinate (point of resolution) and indeterminate 5 5 (incomplete).49 Shaped in this way, the narrative has a certain aesthetic 6 6 intelligibility. What is not represented – the unravelling of the story – emerges 7 7 from a secure point of reference while being left to the imagination, unrestricted 8 8 by comparison with ‘Athanase: A Fragment’. There is no way of attaching the four 9 9 concluding fragments (fols 72v, 71r–68v rev.) to any defined sequence of events 10 10 in the projected narrative, nor are they with absolute certainty all intended for 11 11 ‘Prince Athanase’; yet one might, at a stretch, see in them a possible trajectory of 12 12 what lay ahead, each serving as shorthand or signpost of some key event.50 Grief 13 13 is regarded more positively in the first and, in the second, is offset by an exuberant 14 14 dawn, as Athanase enters Italy. In the third, quite eclipsing grief, Love is perceived 15 15 as a radiant emanation and source of ever-abundant inspiration; while in the fourth 16 16 a lady is rapturously described, who might be Urania or her earthly imitation, 17 17 Pandemos. Beyond his one definite appearance, Prince Athanase may in each case 18 18 be the implied subject or speaker. In these ‘Detached Passages’ labelled in PS (a), 19 19 (b), (c), (d), there is a pattern of emerging and transforming delight that is later 20 20 replicated in Prometheus Unbound. 21 21 Appearing in the MS draft on f. 72v immediately after the ‘Alternative 22 22 Sequence’ (continuing back to front) the first ‘detached passage’,51 in its succinct 23 23 contemplation of weeping, points to a remedial side to grief absent in the narrative. 24 24 Though ironically considered more painful (‘bitterer’) than the suffering (‘blood 25 25 of agony’, 3) of the persecuted martyr who dies in torture, an inward sorrow 26 26 (‘Tears’ ‘when the eyes are cold & dry’, 3, 1) is yet medicinal, providing solace 27 27 (‘peace & sleep’, 7). The heretofore monolithic and gloom-ridden account of 28 28 grief is shaken. In the second, the longest of the fragments (f. 71r–f. 70r; 42 lines 29 29 in PS), misery is more vibrantly transformed. Referred to as ‘despondency’ and 30 30 unobtrusively associated with the wintry Alpine scene, it is quite surpassed by 31 31 the exhilarating springtime sunrise that, in its meticulous detail, all but excludes 32 32 the presence of Athanase who ‘at this season [ … ] / Past the aerial white Alps’ 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 49 37 In theProof case of ‘The Triumph’, the pattern Copy is curious, though perhaps arbitrary in 37 38 view of Shelley’s death. 38 50 The appearance of these fragments immediately after the narrative sections, 39 39 their exploration of themes such as grief, delight and love, their use of terza rima, and 40 40 the reference in one instance to Prince Athanase by name are discernible links with the 41 preceding draft. 41 42 51 The passage reappears cancelled in Prometheus Unbound II, iv (see PS II: 558, 42 43 note to ll. 27–8) and further modified in The Cenci I, i, 109–13. In both these instances, a 43 44 positive outcome is lacking. 44

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on his wanderings (f. 70v: 9–10/10a).52 The rejuvenated earth, signalling the 1 1 periodic cycles of rebirth, mirrors the love of ‘the shade of [one’s] own soul’ (f. 2 2 71r: 13) that seems related to Prince Athanase’s ideal quest, and is recorded in 3 3 the essay ‘On Love’ (June–July 1818). At the end of the fragment (albeit mostly 4 4 cancelled), the prince’s descent traces the expansive Italian scene of fields, towns 5 5 and their antique towers, reflected in ‘the lucid streams’ (f. 70r: 13) as well as 6 6 in his countenance, so giving an impression of reciprocal harmony and solace. 7 7 Anticipating the exordium of ‘The Triumph of Life’ (also set in Italy), the fragment 8 8 relies on a dialectical contrast inscribed into the natural scene – of the seasonal 9 9 withdrawal and assertion of life – and, like the eloquent fragment which follows, 10 10 evinces the lyrical freedom and fluency that results when the narrative is put to 11 11 one side or simply abandoned. Reconstructed in PS detached passage (b), 36–42, 12 12 the concluding lines, though incomplete and partly cancelled in MS, indicate the 13 13 plasticity of Shelley’s command over terza rima, and are a signal of his eventual 14 14 mastery of the form: 15 15 16 Such as the eagle sees when he dives down 16 17 From the grey deserts of wide air, beheld 17 18 Prince Athanase, and o’er his mien was thrown 18 19 19 20 The shadow of that scene, field after field, 20 21 Purple and dim and wide, and many a town, 21 22 Distinct with antique towers and walls, which yield 22 23 23 Their image in the lucid streams below 24 24 25 The third fragment (f. 69v–r; 24 near-complete lines in PS) is a short ode or 25 26 apostrophe to love, reminiscent of the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, and possibly 26 27 an exploration of ‘the love divine’ identified by Zonoras at the end of the first 27 28 narrative sequence (PS 197), or of Diotima’s daemon (love as intermediary).53 28 29 The lines may have been intended to form part of an address by Prince Athanase 29 30 himself or to him, perhaps recording a moment of recognition subsequent to his 30 31 journey through the Alps, the mountains mentioned briefly in the last tercet. The 31 32 impetuous flow of the passage, which in the draft is not end-stopped, again evinces 32 33 Shelley’s growing command of terza rima. The identification of love with wine and 33 34 drunkenness is a subversive Dionysian trope,54 removing inhibitions (as reflective 34 35 35 36 36 52 TheProof crossing into Italy for Shelley was similarlyCopy dramatic and the passage seems to 37 37 38 commemorate that event (see Letters II: 3–4 [6 April 1818]). 38 53 Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, p. 229 finds in this ‘invocation to Love … 39 39 many echoes from Agathon’s speech in praise of Love’. 40 40 54 Notably the Cyclops (Polypheme) – for whose grotesque plight Shelley is not 41 without sympathy – refers to wine as the ‘joy divine’ in Shelley’s translation (PS II: 400, l. 41 42 513; MS Shelley e. 4, f. 38r: 29). The drafts of these detached passages and translation of 42 43 the last scenes of Cyclops appear contiguously in MS notebook (e. 4). In the Symposium, 43 44 Dionysos is presented by Agathon as an adjudicator in matters of Love (Eros). 44

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of the ancient mystery cult which returned the individual to a natural state), 1 1 merging the speaker with all love’s exalted celebrants, and breaking any sense of 2 2 isolation or reasoned caution. It also signals the ceaseless replenishment of love, 3 3 becoming more abundant the more it ‘feeds’ (as with charity in Purgatorio XV or 4 4 in the miracle of the loaves and the fishes). Dedication to a god-like pagan figure 5 5 (reminiscent of Eros in the speech of Agathon) is continued in the image of an 6 6 immaterial presence that has ‘moving wings’ (f. 69v: 15a), ‘soars’ and ‘floats’ and 7 7 yet endows or ‘clothes’ nature with perceptible qualities of radiance and beauty (f. 8 8 69r: 1–5). It seems both to bestow and receive adoration and, as the last unfinished 9 9 lines perhaps suggest, will adorn even the icy winter cold with its presence. This 10 10 religion of love and nature that is variously manifested in Shelley’s poetry, and 11 11 very notably in Prometheus Unbound in opposition to theism, is extended in the 12 12 fourth fragment to the adoration of a lady. Her attraction, sensual and seductive, 13 13 is mainly expressed through her brown ‘starry/sphered eyes’ (f. 68v: 1/1a). Like 14 14 the love that imbues nature with its presence in the preceding fragment, so an 15 15 underlying ‘spirit’ in a flash brings light to dull watery eyes, compared to ‘the dim 16 16 orb of the eclipsed moon’ (3). A parallel simile which alludes to the ‘serene 17 17 flame’ (6) of Venus links light to love, foreshadowing the Dantean Platonics 18 18 of Epipsychidion which coalesce Greek and Italian ideals. Yet the imagery is 19 19 ambiguous, and this semblance of the divine lady, Urania Aphrodite, might be 20 20 Pandemos – it is impossible to tell. 21 21 22 22 In Conclusion 23 23 24 24 The two kinds of fragmentary text represented by the Press Copy ‘Athanase: A 25 25 Fragment’ and the incomplete holograph draft ‘Pandemos and Urania’/‘Prince 26 26 Athanase’, are products whose genesis is the same but whose nature as artefacts 27 27 differs, in some ways quite radically. It is important that these two ‘texts’ should 28 28 not be confused with one another or conflated. They serve different artistic 29 29 purposes and processes. The unresolved paradox of heroic ‘suffering-in-virtue’ 30 30 generated by the abridged Press Copy version, and presented dialectically, has its 31 31 own raison d’être by virtue of its strict framing, segmentation and fictionalization. 32 32 Its fragmentary closure preserves its integrity. It is opened up to other possibilities 33 33 in the fuller originary rough draft, its source, and brought to a hypothetical, partial 34 34 resolution in alternative renderings, neither of which is definitely preferred. 35 35 Inevitably an explanation for the paradox, however speculative and uncertain, 36 36 weakens the idealist imprint and dialectical thrust of the argument, playing down 37 Proof Copy 37 if not removing the enigma of unhappiness predicated on virtue and not (as 38 38 conventional morality would have it) on vice. Perhaps it is on these grounds that 39 39 Shelley chose to – as it were – close off irresolution within the Press Copy version, 40 40 thereby re-establishing thematic indeterminacy. 41 41 Yet the draft preserves the enigma, as if by authorial instinct or caprice. The 42 42 reader of the manuscript (or a transcription of it) is still left in doubt, but this is 43 43 occasioned by its incompletion – its unverified claims, and unrealized love-quest. 44 44

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That doubt, which Shelley himself entertained, is demonstrated in the step-by-step 1 1 unfolding of narrative design reflecting his poetic practice, and may be considered 2 2 a signal instance of it. His method is improvisatory, not clear-cut or dogmatic. 3 3 Fragmentation points to the provisionality of Shelley’s ideas, and his search for 4 4 an adequate embodiment of them – in this or future poems. The abandonment of 5 5 the draft as a whole (and not its introductory part) signifies less the collapse of its 6 6 ideas than the complicating impediments relating to their fuller articulation and 7 7 development – to the form they need take in order to become artistically coherent 8 8 and fully intelligible. The extended narrative and four detached passages anticipate 9 9 but as yet cannot fully articulate what is to come. In that regard, ‘Prince Athanase’ 10 10 is superseded by poems such as Prometheus Unbound and ‘Julian and Maddalo’, 11 11 both of which were composed gradually and in stages, and later Epipsychidion 12 12 (which arose directly out of ‘Fiordispina’). ‘Prince Athanase’, on the other hand, 13 13 sketches the Shelleyan blueprint or ‘idealized history’, drawn towards a Platonic 14 14 and Dantean intertext, that undergirds later poems – and is functional on its own 15 15 terms. Its significance lies in its incompletion, by means of which the unravelling 16 16 of the paradox is held in suspension and endlessly deferred, as if closure and 17 17 openness were wrestling with each other. Moreover, because it is the generative 18 18 source of the Press Copy, it forever exists in relation to its abridgement – indeed 19 19 co-exists with it. A dynamic intratextuality constitutes a ‘ground’ which produces 20 20 the publishable end-product as an artefact but does not favour or reify it as superior. 21 21 Shelley’s work-in-progress is a patchwork composite text or series of texts, certain 22 22 at best of its outlines and broader scope but uncertain of its progress, recast several 23 23 times, breaking up eventually into smaller disconnected fragments and finally 24 24 emerging truncated as a ready-to-be-published fiction, a ‘Fragment’ of a fragment, 25 25 which is yet a poem in its own right. Each stage along the way is a noteworthy 26 26 event, adding a new perspective, and revealing conjointly a sustained if dispersed 27 27 effort to meet the intricate demands of composition, including the brave adoption 28 28 of terza rima, and to register the unnameable sorrow that adherence to the ideal – 29 29 the good life – inevitably entails. 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 176 9/11/2015 4:29:31 PM 1 Chapter 9 1 2 2 3 Satyr Play in a Radical Vein: 3 4 Shelley’s ‘Cyclops’ 4 5 5 6 6 7 Maria Schoina 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 τὴν τύχην μὲν δαίμον’ ἡγεῑσθαι χρεών, 11 12 τὰ δαιμόνων δὲ τῆς τύχης ἐλάσσονα. 12 13 (Ευριπίδης, Κύκλωψ, 606–71) 13 14 believe 14 15 I do 15 16 οf force 16 That chance is a divinity, 17 17 For things divine are subject to her power 18 18 (Shelley’s translation, f. 68v, ll. 34a–362) 19 19 20 20 21 A ‘Peculiar’ Choice? 21 22 22 23 In his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature first published in 1809,3 August 23 24 Wilhelm Schlegel devotes a long section to ancient Greek drama in which he 24 25 examines the major plays of the three tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and 25 26 Euripides. In this comparative analysis, Euripides ranks lower than his tragic 26 27 predecessors in terms of ideas, style and craftsmanship, as he lacks their ‘lofty 27 28 earnestness of purpose’, or ‘severe artistic wisdom’, and thus, at times, ‘sinks into 28 29 downright mediocrity’.4 In this highly influential work Schlegel in fact formulates 29 30 what has been called the Damnatio of Euripides;5 yet the critic gives the dramatist 30 31 credit for his Cyclops (Κύκλωψ), a little-known contribution to a ‘subordinate 31 32 species’6 of tragic art, the satyric drama: 32 33 33 34 1 All Greek quotations from Cyclops are cited from Hourmouziadis’s translation of 34 35 the play. See Evripidou Kyklops, trans., intro. and notes Nicos H. Hourmouziadis. Athens: 35 36 Stigmi, 2008. 36 2 37 Shelley’sProof draft MS of the translation of Euripides Copy is quoted from BSM III, f. 49v‒58v, 37 38 61v‒67r, 37r‒38r, 67v‒68v, 73r, 72v, 73v, 60v‒61r. I will refer to the MS as ‘Cyclops’ and 38 to both the original Greek play and the 1824 published version as Cyclops. 39 39 3 German title, Über dramatische Kunst und Literatur. 40 40 4 Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, trans. John Black (1815). 2nd ed., rev. 41 Revd A.J.W. Morrison, M.A. London: George Bell & Sons, 1892, Lecture VIII, p. 111. 41 42 Available at: https://archive.org/details/lecturesondrama00blacgoog. 42 43 5 Euripides, Alcestis, ed. L.P.E. Parker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. xl. 43 44 6 Schlegel, Lecture V, p. 75. 44

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In external form it [Cyclops] resembled Tragedy, and the materials were 1 1 in like manner mythological. The distinctive mark was a chorus consisting 2 of satyrs, who accompanied with lively songs, gestures, and movements, 2 3 such heroic adventures as were of a more cheerful hue … . As nature, in her 3 4 original freedom, appeared to the fancy of the Greeks to teem everywhere with 4 5 wonderful productions, they could with propriety people with these sylvan 5 6 beings the wild landscapes, remote from polished cities, where the scene was 6 7 usually laid, and enliven them with their wild animal frolics. The composition of 7 8 demi-god with demi-beast formed an amusing contrast. We have an example in 8 9 the Cyclops of the manner in which the poets proceeded in such subjects. It is not 9 10 unentertaining, though the subject-matter is for the most part contained in the 10 Odyssey; only the pranks of Silenus and his band are occasionally a little coarse. 11 11 We must confess that, in our eyes, the great merit of this piece is its rarity, being 12 12 the only extant specimen of its class which we possess.7 13 13 14 In his attempt to offer a palatable synopsis of the sole surviving specimen of satyr 14 15 play to his European audience, Schlegel duly draws attention to the presence of 15 16 satyrs as the constitutive element of the genre; perhaps out of delicacy, however, 16 17 the German critic chooses to soften and romanticize the satyrs’ innate crudeness 17 18 and subversive function in Euripides’s play (‘a little coarse’), portraying them, 18 19 instead, as frolicsome ‘sylvan beings’ whose presence registers Greek art’s 19 20 organic, harmonious relationship with nature. Schlegel’s reserve and idealization 20 21 may have resulted from his mystification or slight embarrassment over a play 21 22 which seemed to resist unproblematic categorization in the European dramatic 22 23 canon, featuring cannibalism, sodomy, rape, drunkenness, blinding, foul language, 23 24 as well as Euripides’s ‘impious’ philosophizing about the gods. 24 25 Percy Bysshe Shelley was reading Schlegel’s Lectures8 in March 1818, a 25 26 book he owned, referred to and lent to the Gisbornes in June of the same year 26 27 while at Livorno.9 Schlegel’s ambivalent account of the satyr play as well as his 27 28 denunciation of the dramatist as one who ‘is shaking the ground-works of religion, 28 29 [while] he at the same time acts the moralist’10 could be one of the reasons which 29 30 prompted Shelley to read Euripides’s work and produce a draft translation of 30 31 it in the first year of residence in Italy, that is, between April 1818 and March 31 32 1819.11 Originally, Shelley’s choice of this unusual play seems to agree with his 32 33 inclination to translate Greek texts which were challenging and/or marginalized: 33 34 34 35 35 7 36 Schlegel, Lecture X, pp. 142‒3. Four hundred lines of the Ichneutae by Sophocles 36 have survived.Proof Copy 37 37 8 38 See Letters II: 484. Shelley read Schlegel aloud to Mary and Claire, probably in the 38 translation by John Black, on their way from Calais to Lyon (MS Journals 198–9 and 198, 39 39 n. 3). 40 40 9 Letters II: 17, n. 3. 41 10 Schlegel, Lecture VIII, p. 117. 41 42 11 Shelley made his translation of Cyclops from Euripidis Tragoediae Viginti, cum 42 43 variis Lectionibus, ex editione Josuae Barnes, vol. V, Oxonii, Typis et sumtu N.B. Bliss, 43 44 1811‒1812. 44

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from the Homeric Hymns, which he translated in January 1818, and again in July 1 1 1820, to Plato’s Symposium, translated in July–August 1818, to Cyclops, and to 2 2 Ion, translated in 1821 possibly between February and October.12 Shelley engaged 3 3 with texts which mirror his fascination with certain aspects of classical Greek 4 4 culture ‒ ethical, philosophical, religious, poetical, political ‒ and at the same time 5 5 help him reflect on his current preoccupations: his fate as an outcast, his aims and 6 6 ambitions as a poet, the contrast between man and God, authority or power, the 7 7 dynamic of Necessity, his views on love. Even though Shelley is strangely reticent 8 8 in his letters about his work on Cyclops, it is safe to assume that like all foreign 9 9 works of literature, the Greek drama would pose a challenge as an exercise in 10 10 translation but also as a testing ground for his ideas. 11 11 Shelley’s decision to translate Euripides and Plato stood in opposition to the 12 12 conventional taste of the day13 and was largely dictated by his dissatisfaction with 13 13 established translations as well as his readiness to argue for and expound ‘the 14 14 otherness of the Greeks’.14 As he famously stated in the introductory essay to his 15 15 translation of Plato’s Symposium, ‘A Discourse on the Manners of the Antient 16 16 Greeks Relative to the Subject of Love’, his aim was ‘to indicate a system of 17 17 reasoning which may enable the reader to form a liberal, consistent, and just 18 18 judgment of the peculiarities of [the] domestic manners [of the Greeks]’ since to 19 19 this day ‘[i]t is to be lamented that no modern writer has hitherto dared to show 20 20 them precisely as they were’.15 Although Shelley’s main concern in this essay is 21 21 to compare the different ideas of love among the ancients and the moderns, he 22 22 imaginatively ‘shapes his own ethos ‒ and poetics ‒ of love’16 and communicates 23 23 his Hellenist-derived views on homosexuality, sexual difference and religious 24 24 tolerance. It is evident that Shelley’s grievance also points to the failure of existing 25 25 translations to render ‘the frankly sexual and ribald character of some Greek 26 26 dramatic writing’17 and to his own intention to correct what was amiss: 27 27 28 There is no book that shows the Greeks precisely as they were; they seem 28 29 all written for children, with the caution that no practice or sentiment, highly 29 30 inconsistent with our present manners, should be mentioned, lest those manners 30 31 31 32 12 For the dating, see James Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of 32 33 Platonism and the Poetic Mind. rpt New York: Octagon Books, 1969, pp. 382, 385, 462. 33 34 13 Hogg reports that ‘Plato is unfortunately little read, even by scholars, which is 34 35 much to be regretted, as he is, perhaps, the most edifying of the Greeks, and his style is so 35 36 easy and simple’ (Hogg to Shelley, 15 June 1821, in Shelley and Mary, ed. Lady Shelley. 4 36 37 vols. N.p.: Privately Printed, 1882, vol. 1, pp. 640–41). 37 14 Proof Copy 38 Timothy Webb, ‘Romantic Hellenism’, in The Cambridge Companion to British 38 Romanticism, ed. Stuart Curran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 148– 39 39 76 (p. 154). 40 40 15 Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, pp. 413, 407. 41 16 Michael O’Neill, ‘Emulating Plato: Shelley as Translator and Prose Poet’, in The 41 42 Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, 42 43 pp. 239–55 (p. 241). 43 44 17 Everest and Matthews in PS II: 372. 44

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should receive outrage and violation. But there are many to whom the Greek 1 1 language is inaccessible, who ought not to be excluded by this prudery to possess 2 2 an exact and comprehensive conception of the history of man.18 3 3 4 Scholars have in recent times proposed more specific reasons behind Shelley’s 4 5 attraction to Euripides’s challenging play, arguing against traditional critical 5 6 opinion which for many years deemed the poet’s choice as a peculiar one;19 in fact, 6 7 a fair amount of evidence seems to suggest that Shelley’s translation of Cyclops 7 8 was neither strange nor unintended. Thus Timothy Webb, in his classic study, The 8 9 Violet in the Crucible, attributes Shelley’s interest in Euripides to his association 9 10 with the so-called ‘Athenian’ group at Marlow,20 that is, Thomas Love Peacock, 10 11 Leigh Hunt and Thomas Jefferson Hogg.21 Webb argues that Shelley’s conception 11 12 of classical literature ‘as something beautiful and therapeutic’22 rather than as 12 13 something pedantic and scholarly was largely cultivated through the influence 13 14 of his friends. The choice of a play which naturally subscribes to an Arcadian 14 15 image of Greece and is permeated by good humour and light-heartedness seems 15 16 less peculiar in such a context, especially at times when Shelley sought spiritual 16 17 solace or lacked inspiration.23 According to Webb, however, Cyclops primarily 17 18 attracted Shelley’s attention because it dealt with the wider implications posed 18 19 by Prometheanism and by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, both of which stood 19 20 close to his interest at the time and affected his choice of readings, writings and 20 21 translations. Webb also claims that Shelley’s sympathetic response to Polyphemus 21 22 has a precedent in the poet’s expressed compassion towards the unhappy monster 22 23 in Mary Shelley’s novel.24 Indeed, Shelley’s writing of the Preface to Frankenstein 23 24 as well as his involvement in the making of the novel were both excellent 24 25 opportunities to advance his own Promethean theory. 25 26 26 27 27 18 Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley, p. 407. 28 28 19 ‘[Shelley’s] choice of poems for translation was peculiar; of the Homeric Hymns 29 29 he chose the most light-hearted, and from extant Greek drama he selected the only satyric 30 play’, M.L. Clarke, Greek Studies in England 1700–1830. Cambridge: at the University 30 31 Press, 1945; Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1986, p. 170. 31 32 20 Shelley was resident at Albion House, Marlow, from 18 March 1817 to 7 February 32 33 1818. 33 34 21 The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, 34 35 p. 62. Webb emphasizes the influence of Hogg, who, in contrast to Schlegel, thought that 35 36 the Greek dramatist’s achievement was without equal: ‘The Cyclops & Bacchae are in a 36 stile of writing,Proof of which there are no traces in the Copyother Tragedians, they are compositions, 37 37 38 which separate their author from his rivals & shew that he was not only the best Tragedian, 38 but also most powerful in a different & exquisite species of Poetry’ (T.J. Hogg to Shelley, 5 39 39 April 1817, qtd. in Webb 57, n. 5). 40 40 22 Webb, The Violet in the Crucible, p. 62. 41 23 Webb, pp. 79, 80. 41 42 24 Webb, p. 85. See Robinson’s essay in the present volume (Chapter 42 43 6). See also Mary Shelley’s reference to the monster as ‘Polypheme’ in her letter to Hunt 43 44 (MWS Letters I: 91). 44

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As Webb indicates, a major point of attraction for Shelley in Euripides’s play 1 1 was the figure of Polyphemus. The poet’s interest and acquaintance with both 2 2 classic and modern renderings of the ogre was largely nurtured via his friend 3 3 Leigh Hunt before the Shelleys’ departure for Italy.25 Even though it was ultimately 4 4 Euripides’s characterization of the Cyclops which most appealed to him,26 the poet 5 5 must have been strongly attracted and amused by the intriguing transformation 6 6 of the Homeric and Virgilian cannibal into a gentle, enamoured shepherd in 7 7 Theocritus’s pastoral world in Idylls 6 and 11, the latter translated by Hunt in 8 8 Foliage, which Shelley read in 1818.27 The implications of such a makeover were 9 9 several: Theocritus’s love-stricken, grotesque monster humanizes the Cyclops, 10 10 and connects with other and later traditions (mainly ’s Metamorphoses Book 11 11 XIII [Acis and Galatea] and musical settings by Handel and Porpora28) which 12 12 elevate the rustic voice, giving it a poetic resonance. Tellingly, Shelley’s invitation 13 13 to the Gisbornes to join him in Naples for the summer of 1819 is humorously 14 14 addressed in the words of the heartbroken Cyclops beseeching Galatea to yield 15 15 to his love: ‘Ἐξένθοις, Γαλάτεια, καί ἐξενθοῖσα λάθοιο, / ὣσπερ ἐγώ νῦν ὧδε 16 16 καθήμενος, οἲκαδ’ἀπενθεῖν’.29 17 17 Setting off from completely different premises, Jennifer Wallace in Shelley 18 18 and Greece places Shelley’s literary Hellenism within a post-Napoleonic political 19 19 frame and reads his translation as a deliberate effort to deal with satyric drama, 20 20 a genre which has the potential ‘to interrupt or to disrupt’, offering Shelley ‘the 21 21 possibility of disturbing or resisting institutions of power’.30 She also points to 22 22 the doubleness and equivocality of the ‘drunken anarchism’ in ‘Cyclops’ which 23 23 becomes liberating but also uncontrollable and unruly, a parallel to ‘the dangers 24 24 25 25 25 26 Webb, The Violet in the Crucible, pp. 81–2. 26 26 27 Webb, p. 85. 27 27 Letters II: 2 (To Leigh Hunt, 22 March 1818). Hunt had also tellingly remarked 28 28 in his letter to Mary: ‘Didn’t you go to Sicily while you were in the neighbourhood – the 29 29 land of Theocritus and and Polyphemus? I do not scruple to put the one-eyed 30 giant in such company, because he always appears to me a pathetic rather than a monstrous 30 31 person, though his disappointed sympathies at last made him cruel. What do you think of 31 32 this Polypheme theory of mine?’(9 March 1819, in Shelley and Mary, vol. 1, p. 370). 32 33 28 It is important that in February 1818 the Shelleys encountered Polyphemus in a 33 34 French ballet based on the story of Acis and Galatea (Webb, Violet in the Crucible, p. 81), 34 35 one of numerous adaptations of Handel’s Acis and Galatea (1718), perhaps the greatest 35 36 and most popular ‘pastoral opera’ (also described as a serenata, masque or oratorio) ever 36 37 composed, with an English libretto by John Gay. 37 29 Proof Copy 38 ‘Come, O Galatea; and having come, forget, as do I, sitting here, to return home’, 38 Theocritus, Idyll XI; Letters II: 91. Shelley’s letter from Rome to the Gisbornes is dated 6 39 39 April 1819 (the translation cited in Letters is Mary Shelley’s, which was provided in Essays 40 40 and Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments. 2 vols. London: Edward Moxon, 41 1840, vol. 2, p. 216). My quotation of the Greek corrects errors in Shelley’s rendering 41 42 (perhaps quoted off by heart). 42 43 30 Shelley and Greece: Rethinking Romantic Hellenism. Houndmills: Macmillan, 43 44 1997, p. 71. 44

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of political release … [and] popular revolution’ in Britain in the turbulent post- 1 1 Napoleonic years.31 2 2 Even though Wallace perceptively attributes Shelley’s choice of drama to ‘the 3 3 political possibilities and questions which Euripides’s text offers the reader’,32 she 4 4 provides minimal evidence of these possibilities and questions, and/or of the ways 5 5 Shelley emphasizes them. With regard to the translation itself, Wallace states that 6 6 through slight yet deliberate alteration of the original Greek, Shelley significantly 7 7 politicizes the text and especially ‘the apolitical monstrousness of the Cyclops’ 8 8 behaviour’.33 In my view, Wallace exaggerates Shelley’s intentions and downplays 9 9 the political nuances and dynamics of Euripides’s Cyclops. This imbalance results 10 10 from the almost complete absence of the original Greek play from her examination. 11 11 Webb, by contrast, provides abundant evidence from Euripides’s play, which helps 12 12 him reach several solid conclusions not only on Shelley’s interpretation of the 13 13 satyr play, but also on the poet’s perception of the ancient Greek world. 14 14 15 15 16 Shelley, Euripides and Satyric Drama 16 17 17 18 The emphasis on the dynamics of genre duly proposed by both Webb and Wallace 18 19 (though in varying degrees) is a key point of departure, and inevitably moves 19 20 the spotlight to Euripides’s play rather than exclusively to Shelley’s ambitious 20 21 version of it. As I see it, many vital aspects of Shelley’s admittedly accomplished 21 22 translation (both textual and semantic) have remained veiled due to the general 22 23 absence of critical discussion of his text in the light of the original Greek play ‒ 23 24 namely, of its models, its meanings, its rhythms. Thus, essential questions have 24 25 remained largely unanswered: In what spirit does Shelley read the original? How 25 26 does he respond to the poetic genre and draw on it to serve his purposes? How alert 26 27 is he to the narrative and lyrical possibilities of the Greek language and how does 27 28 he develop the possibilities which he observes in the original? What do his verbal 28 29 choices and changes in verse form and imagery indicate about his perception of 29 30 the play? In its attempt to address some of these issues, this chapter will re-focus 30 31 attention on the text of Euripides’s play and rely on the MS draft of Shelley’s 31 32 translation for comparative discussion.34 32 33 33 34 34 35 31 Wallace, Shelley and Greece, p. 72. 35 32 36 Wallace, p. 71. 36 33 Wallace,Proof p. 73. Continuing Wallace’s emphasis,Copy recent explorations of Shelley’s 37 37 38 engagement with Euripides’s play attempt to flesh out further political references in the 38 text (which they treat independently of the original Greek), accentuating Shelley’s effort to 39 39 ‘English’ the Greek work by fitting it into the Cockney ‘pleasure’ programme of political 40 40 resistance propagated by Leigh Hunt and his circle (Jeffrey C. Robinson, ‘The Translator’, 41 in The Cambridge Companion to Shelley, ed. Timothy Morton. Cambridge: Cambridge 41 42 University Press, 2006, pp. 104–22 [pp.116, 106]). 42 43 34 The edited draft of Everest and Matthews in PS II: 371–412 (with headnote) is a 43 44 valuable source of reference. 44

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A reading of Shelley’s version of ‘Cyclops’ in the light of its original reveals 1 1 several important facts about the poet’s literary sensibility, historical self- 2 2 consciousness, political and religious thinking, and about his attitude towards the 3 3 Greek world. Characteristically, Shelley builds on the Greek drama’s incongruities 4 4 and ironic inversions, relaying the relativism and double entendres which run 5 5 through it and provoke humour. His version shows his deft management of satyric 6 6 and comic elements and situations through his original and imaginative recasting 7 7 of the play’s abrasive rhythms, exaggerated structures, lascivious innuendos, 8 8 sympotic choral songs and ludicrous dialogues. At the same time, however, 9 9 Shelley orchestrates the changing tones and nuances of the play, weaving together 10 10 the sportive and the serious elements to remarkable effect. As a draft translation 11 11 then, Shelley’s ‘Cyclops’ captures in large measure the discordant, even disturbing 12 12 tones and evocative ideas of Euripides’s satyr play, such as its serious questioning 13 13 of the religious and moral norms of the time; but the reader will also recognize 14 14 several themes already apparent in Shelley’s own writings, particularly those ideas 15 15 running through Prometheus Unbound. To voice and add verve to these ideas, 16 16 Shelley, at times, adapts freely and rewrites aspects of Euripides’s drama, giving 17 17 his ‘Cyclops’ a refreshingly radical edge. 18 18 While remaining alert to Webb’s and Wallace’s arguments about Shelley’s 19 19 attraction to a little-known genre and to a non-canonical ancient Greek play, I 20 20 suggest that his choice of the particular text for translation is intimately connected 21 21 with his experience of self-exile in Italy; it also bears on his exploration of the 22 22 proximity of the comic and the tragic, a possibility afforded by the satyr play. 23 23 Furthermore, I argue that Shelley’s turn to Cyclops parallel to the composition of 24 24 his Aeschylean lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound (which took place between 25 25 September 1818 and January 1820) is not accidental, but comes to reinforce the 26 26 thematic and stylistic affinity between the two works touched on by scholars,35 27 27 consolidating and enlarging the scope of Shelley’s interest in ancient Greek drama. 28 28 Shelley’s geographical estrangement from England shaped his perception 29 29 of classical tradition in important ways. As Everest and Matthews have argued, 30 30 Shelley’s literary projects in the first months abroad in Italy ‘constitute a 31 31 continuation and new inflection of theH ellenism cultivated in the Shelley-Peacock 32 32 circle at Marlow in the summer of 1817’.36 Indeed, the poet-exile came to regard 33 33 Italy as the preserver and mediator of the values that ancient Greece and Rome had 34 34 bequeathed to the world.37 Shelley’s expeditions in Naples and the city of Pompeii 35 35 in January 1819 added significantly to his vicarious experience of classicalG reece, 36 36 stimulating ‘an intense act of imaginative interpretation’.38 On the other hand 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 35 Webb, The Violet in the Crucible, pp. 85, 86; G.M. Matthews, ‘A Volcano’s Voice 40 40 in Shelley’, ELH 24.3 (September 1957), pp. 191–228 (in part reproduced in SPP: 550–68). 41 36 Headnote to Athanase, in PS II: 312. 41 42 37 Alan M. Weinberg, Shelley’s Italian Experience. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991, p. 42 43 15. On this issue, see also Wallace, Shelley and Greece, p. 71. 43 44 38 Webb, ‘Romantic Hellenism’, pp. 148–76 (p. 155). 44

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though, Shelley would infuse his mind’s Hellenic imaginings with his material 1 1 experience of Italy, its evocative physical landscape and its powerful cultural and 2 2 literary tradition. As G.M. Matthews suggests, Shelley’s Act II of Prometheus 3 3 Unbound is replete with scenic influences from the area surrounding Naples (where 4 4 the Shelleys stayed between early December 1818 and February 28, 1819) and 5 5 abounds with volcanic and subterranean imagery:39 Shelley had climbed Vesuvius 6 6 in December 1818 and was staggered by the sight of the mountain ‘in a slight state 7 7 of eruption’.40 Matthews thoughtfully adds that even though Shelley did not visit 8 8 Aetna, ‘the mention of Silenus (Prometheus Unbound, II, ii, 90) suggests that Etna 9 9 and Sicily were also on his mind’.41 Schlegel’s evocative reference to Silenus in 10 10 his Lectures apropos of Euripides’s play supports further this assumption. 11 11 The allusion to a bacchic character and to his jocular pastoral pursuits (‘And 12 12 thwart Silenus find his goats undrawn’) at this point in Prometheus Unbound 13 13 corroborates the view that the visited or imagined scenery in this part of Italy 14 14 provided Shelley with ‘a perfect mythological background’42 which could explain 15 15 the poet’s attraction to a world of spirits and fauns, but also to one of cyclopses 16 16 and satyrs. Both Prometheus Unbound and (the translation of) Euripides’s play 17 17 feature volcanic and pastoral imagery,43 a fact which supports their affinity and 18 18 brings the composition of Prometheus Unbound closer to the draft translation. 19 19 Thus, if ‘Cyclops’ was made in-between the composition of Act I and Acts II and 20 20 III of Prometheus Unbound (between October 1818 and March 1819, that is) but 21 21 certainly after the visit to volcanic scenery (so, between January and March 1819), 22 22 then, in all probability, Shelley’s translation of Cyclops was an additional attempt 23 23 to foster his Promethean theory and imagery by way of a satyric reconstruction, 24 24 an imaginative expansion, a creative re-casting of the Aeschylean universe and 25 25 Prometheus Unbound.44 Unsurprisingly, it was also a welcome release from it. In 26 26 27 27 39 Matthews, ‘A Volcano’s Voice in Shelley’, p. 204. 28 28 40 Letters II: 62. 29 29 41 Matthews, ‘A Volcano’s Voice in Shelley’, p. 206. 30 42 Matthews, p. 222. 30 31 43 The same landscape, origin of Virgil’s underworld, could well have inspired 31 32 the Virgil translations and Shelley’s reading of the episode of the Cyclops in Book 3 32 33 of the Aeneid. Modelled on Homer’s Odyssey, Aeneas’s narrative describes his and 33 34 Achaemenides’s dramatic escape from the ‘fearsome’ Cyclops and his tribe, and from ‘Etna 34 35 thunder[ing] horrific cascades of destruction’ (III, 571). See Virgil, Aeneid, translated with 35 36 notes by Frederick Ahl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 71. 36 44 ΤheProof date of the translation of Cyclops is a Copymatter of ongoing debate. Shelley’s only 37 37 38 recorded reference to his translation, dated November 1819, is in a letter to Leigh Hunt: ‘I 38 have only translated the “Cyclops” of Euripides when I could absolutely do nothing else ‒ 39 39 and the “Symposium” of Plato’ (Letters II: 153). This has led most commentators to believe 40 40 that Shelley’s remark would refer to the translation as a fairly recent accomplishment; yet, 41 they also point out that the translation of Cyclops would have had to take place during a 41 42 period when the poet was unable to proceed with his attempts at original composition. 42 43 Webb tentatively places the translation after the death of William Shelley, sometime during 43 44 the summer of 1819 (The Violet in the Crucible, pp. 79, 85). In the headnote to The Cyclops 44

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Shelley’s mind, the two works seem to be two halves of the same whole, divided yet 1 1 inseparable. Indeed, upon closer examination, Prometheus Unbound and Shelley’s 2 2 translation of Cyclops reveal intriguing correspondences which complicate their 3 3 generic differences. More importantly though, the draft translation exemplifies 4 4 Shelley’s highlighting and inventive development of standard elements at work, 5 5 such as the inherent incongruities of the satyr play and its tragic affinities. 6 6 Shelley’s exploration of and experimentation with genre makes us alert 7 7 to Richard Cronin’s claim that the poet ‘attempts in the poems of his maturity 8 8 to discover styles and genres that will, in themselves, express his themes’.45 In 9 9 other words, for Shelley, the genre does not simply serve the work’s meaning ‒ 10 10 it is an expression of its meaning. Shelley’s interest in the satyr play is further 11 11 documented by his fashioning of Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820) as a mixed genre of 12 12 satire following Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus Tyrannus.46 13 13 But what are the conventions of the satyr play (δράμα σατυρικόν) in the first place 14 14 and which aspects of the genre, and of Euripides’s drama in particular, was Shelley 15 15 attracted to and why? Normally placed as a coda to the tragic trilogy, satyr plays 16 16 have been termed ‘comically grotesque travesties of traditional myths’.47 Cyclops 17 17 famously dramatizes and parodies an incident from the Homeric Cyclopeia, the 18 18 ninth book of the Odyssey; this is a story the audience of 408 B.C. was most likely 19 19 familiar with, since by the time the play was staged the Odyssey had ‘already 20 20 passed into the world of μύθος’.48 However, the genre’s primal relationship with 21 21 tragedy grants it a serious character too, ‘serious insofar as the plots of satyr plays, 22 22 as much as those of tragedy, are constructed out of complications and resolutions 23 23 … which, no matter how grotesque and unreal they might seem to the audience, 24 24 are capable of causing genuine suffering to the characters caught up in them’.49 25 25 26 26 27 in PS II: 371–2, Matthews and Everest argue against a date between July and October 1819, 27 one of the most creative periods of Shelley’s career, and propose, instead, June 1818, based 28 28 primarily on Shelley’s explicit linking of ‘Cyclops’ to his translation of the Symposium and 29 29 also on the position of the draft in the notebook. 30 45 Richard Cronin, Shelley’s Poetic Thoughts. London: Macmillan, 1981, p. 75. 30 31 46 See Timothy Morton, ‘Porcine Poetics: Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant’, in The 31 32 Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, 32 33 pp. 279–95 (p. 280). Even though it contains burlesque and grotesque features, Swellfoot, 33 34 in my view, is closer to comedy and satire than to the satyr play, given that the latter’s 34 35 chorus requires the physical presence of satyrs and has strong affinities with tragedy. 35 36 Swellfoot, instead, figures a cacophonous chorus of pigs which is closer to the conventions 36 37 of Aristophanic comedy. 37 47 Proof Copy 38 Dana F. Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play. Meisenhaim am Glan: Hain, 1980, p. 134. 38 48 Richard Hunter, Critical Moments in Classical Literature: Studies in the Ancient 39 39 View of Literature and its Uses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 59. 40 40 49 Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, p. 132. Demetrius’s influential account of the satyric 41 drama as ‘tragedy at play’ in his treatise On Style reinforces the idea of tragedy and satyr play 41 42 as interrelated and mutually informing genres. See W.R. Roberts, ed. and trans., Demetrius 42 43 On Style: The Greek Text of Demetrius De Elocutione. Cambridge: at the University Press, 43 44 1902. I am grateful to Dr Nikolaos Petsas for his help on this. 44

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Euripides’s Cyclops, which is believed to have been a parody of Hecuba, conforms 1 1 in large part to the formal norms of tragedy: structurally, it consists of a prologue, 2 2 parodos, four episodes, each followed by a choral song, the famous agon and an 3 3 exodus. In terms of plot, we attend to the sufferings of a hero, though we do not 4 4 experience pathos as in tragedy because the grotesque, distorted reality of the 5 5 situation ‘precludes a complete suspension of disbelief’.50 The play also touches 6 6 upon the tragic themes of justice and punishment, as well as upon the moral issues 7 7 surrounding the concepts of nomos (law) and xenia (hospitality) especially through 8 8 the figure of the sinful Cyclops and his act of hubris. Significantly, the Cyclops’s 9 9 blinding and final destruction also fit a tragic narrative pattern. 10 10 Despite what are considered to be a series of violations of artistic conventions 11 11 and compositional lapses,51 Euripides’s Cyclops is regarded as reasonably typical 12 12 of its genre both in content and execution.52 The deflation of the mythic hero and 13 13 debunking of serious motifs, the ironic inversions and non-sequiturs, the voicing 14 14 of thoughts that should not be spoken, the vein of pastoral romance, and the sexual 15 15 ribaldry are common satyrical elements found in Cyclops which Shelley explores 16 16 dynamically in his version. Moreover, the presence of the mischievous, hedonistic 17 17 satyrs works to ensure the necessary incongruity in the satyr play, which derives 18 18 from the stark juxtaposition of the comic/satyric and the serious/heroic. Such 19 19 incongruity, as Dana Sutton argues, is ‘profoundly subversive’ and renders the 20 20 self-contained and plausible world of tragedy ‘implausible’.53 Satyric drama, in 21 21 other words, acts as the ‘other’ play, one which like a mirror turns its (critical) 22 22 gaze upon tragedy, exposing and at the same time allaying its excesses, tensions 23 23 and anxieties. In Euripides’s play, internal inconsistency and a distorted reflection 24 24 of the heroic allow us to view the serious, composed and law-abiding but devious 25 25 Odysseus confronted, counterpoised and to a degree outwitted by the gross and 26 26 brutal, yet semi-urbane, Cyclops. 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 50 Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, p. 132. 32 33 51 See Peter D. Arnott, ‘The Overworked Playwright. A Study in Euripides’ Cyclops’. 33 34 Greece and Rome 8.2 (October 1961), pp. 164–9, and Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, pp. 34 35 102–3. A.E. Haigh, however, claims that Cyclops achieves unity and aesthetic effect despite 35 36 its constitutive disjunctions: ‘the gross and brutal Polyphemus, the drunken Silenus, and 36 the cowardlyProof and licentious satyrs, complete theCopy picture. These discordant elements are 37 37 38 combined with rare skill into a work of harmonious beauty’, The Tragic Drama of the 38 Greeks. Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1896, pp. 316–17. 39 39 52 Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, p. 95 and Z. Philip Ambrose, ‘Family Loyalty and 40 40 Betrayal in Euripides’ Cyclops and Alcestis: A Recurrent Theme in Satyr Play’, in Satyr 41 Drama: Tragedy at Play, ed. George W.M. Harrison. Swansea: The Classical Press of 41 42 Wales, 2005, pp. 21–38 (p. 21). Shelley was greatly fond of Alcestis which he called a 42 43 ‘tragedy’ (despite the presence in the play of comic elements). See Letters I: 542. 43 44 53 Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, p. 168. 44

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But inconsistency does not only concern the satyr play’s relation with its 1 1 underlying tragic affinities. As has been argued in recent years,54 the moral matrix 2 2 of the play itself is not uncomplicated or unambiguous: Odysseus’s act of trickery 3 3 and crafty self-interest, his revenge upon the giant and his hubris near the end, when 4 4 he boastfully reveals his own name as he sails away, complicate his superiority 5 5 and civilized nature as a human being. On the other hand, the Cyclops’s eloquence 6 6 and scepticism together with his forthright, unpretentious and pragmatic claims 7 7 destabilize established notions of villainy, civility, ethics, monstrosity, cannibalism 8 8 and divinity. This chiasmus/reversibility between the two main characters lies at 9 9 the heart of the play, attesting to the complex socio-political operations, moral 10 shadings and unresolved dilemmas that run through Euripides’s Cyclops. Shelley’s 10 11 achievement, in my view, lies primarily in his uncovering, highlighting and at 11 12 times creatively heightening the effect of this doubling. One could therefore argue 12 13 that the emancipated milieu, subversive potential and interpretative dynamics of 13 14 the satyr play, and, above all, their ingenious sunoikisis (alliance) in the Greek play, 14 15 offered Shelley a space to experiment with Euripides’s themes, ideas, rhythms and 15 16 styles, and to explore the juxtaposition of the heroic and the comic as a proposition 16 17 for life. The next section of this chapter will provide examples of Shelley’s acts 17 18 of interpretation and identify instances of Shelley’s inventiveness and creative 18 19 rewriting of Euripides’s play to accord with his own concerns. 19 20 20 21 21 22 Cyclopean Poetics 22 23 23 24 Shelley’s translation of Euripides’s satyr play belongs to the long list of the poet’s 24 25 works which were not published during his lifetime. The manuscript of ‘Cyclops’ 25 26 included in one of Shelley’s notebooks now at the Bodleian library was transcribed 26 55 27 by Mary Shelley after the poet’s death and submitted to Leigh Hunt for corrections. 27 28 Mary Shelley’s repeated appeals to Hunt in her letters of September and October 28 29 1823, in preparation of the Posthumous Poems, to send her his corrections for 29 Shelley’s translation, reveal her anxiety regarding its timely proofreading and 30 30 inclusion in the volume. Shelley’s draft translation of Euripides’s play must have 31 31 posed a unique challenge to Mary who had to work in a language she did not 32 32 know very well and tackle a text whose generic and cultural context she possibly 33 33 took largely for granted. Shelley’s manuscript was heavily edited by both Mary 34 34 Shelley and her consultants. The corrections aimed not only towards a refinement 35 35 of style, language and word choice but also towards a more accurate interpretation 36 of the Greek. The 1824 version fills in quite a few of Shelley’s omitted words and 36 37 Proof Copy 37 lines, yet at the same time omits crude, obscene or indelicate parts of the play 38 without making clear if the omissions are Shelley’s or the editor’s. As a result, one 38 39 cannot really form an educated opinion of Shelley’s genuine translation by looking 39 40 40 41 54 See Hourmouziadis’s introduction to his translation of the play, pp. 9‒26. Also, 41 42 David Konstan’s ‘Introduction’ in Euripides Cyclops, trans. Heather McHugh, with 42 43 introduction and notes by David Konstan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 3‒19. 43 44 55 MWS Letters Ι: 384, 399. 44

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at the 1824 volume because the extensive interventions and modifications cause 1 1 ambiguities and obscure the poet’s conception of the play. By contrast, Shelley’s 2 2 version, though only a draft, reveals an energetic, deliberate engagement with the 3 3 particularities and subtleties of the satyr play. 4 4 The most interesting example of the discrepancy between the MS draft and 5 5 the 1824 edition is found in ‘Cyclops’ f. 68r–68v: 61–74, 7–14. In this scene 6 6 Odysseus, having conceived his plan to blind the ogre and escape with his men 7 and the satyrs, makes sure that the Cyclops gets thoroughly drunk. The monster 7 8 starts to hallucinate: he sees himself as Zeus, the satyrs become the Graces, and 8 9 the wine-pouring Silenus becomes Ganymede, beloved of Zeus.56 Evidently, the 9 10 Cyclops ‘intends his κῶμος to end in sex’57 and reveals his homosexuality and 10 11 lechery: ‘ἣδομαι δέ πως τοῖς παιδικοῖσι μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς θήλεσιν’ (somehow I take 11 12 more pleasure in boys than in women; ll. 583‒4).58 Silenus calls out ‘ἀπόλωλα, 12 13 παῖδες·σχέτλια πείσομαι κακά’ (Oh, I am lost, my sons! Some cruel things are 13 14 going to happen to me! l. 587) as the Cyclops drags him into the cave to rape him. 14 15 To his master’s chastisement, ‘μέμφῃ τὸν ἐραστήν κἀντρυφᾷς πεπωκότι;’ (Do you 15 16 turn down your lover and do you hold in contempt someone who’s drunk? l. 588), 16 17 Silenus bitterly protests ‘οἴμοι· πικρότατον οἶνον ὂψομαι τάχα’ (Woe’s me! Soon 17 18 I will see a very bitter wine! l. 589), alluding to his violation by the Cyclops as he 18 19 is hauled into the cave. 19 20 Most words in this episode have obvious sexual resonances. The 1824 edition 20 21 (the received version prior to PS II) does not introduce any substantial changes in 21 22 the first seven lines but omits the Cyclops’s lewd confession of his homosexuality 22 23 without any editorial sign of intervention. It also omits Shelley’s apostrophic 23 24 ‘O great Polypheme’ to make the style more natural but fails to amend the next 24 25 line, ‘I am the Ganymede of Jupiter’, a question in the original Greek text. Not 25 26 surprisingly, the rest of the passage is omitted without any explanation. On the 26 27 other hand, Shelley’s treatment of this passage, as his manuscript shows, suggests 27 28 a number of things about his relationship with the Greek text. 28 29 29 30 Ho ho, I can scarce rise ‒ what pure delight 30 The heavens & earth appear to whirl about 31 31 Confusedly … I see the throne of Jove 32 32 The holiest clearcongregation of the Gods … 33 Now of if the Graces tempted me to kiss 33 34 I would not. no I swear by their divinities 34 35 35 for the loveliest of them these 36 36 Proofall Copy 37 37 38 38 56 Ganymede, son of King Dardanus of Troy, was a beautiful boy whom Zeus, in the 39 39 form of an eagle, carried off to Olympus to be his cup-bearer. 40 40 57 Willeon Slenders, ‘Λέξις ἐρωτική in Euripides’ Cyclops’, in Satyr Drama: Tragedy 41 at Play, ed. George W.M. Harrison. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales, 2005, pp. 41 42 39‒52 (p. 49). 42 43 58 Prose translations in English, given directly after the Greek in parenthesis, are 43 44 mine, as here. 44

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I would not leave this Ganymede. tis strange 1 1 Somehow or other I take more delight 2 In boys than women 2 3 Sil 3 4 O great Polypheme 4 5 I am the Ganymede of Jupiter 5 6 Cycl 6 7 By Jove you are, I bore you off from Dardanus 7 8 Sil 8 9 I perish boys, I suffer horribly 9 10 CyclChorus 10 Do you complain of 11 11 & 12 12 Do you complain, that you arelovedfallen 13 Into the lap of luxury & delight 13 14 Sil 14 15 Ah me, I soon shall sleep a bitter sleep (f. 68r–v: 61–74,7–14) 15 16 16 17 Interestingly, the manuscript shows no material sign of hesitation or intention 17 18 to gloss over the notorious lines ‘ἣδομαι δέ πως / τοῖς παιδικοῖσι μᾶλλον ἢ τοῖς 18 19 θήλεσιν’, which Shelley translates fluently and unambiguously, representing 19 20 liberally the Cyclops’s sexual divergence. The poet therefore seems to implement 20 21 his plan as asserted in ‘On the Manners of the Antient Greeks’ to illustrate the 21 22 Greeks ‘precisely as they were’ ‒ what Mary Shelley did not do when she edited 22 23 the text of ‘Cyclops’ for Posthumous Poems because of her concentrated efforts to 23 24 redeem the poet’s reputation.59 24 25 Another significant issue in the notorious passage is Shelley’s departures from 25 26 the original. Webb has pointed out the poet’s mistranslation of the Cyclops’s 26 27 rebuke to Silenus ‘μέμφῃ τὸν ἐραστήν κἀντρυφᾷς πεπωκότι;’ (Do you turn down 27 28 your lover and do you hold in contempt someone who’s drunk? l. 588) which 28 29 has resulted from his confusion of ἐντρυφᾷς (you mock at) with ἐντρυφαῖς (in 29 30 luxury), a mistake which led him, in turn, to confuse πεπωκότι with πεπτωκότι 30 31 and translate it as ‘fallen’ instead of the correct ‘drunk’. Though inaccurate, and 31 32 wrongly attributed to the chorus of satyrs in Shelley’s translation (it is attributed 32 33 to the Cyclops in the original), Shelley’s lines are appropriate to the transgressive 33 34 references of the passage;60 at the same time, I think, they are surprisingly comic, 34 35 as Silenus is mischievously chided by his children (as he calls the satyrs) for not 35 36 36 37 37 59 Proof Copy 38 See Susan Wolfson’s ‘Mary Shelley, editor’, in The Cambridge Companion to Mary 38 Shelley, ed. Esther Schor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 193–210. 39 39 60 Webb, The Violet in the Crucible, p. 350. Webb argues that many of Shelley’s 40 40 errors in translation resulted from flawed texts, and reveals that the poet’s confusion 41 and mistranslation at this point is due to his adopting Barnes’s faulty readings which 41 42 Shelley used for his ‘Cyclops’. Shelley is thus doubly misled by his edition at this 42 43 point. Barnes’s text is available at Hathi Trust Digital Library:catalog.hathitrust.org/ 43 44 Record/009716076. 44

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giving in to the Cyclops’s ‘lap of luxury & delight’ ‒ a suggestive reference to 1 1 the ogre’s lustful appetites. In other words, it seems fitting that the satyrs should 2 2 enjoy taunting Silenus for his earlier imprecation ‘οἱ παῖδες ἀπόλοινθ’ (may my 3 3 sons be destroyed; l. 269) when he was ingratiating himself with the Cyclops and 4 4 swore his loyalty to him (ll. 262‒9). Shelley’s departure from the original is a 5 5 creative intervention as it further parodies the parental relationship between old 6 6 Silenus and the mischievous satyrs. If, as noted earlier, the comedy of the satyr 7 7 play depends on a constant tension between its serious and sportive elements, then 8 8 Shelley seems to have grasped this principle well by capturing the spirit of the 9 9 juxtapositions and disjunctions which underlie the characters and their language. 10 Shelley’s apparent mistranslation at this point brings forward his comic and 10 11 playful side. Though largely overlooked, Shelley’s humour is strikingly manifest 11 12 in various expressions in (for example) ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, ‘The Witch of 12 13 Atlas’, Swellfoot the Tyrant, and especially in his translation of Homer’s Hymn to 13 14 Hermes (‘Hymn to Mercury’), works notably written within two to three months of 14 15 each other in 1820.61 Though more accomplished as a verse translation, Shelley’s 15 16 ‘Hymn to Mercury’ closely resembles ‘Cyclops’ in that both works derive from 16 17 Homeric mythology, recalling a world of pastoral romance and idyllic fancy 17 18 inhabited by gods, mortals, and, in the case of ‘Cyclops’, by demi-gods, the satyrs. 18 19 Scholars have long pointed out the strong resemblance between satyr play and 19 20 pastoral poetry. As Sutton claims, ‘the universes of both genres are … rather similar 20 21 in their unreality, so that both calamities and moral shortcomings … acquire an 21 22 unwonted tolerability’.62 The whimsical play, trickery and irresponsibility of the 22 23 god/daemon Mercury echo the satyrs’ playful world; however, set in the general 23 24 context of Euripides’s play, this world is more ribald, unsettling and ambiguous, 24 25 especially if one considers the relocation of the epic hero in the company of satyrs. 25 26 Shelley’s interest in the representation of rural life in Euripides’s play acquires 26 27 more significance if considered together with his concurrent translations from 27 28 Virgil’s Tenth Eclogue, the Fourth Georgic, and the earlier translation of several 28 29 of the Homeric Hymns. All these poems subscribe to a system of natural religion 29 30 with which Shelley sympathized.63 30 31 To return to the excerpt from ‘Cyclops’, Shelley also misinterprets Silenus’s 31 32 reply ‘πικρότατον οἶνον ὂψομαι τάχα’ (Soon I will see a very bitter wine; l. 589), 32 33 producing a totally different sense: ‘I soon shall sleep a bitter sleep’. At this point 33 34 Shelley seems to want to downplay the obscene overtones of the phrase and 34 35 provides instead a powerfully alliterative line in an effort to poeticize, or distract 35 36 attention Proof from Silenus’s outcry. This is notCopy the only case, as there are further 36 37 instances of Shelley’s tendency in his translation to tone down or transform the 37 38 coarseness of Euripides’s satyr play. Webb cites a powerful passage from the play, 38 39 that of the Cyclops’s speech declaring his scorn for Zeus, in order to illustrate 39 40 how Shelley copes with the intended bawdiness and abrasiveness of the Cyclops: 40 41 41 42 61 See Webb’s essay in the present volume (Chapter 11). 42 43 62 Sutton, The Greek Satyr Play, p. 194. 43 44 63 Robinson, ‘The Translator’, p. 116. 44

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‘when he pours / Rain from above, I have a close pavilion / Under this rock, in 1 1 which I lay supine / Feasting on a roast calf, or some wild beast / And drinking 2 2 pans of milk, & gloriously / Emulating the thunder of high Heaven’ (f. 63v: 2–7). 3 3 By choosing not to render accurately ‘πέπλον / κρούω, Διός βρονταῑσιν εἰς ἔριν 4 4 κτυπῶν’(I drum on the sheet, making a din to rival Zeus’s thunder; ll. 327‒8), 5 5 which refers to masturbation, but to write instead ‘Emulating the thunder of high 6 6 Heaven’, Shelley evades the lascivious resonances of this image and misses, 7 7 as Webb argues, ‘the intentional crudity’ of the scene as well as the force this 8 8 crudity adds ‘to the Cyclops’ defiance of the Gods’.64 Even though Webb is right 9 9 that the transformation of the original weakens the implications of this episode, 10 Shelley’s rendering seems to rely on the power of suggestion and inference for its 10 11 success, rather than on the doubtful effect an admittedly crude scene may have 11 12 on the mind of the reader. Hence he rewrites the indecorous lines in a way that 12 13 fits his sensibility and general conception of the play. Following on my previous 13 14 argument regarding Shelley’s interest in showing up the disjunctions of the 14 15 satyr drama, one could further claim that the elevated diction of ‘Emulating the 15 16 thunder of high Heaven’ contrasts notoriously with the bawdy, colloquial tone of 16 17 the Cyclops’s defiant speech. Shelley builds on the incongruity of the character 17 18 by manipulating his language, creating a powerfully ironic effect. By sharpening 18 19 the tone of the ogre’s speech through irony, Shelley is giving more weight to the 19 20 Cyclops’s protest in a manner that reminds us of Prometheus’s address to Jupiter, 20 21 highlighting Euripides’s questioning of divinity. 21 22 Everest and Matthews propose that Shelley’s uncertainty over the translation 22 23 of sexually evocative passages ‘might be explained in the context of a conscious 23 24 effort to strike a balance between fidelity to the original, and a publicly acceptable 24 25 English idiom of the early nineteenth century’.65 Since Shelley seems to have 25 26 made no effort to publish or revise the draft of ‘Cyclops’, he would not have 26 27 been overly concerned to follow established notions of language and taste. But the 27 28 issue of fidelity is crucial for a poet who acknowledged ‘the vanity of translation’, 28 29 and concerns the ways in which Shelley’s ‘faithful’ or ‘unfaithful’ rendering of 29 30 Cyclops conditions the overall thematic and stylistic overtones of his version. 30 31 Despite ample evidence of his effort towards accuracy and of his desire to show 31 32 the Greeks as they were, there are several instances where Shelley sacrifices 32 33 precision for the sake of his personal responsiveness, which he infuses into 33 34 several aspects of his translation ‒ as in the case of the passages with indelicate 34 35 implications.66 The excerpts discussed above are of note because they register 35 36 36 37 37 64 Proof Copy 38 The Violet in the Crucible, p. 134. 38 65 Headnote to The Cyclops, PS II: 373. 39 39 66 When not confident of his rendering, Shelley leaves phrases and lines of theG reek 40 40 untranslated probably with a view to revisiting them later. A telling example of this approach 41 is his omission of the sexually explicit passage of lines 165‒76 of the Greek, a passage 41 42 which concerns the ‘sexually stimulating properties of drink’ (Everest and Matthews, PS 42 43 II: 385, n. 158). He also mistranslates line 177 about Helen of Troy and downplays the 43 44 chorus’s (Silenus’s) abusive comments which follow. 44

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Shelley’s distinctive style as a poet, which is largely responsible for his controlled 1 1 and poised renderings of the play’s diction and language. For instance, the use of 2 2 the Latinate words ‘supine’, ‘emulating’, ‘impious’, ‘perish’ give the translation 3 3 an elevated tone which disguises and transmutes the occasionally lascivious 4 4 and colloquial pitch of Euripides’s Cyclops. Accordingly, and following Leigh 5 5 Hunt and Mary Shelley’s playful usage, Shelley employs the French version of 6 6 Polyphemus’s name in his translation, ‘Polypheme’, to soften the brutal aspect 7 7 of the Cyclops and distance him from his purely bestial/cannibalistic role in 8 8 Homer and Virgil. These interventions suggest the translator’s desire to increase 9 9 sympathy for the Cyclops. However, it is hard to tell if in the end the ogre comes 10 out as likeable or not because Shelley offers in his version a prismatic view of 10 11 the Cyclops and recreates his figure based not only on one but on several literary 11 12 models: his ‘Polypheme’ embodies the spirit of the ‘fearless rebel’67 as much as 12 13 that of the victimized ogre. 13 14 A closer inspection of Shelley’s text of ‘Cyclops’ reveals the poet’s preference 14 15 for poetic, even formulaic words. ‘Winged’, ‘hail’, ‘blithe’ and ‘whirl about’, added 15 16 wittingly in the course of the text, invest Shelley’s lines with an idealized, poetic 16 17 tone, altering the original eclectically, energetically and creatively. A powerful 17 18 example of Shelley’s inventiveness is the rendering of the lines of the Greek ‘ἰδού, 18 19 λαβών ἒκπιθι καὶ μηδὲν λίπῃς· / συνεκθανεῖν δὲ σπῶντα χρὴ τῷ πώματι’ (There, 19 20 take it and drain it off now. The drinker and his wine must end together; ll. 570–71) 20 21 which Odysseus drily addresses to the Cyclops as the latter becomes progressively 21 22 more intoxicated and delusional. Shelley translates: ‘Take it and drink it off ‒ 22 23 leave not a dreg ‒ / O that the drinker died with his own draught’ (f. 68r: 52–3a). 23 24 The second line of the Greek is a compressed way of saying that the ogre should 24 25 drink the whole cup at one draught, even if it renders him unconscious.68 Shelley’s 25 26 version is faithful to the intended meaning and comic tone, yet the alliance of 26 27 ‘drinker’ and ‘draught’ add further effect to the line, suggesting undue drinking 27 28 and deep self-concern. The effect of Odysseus’s provocation is thus more pointed 28 29 and subtle. 29 30 As one would expect, Shelley’s distinctive style and vocabulary enhance and 30 31 poeticize the (bucolic chorus) songs of the play. Shelley’s treatment of the lyric 31 32 passages appears more concentrated, deliberate and artful than his treatment of the 32 33 dialogic parts, which often communicate a kind of impatience on the translator’s 33 34 part. In the parodos, for example, we see the shepherd-satyrs enter the scene 34 35 singing a little shepherd’s song and driving a few unruly sheep before them. 35 36 Shelley’s Proofversion with its alternate rhymes andCopy full vowel sounds is more graceful, 36 37 fluent and dignified than the original which sounds fairly colloquial and bacchic.69 37 38 A case in point is when Shelley adds a line (‘Bright as is their fountain wave’) to 38 39 accommodate the rhyme and when, instead of the onomatopoeic idiomatic ‘ψύττ᾿’ 39 40 40 41 41 42 67 Webb, The Violet in the Crucible, p. 85. 42 43 68 Richard Seaford, ed., Euripides Cyclops. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, p. 208. 43 44 69 See f. 51r: 1a–14. 44

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(shoo!) ‒ quite appropriate in the context of a shepherd addressing his animals ‒ he 1 1 uses the mild, though awkward, invocation ‘Oh, you come’. 2 2 Immediately after, Shelley takes even more liberties with the bacchic cry of 3 3 the satyrs who lament their captivity and separation from Dionysus. Omitting the 4 4 beginning of the epode to the choral song, however, Shelley misses completely 5 5 the intended meaning,70 transforming the nostalgic, even despairing tone of the 6 6 passage into a festive one. Here, Shelley seems to be ignoring the original, testing 7 7 instead his skills at lyrical composition, probably as a preparation for the choral 8 8 songs of Prometheus Unbound (Act II, scenes ii, iii). 9 9 10 An iacchic melody 10 11 To the golden Aphrodite 11 12 Will I lift, as thus I fly 12 13 Seeking her and her delight 13 14 With the Maenads, whose white feet 14 15 To the music glance and fleet.71 15 16 16 17 Shelley’s lyricism contrasts sharply, even shockingly, with those lurid and grotesque 17 18 details of his translation which heighten the scenes of panic, cannibalism and 18 19 infliction of torture. Shelley juggles skilfully the incongruities of the satyr play, 19 20 at times idealizing and at times rendering Euripides’s lines dispassionately, in a 20 21 most ‘unpoetical’ manner. A case in point is the brief choral ode sung by the satyrs 21 22 watching the killing, cooking and eating of two of Odysseus’s men (ll. 356–74 in 22 23 the original), coming right after the two famous speeches of the ἀγών: Odysseus’s 23 24 plea for his men and himself to be spared and the Cyclops’s ‘sophistic’ rebuttal. 24 25 Shelley takes liberties with the structure of the song, strophe-mesodi-antistrophe, 25 26 and by freely reordering the lines literally re-creates the lyric. The densely written 26 27 MS with its heavily crossed-out words, rewritings and irregular lineation (f. 64v) 27 28 shows Shelley experimenting with the Greek, and suggests the poet’s concerted 28 29 effort to convey the rowdy satyrs’ dread and helplessness before the beast’s 29 30 cannibalism, as well as the comic goriness of the scene. The final product, an odd 30 31 fusion of the lyric and the morbid, is compelling in its vibrant, almost Dionysiac 31 32 rhythm, which reinforces the imagery, grotesque effect and attention to gruesome 32 33 detail. It is also revealing of Shelley’s attraction to the macabre, a result of his 33 34 earlier zest for Gothic terrors. 34 35 35 … … … … … … … … … … … … … . 36 36 The monster<> 37 Proof Copy 37 He is<> cruel & bold 38 HisHe drags<> 38 39 He murders the strangers 39 40 That sit on his hearth 40 41 And dreads no avengers 41 42 42 43 70 See ll. 68–72 in the original Greek text. 43 44 71 f. 51v: 1–15. 44

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To rise from the earth 1 1 He roasts the men before they are cold 2 And minces their flesh 2 3 3 He snatches them broiling from the firecoal 4 And from the cauldron pulls them whole 4 5 And minces their flesh, & gnaws theirbonesbones 5 6 With hiscursed teeth till all be gone 6 7 … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … 7 8 Farewellfoul dread pavilion 8 9 Sacri Farewell rites of dread‒. 9 10 The Cyclops Vermilion 10 With slaughter uncloying 11 11 Now feasts on the dead 12 12 Delighting in strangers’flesh 13 13 In the flesh of strangers joying!72 14 14 15 Here and elsewhere in Shelley’s version, the details of consuming (food, wine 15 16 or human flesh), as well as the figuration of torture and corporeality are much 16 17 expanded, showing the poet experimenting with different styles and tones. 17 18 Odysseus comes out of the cave expressing terror and disgust at what he has 18 19 witnessed, that is, the Cyclops’s cannibalism, and goes on to describe at length 19 20 and in lurid detail ‘[h]orrible things ‒ deeds to be feigned in words / But not to 20 21 be believed as being done’ (f. 65r: 3a–4). Shelley seems to suggest that ‘words’ 21 22 (μύθοις in the original) have such evocative powers that they can far exceed actual 22 23 experience, just as in Swellfoot the Tyrant where the ‘intense food imagery … 23 24 evokes the density and affective power of language’.73 24 25 In similar vein, even though it is not always easy to tell where misinterpretation 25 26 ends and deliberate rewriting begins, Shelley’s acts of creative (mis)translation 26 27 add subtle layers of meaning to Euripides’s satyr play, lending valuable insight 27 28 into Shelley’s complex thought and his painstaking efforts to express it. The poet’s 28 29 lifelong and troubled relationship with authority and patriarchy, finding its most 29 30 impressive dramatization in Prometheus’s confrontation with Jupiter, is given a 30 31 satiric thrust in ‘Cyclops’. Thus, a pivotal point in Shelley’s version is Odysseus’s 31 32 quick prayer to Hephaestus and Sleep to aid him to blind the Cyclops and thus 32 33 break free from the island. In his invocation, Odysseus sounds matter-of-fact and 33 34 sceptical; he offers ‘a challenge to the gods’, demanding to be rewarded for his 34 35 ‘mortal piety’.74 He thus concludes by saying: ‘καὶ μὴ ̓πὶ καλλὶστοισι Τρωϊκοῖς 35 36 πόνοις / αὐτόνProof τε ναύτας τ’ἀπολέσητ’ Ὀδυσσέα Copy / ὑπ’ἀνδρὸς ᾧ θεῶν οὐδέν ἢ 36 37 βροτῶν μέλει. / ἢ τὴν τύχην μὲν δαίμον’ ἡγεῑσθαι χρεών, / τὰ δαιμόνων δὲ τῆς 37 38 τύχης ἐλάσσονα’ (After his glorious deeds at Troy, don’t let Odysseus, and his 38 39 39 40 40 72 f. 64v: 14a–26, 32a–38. 41 73 Morton, ‘Porcine Poetics: Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant’, p. 285. 41 42 74 Judith Fletcher, ‘Perjury and the Perversion of Language in Euripides’ Cyclops’, in 42 43 Satyr Drama: Tragedy at Play, ed. George W.M. Harrison. Swansea: The Classical Press of 43 44 Wales, 2005, pp. 53–66 (p. 56). 44

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crew be destroyed, by a man who has no care for gods or mortals. Or we will 1 1 regard chance as a god and the other gods weaker than chance; ll. 603–7). Given 2 2 that the question: ‘do the gods exist?’ is posed often enough in Euripidean theatre, 3 3 it is only natural that Shelley would engage more liberally with this aspect of the 4 4 play. Indeed, instead of rendering the last two lines as an impersonal/collective 5 5 tentative statement of purpose or as a condition, Shelley writes: ‘I of force believe 6 6 / That chance is a supreme divinity / For things divine are subject to her power’ 7 7 (f. 68v: 34a–36). 8 8 Shelley’s compelling intervention is pregnant with implications. First, 9 9 Odysseus offers a bold challenge to the gods in his prayer for assistance by 10 10 forcefully claiming their weakness before ‘τύχην’. Drawing on both Euripides 11 11 and Aeschylus,75 Shelley transposes the two dramatists’ doubts about established 12 12 religion as well as the intellectual crisis of their times into the present context 13 13 of contemporary Europe. Furthermore, Shelley’s deliberate mistranslation makes 14 14 Odysseus not only a more defiant but also a more complex and equivocal character 15 15 than he appears in Euripides’s play, as it stresses (and stretches) his self-sufficiency, 16 16 self-absorbedness and materialistic perspective and understates the resonance of 17 17 his humane and civilized self. In this way, Shelley builds on one of the main ideas 18 18 of Euripides’s play ‒ the reversibility of the two main characters ‒ closing even 19 19 further the distance between the human and the ogre and firmly positioning them 20 20 as each other’s double. As in the original play, much of the humour lies in this 21 21 striking reversal of roles. Drawing on the earlier parallelism with Prometheus 22 22 Unbound, it is worth mentioning that much the same happens with Prometheus, 23 23 who is Jupiter’s double, until the moment the Titan expresses pity for his oppressor 24 24 (Prometheus Unbound I, 53) and ceases to hate him. In Cyclops, Euripides seems 25 25 to mock at Odysseus who claims superiority before the ogre in his play; Shelley, 26 26 coming from a troubled post-revolutionary milieu, questions the idea of humanity 27 27 as a transcendental trait granted a priori to individuals, and openly puts to the test 28 28 anyone’s pretension to it ‒ humans’, cyclopses’ and satyrs’ alike ‒ heightening 29 29 Euripides’s scepticism towards authority of any kind. 30 30 What is thus significant and central to Shelley’s response to the Greek play 31 31 is that Shelley has Euripides’s characters act more defiantly towards agents of 32 32 authority ‒ the gods or their masters. Thus, Shelley has Silenus appear more of 33 33 a rebel than he actually is towards the Cyclops. When Odysseus lures Silenus 34 34 with wine and finally gets him drunk, the satyr sheds his fear of his master and 35 35 becomes contemptuous of him while preparing to get food for Odysseus and his 36 36 crew: ‘δράσω τάδ’, ὀλίγον φροντίσας γε δεσποτῶν’ (I will do just that and pay 37 Proof Copy 37 little heed to my master; l. 163). The line has been rendered in various ways; 38 38 39 39 40 40 75 Compare Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, ll. 507‒18 where Prometheus asserts 41 that Zeus has less power than ‘The three-shaped Fates and mindful Furies’ who are ‘the 41 42 helmsman of Necessity’ Aeschylus, trans. Herbert Weir Smyth. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: 42 43 Harvard University Press, 1926, vol. 1. Available at: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. I am 43 44 grateful to Alan Weinberg for bringing this to my attention. 44

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Green translates rather loosely ‘I’ll risk it, and not care what he can do’ whereas 1 1 McHugh76 prefers a more elevated tone, ‘Yes, indeed I will, my master can be 2 2 damned’. Shelley’s version, ‘That will I do despising any master’ (f. 55v: 4), is 3 3 faithful to Euripides’s use of the plural δεσποτῶν (of masters) but makes a poignant 4 4 break from the meaning of ‘ὀλίγον φροντίσας’ (paying little heed to) through the 5 5 categorical ‘despising’. 6 6 The spirit of defiance against any kind of authority or oppressive power, which 7 7 lies at the heart of Prometheus Unbound, also pervades Shelley’s version of the 8 8 Cyclops’s speech-retort to Odysseus. For instance, the ogre’s bold pronouncement 9 9 ‘Ζηνὸς δ’ἐγὼ κεραυνὸν οὐ φρίσσω, ξένε’ (And as for Zeus’s thunder-bolt, I’m 10 10 not terrified at that, stranger; l. 320) becomes in the hands of Shelley ‘Stranger 11 11 I laugh toscorn Joves thunderbolt’ (f. 63r: 19a–19). At this point in the translation, 12 12 Shelley’s disdainful, defiant and totally independent Cyclops rises above 13 13 Euripides’s partially domesticated and humanized creature and even higher above 14 14 Homer’s unsophisticated beast. In similar vein, Shelley turns his initially faithful 15 15 translation of ‘τοῦ Διός τε τὸν θρόνον / λεύσσω τὸ πᾶν τε δαιμόνων ἁγνὸν σέβας’ 16 16 (I see Zeus’s throne and the whole holy majesty of the gods; ll. 579‒80) into 17 17 a rather improbable version by intentionally mistranslating ἁγνὸν (holy):‘ … 18 18 I see the throne of Jove / The holiestclear congregation of the Gods … ’ (f. 68r: 19 19 63–4). Shelley thinks of the Cyclops’s inebriated confusion and desire for sex as 20 20 incompatible with expressions of religious piety ‒ hence he weakens the gravity 21 21 of his speech. But the stylistic intervention has wider implications in the context of 22 22 Shelley’s subtle politicization of the Cyclops. The ogre’s scorn for and questioning 23 23 of the effectiveness of human law and religion brings home Shelley’s distrust for 24 24 fabricated systems and institutions which may act as forces of oppression on 25 25 human beings. 26 26 How close to Prometheus is Shelley’s figure of the Cyclops? Is the Cyclops 27 27 a mock-Promethean figure? Shelley does not idealize the monster, nor does 28 28 he seek to underplay the Cyclops’s violent and transgressive nature. But since 29 29 monsters seem to reveal a lot about the cultures that produce them and imagine 30 30 them, Shelley poses the issue of transgression anew. Thus, the poet challenges the 31 31 supposed villainy of the ‘impious’ (ἀνόσιον), ‘uncompanionable man’ (ἄμεικτον 32 32 ἄνδρα), by capitalizing on less monstrous aspects of the Cyclops stressed in the 33 33 play: his cynicism, love of freedom, rebelliousness, self-autonomy, practicality 34 34 and the pursuit of pleasure. In this way, the contrast with Odysseus gains 35 35 momentum. As mentioned before, Shelley’s ambivalent presentation of Odysseus 36 36 accentuatesProof the hero’s boastfulness, self-centredness, Copy false piety and vengefulness. 37 37 Consider, for example, Odysseus’s words right after he reveals his true name to 38 38 the blinded Cyclops: ‘δώσειν δ’ἒμελλες ἀνοσίου δαιτὸς δίκας’ (you were destined 39 39 to be punished for your impious meal; l. 693), which Shelley freely renders ‘I 40 40 have taken / A full revenge for your unnatural feast’ (f. 61r: 13–14). Odysseus 41 41 42 42 43 76 Roger Lancelyn Green, trans., Two Satyr Plays: Euripides’ Cyclops and Sophocles’ 43 44 Ichneutai. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957, p. 25; McHugh, Euripides Cyclops, p. 44. 44

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is shown glorying in revenge, setting himself up as the totally autonomous man, 1 1 independent of chance or the will of the gods (‘ἒμελλες’). In similar vein, Shelley 2 2 transforms Odysseus’s call for comradeship and loyalty to his friends, ‘εἰ θανεῖν 3 3 δεῖ, κατθανούμεθ’ εὐγενῶς / ἢ ζῶντες αἶνον τὸν πάρος συσσώσομεν’ (Rather, if 4 4 we must die, we will die nobly – or live on and also retain our old reputation; ll. 5 5 201‒2), into a mock-heroic self-aggrandizing declaration: ‘‒ if I needs must die, 6 6 / Yet will I die with ‒ if I live, / That praise which I have gained shall yet 7 7 remain’ (f. 56v: 21–3). 8 8 For all these reasons, Shelley’s ‘Cyclops’ attests not only to Shelley’s 9 9 exceptional skills as a translator of Greek literature but may be regarded, to an 10 10 extent, as an original rewriting of an ancient Greek play. As I have argued, ‘Cyclops’ 11 11 is a polysemic text which functions successfully on a number of interrelated 12 12 levels. Shelley’s translation shows a consistent fidelity to Euripides’s satyr play 13 13 while frequently intensifying and transforming the Greek text in a deliberate and 14 14 imaginative fashion. Drawing on the rich subtext of Greek drama which ‘allows 15 15 for the proximity of the comic and the tragic’,77 Shelley crafts meanings and raises 16 16 issues close to his current poetic and political concerns. In ‘Cyclops’, one cannot 17 17 miss the resonant notes that the Cyclops and Odysseus strike on account of their 18 18 material-mindedness, self-interest, lack of sympathy and conceit, an indication of 19 19 Shelley’s anxiety about people’s rising dependency on ‘the selfish and calculating 20 20 principle’.78 Moreover, as Wallace rightly indicates, ‘Cyclops’ registers Shelley’s 21 21 pressing concern with the proper mode of resistance to oppression and authority 22 22 as expressed in Prometheus Unbound. But what is vitally important is that Shelley 23 23 manages to infuse all this deep reflection into a sympotic, satyric and parodic 24 24 milieu, gracefully navigating through a Cyclopean universe. 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 77 Adrian Poole, ‘Greek Drama’, in The Oxford History of Literary Translation in 41 42 English, IV: 1790–1900, eds Peter France and Kenneth Haynes. Oxford: Oxford University 42 43 Press, 2006, pp. 178–87 (p. 184). 43 44 78 ‘A Defence of Poetry’, in SPP: 531. 44

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02.07.2008

The Neglected Shelley.indb 198 9/11/2015 4:29:33 PM 1 Chapter 10 1 2 2 3 The Sensitive-Plant and the 3 4 Poetry of Irresponsibility 4 5 5 6 6 7 Richard Cronin 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 In 1985 Harold Bloom pointed out that The Sensitive-Plant had been all but 11 12 ignored by Shelley’s recent critics. Not much has changed since, and this seems at 12 13 first glance odd. It was a popular poem among Shelley’s Victorian admirers, and 13 14 one of the poems that most successfully resisted the twentieth-century assault on 14 15 Shelley’s reputation. Donald Davie thought it, for all its faults, ‘sound and strong’. 15 16 In Earl Wasserman’s Shelley: A Critical Reading, the study that did most of all 16 17 to re-establish Shelley as a major poet, The Sensitive-Plant is given a privileged 17 18 place.1 Wasserman turns to it immediately after the chapter in which he expounds 18 19 the ‘intellectual philosophy’ that, in his view, Shelley explores in all his major 19 20 poems, because, it seems fair to assume, he believes that Shelley’s philosophy 20 21 finds in The Sensitive-Plant its most lucid articulation. 21 22 The poem’s narrative, its ‘fable’ as Wasserman terms it, describes how a 22 23 garden paradise is destroyed when the ‘Lady’ who tends it dies, but the poem ends 23 24 with a ‘Conclusion’ in which we are invited to entertain the possibility that the 24 25 destruction of the garden and the death of the Lady might be illusions. The garden 25 26 and the Lady, it may be, survive, because ‘For love, and beauty, and delight / There 26 27 is no death nor change’ (Conclusion, ll. 21–2).2 Wasserman sets himself to show 27 28 that the poem’s conclusion does not contradict its fable, but was implicit in it from 28 29 the first. The poem’s central metaphor compares flowers with stars. The loveliness 29 30 that is embodied in the flowers remains visible at night when it manifests itself 30 31 as the starry sky. The metaphor is crucial because it quietly intimates Shelley’s 31 32 ‘modest creed’, that the mortal world of existence in which the flowers have their 32 33 place may simply be the form in which our limited and fallible senses permit us to 33 34 experience the immutable realm that Shelley consistently associated with the stars. 34 35 My summary does scant justice to the intricacy and the scrupulousness of 35 36 Wasserman’s reading, but it at least suggests its distance from criticism of the 36 37 Proof Copy 37 kind that has dominated Shelley studies in recent decades. The historicist turn 38 38 39 39 1 Modern Critical Views: Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea 40 40 House Publishers, 1985, p. 18; Donald Davie, Purity of Diction in English Verse. London: 41 Chatto and Windus, 1952, pp. 153–4; Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading. 41 42 Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971, pp. 154–79. 42 43 2 The Sensitive-Plant is quoted from PS III. The poem’s sections are separately 43 44 lineated. 44

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evident in so much criticism since Wasserman seems to have brought with it a 1 1 turn against The Sensitive-Plant. It need not have been so, since gardens and their 2 2 upkeep have traditionally been used to figure the state of the nation. Richard II 3 3 has its ‘Garden Scene’, and for Hamlet the state of Denmark is ‘an unweeded 4 4 garden, / That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature / Possess it merely’ 5 5 (I, ii, 135–7). Shelley recalls that tradition in Queen Mab when he suggests that if 6 6 only the world could be rid of ‘kings and priests and statesmen’ it would become a 7 7 garden ‘Surpassing fabled Eden’ (IV, 89). He recalls it too in the manuscript draft 8 8 of The Sensitive-Plant when the garden is described as a ‘Republic of odours and 9 9 beams’.3 For Alan Bewell the tradition offers the key to an understanding of the 10 10 whole poem: the diseases that infect the garden figure the calamitous effects of 11 11 reactionary government.4 But the interest of Shelley’s recent critics has been less 12 12 engaged by utopian or dystopian visions than by textual traces of more immediate 13 13 political and historical realities. Nora Crook and Derek Guiton did suggest in 1986 14 14 that The Sensitive-Plant had its origin in a depression brought on by news of the 15 15 Cato Street Conspiracy, but they did not develop the thought, and it has not been 16 16 taken up.5 More recently critics have not found it appropriate to bring the poem 17 17 into any very close relationship with England in 1820, and that is surely one reason 18 18 for its neglect. But there have been signs in recent years that critical fashions 19 19 are changing. Susan Wolfson’s Formal Charges, Angela Leighton’s On Form, 20 20 and recent books by Michael O’Neill all suggest a renewed interest in the formal 21 21 character of poetry, and that is the kind of interest that The Sensitive-Plant seems 22 22 more likely to repay.6 Wasserman ends his analysis of the poem by acknowledging 23 23 its ‘tetrameter quatrains’, ‘the frequency of the skimming anapaests’ and ‘the filigree 24 24 quality of the descriptions’, but for him such features work only in conjunction 25 25 with ‘the seeming triviality of the flower fable’ to save the poem from becoming 26 26 ‘too solemn and philosophically ponderous’. The poem’s formal characteristics 27 27 establish its tone but do not contribute to its meaning. It may be worthwhile to 28 28 29 29 30 3 Goslee, BSM XVIII: 181. Stephanie Dumke convincingly argues that Shelley’s 30 31 phrase echoes a phrase of Calderón’s. See ‘The Influence of Calderón and Goethe on 31 32 Shelley in the Context of A. W. Schlegel’s Conception of Romantic Drama’, unpublished 32 33 PhD thesis, Durham University, 2013. 33 34 4 Alan Bewell, Romanticism and Colonial Disease. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins 34 35 University Press, 1999, pp. 209–19. 35 5 36 Nora Crook and Derek Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody. Cambridge: Cambridge 36 UniversityProof Press, 1986, p. 204. Copy 37 37 6 38 Susan J. Wolfson, Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in British Romanticism. 38 Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997; Angela Leighton, On Form: Poetry, 39 39 Aestheticism, and the Legacy of a Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; Michael 40 40 O’Neill, Romanticism and the Self-Conscious Poem. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997, and 41 The All-Sustaining Air: Romantic Legacies and Renewals in British, American, and Irish 41 42 Poetry since 1900. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. O’Neill has also published a 42 43 fine reading of The Sensitive-Plant. See ‘The Sensitive-Plant’, Cambridge Quarterly 25.2 43 44 (1996), pp. 103–23. 44

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invert Wasserman’s procedure and begin not with the poem’s meaning but with 1 1 the skimming anapaests and the quatrains, and, to borrow Wasserman’s words 2 2 again, with the ‘thicket of baroque decorations’ that allows Shelley’s simple fable 3 3 to spread through more than 300 lines. 4 4 The ascendancy of free verse seems to have fostered a low tolerance for 5 5 anapaests even in readers prepared to relish iambs, trochees, even dactyls. 6 6 When Ezra Pound makes the point that in a poem the ‘rhythm, cadence, and the 7 7 arrangement of sounds’ must be in keeping with the sense, he pauses to castigate 8 8 The Sensitive-Plant: 9 9 10 When you have words of a lament set to the rhythm and tempo of There’ll be a 10 11 Hot Time in the Old Town to-night you have either an intentional burlesque or 11 12 you have rotten art. Shelley’s ‘Sensitive Plant’ is one of the rottenest poems ever 12 13 written, at least one of the worst ascribable to a recognized author. It jiggles to 13 14 the same tune as ‘A little peach in the orchard grew.’ Yet Shelley recovered and 14 15 wrote the fifth act of the Cenci.7 15 16 16 17 Eugene Field’s ‘The Little Peach’ seems to be offered as an intentional burlesque, 17 18 and The Sensitive-Plant as bad art, but the poems are surely not similar enough 18 19 to warrant the comparison. The ‘jiggle’ of The Sensitive-Plant is for one thing far 19 20 more various. Its tetrameter line may be made up of four anapaests, ‘And the Earth 20 21 was all rest, and the Air was all love’ (Part First, l. 99), or of four iambs (given 21 22 that ‘plumed’ is allowed two syllables), ‘The plumed insects swift and free’ (Part 22 23 First, l. 83), but most of the lines mix anapaests and iambs and over the course 23 24 of the poem do so in all possible combinations. The metre is designed, I take it, 24 25 to replicate for the ear the discordia concors that the garden exemplifies in its 25 26 planting. A particular metrical effect will sometimes catch the reader’s attention, 26 27 but it is in much the same way that a single plant might fix the gaze of someone 27 28 wandering through a garden. When, for example, on the stream’s ‘inconstant 28 29 bosom’, ‘Broad water-lilies lay tremulously’ (Part First, l. 45), the tremulousness 29 30 is metrically reproduced so exquisitely that most readers will be persuaded to 30 31 pause, and, it may be, rehearse the line again. 31 32 The poem’s metre is as gaudy as the garden flowers, and so is its syntax, 32 33 although the first stanza seems chaste enough: 33 34 34 A sensitive-plant in a garden grew, 35 35 And the young winds fed it with silver dew, 36 36 And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light 37 Proof Copy 37 And closed them beneath the kisses of night. (Part First, ll. 1–4) 38 38 39 When the plant closes its leaves at night, the stanza closes in sympathy. The 39 40 paratactic syntax is arrested, but only momentarily. The next stanza begins, ‘And 40 41 41 42 7 The Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. (with introduction) T.S. Eliot. London: 42 43 Faber and Faber, 1954, p. 31. Pound is of course mistaken to imagine that the composition 43 44 of The Cenci post-dated The Sensitive-Plant. 44

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the Spring arose on the garden fair’ (l. 5). It is a syntax (Part First of the poem has 1 1 114 lines of which 25 begin with the word ‘And’) that allows the sensitive plant 2 2 to be crowded out by all the other flowers in the garden. The third quatrain seems 3 3 to begin a story: 4 4 5 But none ever trembled and panted with bliss 5 6 In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, 6 7 Like a doe in the noontide with love’s sweet want 7 8 As the companionless Sensitive-plant (Part First, ll. 9–12) 8 9 9 10 But the narrative is at once suspended, overtaken by description, as the other 10 11 flowers of the garden are described one after another in a sequence that extends 11 12 for almost 60 lines. 12 13 The primacy of the sensitive plant is established by its early introduction, by 13 14 its ‘companionless’ solitude, and by its richly figurative trappings, panting like an 14 15 over-heated doe with love’s sweet want. But its distinctiveness is challenged when 15 16 so many of the other flowers are figured just as richly. The hyacinth, for example: 16 17 17 18 And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, 18 Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew 19 19 Of music so delicate, soft and intense, 20 20 It was felt like an odour within the sense. (Part First, ll. 25–8) 21 21 22 The colours, because hyacinth flowers are bell-shaped (in de la Mare’s ‘Alone’, the 22 23 ‘wild bee hung in the hyacinth bell’), combine to form a peal. The plant is dissolved 23 24 into music, its appeal to the eye figured as an appeal to the ear, but when the peal 24 25 of bells is ‘felt like an odour’, the plant recovers its vegetable self. The stanza is 25 26 curiously elaborated, ‘quaint and affected’ according to the Quarterly reviewer,8 in 26 27 a way that seems scarcely in keeping with the scant role that the hyacinth plays in 27 28 a poem in which this is its only appearance. The trembling, panting sensitive plant, 28 29 unlike the hyacinth, is eroticized, but no more extravagantly than the rose: 29 30 30 31 And the rose like a nymph to the bath addresst, 31 32 Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, 32 33 Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air 33 34 The soul of her beauty and love lay bare. (Part First, ll. 29–32) 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 8 38 The reviewer, William Sidney Walker, describes how the stanza works rather 38 precisely: ‘The bells of the flower occur to the poet’s mind; but ought not bells to ring a 39 39 peal? Accordingly, by a metamorphosis of the odour, the bells of the hyacinth are supposed 40 40 to do so: the fragrance of the flower is first converted into a peal of music, and then the 41 peal of music is in the last line transformed back into an odour.’ This is well observed, but 41 42 for the reviewer it serves only to expose Shelley as ‘a mere poetical harlequin’. Review of 42 43 ‘Prometheus Unbound, a Lyrical Drama, in Four Acts; with Other Poems. By Percy Bysshe 43 44 Shelley. 8vo. 1821’. Quarterly Review 26 (October 1821), pp. 168–80 (p. 175). 44

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The rose’s strip-tease attracts attention, but so does the pun by which undressing 1 1 becomes addressing (in the manuscript the rose is ‘like a lady half drest’).9 The 2 2 result of all this is that the sensitive plant risks being supplanted by all the other 3 3 garden flowers. 4 4 The sensitive plant or mimosa is commonly distinguished by the capacity 5 5 that gives it its name: its leaves close when touched, when darkness falls, and 6 6 in response to changes of temperature, and this made it a natural anomaly, a 7 7 living form that unsettled the distinction between vegetable and animal.10 But 8 8 many of the other plants are described in a manner that threatens the sensitive 9 9 plant’s uniqueness. The description of the narcissi, who ‘gaze on their eyes in the 10 10 stream’s recess / Till they die of their own dear loveliness’ (ll. 19–20), recalls the 11 11 Greek youth who died because he was unable to tear himself away from his own 12 12 reflection, a self-absorption for which he was punished by being transformed into 13 13 the flower. The hyacinth, too, was produced by metamorphosis: it grew from the 14 14 blood of a youth loved by Apollo. But even flowers to which no such stories are 15 15 attached are humanized. The rose is like a nymph, the lily of the valley is ‘Naiad- 16 16 like’ (l. 19) and the lily is like ‘a Maenad’ (l. 34). It is a garden, like the ‘Garden 17 17 of Live Flowers’ in Through the Looking-Glass or Erasmus Darwin’s The Loves 18 18 of the Plants, in which all the plants, not just the mimosa, are represented in a way 19 19 that undoes the distinction between different orders of being. 20 20 Shelley signals the hyper-fertility in the garden in the number and variety 21 21 of its plants, and still more emphatically in his syntax. The poem is written in 22 22 quatrains formed from two couplets, as if the couplets, like the garden plants, 23 23 refused restraint,11 and very soon the sentences begin to outgrow their quatrains, 24 24 as they sprout subordinate clauses, and figures propagate supplementary figures: 25 25 26 And on the stream whose inconstant bosom 26 27 Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom 27 28 With golden and green light, slanting through 28 29 Their Heaven of many a tangled hue 29 30 30 31 Broad water lilies lay tremulously … (Part First, ll. 41–5) 31 32 32 33 The subject and verb demanded by the first phrase of one stanza are not supplied 33 34 until the first line of the next. The effect is still more extravagant when flowers, 34 35 35 36 36 9 37 BSM XVIII: 165. 37 10 Proof Copy 38 See Robert M. Maniquis, ‘The Puzzling Mimosa: Sensitivity and Plant Symbols in 38 Romanticism’. Studies in Romanticism 8.3 (1969), pp. 129–55, and Donovan’s headnote to 39 39 the poem in the Longman edition. 40 40 11 Alan Weinberg suggests that the stanza may be Shelley’s version of the Spanish 41 redondilla, a telling suggestion since Shelley read Spanish poetry enthusiastically from the 41 42 summer of 1819, assisted by Maria Gisborne and Charles Clairmont, although the redondilla 42 43 is trochaic rather than anapaestic, and uses quatrains rhyming abba more commonly than 43 44 quatrains rhyming aabb. 44

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introduced in the second line of one stanza, do not find space to shine until the 1 1 third line of the next: 2 2 3 And from this undefiled Paradise 3 4 The flowers, as an infant’s awakening eyes 4 5 Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet 5 6 Can first lull, and at last must awaken it, 6 7 7 8 When Heaven’s blithe winds had unfolded them, 8 9 As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, 9 10 Shone smiling to Heaven; and every one 10 Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun … (Part First, ll. 58–65) 11 11 12 A mother and a child, and a Davy lamp (an obtrusively topical reference, since 12 13 Davy only developed his lamp in 1815) come between the subject and its verb, and 13 14 even after this stanza the sentence continues: 14 15 15 16 For each one was interpenetrated 16 17 With the light and the odour its neighbour shed 17 18 Like young lovers, whom youth and love make dear, 18 19 Wrapt and filled by their mutual atmosphere. (Part First, ll. 66–9) 19 20 20 21 The stanza does not just exemplify the poem’s characteristic syntax, it seeks to 21 22 explain it. The stanzas do not remain separate from their neighbours any more 22 23 than the flowers do. Stanzas and plants are both allowed to ‘interpenetrate’. The 23 24 tendency culminates in the final quatrains of ‘Part First’. A sentence begins in line 24 25 98 (though it begins with a conjunction), ‘And when evening descended from 25 26 Heaven above’, and ends only with the first section of the poem in line 114, ‘Cradled 26 27 within the embrace of night’, after a succession of clauses so convoluted as to have 27 28 exercised Shelley’s editors. Reiman and Fraistat interrupt it by introducing full 28 29 stops at the ends of lines 105 and 109; Donovan substitutes a semi-colon for the 29 30 first stop but preserves the second; Leader and O’Neill do the same, but shore up 30 31 the sentence’s grammar by placing the stop inside rather than outside the bracket. 31 32 The stops may be ungrammatical but they are well-meant: they offer pauses that 32 33 spare readers the dizzying bewilderment to which Timothy Webb in his Everyman 33 12 34 edition alone of modern editors subjects them. The variety of editorial solutions 34 35 signals a shared recognition that the poem employs a syntax designed at once to 35 36 underline and to organize the exuberance of the garden’s growth. On the page 36 the poem Proofremains neatly marshalled into itsCopy four-line stanzas, and those stanzas 37 37 38 retain just enough independence one from another to reassure the reader that this 38 39 39 40 40 41 12 See SPP: 289; PS III: 303; Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill, eds, Percy Bysshe 41 42 Shelley, The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 42 43 2003, pp. 453–4; Timothy Webb, ed., Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poems and Prose. London: 43 44 J.M. Dent (Everyman), 1995, p. 195. 44

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is a cultivated garden rather than a wilderness, but its order is only precariously 1 1 maintained. 2 2 ‘Part Second’ begins by introducing into the garden its Eve, the woman 3 3 charged with tending the garden ‘from morn to even’ (l. 9). She is needed because 4 4 Shelley’s Eden has become so overgrown, its plants, like its syntax, in urgent 5 5 need of restraint, but her presence in itself compromises the garden’s perfection. 6 6 Spenser’s Garden of Adonis has no need of any gardener: 7 7 8 Ne needs there Gardiner to set, or sow, 8 9 To plant or prune: for of their owne accord 9 10 All things, as they created were, doe grow, 10 11 And yet remember well the mightie word, 11 12 Which first was spoken by th’Almightie lord, 12 13 That bad them to increase and multiply: 13 14 Ne doe they need with water of the ford, 14 15 Or of the clouds to moysten their roots dry; 15 16 For in themselues eternall moisture they imply. 16 (The Faerie Queene III, vi, 302–10) 17 17 18 The plants in Shelley’s garden cannot so securely be left to their own devices. They 18 19 are, for example, reliant on the lady to sprinkle ‘bright water from the stream / On 19 20 those that were faint with the sunny beam’ (Part Second, ll. 32–3). The garden, as 20 21 Shelley suggests when he compares the Lady with Eve, more closely resembles 21 22 Milton’s Eden, except that Milton’s Eve, even before the Fall, acknowledges that 22 23 her gardening, once a recreation, is becoming a chore: 23 24 24 25 Adam, well may we labour still to dress 25 26 This Garden, still to tend Plant, Herb and Flour, 26 27 Our pleasant task enjoyn’d, but till more hands 27 28 Aid us, the work under our labour grows, 28 29 Luxurious by restraint, what we by day 29 30 Lop overgrown, or prune, or prop, or bind, 30 31 One night or two with wanton growth derides 31 Tending to wilde. (Paradise Lost IX, 205–12) 32 32 33 Shelley’s garden shares the tendency to wildness, as his syntax and figures reveal 33 34 even more clearly than the vegetation, but his Lady, unlike Eve, seems not to 34 35 exercise a disciplinary function. Significantly, she does no pruning. Eve comes to 35 36 her task from her nuptial bed, and yet still seems disconcerted by the wantonness of 36 37 Proof Copy 37 Eden’s vegetation. She and Adam discriminate between legitimate and illegitimate 38 sexuality, assisting the vine in its marital embrace of the elm, but checking the fruit 38 39 trees when their sexual play threatens to become an end in itself, disconnected 39 40 from the duty to procreate: 40 41 41 42 where any row 42 43 Of Fruit-trees overwoodie reachd too farr 43 44 Thir pamperd boughes, and needed hands to check 44

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Fruitless imbraces: or they led the Vine 1 1 To wed her Elm; she spous’d about him twines 2 Her mariageable arms, and with her brings 2 3 Her dowr th’ adopted Clusters, to adorn 3 4 His barren leaves. (Paradise Lost V, 212–19) 4 5 5 6 Shelley’s Lady by contrast gardens ‘from morn to even’, never awakening in all 6 7 that time from her erotic daze. It seems as if she were all the while accompanied 7 8 by the Spirit who comes to her dreams at night (or seems to) and may linger about 8 9 her all day, as unseen in the daylight as the stars in the sky: 9 10 10 11 She had no companions of mortal race 11 12 But her tremulous breath and her flushing face 12 Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes 13 13 That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise: 14 14 15 As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake 15 16 Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake 16 17 As if yet around her he lingering were, 17 18 Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her. (Part Second, ll. 13–20) 18 19 19 20 The poem invites the reader to imagine the Spirit visiting the Lady’s dreams as 20 21 Satan visits Eve’s. Both women carry the dream into their waking hours, and the 21 22 Spirit, like Satan, has ‘deserted heaven’, but Shelley’s is a ‘bright Spirit’ whereas 22 23 the ‘lustre’ of Milton’s Satan is ‘visibly impar’d’ (Paradise Lost IV, 850). The two 23 24 visitations seem related only by difference. 24 25 Eve stands apart from the plants that she tends, whereas Shelley’s Lady is 25 26 almost a plant herself, ‘Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean’ (Part 26 27 Second, l. 8). She is herself flower-like but like a flower that inhabits a different 27 28 element. Nevertheless, the ministrations of the Lady, just as much as Eve’s lopping 28 29 and pruning, remain paradoxical. Remedial work can secure the perfection of the 29 30 garden only by compromising it, because a perfect garden would need no gardener. 30 31 The Lady would be able to complete her task, and render the garden truly perfect, 31 32 only if she could somehow contrive to erase the marks of her own presence, which 32 33 is what, in one stanza, she succeeds in doing: 33 34 34 And wherever her aery footstep trod, 35 35 Her trailing hair from the grassy sod 36 36 ErasedProof its light vestige, with shadowy sweep Copy 37 Like a sunny storm o’er the dark green deep. (Part Second, ll. 25–8) 37 38 38 39 But the paradox, as the phrase ‘sunny storm’ intimates, cannot be so easily evaded. 39 40 This garden is an Eden that may become too dry and need watering. The Lady 40 41 must intervene again if the rainfall is too heavy: 41 42 42 43 And out of the cups of the heavy flowers 43 44 She emptied the rain of the thunder showers. (Part Second, ll. 35–6) 44

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Like Milton’s Eve, ‘our general Mother’ (Paradise Lost IV, 492), Shelley’s Lady 1 1 is maternal even though she seems to be childless: 2 2 3 If the flowers had been her own infants she 3 4 Could never have nursed them more tenderly. (Part Second, ll. 39–40) 4 5 5 6 But she finds that her tenderness to the flowers demands that she practise cruelty 6 7 to other living things. She may, unlike Eve, avoid pruning, but she remains an 7 8 embarrassed exponent of pest control: 8 9 9 10 And all killing insects and gnawing worms 10 11 And things of obscene and unlovely forms 11 12 She bore, in a basket of Indian woof, 12 Into the rough woods far aloof, 13 13 14 In a basket of grasses and wild flowers full, 14 15 The freshest her gentle hands could pull 15 16 For the poor banished insects, whose intent, 16 17 Although they did ill, was innocent. (Part Second, ll. 41–8) 17 18 18 19 Jack Donovan compares her with Mrs Mason in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Original 19 20 Stories from Real Life, who counsels her young charges in the duty of compassion 20 21 by recommending her own considerate practice: ‘If some insects are to be 21 22 destroyed, to preserve my garden from desolation, I have it done in the quickest 22 23 way.’13 Shelley’s Lady refrains even from humane pesticide, but in another way 23 24 she is still more rigorous than Mrs Mason. Mrs Mason asks her pupils not to allow 24 25 their behaviour to be governed by merely aesthetic preferences: ‘would you dare 25 26 kill it, merely because it appears [to you] ugly?’ Shelley’s Lady banishes from the 26 27 garden the creatures that threaten the welfare of the plants, but she also banishes 27 28 those that compromise the garden’s beauty by their ‘obscene and unlovely’ 28 29 appearance. She takes care that they are softly couched on the journey, but she 29 30 exiles them to the ‘rough woods’ all the same. The bee, the mayfly, the moths 30 31 and the chrysalises are spared, and more than spared: the Lady appoints them 31 32 her ‘attendant angels’. But this serves only to show that the Lady’s justice is as 32 33 arbitrary as God’s: her garden is an Eden in which innocence itself is no protection 33 34 for ‘unlovely forms’. 34 35 And neither, it emerges, rather shockingly, is it any protection for the Lady 35 36 herself: 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 This fairest creature from the earliest spring 38 Thus moved through the garden ministering 39 39 All the sweet season of summertide, 40 40 And ere the first leaf looked brown – she died! (Part Second, ll. 57–60) 41 41 42 42 43 13 The Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, eds Janet Todd and Marilyn Butler. 7 vols. 43 44 London: Pickering, 1989, vol. 4, p. 368. 44

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The dash and the exclamation mark register the jolt, but the metre is scarcely 1 1 perturbed. The death is so shocking because of the garden’s equivocal status. It 2 2 is subject to time: its flowers arise from their dreams only when they feel that 3 3 Spring has arrived, and at night they close their petals, the sensitive plant retiring 4 4 to rest earliest of them all. But there are also suggestions that in the garden the 5 5 operation of time is suspended. Some flowers seem to bloom in succession, first 6 6 the snow-drop and the violet, but the hyacinth, the rose and the late-flowering 7 7 tuberose bloom all at once: 8 8 9 And all rare blossoms from every clime 9 10 Grew in that garden in perfect prime. (Part First, ll. 39–40) 10 11 11 12 But it is the equivocal status of the Lady herself that clinches the surprise of her 12 13 sudden death. Part Second opens with a quatrain so smooth that it is hard not to 13 14 overlook its radical inconsistency: 14 15 15 16 There was a Power in this sweet place, 16 17 An Eve in this Eden; a ruling grace 17 18 Which to the flowers did they waken or dream 18 Was as God is to the starry scheme. (Part Second, ll. 1–4) 19 19 20 Milton’s Eve may prop the flowers, but when she strays from her own ‘best prop’ 20 21 (Paradise Lost IX, 433), her husband Adam, she finds that she lacks the strength 21 22 to withstand Satan’s blandishments. She falls, and in falling brings death upon 22 23 herself. Insofar as she is Eve-like the Lady is mortal, but she is also ‘as God is to 23 24 the starry scheme’, and God is able to sustain the order of the universe precisely 24 25 because he transcends it, and one crucial aspect of that transcendence is that he is 25 26 not subject to time. 26 27 In Part Third the Lady changes character yet again. The garden maintains 27 28 its beauty for three days, but on the fourth the Lady’s funeral procession passes 28 29 through it, the coffin followed by a ‘crowd’ of mourners. She had seemed the 29 30 garden’s tutelary spirit, akin to , but she is revealed now as a well- 30 31 respected member of a community. She changes in other ways, too. She had been 31 32 the ‘soul’ of the garden (Part Third, l. 18), but in death she becomes emphatically, 32 33 even grossly corporeal. The poem notices ‘the smell, cold, oppressive and dank, 33 34 / Sent through the pores of the coffin plank’ (Part Third, ll. 11–12). In a ghastly 34 35 symmetry the stink of putrefaction replaces the scent of summer flowers, ‘the 35 36 jessamineProof faint, and the sweet tuberose, / The Copy sweetest flower for scent that blows’ 36 37 (Part First, ll. 37–8). The decaying corpse that ‘slowly changed, till it grew a 37 38 / To make men tremble who never weep’ (Part Third, ll. 20–21) counters the heady 38 39 eroticism of the summer garden. The body’s decay inverts the plants’ growth, and 39 40 yet in another sense the garden and the corpse act each as the other’s grotesque 40 41 reflection. Both are insistently fleshly, and the one arouses a desire as excessive 41 42 as the disgust prompted by the other. The flowers had entered into a sympathetic 42 43 communion with the Lady when she lived: 43 44 44

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I doubt not they felt the spirit that came 1 1 From her glowing fingers through all their frame. (Part Second, ll. 31–2) 2 2 3 The sympathetic bond persists when she dies: 3 4 4 5 The garden once fair became cold and foul 5 6 Like the corpse of her who had been its soul. (Part Third, ll. 17–18) 6 7 7 8 As summer fades into autumn the plants begin to rot in sympathy with the rotting 8 9 corpse. But the garden in decay of Part Third closely parallels the ‘garden fair’ of 9 10 Part First. 10 11 The metrical delicacy, for example, persists. As the flowers shed their leaves, 11 12 the garden dwindles, a process noted in a line that itself has shrunk to a mere seven 12 13 syllables, ‘Leaf after leaf, day by day’ (Part Third, l. 32). The stream that flows 13 14 through the garden becomes choked with vegetation, a calamity at once marked 14 15 and mimicked in a line in which the metrical flow is impeded by a superfluity of 15 16 stressed syllables: 16 17 17 And at its outlet flags huge as stakes 18 18 Dammed it up with roots knotted like water snakes. (Part Third, ll. 72–3) 19 19 20 The ‘running’ tetrameter rhythm of the poem becomes suddenly ‘thick and dumb’ 20 21 (Part Third, l. 71). The paratactic syntax of Part First reappears (26 of the 115 lines 21 22 of Part Third begin ‘And’), and proves to be as appropriate to the propagation of 22 23 weeds as to flowers: 23 24 24 25 Between the time of the wind and the snow 25 26 All loathliest weeds began to grow, 26 27 Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck 27 28 Like the water-snake’s belly and the toad’s back. 28 29 29 And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, 30 30 And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, 31 Stretched out its long and hollow shank 31 32 And stifled the air, till the dead wind stank. 32 33 33 34 And plants at whose name the verse feels loath, 34 35 Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 35 36 Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, 36 37 Livid Proofand starred with a lurid dew. Copy 37 38 38 And agarics and fungi with mildew and mould 39 39 Started like mist from the wet ground cold; 40 Pale, fleshy, – as if the decaying dead 40 41 With a spirit of growth had been animated! 41 42 42 43 Their mass rotted off them, flake by flake, 43 44 Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake, 44

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Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 1 1 Infecting the winds that wander by. (Part Third, ll. 50–69) 2 2 3 Shelley’s recent editors have restored the last of these stanzas, which was included 3 4 when the poem was first published in 182014 but omitted by Mary Shelley in 1839.15 4 5 She was deterred from including it, I suspect, not so much by the thought as by the 5 6 gusto with which it is expressed. Nora Crook and Derek Guiton astutely suggest 6 7 that the name Shelley is ‘loath’ to include in verse is the common stinkhorn, 7 8 which emits a foul stench like carrion, and has an obscenely phallic shape. The 8 9 stinkhorn’s Latin name, phallus impudicus, makes it the precise counterpart of 9 10 the sensitive plant, the mimosa pudica.16 But, despite his protestations, Shelley 10 11 seems to take as much relish in incorporating into his verse loathsome fungi as he 11 12 had in cataloguing the garden’s flowers. In both cases the verse pays tribute to the 12 13 rankness of the garden’s growth by cultivating an extreme metaphorical vitality. 13 14 The stink of the weeds reverses the scent of the flowers, but also corresponds with 14 15 it. Winter is personified with unusual vigour, wielding the wind as his whip. With 15 16 his choppy finger on his lip, he rehearses the attitude of the witches in Macbeth. 16 17 The frozen cataracts clank at his girdle ‘like manacles’. Winter is the counterpart of 17 18 the Lady, his presence as assertive as hers is self-effacing. He is the anti-gardener 18 19 whose task it is to drive underground all plants, even the weeds that have taken 19 20 over the garden, but he is in himself supplanted, when winter gives way to spring. 20 21 The Sensitive-Plant has a teasing relationship with a poem written a few 21 22 months earlier, and printed in the volume of 1820 a few pages later, Ode to the 22 23 West Wind.17 When autumn comes to the garden, the wind strips the vegetation: 23 24 24 25 And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red, 25 26 And white, with the whiteness of what is dead, 26 27 Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind past – 27 28 Their whistling noise made the birds aghast. (Part Third, ll. 34–7) 28 29 29 30 The echo of the Ode, in which the ‘leaves dead / Are driven, like ghosts from an 30 31 enchanter fleeing, / Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red’, seems pointed, 31 32 especially when in both poems the wind blows ‘the winged seeds’ to beds that 32 33 seem like graves. The Ode ends when the withered leaves, which are also the 33 34 poet’s pages, are invited to ‘quicken a new birth’. The Sensitive-Plant, too, ends 34 35 when the dead come back to life: 35 36 36 14 In ProofPrometheus Unbound: A Lyrical DramaCopy in Four Acts, with Other Poems . 37 37 38 London: C. and J. Ollier, 1820. 38 15 The stanza is scored out in Mary Shelley’s fair copy of the poem, it may be with 39 39 Shelley’s authority. In 1820 and in Mary Shelley’s transcript, it is ‘moss’ rather than ‘mass’ 40 40 that falls from the fungi. Donovan (unwisely?) emends to ‘mass’ on the authority of the 41 draft manuscript. 41 42 16 Crook and Guiton, Shelley’s Venomed Melody, p. 205. 42 43 17 This relationship is discussed in some detail by Timothy Webb. See Shelley: A 43 44 Voice Not Understood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977, p. 238. 44

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When winter had gone and spring came back 1 1 The Sensitive-plant was a leafless wreck; 2 But the mandrakes and toadstools and docks and darnels 2 3 Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels. (Part Third, ll. 114–17) 3 4 4 5 The coming of winter, here as in the Ode, is the sign that Spring cannot be far 5 6 behind, but Spring in this poem offers only a grotesque parody of resurrection. 6 7 The mimosa cannot revive for good botanical reasons, because it cannot survive 7 8 the winter in temperate climates. Only ‘loathliest weeds’ respond to the coming 8 9 of spring, and they do not undergo a new birth but sprout from the ground like 9 10 vampires rising from their tombs. 10 11 The Sensitive-Plant may seem a sardonic retort to ‘Ode to the West Wind’, but 11 12 in the ‘Conclusion’ Shelley reverses the poem’s apparent import. In the closing 12 13 speech of Prometheus Unbound, which immediately precedes The Sensitive-Plant 13 14 in the 1820 volume, Demogorgon urges all who hear him ‘to hope, till Hope 14 15 creates / From its own wreck the thing it contemplates’ (IV, 573–4). The Sensitive- 15 16 Plant ends similarly, with an invitation to consider the possibility that the garden’s 16 17 wreck may have been all an illusion, and that ‘For love, and beauty, and delight / 17 18 There is no death nor change’ (Conclusion, ll. 21–2): 18 19 19 20 It is a modest creed, and yet 20 21 Pleasant if one considers it, 21 22 To own that death itself must be, 22 Like all the rest a mockery. (Conclusion, ll. 13–16) 23 23 24 24 But there seems the world of difference between Demogorgon’s insistence on the 25 25 duty of hope and the ‘modest’ suggestion that in a world in which all experience 26 26 amounts to no more than a mockery, death might just be one mockery the more. 27 27 For Wasserman the Conclusion makes explicit a thought that has been implicit 28 28 throughout the poem, a thought figured most compactly in ‘an apparently casual 29 29 image’ to which a rather weighty ‘symbolic meaning’ is attached. The Lady is 30 30 careful not to disturb the chrysalises when she comes across them: 31 31 32 And many an antenatal tomb 32 33 Where butterflies dream of the life to come 33 34 She left clinging round the smooth and dark 34 35 Edge of the odorous cedar bark. (Part Second, ll. 53–6) 35 36 36 37 It is not justProof that the death that the caterpillars Copy seem to suffer will be exposed 37 38 as a mockery when the butterfly emerges. Inside the chrysalis the butterfly is 38 39 already perfectly formed, because the butterfly is the psyche or soul, and the soul, 39 40 as well as being immortal, is what constitutes the true identity of each one of 40 41 us, though it may well be an identity that in mortal life is disguised. But is it as 41 42 easy as Wasserman suggests to distinguish between the image of the chrysalis, 42 43 which is only ‘apparently casual’, and all the poem’s other images? For example, 43 44 as well as the chrysalis there is the mayfly, ‘the beam-like ephemeris’, which is 44

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introduced in the preceding stanza. Like the butterfly it is released from its naiad 1 1 state and soars into the air, but its flight lasts only hours: its immortality proves 2 2 disappointingly short-lived. The butterfly may figure human immortality, but the 3 3 mayfly commonly figures human transience, and the poem with a fine impartiality 4 4 finds room for both. 5 5 Only one other quatrain in the poem has attracted as much critical attention 6 6 as the quatrain that sets out the ‘modest creed’ – the lines that echo Diotima’s 7 7 analysis of love in Plato’s Symposium: 8 8 9 For the Sensitive-Plant has no bright flower; 9 10 Radiance and odour are not its dower – 10 11 It loves – even like Love – its deep heart is full – 11 12 It desires what it has not – the beautiful! (Part First, ll. 74–7) 12 13 13 14 Because it is scentless and has no ‘bright flower’, the sensitive plant is excluded 14 15 from the mutuality that defines the experience of all the other flowers of the garden: 15 16 16 17 For each one was interpenetrated 17 With the light and the odour its neighbour shed 18 18 Like young lovers, whom youth and love make dear, 19 19 Wrapt and filled by their mutual atmosphere. (Part First, ll. 66–9) 20 20 21 For these blooms the difference between self and other lapses. They are like young 21 22 lovers whose love of their own youth and beauty is indistinguishable from their love 22 23 of the youth and beauty of the objects of their love. Theirs is a perfectly fulfilled 23 24 love, which is, from the sensitive plant’s point of view, a contradiction in terms. 24 25 Love, as the sensitive plant understands it, is the desire for what is not possessed. 25 26 The mimosa is an exponent of the aesthetics of lack that Shelley rehearses in 26 27 poem after poem, as, for example, in the lyrics to Jane Williams, whom Shelley 27 28 came to associate with the Lady of this poem.18 Jane’s power is contingent on her 28 29 not returning the love that she is offered. As Shelley explains it in his essay ‘On 29 30 Love’, love is the desire ‘to awaken in all things that are a community with what 30 31 we experience within ourselves’. It is prompted by the discovery ‘within our own 31 32 thoughts’ of ‘the chasm of an insufficient void’. Love is a ‘want or power’, that 32 33 is, it is a desire produced by a lack. When Shelley classified himself as an ‘Exotic 33 34 … unfortunately belonging to the order of mimosa’,19 he made explicit an analogy 34 35 to which most readers of the poem have responded. The destruction of the garden 35 36 produces Proofin both the poet and his reader theCopy inner vacancy that impels them to 36 37 imagine the only possibility that promises to supply it, the thought that 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 18 Letters II: 438. For a recent account of Shelley’s aesthetics of lack, see Paul A. 41 42 Vatalaro, Shelley’s Music: Fantasy, Authority, and the Object Voice. Farnham: Ashgate, 42 43 2009. 43 44 19 Letters II: 368. 44

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That Garden sweet, that lady fair 1 1 And all sweet shapes and odours there 2 In truth have never past away – 2 3 ’Tis we, ’tis ours, are changed – not they. (Conclusion, ll. 17–20) 3 4 4 5 In this view of things, the sensitive plant takes its place alongside all the figures 5 6 in other poems by Shelley that have always and inevitably been understood as 6 7 self-characterizations, alongside, for example, the ‘frail Form’ of Adonais. But 7 8 in Adonais there is a startling discrepancy between the ‘frail Form’ and the 8 9 poet who might be inferred from an examination of the poem itself, a poem so 9 10 extravagantly baroque in its ornamentation, so coolly conscious of its own artifice. 10 11 The discrepancy and extravagance are reproduced in The Sensitive-Plant. 11 12 Shelley’s poem has on the face of it very little in common with another poem 12 13 about a garden that runs to rack and ruin when deprived of the attentions of the 13 14 woman who tended it. The poem now most commonly known as ‘The Ruined 14 15 Cottage’, the poem that Shelley would have encountered recast as the first book 15 16 of The Excursion, is very different in manner, unlikely to impress anyone by its 16 17 ‘filigree quality’. But many readers have felt a discrepancy between the tale of 17 18 Margaret and the so-called reconciling addendum in which the Pedlar instructs 18 19 the young man that to continue to grieve over Margaret’s fate would be to ‘read 19 20 / The forms of things with an unworthy eye’ (The Excursion, I, 940). He delivers 20 21 the lesson so persuasively that the young man turns away and walks along his 21 22 road in happiness. I want to suggest that there is a rather similar discrepancy 22 23 between the story of The Sensitive-Plant and the poem’s Conclusion. The ending 23 24 of Wordsworth’s poem commonly divides his readers. For some, the Pedlar, the 24 25 young man, and by implication Wordsworth himself are reconciled to Margaret’s 25 26 death all too easily. Others have received the Pedlar’s lesson more gratefully. The 26 27 Pedlar weeps as he rehearses Margaret’s tale. He asks, ‘Why should a tear be on 27 28 an old Man’s cheek?’, and in the Pedlar’s conclusion those tears are not wiped 28 29 away but transmuted, reappearing as the ‘silent rain-drops’ that silver ‘the high- 29 30 spear-grass on that wall’ (I, 943–4). The observation is Peter Larkin’s in his recent 30 31 collection of essays on Wordsworth and Coleridge, where it points the way to 31 32 Larkin’s poised understanding of the Pedlar’s conclusion as at once consoling and 32 33 awkwardly inadequate.20 The Sensitive-Plant should, I suggest, prompt a rather 33 34 similar response. 34 35 The Conclusion voices the possibility to which Shelley, as a poet of lack, was 35 36 committed, but it expresses it couched in the accents of a very different poet who 36 37 entertains Proofit as no more than a ‘pleasant’ hypothesis.Copy The presence of those two 37 38 voices is, I think, more characteristic than is commonly recognized in the work of 38 39 a poet who insists that it cannot be determined whether poetry ‘spreads its own 39 40 figured curtain or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene of things’,21 40 41 41 42 20 See Peter Larkin, Wordsworth and Coleridge: Promising Losses. New York: 42 43 Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, pp. 80–91. 43 44 21 SPP: 533. 44

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who cannot tell whether poetry offers access to a reality that is obscured by the 1 1 phenomenal world, or whether poetry too is, ‘Like all the rest, – a mockery’. Shelley 2 2 can never quite decide whether poetry has the power to transfigure the world, or 3 3 whether it is a kind of writing that simply takes delight in its own figurations. 4 4 That is why the Conclusion of the poem is at once wistful, embracing a 5 5 creed that has to support it only the urgency of the wish that it might be true, and 6 6 nonchalant, detached from, even amused by, the human capacity to be persuaded 7 7 of what it would be pleasant to believe. For Shelley, poetry is produced in response 8 8 to ‘the chasm of an insufficient void within us’, which is why all poets, like 9 9 Shelley, belong to ‘the order of mimosa’. But The Sensitive-Plant suggests that 10 10 poets are hybrids, and also bear the character claimed by , for whom the 11 11 ‘poetical Character itself’, a character that must be sharply distinguished from the 12 12 ‘wordsworthian or egotistical sublime’, is defined by its lack of any self. ‘It has no 13 13 character’, Keats insists, which is why it takes ‘as much delight in conceiving an 14 14 Iago as an Imogen … It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any 15 15 more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation’.22 16 16 The Sensitive-Plant is a poem that seems as indifferent as Keats would wish 17 17 between Iago and Imogen, a poem in which Shelley takes as much delight in 18 18 rendering the dilapidation of the garden as its perfection, in which he figures fungi 19 19 with the same relish with which he figures flowers, in which Winter, nature’s 20 20 turnkey, cataracts clanking at his belt, is presented just as vividly as the Lady 21 21 whose ‘step seemed to pity the grass it prest’. It is Keatsian too in its conclusion, 22 22 ending, as Keats thought poems should, not in ‘any irritable reaching after fact 23 23 & reason’23 but in speculation. Most recent Shelley criticism has been concerned 24 24 to explore the poet’s ideological commitments. The most recent account of The 25 25 Sensitive-Plant, Jerrold Hogle’s, seems to me exactly right in its insistence that the 26 26 poem’s ‘metaphoric movement’ runs counter to the fixity of meaning that readings 27 27 such as Wasserman’s ascribe to the poem. But when Hogle locates within the 28 28 poem ‘a non-hierarchical process of redemptive transfiguration’ that constitutes 29 29 ‘the ultimate resistance to all the older hierarchies that still try to suppress or 30 30 destroy it’, he risks doing some fixing of his own.24 It may be that the peculiar 31 31 value of The Sensitive-Plant is that it exemplifies the presence in Shelley’s work 32 32 of a very different kind of poetry, a poetry that, like Shelley’s own Witch of Atlas, 33 33 or like Mercury in his translation of the Homeric hymn, seems playful rather than 34 34 purposive. As he acknowledged in the preface to Prometheus Unbound, Shelley 35 35 had ‘a passion for reforming the world’, but he was also ready to write poetry of 36 36 a very differentProof kind, poetry that seems to takeCopy delight in its own irresponsibility. 37 37 38 38 39 39 22 John Keats, The Letters, 1814–1821, ed. Hyder Edward Rollins. 2 vols. Cambridge: 40 40 Cambridge University Press, 1958, vol. 1, pp. 386–7. 41 23 John Keats, The Letters, vol. 1, p. 193. 41 42 24 See Jerrold E. Hogle, ‘Visionary Rhyme: The Sensitive-Plant and The Witch of 42 43 Atlas’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony 43 44 Howe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 360–74 (pp. 366–7). 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 214 9/11/2015 4:29:33 PM 1 Chapter 11 1 2 2 3 ‘Infinitely comical’: 3 4 Italianizing the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ 4 5 5 6 6 7 Timothy Webb 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 I 11 12 12 13 Shelley’s version of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes1 (known to him as ‘Hymn to 13 14 Mercury’) is a striking poetic success which exhibits many of his characteristics 14 15 and is distinguished by enviable wit, ease and fluency. Although extracts from 15 16 this translation have been included in their relatively short Shelley anthologies by 16 17 John Holloway (1955) and Timothy Webb (1977),2 most critics continue to avoid 17 18 any detailed engagement with the poem, mainly perhaps because they have been 18 19 uncertain whether specific credit should be accorded to ‘Homer’ or to Shelley. The 19 20 Oxford edition which, until very recently, provided the main authoritative source 20 21 for Shelley’s poetic text, and which is still prominently available on library shelves, 21 22 has not helped by placing the poem towards the end of the book and apparently 22 23 marginalizing it under the heading of ‘Translations’. The few classicists who have 23 24 dared to engage with the text have usually preferred to read the poem in terms of 24 25 its representation of the Greek, even its ‘rightness’ and ‘wrongness’; but, although 25 26 this approach has its own undeniable virtues, it engages only marginally with the 26 27 nature of Shelley’s poetic achievement.3 27 28 As a result, all too little attention has been paid to the extraordinary ways in 28 29 which the main interests of the hymn often coincide with the concerns of the poet 29 30 himself. For instance, when the Hymn describes the young Hermes hiding from 30 31 the wrath of Apollo, his half-brother, it is hard not to believe that the translator 31 32 alone was responsible for what seems an identifiably ‘Shelleyan’ image: ‘As 32 33 among fire-brands lies a burning spark / Covered, beneath the ashes coldand 33 34 dark’ (ll. 308–9).4 The Greek poem devotes much space to a celebration of the 34 35 35 36 36 1 37 HereProof and throughout the chapter, the title Copyin italics represents the Greek original, 37 38 while that in inverted commas signifies Shelley’s translation. 38 2 John Holloway, ed., Selected Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London: Heinemann 39 39 Educational Books 1960; Timothy Webb, ed., Percy Bysshe Shelley: Selected Poems. 40 40 Everyman’s Library. London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1977. 41 3 For further discussion see Timothy Webb, The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and 41 42 Translation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976 (hereafter TVC), p. 90. 42 43 4 Throughout this chapter, quotations from Shelley’s translation are taken from PS 43 44 III, based on Shelley’s transcription of the MS draft in the Harvard Notebook, pp. 110–45. 44

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virtues of music and poetry; Hermes/Mercury (Shelley switches between the 1 1 Greek and Latin versions largely in accord with the claims of rhyme or prosody)5 2 2 subdues Apollo ‘by the might / Of winning music’ (ll. 558–9). The child-god’s 3 3 theft of Apollo’s cattle which first appeared to constitute grave grounds for serious 4 4 disagreement is now apparently forgotten, while Apollo remains in awe of Hermes 5 5 and his ‘sly chameleon spirit’ (l. 693), and Apollo and Hermes engage in an 6 6 extended negotiation and mutually celebratory dialogue. Climactically, Hermes 7 7 presents his brother with ‘this music-flowing shell’ (l. 659), the lyre which he has 8 8 so recently invented and from which ‘sweet as love / The penetrating notes did live 9 9 and move / Within the heart of great Apollo’ (ll. 563–5); Apollo reciprocates by 10 10 acknowledging his step-brother’s irresistible capacities and presenting him with 11 11 ‘The beautiful wand of health and happiness’ (l. 710). On a narrative level, this 12 12 reciprocated generosity reconciles Hermes and Apollo and provides an aetiology 13 13 for Apollo’s jurisdiction over the lyre; in the translation, the lengthy passage is 14 14 managed with exceptional grace and felicity so that it comes as little surprise that 15 15 these lines look forward to Shelley’s own treatment of the subject, with appropriate 16 16 sociological and historical intensification, in ‘A Defence of Poetry’, which he 17 17 wrote in the following year.6 18 18 Although the Homeric Hymns are not now attributed to ‘Homer’, stylistically 19 19 they have much in common with the two epics traditionally associated with his 20 20 name. Shelley translated into rhyming couplets a group of shorter Hymns (the 21 21 longer ‘Hymn to Venus’ was left unfinished) in early 1818 before he left for Italy; 22 22 in July 1820 he rendered into ottava rima the Hymn to Hermes, which was much 23 23 longer, more anecdotal and different in tone and spirit. Not only is this one of the 24 24 longest hymns; it also pays homage, not to an established divinity such as Venus or 25 25 Minerva (to use their Latin names, as Shelley did), but to a baby who has just been 26 26 born. Clearly, Shelley’s appreciation of the Homeric was wide enough to include 27 27 in their diversity the Hymns, which had been recommended to him by Hogg 28 28 29 29 30 Except those few derived from Shelley’s manuscripts, all Greek quotations are taken from 30 31 Homeric Hymns, Homeric Apocrypha, Lives of Homer, ed. and trans. Martin L. West. The 31 32 Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003. 32 33 5 During the course of his translation, Shelley uses the name ‘Hermes’ on 17 occasions 33 34 and ‘Mercury’ on 10; both versions are used within two lines of each other in stanza lxvii. 34 35 In two letters he refers to the ‘Hymn to Mercury’; since prosody cannot be at stake here, 35 36 it seems that, for all his Hellenism, Shelley (like Byron) was still affected by the Latin 36 orientationProof of the previous century. Even Shelley’s Copy experience of living in Italy was prone 37 37 38 to produce this result: although there are some textual uncertainties, his notes on the statues 38 at Florence (see below) seem to have included Venus, Bacchus, Minerva and Mercury. This 39 39 apparently surprising tendency in a writer who was ‘subtly generous of the honour of the 40 40 Greeks our masters & creators’ (Letters II: 89) demonstrates how difficult it must have been 41 fully to escape from strongly prevailing cultural practices and assumptions. In suggestive 41 42 contrast, , who lived in a period more directly open to Greek influences, 42 43 used unmistakably Greek names in all his translations from the Homeric Hymns. 43 44 6 For a general survey and for a critique of the poem, see TVC, especially pp. 70–79. 44

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and by the poetic example of Peacock in Rhododaphne and which he ordered in 1 1 Chapman’s translation.7 The Hymns which Shelley had first translated in 1818 2 2 were likely to attract his attention because, like some of his own poems, they 3 3 celebrated natural forces, and perhaps because in their formalities they provided 4 4 evidence of an alternative system of piety; more than two years later and in a 5 5 different country, the Hymn to Hermes appealed to him on many grounds, not least 6 6 its comic and joyful presentation of the ‘subtle, swindling baby’ (l. 317) who gives 7 7 the poem its title and who, with whatever differences, has something in common 8 8 with those irresponsible and capricious forces later celebrated in poems such as 9 9 ‘The Witch of Atlas’ and ‘The Zucca’.8 There may have been a more personal 10 10 reason, too: Mercury had been cultivated and honoured by Leigh Hunt, who even 11 11 compared his friend Shelley to the youthful god.9 12 12 Like many of his contemporaries,10 Shelley was a severe critic of the militaristic 13 13 ethos and both his predilections and the interests of his own work suggest that he 14 14 was likely to favour those elements in the Homeric canon which allowed room 15 15 for the pastoral or the idyllic;11 yet, in spite of such apparent inclinations and 16 16 such persuasive influence, he continued to recognize the merits of Homer’s more 17 17 renowned poetic achievements. This admiration for Homer, and especially for 18 18 the IIiad, is not surprising, and Shelley should be exonerated from any charge of 19 19 preferring for translation a text which was more obviously ingratiating and less 20 20 unsettling. He may well have been susceptible to the tastes of friends like Hogg 21 21 and Hunt, but even some of their emphases must have been flexible since, in spite 22 22 of his stated preferences, Hunt actually published more translations from the Iliad 23 23 than from the Odyssey and the Homeric Hymns. Yet, although his own declared 24 24 preference was for the Iliad,12 Shelley may have found the Hymns more in keeping 25 25 with his recognition that the Greeks were a pastoral people, living in accord with 26 26 nature. For various reasons, this interest may also have coincided with his tendency 27 27 to translate works which had still to be established as part of the canon for English 28 28 readers or which were challenging in various ways (Euripides’s satyr-play Cyclops 29 29 or his versions from Goethe’s Faust are good examples).13 His translations from 30 30 the Hymns, and especially the Hymn to Hermes, were certainly an expression 31 31 of personal engagement and, particularly in the second case, a psychological 32 32 33 33 34 7 TVC, p. 63. 34 35 8 For a detailed discussion, see Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood. 35 36 Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977, chapter 8 (‘The Animation of Delight’), 36 37 pp. 229–60. 37 9 Proof Copy 38 TVC, p. 72. 38 10 For a survey of Romantic taste, see Timothy Webb, ‘Homer and the Romantics’, 39 39 in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Fowler. Cambridge: Cambridge 40 40 University Press, 2004, pp. 287–310. 41 11 A quotation from Anacreon in one of the notebooks suggests that Shelley recognized 41 42 the attractions of an unbloodied muse (cited in TVC, p. 66). 42 43 12 See Letters I: 545; II: 250. 43 44 13 See TVC, passim. 44

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diversion; yet they also gave voice to a view of the world not merely antiquarian 1 1 or scholarly or charmingly recondite but in its way as relevant to the concerns of 2 2 Shelley’s contemporaries as An Address to the People on the Death of the Princess 3 3 Charlotte or ‘The Mask of Anarchy’ or Prometheus Unbound. His ‘Discourse on 4 4 the Manners of the Antient Greeks’, written in the summer of 1818, was primarily 5 5 intended to explain sympathetically Greek homosexual practices as a necessary 6 6 adjunct to his translation of Plato’s Symposium; now his translation of the Hymn 7 7 to Hermes celebrated without any apparent reservation the amusing adventures 8 8 of a trickster and the splendid irresponsibility of a child-god in settings which 9 9 were palpably pastoral and far removed from the urban realities which leave their 10 10 troubling mark even on poems such as ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’. 11 11 12 12 13 II 13 14 14 15 An important influence on many of Shelley’s translations from Greek, including 15 16 ‘Symposium’, ‘Cyclops’ and the ‘Hymn to Mercury’, was the fact of living in Italy. 16 17 Shelley paid careful attention to Italian language, literature and politics and to the 17 18 landscapes and locations of the Italian cities and towns where he lived and through 18 19 which he passed on his travels; but his experience of Italy also provided him for 19 20 the first time with a sense of the south and encouraged him to approach theH ymns 20 21 through eyes which were primarily Italian rather than Greek or English. Even in 21 22 the early days in Italy, he was beginning to approach Greek literature in a way 22 23 which took it out of the study or the library and into the vitalities of the open air. 23 24 An early letter to Peacock14 provides memorable images of the naked poet leaping 24 25 into the refreshing waters of a rock pool. What is most surprising perhaps is the 25 26 appearance of Herodotus in this pastoral setting – ‘My custom is to undress and 26 27 sit on the rocks, reading Herodotus’. Here, like the habit of naked bathing, reading 27 28 Herodotus is an expected and regular activity; but its rightness is expressed not 28 29 just by its apparently unremarkable introduction into a long descriptive passage 29 30 but by its absorption, like that of Shelley himself, into a landscape which may 30 31 carry traces of Wordsworth15 or even of England, but is essentially Italian and 31 32 therefore, ultimately, redolent of Greece. 32 33 There are other examples, but perhaps the most significant is that provided by 33 34 Pompeii which the Shelleys visited on 22 December 1818. Shelley, whose long 34 35 descriptive letter to Peacock16 is a masterpiece of poetic evocation and an example 35 36 of how EnglishProof Romantic Hellenism often capitalizedCopy on Italian opportunities, did 36 37 not conceal his admiration: ‘I was astonished at the remains of this city; I had no 37 38 conception of any thing yet remaining so perfect.’ He was delighted by the view 38 39 from two theatres; he appreciated the paintings and attributed their excellence to a 39 40 mental contagion which was positive and creative in its outcome; and he compared 40 41 41 42 14 Letters II: 25–6. 42 43 15 Letters II: 25–6. 43 44 16 Letters II: 70–76. 44

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the settings of public buildings to the dark enclosures presented by contemporary 1 1 cities, often frustratingly separated from the natural world: ‘in the present case 2 2 the glorious scenery around is not shut out, & … unlike the inhabitants of the 3 3 Cimmerian Ravines of modern cities the antient Pompeians could contemplate 4 4 the clouds, & the lamps of Heaven could see the moon rise behind Vesuvius, & 5 5 the sun set, in the sea, tremulous with an atmosphere of golden vapour, between 6 6 Inarime & Misenum’; ‘tremulous’ in this precise but ecstatic description has an 7 7 obvious connection with ‘trembling’ in the letter from Bagni di Lucca (‘the stones 8 8 and sand … seem, as it were, trembling in the light of noonday’),17 and suggests 9 9 that, in Shelley’s perception, the effects of Italian light were themselves endowed 10 10 with a special emotional intensity. 11 11 Perhaps the most important feature of this Pompeian expedition was that 12 12 Shelley explicitly translated his Italian experience into Greek: 13 13 14 This scene was what the Greeks beheld. (Pompeii you know was a Greek city.) 14 15 They lived in harmony with nature, & the interstices of their incomparable 15 16 temples, were portals as it were to admit the spirit of beauty which animates 16 17 this glorious universe to visit those whom it inspired. If such is Pompeii, what 17 18 was Athens? what scene was exhibited from its Acropolis? The Parthenon & the 18 19 temples of Hercules & Theseus & the Winds? The islands of the Aegean Sea, the 19 20 mountains of Argolis & the peaks of Pindus & Olympus, & the darkness of the 20 18 21 Beotian forests interspersed? 21 22 22 23 Faced with these components of the scene, Shelley once again ignores the 23 24 achievements of Roman civilization by posing a sequence of unanswered 24 25 questions; compare Keats’s engagement with the unresponsive Grecian urn. This 25 26 leads him to an empathetic understanding of the basis of Greek civilization and 26 27 a concluding regret, this time not expressed in the form of a question but as a 27 19 28 lament: ‘O, but for that series of wretched wars which terminated in the Roman 28 29 conquest of the world, but for the Christian religion which put a finishing stroke 29 30 to the antient system; but for those changes which conducted Athens to its ruin, to 30 31 what an eminence might not humanity have arrived!’ 31 32 A similar attitude marks one of his letters from Rome to Peacock in which, in 32 33 spite of his anxieties about the damaging influence of ancient Rome, he pointedly 33 34 prefers the ruins and sculptures to the negligible contribution of Christianity and 34 20 35 the few pictures it has ‘suffered to spring forth from its dark & pernicious Chaos’. 35 36 This rejection of orthodoxies in favour of a system imperfectly but powerfully 36 37 suggested Proof by the remains of Copy was not merely a provocative 37 38 attitude; he may not have sacrificed to the Greek gods in his back-garden, as 38 39 Thomas Taylor was alleged to have done, but his commitment was completely 39 40 40 41 17 Letters II: 26. 41 42 18 Letters II: 73–4. ‘Beotian’ is contemporary spelling. 42 43 19 Letters II: 75. 43 44 20 Letters II: 93. 44

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serious. As he put it in ‘On the Devil, and Devils’, which was written in the same 1 1 notebook as his draft translation of the Hymn to Hermes: 2 2 3 The Sylvans & Fauns with their leader the Great Pan were most poetical 3 4 personages, & were connected in the imagination of the Pagans with all that 4 5 could enliven & delight. They were supposed to be innocent beings not greatly 5 6 different in habits & m{anners} from the shepherds & herdsmen of which they 6 7 were the patron saints. But the Xtians contrived to turn the wrecks of the Greek 7 8 mythology as well as the little they understood of their philosophy to purposes 8 21 9 of deformity & falshood. 9 10 10 The argumentative and deliberately controversial essay from which this passage is 11 11 taken was unfinished and unpublished – hence the refreshingly minimal punctuation 12 12 and the retention of ampersands; but it vividly, if sometimes mischievously, 13 expresses a critique of prevailing Christian beliefs, claiming that the disappearance 13 14 of Greek mythology and the failure to make sense of Greek philosophy was a loss 14 15 to European culture too rarely admitted. His admiring reference in ‘A Defence of 15 16 Poetry’ to ‘the antient system of religion and manners’ should not be discounted as 16 17 an unthinking instance of Romantic philhellenism. As I once suggested: ‘Shelley 17 18 implies that one of the features of Greek civilization which he valued most highly 18 19 was its religion, whose charm, beauty and true spirituality he contrasts to the 19 20 sanguinary history of Christianity, tragically enacted in the wars of religion and 20 21 unhappily embodied in the image of a sadistic and tyrannical deity.’22 If that is the 21 22 case, Shelley’s choice, in early 1818 when he was still in England, of Castor and 22 23 Pollux, the Moon, the Sun, the Earth, Minerva (more properly, Athena), Venus 23 24 (more properly, Aphrodite), and at much greater length Mercury (or Hermes) in 24 25 the summer of 1820 when he was temporarily settled at Livorno, may well have 25 26 been driven not only by a translator’s intimate objectives but also by a desire to 26 27 resurrect and celebrate alternative divinities and to capture the attractions of a 27 28 system which seemed to have been long eliminated. 28 29 Life in Italy necessarily brought Shelley into repeated contact with these 29 30 polarities. A few months after his arrival, he described in some detail the picture 30 31 gallery at Bologna. The challenge is a particularly interesting one because here (as 31 32 elsewhere in Italy) Shelley seems to react as an English Protestant in a Catholic 32 33 country, although he is also a committed atheist who is necessarily offended by 33 34 many of the images he encounters. In particular, his attention is attracted by a 34 35 Guercino portrait of the founder of the Carthusians: 35 36 36 I neverProof saw such a figure as this fellow.H is faceCopy was wrinkled like a dried snakes 37 skin & drawn in long hard lines. His very hands were wrinkled. He looked like 37 38 an animated mummy. He was clothed in a loose dress of death-coloured flannel, 38 39 such as you might fancy a shroud might be after it had wrapt a corpse a month or 39 40 two. It had a yellow putrified ghastly hue which it cast on all the objects around, 40 41 41 42 21 Dawson and Webb, BSM XIV: 96–9. 42 43 22 Timothy Webb, ‘Shelley and the Religion of Joy’. Studies in Romanticism 15.3 43 44 (1976), pp. 357–82 (p. 361). 44

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so that the hands & face of the Carthusian & of his companion were jaundiced in 1 1 this sepulchral glimmer. Why write books against religion, when one may hang 2 up such pictures … 23 2 3 3 4 Although the vehemence of this description is partly qualified by other, more 4 5 empathetic, descriptions, it can best be examined in contrast with those prose- 5 6 poems on Greek sculpture which Shelley composed when he was a regular 6 7 visitor to the gallery at Florence in 1819. Many of these figures were, in Shelley’s 7 8 estimation, strikingly different in spirit from the Guercino portrait, even though 8 9 the comparison is never specifically presented. Take for example his description 9 10 of ‘Mercury’ (apparently so named by Shelley):24 10 11 11 12 Another glorious creature of the Greeks. His countenance expresses an 12 13 imperturbable and god-like self-possession; he seems in the enjoyment of 13 delight which nothing can destroy. His figure, nervous yet light, expresses the 14 14 animation of swiftness emblemed by the plumes of his sandalled feet. Every 15 15 muscle and nerve of his frame has tranquil and energetic life. 16 16 17 This manifestation is necessarily an older figure than that of the ‘subtle-witted 17 18 / Infant’ (ll. 520–21) who is celebrated in the ‘Hymn to Mercury’; yet his self- 18 19 possession and his ‘enjoyment of delight’ make a telling counterpoint to the 19 20 wrinkled and jaundiced appearance of the monk with its repeated intimations 20 21 of the grave, and provide an eloquent commentary on the spirit of Shelley’s 21 22 translation. Perhaps part of the significance of the young Mercury of the Homeric 22 23 Hymn, the ‘herald-baby’, is that he expresses the opposite polarity to God the 23 24 Father, particularly as represented in Italian painting. From his first sight at 24 25 Naples, Shelley had resisted the received enthusiasm for Michelangelo and was 25 26 privately scathing about his representations both of Jesus Christ and of God the 26 27 Father. According to his interpretation, Michelangelo’s Day of Judgement in the 27 28 Sistine Chapel is ‘a dull & wicked emblem of a dull & wicked thing’, while ‘Jesus 28 29 Christ is like an angry pot-boy & God like an old alehouse-keeper looking out of 29 30 window’.25 Not only does this challenge an apparently settled reputation in art; it 30 31 also implies that Christian notions of divinity are far from adequate or satisfying 31 32 and intimates that, particularly when compared to the ‘imperturbable and god-like 32 33 self-possession’ of Mercury, or the ‘immortal beauty’ of Bacchus whom Shelley 33 34 also celebrated, the vulgarities and banalities of Jesus Christ and God the Father 34 26 35 are crudely displeasing. 35 36 36 37 37 23 Proof Copy 38 Letters II: 52. 38 24 Shelley’s Prose, ed. David Lee Clark (1954, corr. 1966). London: Fourth Estate, 39 39 1988, p. 347. 40 40 25 Letters II: 112. 41 26 ‘Shelley’s vision of Greece is intrinsically beautiful but it must also be recognized 41 42 as part of a dialectic. The full significance of Shelley’sG reece becomes clearer when it is set 42 43 against Christianity, Praxiteles against Michelangelo, Paestum against York Minster, God 43 44 the Father against the Apollo Belvedere’ (Webb, ‘Shelley and the Religion of Joy’, p. 365). 44

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III 1 1 2 In his version of the Hymn to Hermes, Shelley emphasizes those characteristics 2 3 which set the gods apart from ordinary mortals. At an early stage, immediately 3 4 after he has invented the lyre, Hermes is energized by a surprising desire: ‘Seized 4 5 with a sudden fancy for fresh meat / He in his sacred crib deposited / The hollow 5 6 lyre, and from the cavern sweet / Rushed, with great leaps up to the mountain’s 6 7 head’ (ll. 80–83). The Greek allows for leaping but, aided by the effect of run-on 7 8 lines, the final version endowsH ermes with an urgency which is not in the original 8 9 and emphasizes a more than ordinary energy: ‘Rushed’ is Shelley’s addition, as is 9 10 the detail ‘with great leaps’ which expands on the original ἂλτο (‘sprang’) while 10 11 maintaining a tone which finds room for comic exaggeration. Not long afterwards, 11 12 Apollo goes in search of his stolen cattle. Shelley writes: ‘And a delightful odour 12 13 from the dew / Of the hill pastures, at his coming, flew’ (ll. 300–301; 231–2 in the 13 14 Greek). The Greek does not actually make a direct connection between the passage 14 15 of the god and the ‘delightful odour’, nor do Chapman and more recent translators; 15 16 but, in Shelley’s imagination, Greek divinity is gifted with special powers and its 16 17 very presence is signalled by pleasure and delight. 17 18 The imperturbability and self-possession of ‘the unabashed boy’ (l. 568) is 18 19 recurrently evident during the action of the ‘Hymn to Mercury’, marking his 19 20 relations with other gods (ll. 517–22): 20 21 21 22 So speaking, the Cyllenian Argiphont27 22 23 Winked, as if now his adversary was fitted, 23 24 And Jupiter according to his wont 24 25 Laughed heartily to hear the subtle-witted 25 26 Infant give such a plausible account, 26 27 And every word a lie – 27 28 28 29 This brief passage suggests that even Jupiter admires the mental qualities of 29 30 his child, although he recognizes that Hermes is not to be trusted; the final line 30 31 develops what is merely implied in the Greek and Shelley, who took particular 31 32 trouble over this choice, seems eventually to have restored in the draft his original 32 28 33 ‘Which he well knew was false’, which does not feature in the final version. 33 34 Even more effectively, perhaps, the self-possession of both parties is enacted by 34 35 the run of the lines which captures with precision the innate irresponsibility of the 35 36 child and the amused tolerance of the father. Shelley is inventively responsive to 36 the challengesProof of his original and presents theCopy unpredictable behaviour of Hermes 37 37 38 with apparent ease: ‘He winked as fast as could be and his brow / Was wrinkled, 38 39 and a whistle loud gave he / Like one who hears some strange absurdity’ (ll. 371– 39 40 3). When Apollo tries to carry the baby, Hermes reclaims control by farting and 40 41 sneezing (ll. 390ff.). Here, even the original Greek is less than explicit, although 41 42 42 43 27 That is, Hermes, who was born in Cyllene and became the slayer of Argos. 43 44 28 BSM XIV: 166–7. 44

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its meaning is clear; the first two lines are missing from Hutchinson’s edition but 1 1 Shelley translated them in the manuscript: ‘He sent out of his belly, that which 2 2 was / A fearful herald of the want behind’ (ll. 390–91).29 Shelley does not capture 3 3 the full force or the amusingly inappropriate phrasing of τλήμονα γαστρός ἒριθον 4 4 (a hard-worked belly-slave; l. 296), which must have been designed to tickle an 5 5 audience; yet, contrary to the apparent evidence of printed texts, even this example 6 6 does not seem to have seriously troubled his presentation of the trickster who, like 7 7 his translator, is endlessly resourceful. 8 8 This last example introduces a potential problem for Shelley, who has to 9 9 reconcile impetuosity and quicksilver inventiveness with the physical and must 10 10 find room for both extremes, sometimes even playing them off against each other. 11 11 For instance, at a relatively early stage, Shelley is faced with a severe challenge to 12 12 his skill as translator when it is necessary to render the passage in which the baby- 13 13 god transforms a wandering tortoise into a lyre (ll. 49–63): 14 14 15 Then scooping with a chisel of grey steel 15 16 He bored the life and soul out of the beast – 16 17 Not swifter a swift thought of woe or weal 17 18 Darts through the tumult of a human breast 18 19 Which thronging cares annoy, – not swifter wheel 19 20 The flashes of its torture and unrest 20 21 Out of the dizzy eyes – than Maia’s son 21 22 All that he did devise hath featly done. 22 23 23 And through the tortoise’s hard stony skin 24 24 At proper distances small holes he made 25 And fastened the cut stems of reeds within, 25 26 And with a piece of leather overlaid 26 27 The open space, and fixed the cubits in, 27 28 Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o’er all 28 29 Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical.30 29 30 30 31 These stanzas may stand as an example of the flexibility of Shelley’s practice, 31 32 his inclusive poetics and his seemingly untroubled switches of tone and register. 32 33 The manuscript shows that in this case the first stanza was composed with few 33 34 corrections, although the second was clearly more difficult. Shelley’s final version 34 35 of all these lines is firmly based on the Greek, even if the draft first version was 35 36 often even nearer to the words of his original than the text which was finally 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 29 BSM XIV: 156–7. Missing lines are restored in PS III: 391–2. For an analysis of 41 Shelley’s difficulties with the obscene elements in Euripides’s Cyclops, see the detailed 41 42 treatment by Maria Schoina in Chapter 9. 42 43 30 The manuscript shows that the second stanza was always a line short (BSM XIV: 43 44 132–3). 44

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transcribed.31 This general fidelity to theG reek original and his disinfecting choice 1 1 of verse-form allows him triumphantly, though with what level of consciousness 2 2 we cannot say, to avoid a fashion which had long since become arch and self- 3 3 indulgent. This fashion for sounding shells (often a metaphor for poetry) and little 4 4 prattlers involved creations in art, interior decoration and book-illustration, as well 5 5 as poems; the resulting odes were ‘coterie pieces intended for readers possessed of 6 6 a special, cultivated taste in both poetry and the fine arts and a quick responsiveness 7 7 to the “gentle passions”’.32 The tangibility of Mercury’s lyre and the detailed and 8 8 seemingly ‘unpoetic’ description of its creation in both the Homeric Hymn and its 9 9 translation happily preserve Shelley from such aesthetic clichés and such instances 10 10 of poetic artifice. 11 11 Consequently, few readers of Shelley’s translation would charge him with being 12 12 merely decorative, or tasteful, or obediently following a neo-classical taste. He is 13 13 particularly at ease in imagining the activities of a new-born baby. For instance, as 14 14 part of his alibi, Hermes makes this fraudulent claim (ll. 350–57): 15 15 16 An ox-stealer should be both tall and strong – 16 17 And I am but a little new-born thing, 17 18 Who, yet at least can think of nothing wrong; 18 19 My business is to suck and sleep, and fling 19 20 The cradle-clothes about me all day long, 20 21 Or half-asleep hear my sweet mother sing, 21 22 And to be washed in water clean and warm, 22 23 And hushed and kissed and kept secure from harm. 23 24 24 Two of the last three lines are added to the original, and the penultimate line has 25 25 been expanded (the Greek speaks only of warm baths); while ‘kissed’ must have 26 26 been inserted at a late stage since it does not feature in the manuscript. The scale and 27 27 nature of Shelley’s success can be measured by comparison with Chapman, who 28 28 translates (ll. 473–6): ‘No infant’s worke is That. My powres aspire / To sleepe and 29 29 quenching of my hunger’s fire / With Mother’s Milke, and gainst cold shades to 30 30 arme / With Cradle-cloths my shoulders, and Baths warme’.33 Here, and elsewhere 31 31 in the poem (for example, ll. 310–15), Shelley is preserved from the merely 32 32 fashionable or the tediously literal by his delighted and empathetic presentation of 33 33 the wayward and irresponsible child, perhaps even, as I have argued elsewhere, by 34 34 a tendency to acknowledge the force of daemons or intermediary spirits which he 35 35 may have recognized in the child.34 His Mercury (or Hermes) is certainly no mere 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 31 38 This is the Harvard Fair Copy, which provided the basis for the text in Posthumous 38 Poems and most later editions. 39 39 32 Benjamin Boyce, ‘Sounding Shells and Little Prattlers in the Mid-Eighteenth- 40 40 Century English Ode’. Eighteenth-Century Studies 8.3 (1975), pp. 245–64 (p. 262). 41 33 Text from Chapman’s Homer: The Iliad. The Odyssey and The Lesser Homerica, 41 42 ed. Allardyce Nicoll. 2nd edn, 2 vols (Bollingen Series XLI). Princeton, N.J.: Princeton 42 43 University Press, 1967, p. 556. 43 44 34 TVC, pp. 71–3. 44

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putto, no cherub with a musical shell. Admittedly, the fashion had largely passed 1 1 by the time Shelley made his version. Admittedly, too, even at the height of the 2 2 fashion, the Homeric Hymn (once described by Joseph Spence as a ‘ridiculous old 3 3 legend’) remained immune, not least because it is too complex to fit easily into 4 4 any of the patterns which might have made it acceptable to eighteenth-century 5 5 drawing-rooms and to connoisseurs, however apparently unconventional their 6 6 aesthetics. In addition to the resistance of the original itself, Shelley’s translation 7 7 is rescued from any risk of sentimentality by the verbal choices which constantly 8 8 inform his version with imaginative energy and make it, in the best sense, a comic 9 9 creation rarely troubled by the anxious and inhibiting claims of a translation which 10 10 is strictly literal. 11 11 These successes were founded on a number of preferences. Although Shelley 12 12 was always aware of the presence of Plato, the Greek tragedians and the epics of 13 13 Homer, ‘the only sure remedy for diseases of the mind’,35 he was also susceptible 14 14 to the attractions of the Greek romances, even if he recognized their limitations – 15 15 ‘they are all very entertaining’, he told Peacock36 ‘and would be delightful if they 16 16 were less rhetorical and ornate’. ‘Hymn to Mercury’ obviously responds to the 17 17 pastoral settings of the original poem – ‘the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows 18 18 / Where the immortal oxen of the God / Are pastured in the flowering unmown 19 19 meadows’ (ll. 89–91); ‘green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass’ (ll. 109); 20 20 ‘shadowy mountain and resounding dell / And flower-paven plains’ (ll. 119–20); 21 21 ‘the water-troughs which ever run / Through the fresh fields’ (ll. 129–30); ‘the 22 22 sacred wood / Which from the inmost depth of its green glen / Echoes the voice of 23 23 Neptune’ (ll. 240–42); ‘High Pieria – / Where a black bull was fed apart, between 24 24 / Two woody mountains in a neighbour glen, / And four fierce dogs watched there, 25 25 unanimous as men’ (ll. 250–53); ‘high Cyllene’s forest-cinctured hill / And the 26 26 deep cavern where dark shadows lie’ (ll. 296–7); ‘the folded depths of the great 27 27 Hill [“odorous” Olympus]’ (ll. 429; 427); ‘the low shore on which the loud sea 28 28 laughed’ (l. 448); ‘the pastures wide / And lofty stalls by the Alphaean ford, / 29 29 Where wealth in the mute night is multiplied / With silent growth’ (ll. 534–7); ‘the 30 30 snowy head / Of white Olympus’ (ll. 679–80); ‘a vale round which Parnassus flings 31 31 / Its circling skirts’ (ll. 744–5; ‘skirting crags’ in manuscript). This alertness to the 32 32 natural world37 must be connected to that delighted recognition of the importance 33 33 of nature to the Greeks which marks his long letter from Pompeii. 34 34 35 35 36 IV 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 Shelley’s responsiveness to nature was clearly linked with another taste which 38 39 was unconventional for an English writer of the ‘Romantic’ period. On 20 May 39 40 40 41 35 Letters II: 360. 41 42 36 Letters II: 213. 42 43 37 According to Maria Schoina (see above), a similar attentiveness to natural settings 43 44 attracted him to the Cyclops and marks his own translation. 44

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1820 Shelley read to his wife Spenser’s Virgil’s Gnat, a free translation of Virgil in 1 1 ottava rima. Neither Shelley’s letters nor Mary Shelley’s journal records a reading 2 2 of Muiopotmos, or The Fate of the Butterflie, although it was apposite to Shelley’s 3 3 own translation both because of its use of ottava rima and because of its gentle 4 4 inflation of a subject which is potentially below the concern of poetry. Spenser 5 5 took delight in celebrating the apparently ordinary, an exercise which would later 6 6 prove uncomfortably challenging for Pope in his version of Homer. Whatever 7 7 Shelley’s reading, it is clear that Spenser left his mark on the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ 8 8 because the poem is mildly archaizing in its occasional use of Spenserean diction, 9 9 most obviously perhaps in the unusual word ‘depasturing’ which also features in 10 10 Shelley’s translations from Plato’s Republic,38 and especially in its employment of 11 11 ottava rima. Even more obviously, the influence of Milton can be traced, especially 12 12 in the stanza in which Apollo threatens to hurl the thieving Hermes into ‘dismal 13 13 Tartarus’ (334–41).39 In these ways, Milton and especially Spenser contribute to 14 14 a distancing effect, by which the Homeric Hymn is slightly removed from the 15 15 present, both as a sign of its seemingly unreachable antiquity and because it gives 16 16 voice to a world which we may recognize but with which we are no longer directly 17 17 familiar. The presence of this unbridgeable gap and the inevitable challenge it 18 18 poses for any translator is expressed, though with a different emphasis and a 19 19 characteristic sense of unreachable and sacred otherness by Charles Olson in ‘A 20 20 Newly Discovered “Homeric” Hymn’ (ll. 15–18): ‘Hail and beware them, in their 21 21 season. Take care. Prepare / to receive them, they carry what the living cannot do 22 22 without, / but take the proper precautions, do the prescribed things, let / down the 23 23 thread from the right shoulder. And from the forehead. / And listen to what they 24 24 say, listen to the talk, hear / Every word of it’.40 25 25 Shelley did not encounter or imagine such explicit instructions but this 26 26 deployment of Spenser, and to a lesser extent Milton, indicates that Shelley 27 27 recognized some of the problems; it also suggests that English models should not be 28 28 completely ignored and that his version could even be seen as, in some way, part of 29 29 an English tradition. Yet in the achievement of a vivid resurrection, the Italian uses 30 30 of ottava rima were clearly a direct and powerful influence. Although the reading 31 31 aloud of Virgil’s Gnat occurred only a few weeks before, Mary Shelley’s journal 32 32 specifically indicates that her husband combined his translation of the Hymn to 33 33 Hermes both with his reading of the Greek Romances and with his reading aloud 34 34 of Niccolò Forteguerri’s Il Ricciardetto (1738; composed between 1716 and 1725). 35 35 This unusual but significant combination seems to have had the effect of enabling 36 36 Shelley toProof see the Hymn to Hermes not exclusively Copy as a Greek poem, or a G reek 37 37 original which had been possessively ‘Englished’, but as a Greek poem mediated 38 38 through examples which were undeniably Italian. Perhaps this interpretation was 39 39 40 40 41 38 For Spenserean echoes, see TVC, pp. 117, 121. 41 42 39 TVC, pp. 119–21. 42 43 40 Cited from The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, eds Richard Ellmann and 43 44 Robert O’Clair. 2nd edn. New York and London: Norton and Co., 1988, p. 815. 44

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heralded or made less unlikely by the example of Spenser; yet Shelley’s version 1 1 is undoubtedly informed by the Italian comic or burlesque tradition and its genial 2 2 and jocular treatment of epic subjects which Shelley encountered in the work of 3 3 various Italian poets, not least in the form of Il Ricciardetto. According to Mary 4 4 Shelley, he read this poem to her or ‘aloud’ on at least 10 occasions at the end of 5 5 June and the beginning of July 1820; he also read Il Ricciardetto (though whether 6 6 ‘aloud’ or ‘to me’ or silently is not specified) on 7 and 9 July, while Mary Shelley 7 7 seems to have read the poem to herself on 12, 17, 26 and 27 July.41 Shelley’s 8 8 only explicit reference to this recurrent reading occurs in a letter to the Gisbornes 9 9 dated 30 June 1820 where he mentions: ‘We are reading Ricciardetto [in itself this 10 10 formulation suggests a more active and collaborative process than is intimated by 11 11 Mary Shelley’s journal entries, which seem to imply her own passivity]. I think 12 12 it admirable [he continues], especially the assaults of the Giants, and Ferrau’s42 13 13 conversion of them.’43 He returned to the poem on 7 June of the following year 14 14 when he read it aloud in the evening, which suggests that it may have become 15 15 a favourite and may even have featured during the intervening period; Mary 16 16 Shelley’s journal only notes this single reading, though it can hardly be trusted 17 17 as a complete record.44 Perhaps, too, the flow and freedom of the original was 18 18 enhanced by the process of reading aloud for which Forteguerri, with his switches 19 19 of register, was particularly suitable. 20 20 Forteguerri is today an elusive presence whose reputation may have been 21 21 seriously damaged for Italian readers by Francesco De Sanctis who harshly 22 22 dismissed his work many years ago as ‘nullità poetica della vita e della forma’. But 23 23 his verse had been sufficiently congenial to appeal toL eopardi, who was Shelley’s 24 24 Italian contemporary although, disappointingly, the poets were apparently unaware 25 25 of each other.45 Forteguerri’s poem shifts between the everyday and the low comic 26 26 style in which he operates in the epic-romantic and serio-comic tradition of 27 27 Boccaccio (the inventor of ottava rima, a writer much admired by Shelley), Berni, 28 28 Pulci (partly translated by Byron), Boiardo, Tasso and Ariosto (46 cantos read by 29 29 Mary Shelley in the summer of 1818, some at least with Shelley, who had first read 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 41 MS Journals I: 324–7. 33 34 42 Alan Weinberg has pointed out to me that the reading ‘Terran’ in Letters is 34 35 understandable but mistaken; Shelley is here referring to a Saracen knight (Ferraguto, 35 36 Ferraù) who appears in Boiardo and Ariosto as well as in Forteguerri, and into the 36 37 presentationProof of whose character the poet (Forteguerri) Copy ‘has thrown the most biting and 37 38 humorous satire upon the whole race of mendicant friars’, ‘The Ricciardetto of Forteguerri’. 38 New York Literary Gazette and Phi Beta Kappa Depository 1.20 (21 January 1826), pp. 39 39 306–9 (p. 307). 40 40 43 Letters II: 207. 41 44 MS Journals I: 369. 41 42 45 For a brief but helpful treatment, see the anthology, Il Settecento: L’Arcadia e L’età 42 43 delle riforme, vol. 6 no. 1, eds Gaetano Compagnino, Guido Nicastro, Giuseppe Savoca. 43 44 Rome-Bari: Editori Laterza, 1973, especially pp. 578ff.; De Sanctis is cited on p. 584. 44

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his poetry in England).46 All these writers presented their version of romantic-epic 1 1 in ottava rima so that, in following their lead, Shelley was also following, not 2 2 so much the example of Spenser or his own friend Byron (though he must have 3 3 been conscious of Byron’s outstanding incorporation of a foreign verse-form into 4 4 English) as that of his Italian predecessors. Forteguerri may have been sceptically 5 5 unsettling but he was less obviously a satirist than Byron, more given to burlesque, 6 6 and more characteristically engaged in what Alan Weinberg has called ‘good- 7 7 humoured jesting’ and ‘exuberant and amused leggerezza [lightness of touch]’, in 8 8 contrast to English ‘wit’.47 9 9 Whatever the poetic consequences, Shelley was alert to the fact that his choice 10 10 of verse-form would separate him from his translating brethren, whether ancient 11 11 or modern: for instance, in a fragmentary preface, he wrote of ‘a blank verse, 12 12 which is ill and easily made by the herd of translators’, perhaps thinking more of 13 13 translators such as Cowper than specifically of those few who had translated one 14 14 or more of the Hymns. Almost as soon as his translation was published, Cowper 15 15 had fallen out of favour. Advising Charles Lloyd on his own attempt at Homeric 16 16 translation, had remarked in 1809: ‘I find Cowper is a favourite 17 17 with nobody. His injudicious use of the stately slow Miltonic verse in a subject 18 18 so very different has given a distaste.’48 This common abdication of poetical 19 19 responsibility Shelley contrasted with the formal challenge of ‘the octave stanza’,49 20 20 although, unfortunately, he did not develop the antithesis, and we must speculate 21 21 what virtues he preferred in making this choice and what objectives must have 22 22 been sacrificed. Two days before he finished his version (that is, on 12 July) he 23 23 told Peacock: ‘I am translating in ottava rima the “Hymn to Mercury” of Homer. 24 24 Of course my stanza precludes a literal translation. My next effort will be, that it 25 25 should be legible – a quality much to be desired in translations.’50 Only a week 26 26 later, he informed Maria Gisborne: ‘I have been translating the hymns of Homer, 27 27 for want of spirit to invent – I have only finished one, the Hymn to Mercury, in 28 28 ottava rima.’51 Once again, the unusual verse-form is mentioned, specifically if 29 29 undemonstratively, as an essential defining feature; this letter also suggests that, at 30 30 least at one point in 1820, Shelley might have entertained plans to translate more 31 31 than one of the Hymns. As late as 25 January 1822 he may have revived this plan 32 32 when he told Leigh Hunt that he had a ‘parcel of little Poems – the Witch of Atlas 33 33 & some translations of Homers Hymns the copyright of which I would sell’.52 34 34 Nothing seems to have come of this, but the conjunction indicates that ‘The Witch 35 35 36 36 46 MSProof Journals I: 211–20; Letters II: 20. Copy 37 37 47 38 Private communication. See also Alan Weinberg, ‘Il Ricciardetto and Shelley’s The 38 Witch of Atlas’. Studi D’Italianistica nell’Africa Australe 3.4 (1990), 4.1 (1991), pp. 32–42. 39 39 48 The Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, ed. Edwin W. Marrs, Jr. 3 vols– 40 40 Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1978, vol. 3, p. 23. 41 49 ‘Sketches towards a preface’, BSM XIV: 117; cited in TVC, p. 126. 41 42 50 Letters II: 213. 42 43 51 Letters II: 218. 43 44 52 Letters II: 381. 44

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of Atlas’, also in ottava rima, must have been associated by him with the ‘Hymn 1 1 to Mercury’, which had so clearly enabled his own poem; there is also at least the 2 2 intriguing possibility that there were other translations of the Homeric Hymns, 3 3 which have now disappeared. 4 4 In spite of his choice, Shelley was aware that this verse-form was fashionable 5 5 and used, for example, by Byron, Frere, Keats and Barry Cornwall; if employed 6 6 unthinkingly or less than precisely, it could be dangerous.53 In a letter of 15 February 7 7 1821 he expressed his views to Peacock, whose The Four Ages of Poetry had 8 8 irritated him into a detailed response but some of whose individual assessments 9 9 he shared: ‘The man whose critical gall is not stirred up by such ottava rima as 10 10 Barry Cornwall’s, may safely be conjectured to possess no gall at all. The world 11 11 is pale with the sickness of such stuff.’54 Barry Cornwall (pen-name of Bryan 12 12 Waller Procter) was, for a time, a poet much in vogue who would become one of 13 13 the backers of Posthumous Poems. Less than five weeks later, Shelley expressed 14 14 further outrage at Procter’s verses and confessed to Peacock: ‘I had much rather, 15 15 for my private reading, receive political geological & moral treatises than this 16 16 stuff in terza, ottava, & tremilesima rima, whose earthly baseness has attracted the 17 17 lightning of your undiscriminating censure upon the temples of immortal song.’55 18 18 As these remarks imply, Shelley must have recognized that, in casting 19 19 his version in ottava rima, he was taking a considerable risk; he was also, and 20 20 deliberately, breaking new ground as an English translator of Homer, though not of 21 21 Virgil since Spenser had translated Virgil’s Culex into that distinctive verse-form. 22 22 All of his seven previous versions of Homeric Hymns had been made while he was 23 23 still in England and rendered into rhyming couplets, the standard poetic form for 24 24 English translators. Even if Pope himself had not managed a version of the Hymns, 25 25 it was difficult, directly or indirectly, to escape from the pervading influence of his 26 26 Homeric translations, which a resistant Wordsworth had once described to Walter 27 27 Scott as ‘poison’.56 The manuscript suggests that Shelley planned to include two 28 28 sentences in his preface, giving voice to his own anxieties as a translator and the 29 29 difficulty of escaping from so powerful an example: ‘This translation is as bad as 30 30 Pope’s – without being as good; that is, it has all its faults and none of its merits. 31 31 I beg those critics who mean to speak unfavourably of it to copy this sentence 32 32 into their reviews, unless they can find a severer.’57 Now, by selecting ottava 33 33 rima, he is, of course, eventually liberating himself from comparison with Pope 34 34 whose faults, and virtues, he recognizes. Yet he still prefers to stick with Pope as 35 35 a criterion rather than explain or defend a choice which necessarily removes him 36 36 from a seemingly inevitable English tradition (followed not only by Pope in his 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 53 For a brief history of this vogue, see TVC, pp. 126–7. 39 39 54 Letters II: 261. 40 40 55 Letters II: 276. 41 56 The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: The Middle Years, Part 1, 1806– 41 42 1811, ed. E. de Selincourt. 2nd ed., rev. M. Moorman. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969, vol. 42 43 2, p. 191. 43 44 57 Cited in TVC, p. 126. 44

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Homeric translations but by other translators of the Hymns including Shelley’s 1 1 friends Peacock and Hunt). Ironically, too, one probable source of influence in this 2 2 choice was English: Byron had read the First Canto of Don Juan aloud to Shelley 3 3 when they were together in Venice in October 1818, while later in the same month 4 4 Mary Shelley read ‘’.58 5 5 Most readers will find that, for all their virtues,59 the versions of the Homeric 6 6 Hymns which Shelley made in England fail to exhibit that imaginative freedom 7 7 or that sureness of touch which so evidently characterizes his translation in the 8 8 ‘Hymn to Mercury’. Almost any comparison will demonstrate a clear distinction. 9 9 Compare, on the one hand, descriptions of the creation of the lyre, the discovery of 10 10 the ‘mystery’ of fire, the pleasurable and idle pursuits of a baby, the effects of music 11 11 and song; and, on the other, resonant but dutiful accounts of Castor and Pollux, 12 12 who ‘suddenly appear / On yellow wings rushing athwart the sky, / And lull the 13 13 blasts in mute tranquillity’ (ll. 16–18), or the fruitful Earth (‘Happy are they whom 14 14 thy mild favours nourish, / All things unstinted round them grow and flourish’ (ll. 15 15 12–13), or Minerva, ‘the Cerulean-eyed’, at whose portentous birth ‘lifted from 16 16 its depths, the Sea swelled high / In purple billows, the tide suddenly / Stood still, 17 17 and great Hyperion’s son long time / Checked his swift steeds’ (ll. 13–16). Of 18 18 course, the Hymns which Shelley first chose for translation are not characterized 19 19 by the comic spirit which permeates the Hymn to Hermes; but, whatever defence 20 20 may be adduced, these examples suggest that conventional poetic diction and 21 21 rhyming couplets reinforce or inform each other, while ottava rima provides 22 22 much greater fluency and, it would seem, a less inhibiting reverence. Perhaps the 23 23 first set of Hymns is trammelled by the relative shortness of the poems while 24 24 the Hymn to Hermes allows its translator to take full advantage of its generous 25 25 narrative possibilities. Whatever the causes and the contributing factors, Shelley’s 26 26 undoubted success as a translator in the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ coincides with his 27 27 exploration of a poetic form which was new to him but entirely appropriate to his 28 28 subject. For most English readers, it is precisely this break with prevailing English 29 29 poetic tradition, once followed even by Shelley’s younger self, and that daring 30 30 preference for Italian models, which marks a new beginning. Here, as in ‘Ode 31 31 to the West Wind’ and ‘The Triumph of Life’ the strength of the poem is partly 32 32 derived from the poet’s bold decision to assimilate a foreign verse-form into the 33 33 body of English. 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 58 Letters II: 42; MS Journals I: 230. On 3 January 1820 Shelley read Don Juan ‘aloud 40 40 in the evening’ (MS Journals I: 340), an occasion which provides continuity with Byron’s 41 own reading to Shelley and suggests, once again, the possible influence of reading aloud. 41 42 For a brief comparison of Shelley’s version with Byronic use of ottava rima, see TVC, pp. 42 43 127–30. 43 44 59 Considered in TVC, pp. 68–70 and in Webb, ‘Shelley and the Religion of Joy’. 44

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V 1 1 2 As Shelley admits, and as he must have known from his reading of Spenser, the 2 3 use of ottava rima necessarily ‘precludes a literal translation’. There is one point 3 4 in the manuscript where he specifically addresses the implications of his formal 4 5 preference. At the top of p. 16560 he writes: ‘The literal is – who ever follow 5 6 or minister to, the Olympian Muses – but without regard to the relation 6 7 expressed by ὀπηδός [follower] may be considered as a convertible term – ’. The 7 8 passage to which this note directly refers is immediately on the other side of the 8 9 same page, and concludes: ‘And I, who speak this praise, am that Apollo / Whom 9 10 the Olympian Muses ever follow’ (ll. 603–4). The Greek text makes it clear that, 10 11 in the original, the roles are reversed and that Apollo is the follower of the Muses 11 12 and not the other way round. Shelley’s note shows that he was aware of the strictly 12 13 ‘correct’ translation but preferred to provide an alternative version, impressed by 13 14 the thought that the Greek word was ‘a convertible term’ but also perhaps taking 14 15 advantage of a convenient rhyme between ‘follow’ and ‘Apollo’. The manuscript 15 16 does not appear to contain any similar confessions, though its evidence does 16 17 suggest that, occasionally, Shelley was exercised to find appropriate versions; but 17 18 even this single instance indicates that, quite apart from the occasionally strange 18 19 readings of his original Greek text, students of Shelley’s ‘translation’ should be 19 20 careful not to accuse him of ignorance or imperfect Greek, even when he appears 20 21 to make a ‘mistake’.61 The manuscript often shows that Shelley first translated 21 22 ‘correctly’ and then preferred another version which he must have considered 22 23 more felicitous, even if less strictly accurate. 23 24 Shelley’s procedures and the danger of passing judgement might be illustrated 24 25 by two further examples. In the first case, when Hermes sings that his parents 25 26 had ‘Dallied in love not quite legitimate’ (l. 73) the manuscript suggests that the 26 27 ultimate choice of ‘Dallied’ was only reached after Shelley had tried ‘In love & 27 28 joy’, ‘Were mixt in love’ and ‘Courted’ as possible translations of ὠρίζεσκον 28 29 (conversed; l. 58 in the Greek), a conundrum signalled by the word οαριsτυs 29 30 (a term used in the Iliad, meaning ‘fond discourse’) which Shelley has entered 30 31 in the manuscript, as usual without breathing or accent (and with a seemingly 31 32 unconventional form of ‘s’); ‘not quite legitimate’ has felicitously arisen from the 32 33 implications of ‘incorrectly’ which also has no precedent in the Greek.62 A second 33 34 example is ‘the ghosts of men’ (l. 341), intended by Apollo as a threatening feature 34 35 of the grim underworld to which the young Hermes might be committed; in fact, 35 36 this is Shelley’s version of ὀλίγοισι μετ’ ἀνδράσιν (among little men, l. 259 in the 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 60 BSM XIV: 172. 40 40 61 See, in particular, TVC, pp. 90ff. and (for Plato), James A. Notopoulos, The 41 Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind. Durham, N.C.: Duke 41 42 University Press, 1949, pp. 572–603. 42 43 62 BSM XIV: 134–5. Shelley’s noting in his manuscript of the singular noun rather than 43 44 the verb-form used in the poem suggests that at this point he was resorting to a dictionary. 44

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Greek); but this verbal choice seems not so much an error as a happy substitution 1 1 in keeping with images of the Homeric underworld. 2 2 This licence allows Shelley to omit various features of the original and to 3 3 fill his version with contextual details which frequently enrich the relatively 4 4 straightforward narrative of the Greek. The Greek runs to 580, Chapman’s version 5 5 to 1,011 and Shelley’s to 772 lines. As these figures show,G reek is naturally more 6 6 compressed; but the Shelley version rarely, if ever, appears to be swollen by its 7 7 own concerns, although there are times when the translation gently imposes its 8 8 own agenda on the original. Shelley is much nearer than, say, Chapman, to the 9 9 spirit of the Greek, but this appearance is also something of an illusion. Close 10 10 comparison with the original clearly shows that Shelley’s ‘Hymn to Mercury’ may 11 11 convey the impression of fidelity: while not restrained by the claims of literalness 12 12 or exact rendition, it is a strong, persuasive and personal interpretation. Shelley’s 13 13 version is augmented by many personal touches and emphases and by the addition 14 14 of numerous placing and adjectival details. Among other things, the first 100 lines 15 15 yield, almost at random, ‘And other glorious actions to achieve’ (l. 16), ‘from 16 16 the grass on which it fed’ (l. 46), ‘And grasping it in his delighted hold’ (l. 47), 17 17 ‘woe or weal’ (l. 51), ‘tumult’ (l. 52), ‘dizzy’ (l. 55), ‘a tumult sweet / Οf mighty 18 18 sounds’ (developed from the original; ll. 67–8), ‘not quite legitimate’ (l. 73), ‘still 19 19 scoffing at the scandal’ (l. 74), ‘In plastic verse’ (l. 77), ‘brazen pan’ (l. 78), ‘lone 20 20 season of dun’ (l. 86), ‘safely stalled in a remote abode’ (l. 92), ‘elate and proud’ 21 21 (l. 93). Apart from one case which is uncertain, none of these examples has a direct 22 22 equivalent in the Greek. Some of these additions fill out the line and conform to the 23 23 structure of the rhyme scheme; some contribute details or adjectival thickening. 24 24 In many cases, though, the addition is much more than the conventional adjectival 25 25 decoration which had become all too characteristic of translations from the Greek; 26 26 cumulatively, it often endows the action with an extra dimension, geographical, 27 27 emotional or linguistic. 28 28 Frequently, Shelley develops possibilities which he observes in the original: 29 29 for instance, he writes (ll. 140–41), ‘Mercury first found out for human weal / 30 30 Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint, and steel’, where the Greek for the second 31 31 line simply mentions πυρήια πῦρ τ’ (firesticks and fire; l. 111 in the Greek); 32 32 later, the single word φηλητέων (meaning ‘of thieves’; l. 293 in the Greek) is 33 33 amplified to ‘of those / Who swindle, housebreak, sheep-steal and shoplift’ (ll. 34 34 383–4). This concretizing and particularizing kind of effect may remind readers 35 35 of Byron, not least in its introduction of such seemingly ‘unpoetic’ diction and 36 36 unglamorousProof concerns; yet, as I pointed outCopy some years ago, although Shelley 37 37 occasionally includes Byronic touches in his translation, his handling of ottava 38 38 rima is expressively and recognizably different.63 He regularly enriches the texture 39 39 of his original in various ways: for instance, from later lines, ‘The penetrating 40 40 notes did live and move’ (l. 564), ‘Clothe in the light of his loud melodies’ (l. 576), 41 41 ‘Was folded up within you at your birth’ (l. 588), ‘Thy power of unpremeditated 42 42 43 43 44 63 TVC, p. 128. 44

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song’ (l. 590), ‘chameleon spirit’ (l. 693)’ and ‘Thou dost alone the veil from death 1 1 uplift’ (l. 763). The lyre is animated by an unquenchable spirit which sometimes 2 2 seems to express the child-god himself: so it ‘teaches, babbling in delightful 3 3 mood’ (l. 649), a characterization which goes beyond the less expressive Greek 4 4 term φθεγγομένη (loudly voicing; l. 484 in the Greek). If it is mishandled by 5 5 those ‘who are unskilled in its sweet tongue’ (l. 653; the sweet tongue is Shelley’s 6 6 invention), the lyre ‘gossips something wrong, / Some senseless and impertinent 7 7 reply’ (ll. 655–6); here Shelley replaced the expressive ‘babbles’, perhaps because 8 8 it repeated the word ‘babbling’ which had been introduced only a few lines earlier. 9 9 As these examples show, Shelley is affected by the Greek, which explores the 10 10 concept of a lyre capable of speech and appropriately responsive to its handler; 11 11 as these details also illustrate, he has developed the potential of his original and 12 12 strengthened the animation of the lyre. In due course, he took further advantage of 13 13 the personification described in the originalG reek, and expanded in his translation, 14 14 and accorded this motif a central place in ‘With a Guitar, to Jane’.64 Curiously, 15 15 Shelley omits or perhaps blunts the phrase in which Hermes admits that the lyre, 16 16 much like Hermes himself, prefers to flee from ‘toilsome drudgery’ (ἐργασίην 17 17 φεύγουσα δυήπαθον; l. 486 in the Greek); his version seems to be ‘Chasing the 18 18 heavy shadows of dismay’ (l. 652). 19 19 Yet, in spite of this apparent reluctance to follow the lead of his original, Shelley’s 20 20 version generally ensures that the lyre and the child who has constructed it are held 21 21 together, even identified, by language which could apply to either. Although he 22 22 cannot have known the pronouncement of Charles Lamb, his translation embodies 23 23 Lamb’s characterization more exactly than any other: ‘Homer is perfect prattle, 24 24 tho’ exquisite prattle, compared to the deep oracular voice of Milton. In Milton, 25 25 you love to stop, and saturate your mind with every great image or sentiment; 26 26 in Homer you want to go on, to have more of his agreeable narrative.’65 Since 27 27 Lamb’s assessment was intended to discourage any imitation of Cowper, it may 28 28 exaggerate the disparity between blank verse and the Homeric hexameter, and it is 29 29 particularly hard to apply to the Iliad, not least to its later books; yet it is beautifully 30 30 appropriate to the poem to Hermes. By capturing the babbling spirit of the lyre, 31 31 and by associating it with Mercury, and more generally with the high spirits of the 32 32 poem itself, Shelley is able to achieve that legibility,66 or readability, for which 33 33 he aimed and to animate his poem with an immediately intelligible and graphic 34 34 narrative flow. His version makes most readers ‘want to go on’. His omissions 35 35 and additions, briefly detailed on this and the previous page, all contribute to this 36 36 effect, maintaining a high level of local interest and a momentum which is hard 37 Proof Copy 37 to resist. This momentum affected even the process of translation itself: although 38 38 Shelley sometimes encountered difficulties in finding a translation which was 39 39 sufficiently exact or otherwise effective, the manuscript recurrently demonstrates 40 40 41 41 42 64 The connection is considered in TVC, pp. 73–4. 42 43 65 Letters of Charles and Mary Anne Lamb, vol. 3, p. 23. 43 44 66 Letters II: 213. 44

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an impressive level of fluency so that many of the most striking words and phrases 1 1 do not emerge from any tangled process of revision or correction but seem to have 2 2 arrived on the page without evident struggle. 3 3 4 4 5 VI 5 6 6 7 Referring specifically to Il Ricciardetto, Shelley told the Gisbornes that he was 7 8 ‘very grateful to anyone who amuses me’. The letter in which he makes this 8 9 admission67 is mainly concerned with anxieties and troubling circumstances. 9 10 Shelley, who confesses that ‘I struggle with despondency’, is unillusioned about 10 11 the comforts life can bring him: ‘The reflection [that he has been a party in making 11 12 financial claims on the Gisbornes], is full of bitterness, as most of the draughts 12 13 are which life presents to me.’ His next letter to the Gisbornes, written perhaps a 13 14 week later, reports: ‘My Neapolitan charge is dead. It seems as if the destruction 14 15 that is consuming me were as an atmosphere which wrapt & infected everything 15 16 connected with me. … An ounce of civet good apothecary to sweeten this dunghill 16 17 of a world.’68 Both his declared need for amusement and his assessment of the 17 18 Homeric Hymn to Hermes as ‘infinitely comical’69 must be seen in this perspective. 18 19 Such a recognition and a willingness to acknowledge the comical elements in the 19 20 Homeric Hymn may seem immediately obvious to admirers of the Shelley version, 20 21 but readers of Chapman’s clotted70 and lengthy translation or of the recent and 21 22 more scholarly versions by Michael Crudden (Oxford World’s Classics, 2002), 22 23 Jules Cashford (Penguin, 2003) or Diane J. Rayor (University of California Press, 23 24 2004) may recognize the elements which set this Hymn apart from the others but 24 25 still be a little surprised by the full implications of the adjective. Although classical 25 26 scholars are usually prepared to admit that this Hymn is necessarily comical, most 26 27 translations do not capture this spirit or generate a prevailing lightness of tone as 27 28 consistently as Shelley. 28 29 In this way, verse-form and Shelley’s interpretation of the Greek poem reinforce 29 30 or complement each other. Hermes was widely known as ‘the little Prometheus’ 30 31 and this Hymn seems to represent a holiday from more serious concerns so that, in 31 32 some ways, it plays over more serious issues in a compellingly different key. The 32 33 same frame of mind seems to have marked ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, ‘The Witch 33 34 of Atlas’, possibly Swellfoot the Tyrant and, at an earlier stage, his translation from 34 35 Cyclops. A comparison of Shelley’s version with its Greek source suggests that 35 36 he was particularlyProof responsive to its ludic possibilities.Copy For instance, the second 36 37 stanza of his translation acknowledges the attributes of Hermes according to the 37 38 ritualistic practice of the Hymns; here Shelley follows the lead of his original 38 39 39 40 40 67 Letters II: 206–7. 41 68 Letters II: 211. 41 42 69 Letters II: 218. 42 43 70 This adjective is employed in TVC, p. 140 (for a larger comparison between Shelley 43 44 and Chapman, see pp. 138–41). 44

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but adds a dimension by turning the already unheroic catalogue into a list of 1 1 compound epithets constituting an unusual litany of praise (‘A shepherd of thin 2 2 dreams, a cow-stealing, / A night-watching, and door-waylaying thief’ [ll. 13– 3 3 14]). This cumulation of adjectives must have caused the translator some thought 4 4 since the manuscript71 shows that the striking word ‘door-waylaying’ resulted 5 5 from a consideration of the meaning of the Greek word πῠληδόκος72 (watching 6 6 at the door; l. 15 in the Greek), and was first rendered as ‘gate expecting’, more 7 7 literal but also more clumsy in English. Shelley responds easily to other amusing 8 8 elements in the original. For example, there is Hermes’s ingenious method of 9 9 concealing his own involvement in the theft and mysterious disappearance of 10 10 Apollo’s cattle: ‘Backward and forward drove he them astray / So that the tracks 11 11 which seemed before, were aft’ (ll. 97–8); and his own deliberately deceptive 12 12 method of progression – ‘And, as on purpose, he walked wavering / From one 13 13 side to the other of the road –, / And with his face opposed the steps he trod’ 14 14 (ll. 275–7). The translation also does justice to other episodes and handles them 15 15 with leggerezza: for instance, Mercury’s return to his cradle – ‘Now, he obliquely 16 16 through the keyhole passed / Like a thin mist or an autumnal blast’ (ll. 188–9); 17 17 ‘obliquely’ is Shelley’s rendering of δοχμωθεὶς (edgeways; l. 146 in the Greek) 18 18 while ‘thin’ is a second thought for ‘autum’, presumably once intended to turn 19 19 into ‘autumnal’, and looks back to the ‘thin dreams’, an adjective earlier added 20 20 by Shelley. 21 21 Shelley is also alert to the comic potential of the juxtapositions of the Hymn, its 22 22 situations and its language. For example, when Hermes/Mercury invents the lyre, 23 23 Shelley records that ‘from his lips he sent / A strain of unpremeditated wit / Joyous 24 24 and wild and wanton – such you may / Hear among revellers on a holiday’ (ll. 68– 25 25 71). This version more or less follows the Greek original, though ‘unpremeditated’ 26 26 slightly differs in emphasis from the Greek implication of something improvised 27 27 (ἐξ αὐτοσχεδίης πειρώμενος, meaning ‘impromptu, experimentally’; l. 55 in the 28 28 Greek), not least by suggesting a Miltonic tradition which might be recognized 29 29 by an English reader; the word is picked up again at l. 590 where Apollo refers 30 30 admiringly to ‘Thy power of unpremeditated song’, where once more the adjective 31 31 has no exact precedent in the Greek.73 In a recent study, Nicholas Richardson 32 32 comments that ‘Hermes’s song is compared to the mocking songs of young men 33 33 at feasts’. Perhaps Shelley does not quite capture what Richardson calls ‘its 34 34 humorous or risqué tone’, or illustrate his comment that ‘The practice alluded to 35 35 in the hymn is that of capping songs in an impromptu and witty way in a sympotic 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 71 BSM XIV: 134–7. 40 40 72 The fact that Shelley writes down the word in the nominative singular, whereas 41 in the text it occurs in the accusative (πυληδόκον), suggests that here again he has had 41 42 recourse to a dictionary. 42 43 73 For a consideration of Shelley’s debts to Milton in his translation, see TVC, pp. 43 44 112, 119–21. 44

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context, with a mockery which could, if uncontrolled, easily slide into abuse’.74 1 1 Yet ‘tumult sweet / Of mighty sounds’ (ll. 67–8), ‘wit’ (l. 69) and ‘Joyous and 2 2 wild and wanton’ (l. 70; where the original has παραιβόλα κερτομέουσιν [bandy 3 3 taunts; l. 56 in the Greek]) are all introduced in Shelley’s interpretation or in 4 4 shadings which bring the poem closer to his concerns; they affect the tone of the 5 5 whole passage, much as the substitution of ‘revellers’ for youths (ἡβηταὶ; l. 56 in 6 6 the Greek) and ‘holiday’ for festivals (θαλίηισι; l. 56 in the Greek) bring to bear 7 7 on it a context which is less anthropologically or linguistically exact but more 8 8 concentratedly unrestrained. Though it may seem extravagant to claim that these 9 9 lines could easily provide a description of the prevailing spirit of Shelley’s own 10 10 translation, the poem as a whole is informed by an infectious good humour, and a 11 11 capacity for identification and witty engagement, not always so obviously or even 12 12 always so elegantly expressed in the original. 13 13 14 14 15 VII 15 16 16 17 Perhaps the spirit of Shelley’s translation and its emphasis on the ‘delightful Boy’ 17 18 (l. 770) can best be illustrated by one short passage (ll. 158–65): 18 19 19 20 We mortals let an ox grow old, and then 20 21 Cut it up after long consideration – 21 22 But joyous-minded Hermes from the glen 22 Drew the fat spoils to the more open station 23 23 Of flat smooth space, and portioned them, and when 24 24 He had by lot assigned to each a ration 25 Of the twelve Gods, his mind became aware 25 26 Of all the joys which in religion are. 26 27 27 28 The body of this stanza can be traced directly to its Greek original, which includes 28 29 the details of sacrificing to the Gods, a ritual practice followed at length by the 29 30 heroes of Homeric epic, and which identifiesH ermes as χαρμόφρων (l. 127 in the 30 31 Greek; correctly translated by Shelley). But the Shelley version differs from the 31 32 Greek in at least two major and defining details which he has transformed to his 32 33 own purposes. The concluding reference to the joys of religion has no precedent 33 34 and, not accidentally, introduces the word ‘joy’, which is not mentioned in the 34 35 Greek. Even more significantly and again unlike theG reek, the whole of Shelley’s 35 36 stanza is Proofbased on a contrast between the cautiousCopy behaviour of mortals (‘let an 36 37 ox grow old’ and ‘after long consideration’) and the instinctive and unrestrained 37 38 actions of divinity. Undemonstratively, but with exactly calculated components, 38 39 the verse-form allows the translator to give voice to a view of the world which 39 40 acknowledges narrative curiosity but is always poised to keep sublimities in place 40 41 by the recurring device of its rhyme and the onward flow of its versification. The 41 42 42 43 74 Nicholas Richardson, ed., Three Homeric Hymns: To Apollo, Hermes and Aphrodite. 43 44 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, p. 163. 44

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sureness and speed of Hermes is expressed in and matched by a verse-form which 1 1 takes full advantage of enjambement and even modifies the potentially satirical 2 2 effect of its final couplet by a deliberate imprecision. 3 3 The stanza shows that Shelley was much indebted to his original but that he 4 4 also interpreted it to the full by his easy use of ottava rima, by his mastery of 5 5 tone, and by the ways in which he described a self-gratifying mentality; such an 6 6 unrestrained sensibility is persuasively charming but, by normal human criteria, 7 7 self-serving and even egotistical since it acknowledges no boundaries. In spite 8 8 of his losses, but with admiring recognition, Apollo acknowledges the divinely- 9 9 sanctioned functions of Hermes which have been listed before and richly illustrated 10 10 by the convolutions of the myth (ll. 697–8): ‘Thieves love and worship thee – it 11 11 is thy merit / To make all mortal business ebb and flow / By roguery’. The final 12 12 stanza of the Hymn (normally devoted to celebrating the attributes of the relevant 13 13 divinity) further emphasizes that the defining exploits of this god fall outside those 14 14 normal structures which define most societies (ll. 767–80): ‘Hermes with Gods 15 15 and men even from that day / Mingled, and wrought the latter much annoy, / 16 16 And little profit, wandering far astray / Through the dun night.’H ere Shelley, who 17 17 wrote these lines with apparently little hesitation, maximizes the possibilities of 18 18 the Greek and in ‘wandering far astray’ even allows his readers a final pun which is 19 19 not in the original but defines a character enviably and unrepentingly deviant.L ike 20 20 Odysseus, Hermes is πολύτροπος, a word which might suggest travelling far afield 21 21 (‘much travelled’) but might also indicate a boundless resourcefulness (‘shifty, 22 22 versatile, wily’); like the Ithacan hero, he is admired for those qualities and that 23 23 quickness of mind which make him a celebrated trickster.75 Shelley’s enraptured 24 24 engagement with the ruins and setting of Pompeii and his hours of contemplating 25 25 statues in the Uffizi may here have reached their perfect point of focus. Surely 26 26 one can detect in this ‘joyous-minded Hermes’ ‘an imperturbable and god-like 27 27 self-possession’ (‘god-like’ not suggesting here a comparison but the sometimes 28 28 surprising behaviour which might be expected from a divinity); surely one can say 29 29 of him as of the statue at Florence, ‘he seems in the enjoyment of delight which 30 30 nothing can destroy’? 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 75 For a discussion of the trickster god, see Norman O. Brown, Hermes the Thief: The 43 44 Evolution of a Myth (1947). New York: Vintage Books, 1969. 44

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02.07.2008

The Neglected Shelley.indb 238 9/11/2015 4:29:35 PM 1 Chapter 12 1 2 2 3 ‘Wrecks of a Dissolving Dream’: 3 4 |Shelley’s Art of Ambivalence in Hellas 4 5 5 6 6 7 Michael O’Neill 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 I 11 12 12 13 The end of Hellas is, given the work’s obsession with cycles, an appropriate place 13 14 to start: 14 15 15 16 O cease! must hate and death return? 16 17 Cease! must men kill and die? 17 Cease! drain not to its dregs the urn 18 18 Of bitter prophecy. 19 19 The world is weary of the past, 20 20 O might it die or rest at last! (ll. 1096–101)1 21 21 22 The triple imperative to ‘Cease’ seems self-directed, as though the Chorus were 22 23 commanding itself to stop its imaginings, its lyric voicings. By implication, it 23 24 serves also as a form of authorial and poetic self-address. Shelley, the stanza 24 25 suggests, should ‘cease’, and so, too, should Hellas. It is as though the work as a 25 26 whole were conscious that, unless it ends and ends quickly, it will have to go on 26 27 confronting the inescapable fact that ‘hate and death’ will ‘return’. 27 28 The lines are among the most startling and most violent of Romantic poetry’s 28 29 characteristic returns upon itself, to adapt a phrase from Matthew Arnold.2 Shelley 29 30 involves the reader in the imaginative process of finding that rhyme itself forms a 30 31 vehicle for ‘return’, the verb provoking thought of the ‘urn / Of bitter prophecy’ 31 32 which Hellas induces itself and its reader to ‘drain … to its dregs’. The metaphor 32 33 is forcefully mixed: the ‘urn’, a vessel of ashes, is also a means for drinking in 33 34 ‘bitter’ knowledge of the future, and Shelley seems to adapt Keats’s own odic 34 35 35 36 36 1 37 UnlessProof indicated otherwise, Shelley’s poetryCopy and prose are quoted from Percy 37 38 Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works, eds Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill (2003). Rev. 38 edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009, hereafter SMW. Page numbers are supplied in 39 39 the notes for quotations from the prose. The author will like to thank Dr Oliver Clarkson 40 40 and Dr Paige Tovey for helpful suggestions. 41 2 Of a passage in Burke, Arnold writes: ‘That return of Burke upon himself has always 41 42 seemed to me one of the finest things in English literature, or indeed in any literature’, ‘The 42 43 Function of Criticism’, in Arnold: ‘Culture and Anarchy’ and Other Writings, ed. Stefan 43 44 Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 26–52 (p. 35). 44

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‘bitters’ to his concerns. In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Keats experiences ‘a drowsy 1 1 numbness’ (l. 1) as though he had ‘emptied some dull opiate to the drains’ (l. 2 2 3), heading towards an oxymoronic state approaching death-in-life; in ‘Ode on a 3 3 Grecian Urn’, he realizes that the ‘urn’ amounts to a ‘Cold Pastoral’ (l. 45) that 4 4 will ‘remain, in midst of other woe / Than ours, a friend to man’ (ll. 47–8), offering 5 5 its resilient, enigmatic equation between beauty and truth.3 Shelley registers an 6 6 outburst of renewed shock at the thought of woe’s continuance throughout history, 7 7 and a wish that the cup or urn of such knowledge might pass him by. 8 8 The end of Hellas, then, encompasses a more nuanced perspective than is 9 9 allowed for by the play’s reputation as a piece of philhellenic propaganda. This 10 10 is not to deny the force of Shelley’s support for the Greek cause, apparent (for 11 11 example) in his co-translation with Mary Shelley of Alexander Ypsilanti’s ‘Cry 12 12 of War to the Greeks’; his evidently partisan Preface, and comments in letters 13 13 along the lines of ‘Greece has risen in this moment to vindicate its freedom’, 14 14 though even here the subsequent remark that ‘Massacres of the Turks have begun 15 15 in various parts’ strikes a subliminally disquieted tone.4 It is not my purpose to 16 16 deny that Shelley sought to throw his literary weight behind the cause of Greek 17 17 ‘freedom’. Rather, I am suggesting that his ethical imagination is on the look-out, 18 18 in the language through which it expresses itself, for the complexities, scruples, 19 19 problems and difficulties thrown up in the wake of ardent commitment tothe 20 20 embracing of a nationalist ideal. 21 21 That the presence of such complexities has not always been recognized may 22 22 throw light on the work’s comparative neglect. Hellas is not exactly ‘unfamiliar’ 23 23 in overviews of Shelley’s poetic career; and yet it seldom features among the 24 24 more celebrated of the poet’s works. Even the final chorus, until recently, has 25 25 been anthologized more than analysed. Certainly, what is comparatively rare is 26 26 recognition of the artistic subtlety with which Hellas shapes an outlook that is 27 27 shiftingly, fluidly ambivalent and complex. Perhaps because it is at once taxingly 28 28 occasional in its detailed topicality and not evidently transparent in its conceptual 29 29 trajectory (an early reviewer speaks in unconsciously Shelleyan terms of ‘a maze 30 30 of inexplicable thought’), Hellas has consistently failed to attract the critical 31 31 acclaim it deserves.5 Shelley, too, may have played a part in the underestimation of 32 32 his work by referring to it with apparently slighting indifference as ‘written at the 33 33 suggestion of the events of the moment’.6 This essay seeks to correct the relative 34 34 lack of esteem enjoyed by Hellas: in its first half, by exploring the poetry of the 35 35 work’s choral lyrics; in its second half, by turning more directly to the work’s 36 36 treatment Proofof time and history. Copy 37 37 38 38 3 Qtd from The Poems of John Keats, ed. Miriam Allott. London: Longman, 1970. 39 39 4 For a transcription of ‘Cry of War to the Greeks’ in Mary Shelley’s hand, with 40 40 corrections by Shelley, see Weinberg, BSM XXII (2): 238–45; Letters II: 280. 41 5 Review of ‘Hellas, a Lyrical Drama, by Percy B. Shelley’. The General Weekly 41 42 Register of News, Literature, Law, Politics and Commerce 13 (30 June 1822), pp. 501–3 42 43 (p. 502). 43 44 6 SMW: 548. 44

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II 1 1 2 In the wake of comments by Jerome McGann, Jonathan Sachs asserts of the final 2 3 stanza that ‘these lines sit uncomfortably with the rest of the poem and make 3 4 the optimistic idealization of Greece difficult to maintain’.7 The view is elegantly 4 5 argued, yet it is grossly over-simplifying to read this final stanza of the last choral 5 6 ode in Hellas as undermining the poem’s previous optimism. For that optimism is 6 7 never single-toned, nor is the ‘idealization of Greece’ ever other than self-aware. 7 8 The point is well made by Robert M. Ryan, who observes that ‘McGann does 8 9 not see that the pessimism of the last stanza is an undercurrent in the chorus as 9 10 it is in the drama as a whole’.8 The lyrical drama finishes on a downbeat which 10 11 is complicatedly at one with and inseparable from its more up-tempo moments. 11 12 Indeed, the close is not wholly different in inflection from the end of Shelley’s 12 13 previous lyrical drama, Prometheus Unbound. That earlier work concluded by 13 14 imagining the need to ‘hope, till Hope creates / From its own wreck the thing it 14 15 contemplates’ (IV, 573–4). Wreckage of hope is the conjectured ground for hope’s 15 16 unremitting creativity. In Hellas, hope is at once under strain and capable of a 16 17 desperate resilience.9 17 18 The stanza brings out how ‘hazardous’ an ‘exercise of the faculty which bards 18 19 possess or feign’ it is ‘to anticipate however darkly’, as Shelley puts it in a note to 19 20 the final chorus, ‘a period of regeneration and happiness’.10 ‘The world is weary 20 21 of the past’, the ode finishes, ‘O might it die or rest at last!’ The last line seems 21 22 to wish to abolish ‘the past’, or at least for it to ‘rest at last’. But, as Shelley’s 22 23 self-aware irony in his note suggests, the poem’s anticipations of ‘a period of 23 24 regeneration and happiness’ are working ‘darkly’, in the dark about what might 24 25 eventuate because only too conscious of history’s darkness. The result is a work 25 26 marked by its simultaneous commitment to a cause associated with political and 26 27 cultural ‘freedom’ (here that of Greek independence) and by its capacity to register 27 28 the obstacles shadowing such commitment; it is a mature bringing together of 28 29 Shelley’s political and aesthetic considerations. 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 7 In his provocative essay, McGann sees the poem as ‘hopelessly divided against 34 35 itself’ and suggestively (for my argument) points to Hellas’s employment of ‘poetic 35 36 counterstatement’, ‘The Secrets of an Elder Day: Shelley after Hellas’ (1966), rpt. in 36 37 Shelley: ModernProof Judgements, ed. R.B. Woodings. Copy London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 253–73 37 38 (pp. 270, 254–5); Jonathan Sachs, Romantic Antiquity: Rome in the British Imagination 38 1789–1832. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 163. 39 39 8 Robert M. Ryan, The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature 40 40 1789–1824. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, p. 216. 41 9 Compare Alan M. Weinberg on Prometheus Unbound, in Shelley’s Italian 41 42 Experience. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991: ‘Shelley, in Act IV, shows how close to 42 43 collapse his Paradise is’, p. 132. 43 44 10 SMW: 586. 44

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For Robert Ryan, the poem’s main conflict is between ‘redemptive’ and 1 1 ‘fatalistic’ ideologies.11 Constance Walker writes acutely about the work’s use of 2 2 what she calls ‘the dynamics of antithesis’.12 My reading has been aided greatly 3 3 by the accounts of Ryan and Walker, but it lays more emphasis than they do on 4 4 Shelley’s quarrel with himself. It seeks to quicken a grasp of the poetry’s art of 5 5 ambivalence, the dazzling rush created by its depiction of warring apprehensions (a 6 6 possible source, too, of the readerly bewilderment noted above). This ambivalence 7 7 incorporates ambiguities, as it displays a ‘simultaneous attachment to incompatible 8 8 or contradictory ideas, or beliefs’, to use Kenneth Weisbrode’s words.13 Crucial to 9 9 the poem’s effects is its quality of near-tragic sensitivity to what is involved in the 10 10 taking of political sides. Shelley finds ways of defamiliarizing what might have 11 11 been a merely partisan poem by a number of techniques, including a focus on 12 12 the Turkish emperor Mahmud and his depressive view of history’s cycles, which 13 13 comes close to voicing and mirroring Shelley’s own misgivings, and allowing the 14 14 viewpoint of ‘the enemy’ to be viewed sympathetically as in Aeschylus’s Persae, 15 15 the immediate model for Hellas. Shelley’s writing attains an inward empathy with 16 16 Mahmud, who alludes to Macbeth (at l. 644 and l. 918), faces the future with tragic 17 17 composure, recognizes power’s ultimate futility (as tyrants seldom, if ever, do), 18 18 and becomes in some ways the dramatic centre of the work’s movement towards 19 19 change and resolution. Moreover, it is a near-inevitable consequence of Shelley’s 20 20 generic choice, given the dramatic scenario he inherited from Aeschylus’s Persae, 21 21 which focuses on the moods of the defeated Persians rather than the joy of the 22 22 victorious Greeks.14 23 23 In breaking up the scenes of Greek plays, and allowing the chorus a voice, 24 24 the ode, with its dialectical structure of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, is a form 25 25 that permits lyric to be part of and participate in drama. Shelley exploits fully the 26 26 tendency of the choric ode to express vacillating emotions; Hellas teems with 27 27 mood swings associated with the formal interplay built into it at larger structural 28 28 and local levels. The three stanzas of the second choral ode, ‘Worlds on worlds’ 29 29 (l. 197), for example, are each 14 lines in length; they might be thought of as 30 30 continuous with Shelley’s experiments with the form of the sonnet, and, indeed, 31 31 the ode, and they contain the shifts and switches of direction virtually intrinsic 32 32 33 33 34 11 Ryan, The Romantic Reformation, p. 214. 34 35 12 Constance Walker, ‘The Urn of Bitter Prophecy: Antithetical Patterns in Hellas’. 35 36 Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 33 (1982), pp. 36–48 (p. 37). 36 13 KennethProof Weisbrode, On Ambivalence: TheCopy Problems and Pleasures of Having It 37 37 38 Both Ways. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2012, p. 11. 38 14 See Timothy Webb’s comment that ‘Temperamentally, Shelley was always liable 39 39 to align himself with the defeated rather than with the conqueror’, Shelley: A Voice Not 40 40 Understood. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977, p. 199. For more work 41 on Hellas and genre, see Stephen Cheeke, ‘Wrong-Footed by Genre: Shelley’s Hellas’. 41 42 Romanticism 2 (1996), pp. 204–19; and Michael Erkelenz, ‘Inspecting the Tragedy of 42 43 Empire: Shelley’s Hellas and Aeschylus’ Persians’. Philological Quarterly 76 (1997), pp. 43 44 313–37. 44

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to both forms. The stanzas are mirrored by the final choral ode (or, technically, 1 1 exode), also, as Donald H. Reiman points out, ‘forty-two lines long’.15 It is as 2 2 though the final ode is continually trying to compose a set of resolving sestets, 3 3 but never obtaining quite the resolution it desires. This is to praise the poetry 4 4 for the art with which it dramatizes longing and the possibility of unfulfilment. 5 5 In ‘Worlds on worlds’, the first stanza sets one kind of everlastingness, endless 6 6 material processes ‘rolling ever / From creation to decay’ (ll. 197–8), against a 7 7 different notion of permanence as it asserts, ‘But they are still immortal’ (l. 201) in 8 8 its rendering of reincarnated figures: 9 9 10 But they are still immortal 10 11 Who, through birth’s orient portal 11 12 And death’s dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 12 13 Clothe their unceasing flight 13 14 In the brief dust and light 14 15 Gathered around their chariots as they go; 15 16 New shapes they still may weave, 16 17 New Gods, new laws receive, 17 18 Bright or dim are they as the robes they last 18 On Death’s bare ribs had cast. (ll. 201–10) 19 19 20 Tempted though one might be to call them ‘souls’, Shelley uses the more enigmatic 20 21 pronoun ‘they’ and in his note refers to ‘living and thinking beings which inhabit the 21 22 planets’ (l. 584), a phrase which opens up the notion of extra-human life. Platonic 22 23 trust in spirit negotiates with matter’s tumultuous passage in the lyric, even as 23 24 the terms themselves (spirit and matter) are deliberately avoided. The syntax is 24 25 at once rapid, moving the sense past line-endings, and open to qualification, as 25 26 when the verb ‘Clothe’ takes on an almost exultantly accidental tone in ‘Gathered 26 27 around their chariots as they go’. The ‘immortal’ ‘Clothe’ themselves, that is, 27 28 with whatever ‘dust and light’ they travel through, ‘dust and light’ to which they 28 29 are superior but by which they are affected. Immortality coexists with motion; 29 30 ‘hurrying to and fro’ between birth and death, death and birth, they ‘weave’ 30 31 and they ‘receive’, creators and receivers of the lives they live, lives that seem 31 32 ultimately snatched from the skeleton-like fate glimpsed in ‘Death’s bare ribs’. 32 33 Such ‘beings’ engage in ‘unceasing flight’ (l. 204), a phrase whose energy recalls 33 34 the lyric’s opening. Notopoulos detects a ‘direct echo from the argument of Cebes 34 35 in the Phaedo, wherein he states that the soul may pass through many bodies, just 35 36 as the weaver may outlive many coats’.16 But a Platonic distinction between soul 36 37 Proof Copy 37 and body is not merely what is offered here. As so often in Shelley, an apparent 38 contrast between ‘spirit’ and ‘matter’ also admits Spinozistic continuity between 38 39 39 40 40 15 Donald H. Reiman, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1969). London: Macmillan, 1976, p. 41 148. The point is also made in Shelley: Selected Poems and Prose, ed. G.M. Matthews. 41 42 London: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 211. 42 43 16 James A, Notopoulos, The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and The 43 44 Poetic Mind. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1949, p. 304. 44

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the two or, at least, a semantic blurring that adumbrates an anti-Cartesian position 1 1 and foreshadows the findings of modern physics. 2 2 The second stanza speaks of the coming of ‘A power from the unknown God, / 3 3 Promethean conqueror’ (ll. 211–12), Jesus Christ. Even if the stanza is mistrustful 4 4 of traditional titles (Christ is not named), it maintains, by contrast with the first 5 5 stanza, a reasonably unthwarted course, as it shows the complexly ‘triumphal 6 6 path’ (l. 213) trodden by Jesus and, subsequently, Christianity: ‘The cross leads 7 7 generations on’ (l. 224). In the third stanza, the Chorus of Greek Women, as 8 8 though unable wholly to suppress the poet’s argument with Christianity, utters a 9 9 Milton-inspired lament for ‘The Powers of earth and air’ (l. 230) which ‘Fled from 10 10 the folding star of Bethlehem’ (l. 231) and from the contrastingly singular and 11 11 monotheistic ‘power from the unknown God’.17 Moreover, in the final four lines, 12 12 the chorus effects a gentle but definite shock of mild surprise by assuming the 13 13 subject-position of those once in thrall to those ‘Powers’: ‘Our hills and seas and 14 14 streams … Wailed for the golden years’ (ll. 235, 238; emphasis added). As in ‘Ode 15 15 to the West Wind’, this chorus combines ode and sonnet to reinforce its dramatic 16 16 articulation of feelings that are by no means single-toned. Mahmud cries ‘woe to 17 17 all!’ (l. 893), and his ancestor the Phantom of Mahomet hears ‘voices … / Wailing 18 18 for glory never to return’ (ll. 867, 869), where ‘Wailing’ echoes the earlier ‘Wail’ to 19 19 suggest a kinship of lament between the Greek women and the Turkish conqueror. 20 20 Thus, to seize on the final lines of the work as though they constituted an 21 21 utterly unexpected cry of hopelessness is simplistic. True, they surprise, but they 22 22 do not fall on the ear as a wholly dissonant note. Throughout the final chorus, there 23 23 are hints of mixed feelings. The opening lines cannot but twin a fresh beginning 24 24 with an assertion of near-repetition: 25 25 26 The world’s great age begins anew, 26 27 The golden years return, 27 28 The earth doth like a snake renew 28 29 Her winter weeds outworn: 29 30 Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, 30 31 Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. (ll. 1060–65) 31 32 32 33 The cadences are stirring, with the three strong and assertive parallel declarations: 33 34 ‘The world’s great age’, ‘The golden years’ and ‘The earth’. Yet all three 34 35 assertions contain verbs that speak of renewal, repetition, beginning again: 35 36 ‘begins anew’, ‘return’, ‘renew’. It is as though going forward means returning 36 to what hadProof happened before. Utopian imaginings, Copy then, involve an element of 37 37 38 nostalgic revisiting, and that revisiting extends to the language of the stanza 38 39 which echoes previous moments in the work, in such a way as to cast a shadow 39 40 over the attempted tone of jubilation. The opening adjectives manage to sound 40 41 almost triumphalist, yet, on closer inspection, to betray uncertainty: ‘great’ may, 41 42 42 43 17 See Milton’s ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’, esp. stanzas XIX and XX, 43 44 describing the ‘loud lament’ (183) made for and by the departing gods of Greece. 44

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as Ryan argues, allude merely to duration as in the Platonic notion of the ‘great 1 1 year’, rather than necessarily imply the distinction that the apparent parallel with 2 2 ‘golden’ suggests.18 That parallel both does and does not hold firm, as though 3 3 one saw a light switching on and off over and over. The use here of ‘great’ shares 4 4 subliminally, on this argument, in the doubt that surrounds the word elsewhere 5 5 in Shelley, as in his sonnet meditation on ‘political greatness’, or, indeed, in his 6 6 brooding over the inner flaws of ‘The wise, / The great, the unforgotten’ (ll. 208–9) 7 7 in ‘The Triumph of Life’: a poem that has an intimate creative relationship with 8 8 the convergence of radiance and darkness in Hellas. 9 9 Again, the reference to ‘The golden years’ summons up a memory of the close 10 10 of the earlier choral ode, ‘Worlds on worlds are rolling ever’, which concludes with 11 11 an evocation of pagan loss at the coming of Christianity’s ‘killing Truth’ (l. 234) 12 12 when ‘Our hills and seas and streams’ (l. 235) ‘Wailed for the golden years’ (l. 238). 13 13 The new ‘golden years’ mean making a truce with the religion (Christianity) that is 14 14 held responsible earlier for their loss. Constance Walker observes that the passage 15 15 which follows ‘mocks the choral metaphor of “golden years” by using “gold” in 16 16 its most literal sense, as Mahmud responds to his soldiers’ demand for pay: “More 17 17 gold?”’.19 The same opposition is at work in the final chorus which instantly brings 18 18 into play the idea of ‘The golden age’, deriving from Hesiod and Ovid, and used 19 19 in poems by many writers, as in Joseph Warton’s translation of Virgil’s fourth 20 20 Eclogue, which looks forward to ‘The Golden age this infant shall restore’ (l. 11).20 21 21 It moves, however, to a near-disenchanted assertion that ‘Saturn and Love’ (l. 22 22 1090) will have for ‘their altar dowers’ ‘Not gold, not blood’ (l. 1094), but ‘votive 23 23 tears and symbol flowers’ (l. 1095), where ‘symbol’, a rare adjectival usage in 24 24 Shelley (and other poets), catches the eye. Those ‘symbol flowers’ might describe 25 25 poetry’s own self-conscious efforts to transcend the mire of ‘gold’ and ‘blood’, a 26 26 familiar combination in later Shelley, speaking of the alliance between wealth and 27 27 bloodshed.21 The ‘flowers’ of poetry know that they are at best ‘symbol’ flowers; 28 28 they are ‘symbolical’ and have a ‘signification’,22 but they are secondary, too. The 29 29 power of the symbolic may invest them, but they share in the condition of naming 30 30 an absence that attends the symbolic.23 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 18 Ryan, The Romantic Reformation, p. 216. 34 35 19 Walker, ‘The Urn of Bitter Prophecy’, p. 44. 35 20 36 The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, trans. Joseph Warton (1753), qtd from 36 37 Literature Online available at: http://literature.proquest.com/marketing/index.jsp. 37 21 Proof Copy 38 For Shelley’s unadmiring collocation of ‘blood & gold’, see his letter to Horace 38 Smith of 29 June 1822, in Letters II: 442. For discussion, see Neville Rogers, Shelley at 39 39 Work: A Critical Inquiry (1956). 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, pp. 274, 282–5. 40 40 22 A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (hereafter 41 Conc), comp. and ed. F.S. Ellis. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1892. 41 42 23 In terms that are relevant to my argument, Neville Rogers glosses ‘votive tears’ 42 43 as ‘“verse memorials” such as Adonais had been to the immortality of Keats’s thought’, 43 44 Shelley at Work, p. 285. 44

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Shelley attempts to represent the new ‘golden years’ as a triumph of Greek 1 1 mythology, yet throughout Hellas he has associated the Greek cause with 2 2 Christianity, in part for pragmatic, opportunist reasons as a means of securing 3 3 Western sympathy for the Greeks. As he argues in a note to the second chorus, 4 4 ‘The popular notions of Christianity are represented in this chorus as true in their 5 5 relation to the worship they superseded, and that which in all probability they will 6 6 supersede, without considering their merits in a relation more universal’ (l. 584). In 7 7 the phrase ‘popular notions’ Shelley implies, as elsewhere, a distinction between 8 8 Christianity’s true nature (about which he is, at best, elliptically tight-lipped) and 9 9 ‘popular notions’. So when he writes later in the final chorus, ‘Saturn and Love 10 10 their long repose / Shall burst, more bright and good / Than all who fell, than One 11 11 who rose, / Than many unsubdued’ (ll. 1090–94), he intimates a new version of 12 12 myth, one that is ‘more bright and good’ than the three groups alluded to in the 13 13 last two lines and glossed as follows in Shelley’s note: ‘the Gods of Greece, Asia, 14 14 and Egypt’, ‘Jesus Christ, at whose appearance the idols of the Pagan World were 15 15 amerced of their worship’, and ‘the monstrous objects of the idolatry of China, 16 16 India, the Antarctic islands, and the native tribes of America’.24 The new religion 17 17 of ‘Saturn and Love’ (emphasis added) seeks to broaden the significance of the 18 18 deities invoked, since ‘Love’ cannot wholly be identified with, say, Venus. And 19 19 yet this new version of past mythology vies with what seems also a restoration of 20 20 ‘Saturn and Love’, when they ‘were among the deities of a real or imaginary state 21 21 of innocence and happiness’,25 as Shelley’s note puts it: a characteristic scepticism 22 22 asserting itself (‘real or imaginary’) in the midst of ardent commitment. 23 23 The motion of going in circles haunts the ababcc-rhymed stanzas of the final 24 24 chorus. The summary couplet in each stanza announces a temporary suspension 25 25 of to-ing and fro-ing, but even here an effect of shimmering ambivalence often 26 26 occurs. Thus, at the close of the first stanza, the fact that ‘faiths and empires gleam, 27 27 / Like wrecks of a dissolving dream’ (ll. 1064–5) invites us, first, to notice that 28 28 some form of survival is implicit in ‘wrecks’ and, secondly, to question whether 29 29 these ‘gleams’ have forfeited any claim to our imaginative interest; as they ‘gleam’, 30 30 do they do more than make manifest the fact of their imminent dissolution? The 31 31 verb here appears to imply the transitory, even delusive nature of the ‘gleam’, 32 32 here collapsing into the insubstantiality of ‘dissolving dream’. Yet in the previous 33 33 semichorus, just a few lines earlier, ‘gleam’ shines with a more hopeful lustre, as, 34 34 indeed, does the idea of ‘dream’: ‘Through the sunset of hope, / Like the shapes of 35 35 a dream, / What Paradise islands of glory gleam!’ (ll. 1050–52). The technique here 36 36 reveals a Proofpoised delicacy of implication: Shelley’s Copy use of the same word to imply 37 37 both paradisal hopes and a mage-like dismissal of ‘faiths and empires’ implies 38 38 the precarious nature of poetic optimism; it extends, too, a sympathy towards that 39 39 which it is intent on banishing since ‘faiths and empires’ seem made of the same 40 40 stuff as ‘Paradise islands of glory’. 41 41 42 42 43 24 SMW: 586 43 44 25 SMW: 586. 44

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That they are confirms the all-important function of the work’s will to orient 1 1 the imagination. Hellas is a remarkable work because it bravely stages such a 2 2 will and allows us to see it confronting the frail grounds of its existence, to depict 3 3 itself, that is, as ‘pavilioned upon chaos’ (l. 772).26 In this final chorus, one can 4 4 see the insecurity of reincarnated Hellenism. Indeed, Shelley’s note is slightly 5 5 at odds with the poem; when he speaks of ‘the idols of the Pagan World’ being 6 6 ‘amerced of their worship’, he expresses in ‘amerced’ his sense of an unjustified 7 7 violation, yet the poem demands some recognition of the claims of the superseding 8 8 ‘One who rose’. Christianity may supersede pagan ‘idols’, but it has brought 9 9 with it complications that cannot be resolved by returning, as the second two 10 10 stanzas of the final chorus do, to ideas of ‘A brighterH ellas’ (l. 1066) or ‘A loftier 11 11 Argo’ (l. 1072), or ‘Another Orpheus’ (l. 1074), or ‘A new Ulysses’ (l. 1076). 12 12 These comparatives seek to reconstitute the ancient world in the modern; they 13 13 echo a Virgilian topos in the Roman poet’s fourth, ‘messianic’ Eclogue in which 14 14 repetition of old themes is seen both as evidence that ‘the Golden Age / Returns’ 15 15 and that ‘there’ll be lingering traces still of our primal error’, so that, for example, 16 16 ‘A second Argo will carry her crew of chosen heroes’.27 Shelley’s comparatives 17 17 betray a dependence on underpinning myths: myths that frequently, as with the 18 18 stories of Orpheus and Ulysses, incorporate sadness and death (‘And loves, and 19 19 weeps, and dies’, l. 1075) or inevitable betrayal and heartache (‘leaves once more 20 20 / Calypso for his native shore’, l. 1076–7). Even reaching a ‘shore’ seems merely 21 21 repetition, a question of embarking on a voyage ‘once more’. In Virgil, as noted, 22 22 these repetitions are ‘lingering traces … of our primal error’: indeed, the Latin is 23 23 harsher in inflection than Day Lewis’s translation conveys, referring to sceleris 24 24 vestigia (traces of wickedness). Virgil foresees that even in the new order old 25 25 imperfections will die hard; Shelley hopes that the return of myth will usher in 26 26 a new order, but, for all his ideological objections to notions of Original Sin, his 27 27 allusion to Virgil sharpens his and our awareness that discarding ‘primal error’ is 28 28 virtually impossible. 29 29 Anticipating the final line of the poem, the fourth stanza intensifies the 30 30 interrogation of myth as the vehicle for Utopian hope: 31 31 32 O, write no more the tale of Troy, 32 33 If earth Death’s scroll must be! 33 34 Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 34 35 Which dawns upon the free: 35 36 Although a subtler Sphinx renew 36 37 RiddlesProof of death Thebes never knew. (ll. 1078–83) Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 26 See M[ilton] Wilson, ‘Pavilioned upon Chaos: The Problem of Hellas’, in 41 42 Woodings, Shelley: Modern Judgements, pp. 228–40. 42 43 27 The Eclogues, Georgics and Aeneid of Virgil, trans. C. Day Lewis. London: Oxford 43 44 University Press, 1966, pp. 18–20. 44

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The move and the formulation are typical of the mercurial life and poetic vitality 1 1 of Hellas. Strengthening the force of his poem, Shelley senses a weakness in 2 2 the chorus’s previous lyricism, and almost abjures what has gone before; the 3 3 ‘once more’ (l. 1076) of Death’s seemingly inevitable script leads him to turn on 4 4 what he has been doing: ‘O, write no more the tale of Troy’. The danger of that 5 5 ‘tale’ is dependent on a condition that seems only too much like an inevitable 6 6 occurrence (‘If earth Death’s scroll must be’). The mythmaking poet finds himself 7 7 in contention with the overwhelming power of another ‘script’, one already 8 8 written and hard, it would seem, to gainsay. Hellas is a poem rich in awareness 9 9 of counter-conditions, other, less positive perspectives. Classical myth takes as its 10 10 central seer, the stanza half-suggests, the tragic figure of Oedipus, blinded when 11 11 able to see, and Shelley would forestall any such fate for himself or for those on 12 12 whose behalf he writes his poem: he would not ‘mix with Laian rage the joy / 13 13 Which dawns upon the free’, where ‘dawns upon’ breathes idiomatic vividness 14 14 (‘suddenly occur to’) into the more hackneyed image of a new dawn. Laius, the 15 15 father whom Oedipus unwittingly kills at the crossroads, is a brilliant substitution 16 16 for Shelley’s first thought, the horrors of the house of Atreus, with its legacy of 17 17 ‘Thyestean blood’.28 The revision is finely alert to the paradoxes encoiled within 18 18 the story of Oedipus: the solver of the nightmare confronting Thebes was also 19 19 its cause and victim. It is as though Shelley detects the possibility of cultural 20 20 parricide in an act of imaginative redemption dependent on Hellenic myth. Even 21 21 here, a further condition suggests that troubles lie in wait, as a spin of the stanza’s 22 22 syntactical wheel brings into play ‘Riddles of death Thebes never knew’; ‘renew’, 23 23 in the rhyming position, is again shaded with irony, as though renewal will present 24 24 the poet with previously hitherto unrealized ‘Riddles’. 25 25 The lyric associates those ‘Riddles’ with ‘Death’, making a link, in the context 26 26 of the poem, with the historical process of seeking freedom through armed 27 27 struggle. It is riddling that the search for freedom should lead to further conflict 28 28 and ‘Death’. And yet the lyric is itself riddling about the nature of those ‘Riddles’. 29 29 They resonate with Shelley’s use of ‘riddle’ in a note purporting to be about the 30 30 second choral lyric. This note’s second paragraph, however, seems to refer less to 31 31 the ‘concluding verses’ of ‘Worlds on worlds are rolling ever’, verses that enact 32 32 the conflict between pagan and Christian worship, than to those that conclude the 33 33 entire poem, which can be described as seeking to ‘indicate a progressive state of 34 34 more or less exalted existence’.29 Whether this be a correct interpretation or not, the 35 35 note has relevance to the ‘Riddles of death Thebes never knew’ in its meditation, 36 36 unlinked toProof the overt theme of ‘Worlds on worldsCopy are rolling ever’, on ‘the origin 37 37 of Evil’. Shelley writes: ‘That there is a true solution of the riddle, and that in 38 38 our present state that solution is unattainable by us, are propositions which may 39 39 be regarded as equally certain.’ He claims the right and duty of the poet to ‘have 40 40 conjectured the condition of that futurity towards which we are all impelled by an 41 41 42 42 43 28 Reiman and Neth, BSM XVI: 202–3. 43 44 29 SMW: 585. 44

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inextinguishable thirst for immortality’.30 But such conjecturing does not mean he 1 1 is able to forsake the sense that modern times will pose new ‘Riddles’, and Hellas 2 2 gains greatly in emotional force and intellectual integrity from that fact. 3 3 One such riddle is addressed in the next stanza, with its opening gambit of 4 4 imagining ‘Another Athens’ (l. 1084) and subsequent denial of its capacity to 5 5 last: this born-again Athens will ‘leave, if nought so bright may live, / All earth 6 6 can take or Heaven can give’ (ll. 1088–9). Yeats’s ironic reworking of these 7 7 Virgilian-influenced lines in ‘Two Songs from a Play’ (‘Another Troy must rise 8 8 and set, / Another lineage feed the crow’) brings out, one might argue, what in 9 9 Shelley are potentially troublesome undercurrents.31 Shelley’s language is again 10 10 operating with maximum concatenated force. So, ‘Heaven’ avoids the polemical 11 11 downgrading inflicted on it inPrometheus Unbound, in which the first act finishes, 12 12 ‘Earth can console, Heaven can torment no more’ (I, 820). There, ‘Heaven’ serves, 13 13 in effect, as code for ‘God’, thought of as a tyrannical Jupiter-figure; in Hellas, 14 14 Shelley first wrote ‘God’, then replaced the word with ‘Heaven’, aligning it with 15 15 ‘earth’, as benign co-executors of the new Athens’s bequest.32 Once more, the 16 16 idea of the legacy appears; the thing itself cannot last; what can survive is ‘All 17 17 earth can take or Heaven can give’, and while the stanza ends with the idea of 18 18 a giving, it feels like a compensation; the two rhyme-words – ‘live’ and ‘give’ – 19 19 exist in a sharply contrapuntal relationship. The idea of legacy is there in the verb 20 20 ‘leave’, glossed by the Shelley Concordance in this instance as meaning ‘leave 21 21 behind, bequeathe [sic], let remain’, but also building into itself, as the condition 22 22 for any such leaving, the fact that there must be a leaving that is a departing from 23 23 or abandonment (the Concordance’s first meaning for the verb is ‘depart from or 24 24 abandon a person’). It has, moreover, a greater force for drawing on an earlier, 25 25 comparable use of the word, in the initial full choral song, where Shelley writes 26 26 the typically Janus-faced lines, ‘Let Freedom leave, where’er she flies, / A Desert 27 27 or a Paradise’ (ll. 90–91): a ‘Desert’ if the leaving is solely an abandonment, a 28 28 ‘Paradise’ if the leaving is a legacy. 29 29 In Hellas Shelley suggests two possibilities of redemptive, spiritual meaning: 30 30 one is the contradiction-ridden invocation of a re-created Hellenism which 31 31 reaches eloquent and self-deconstructing heights in the final chorus; the other is 32 32 the spectral glimpse of what Ryan calls a ‘pure Christianity’ which is in his view 33 33 gestured towards at the close of the third chorus:33 34 34 35 In sacred Athens, near the fane 35 36 Of Wisdom, Pity’s altar stood: 36 37 ServeProof not the unknown God in vain, Copy 37 38 But pay that broken shrine again, 38 39 Love for hate and tears for blood. (ll. 733–7) 39 40 40 41 30 SMW: 585. 41 42 31 W.B. Yeats, Poems, ed. Daniel Albright. London: Dent, 1990. 42 43 32 BSM XVI: 204–5. 43 44 33 Ryan, The Romantic Reformation, p. 212. 44

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The ‘unknown God’, alluding to Paul’s reproach to the ‘men of Athens’ for their 1 1 ‘too superstitious’ worship of ‘THE UNKNOWN GOD’ (Acts 17: 22, 23), is, 2 2 on Ryan’s reading, the deity who presides over a ‘religion that had never yet 3 3 existed on earth and perhaps never could’.34 Whether this religion is a version of 4 4 Christianity rather than a purified adaptation of Greek thought is more arguable 5 5 than Ryan allows, especially in view of the locale’s description as ‘sacred Athens’ 6 6 (emphasis added). Typically, however, Shelley turns his source against itself, 7 7 apparently reinstating the value of serving ‘the unknown God’, a value which 8 8 Paul has questioned. And even more typically he opens his own critique to further 9 9 self-interrogation as his syntax allows for a double reading of the line ‘Serve not 10 10 the unknown God in vain’. This might mean: ‘Do not serve the unknown God 11 11 vainly but do so in appropriate ways’; or it might mean: ‘Do not undertake the vain 12 12 labour of serving the unknown God since such a God belongs with the “poisonous 13 13 names” (l. 53) rejected in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.’ The ‘shrine’ (of ‘Pity’) 14 14 may be ‘broken’ as the scene of previously ‘broken’ vows, or it may be ‘broken’ 15 15 in the sense of being overturned. These uncertainties do not undercut the pleading 16 16 that ‘hate’ should be paid with ‘Love’, ‘blood’ with ‘tears’. But they show that 17 17 such pleading has as its ultimate sanction less a divine commandment than a 18 18 self-begotten imperative, such as seems at work propelling the ‘they of Athens 19 19 and Jerusalem’ (l. 134) in ‘The Triumph of Life’, the unfinished poem on which 20 20 Shelley would shortly embark in 1822. 21 21 22 22 23 III 23 24 24 25 Hellas is a lyrical drama that immerses itself in time, even as it longs for a conquest 25 26 over cyclical temporality. Written when the outcome of the Greek rebellion against 26 27 Ottoman rule was uncertain, since the rebellion’s initial victories were clouded 27 28 by the fact that the western powers were pursuing a policy of non-intervention, 28 29 the poet casts the work as one that cannot wholly follow the completed design 29 30 of the ‘first model of my conception’, the ‘Persae of Aeschylus’ and supply a 30 31 ‘catastrophe parallel to the return of Xerxes and the desolation of the Persians’.35 31 32 Shelley wished, as Kenneth Neill Cameron has it, to publish Hellas quickly in 32 33 order ‘to add his voice effectively to the already considerable chorus of opposition 33 34 to Castlereagh’s non-intervention policy’.36 But Cameron’s word ‘chorus’ reminds 34 35 us that Shelley’s choice of literary genre, lyrical drama, involves the use of choral 35 36 lyrics thatProof do not simply oppose, but explore Copywhat it means to oppose. 36 37 ‘I have’, Shelley asserts in his Preface, ‘contented myself with exhibiting 37 38 a series of lyric pictures, and with having wrought upon the curtain of futurity, 38 39 which falls upon the unfinished scene, such figures of indistinct and visionary 39 40 40 41 34 Ryan, The Romantic Reformation, p. 212. 41 42 35 SMW: 548. 42 43 36 Kenneth Neill Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard 43 44 University Press, 1974, p. 379. 44

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delineation as suggest the final triumph of the Greek cause as a portion of the 1 1 cause of civilization and social improvement’.37 The ‘curtain of futurity’ recalls 2 2 Shelley’s phrasing in ‘A Defence of Poetry’. There, he says that whether poetry 3 3 ‘spreads its own figured curtain or withdraws life’s dark veil from before the scene 4 4 of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being’.38 This formulation 5 5 waives as relatively unimportant the question of whether poetry finds or bestows a 6 6 meaning. Yet, in Hellas, the question comes to the fore. If the ‘curtain of futurity’ 7 7 is virtually the same thing as poetry’s ‘own figured curtain’, does the poet do 8 8 more than express pious hopes concerning ‘the cause of civilization and social 9 9 improvement’? In asking that very question, albeit usually at an implicit, even at 10 10 times subliminal level, Hellas ceases to be ‘a mere improvise’ which ‘derives its 11 11 interest … solely from the intense sympathy which the Author feels with the cause 12 12 he would celebrate’,39 and becomes a poem that reflects on its status as a ‘figured 13 13 curtain’, and thus on the nature of a poetry that would reshape history into an 14 14 image of its own desires. 15 15 The description of the work as a ‘mere improvise’ may seem wryly self- 16 16 deprecating. But Hellas has something of an improvisatory quality, for all the 17 17 symmetry of its carefully plotted imbalance between four choral sections and three 18 18 blank-verse episodes, in the very sense it gives of committing its hopes, aspirations 19 19 and fears to the mercy of testingly intricate formal structures. An example occurs 20 20 in the opening sequence. Interweaving the voices of ‘Greek Captive Women’ and 21 21 an Indian slave caring for the sleeping Mahmud, Shelley arranges the episode 22 22 with skill and art; it emerged from (and replaced) painstaking preliminary drafts 23 23 of what Reiman and Neth call the ‘Discarded lyric dialogue in the Harem’. Of 24 24 these drafts, they note in terms relevant to the present essay that ‘The complexity 25 25 of the argument in this rejected passage … makes it difficult to say in every case 26 26 which speaker is taking which side of the argument’.40 At the same time, in the 27 27 final version, Shelley sweeps his fingers across the lyric strings with a deft, light 28 28 rapidity. The word ‘sleep’ recurs, but it takes on different inflections from the 29 29 different singers. The Greek Captive Women point up the sinister suggestions of 30 30 ‘sleep’, understood as an elegiac metaphor for the killing of the Greek soldiers 31 31 ‘Who now keep / That calm sleep / Whence none may wake, where none shall 32 32 weep’ (ll. 18–20). The Indian slave uses the same rhyme, but, reversing it, ‘would 33 33 live to weep, / So thou [Mahmoud] mightst win one hour of quiet sleep’ (ll. 25–6). 34 34 As the dramatic poem unfolds, it displays impressive artistry in its refusal 35 35 to propagandize. The chorus of Greek Women affirms the prospect of waking: 36 36 while ‘Tyrants sleep, let Freedom wake’ (l. 30), it says, and invokes the notion of 37 Proof Copy 37 powerful ‘words which, like secret fire, shall flow’ (l. 32). But immediately the 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 37 SMW: 548–9. 41 42 38 SMW: 698. 42 43 39 SMW: 548. 43 44 40 BSM XVI: xxxix. 44

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single choral song splits into semichoral lyrics which problematize the idea of 1 1 easy access to words that will function like ‘secret fire’: 2 2 3 SEMICHORUS 1 3 4 Life may change, but it may fly not; 4 5 Hope may vanish, but can die not; 5 6 Truth be veiled, but still it burneth; 6 7 Love repulsed, – but it returneth 7 8 8 9 SEMICHORUS 2 9 10 Yet were life a charnel where 10 Hope lay coffined with Despair; 11 11 Yet were truth a sacred lie, 12 12 Love were lust – 13 13 14 SEMICHORUS 1 14 15 If Liberty 15 16 Lent not life its soul of light, 16 17 Hope its of delight, 17 18 Truth its prophet’s robe to wear, 18 19 Love its power to give and bear. (ll. 34–45) 19 20 20 Much of the work’s self-challenging and arduous clinging to optimism is apparent 21 21 in this triadic lyric, with its affirmative thesis, undercutting antithesis, and 22 22 conditionally hopeful synthesis. Cameron is right to describe the poem as made 23 23 up of ‘deceptively tenuous lines’.41 Indeed, tenuousness here has its own tenacity. 24 24 Shelley is prepared to confront the possibility that ‘Truth’ might be a ‘sacred lie’ in 25 25 the second quatrain when a doubt-tinged ‘If’ momentarily but memorably subverts 26 26 the difficult commitment maintained in the first semichorus’s opening lines. The 27 27 incomplete grammar mimed here is an indication of the indeterminacy running 28 28 through the lyrical drama; throughout, one finds a sense of incompleteness that 29 29 both hints at possible failure and spurs on to renewed hope. The movement of the 30 30 verse is so light it is easy to underestimate the embattled and affecting depth of 31 31 engagement with emotional opposites here. The poetry uses abstractions not in a 32 32 tired, worn way, but to suggest how they might seem worn and tired, how ‘Hope’ 33 33 might be ‘coffined with Despair’, were it not for the intervention of ‘Liberty’, with 34 34 its transforming gifts and metaphorical persuasions: ‘soul of light’, ‘iris of delight’, 35 35 and ‘prophet’s robe’. In the draft version of the final line, Shelley crossed out ‘its 36 36 power to Proofgive and bear’ and replaced it with Copy‘flowers to give & thorns to bear’. 42 37 37 It may be that the return to the first version is a recognition that metaphor itself is 38 38 rolling ever from creation to decay, and that the ‘power to give and bear’ needs 39 39 to be restated in an unadorned way. That, in turn, is an instance of the glinting 40 40 restlessness that shines off the poetry in Hellas; it is as though the work’s language 41 41 42 42 43 41 Cameron, Shelley: The Golden Years, p. 382. 43 44 42 BSM XVI: 172–3. 44

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were a double-edged blade flashing out dazzling and often opposed figures from 1 1 imaginative space. First ‘Liberty’ breathes new life into potentially hackneyed 2 2 abstractions; then, as that new life threatens to become stylized, the verse switches 3 3 back to a less figurative idiom, in the trust that, by this stage, the reader, having 4 4 followed the switches of trajectory, will sense the enhanced significance of words 5 5 such as ‘give and bear’. 6 6 As though the poetry has survived a perilous passage of self-searching, the 7 7 chorus embarks on a lyric narrative of Freedom’s course. The poetry assumes a 8 8 greater confidence, its metre shifting from nervy trochees into more stabilized 9 9 iambs that, after establishing themselves as a norm, can accommodate further 10 10 trochaic lines (ll. 52–3), conferring on the trochees an air that is, this time, aspiring 11 11 rather than anxiously yearning: 12 12 13 In the great morning of the world, 13 14 The spirit of God with might unfurled 14 15 The flag of Freedom over Chaos, 15 16 And all its banded anarchs fled 16 17 Like vultures frighted from Imaus 17 18 Before an earthquake’s tread. – 18 19 So from Time’s tempestuous dawn 19 20 Freedom’s splendour burst and shone: – (ll. 46–53) 20 21 21 In this fascinating rewriting of Genesis, Shelley locates a space between orthodoxy 22 22 and transgression. As he identifies the cause of ‘Freedom’ with ‘The spirit ofG od’, 23 23 he quietly enhances the significance of the former. His phrase treads a fine line; 24 24 it allows for a double reading of ‘The spirit of God’ as the Holy Spirit and a 25 25 more abstract sense of divinity’s disembodied essence. Yet, reining in any too 26 26 subversive a rewriting, Shelley suggests, through an allusion to Paradise Lost 27 27 (Satan is compared in Book III, line 431, to ‘a vulture on Imaus bred’), that he 28 28 is reading Milton’s epic in an orthodox spirit. At this point, as history bursts into 29 29 it, the poem bursts into history (‘Time’s tempestuous dawn’) and into something 30 30 close to the charting of libertarian energies associated with Shelley’s own version 31 31 of the progress poem in ‘Ode to Liberty’. Trochees, here, are the vehicle for a new 32 32 access of creative energy: ‘Freedom’s splendour burst and shone’. But the verbs 33 33 are in the past tense and one of them – ‘burst’ – reveals a doubleness characteristic 34 34 of the work; as in its gerundival form later on where the ‘Worlds on worlds’ are 35 35 ‘bubbles on a river / Sparkling, bursting, borne away’ (ll. 199–200), ‘burst’ can 36 36 mean ‘suddenly manifest’ or ‘vanish’, an ambiguity much more present than it is 37 Proof Copy 37 when it ghosts the close of ‘England in 1819’. Shelley imagines how ‘a glorious 38 38 Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day’ (ll. 13–14), his primary 39 39 meaning being, as the Concordance suggests, ‘break forth’, though that ‘breaking 40 40 forth’ may hint at a fizzling out. In Hellas the double meaning of ‘burst’ exists 41 41 in a latent state in ‘burst and shone’, where the meaning ‘suddenly manifest’ is 42 42 uppermost because of the subsequent ‘shone’, even as ‘and’ need not necessarily 43 43 imply temporal sequence: that is, the bubbles may have vanished and shone in the 44 44

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same instant. This latent doubleness then moves closer to the surface in ‘Sparkling, 1 1 bursting’, where the position of ‘bursting’ (and the subsequent ‘borne away’) lends 2 2 force to a reading that emphasizes ephemerality, de-materialization.43 3 3 Subliminally this ambiguity heralds the recognition that the progress of Freedom 4 4 is complex and interrupted, as the rest of the chorus reveals, before the entire 5 5 opening sequence is rounded off by a return to the semichoral vacillations which 6 6 preceded the full ode. The opening sequence concludes with a note of foreboding 7 7 about what would happen were ‘Freedom’ to experience ‘Annihilation’ (l. 106) 8 8 rather than ‘resurrection’ (l. 100), the latter term preceding the former rather than 9 9 following it, as one might expect in a work that seems, in places, to entertain 10 10 transformative hope. The first semichorus’s aghast ‘If Annihilation’ completes 11 11 itself in the second semichorus’s lines, lines that use ‘her’ to refer to ‘Greece’ (see 12 12 ll. 97, 99) while reminding us the same word has been used before for ‘Freedom’ 13 13 (see ll. 90, 93), thus uniting the nation and the concept: ‘Dust let her glories be! / 14 14 And a name and nation / Be forgotten, Freedom, with thee!’ (ll. 107–9).44 The form 15 15 of the utterance has an oracle’s air of inevitability, as though a dismal vision had 16 16 been summoned into being as an admonitory alternative to the work’s best hopes. 17 17 There is a note there, in the ecstatic submission to the idea of failure, that 18 18 recalls Yeats’s description of Demogorgon as thrust into being ‘by that something 19 19 in [Shelley] which again and again forced him to balance the object of desire 20 20 conceived as miraculous and superhuman, with nightmare’.45 This may be a touch 21 21 melodramatic, but, as Harold Bloom remarks, Shelley needed such a figure as ‘the 22 22 god of scepticism, and thus the preceptor of our appalling freedom to imagine 23 23 well or badly’.46 Awareness of this ‘appalling freedom’ informs the language and 24 24 mode of Shelley’s second lyrical drama. It explains his switch of genre from that 25 25 adopted in the preliminary ‘Prologue in Heaven’, in which, influenced by the 26 26 openings of Goethe’s Faust and the Book of Job, Shelley places the fight forG reek 27 27 independence in a supra-human context.47 In this earlier version, the struggles of 28 28 men are viewed with lofty detachment from the ramparts of eternity. Instead, in the 29 29 30 30 31 43 For stimulating discussion of ‘bursting’ in Shelley, see Argyros I. Protopapas, 31 32 Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Poetic Science: His Visionary Enterprise and the Crisis of Self- 32 33 Consciousness. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2013, passim. 33 34 44 For relevant commentary, see Jeffrey N. Cox’s comment, in relation to Hellas, that 34 35 ‘A free Greece will be a wonderful thing; it will not be the millennium’, ‘The Dramatist’, 35 36 in The Cambridge Companion to Shelley, ed. Timothy Morton. Cambridge: Cambridge 36 UniversityProof Press, 2006, pp. 65–84 (p. 77). Copy 37 37 45 38 W.B. Yeats, ‘Prometheus Unbound’ (1933), in Essays and Introductions. London: 38 Macmillan, 1961, p. 420. 39 39 46 Harold Bloom, ‘The Unpastured Sea: An Introduction to Shelley’, in The Ringers 40 40 in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971, 41 p. 99. 41 42 47 See Cian Duffy, ‘Percy Shelley’s other “lyrical drama” and the inception of Hellas 42 43 (1822)’, forthcoming in Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, for a re-contextualization 43 44 of the so-called ‘Prologue’ and of the poem’s composition. 44

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finished lyrical drama, Shelley brings forward no such extra-human speaker. The 1 1 nearest thing to a seer or prophet in the work, Ahasuerus is distinctly human in his 2 2 claims, accorded at best ‘a sort of natural magic’ in his dealings with Mahmud, 3 3 the Turkish emperor, and described as ‘disclaiming all pretension, or even belief, 4 4 in supernatural agency’.48 From this perspective even the Greek women’s earlier 5 5 trust in ‘the Spirit of God’ may seem metaphorical, rather than metaphysical. If the 6 6 Phantom of Mahomet the Second appears, it does so to a mind that has wrought 7 7 upon itself. It is as though Mahmud were interiorizing imaginatively, through 8 8 Ahasuerus’s promptings, the account of the fall of Constantinople to Mahomet 9 9 provided by Gibbon in his Decline and Fall, a passage to which Shelley directs 10 10 us in a note. 11 11 Ahasuerus lures Mahmud into imaginative empathy with the past, so that 12 12 the latter can question Mahomet about ‘The written fortunes of thy house and 13 13 faith’ (l. 809), and especially about how power won through violence must 14 14 inevitably succumb to violent overthrow, ‘How what was born in blood must die’ 15 15 (l. 811). Ahasuerus, one might argue, does not so much voice his own belief in 16 16 the inevitability of overthrow as evoke Mahmoud’s fear of such a thing.49 Yet as 17 17 Mahmoud describes ‘The sound / As of the assault of an imperial city’ (ll. 814– 18 18 15), and embarks on a Gibbon-inspired evocation of war’s horror, he articulates 19 19 the major threat to optimism about the current struggle, the fear that it, too, will be 20 20 ‘born in blood’ and thus ‘must die’. The text shadows its hopes with fears. 21 21 Gibbon’s account of the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 (Shelley 22 22 mistakenly gives the date as two years later) is a quietly virtuosic demonstration 23 23 of the horror of warfare and the ease with which the great work of time can be 24 24 overthrown. Among other things, he suggests the brutal menace of successful 25 25 military strategy; of the Turkish tactics, he writes: ‘the similitude of a twined or 26 26 twisted thread has been applied to the closeness and continuity of their line of 27 27 attack’; of the decisive assault, he asserts: ‘in the uniform and odious pictures of 28 28 a general assault, all is blood and horror and confusion; nor shall I strive, at the 29 29 distance of three centuries and a thousand miles, to delineate a scene of which 30 30 there could be no spectators, and of which the actors themselves were incapable 31 31 of forming any just or adequate idea.’50 It is hard not to link these quotations with 32 32 33 33 34 48 SMW: 586. 34 35 49 For excellent commentary on the way in which ‘Ahasuerus shatters Mahmud’s 35 36 assumptions and convictions and thrusts him into the state of aporia’, see E. Douka 36 37 Kabitoglou,Proof ‘“The Name of Freedom”: A Hermeneutic Copy Reading of Hellas’, in Shelley: 37 38 Poet and Legislator of the World, eds Betty T. Bennett and Stuart Curran. Baltimore: 38 Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, pp. 129–43 (p. 135). See also pertinent discussion 39 39 in Lorraine Morris, ‘All That Faith Creates, or Love Desires: Shelley’s Poetic Vision of 40 40 Being’, PhD thesis, Durham University, available at: Durham E-Theses Online: http:// 41 etheses.dur.ac.uk/4602, pp. 208–45. 41 42 50 Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed., abridged and with 42 43 a critical foreword by Hans-Friedrich Mueller, intro. Daniel J. Boorstin. New York: Modern 43 44 Library, 2003, pp. 1210, 1211. 44

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the potent subtext that keeps obtruding in Hellas, to its artistic advantage. The 1 1 ‘similitude’ in the first might suggest the fate of a writer seeking to keep his hands 2 2 clean while ‘exhibiting a series of lyric pictures’51 in favour of a ‘cause’ that cannot 3 3 but involve ‘blood and horror and confusion’. The second strikes at the heart of 4 4 the Shelleyan assumption that human beings are inevitably ‘actors or spectators’ 5 5 (l. 185), as he had described the human predicament in Adonais, a phrase he would 6 6 modify in ‘The Triumph of Life’, when Rousseau tells the Poet that he will ‘from 7 7 spectator turn / Actor or victim in this wretchedness’ (ll. 305–6). With silky, deadly 8 8 irony, Gibbon depicts a situation deprived of agency, understanding, heroism; his 9 9 ‘pictures of a general assault’ invite comparison with and indeed contrive to be 10 10 enfolded within Shelley’s ‘series of lyric pictures’. Ahasuerus says that the vision 11 11 experienced by Mahmoud shows how ‘the full tide of power / Ebbs to its depths’ 12 12 (ll. 848–9). Hellas, true to its instinct to dramatize conflicting perspectives, is 13 13 astute enough to realize that such Ozymandias-like ironies can boomerang. 14 14 Power can reassert itself, as though it were a force at odds with human agency, 15 15 as though it obeyed its own narrative imperatives.52 Such an awareness seeps into 16 16 the lyrical drama’s reworking of idealist thought. Shelley asserts the need to believe 17 17 in the possibility of freedom from history as cyclical enchaining. Yet he seems, on 18 18 another level, to verge perilously on a rejection of agency. Ahasuerus is ‘an adept 19 19 in the difficult lore /O f Greek and Frank philosophy’ (ll. 741–2). One assumes he 20 20 is able to expound the thought of Plato and also of more modern thinkers such as 21 21 Spinoza, Bacon, Rousseau, the philosophes, Kant, Locke, Berkeley and Hume. But 22 22 what emerges in his response to Mahmoud’s half-respectful, half-taunting assertion 23 23 that ‘Thou dost not own that art, device, or God, / Can make the future present’ (ll. 24 24 758–9) is a redefinition of those temporal terms: ‘Sultan!’, he cries, ‘talk no more 25 25 / Of thee and me, the future and the past; / But look on that which cannot change 26 26 – the One, / The unborn and the undying’ (ll. 766–9). That ‘One’, lifted out of 27 27 time, is a disturbing concept for modern criticism, intent on repudiating an earlier 28 28 Platonic notion of the ‘One’, or Hegelian trust in the spirit such as is articulated by 29 29 Earl R. Wasserman when he argues that ‘Hellas assumes that man is defined by the 30 30 persistent active presence in him of the universal Spirit and that Spirit can develop 31 31 through man’s mastery of time’s cycle … until the difference between time and the 32 32 atemporal is infinitesimal’.53 Mark Kipperman concedes that the Shelleyan One 33 33 seems to support a notion that the poet’s ‘metaphysics etherealizes the historical 34 34 present’, but he argues that, in ‘dramatic context’, what is being imagined is the 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 51 38 SMW: 548. 38 52 See Jack Donovan on the ‘competing dynamics [in Hellas] of history, narrative, 39 39 genre, and text’, ‘The Storyteller’, in Timothy Morton ed., Cambridge Companion to 40 40 Shelley, pp. 85–103 (p. 98). See also William A. Ulmer for the view that ‘Hellas plots 41 history metaphysically as a dialectical variation of metaphor’, ‘Hellas and the Historical 41 42 Uncanny’, ELH 58 (1991), pp. 611–32 (p. 614). 42 43 53 Earl R. Wasserman, Shelley: A Critical Reading. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins 43 44 University Press, 1971, p. 411. 44

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‘transition from … one understanding of history to another’.54 Submitting, for his 1 1 part, that Ahasuerus ‘is uninterested in the details of earthly history and whether 2 2 its course is circular or linear’, Hugh Roberts contends that there is a difference 3 3 between Ahasuerus’s ‘voluntarist relativism’ and ‘that expressed in the choruses’, 4 4 the latter suggesting that ‘non-linear “renewal” leads to irreversible evolution’.55 5 5 For Roberts, Shelley establishes a critical attitude towards Ahasuerus, and does 6 6 not use him as a mouthpiece for his dogmatic ideas. 7 7 Though Kipperman and Roberts admirably recognize both the involvement 8 8 in history and dramatic play to be found in Shelley’s second lyrical drama, the 9 9 problem or the challenge remains: Shelley, in a work that addresses a particularly 10 10 urgent moment in European history and appears to wish to take sides with 11 11 contemporary Greece in its struggle for independence from Ottoman rule, invests 12 12 with considerable authority a contemptuous view of those temporal categories – 13 13 ‘the future and the past’ – which are necessary for the writing of history or the 14 14 imagining of change. In a sense, Mahmoud and Ahasuerus are debating the nature 15 15 of prophecy. The former asks sceptically whether anyone can ‘unveil’ (l. 754) 16 16 ‘the unborn hour’ (l. 752); the latter would turn from the anxiety to locate such an 17 17 hour towards focusing on ‘The unborn and the undying’ (l. 769). Both speakers 18 18 use the word ‘unborn’, but their meanings differ: Mahmoud refers to a future 19 19 time which is awaited anxiously because it has yet to come into being; Ahasuerus 20 20 means something that participates in the condition of ‘that which cannot change’ 21 21 (l. 768), and seems beyond flux in a way not available to or desired by those earlier 22 22 ‘immortal’ (l. 201) beings ‘hurrying to and fro’ (l. 203) between birth and death. 23 23 Ahasuerus, Prospero-like, sees the real, ‘this Whole / Of suns, and worlds, 24 24 and men, and beasts, and flowers’ (ll. 776–7), as ‘but a vision’ (l. 780), ‘motes of 25 25 a sick eye, bubbles and dreams’ (l. 781).56 ‘A mote it is to trouble the mind’s eye’, 26 26 Horatio’s line from the first scene of Hamlet, troubles the mind’s eye of Hellas; 27 27 can these ‘bubbles, and dreams’ be dismissed? Ahasuerus advises Mahmoud to 28 28 look on the ‘One’ as a stay against this relentless stream of seemings. The ‘One’ as 29 29 a refuge from meaningless evanescence passes into, houses itself within ‘Thought’ 30 30 (l. 795), which is both, it would seem, gateway into and manifestation of the 31 31 ‘One’. The passage tilts, in Gerald McNiece’s terms, from ‘objective’ idealism 32 32 (belief in the ‘One’) to ‘subjective’ idealism (belief in the power of ‘thought’).57 33 33 34 34 35 54 Mark Kipperman, ‘History and Ideality: The Politics of Shelley’s Hellas’, Studies 35 36 in Romanticism 30 (1991), pp. 147–67 (pp. 160, 161). 36 55 37 HughProof Roberts, Shelley and the Chaos ofCopy History: A New Politics of Poetry . 37 38 University Park: Pennsylvania State University, 1997, pp. 480, 481. 38 56 For the likely influence of Calderón’s Life Is a Dream [La vida es sueño], see 39 39 Timothy Webb, The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation. Oxford: Clarendon 40 40 Press, 1976, pp. 218–22. Also of great value is chapter 6 of Stephanie Dumke, ‘The 41 Influence of Calderón andG oethe on Shelley in the Context of A.W. Schlegel’s Conception 41 42 of Romantic Drama’, unpublished PhD thesis, Durham University (2013). 42 43 57 For relevant discussion, see Gerald McNiece, Shelley and the Revolutionary Idea. 43 44 Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969, p. 250. 44

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Or one might argue that Shelley proceeds to fuse the two categories by showing 1 1 that thought’s power is to apprehend or manifest the ‘One’. Certainly, the close 2 2 of Ahasuerus’s speech begins to take the sage out of Platonic realms into those 3 3 associated with more subjectivist accounts of cognition: 4 4 5 The future and the past are idle shadows 5 6 Of thought’s eternal flight – they have no being: 6 7 Nought is but that which feels itself to be. (ll. 783–5) 7 8 8 9 Douglas Bush speaks of Ahasuerus as ‘a mystic who re-utters Prospero’s speech 9 10 in the spirit of Berkeley’, a characterization that is witty and perceptive.58 But 10 11 whereas Prospero’s vision turns into a lament for the insubstantial nature of 11 12 existence, and Berkeley sees the ‘One’ as among the ‘attributes’ one might attach 12 13 to a ‘Spirit, “who works all in all,” and “by whom all things consist”’, Ahasuerus’s 13 14 speech finds access to a surprising current of energy, one suggestive of Shelley’s 14 15 conceptual uniqueness and hard to locate within any philosophical system.59 This 15 16 is the energy of poetic adventurousness; the word ‘flight’, for example, animates 16 17 the potentially static ‘eternal’, and gives ‘thought’ a kinetic quality evident in the 17 18 second spirit’s ‘flight of fire’ (‘The Two Spirits: An Allegory’, l. 3) or Shelley’s 18 19 own ‘flight of fire’ (l. 590) at the close ofEpipsychidion . And, as a thing in motion 19 20 casting ‘shadows’, thought grants an at least secondary ‘being’ to that which has 20 21 no ‘being’ in itself, namely ‘The future and the past’. Without abandoning belief in 21 22 the One, Ahasuerus has brought it within the condition of time at the close. 22 23 Thus I would take issue with two ways of reading this passage. One is to seek 23 24 to cancel the reality of the ‘One’ by claiming that it is merely a synonym for ‘the 24 25 endless process that … underpins the other Ones … in Shelley’s later writing’, 25 26 as Jerrold E. Hogle has it.60 But Hogle’s own gloss on ‘eternal flight’ as showing 26 27 that the dynamic of change and history is ‘always … a passage across’ is helpful, 27 28 and underpins my objection to a second way of reading the passage: that is, that 28 29 it reveals renunciation of human agency.61 ‘Shelley’, writes Bush, ‘does not now 29 30 picture a world of freedom and love as something which, however remote and dim, 30 31 can be thought of as within reach of man’s will. He has retreated still further from 31 32 actualities into a solitude of pure idealism where alone he can remold the sorry 32 33 scheme of things nearer to the heart’s desire’.62 This contradictory formulation (at 33 34 once withdrawing and bestowing agency) undervalues the complexity of Shelley’s 34 35 poem; ‘the solitude of pure idealism’ is less an escapist retreat than glimpsed 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 58 38 Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (1937). 38 New York: Norton, 1963, p. 164. 39 39 59 George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge; Three Dialogues between 40 40 Hylas and Philonous, ed. with intro. G.J. Warnock. London: Collins, 1962, pp. 139, 140. 41 60 Jerrold E. Hogle, Shelley’s Process: Radical Transference and the Development of 41 42 His Major Works. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 294. 42 43 61 Hogle, Shelley’s Process, p. 291. 43 44 62 Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition, p. 164. 44

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as a vantage-point that makes possible imaginings that enable further enabling 1 1 imaginings. 2 2 The One in Hellas is close to a Platonic absolute or at any rate proto-Supreme 3 3 Fiction, and a means of regathering energies of resilience that will allow for a re- 4 4 entry into the dimension of history. Shelley’s very imagery in a number of places 5 5 seems determined to locate the existence of the spiritual even as it proposes its 6 6 unbounded, free condition. In the event of an Ottoman victory, a semichoral lyric 7 7 imagines a ‘sunnier strand’ (l. 1028), and seeks to follow ‘Love’s folding star / 8 8 To the Evening land!’ (ll. 1029–30), presumably America. ‘The world’s eyeless 9 9 charioteer, / Destiny, is hurrying by’ (ll. 711–12) with great force in Hellas, but its 10 10 hurry must contend with the desires of those ‘immortal’ beings ‘hurrying to and fro’ 11 11 from one state to another. They seem to speak, or be spoken for, by the semichoral 12 12 lyric (ll. 693–4) which, above all else in the work, brings out what Shelley means 13 13 by the prefatory assertion ‘We are all Greeks’.63 In it, Shelley allows for tragic 14 14 decline and fall: his lyric’s addressee in line 696 is presumably ‘Slavery’, as at line 15 15 676, an abstraction which is treated with contemptuous indifference but also with 16 16 alertness to its corroding ubiquity: 17 17 18 Temples and towers, 18 19 Citadels and marts, and they 19 20 Who live and die there, have been ours, 20 21 And may be thine, and must decay; 21 22 But Greece and her foundations are 22 23 Built below the tide of war, 23 24 Based on the crystalline sea 24 25 Of thought and its eternity … (ll. 693–700) 25 26 26 Shelley compresses much thought into these lines through a poetic form which 27 27 compels attention. So the phrasing of ‘they / Who live and die there’ dismisses 28 28 dying generations with lofty but not indifferent calm. At the same time, the simple 29 29 verb ‘are’ is, as at the end of Adonais, requisitioned in a prominent position for its 30 30 promise of permanent being and set with something close to defiance in a rhyming 31 31 relationship with ‘war’. That the image is an image, however, a feigning, to use 32 32 a word important for Hellas (compare lines 152, 411 and the final Note), is also 33 33 evident, partly because the metaphor of Greece as ‘below the tide’ yet ‘Based on 34 34 [a] crystalline sea’ communicates an expressive strain. 35 35 Later on, deploying another ‘If’, another conjecture, another lyric picture, 36 36 Shelley resolves those strains in the imagining of a possible wrecked Greece: ‘yet 37 Proof Copy 37 shall its fragments reassemble, / And build themselves again impregnably / In a 38 38 diviner clime / To Amphionic music on some Cape sublime, / Which frowns above 39 39 the idle foam of Time’ (ll. 1003–7). The syntax itself contrives to ‘reassemble’ 40 40 ‘fragments’ of hope, claiming for such hope the ‘impregnable’ strength of a fortress 41 41 of the spirit which can never be taken by the force of historical reversals, until the 42 42 43 43 44 63 SMW: 549. 44

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lyric comes to a close, a pool recomposing itself after a stone has shattered its 1 1 calm. This is hope that is not coffined with despair, but confronts the possibility 2 2 of failure. Again, comparatives (‘a diviner clime’) and unspecified locality mirror 3 3 the ardent desire of an imagination dependent for its continued life on the building 4 4 of a city of the mind, a building performed by the imagination’s own ‘Amphionic 5 5 music’. Such a ‘music’ is bravely plangent. Hellas tests the reader’s mind and 6 6 affects the reader’s heart through its self-examining idealism. At the same time, it 7 7 composes a hymn to the politically yearning spirit, which it paradoxically fortifies 8 8 through its very art of ambivalence. 9 9 10 10 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 41 42 42 43 43 44 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 260 9/11/2015 4:29:36 PM 1 Chapter 13 1 2 2 3 Shelley, Jews and the Land of Promise 3 4 4 5 Nora Crook* 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 I 10 10 11 There are monographs with the titles Shelley’s Annus Mirabilis, Shelley’s Style, 11 12 Shelley’s Goddess, Shelley’s Eye, Shelley’s Music, and many others, but no Shelley’s 12 13 Jews. In 1988 Nabil Matar wrote that the Romantics concerned themselves with 13 14 Jews chiefly as the Biblical ‘prophetic poets of human history’, or as figurative 14 15 personages like Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, oblivious of real Jews ‘eagerly 15 16 trying to change their “homeless” image’. The major Romantic poets show in both 16 17 verse and private correspondence little interest in contemporary Jews, and their 17 18 rights ‘never became the preoccupation of the Romantics’.1 This description of a 18 19 ‘typical’ Romantic attitude seems particularly applicable to Shelley. 19 20 Since Matar, interdisciplinary studies of the political and social position of 20 21 Jews in Britain during the Romantic period, and of Jewish participation in British 21 22 Romanticism, have produced a more complex map of interaction.2 Theatre history 22 23 studies, for instance, have analysed the significant change in the stage-Shylock 23 24 24 25 * I am grateful to the Bodleian Libraries and to the University of Tokyo Library for 25 26 permission to quote from manuscripts in their possession, and to the supportive staff of 26 27 the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, New York Public Library. A 27 28 version of part of this essay appeared in Nora Crook and Tatsuo Tokoo, ‘Shelley’s Jewish 28 29 Orations’. Keats-Shelley Journal 59 (2010), pp. 43–64, which contains texts of the two 29 30 ‘Jewish’ fragments discussed below; page numbers are taken from this essay. Michael 30 Scrivener considers Hellas in the light of these fragments in ‘Reading Shelley’s Ahasuerus 31 31 and Jewish Orations: Jewish Representation in the Regency’. Keats-Shelley Journal 61 32 (2012), pp. 133–8. The first version of the present essay, which was written before the 32 33 publication of Scrivener’s essay, has benefited retrospectively from it during revision. In 33 34 Johnsonian phrase, I ‘rejoice to concur’ with Scrivener and cannot resist quoting some of 34 35 his valuable remarks. 35 36 1 N.I. Matar, ‘The English Romantic Poets and the Jews’. Jewish Social Studies 36 37 50.3/4 (SummerProof 1988–Autumn 1993), pp. 223–38 Copy (p. 223). 37 2 38 To confine oneself to the twenty-first century, see three collections of essays edited 38 39 by Sheila Spector: British Romanticism and the Jews: History, Culture, Literature. New 39 York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; The Jews and British Romanticism: Politics, Religion, 40 40 Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005; Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence 41 of Cultures. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011; Judith W. Page, Imperfect Sympathies: Jews and 41 42 Judaism in British Romantic Literature and Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004; 42 43 Michael Scrivener, Jewish Representation in British Literature, 1780–1840: After Shylock. 43 44 New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 44

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from Macklin’s red-hatted monster of malignity (1741) to Kean’s demonic, yet 1 1 sympathetic figure (1814). Philosemitic and ‘anti-antisemitic’ Romantic-period 2 2 literature has been more extensively documented and assessed.3 But Matar’s 3 3 analysis still stands in some major respects. Rights for Jews never became a cause 4 4 on a par with Abolitionism or Catholic Emancipation. Articles by Mary Shelley 5 5 and by William Hazlitt published in early 1831 during the movement (1830–34) 6 6 for a Jewish Emancipation Bill to equalize the civil rights of Jews with Catholics 7 7 after the success of the Catholic Emancipation Bill (1829), complicate but do not 8 8 disprove this overall judgement. Each wrote scathingly about unjust treatment of 9 9 Jews, but not as part of a concerted campaign; Hazlitt died shortly before his article 10 appeared.4 Again, sympathy expressed during the Romantic period for the historic 10 11 wrongs of Jews may sometimes be a manifestation not of true philojudaism, but 11 12 of an almost paranoid anticatholicism, for which the bad record of antisemitism 12 13 in the Iberian peninsula provided a useful Catholic-bashing hammer.5 But, 13 14 without engaging in the broader issues raised by Matar, this essay queries whether 14 15 Shelley was really oblivious to the attempts of contemporary Jews to cease to 15 16 be wanderers. It looks at those few imaginative works in which he attempted to 16 17 situate Jews within a contemporary (though highly idealized) world, particularly 17 18 two short pieces that have only come to attention in the last fifteen-odd years. In 18 19 these, Shelley’s prejudices seem to be in abeyance. He sees outside them, as if 19 20 asking himself, ‘If I were a Jew, what sort of Jew would I be?’ 20 21 While Shelley does not indulge in antisemitic diatribes such as are found in 21 22 Voltaire and Burke, his casual remarks about Jews are negative, when he mentions 22 23 them at all.6 Coleridge, for all his contradictory statements about Jews, at least 23 24 24 25 3 See Judith Page, ‘“Hath not a Jew Eyes?”: Edmund Kean and the Sympathetic 25 26 Shakespeare’. The Wordsworth Circle 34.2 (Spring 2003), pp. 116–19; Michael Scrivener, 26 27 The Cosmopolitan Ideal in the Age of Revolution and Reaction, 1776–1832. London: 27 28 Pickering & Chatto, 2007, p. 149. 28 4 29 [Mary Shelley], ‘Review of J.P. Cobbett’s Tour in Italy’. Westminster Review 14 29 30 (January 1831), pp. 174–80 (pp. 179–80); Hazlitt, ‘Emancipation of the Jews’. The Tatler 30 (28 March 1831), pp. 701–2. For attribution of the review of Cobbett’s Tour, see Nora 31 31 Crook, ‘Counting the Carbonari: A Newly-Attributed Mary Shelley Article’. Keats-Shelley 32 Review 23.1 (2009), pp. 39–50. Both articles may have been provoked by [William] 32 33 Cobbett’s virulently anti-Jewish Emancipation pamphlet Good Friday; or the Murder of 33 34 Jesus Christ by the Jews. London: Published for the Author, 1830. 34 35 5 On this issue see, with respect to Robert Southey, Timothy Webb, ‘Catholic 35 36 Contagion: Southey, Coleridge, and English Anxieties’, in Romanticism and Religion from 36 William CowperProof to Wallace Stevens, eds Gavin HoppsCopy and Jane Stabler. Aldershot: Ashgate, 37 37 38 2006, pp. 75–92 (pp. 83, 85–6). 38 6 39 They almost invariably relate to rich Jews or to the God of the Jews. Many are 39 clustered in 1811, when Shelley’s father cut off his allowance, and he was at his most 40 40 Voltairean. Shelley imagines his sister Elizabeth ‘bound to some fool, in a bond fit only 41 for a Jewess’, marriage being, for him, a low commercial contract (20 June 1811, Letters 41 42 I: 111). For other animadversions on Jews, see in particular Letters I: 101, 193; II: 46 and 42 43 Thomas Love Peacock, ‘Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley’ [Part 1]. Fraser’s Magazine 57 43 44 (1858), pp. 643–59 (p. 657). 44

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conversed with them, from old-clothes men to learned scholars.7 The schoolboy 1 1 Leigh Hunt enjoyed the music of Duke’s Place Synagogue, and regarded his visits 2 2 as serving ‘to universalize my notions of religion, and to keep them unbigoted’. He 3 3 ‘retained through life a respectful notion of the Jews as a body’.8 Byron, certainly 4 4 no Judaeophile, nevertheless collaborated with Isaac Nathan and John Braham to 5 5 produce (1815). But while Shelley in 1811 enjoyed Voltaire’s 6 6 ‘extravagant ridicule of the Jewish nation’ and responded with ‘a wild, demoniacal 7 7 burst of laughter’ when his friend Hogg whispered that Sir Timothy Shelley was 8 8 ‘the God of the Jews; the Jehovah you have been reading about!’, Hogg could 9 9 not interest him in Hebrew studies.9 His encounters with Jews seem confined 10 to financial transactions. Shelley’s Oxford bookseller, Henry Slatter, claimed 10 11 to have lost £1,300 through making him a loan in order to dissuade him from 11 12 ‘flying to Jews’, which he actually did at some point after 1812.10 ‘Jews’ often just 12 13 meant ‘money-lenders’, but Shelley certainly went to the notorious ‘Jew’ King 13 14 (Jacob Rey), money-broker to the aristocracy during the first two decades of the 14 15 nineteenth century. He deposited with King, presumably as security, a copy of the 15 16 1791 settlement establishing his right to inherit his grandfather’s property.11 16 17 His resentment of usurious Jews interacted with his crusade against Christianity, 17 18 which, though the end was to expose Christianity as worse than Judaism, was 18 19 predicated on first discrediting theO ld Testament as true history and good morality. 19 20 In A Refutation of Deism (1814) Theosophus asks rhetorically whether there is a 20 21 ‘record of such groveling absurdities and enormities so atrocious, a picture of the 21 22 Deity so characteristic of a demon as that which the sacred writings of the Jews 22 23 contain’ – a view that Shelley never retracted and that he partly reaffirmed in Note 23 24 8 to Hellas.12 In a fragment from Mary Shelley’s early writing, ‘History of the 24 25 Jews’, probably of late 1815, strongly influenced by A Refutation and Voltaire’s 25 26 26 27 27 7 Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 2nd edn. London: John 28 28 Murray, 1836, pp. 52, 98; for Coleridge’s friendship with and indebtedness to Hyman 29 29 Hurwitz, the first Professor of Hebrew at University College, London, see Ewan James 30 Jones, ‘Coleridge, Hyman Hurwitz, and Hebrew Poetics’. Coleridge Bulletin, n.s. 40 (Winter 30 31 2012), pp. 59–68. On Coleridge’s conflictedness, see Matar’s ‘The English Romantic Poets 31 32 and the Jews’, pp. 231–3 and Page, Imperfect Sympathies, pp. 1–2, 33–4. 32 33 8 Hunt, Autobiography. 3 vols. London: Smith & Elder, 1850, vol. 1, pp. 172–5. It 33 34 was in Hunt’s Tatler that Hazlitt published ‘Emancipation of the Jews’. 34 35 9 Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London: Moxon, 35 36 1858, vol. 1, pp. 108, 304–5. 36 10 37 LettersProof I: 61, n. 2; Thomas Medwin, TheCopy Shelley Papers. London: Whittaker, 37 38 Treacher, 1833, pp. 20–21. 38 11 In June 1816, writing from Geneva, Shelley suggested that the hard-up Godwin 39 39 should buy this copy from King and use it as a guarantee to raise a loan (Letters I: 478). 40 40 For King’s combination of radicalism and rascality, see Oxford Dictionary of National 41 Biography. For his earlier attempt to compromise Godwin, see The Letters of William 41 42 Godwin, ed. Pamela Clemit. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, vol. 1, pp. 42 43 149–52. 43 44 12 Prose I: 101; SPP: 464. 44

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La Bible enfin expliquée (1776), and no doubt coloured by Shelley’s money- 1 1 borrowing, ancient Greeks are played off against Jews, both ancient and modern: 2 2 Noah, after the Flood, got drunk ‘perhaps in his rapture at his deliverance … . 3 3 Such are the feelings of a Jew & befitting the father of their race but surely the 4 4 feelings of Deucalion & Pyrrha were of a much milder and more amiable nature 5 5 when they wept for the loss of their fellow creatures & companions’. Whether 6 6 or not Shelley collaborated in this production, he could hardly have disapproved 7 7 of it.13 It was to include an extract from Tacitus’s account of Jewish history and 8 8 customs, of which a translation by Shelley (dated 1814–16 by Eugene Murray) is 9 9 extant. This contains Tacitus’s infamous statement that Jews hate all nations but 10 10 their own.14 11 11 In what is arguably the most distasteful reference to Jews in Shelley’s 12 12 published work, Swellfoot the Tyrant (1820) presents Jews as henchmen of 13 13 tyrants. Swellfoot, faced with seditious pigs (Burke’s ‘swinish multitude’), calls 14 14 in ‘the Jews, Solomon the court porkman, / Moses the sow-gelder, and Zephaniah 15 15 / The hog-butcher’ (I, 69–71), and orders them to castrate and slaughter the pigs. 16 16 Sweeping aside their feeble demurrals, he despatches them to do his dirty work 17 17 off-stage. ‘Moses’ is probably intended for the clergyman Malthus (see PS III: 667 18 18 n.). But if Swellfoot’s Jews are to be understood as Christians with undesirable 19 19 ‘Jewish’ qualities this hardly improves matters. Swellfoot shows the influence of 20 20 William Cobbett, whose demagoguery and encouragement of revenge Shelley 21 21 abominated, yet whose economic analysis in Paper Against Gold he accepted in 22 22 ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’ (1819–20), nowhere distancing himself from its 23 23 conspiracy theories concerning Jewish financiers. Paper Against Gold insinuated 24 24 that Jewish bribery lay behind the appearance of ‘fine benevolent Jewish 25 25 characters’ in ‘some of our modern plays’.15 Shelley must have realized that he 26 26 was introducing some nasty Jewish characters into his play. It should, however, 27 27 be noted that Swellfoot’s Jews are in keeping with the other personages, who, 28 28 except for the veiled Liberty, whether victims or oppressors, are a gallimaufry of 29 29 grotesques and animal-human hybrids, following the conventions of Aristophanic 30 30 comedy, satyr-plays, and contemporary print-culture caricature.16 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 13 Mary Shelley’s Literary Lives (MSLL), ed. Nora Crook et al. 4 vols. London: 34 35 Pickering & Chatto, 2002, vol. 4, p. 337; see pp. lxxii–lxxvi for the argument that this was 35 36 a case of collaborative joint-authorship or of Mary Shelley incorporating an unquantifiable 36 material byProof Shelley into her text. Copy 37 37 14 38 Tacitus, Historiae, Bk V, chap. v §1: ‘Adversus omnis alios hostile odium’; see 38 Murray, BSM XXI: 330–31, 511–12. 39 39 15 Paper Against Gold. 2 vols. London: J. McCreery, 1815, vol. 1, p. 151. Reiman 40 40 estimates that Shelley worked on ‘A Philosophical View’ most intensively between 41 December 1819 and January 1820 (SC VI: 951–4). Shelley recommends Paper Against 41 42 Gold in lines 2370–76 (SC VI: 1014). 42 43 16 See also Timothy Morton, ‘Porcine Poetics’, in The Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan 43 44 M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 279–95 (p. 294). 44

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II 1 1 2 Nor is the above account the whole story. J.B. Pereira, the Brazilian friend and 2 3 enthusiast for Shelley’s doctrines who attempted to translate Queen Mab (1813) 3 4 into Portuguese, may have been an exception to the apparent rule that Shelley 4 5 knew no Jews outside the world of finance.17 It is tempting to speculate that it 5 6 was the figure of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew in Queen Mab, that most fired 6 7 Pereira’s enthusiasm. Shelley’s fascination with Ahasuerus, from The Wandering 7 8 Jew (1809) through Queen Mab (1813), down to Hellas (1822), involved endowing 8 9 the Jew with moral attributes that indicate a measure of self-identification with this 9 10 exilic figure. His Jew is never the scapegoat bearing the guilt of Jews for killing 10 11 Christ, nor the remorseful shoemaker of the Percy ballad ‘The Wandering Jew’. 11 12 In Queen Mab he is the angry Romantic outcast and denouncer of tyrants, whose 12 13 punishment is disproportionate to his crime. For Queen Mab Shelley drew much 13 14 of his conception of Ahasuerus from the lyric rhapsody Der Ewige Jude by the 14 15 Sturm und Drang writer Christian Schubart, further adapting Schubart’s adaptation 15 16 (which is not without sympathy for the Jew) of the traditional Judaeophobic legend. 16 17 In Scrivener’s words, ‘The Romantics usually work with these cultural myths … 17 18 and make something less toxic than the raw material from which they started’.18 18 19 In the translation of Schubart that forms Shelley’s Note to Queen Mab, VII, 19 20 67 (‘Ahasuerus, rise!’), Ahasuerus is an ‘unfeeling wretch’ who turns away the 20 21 suffering Christ from his door. Thus far, Shelley’s paratext preserves a footstep of 21 22 the villainous hard-hearted Jew of popular fantasy, in as much as Schubart’s poem 22 23 does also.19 But, as has often been observed,20 Shelley’s Christ is not the merciful 23 24 Saviour of Schubart, whose blood offers redemption to the (still rebellious) wretch 24 25 after 1,800 years. The ‘Ahasuerus, rise!’ note omits the ‘redemptive’ portion of 25 26 Schubart’s rhapsody, while the next note contains Shelley’s most notorious 26 27 footnote, written under the influence of Holbach’s Ecce homo (1770), suspecting 27 28 the historical Jesus of being ‘an ambitious man, who aspired to the throne of 28 29 Judea’.21 In the actual poem of Queen Mab, Christ is on the Cross when Ahasuerus 29 30 30 31 31 32 17 See Letters I: 431; Peacock, ‘Memoirs of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Part II’. Fraser’s 32 33 Magazine 61 (January 1860), pp. 92–109 (p. 93). Shelley knew Pereira between 1813 33 34 and 1815. ‘Pereira’ was one of the Spanish/Portuguese toponyms adopted by persecuted 34 35 Sephardic Jews to disguise their origin. Michael Scrivener informs me (private 35 36 communication) that all Brazilian Pereiras are likely to have Jewish ancestry. 36 18 37 Scrivener, ‘Reading Shelley’s Ahasuerus’, p. 136. 37 19 Proof Copy 38 For an account of Schubart’s contribution to the myth, see Edgar Rosenberg, 38 Shylock to Svengali: Jewish Stereotypes in English Fiction. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford 39 39 University Press, 1960, pp. 197–9. 40 40 20 See, for instance, Teddi Chichester Bonca’s discerning account of Shelley’s 41 treatment of the Wandering Jew (Shelley’s Mirrors of Love: Narcissism, Sacrifice, and 41 42 Sorority. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999, pp. 29–40). 42 43 21 Footnote to Note to VII, 135–6 of Queen Mab, ‘I will beget a son, and he shall bear 43 44 / The sins of all the world’. 44

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meets him. Christ does not appeal to him for succour, and there is no callous 1 1 refusal as such. Instead, Ahasuerus exposes Christ as the hypocritical Son of the 2 2 implacably vengeful Almighty. He expresses no pity, having doubts that Christ 3 3 suffers like a mortal when he groans; he is righteously indignant that the supposed 4 4 Saviour has lighted ‘flames of zeal’, and provoked ‘massacres and miseries’ in 5 5 Judaea. He scornfully tells him to go and cease to trouble the earth, whereupon 6 6 the seemingly meek sufferer reveals his true colours, smiles with ‘godlike malice’, 7 7 and curses Ahasuerus with immortality (VII, 161–83). A transitional version of 8 8 Ahasuerus appears in Alastor, where he is a baleful figure, a ‘Vessel of deathless 9 9 wrath’ (both God’s wrath and his own wrath against God), a ‘slave / … Lone as 10 10 incarnate death’, and the undying alter ego of the Poet (ll. 677–81). Like the Poet, 11 11 he is a victim, but filled with an anger that the gentle Poet, who has died seeking an 12 12 unattainable love, had been incapable of. The Jew here is the emblem of a ferocity 13 13 that Shelley acknowledges as a component of his own energies. 14 14 Shelley’s castigation of Jehovah and the scriptures as instruments of fraud was, 15 15 even as early as 1812, tempered by a plan of separating ‘all the good of the Jewish 16 16 Books’ from the bad.22 More importantly, Shelley regarded, or came to regard, the 17 17 Jewish nation as containing within itself, no less than other cultures, the seeds of 18 18 its own regeneration. Inasmuch as one can deduce how he imagined this process, it 19 19 does not differ from his general conception of universal liberation from despotism 20 20 and ‘Falshood’: the ‘eminent in virtue’ (Queen Mab VI, 33) shall start up and 21 21 proclaim truth; national virtues, slumbering, shall be aroused by the living spirit 22 22 of great poets and prophets, which shall combine with the spirit of the age when 23 23 necessity ensures that the time is ripe. The national virtues that Shelley ascribes 24 24 even to ancient Jews are tenacity and the indispensable ‘unconquerable hope of 25 25 liberty’ (The Assassins, composed 1814–16).23 26 26 Shelley’s Jewish ‘eminent in virtue’ of the past are exceptional, alienated Jews 27 27 with whom he can identify, who, grounded in their law, nevertheless transcended 28 28 it and became benefactors of mankind. While the dominant tactic of Queen Mab 29 29 is to pit a legendary Jew against a deified one, and to elevate the blasphemous 30 30 Ahasuerus at the expense of the Saviour Christ, even in the Queen Mab Notes 31 31 Shelley warmly admires a human Jesus, firmly to be distinguished from the 32 32 hypocrite Son of God, and foremost among ‘true heroes, who have died in the 33 33 glorious martyrdom of liberty … in the cause of suffering humanity’.24 By 1817 34 34 he had totally embraced this view, dropping the imputation of ambition. The fate 35 35 of these heroes was rejection, persecution and misrepresentation by hypocrites, 36 Proof Copy 36 37 37 22 38 To Elizabeth Hitchener, 27 February 1812; Letters I: 265. 38 23 Weinberg, BSM XXII (2): 20–21, modifying Prose I: 124. A passage in ‘History of 39 39 the Jews’, perhaps contributed by Shelley, defends assassinations carried out by the ancient 40 40 Jews: ‘Let us sympathise even with these bloodthirsty robbers in an ardent love of Liberty’, 41 and sees them as types of nobler assassins such as Brutus and Cassius, whom he was later 41 42 to defend in ‘On Christianity’ (MSLL, vol. 4, p. 344; Prose I: 254). 42 43 24 Note to VII, 135–6, ‘I will beget a son’, to which the Footnote (see note 21) is a 43 44 palinode. Neil Fraistat discusses the contradiction between the two in CPPBS II: 639–40. 44

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tyrants and the multitude. Such was the reward of Jesus, such too, to a lesser 1 1 degree, was that of Spinoza, who for his heresies was formally expelled from the 2 2 Sephardic community of Amsterdam in 1656.25 Between 1817 and 1822 Shelley 3 3 translated at intervals the whole of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 4 4 sometimes with Mary Shelley.26 Behind these reformers stood the Jewish poet- 5 5 prophets, contributors to the ‘episodes to that great poem, which all poets, like the 6 6 co-operating thoughts of one great mind, have built up since the beginning of the 7 7 world’.27 8 8 The first overt sign of Shelley’s interest in the poetry of the Old Testament as 9 9 poetry is probably in 1815, when he ordered Robert Lowth’s lectures, De Sacra 10 10 Poesi Hebraeorum Praelectiones Academicae (1753),28 the work that had deeply 11 11 influenced Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction and established the poetry in 12 12 Hebrew of the Old Testament as great literature, equal to the classics in strength 13 13 and artistry, once the rules peculiar to its organization were understood. Lowth’s 14 14 most important contribution was his identification of parallelism as the dominant 15 15 organizing principle of Hebrew poetry. Shelley never comments on Lowth directly, 16 16 and we may suppose that he found much to wrangle with, yet he absorbed some 17 17 of his key principles, and there is more parallelism in Shelley’s poetry than has 18 18 hitherto been noted.29 But more pertinent for this essay is Lowth’s linkage, in his 19 19 Lecture 19, of sacred prophetic poetry to sublime obscurity, in which future events 20 20 are imperfectly disclosed, and for which the metaphoric language of the Hebrew 21 21 prophetic books was, Lowth maintained, better adapted than sources available to 22 22 classical writers.30 Shelley would not have agreed,31 but his admiration for Hebrew 23 23 poetry is cast in Lowthian terms. In the prose fragment known as ‘On Christianity’ 24 24 (composed 1817) Shelley imagines Old Testament poetry as forming the moral 25 25 nature of Jesus and making him a poet. While he gives first place to the Book of 26 26 27 27 25 For a compendium of references to Spinoza in Shelley letters and journals, see SC 28 28 VIII: 737–43. 29 29 26 MWS Letters I: 262. A fragment dating from the 1817 period was left behind in 30 England. It was part-published with a facsimile leaf by Charles Middleton as original 30 31 Shelley juvenilia (Shelley and His Writings. 2 vols. London: Newby, 1858, vol. 1, pp. 182– 31 32 90), but has since disappeared. See note 44. 32 33 27 ‘A Defence of Poetry’, SPP: 522. 33 34 28 Letters I: 437 (5 December 1815). 34 35 29 For instance, ‘The spring rebels not against winter but it succeeds it – the dawn 35 36 rebels not against night but it disperses it –’ (Bod. MS Shelley adds. e. 18, front pastedown; 36 37 Crook and Webb, BSM XIX: 4–5). 37 30 Proof Copy 38 Citations and quotations from George Gregory’s translation of Lowth, Lectures on 38 the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews (1787). Boston, Mass.: Joseph T. Buckingham, 1815, 39 39 pp. 124–6. For a recent recognition of the importance of Lowth, see Ian Balfour’s ‘Shelley 40 40 and the Bible’, in The Oxford Handbook of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and 41 Anthony Howe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 411–26. 41 42 31 See, for instance, his considering the Book of Ezekiel unrefined (‘On the Devil, and 42 43 Devils’, composed c. November 1819–c. January 1820; Bod. MS Shelley adds. e. 9, p. 67 43 44 [Dawson and Webb, BSM XIV: 74–5]). 44

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Job, which he did not consider to be Jewish in origin,32 ‘Ecclesiastes had diffused 1 1 a seriousness and solemnity over the frame of his spirit’.33 In ‘A Defence of Poetry’ 2 2 he enlarges this canon: ‘It is probable that the astonishing poetry of Moses,34 Job, 3 3 David, Solomon, and Isaiah, had produced a great effect upon the mind of Jesus 4 4 and his disciples. The scattered fragments preserved to us by the biographers of 5 5 this extraordinary person, are all instinct with the most vivid poetry.’ The effect 6 6 on ‘the moral condition of the world’ if ‘the Hebrew poetry had never been 7 7 translated’ is something that Shelley considers unimaginable, on a par with other 8 8 counterfactual possibilities such as ‘if a revival of the study of Greek literature had 9 9 never taken place’.35 The moral effect, for Shelley, of Hebrew poetry in translation 10 10 works principally through style: the bold imagery startles the world from its cold 11 11 trance, while the obscure prophecy stimulates the imagination to create futurity.36 12 12 By contrast, Spinoza was for Shelley a profound thinker, one of the ‘great 13 13 luminaries’, a peer of Bacon and Montaigne,37 though a reasoner, unlike Bacon, 14 14 whom Shelley regarded as a poet. Spinoza supplied Shelley with further aspects 15 15 of Jesus’s moral character as expounded in ‘On Christianity’. One of these is that 16 16 ‘Jesus Christ … accommodated his doctrines to the prepossessions of those whom 17 17 he addressed’.38 Shelley evolves this passage by expanding Spinoza’s remark on 18 18 Jesus in Tractatus Theologico-Politicus: ‘sese ingenio populi accommodavit’,39 19 19 20 20 21 32 He argues that Satan appears nowhere else in the Old Testament, and that the imagery 21 22 is drawn from ‘a severer climate than Palestine’ (Bod. MS Shelley adds. e. 9, pp. 37–8; 22 23 BSM XIV: 44–7). He is undoubtedly drawing here on Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, 23 24 but may also be taking a cue from Spinoza, who in ‘An Examination of the Remaining 24 25 Books of the Old Testament According to the Preceding Method’ inclined towards the book 25 26 being a translation, probably from some Gentile author (Tractatus Theologico-Politicus [A 26 27 Theologico-Political Treatise], trans. by R.H.M. Elwes. London: G. Bell, 1883, Part 2, x, 27 §32; available at http://www.sacred-texts.com/phi/spinoza/treat/index.htm). 28 28 33 Prose I: 249–50. 29 29 34 Shelley evidently refers to the songs of triumph and farewell ascribed to Moses 30 (Exodus 15; Deuteronomy 32–3). 30 31 35 SPP: 524, 530. Shelley particularly drew on Job, Song of Solomon, Psalms, 31 32 Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. 32 33 36 Shelley’s career-long appropriation of the Bible, using episodes and the framework 33 34 of particular books as paradigms for counter-myths, his eclectic weaving of Biblical allusion 34 35 with other texts, his use of Biblical rhetoric and images (chariots, whirlwinds, waters, the 35 36 cup, the rainbow, the blood crying from the ground, the spirit panting and thirsting), his 36 self-projectionProof as the outcast and Christ theCopy saviour – lie outside the scope of this 37 37 38 essay. They have been extensively studied, notably by Bryan Shelley, who records Shelley’s 38 interest in the Apocrypha and in particular the Book of Wisdom; see especially pp. 151–2 of 39 39 his Shelley and Scripture: The Interpreting Angel. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. 40 40 37 ‘Philosophical View’ (SC VI: 970, 973). 41 38 Prose I: 261. 41 42 39 On pp. 50–51 of Shelley’s copy of Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, now 42 43 SC 660 in the Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection of Shelley and His Circle, this passage has 43 44 a pencilled marginalium: ‘Christ’s superiority to an ordinary prophet. He accommodated 44

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but takes matters further. He emphasizes Jesus’s radical departures from Jewish 1 1 law and practice, taking some pleasure in his adroitness. Like all effective 2 2 reformers, Shelley asserts, Jesus justifiably aimed ‘like a skilful orator’ to lead his 3 3 listeners ‘by his professions of sympathy with their feelings, to enter with a willing 4 4 mind into the exposition of his own’, the honourable and practical motive for this 5 5 insincerity being to secure their receptivity to truth.40 6 6 7 7 8 III 8 9 9 10 Events that may have further modified Shelley’s negative perception of Jews were 10 11 his December 1818 reading of Madame de Staël’s Corinne (in which the heroine 11 12 salutes the proud refusal of modern ill-treated Roman Jews to pass under the Arch 12 13 of Titus), and his 1819 sojourn in Rome. For the first time he would have actually 13 14 encountered ghettoized Jews.41 They are marginal figures in his description of the 14 15 Cenci palace: ‘a vast and gloomy pile … in an obscure corner of Rome, near the 15 16 quarter of the Jews, and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of 16 17 Mount Palatine half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees’ (Preface to The 17 18 18 19 himself to the notions of the vulgar’ (SC VIII: 733). Donald Reiman identified SC 660 as a 19 20 1674–7 reprint of the 1670 Hamburg (i.e. Amsterdam: J. Rieuwertsz) edition, and deduced 20 21 that Shelley received it in early 1813, having ordered the Tractatus through his bookseller 21 22 (SC VIII: 731, 737–8). There are many other marginal annotations, but some, especially 22 23 one citing the eighteenth-century divine John Jortin (read as ‘?Souter’ in SC VIII: 735, 23 24 736), seem out of Shelley’s orbit. After examining SC 660 (October 2011) I concluded that 24 25 most of the annotations are probably not in Shelley’s hand, though the most interesting 25 26 comment (criticizing Spinoza’s definition of justice, in ink) is certainly his, and two relating 26 27 to Locke (in pencil) might be. I am therefore reluctant to interpret Shelley’s Spinozism 27 through the other annotations, though he is likely to have found them congenial. SC 660 28 28 has the signature of a previous owner, ‘Philip Mallet 1798’. This might be Philip Mallet 29 29 (b. 1778/9, d. 26 June 1812), son of a wealthy dissenting ‘English Jacobin’ (d. 1795) of 30 the same name, living at Stoke Newington. The younger Mallet was a scholar, barrister, 30 31 speaker, republican, admirer of John Horne Tooke and editor of Bacon’s Advancement of 31 32 Learning, Hobbes’s ‘On Liberty and Necessity’ and Locke (Admissions to Trinity College, 32 33 Cambridge. Vol. III, 1701–1800, eds W.W. Rouse Ball and J.A. Venn. London: Macmillan, 33 34 1911, p. 355; J. McCreery, The Press, a Poem: Part the Second. London: Cadell, 1827, pp. 34 35 76–7; Annual Register 54 [1813], p. 177). If Mallet wrote the annotations, they were in place 35 36 when Shelley acquired SC 660, and may have directed his reading. Unfortunately I have 36 37 not found aProof specimen of Mallet’s handwriting. ThomasCopy Love Peacock, Thomas Medwin, 37 38 Edward Williams (Shelley’s amanuensis for the Tractatus translation in 1821–22), whose 38 hands have some features in common with that of the annotator, and Shelley’s son, Sir Percy 39 39 (SC 660 has his book-plate), have been considered, but none is sufficiently convincing. 40 40 40 Prose I: 262–3. 41 41 See Corinne; ou, l’Italie. 3 vols. Londres: Peltier, 1807, vol. 1, pp. 35–6, 189. 41 42 Between 1555 and 1870 Roman Jews were locked into the ghetto every evening, except 42 43 for a few years under Napoleon. After Napoleon’s defeat ghettos were restored in Italy, but 43 44 enforcement during the period 1815–22 was less stringent than previously, except in Rome. 44

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Cenci).42 An overgrown complex of ruined palaces is seen from a newer palace, 1 1 the dwelling of a domestic tyrant, which, centuries after the owner’s dreadful 2 2 crimes, broods over a precinct where descendants of captive slaves of a ruined 3 3 empire have lived under oppression for generations – what an image of a chain 4 4 of doing and suffering wrong! In September 1819, he read with great enjoyment 5 5 Boccaccio’s Decameron, one of the rare instances of his known reading outside 6 6 the Bible in which a notably good, rich and wise Jew appears. This is the tale of 7 7 Melchisedech (Day 1, Tale 3), the source of Lessing’s philojudaic Nathan the Wise 8 8 (1779). Both Shelley’s friend Edward Williams and Shelley himself were later 9 9 to draw on it in 1821 when writing their respective dramas, the unpublished The 10 10 Promise and Hellas.43 Certainly, it is during the winter of 1819–20, a period during 11 11 which Shelley wrote ‘Peter Bell the Third’ and began reading and translating 12 12 Spinoza again,44 that we discover a uniquely overt expression of admiration for 13 13 Jews as a people, a brief interpolation in the unfinished ‘A Philosophical View 14 14 of Reform’, at a point where Shelley is also reflecting on empire and ruin. It is 15 15 typical of Shelley’s contrarieties that this admiration surfaces during the period 16 16 when the influence of Cobbett is strongest. Hailing the stirrings of independence 17 17 and enlightenment in the Eastern Mediterranean, the hopeful harbingers of the 18 18 Ottoman Empire’s collapse, Shelley envisages that ‘The Jews, that wonderful 19 19 people which has preserved so long the symbol of their union, may reassume 20 20 their ancestral seats’.45 By the ‘symbol’ Shelley means circumcision; the idea that 21 21 the rite has maintained Jewish identity derives from the Tractatus Theologico- 22 22 Politicus. Spinoza sardonically remarks that the ‘signum circumcisionis’ (‘sign of 23 23 circumcision’) might ‘preserve the nation for ever’. If the Jews can adhere to it so 24 24 tenaciously, they might equally well ‘raise up their empire afresh’, and ‘God may 25 25 26 26 27 27 42 SPP: 144–5. 28 28 43 See note 63. 29 29 44 ‘Peter Bell the Third’ was composed during the last week of October 1819 30 immediately after Shelley had been reading Spinoza. After its prologue, the poem playfully 30 31 begins with a conjunction, ‘proving’ that it is a fragmentary continuation of Wordsworth’s 31 32 Peter Bell, a joke that may have been suggested by a passage in ‘An Examination of the 32 33 Remaining Books of the Old Testament’: ‘That the book of Ezekiel is only a fragment, is 33 34 clearly indicated by the first verse. For anyone may see that the conjunction with which it 34 35 begins, refers to something already said, and connects what follows therewith. However, 35 36 not only this conjunction, but the whole text of the discourse implies other writings’ 36 (Treatise, PartProof 2, x, §24–6). The Shelleys translated Copy Spinoza in bursts between January and 37 37 38 April of 1820, during which time Shelley was writing ‘Philosophical View’, and reread 38 him in autumn 1820. In November 1821 Shelley resumed the translation, this time with 39 39 Williams as amanuensis (MS Journals I: 299–300, 305–6, 312–14, 319; Medwin, The 40 40 Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley [1847], rev. and ed. H. Buxton Forman. London: Humphrey 41 Milford; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913, pp. 252–3; Maria Gisborne & Edward E. 41 42 Williams: Shelley’s Friends. Their Journals and Letters, ed. F.L. Jones. Norman: University 42 43 of Oklahoma Press, 1951, pp. 111–12). 43 44 45 SC VI: 989. 44

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a second time elect them’.46 Shelley’s remark, however, unlike Spinoza’s, seems 1 1 not to be ironic. 2 2 The same is true of two tantalizing Shelley fragments, both relevant to the 3 3 Jews reclaiming their ‘ancestral seats’, one in the Bodleian Library, the other in 4 4 Tokyo University Library.47 The first was titled by Thomas Medwin ‘The Arch of 5 5 Titus’ and first published in 1832 from a copy that Shelley had permitted him to 6 6 take. The other, untitled, remained unknown until 1923 when it was published in 7 7 Japan, and is still uncollected.48 There is nothing else quite like them in Shelley’s 8 8 oeuvre. Both are incomplete prose addresses in which Shelley speaks in the person 9 9 of an imaginary contemporary Jew to fellow Jews, though Medwin’s version of 10 10 ‘Arch of Titus’ effaces this, a misrepresentation disclosed only in 1995.49 They are 11 11 discontinuous and different in tone, but likely to belong to the same compositional 12 12 13 13 46 14 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (1670), p. 43 (Treatise, Part 1, iii, §104–5). 14 47 15 Bod. MS Shelley, adds. c. 4, fol. 207 (Murray, BSM XXI: 246–9) and Tokyo 15 16 University Shelley MS A100/1590. 16 48 The Shelley family gave the Tokyo fragment to Richard Garnett, who in 1902, 17 17 during a period of great interest in Zionism following publication of Theodor Herzl’s 18 18 Der Judenstaat (1896), gifted it to a famous Japanese poet and Romanticist, Bansui Doi. 19 A reading text was published with a facsimile in Sheri Kenkyū, Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku 19 20 Eibungakukai hen (The Shelley Memorial Volume, by Members of the English Club, 20 21 Imperial University of Tokyo). Tokyo: Kenkyūsha, 1923. Doi’s family later presented the 21 22 MS to the University of Tokyo. Tatsuo Tokoo retranscribed it and published the result in 22 23 1993 under the title ‘On Zionism’. His diplomatic transcription, with light modifications 23 24 after my collation with A100/1590 in 2006, is in the K-SJ essay ‘Jewish Orations’, where I 24 25 call it ‘Restoration of the Jews’, the fragment being a proto-pro-Zionist monologue rather 25 26 than an essay fragment on Zionism. An alternative name might be ‘Address to the Jews’. 26 27 In 2010 I was unaware of Bryan Shelley’s remarks on the 1923 Tokyo publication in 27 Shelley and Scripture (1994). His noting the fragment’s Spinozism and its prediction of the 28 28 downfall of the Ottoman Empire antedated my essay. 29 29 49 By E.B. Murray (BSM XXI: 497). Its first appearance was as the first of several 30 short miscellaneous prose fragments that make up the tenth article on Shelley that Medwin 30 31 published in the Athenaeum (1832–33). The eighth and ninth articles were composed of 31 32 ‘Critical Notices of the Sculpture in the Florence Gallery’. When Medwin collected these 32 33 articles in The Shelley Papers of 1833, he ran them consecutively, so that ‘Arch of Titus’ 33 34 followed on directly from the ‘Critical Notices’, and, save for a discreet rule, now seemed 34 35 to be one of them. For Essays, Letters from Abroad (1840), Mary Shelley used Medwin’s 35 36 text of ‘Arch of Titus’, even though she had Shelley’s holograph. Evidently interested in it 36 37 as a descriptiveProof piece only, she did not include it withCopy Shelley’s other notes on sculpture but 37 38 placed it as a footnote to his March 1819 letter to Peacock. Forman, without access to the 38 ‘Arch of Titus’ holograph, reversed her uncoupling, and gave ‘Arch of Titus’ first place in 39 39 what he called ‘Notes on Sculptures in Rome and Florence’ in The Works of Percy Bysshe 40 40 Shelley in Verse and Prose, ed. H. Buxton Forman. 8 vols. London: Reeves and Turner, 41 1880, vol. 7, pp. 43–4. The lack of a complete modern critical edition of Shelley’s prose 41 42 works has ensured a long life to Forman’s error, which continues to mislead the unwary 42 43 through its perpetuation in the Julian edition (1927–30) and in David L. Clark’s widely read 43 44 Shelley’s Prose (1954). 44

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project, though this cannot be absolutely proved. The drafts are on virtually 1 1 identical paper, and are the only known examples among Shelley MSS of whole 2 2 sheets of that particular paper. They have about the same number of written lines 3 3 a page, ignoring interlineations, and are similar in penning style and ink, if one 4 4 may judge from notes taken in situ, aided by photofacsimiles. It also seems more 5 5 probable that composition was prompted by a single set of circumstances than that 6 6 Shelley attempted over time to make separate feints at writing as an imaginary 7 7 Jew. ‘Arch of Titus’ has been conjecturally dated March 1819, but on weak 8 8 grounds: Shelley wrote a letter to Peacock describing the Arch during that month, 9 9 and continued the unfinished prose narrative ‘The Coliseum’ (1818–19), which he 10 10 had started the previous November. But the manuscripts of ‘The Coliseum’ and 11 11 ‘Arch of Titus’ are physically very different from each other, and, apart from the 12 12 theme of ‘ruins of Rome’ and an opening reference to the Passover, there is no 13 13 connection in content between them.50 The Tokyo manuscript is definitely later 14 14 than the first quarter of 1820, as it mentions some of the same political situations 15 15 as ‘Philosophical View’, but at a more advanced stage. The likeliest window of 16 16 composition for both is between late 1820 and late summer of 1821, when unrest 17 17 in the Middle East was increasing, but before Shelley had learned of the latest 18 18 political developments referred to in Hellas (composed chiefly during October 19 19 1821). In the first, the speaker looks backward to ‘the desolation of our City’ and 20 20 describes the Arch, erected in the Roman Forum to commemorate Titus’s victory 21 21 at the siege of Jerusalem in ad 70, but now ruined. Its panels depict ‘the walls of 22 22 the temple split by the fury of the conflagration’, ‘matrons & virgins & children & 23 23 old men, gathered into groupes; and the rapine & license of a barbarous & enraged 24 24 soldiery are imaged in the distance’. The ‘sacred instruments of our eternal 25 25 worship’, including the seven-branched candlestick and the shewbread table, are 26 26 profaned, ‘our magistrates & priests & generals & philosophers dragged in chains’ 27 27 beside the victor’s wheels. The speaker describes this imagery as ‘almost erased 28 28 by the lapse of fifty generations’, as well he might, since apart from the ‘sacred 29 29 instruments’ (borne in triumph by Roman soldiers), these features are not and 30 30 could never have been on the actual panels.51 His vivid sense of history peoples the 31 31 vacancy of this tabula rasa. Lady Morgan in her Italy (1821) also adds colourfully 32 32 imagined details to her account (soldiers drunk on blood, abject Jewish captives), 33 33 and it is possible that Morgan’s brief description incited Shelley to compose the 34 34 fragments in late August or early September 1821.52 But Italy lacks Shelley’s 35 35 36 36 50 E.B.Proof Murray suggested that ‘Arch of Titus’Copy might be part of ‘The Coliseum’, the 37 37 38 stranger youth being the Wandering Jew, and Mary Shelley mistaken in identifying the 38 youth as Greek (BSM XXI: 497). This is improbable. For one thing, ‘The Coliseum’ is set in 39 39 Rome, but the speaker in ‘Arch of Titus’ tells his audience/readers that the Arch is in Rome 40 40 (not ‘this city, Rome’), which implies that he and/or they are supposed to be somewhere 41 else. For a more detailed argument, see Crook and Tokoo, ‘Jewish Orations’, pp. 47, 50–53. 41 42 51 Crook and Tokoo, pp. 58–9. 42 43 52 Lady Morgan, Italy. 3 vols. London: Henry Colburn, 1821, vol. 2, p. 354. Italy is a 43 44 conjectural item of Shelley’s reading in 1821, much of which is unrecorded. Byron received 44

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empathy. ‘Arch of Titus’ is the only instance of Shelley’s imagining the feelings of 1 1 a contemporary Jew contemplating the Fall of Jerusalem. The speaker’s reference 2 2 to Jewish philosophers suggests that for him Jerusalem is a site of wisdom. He 3 3 himself is philosophical, in the manner of Volney in Les Ruines (1791), as he 4 4 reflects that the family of Titus, destroyer of Jerusalem, is no more, that his arch is 5 5 ‘mouldering to its fall’, that ‘[t]he Flavian Amphitheatre is become a habitation of 6 6 owls and dragons’ (a direct allusion to Isaiah 34: 13), and that ‘Rome is no more 7 7 than Jerusalem’. 8 8 In the Tokyo fragment the speaker, by contrast, looks forward to the City’s 9 9 restoration. He has switched register (or, possibly, the portions represent a 10 10 dialogue between two Jewish speakers). The Hebrew philosopher-prophet voice 11 11 cedes to that of a Spinoza redivivus, reasoned and eloquent, though not poetic, 12 12 hybridized with the voice of Shelley the pragmatic ‘Hermit of Marlow’, author 13 13 of A Proposal for Putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom (1817), 14 14 and (perhaps, though Greece is nowhere mentioned) the enthusiasm of Alexander 15 15 Ypsilanti’s proclamation, ‘Cry of War to the Greeks’, which the Shelleys received 16 16 on 1 April from Alexander Mavrocordato and translated together to advance the 17 17 cause of Greek independence.53 18 18 The Spinozan speaker is an interpreter of obscure scriptural prophecies. He 19 19 discloses that their purport is both rational and utopian. He outlines ‘a certain 20 20 infallible plan for … re-establishing the antient free republic of the Jews according 21 21 to the Mosaic law, & rebuilding the City & the Temple’ and once more possessing 22 22 ‘the Land of Promise’. Evasively, he does not actually propose a return to the legal 23 23 decrees of the Pentateuch (‘Mosaic law’), only to the republic legislated by Moses 24 24 in the wilderness.54 The obfuscation concerning whether a theocracy is envisaged 25 25 26 26 27 his copy on 16 August, the day or the day before Shelley left Ravenna. Claire Clairmont 27 began reading Italy at Livorno on 1 September (The Journals of Claire Clairmont [CCJ], 28 28 ed. Marion Kingston Stocking. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968, p. 248). 29 29 She was living with the Shelleys for much of the first part of September. Byron’s ‘On the 30 Day of the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus’ in Hebrew Melodies had imagined the fall 30 31 of Jerusalem from the perspective of a Jewish eyewitness, but one eager for vengeance, as 31 32 Shelley’s Jewish speaker is not. 32 33 53 Compare ‘Cry of War’: ‘Behold our temples trampled underfoot, our children 33 34 ravished from us to glut the brutal appetites of our unnatural & barbarous tyrants; our houses 34 35 sacked, our land devastated, and we ourselves treated as slaves’ (Weinberg, BSM XXII (2): 35 36 240–41) and the passage quoted above from ‘The Arch of Titus’; also the exhortations 36 37 ‘What GrecianProof heart will be indifferent to the call Copyof his country?’ (BSM XXII (2): 29–31, 37 38 238–45) and ‘is there a Jew who would not devote himself to its success?’ i.e., of the 38 proposed restoration (‘Jewish Orations’, p. 63). The ‘Cry of War’ translation was probably 39 39 first made by Mary Shelley from a French version, not modern Greek, and then improved 40 40 by Shelley. Mavrocordato communicated with Mary Shelley in French, and the translation 41 has several Gallicisms (e.g. ‘marine’ for ‘navy’). 41 42 54 Crook and Tokoo, ‘Jewish Orations’, p. 60. Shelley draws on Paradise Lost, where 42 43 the archangel foretells that the Israelites will ‘their great Senate choose / Through the 43 44 twelve Tribes’ (XII, 225–6), and on Commonwealth republican theory, which maintained 44

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is evidently designed to ‘accommodate’ the message to the understandings of his 1 1 auditors, and to persuade them that, like Shelley’s Jesus, he is urging ‘only the 2 2 restoration and reestablishment of the original institutions, and antient customs of 3 3 your own law and religion’ (‘On Christianity’).55 4 4 The speaker’s terms – ‘God’, ‘the Almighty’ – imply orthodoxy, but his God 5 5 proves to be Spinoza’s ‘Deus sive Natura’ (God or Nature), and the wording would 6 6 allow a rebuilt Temple to be dedicated to this conception. The speaker declares 7 7 that it is ‘a vulgar error to imagine that [the Almighty] produces the great political 8 8 changes on which the happiness of nations depends, by an agency distinct from 9 9 that of Man & nature’.56 A necessitarian like Spinoza, he declares that in the same 10 10 way that God is the sole cause of ‘all the events which have place in the Universe’, 11 11 so he is of ‘all our thoughts and actions’. When these ‘become sufficiently 12 12 powerful to produce a great event, they may be considered as the means selected 13 13 by the Almighty to produce that event’ – a form of words that would permit a 14 14 sceptic to dispense with any belief in a supernatural agent. Salvation is simply 15 15 the ‘reestablishment of our political state & the public prosperity & private virtue 16 16 which will result from it’, despite the ‘pretension of certain reli fanatics that it 17 17 relates to a future state of life’. (The prudential substitution of ‘fanatics’ for ‘reli’ 18 18 tellingly indicates Shelley’s tactics of ‘accommodation’.) The ‘reflecting mind’ 19 19 needs no ‘supernatural instruction’ to be convinced that ‘the good will of all 20 20 professions will be happy’. The word ‘professions’ is similarly slippery. It might 21 21 refer to professions of faith, and commit the reborn state to universal religious 22 22 tolerance, or merely mean that the rich man, the rabbi and the rag-merchant will all 23 23 be happy if they are good, a proposition that few could quarrel with. The speaker 24 24 then issues a Shelleyan trumpet-prophecy, daringly proclaiming that the state 25 25 26 26 27 27 that in later changing this model for a monarchy, the Jewish nation disobeyed God’s will 28 28 (see 1 Samuel 8). According to Coleridge (1795): ‘If we except the Spartan, the Jewish 29 29 has been the only Republic that can consistently boast of Liberty and Equality’; see No. 30 2 of Lectures On Revealed Religion in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 30 31 eds Lewis Patton and Peter Mann. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971, vol. 31 32 1, p. 126. Coleridge was influenced, directly or indirectly, by James Harrington’s The 32 33 Commonwealth of Oceana (1656), which argues for the democratic and popular character 33 34 of the Jewish commonwealth legislated by Moses at God’s command, and on the fitness of 34 35 the Jews for excelling at agrarian as well as commercial pursuits if they were to be given 35 36 land. An entry in an unpublished list of books left behind in England by Shelley when he 36 departed forProof Italy attests to his ownership of a copyCopy of Oceana (Pforzheimer Collection of 37 37 38 Shelley and His Circle, Shelleyana 1082). There is a brief cancelled reference to Harrington 38 in ‘Philosophical View’ (SC VI: 971 and n.). 39 39 55 Prose I: 262. 40 40 56 Crook and Tokoo, ‘Jewish Orations’, p. 60. Cf. Tractatus (1670), p. 14: ‘to say that 41 everything happens according to natural laws, and to say that everything is ordained by the 41 42 decree and ordinance of God, is the same thing’ (Treatise, Part 1, iii §14). This was one of 42 43 Shelley’s favourite quotations from Spinoza; see Queen Mab, last quotation in Note to VII, 43 44 13 (‘There is No God!’), and A Refutation of Deism (Prose I: 122). 44

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might be brought into being with a human Word, as God created light: ‘We have 1 1 only to say, it shall be, & it is.’57 2 2 The speaker next turns to the financing of the plan, putting a novel spin on some 3 3 of the historic aspersions on Jews. He concedes something to Tacitus but without 4 4 implicating the entire Jewish people: there are rich Jews, merchants and capitalists, 5 5 who hate all other nations, but their hatred is rational, the ‘natural consequence of 6 6 their misfortunes & their wrongs’. They have accumulated fortunes (gained in the 7 7 first place by industry and economy, not craft and extortion), but only because 8 8 the ‘tyranny & insolence of their oppressors’ restricts their spending. Their undue 9 9 influence with governments is granted, but it may readily be turned to a good end, 10 10 the restoration of their nation-state. Non-Jewish financiers, their rivals, will not 11 11 impede their exodus, and ‘for manufacturing countries they would create a’.58 The 12 12 sentence was obviously continued on a lost leaf, but probably the composition 13 13 was not very much longer than its present length. This final portion shows Shelley 14 14 beginning to lose his grip on character and sense of audience. The voice starts to 15 15 sound like an Englishman trying to convince other Englishmen that it would be in 16 16 their interest to support a Jewish homeland. 17 17 What makes Shelley’s Tokyo fragment unusual in its time, if not unique, is 18 18 that it is free of early nineteenth-century Christian conversion millenarianism (the 19 19 belief that conversion and restoration of the Jews would herald Armageddon, the 20 20 defeat of the antichrist and the earthly Kingdom of God).59 Moreover, Shelley 21 21 imagines the return of the Jews to their ‘ancestral seats’ as a Jewish initiative, not 22 22 as an offer from a European power seeking Jewish support, such as Napoleon 23 23 actually made but did not proclaim, nor as a European solution to an identified 24 24 ‘Jewish problem’. Yet there is something self-defeating in the monologue that 25 25 Shelley (who, as far as is known, never met any real Jewish proto-Zionists60) may 26 26 27 27 57 Crook and Tokoo, ‘Jewish Orations’, pp. 60–61. Cf. ‘Shelley believed that mankind 28 28 had only to will that there should be no evil, and there would be none’ (Mary Shelley, ‘Note 29 29 on the Prometheus Unbound’, PW II: 133). 30 58 Crook and Tokoo, pp. 62–4. 30 31 59 The Revd G.S. Faber, whom Shelley placed among the ‘Armageddon-Heroes’ 31 32 (Letters I: 45), and whom he entangled in a hoax, posing as an honest doubter (1811), 32 33 expounded these views in A General and Connected View of the Prophecies, Relative to the 33 34 Conversion, Restoration, Union, and Future Glory of the Houses of Judah and Israel; the 34 35 Progress, and Final Overthrow, of the Antichristian Confederacy in the Land of Palestine; 35 36 and the Ultimate General Diffusion of Christianity. 2 vols. London: Rivington, 1808. For 36 37 other varietiesProof of 1790s Christian millenarianism seeCopy Sceptics, Millenarians and Jews , eds 37 38 David S. Katz and Jonathan I. Israel. Leiden: Brill, 1990, especially pp. 256–74. 38 60 From the existence of the Tokyo MS, Emily Sunstein conjectured that the Shelleys 39 39 encountered contemporary Zionism among the progressive Livornese Sephardic community 40 40 (Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality. 2nd edn. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 41 1991, p. 436 n. 33), but their recorded contacts with Jews of Livorno are tangential only. 41 42 Claire Clairmont saw (22 July 1820) the casting of a cylinder for Henry Reveley’s steam 42 43 boat at Livorno, where a Jew was present (Livorno shipping was controlled by Jews, which 43 44 the steam boat presumably would not have been). On 27 July she visited the gardens of a 44

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have recognized: this compound of Isaiah, Jesus and Spinoza, this Moses of a new 1 1 exodus, propounds a rationalist message designed to be misunderstood by at least 2 2 some of those whom he tries to persuade, and who would reject him if they were 3 3 to understand him fully. 4 4 5 5 6 IV 6 7 7 8 There is another reason for Shelley’s failure to persist with his address(es), 8 9 if the suggested dating is correct: their eclipse by the cause that engaged his 9 10 imaginative energies in 1821 after Adonais: the liberation of Greece. Yet the 10 11 attempt, I would suggest, finds an oblique expression in the appearance inHellas 11 12 (1822) of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, Shelley’s last and subtlest treatment of 12 13 this figure. 13 14 Ahasuerus no longer wanders, but dwells somewhere in the significantly 14 15 named Demonesi islands in the Sea of Marmara, the Greek Propontis, at the 15 16 meeting point of Asia and Europe. As one of the ‘Jews dispersed throughout the 16 17 continents of Europe Asia & Africa, & in the Mediterranean islands’ mentioned in 17 18 the Tokyo fragment, he is, in Scrivener’s words, a representative of ‘the Diaspora, 18 19 whose exiles are ready to return’,61 but he is also acculturated to Western thought, 19 20 including that of Plato, ‘an adept in the difficult lore / Of Greek and Frank 20 21 philosophy’ (Hellas, ll. 741–2). He is summoned to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmud 21 22 by Hassan, a polymorphous figure, a loyal servant whose services end up doing his 22 23 master no good at all. Hassan recounts Greek defeats as though they were victories 23 24 so vividly that Mahmud protests, ‘Your heart is Greek, Hassan’ (l. 454), which 24 25 Hassan does not deny. Hassan despises Jewish merchants: ‘the yellow Jew / Hides 25 26 his hoard deeper in the faithless earth’ (ll. 326–7), but is in awe of Jewish sages – a 26 27 clear illustration of what Scrivener calls the Romantic denigration of ‘the pedlar, 27 28 the materialistic and foreign seller of commodities’ while idealizing ‘the prophet, 28 29 the vehicle for inspired speech’.62 It is by exciting in Mahmud an irresistible desire 29 30 to talk to Ahasuerus that Hassan inadvertently enables the Jew to gain control over 30 31 the Sultan’s imagination. 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 villa ownedProof by a prominent Livornese Jewish merchantCopy family: ‘In the evening walk with 37 37 38 the Signorine Ricci to villa Busnach; the Jew Montefiore & his daughter’ (CCJ: 157–8, 38 159), but it is impossible to tell from this whether she actually met two members of the 39 39 famous Montefiore family. Shelley was in Pisa on both dates. 40 40 61 Scrivener, ‘Reading Shelley’s Ahasuerus’, p. 138. 41 62 Scrivener, p. 133. Hassan, the Turk, calls the Jew ‘yellow’ because gold is yellow and 41 42 because of the yellow badge decreed by medieval Islamic (and later Christian) sumptuary 42 43 laws to distinguish Jews from other minority religious communities. There seems to have 43 44 been no association between yellow and cowardice in Shelley’s day. 44

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The consultation that ensues parallels Saladin’s interview with the wise Jew 1 1 in the Decameron and in Act III of Williams’s The Promise.63 In all three works 2 2 despot and Jew are given a magnanimity that raises them above their stereotypes, 3 3 especially in Hellas, where the wise Jew is not rich, and is summoned by Mahmud 4 4 to release the treasure of his secrets, not, as in Boccaccio and The Promise, to open 5 5 his coffers. Both Williams’s Melchisedech and Shelley’s Ahasuerus live austerely, 6 6 and are the subjects of speculation. Ahasuerus, Proteus-like, inhabits a sea-cave, 7 and is said by some to be immortal, while Melchisedech, according to superstitious 7 8 rumour, repairs to a cave to work forbidden spells that turn all he touches to gold. 8 9 He has, in fact, no occult powers. Shelley similarly represents Ahasuerus as 9 10 ‘disclaiming all pretension or even belief in supernatural agency’. He depends on 10 11 ‘a sort of natural magic, susceptible of being exercised in a degree by anyone who 11 12 should have made himself master of the secret associations of another’s thoughts’.64 12 13 In his affirmation that he does not disdain Mahmud, nor ‘the worm beneath thy 13 14 feet’ (l. 762), he follows Spinoza’s maxim, ‘humanas actiones non ridere, non 14 15 lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere’ (‘neither to laugh at, or bewail, or detest the 15 16 actions of men; but to understand them’).65 In some of Shelley’s finest sententious 16 17 verse, he proceeds to impress on Mahmud his insignificance and that of the 17 18 Ottoman Empire, when contemplated in Spinozan phrase, sub specie aeternitatis,66 18 19 and undermines Mahmud’s belief in its continuance. Thus the Jew dislocates 19 20 Mahmud’s reality, leaving the way open for the return of an essentially classical 20 21 21 22 63 Williams began work on The Promise in May 1821, and finished it in July. Shelley 22 23 corrected it (corrections are transcribed in Walter E. Peck, Shelley: His Life and Work. 2 23 24 vols. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927, vol. 2, pp. 365–80). As Act III of 24 25 this May–July version has not survived, it is not completely certain that it contained a 25 26 ‘wise Jew’ scene. However, Williams’s journal entries about revising The Promise between 26 27 24 October and 5 December 1821 suggest that he did not insert new scenes at this point. 27 The Melchisedech scene is the only one identified: ‘Employed revising the Jew scene’ and 28 28 ‘Read my Jew scene to S[helley], and revise a little’; see, in particular, Maria Gisborne 29 29 & Edward E. Williams, entries of 21 October, 24 October and 20 November (pp. 103, 30 105, 113). Williams’s revised Promise, a neat fair copy, is in the Pforzheimer Collection 30 31 (Shelleyana 578; examined by me October 2011). Williams fair-copied Hellas between 6 31 32 and 10 November 1821, making it possible that the ‘Jew scene’ in the revised Promise was 32 33 influenced by Hellas. The possibility that the influence was mutual is also very strong. 33 34 64 Hellas, Note 6 (SPP: 463). 34 35 65 Tractatus-Politicus I, §4, in Spinoza’s Opera Posthuma (1677). Quoted by 35 36 ‘Shelley’ in the fictionalized dialogue ‘Byron and Shelley on the Character of Hamlet’, 36 37 together withProof this translation; see New Monthly MagazineCopy, n.s. 29 (1830), pp. 327–36 (p. 37 38 336). SC VIII (p. 743) names the source as the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, but this is a 38 slip: the Tractatus-Politicus is a different work. Both the quotation and the translation, with 39 39 a slight variation, are found in the epigraph to Essay 1 of Coleridge’s The Friend. Medwin, 40 40 the probable author, may have derived them from notes taken verbatim from Shelley’s 41 conversation, or from The Friend, or both. 41 42 66 Ethica V, §29 and 30. Arthur Hallam owned a copy said to be Shelley’s, present 42 43 whereabouts unknown (SC VIII: 742). Ethica is also in the Opera Posthuma, which Shelley 43 44 ordered with the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (SC VIII: 737). 44

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and predominantly Athenian Golden Age, though one anticipated with doubt and 1 1 foreboding, especially in the final lines. Jewish restoration is not mentioned; it is 2 2 not presented as Ahasuerus’s motive for undermining the idea of empire. Yet just as 3 3 from the Tokyo fragment a pro-Hellenic subtext can be extrapolated (anything that 4 4 hastens the collapse of the Ottoman Empire aids the Greek War of Independence), 5 5 the subtext here is that Jews and Greeks (and unconsciously disaffected servants of 6 6 Muslim despots like Hassan) have a common cause, and together demonstrate that 7 7 all subjugated nations in the Congressional post-Napoleonic era, even those exiled 8 8 for 2,000 years, may be roused to self-liberation from ‘Tyrants who have pinnacled 9 9 themselves on [their] supineness’.67 As a synthesis of the great-mindedness of 10 10 Boccaccio’s Melchisedech, the philosophy of Plato and Spinoza, and of Eastern 11 11 and Western traditions of poetry, Ahasuerus embodies the moral authority and 12 12 wisdom that might be the precondition for such a restoration. 13 13 Shelley’s heart, too, is Greek. Yet he gestures at the fusion of Hebrew and 14 14 classical prophecies of restoration and renewal in his Note 7 of Hellas, citing 15 15 two famous and often compared prophecies, the eleventh chapter of Isaiah and 16 16 Virgil’s Fourth ‘Messianic’ Eclogue. In what appears to be a direct allusion to 17 17 Lowth’s assertion that ‘some degree of obscurity is the necessary attendant upon 18 18 prophecy’ because of ‘the impropriety of making a complete revelation of every 19 19 circumstance connected with the prediction’,68 Shelley describes the final Chorus 20 20 of Greek captives, themselves Christian, as ‘indistinct and obscure as the event of 21 21 the living drama whose arrival it foretells’. It will remind the reader ‘of Isaiah and 22 22 Virgil, whose ardent spirits overleaping the actual reign of evil which we endure 23 23 and bewail, already saw the possible and perhaps approaching state of society in 24 24 which the “lion shall lie down with the lamb” and “omnis feret omnia tellus [Every 25 25 land will bring forth all things].” Let these great names be my authority and my 26 26 excuse’.69 27 27 Predictions as to how Shelley’s attitude towards Jews and Judaism might 28 28 have evolved had he lived must also be dark and imperfect. That he would have 29 29 tried to publish his lost translation of Spinoza seems probable, but obstinate 30 30 questionings remain (‘Would he have made greater efforts to discover more about 31 31 contemporary Jewish culture? Would he have given any thought to the inhabitants 32 32 of Palestine?’).70 Such speculations wander in the same region as ‘How would he 33 33 34 34 35 67 Preface to Hellas, SPP: 432. 35 68 36 Lowth, Lecture 9 in Lectures (1815), pp. 124–5. 36 69 ‘AProof Defence of Poetry’, SPP: 463–4. Virgil’s Copy status in medieval Europe as a quasi- 37 37 38 Christian poet, equipping him to be Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, has been 38 traced back to Eusebius’s interpretation (c. 337 AD) of Eclogue IV as prophetic of the 39 39 Kingdom of Christ on earth. Lowth regarded this Eclogue as an exception to his rule that 40 40 Classical prophecy lacked Hebrew sublimity. In Lecture 21 he expounds a now exploded 41 theory of its transmission to Virgil from the Hebrew original via Greek translations, or via 41 42 divine inspiration (Lectures [1815], pp. 298–309). 42 43 70 In 1811 Faber (see note 59) accused Shelley of imposing on him with a claim to 43 44 have ‘travelled through Palestine, which resembled a stone-quarry more than anything else’ 44

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have completed “The Triumph of Life”?’ – a barren and dry land where no water is. 1 1 Yet he was unquestionably curious about the Eastern Mediterranean, and jumped 2 2 in late 1820 at the idea of joining Thomas Medwin’s ‘plan to be accomplished with 3 3 a friend of his, a man of large fortune, who will be at Leghorn next Spring, and 4 4 who designs to visit Greece, Syria, and Egypt in his own ship’, a plan that, had 5 5 it materialized, would have given him eyewitness impressions of Palestine, then 6 6 part of Syria.71 Such openness to new experience, together with his conviction that 7 7 ‘circumstances make men what they are[.] … we all contain the germ of a degree 8 8 of degradation or of greatness, whose connexion with our character is determined 9 9 by events’,72 holds out the promise that Shelley’s knowledge of Jewish affairs 10 10 would have become better informed, and his views more enlarged and inclusive. 11 11 12 12 13 13 14 14 15 15 16 16 17 17 18 18 19 19 20 20 21 21 22 22 23 23 24 24 25 25 26 26 27 27 28 28 29 29 30 30 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 Proof Copy 37 38 (Bod. MS Don. c. 180, fols 41–5; see James Bieri, Percy Bysshe Shelley; A Biography. 38 Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008, pp. 120, 702 n. 93). Shelley may have 39 39 supposed, like some late nineteenth-century Zionists, that Palestine was an ‘empty land’, 40 40 but there is too little evidence to encourage conjecture. 41 71 Shelley to Claire Clairmont, 29 October 1820; Letters II: 242. The ‘man’ has been 41 42 plausibly conjectured to be Edward Trelawny. The ‘large fortune’– and the ship – were 42 43 someone’s wishful thinking. 43 44 72 Hellas, Note 4 (SPP: 463). 44

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02.07.2008

The Neglected Shelley.indb 280 9/11/2015 4:29:38 PM 1 Chapter 14 1 2 2 3 Shelley’s Italian Verse Fragments: 3 4 Exploring the Notebook Drafts 4 5 5 6 6 7 Alan M. Weinberg 7 8 8 9 9 10 10 11 The Corpus of ‘Italian’ Fragments 11 12 12 13 Several draft verse fragments, whose subject, locality or reference is discernibly 13 14 Italian in character, were written over the course of the poet’s residence in Italy (30 14 15 March 1818 to 8 July 1822). Among these texts, the most notable is ‘The Triumph 15 16 of Life’, a work whose frame setting is distinctly Italian and Mediterranean (the 16 17 bay of Lerici), and whose indebtedness to Italian poetry, specifically the allegories 17 18 of Dante and Petrarch, is now well attested.1 But while ‘The Triumph’ once 18 19 languished among Shelley’s most seriously neglected poems, it is now ironically 19 20 considered among the best known and admired, a reputation well deserved as it 20 21 is a work of towering stature, albeit incomplete. In consequence of its present 21 22 renown, it will not feature among the group of unfamiliar fragments which is the 22 23 subject of the present essay. 23 24 With the exception of the ‘Song for Tasso’ and probably ‘Mazenghi’, these 24 25 texts were written in Pisa or its environs,2 and all but the ‘Tasso’ fragments 25 26 have Tuscan subjects, mainly Pisan or Florentine. They may be anchored in an 26 27 immediate Italian context (the poet’s domicile) or in the culturally vibrant past 27 28 – which includes, in addition to Tasso, the notable influence of Dante as well as 28 29 other authors – though the tenor of these works is by no means idealistic. The texts 29 30 cover a fairly wide range of ‘Italian’ topoi, often interrelated, focusing (as the case 30 31 may be) on a poet, a patriot, historic and contemporary scenes, legendary figures, 31 32 recreation (boating on the Tuscan waterways), an emblematic vegetable plant. The 32 33 fragments themselves are of varied length. The more extended are inconclusive 33 34 narratives such as ‘Mazenghi’ and ‘Ginevra’, and unformed or unrealized ones 34 35 such as ‘Fiordispina’ and the river bucolic, ‘The Boat on the Serchio’. The latter 35 36 two have pronounced lyrical or dialogic qualities that protract, perhaps even 36 37 override whateverProof story might have been intended.Copy The briefer fragments are 37 38 mostly descriptive portraits such as ‘Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa’ and ‘The Tower 38 39 of Famine’. There remain, in this grouping of texts, brief sketches of a drama on 39 40 40 41 1 See e.g. Timothy Webb, The Violet in the Crucible: Shelley and Translation. Oxford: 41 42 Clarendon Press, 1976, pp. 326–9, and Alan Weinberg, Shelley’s Italian Experience. 42 43 London: Macmillan 1991, pp. 202–42. 43 44 2 For the dating of ‘Mazenghi’, see p. 286 below. 44

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the Italian poet Tasso (among the first of Shelley’s concerns on arrival in Italy), and 1 1 the opening stanzas of a mythopoeic fable, ‘The Zucca’ (composed in Shelley’s 2 2 last year), whose Italian qualities are muted yet present in title (original with the 3 3 poet), the plant itself, which is the centre of focus, the wintry setting (the time of 4 4 composition) and rhyme scheme (ottava rima). While these diverse fragments are 5 5 not united by any single concern, they do form a network of related ideas, and 6 6 have been grouped here chronologically, in pairs, as reflective of periodic ties 7 7 and linkages. A pattern of four groups emerges that may reflect some degree of 8 8 authorial design, as in the pairing of the brief Pisan sketches or of ‘Fiordispina’ 9 9 and ‘Ginevra’. It should be noted, too, from the outset that nearly all the titles are 10 10 editorial and did not (as far as is known) have the poet’s sanction. 11 11 These texts may have less lustre than the ‘The Triumph of Life’, may be 12 12 neither as ambitious in conception nor substantial in length. Nevertheless they 13 13 are significant draft fragments in their own right, all embedded in a texture of 14 14 ongoing creative thought and composition, and of response to the Italian ‘world’. 15 15 Moreover, they share with the epic fragment a sense of the provisional, of the 16 16 unformulated that, in the case of Shelley, is idiosyncratic and determines the very 17 17 nature of the artefact and the kind of response that would be pertinent. Unlike the 18 18 surviving art works and ruins of the past, these works are not mutilated, were not 19 19 once whole and entire, but were simply left unfinished by a young poet neither 20 20 wholly displeased to leave texts in an imperfect state, nor granted the fullness 21 21 of time ever to rethink or revise them. Much as he strove to perfect his art, he 22 22 understood that imperfection was bound up with the very nature of creative 23 23 activity and has a value and significance of its own. 24 24 The stark fact of incompletion is often overlooked in the now abundant critical 25 25 discourse on ‘The Triumph of Life’, and the result is an inevitable distortion of 26 26 the work’s character. Faced with the seemingly inchoate manuscript (see BSM 27 27 I), whose last pages in this instance were scribbled hastily on loose paper, one 28 28 may be left in doubt regarding even the primary signification of the text, largely 29 29 because this has not been resolved by the author. Much the same doubt arises 30 30 in regard to the rough state of the other Italian fragments, especially ‘Tasso’, 31 31 ‘Fiordispina’, ‘Ginevra’ and ‘The Boat on the Serchio’, the texts, in these instances, 32 32 apparently abandoned by the poet. In manuscript, which is where Shelley left 33 33 them, they appear to the ordinary eye as disordered and incomprehensible, and 34 34 as hieroglyphics of cancellations and reworkings set down seemingly in the 35 35 white heat of inspiration. Considerable editorial skill is required to discern the 36 36 probable Proofsense embedded in an unfinished Copyauthorial draft, and certain readings 37 37 will always remain conjectural. Some of the poet’s drafts which appear to be 38 38 intermediate (as in the case of ‘Mazenghi’, ‘Evening. Ponte a mare’, ‘The Zucca’) 39 39 are more intelligible and cause fewer problems for the reader.3 For nearly two 40 40 41 41 42 3 To date, all but ‘The Zucca’ (to be edited by Jack Donovan for vol. 5) have been 42 43 freshly edited by Kelvin Everest (‘Mazenghi’ and ‘Tasso’ for vol. 2) and Michael Rossington 43 44 (the remaining five fragments for vols 3 and 4) inPoems of Shelley (PS). London: Longman 44

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centuries, corrupt or unsatisfactory texts have caused the fragments to recede into 1 1 the background of Shelley’s corpus, so receiving at best only sporadic attention. 2 2 Such editions, mostly out of date, have neither inspired nor prompted reliable 3 3 discussions of these fragments. This state of affairs will alter in the wake of new 4 4 editions presently being published which scrupulously contextualize and provide 5 5 intelligible readings of the manuscripts. Such impressive scholarship is invaluable, 6 6 though smoothed-out readings, with hesitations, cancellations and insertions – 7 7 in short, the writing process – selectively signalled in the notes but elided from 8 8 the text, might begin to seem overly authoritative.4 Induced as one is to return to 9 9 the original notebook drafts for anchorage – now available for consultation in 10 10 facsimile and transcription in BSM5– one discovers a different textual reality, one 11 11 which resituates the drafts among others in a continuum that draws attention to the 12 12 nature of Shelley’s compositional practice. Frequently one notes how Shelley is 13 13 ready to abandon a text which, though in a rough state and incomplete, appears to 14 14 have served some creative purpose germane to the author’s needs. In the ensuing 15 15 discussion, I shall follow this path of investigation in order to reveal the underlying 16 16 concerns and attributes of Shelley’s ‘Italian’ fragments.6 17 17 18 18 19 Poet and Patriot: The ‘Tasso’ Fragments and ‘Mazenghi’ (1818–19) 19 20 20 21 Occupying Shelley from the moment he arrived in Italy – as his reading of Manso’s 21 22 and Serrassi’s ‘Lives of Torquato Tasso’ and his own sketch for a scenario show7 22 23 – the project of ‘a tragedy on the subject of Tasso’s madness’,8 which he expected 23 24 to take several months to complete, appears to have been suspended at Bagni di 24 25 Lucca in July 1818,9 and may well have been dropped once the character of Tasso 25 26 26 27 27 (Pearson Education), 2000, 2011; New York: Routledge, 2014. These fragments will again 28 28 be independently edited by Nora Crook and, in the instance of ‘Fiordispina’, by Stuart 29 29 Curran for later volumes of Complete Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley (CPPBS). Baltimore: 30 Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000–2012 (8 vols planned, 3 vols published). I am deeply 30 31 indebted to Michael Rossington, Jack Donovan and Nora Crook whose advice and editorial 31 32 work have provided me with invaluable assistance regarding manuscripts, dates and matters 32 33 of interpretation. 33 34 4 For consideration of this editorial practice, see Michael Bradshaw, ‘Reading as 34 35 Flight: Fragment Poems from Shelley’s Notebooks’, in The Unfamiliar Shelley, eds Alan 35 36 M. Weinberg and Timothy Webb. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 21–40, esp. pp. 31–2. 36 5 37 The ProofItalian verse fragments are reproduced Copy in facsimile and transcribed in BSM II 37 38 Massey, III (Dawson), VI (Adamson), XII (Crook), XIV (Dawson and Webb), XV (Jones), 38 XVIII (Goslee), XIX (Crook and Webb). 39 39 6 Although presently not easily accessible to all readers, BSM will soon be available 40 40 online in the Shelley-Godwin Archive (see http://shelleygodwinarchive.org). 41 7 MS Journals: 203 and n. 4, 209. The scenario has been dated June 1818 (BSM III: 41 42 355) or April/May 1818 (PS II: 366). 42 43 8 Letters II: 8. 43 44 9 PS II: 366. 44

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was recast in the Maniac of ‘Julian and Maddalo’ (probably begun at Este in the 1 1 autumn of 1818).10 With the illustrious Ferrarese poet, Shelley would have felt a 2 2 close tie: as if thinking of his experience in England which prompted his self-exile, 3 3 Shelley later remarked, in contemplation of the handwriting of Tasso, that the 4 4 latter’s ‘unoffending genius could not escape … hopeless persecution’.11 Romantic 5 5 legend (already represented in Goethe’s drama Torquato Tasso [1790], Byron’s 6 6 The Lament of Tasso [1817] and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV: xxxvi–xl [1818])12 7 7 gave the Italian an aura that appealed to Shelley’s imagination. Yet attempts at a 8 8 play based, it appears, on Tasso’s frustrated, thwarted love for Leonora d’Este were 9 9 sporadic and failed to develop further, perhaps because Tasso’s hyper-sensitive 10 10 nature, approaching insanity, may not have lent itself to dramatic progression.13 11 11 Three surviving fragments do, however, indicate the specific focus of Shelley’s 12 12 interest. A brief scene, perhaps intended to open the play (it is marked ‘scene 1’) and 13 13 drafted on the first pages of MS Shelley adds. e. 11 (pp. 166–161 rev.),14 presents 14 14 Tasso through the eyes of his friend, (Cardinal) Albano, who is in conversation 15 15 with (Giovan Battista) Pigna and the poet’s mercenary rivals, (Count) Maddalo 16 16 and (Lorenzo) Malpiglio. This framing device serves to provide a contextualized 17 17 and sympathetic viewpoint on Tasso (partly drafted in pencil). Most striking, in 18 18 Albano’s report, is the young Tasso’s inwardness, his living as a poet intensely 19 19 in the mind. The person and the poet seem indistinguishable. Momentarily, his 20 20 fiery eyes appear to ‘track’ (p. 163 rev.: 28) ‘the winged children of his brain’ 21 21 (p. 162 rev.: 12), a cancelled yet suggestive image of hyperactive and feverish 22 22 imagination. Thereafter, as drooping lashes fall, he is brooding and restrained with 23 23 regard to his patron, the Duke, who seems pensive and still. Leonora sits mute, 24 24 her pale hands ‘clasped’ but ‘quivering’, as if complicit with some secret shared 25 25 between herself and Tasso (p. 164 rev.: 18–19). The scene is sharply focused, 26 26 poignant, expectant of things to come, and its discontinuation regrettable. Another 27 27 small fragment, ‘Silence; oh well are Death & Sleep & thou’,15 appearing a few 28 28 pages further on in adds. e. 11 (p. 155 rev., and immediately followed by a draft 29 29 of the essay ‘A Future State’), continues the note of mental flight, Tasso, it would 30 30 seem, seeking his soul’s union with ‘sounds’ (presumably Leonora’s singing), 31 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 10 BSMProof XIV: 173. Copy 37 37 11 38 Letters II: 47. 38 12 Later memorialized in Delacroix’s ‘Tasso in the Hospital of St Anna Ferrara’ (1839). 39 39 13 Peacock remarked (on 30th May) that he did not think Shelley’s subject sufficiently 40 40 theatrical though (he added) ‘in the Greek sense perhaps it may be dramatic’ (Letters II: 9 41 n. 11). 41 42 14 See Jones, BSM XV: 167–160, and G.M. Matthews, ‘A New Text of Shelley’s 42 43 Scene for Tasso’. Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 11 (1960), pp. 39–47. 43 44 15 See BSM XV: 157, 176 (note) and PS II: 369–70. 44

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freeing his soul ‘To track,16 along the lapses of the air / This wandering melody’, 1 1 and thus escaping ‘these faint & weary17 limbs’ (11, 15–16, 12). 2 2 Lastly, a third fragment, mostly in pencil, designated ‘Song for Tasso’ by Mary 3 3 Shelley (and drafted in adds. e. 12, pp. 39–40),18 is a lament whose chief feature 4 4 is its reflection on unfulfilled but undying love, from the perspective of helpless 5 5 captivity. The scene shifts to a later episode in Tasso’s life most probably suggested 6 6 by the visit, in November 1818, to the dungeon at Ferrara where, according to 7 7 legend, Tasso was imprisoned for his illicit love. In the ‘Song’, Shelley continues 8 8 to draw a veil over Tasso’s subservience towards the Duke which, Shelley noted 9 9 on his visit, was pitiable rather than deserving condemnation.19 Perhaps intended 10 10 only to sum up Tasso’s situation and not to form part of the play, the successive 11 11 seven-line stanzas (each comprising two couplets and a triplet, the last incomplete) 12 12 record Tasso’s uncanny fidelity to Leonora, despite every disappointment and 13 13 inclemency. He has been as true to her as to his commitment as epic poet, his 14 14 ‘Keen thoughts’ encompassing ‘all that men had thought before / And all that 15 15 Nature shews’ (p. 39: 6, 7–8).20 His persistence in love is both heroic and futile 16 16 and may point to insanity. He remains obsessed with Leonora’s image, ‘A silver- 17 17 shining form like thee’, which yet eludes him and which is ‘but a vapour hoar’ 18 18 (p. 40: 3, 12).21 If, as may be the case with Mazenghi (noted below), his love is 19 19 ‘misdirected’, yet he does at the same time seem undefeated, committed to his 20 20 ideal at all costs, and able to suffer for it. The poet is, one feels, the man, and this 21 21 would seem to be the crucial point Shelley is making. Though left incomplete 22 22 here, Tasso’s lament is reconstituted dramatically in ‘Julian and Maddalo’, in the 23 23 Maniac’s extended monologue that neither the optimism nor pessimism of the 24 24 friends (fictional surrogates for Shelley and Byron) can satisfactorily explain. 25 25 The topic of heroic resistance in the face of persecution – imaging Shelley’s 26 26 unflinching conception of superlative being – was further explored in a second 27 27 ‘Italian’ fragment of the period, this time within the domain of political conflict. The 28 28 poem ‘Mazenghi’ – an incomplete narrative in sesta rima (or sestina narrativa),22 29 29 comprising some 30 unnumbered stanzas – is based on recorded events of the 30 30 early quattrocento concerning the warring republics of Florence and Pisa and an 31 31 instance of Italian virtue-in-exile that caught Shelley’s attention. 32 32 33 33 34 16 One notes the repeated verbal image. To track = ‘to trace the course or movements 34 35 of’ (OED). 35 17 36 PS II: 370 reads ‘heavy’. 36 18 37 See Goslee, BSM XVIII: 41–3. 37 19 Proof Copy 38 Letters II: 47. 38 20 Cf. PS II: 446, ll. 5, 6–7. 39 39 21 PS II: 447 provides a corrected reading. BSM XVIII reads ‘[?vaporous] hour’. 40 40 22 The rhyme scheme adopted by Shakespeare for his narrative poem, Venus and 41 Adonis, and Spenser for Astrophel (his elegy on the death of Sir Philip Sidney). Giambatista 41 42 Casti’s Gli Animali Parlanti (1802), a political satire, made popular Italian use of the verse- 42 43 form and was highly regarded by Leopardi. Casti’s poem is reflected in Byron’sBeppo and 43 44 Don Juan and was almost certainly known to Shelley. See footnote 46. 44

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In the notebook MS Shelley e. 4, the fragment is immediately preceded by 1 1 the scenario for the drama of ‘Tasso’ and (reverso) by a brief fragment on the 2 2 ‘Apennine’ (in PS II: 35 precisely dated to 4 May 1818, but probably written soon 3 3 after). There are currently two views on the dating of ‘Mazenghi’ and the position 4 4 of the draft in the notebook could support either. Everest and Matthews (PS II) 5 5 posit composition in the spring of 1818, following upon the ‘Apennine’, when 6 6 Shelley was residing at Livorno in the vicinity of the Torre di Vada and the Tuscan 7 7 marshes, where the action of the narrative fragment takes place. Dawson (BSM III) 8 8 in the main follows the dating of Mary Shelley who appended ‘Naples [December] 9 9 1818’ when publishing nine stanzas of the fragment in PP: 257–9, though Dawson 10 10 extends possibilities into the early weeks of 1819. In favour of the later date is 11 11 the fact that Mazenghi’s story is found in Sismondi’s Histoire des républiques 12 12 italiennes du moyen âge, certainly read by Shelley in January and February 1819 13 13 at Naples (as recorded in MS Journals: 247–8).23 One might add that Florence, 14 14 Mazenghi’s birthplace and described in knowledgeable detail in the fragment, was 15 15 not seen by Shelley before his brief visit in August 1818.24 If (as I believe) a later 16 16 date is correct, the story which embraces Florence, Pisa and the Maremma offered 17 17 the poet from the vantage point of Naples, itself filled with echoes of the past, a 18 18 distanced retrospect of his formative experience of Italy. 19 19 It is notable that ‘Mazenghi’ and the works surrounding or impinging on its 20 20 composition, all have Italian or, in the specific instance of ‘Cyclops’, set at Mount 21 21 Aetna, Graeco-Italian contexts. Shelley was accommodating his mind to the 22 22 historical and mythic undercurrents of Italy, searching out their silent recesses, 23 23 and he did so without conforming to conventional tastes. He found a useful point 24 24 of reference for his own isolation in exile in an unfamiliar chapter of local Italian 25 25 history recording the ostracism of a patriot and the betrayal of liberty (as would 26 26 be associated in his mind with his own unhappy experience of English politics). 27 27 In the case of ‘Mazenghi’, Shelley’s protagonist-hero is, unlike Tasso, hardly a 28 28 prominent figure, nor is Torre di Vada a notable historical landmark. Mazenghi’s 29 29 banishment from Florence and single-handed defeat of the Pisan galley ship 30 30 at Vada in continued loyalty to his native city, are given only brief mention in 31 31 Sismondi’s Histoire,25 and the hero’s story seems otherwise very much lost to time. 32 32 Allowing himself scope to strengthen matters of personal interest, Shelley changed 33 33 the historical figure’s name from Pierre (Pietro) Marenghi to Albert Mazenghi,26 34 34 bringing himself closer to the Florentine in imagination, though the English first 35 35 36 36 23 TheProof Latin and Greek translations interspersed Copy with, or following, ‘Mazenghi’ 37 37 38 may well have been prompted by associations with Virgil and the Cyclops at legendary 38 or volcanic sites in the bay of Naples. See BSM III: xv. For dating of ‘Cyclops’, see Maria 39 39 Schoina’s discussion of the translation in Chapter 9 (esp. pp. 184–5). 40 40 24 Letters II: 33. 41 25 J.C.L Simonde de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes du moyen âge. 16 41 42 vols. 2nd ed. Paris: chez Treuttel and Würtz, 1818, vol. 8 (ch. 60), pp. 142–3. 42 43 26 In the first stanza (f. 42r: 6), Shelley began with ‘Marenghi’ but then altered the ‘r’ 43 44 to ‘z’. 44

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name was eventually cancelled (f. 44r: 12). By the time of Shelley’s first residence 1 1 in Livorno, Pisa and both the tower and town of Vada were in evident decline and 2 2 off the beaten track. Present degradation is heavily inscribed in the manuscript, 3 3 particularly in the second and ninth stanzas, though Shelley’s account of Vada 4 4 (second stanza) is hampered by clichéd Gothic formulations (‘plague infected 5 5 corpses’, ‘The wretched natives Men women children crawl’,27 f. 42r: 12–13/13a) 6 6 and is largely scored through and unformulated, as if the weight of history should 7 7 not be allowed to erase remembrance of ‘Mazenghi’s urn’ (f. 42r: 6). Likewise, the 8 8 persistent feuds that plagued the Pisan republic (only reconciled by the common 9 9 enemy, Florence) are signalled early in the poem, in the fourth and fifth stanzas, 10 10 but this account is also itself fragmentary, indicating that Shelley might have been 11 11 impatient with historical detail (as recorded in Sismondi’s larger narrative), and 12 12 wished to move on rather to his ironic celebration of Florence, a liberticide in 13 13 the war against Pisa and, as we discover subsequently, faithless in banishing its 14 14 patriot, Mazenghi. 15 15 On first visiting Florence, Shelley described it as ‘the most beautiful city I 16 16 ever saw’.28 With libertarian emphasis, this idea is cast in the paradisal image in 17 17 the sixth stanza – that Florence was ‘Like one green isle amid the mid AEthiopian 18 18 sand / A nation amid slaveries’ (f. 43r: 8–9) – an image itself prefigured, in early 19 19 autumn 1818, in Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills, as the leitmotif refrain 20 20 of the Petrarchan ‘green isle in a sea of misery’. In ‘Mazenghi’, it encapsulates the 21 21 erstwhile republic’s creativity, its unique embodiment of the imaginative freedom 22 22 central to Shelley’s own philosophy – freedom that is always imperilled and must 23 23 therefore be defended. The stanza in question is intelligible provided one restores 24 24 several cancellations (as occurs silently in PS II: 355); but the phrase ‘true, wise, 25 25 & just’ (10) which sums up Florence’s achievement (broadly in keeping with 26 26 Sismondi elsewhere in his History),29 is understandably scored out as it dilutes the 27 27 focal image, reducing it to a bland abstract formula (about to be put in question); 28 28 overanticipates a more suitably placed résumé two stanzas later, and fails to 29 29 provide a completing rhyme for ‘tyrants prey’ or its alternative ‘spoil’ (11). The 30 30 impact and indeed significance of the tribute relies on the irony upon which it 31 31 hinges in the concluding line: that the same Florence made a mockery of itself in 32 32 subjugating Pisa (in 1406), a calamity from which the latter has never recovered,30 33 33 and which has due consequences for Florence as it may never regain its former 34 34 stature (Shelley later in September 1819 referred to Florence as the ‘ghost of a 35 35 republic’).31 The same ironic pattern (a negative expressed by way of a positive, in 36 36 turn enhancing the value of the latter) is repeated in the succeeding stanzas (7 and 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 27 The account echoes, perhaps too obviously, Byron’s lines, ‘and thus they creep, / 39 39 Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets’ (Ode on Venice, 12–13). 40 40 28 Letters II: 33. 41 29 See for example the brief tribute to the Florence of Dante in Sismondi, Histoire 41 42 (1818), vol. 5 (ch 32), pp. 166–9. 42 43 30 See ninth stanza. 43 44 31 Letters II: 121. 44

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8): Florence’s cultural and artistic eminence as the heir to Athens (‘foster-mother/ 1 1 nurse of mans witherin abandoned glory’, 12/12a)32 is – in the concluding couplet 2 2 – demeaned by its falsehood, its betrayal of all it has stood for.33 The sorrowful 3 3 decline of Athens – through subjugation as much as desertion – echoes the motif 4 4 of ‘rise and fall’.34 These nuanced reflections point to the balanced complexity of 5 5 Shelley’s engagement with the Italian (and Grecian) past, and the absence of any 6 6 sentimental attachment to it. 7 7 The account of Mazenghi’s cruel exile from his native Florence – a tragic 8 8 reversal which, though a ‘sad reality’,35 itself undergoes a reversal – forms the 9 9 greater part of the fragment (stanzas 11 to 30) and is very largely the poet’s own 10 10 invention, in pursuance of congenial thematic interests. Forced to live in the wild 11 11 and in the diseased Maremma (Dante’s ‘fiere selvagge’, Inf. XIII, 8; ‘quante 12 12 bisce’, Inf. XXV, 20; and ‘i mali’, Inf. XXIX, 48)36 and thus, it would seem, to 13 13 endure a double woe, Mazenghi nevertheless accommodates himself to their 14 14 severities and becomes in the course of time an active citizen of nature, taming 15 15 ‘every newt & snake & toad / And every seagull’ (stanza 20; f. 45v: 20–f. 46r: 16 16 1) – creatures of the perilous marshland. As a figure isolated from his fellow man, 17 17 he recalls the wise hermit figures (the ‘old man’ in Laon and Cythna and Zonoras 18 18 in ‘Prince Athanase’): but, like the eponymous protagonists of these works, he 19 19 is more obviously a victim of injustice or antipathy. The narrative perspective 20 20 remains subtle and ironic through to the fragmentary end. Rising above his trying 21 21 circumstances, Mazenghi acquires solace certainly, but more than that, the capacity 22 22 of interrelating with what is both inimical and hospitable in his unprotected 23 23 physical environment. Responsive to the ‘[ ] liberty’ (f. 46v: 3)37 he experiences 24 24 in nature – and that was paradoxically denied him as a Florentine citizen – he 25 25 acquires a power that, foreshadowed as early as in Queen Mab, is also given to 26 26 Zonoras (in the cancelled sequence of ‘Prince Athanase’) and extolled by the old 27 27 man of ‘The Coliseum’ (begun November 1818): namely, to commune ‘with the 28 28 immeasurable world’ – the extent marked by the splendidly original image of ‘the 29 29 wide vast Heaven, star-impearled’38 – and to feel ‘his spirit, as soul life beyond his 30 30 limbs dilated / Till his mind grew like that it contempla[ted]’ (f. 46v: 7, 5/5a/5b, 31 31 32 32 33 32 ‘ … et l’Athènes de l’Italie rappelle celle de la Grèce, autant par le génie de son 33 34 peuple que par les chefs-d’œuvres qu’on lui vit produire’, Sismondi, Histoire, vol. 5, p. 167. 34 35 33 Reference to ‘A beast of deadlier

subtler venom’ (f. 43v: 11/11a) points to 35 36 Florence’s subjection to Austrian military rule at the time of writing. 36 34 Cf.Proof similar sentiments with regard to Athens Copy in Childe Harold II (see for example 37 37 38 stanza 6). 38 35 See Dedication, The Cenci, PS II: 726. 39 39 36 For discussion of Dante’s influence in ‘Mazenghi’ (especially in regard to the 40 40 Purgatorio), see Jack Donovan, ‘Shelley’s Second Kingdom’ (Chapter 7). 41 37 The last line of the twenty-third stanza is mostly incomplete, presenting a large 41 42 blank between ‘And feel’ and ‘liberty’. 42 43 38 The coinage, ‘star-impearled’, replaces a discarded early reference to the ship 43 44 ‘Walking in pride upon the purple Ocean’. 44

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8/8a–9). This sense of ‘at-oneness’ has its notable antecedents in Wordsworth’s and 1 1 Coleridge’s poetry, but Shelley’s emphasis in ‘Mazenghi’ falls idiosyncratically on 2 2 expansiveness of being and the capacity of mind which, assimilating what might 3 3 be threatening, frees the individual from what, in ‘A Defence of Poetry’, is called 4 4 the ‘principle of Self’ or ‘’. Very precise phrasing displaces rather than 5 5 affirms the Romantic quest for self-fulfilment. 6 6 Mazenghi is now disposed to return, emboldened, to the service of Florence, 7 7 despite what he has suffered. ‘The thought of his own kind’ and ‘of his own 8 8 country’ (f. 48r: 7, 9/9a) has, it is implied, dispelled any instinct of revenge, the 9 9 ‘bitter faith’ repaying ‘ill for ill’ that, at the very outset of the fragment, Mazenghi’s 10 10 urn can ‘unlearn’ (f. 42r: 6, 2, 5).39 The negative formulation (‘unlearn’) points to 11 11 the possible reversal both of historical decline and the ignorance that attends it, 12 12 through the intelligent perception of heroic example. Significantly, the error of 13 13 revenge is the keynote in Shelley’s reflections on Christ’s teaching that precedes 14 14 ‘Mazenghi’ in the e. 4 notebook. Yet despite reaching the end of the story (as found 15 15 in Sismondi), the narrative comes to a sudden halt in the middle of stanza 29, as 16 16 if Shelley were not keen to pursue the hero’s defence of treacherous Florence. 17 17 This reluctance is intimated in an isolated, possibly final stanza in sesta rima40 18 18 (following a blank folio, f. 48v) wherein ‘love’, though ‘among / The things 19 19 which are immortal’, is seen to be ‘misdirected’ as, in Mazenghi’s case, Florence 20 20 – recipient of his unconditional loyalty – has betrayed itself and him (f. 49r: 4–5). 21 21 The pointer to immortality, impressively enhanced by the couplet rhyming of 22 22 ‘surpass’ and ‘was’ (‘surpass / All that weak frail stuff which will be, is or or which 23 23 was’, 5a–6/6b/6a),41 might reconstitute Mazenghi’s ‘love’ in a domain that (as in 24 24 Dante’s Paradiso) outreaches or transcends human limitation. 25 25 Although incomplete and seemingly discarded, ‘Mazenghi’ is a notable and 26 26 sensitive portrait of an exile’s experience refiguring Shelley’s own self-exile in his 27 27 first year in Italy, and re-echoing too Dante’s banishment from his native Florence 28 28 in 1302. As an historical prototype, politically obscure and cast in the mould of the 29 29 stoic Roman patriot, Mazenghi himself may not be equal to the intense sensibility 30 30 which characterized earlier fictional protagonists such as the Alastor-poet, Laon, 31 31 Cythna, Lionel in Rosalind and Helen and Prince Athanase. Nor is he quite a match 32 32 for the hyper-sensitive Tasso; but, like the legendary poet, eventually recast in the 33 33 enigmatic figure of the Maniac, his magnanimity seems to override inclemencies 34 34 or imperfections, finding expression in the union of what he is and what he does. 35 35 Such dedicated singleness of purpose implies promise in a world darkened by 36 36 betrayal, soon finding ampler heroic embodiment inPrometheus Unbound. 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 40 40 41 39 The parallel again with Lines Written among the Euganean Hills is marked. See ll. 41 42 232–5. 42 43 40 The cc closing couplet modified toaa , presumably to round off the work. 43 44 41 Shelley began a further stanza with the word ‘love’ but deleted it. 44

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Historic Pisan Scenes: ‘Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa’ and ‘The Tower of 1 1 Famine’ (1820) 2 2 3 Following early residence at Milan and Livorno, and subsequent peregrinations to 3 4 Bagni di Lucca, Este, Venice, Rome, Naples, Livorno and Florence over a period 4 5 of nearly two years, which influenced several ambitious, complete works, the 5 6 more settled lifestyle of the Shelleys at Pisa and neighbouring towns or resorts, 6 7 from 1820 to 1822, gave occasion for further sporadic Italian sketches.42 The first 7 8 of these, the evocation of a scene, has the poignant suggestiveness of a riverside 8 9 etching. The work in question is the fragment ‘Evening. Ponte a Mare, Pisa’, the title 9 10 given by Mary Shelley in Posthumous Poems, 1824 (but not in her copybook MS 10 11 Shelley adds. d. 7). Nowhere in the surviving draft manuscript (MS Shelley adds. 11 12 e. 9, pp. 346–8)43 is there any specific reference either to Pisa or the bridge (Ponte 12 13 a Mare), but the general impression of the view at sunset, as might be captured 13 14 by an observant artist, undoubtedly portrays contemporary Pisa on a summer 14 15 evening, and to that extent justifies the title. Each aspect of the scene alternately 15 16 appealing or unappealing is touched on: the sea-bound, fast flowing river Arno, 16 17 its slightly dismal, ominous nocturnal life and dried-out neighbouring vegetation; 17 18 the dreamy reflection of the town in its moving waters; the bare, dusty, deserted 18 19 pavements; the lingering, impressively picturesque twilight, also noted admiringly 19 20 by Medwin,44 and faint intimation of sea in the distance, towards the setting sun. 20 21 These details are quietly and unobtrusively worked in, unlike the account of the 21 22 Medusa painting at Florence (c. November–December 1819), which is precisely 22 23 detailed and energetic in description.45 Shelley’s verse is lazy, even halting in its 23 24 motion, taking advantage of the sesta rima, whose single quatrain and couplet 24 25 restrict elaboration and speed, and are suited to brief successive meditations.46 The 25 26 verse-form recalls ‘Mazenghi’, allowing room for lyrical reflection and likewise 26 27 – as if a link were intended – centred on Pisa (Vada was in Pisan territory until 27 28 captured by the Florentines). 28 29 29 30 30 31 42 Five of which were written in the course of a single year, from June 1820 to June 31 32 1821. 32 33 43 Dawson and Webb, BSM XIV: 252–5. 33 34 44 Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1847), rev. and ed. H. Buxton 34 35 Forman. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1913, p. 238. 35 45 36 ‘On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci, In the Florentine Gallery’ is not ‘perfectly 36 finished’ (PSProof III: 219) and therefore might be consideredCopy a fragment. The sequence of 37 37 38 stanzas remains undecided, two lines are slightly incomplete, and two fragmentary stanzas, 38 copied out by Mary Shelley from the lost holograph, have an uncertain status. See editorial 39 39 headnote, PS III: 218–19. 40 40 46 The ‘relaxed’ verse-form made popular in The Court of Beasts (1816), William 41 Rose’s translation of Casti’s ‘gossipy’ satire, Animali Parlanti, reviewed by Ugo Foscolo 41 42 in the Quarterly Review 21 (April 1819), pp. 486–98, following J.T. Coleridge’s hostile 42 43 review of Laon and Cythna. (Both reviews appeared anonymously.) See esp. p. 494 and 43 44 footnote 23 above. 44

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The draft fragment (a fifth stanza truncated and a line in the third incomplete) 1 1 was almost certainly composed in the summer of Shelley’s first residence at 2 2 Pisa, in June 1820 (and not in 1821 as Mary Shelley supposed).47 Drafted among 3 3 miscellaneous fragments towards the back of adds. e. 9, its haunting image of 4 4 Pisa’s reflection in the Arno – ‘Over the Within the surface of the fleeting river / The 5 5 wrinkled image of the city lay / Immoveably unquiet’ (p. 347: 1/1a–3) – reappears 6 6 with almost identical phrasing in the guise of Athens in the ‘Ode to Liberty’ VI, 7 7 1–3 (c. 10 May–21 June), the river there indicated as a metaphor of ‘Time’. This 8 8 recurrence implicitly aligns Pisa and Athens, indicating that the past they reflect 9 9 (reminiscent of the Athenian inheritance of Florence in ‘Mazenghi’) is distorted 10 10 and troubled by time (‘wrinkled’, ‘unquiet’), yet nevertheless unchanging (‘and 11 11 forever / It [image of the city] trembles but it never fades away’, 3–4). Thus Pisa 12 12 will continue to embody the liberty and eminence that, like Athens, she has lost. 13 13 It might be compared to Livorno which, in the ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’ (drafted 14 14 as well in adds. e. 9, and begun 15 June), has little historical distinction but, in 15 15 compensation, the vibrancy and charm of rural Italy in summer (in contrast to 16 16 shabby, frenetic London). 17 17 An oblique disquietude characterizes the fragment in all its aspects, from the 18 18 very first lines to the end. While nothing is directly said about Pisa’s decline, 19 19 the unpopulated, seemingly deserted scene points further to its unmistakeable 20 20 occurrence. The features described are that of a forsaken city: departed swallows 21 21 which come and go, ‘flitting’ bats and ‘slow soft toads’ (p. 346: 2, 3) which inhabit 22 22 the air and the damp river bank in the absence of other life. Even the sunset, itself 23 23 the poetic emblem of decline, is subdued and funerary – ‘cinereous’ 24 24 (replacing ‘enormous’; p. 347: 8, 8a/8b), the ‘thundersmoke’ ‘lurid’, and a ‘streak 25 25 of light of dun & sulphur[e]ous gold’ (p. 348: 2, 3–3a) – reinforcing the stillness 26 26 (as if the scene were frozen) yet indicating, in the ‘intermitting’ coastal breeze (p. 27 27 346: 13), and the changing cloud formations on the horizon, ongoing movement. 28 28 Caught up and finally side-tracked into fragmentation by the resonant, darkening 29 29 sunset, Shelley’s ‘still-life’ seems, in the absence of finality, to suspend time in a 30 30 moment of observation, and yet to suggest the appeal and sustainability of the past, 31 31 the sad, haunting finitude of the present, and the silent persistence of time passing. 32 32 A companion fragment, ‘The Tower of Famine’ (as Mary Shelley entitled it 33 33 in Harvard MS Eng. 822) appears to have been composed at Pisa in December 34 34 1820,48 the draft manuscript written reverso near the centre of MS Shelley 35 35 adds. e. 8 (pp. 92–90 rev.),49 in the company of ‘Woodman and the Nightingale’ 36 36 (similarly drafted in terza rima). Discarded formulations alternate with passages 37 Proof Copy 37 of impressively fluid composition, the lines and stanzas typically unstopped – as 38 38 in ‘Woodman’ or the translation of ‘Matilda Gathering Flowers’ (Purg. XXVIII, 39 39 1–51) – to give the sense of interlocked impressions of a dominant scene. Gone is 40 40 41 41 42 47 PS III: 421. 42 43 48 PS IV: 35. 43 44 49 See Adamson, BSM VI: 271–66. 44

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the subdued charm of the earlier Pisan fragment (there reflecting a less oppressive 1 1 sentiment), and in its place, more strongly brought out, is the sense of a city of 2 2 death, cursed by inglorious misdeeds. The centre of focus is the surviving ‘tower 3 3 of Famine’ (p. 92: 9 – la Muda or Torre della Fame)50 in which Count Ugolino della 4 4 Gherardesca was imprisoned with his four sons, all dying from starvation at the 5 5 hands of Archbishop Ruggieri (hunger possibly having driven Ugolino to devour 6 6 his children). Though at no point does Shelley explicitly refer to Canto XXXIII 7 7 of the Inferno, where, at considerable length, Ugolino recounts his experience 8 8 and the treachery that engulfs him, the ill-famed tower is in itself the emblem 9 9 of Dante’s canto which has memorialized the tragic events, beyond even that of 10 strict historical fact. Shelley’s choice of terza rima (each tercet distinctly marked 10 11 with a dash or cross) further signals Dante’s influence and presence, inevitably 11 12 calling to mind Ugolino’s self-pitying lament despite his own evident treachery, 12 13 his gruesome fate (he will gnaw at Ruggieri’s head for all eternity) and the pilgrim 13 14 Dante’s wearied curse of the Pisans (‘vituperio delle genti / del bel paese’, Inf. 14 15 XXXIII, 79–80) for having permitted the murder of children – the outcome of 15 16 ruthless factional rivalry, power-mongering and self-interest. 16 17 In this fragment, Pisa’s glorious past is completely shrouded. Even the terrible 17 18 events attaching themselves to the tower (which, it is implied, has a phantom-like 18 19 presence [p. 91: 8a–15]) are unstated and a far distant memory, taking place in 19 20 the late thirteenth century. The ‘desolation’ referred to in the opening line (p. 92: 20 21 2), and the ‘shipwrecks of Oblivion’s wave’ (8) are not of recent provenance; and 21 22 the ‘people’ of Pisa, said to be ‘extinguished’ (7a/7 – the city once their ‘cradle’ 22 23 [6], now their ‘grave’ [6a]), could have risen to prominence only briefly, and have 23 24 been in decline ever since. This deepening of historical perspective, obliquely 24 25 indicated, allows Shelley to focus not on the past but rather on the present reality 25 26 – the ‘grave’ – the tower its dreaded symbol and macabre landmark. Modern 26 27 dwellings languish beneath it, as if weighed down by its gloomy superstructure – 27 28 an image never actually depicted or concretized, but only implied analogously in 28 29 the ‘spectre wrapt/shrouded in shapeless terror’ (p. 91: 11–11b). The rhyming of 29 30 ‘wave’ and ‘rave’ in the second tercet (p. 92: 8, 11a) links the forgotten past to the 30 31 desperate present, equally obsessed with ‘bread & gold & blood’ (12a), the signs 31 32 of hunger, greed and violence. Ancient discord has its due effects. The inhabitants 32 33 seem only to flicker into existence, their lives in that sense merely an oil-lit flame, 33 34 defenceless against the ‘Pain’ and ‘Guilt’ (12a, 12b) which the tower seems to 34 35 transmit and embody. 35 36 RepetitionProof in the second and fourth tercets Copy (‘There stands … There stands’, p. 36 37 92: 9; p. 91: 1), made parallel and identical in revision, sets up the tower as the 37 38 figure that dominates the poem (fragment though it be), the consciousness of the 38 39 city, and the mind of the reader. Positioned centrally and iconically ‘Amid the 39 40 desolation’ (p. 92: 2), the edifice later appears as one of many ancient ‘towers’ 40 41 41 42 50 For conflicting views of the actual site of Shelley’s tower, see PS IV: 37–8. 42 43 According to Medwin, the ‘torre’ was a visible landmark in the Pisan sunset, but this is 43 44 ‘topographically inaccurate’ (37). Dante calls la Muda ‘l’orribile torre’ (Inf. XXXIII, 47). 44

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(p. 91: 1) whose character is an impressive sign of the isolated stature of ancient 1 1 Pisa, as are ‘[ ] domes’, ‘brazen-gated temples’ and ‘bowers / Of solitary wealth’ 2 2 (2, 3, 5a). Yet it is the ‘tower of famine’ that draws away the life of these edifices, 3 3 leaving them thereby to ‘stand aloof’, ‘withdrawn’, ‘ghasted with its presence’ 4 4 (8a/8b, 10, 8a). There is a sense in the finally fragmented simile, whose over- 5 5 elaboration unbalances the poem, taking it on a digressive and abortive course, 6 6 that surviving beauty (as in the Boccaccian ‘company of ladies fair’, 13) becomes 7 7 spectrally mirrored and absorbed in the tower that persistently and monumentally 8 8 haunts it – ironically not with past glory but with infamy. Unable to withstand the 9 9 weight of history, Pisa is interminably locked into the consequences of its own 10 acts, its beauty trapped in a Dantean infernal prison. 10 11 11 12 12 13 The ‘donna ideale’ and Marriage: ‘Fiordispina’ and ‘Ginevra’ (1820–21) 13 14 14 15 In a vein markedly different from the negative, even cynical mood of ‘The Tower 15 16 of Famine’, though a product of the same winter, at Pisa, being mostly drafted in 16 17 the same notebook in late January 1821,51 ‘Fiordispina’ is a benign, light-spirited 17 18 and limpid representation of the ‘donna ideale’ (the Italian feminine sublime) as 18 19 the subject of marriage. This composition has received little attention of its own, 19 20 largely because it has long been considered the disjointed, discarded precursor 20 21 of Epipsychidion, the Dantean panegyric of womanly perfection in beauty and 21 22 love, as manifested in ‘Emily’ (Teresa Viviani). Presented as a series of wholly 22 23 disconnected fragments by Richard Garnett in 1862 (supplementing by several 23 52 24 lines the fragments in PP), ‘Fiordispina’ nevertheless emerges, thanks to recent 24 25 editing, as a more substantial and continuous narrative, even if only an abandoned 25 53 26 first draft. 26 27 Sketched in MS Shelley adds. e. 8, pp. 52–69, 14–16 (the page sequence 27 28 not strictly continuous), the draft is difficult to follow as its sequence is barely 28 29 discernible; it is heavily but inconclusively revised, missing words, phrases or 29 30 rhymes; and is furthermore enmeshed in drafts of Epipsychidion. Lines 51–110 30 31 of the edited text, though correctly belonging in the first instance to ‘Fiordispina’, 31 32 as descriptive of the youthful bride’s overwhelming beauty and grace, were 32 subsequently incorporated, with slight alterations, in the later address to Emily 33 33 (January–February 1821). This transfer of passages indicates that the drafting of 34 34 ‘Fiordispina’ precedes or coincides with Shelley’s adulation of Teresa Viviani, and 35 35 is in all probability a fictionalized record of his initial response to her. Fiordispina 36 36 herself, one must note, has notable antecedents in other fictive Shelleyan creations, 37 Proof Copy 37 most recently the Witch of Atlas (August 1820), and her conception is probably 38 38 inspired by her namesake in the romance epics of Boiardo and Ariosto, whose 39 39 40 40 51 Possibly begun by mid-December 1820 (PS IV: 63). 41 52 See Relics of Shelley. London: Edward Moxon & co, 1862, pp. 28–33. 41 42 53 I am indebted to the fine textual scholarship of Carlene Adamson (BSM VI: 11–14; 42 43 110–15; 190–225 and descriptive commentary, passim) and Michael Rossington (PS IV: 43 44 62–74). 44

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confusion over the identity of her beloved (the female warrior, Bradamante, whom 1 1 she thinks is a man, or Ricciardetto disguised as Bradamante’s twin sister) blurs 2 2 sexual difference; as well as by Despina in Forteguerri’s Il Ricciardetto, whose 3 3 marriage to the eponymous hero rounds off this playful burlesque on a celebratory 4 4 note.54 Far from being merely a source for Epipsychidion, ‘Fiordispina’ appears, 5 5 on its own terms, as a significant fragment that bridges, via its serio-comic literary 6 6 derivatives, the transition to the Italianate style of idealized history in emulation 7 of Dante’s Vita Nova. 7 8 Its brief, historicized narrative is simply told. In legendary Florence (as it would 8 9 seem), on the auspicious day of her wedding to her cousin, Cosimo, who seems 9 10 almost her own twin, Fiordispina gathers and displays flowers, and helps her aged, 10 11 loquacious nurse, Medica, up the steps of the portico, while the latter playfully 11 12 encourages the young bride to make the best of her matrimonial night, following the 12 13 tradition of her female progenitors – ‘For tis a game our grandmothers have plaid 13 14 / Through you should lose And always won at last And never yet was lost.’ (p. 68: 14 15 10–12a).55 Medica brings to mind the cautionary, shrewd adult protectiveness of 15 16 Juliet’s nurse in Romeo and Juliet and something of the same expediency. Poised 16 17 on a similar conflict between youthful idealism and adult pragmatism, the story 17 18 has potential for development even if this does not materialize. What remains may 18 19 appear slight and short of incident, but it should be borne in mind that ‘The Witch 19 20 of Atlas’, for all its greater length and completion, is hardly more eventful. In the 20 21 case of the Witch the story progresses almost without notice, from one ottava rima 21 22 stanza to the next. In ‘Fiordispina’, the barely fleshed-out narrative covering, in 22 23 an edited text, just 157 lines of rhymed couplets, from line 57 unarranged into 23 24 paragraphs, provides a scaffold as well as superstructure for the poet to develop 24 25 several interlocking concerns relating to love: the propitious spring, encapsulating 25 26 the promise of youth and offsetting the passage of time (ll. 1–12); the idea of 26 27 soulmates separated by birth but indissolubly matched (12–35); gathered flowers 27 28 as, possibly, emblems of sexual initiation (36–56); the entrancing, sublime beauty 28 29 of young womanhood (60–114); female stratagems of temporizing experience 29 56 30 (115–32); and the perpetuation of identity in or beyond matrimony (133–57). 30 31 Together united by a single trajectory, namely the safeguarding of a vibrant 31 32 and not physically restrictive innocence, the diverse sections (indicated above) 32 33 tend to become digressive and ends in themselves, each in turn drawing away from 33 34 the tenuous line of narrative, as if impatient of its possible restraints, and brought 34 35 back to it in a manner that is abrupt or disjunctive. Thus each is, to a degree, 35 36 a fragmentProof within a fragment. Neither the Copy flowing exposition of the betrothed 36 37 37 54 38 This popular parody of chivalric romance, read by Shelley from 26 June to 27 July 38 39 1820 (MS Journals: 324–7), also influenced ‘Hymn to Mercury’ and ‘The Witch of Atlas’. 39 See Timothy Webb’s essay on the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ (Chapter 11). 40 40 55 The motif of flowers as in ‘Fiordispina’ and those she displays, the names ‘Cosimo’ 41 (implying harmony, beauty) and ‘Medica’ (a derivative of Medici) and the ‘portico’ are all 41 42 emblematic of a Renaissance Florentine setting. 42 43 56 Line references are to the edited text in PS IV: 65–74. For corresponding pages in 43 44 MS Shelley adds. e. 8, see headers for drafts of ‘Fiordispina’ in BSM VI: 190–225; 110–15. 44

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cousins’ extraordinary resemblance to each other (‘like two flowers / Upon one 1 1 stem’, p. 55: 5–6), nor the scene of the displayed flowers remorsefully ‘divided’ 2 2 by Fiordispina ‘from their [ ] stem’ (p. 57: 3a), is intelligibly subsumed in the 3 3 narrative and both drift off into vacant spaces of manuscript. The 60-line passage 4 4 incorporated in Epipsychidion is an obvious instance of over-elaboration, as its 5 5 length and exalted verse tend to overwhelm the whole composition. It arises out of 6 6 the scene on the portico, Fiordispina assisting Medica, ‘like night by day / Winter 7 7 by Spring or Grief by Sorrow by sweet Hope – / [ … ] Led into life & light’ (p. 8 8 60: 8a/8b–10c). The positive emblems here announced – as if Fiordispina (like her 9 9 predecessors Beatrice or Laura) embodied the day, season and occasion – are the 10 spur to their delicate, finely-tuned and extraordinarily fluent adumbration, and their 10 11 manifestation in rapturous beauty, concluding with the Petrarchan refiguration of 11 12 Fiordispina as a Witch of Atlas-like transubstantiation into shadow, metaphor and 12 13 vision – perhaps, it is implied, into poetry. 13 14 Following upon a number of rejected passages (p. 65: 21–p. 67: 17), the return 14 15 to the portico brings Fiordispina back on terra firma as simply one ‘so fair’ (p. 67: 15 16 20; PS IV: l. 115) – the connective link with ‘so fair was is she’ in the previous 16 17 couplet (18) that eventually curtails further elaboration. The narrative proceeds on 17 18 a more realistic note, but not out of character since the poem now hinges on the 18 19 acute contrast between the exotic ‘fabulous’ bride and her down-to-earth nurse, 19 20 whose obtrusive withered ugliness is a little played down in revision. But the 20 21 dichotomy now set up between fresh and wearied experience (so different from 21 22 the harmony of youth and age in ‘Prince Athanase’) seems to question Medica’s 22 23 precautionary wisdom concerning sexual consummation, even though the nurse is 23 24 confident of success as regards Fiordispina. The lovers’ single identity (a strong 24 25 motif reasserted in the heroine’s preparedness to die for Cosimo – a premonition 25 26 here of Ginevra’s similar commitment) and the promise of self-replication in 26 27 marriage and future birth (albeit advocated by the earthy Medica and, in her 27 28 opposition to sacrificial heroics, only with Fiordispina’s future in mind) seem 28 29 to hold at bay several indications of mortal disquiet in the whole fragment. The 29 30 name ‘Fiordispina’ = ‘flower of thorn’ (eglantine) might alone suggest beauty-in- 30 31 suffering, though this is never openly explored. The wizened figure of the nurse 31 32 seems a reminder of the cost of hardened experience, of how playing the game 32 33 of life is inimical to ingenuous youth. While the eventual drift of the narrative 33 34 remains uncertain – and was probably not fully entertained by the poet – the 34 35 contextualization of superlative existence in time and space, that is, in a tale of 35 36 prospective marriage, has the value of an experiment and is comparable to other 36 37 examples Proofof Shelleyan actualization. Moreover, Copy while the subject of the whole 37 38 fragment and its broad areas of interest are conventional, and redolent of a former 38 39 age, there is more than a suggestion of transgression in the merging of sexes, and 39 40 in the exaltation of the physical body, cast in the language of divinity which, in 40 41 Dantean and Petrarchan manner, establishes its own earthly frame of reference, 41 42 sub specie aeternitatis. But if marriage was finally not the most congenial vehicle 42 43 of love-union for Shelley, the elopement of the lovers in Epispychidion more 43 44 adequately served the purpose. 44

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That marriage is the instrument of social hegemony forcing compliance with 1 1 its empty rituals – is the problem and not the solution – finds dramatic expression 2 2 in ‘Ginevra’, one of the more developed, cohesive and contained among the Italian 3 3 fragments. Often seen as Shelley’s implied critique of Teresa Viviani’s capitulation 4 4 to an arranged parental marriage,57 and thus of her identification as the embodied 5 5 ‘donna ideale’, this composition, more broadly speaking, reappraises the marriage 6 6 convention and finds it pernicious.58 It takes advantage of the freer exploration 7 7 of love-union in Epipsychidion which, unlike ‘Fiordispina’, never relies on the 8 8 idea of ceremonial marriage, not even in its imagery, although figuratively ‘the 9 9 marriage of true minds’ is a dominant motif. 10 The manuscript of ‘Ginevra’ (the title given to it by Mary Shelley)59 is a rough 10 11 working draft, heavily revised but with many undecided phrases and lines of verse, 11 12 and lacking a formal conclusion of the narrative (if indeed the action has more or 12 13 less come to an end). The work starts briefly on the remaining reverso pages of 13 14 ‘Shelley’s Pisan Winter Notebook’, MS Shelley adds. e. 8 (pp. 138–133 rev., 130– 14 15 122 rev.),60 being crowded out by existing drafts, among them ‘The Fugitives’, 15 16 Epipsychidion and ‘Fiordispina’ already completed in the opposite direction, 16 17 themselves interspersed with ‘The Woodman and the Nightingale’ and ‘The Tower 17 18 of Famine’ in reverso (all of which date roughly from December 1820 to February 18 19 1821). It continues with the bulk of the fragment at the very beginning of ‘The 19 20 Faust Draft Notebook’, MS Shelley adds. e. 18 (pp. 1–28),61 a notebook evidently 20 21 begun from both sides in April–May 1821 – indicating the date of composition of 21 22 ‘Ginevra’ – but mostly used in 1822.62 The drafts in MS Shelley adds. e. 8 give the 22 23 best indication of the works to which the composition of ‘Ginevra’ relates. Those 23 24 just cited – none eventually completed except Epipsychidion – all point to certain 24 25 pressures, imperfections or evils weighing on the permanence or resilience of love 25 26 and beauty: the lovers riding the powerful storm in their flight from an imposed, 26 27 preordained marriage (‘The Fugitives’); the ‘High, spirit-winged Heart’ (Emily) 27 28 28 29 29 57 See, for example, Thomas Medwin, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 288 and 30 Enrica Viviani della Robbia, Vita di Una Donna. Firenze: Sansoni, 1936, p. 121. Viviani 30 31 della Robbia notes earlier: ‘Tutte le vie rimanevano ermeticamente chiuse, fuorchè quella 31 32 del matrimonio, che la famiglia stava trattando per lei, senza alcun suo intervento’ (p. 117). 32 33 58 An undercurrent in Shelley’s thought. See Jack Donovan’s discussion of Rosalind 33 34 and Helen (Chapter 7). 34 35 59 Perhaps following Samuel Rogers, who named his poem ‘Ginevra’ (no. XVIII in 35 36 Italy, 1822) after a visit to Byron and Shelley at Pisa. Hunt later named his rendering of the 36 story A LegendProof of Florence. A Play. In Five Acts Copy(1840) with an epigraph drawn from the 37 37 38 Dirge of Shelley’s fragment (1840). 38 60 See Adamson, BSM VI: 371–60, 355–38. 39 39 61 Crook and Webb, BSM XIX: 6–61. 40 40 62 BSM XIX: xlii–xliii, xxvii–xxviii. Neville Rogers’s view (in Shelley At Work: A 41 Critical Inquiry. 2nd edn. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967) that ‘Ginevra’ was continued in 41 42 1822 is now discredited (see PS IV: 203). The brief, well-anthologized ‘A Lament’ which 42 43 begins the notebook in reverso (‘O World o Life o Time’, p. 164 rev.) might have prompted 43 44 the dirge that ends ‘Ginevra’. See BSM VI: 39–41 for discussion of ‘A Lament’. 44

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unhappily encaged in her convent; the mellifluous arboreal nightingale vulnerable 1 1 to the ill-will of the forester; ancient and modern Pisa ruined by greed and enmity; 2 2 and Fiordispina under pressure of conformity to her nurse, and to the rites of 3 3 sexual initiation in marriage. A conflict or dichotomy is discernible between the 4 4 free spirit and the rigidities of power – a motif that underlies much of Shelley’s 5 5 poetry including, as we have seen, ‘Mazenghi’ and the Tasso and Pisan fragments. 6 6 It recurs in Adonais founded on the idea that Keats was destroyed by malicious 7 7 critics; the elegy being the highly ‘finished’ meditation on untimely death that, 8 8 from its inception in mid-May 1821,63 appears to supersede ‘Ginevra’ – by strange 9 9 chance focused on the identical theme – and lead to its subsequent abandonment. 10 10 The source of ‘Ginevra’, Marco Lastri’s L’Osservatore Fiorentino – which 11 11 Mary Shelley was consulting in April 1821 for her novel (BSM XIX: 12 12 xxxiv) – records the tale of Ginevra degli Amieri,64 whose assumed death in 1400 13 13 in consequence both of an unhappy marriage to Francesco Agolanti, and of the 14 14 plague (‘la gran morìa’),65 is brought eventually to a happy resolution. Awaking 15 15 (like Juliet) in the family tomb – in Ginevra’s case in the Duomo of Florence – she 16 16 is in turn rejected as a phantom by her husband and family (of the nobility), but 17 17 joyously received by her true lover, Antonio Rondinelli, who wins her in marriage 18 18 when the ecclesiastical court annuls her tie to Francesco. Popularity assuredly 19 19 feeds on the comfortable, romantic ending, which Lastri does find rather stretched,66 20 20 and there is a Boccaccian quotient in the story that imparts to it the suggestion of 21 21 illustrative folklore, as indicating the true devotion of Florentine lovers and their 22 22 just reward. Shelley, however, characteristically adapts the story to his own ends. 23 23 His interests lie in the circumstances surrounding Ginevra’s ‘death’, its immediate 24 24 cause and immediate effect – and not in its aftermath, following interment – 25 25 leaving doubt as to whether she will return to life. Adherence to popular legend 26 26 would have ruined Shelley’s story, by weakening the sense of marital oppression 27 27 and personal choice which weighs on the whole of the existing narrative fragment 28 28 and gives it its motive force and definition. This recognition of what was at stake 29 29 – the need to prolong uncertainty – would have been as good a reason as any to 30 30 discontinue the poem, which breaks off in the fourth stanza of the choral dirge, as 31 31 if the unremitting finality ofG inevra’s loss to all concerned were suspended in the 32 32 void, with no solution forthcoming, the slight intimation in the dirge of reckoning 33 33 or illumination leading, in the very last lines, nowhere: ‘She shall sleep … / But 34 34 at length / But when at the fatal Arcangelic clarion / Of’ (MS Shelley adds. e. 18, 35 35 p. 27: 26–9; p. 28: 24). Given this perspective, fragmentation would appear to 36 36 enhance the dramatic effect of futility and ravage, as further gruesomely intimated 37 Proof Copy 37 38 38 39 39 63 PS IV: 241. 40 40 64 L’Osservatore Fiorentino Sugli Edifizj Della Sua Patria. Terza edizione, tomo 41 primo. Firenze: Gaspero Ricci, 1821, pp. 119–23. Mary Shelley used this edition. 1st and 41 42 2nd eds appeared in 1776 and 1797. 42 43 65 Lastri, L’Osservatore Fiorentino, p. 120. 43 44 66 The resolution is ‘malagevole a credere’ (hard to believe), Lastri, p. 121. 44

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by the ‘rats in her breast’ (p. 27: 17) and the ‘worms [ … ] alive in her golden hair’ 1 1 (20). But the effect is equivocal since Ginevra’s death may have been feigned, and 2 2 there is no way of telling. 3 3 The careful deployment of the narrative shows how insistently – and dramatically 4 4 – the marriage motif is sustained. Focusing exclusively on the wedding day (as in 5 5 ‘Fiordispina’), and achieving thereby an economy and intensity redolent of Greek 6 6 drama, Shelley collapses the four years of Ginevra’s marriage (in Lastri’s account) 7 7 to less than half a day, from before noon to evening, altering the husband’s name 8 8 to Gherardi to underline the poet’s reworking of the original, notwithstanding its 9 9 legendary appeal, and for stronger effect of gothic villainy. The concluding dirge 10 10 anticipates the burial to come, the latter taking place off stage and beyond the limits 11 11 of the fragmentary text. The action is confined to four successive scenes, each of 12 12 which distinctly advances the course of events. In the first, Ginevra, tormented, 13 13 departs from the nuptial altar and cathedral, espoused against her will. In the 14 14 second, at midday, she unconditionally pledges herself to Antonio in the garden of 15 15 her husband, retiring to the Gherardi family palace in a state of abject stupefaction. 16 16 In the third, the evening wedding feast takes place, muted by the bride’s silent 17 17 unmentioned presence and her state of mind. Before long she is missing and 18 18 discovered ‘dead’. In the fourth, misery and commiseration follow. 19 19 Each stage of the narrative (following the day’s progression) builds towards 20 20 the climax, which is anticipated when Ginevra offers Antonio her wedding ring as 21 21 22 ‘this token ofmy faith – 22 23 The mark/pledge of vows to be absolved by death 23 24 [ … ] 24 25 And I am dead; or shall be, [ … ] soonthat and my knell 25 26 Shall/Wi mix its music with that merry bell … ’ (MS Shelley adds. e. 18, p. 4: 26 27 26–31; p. 5: 3–7) 27 28 28 29 This is the turning point of the drama: ‘token’, ‘faith’, ‘mark’ or ‘pledge’, 29 30 ‘vows’ displace the formal ritual, releasing Ginevra from external obligation, yet 30 31 signifying an absolute commitment to her lover that only death can absolve. She 31 32 negates, indeed subverts, formulaic pledges – as symbolized by the wedding ring 32 33 – and ethically redeploys their terms of reference. Her sensibility is registered 33 34 in the metonymic rhyming of ‘my knell’ and ‘that merry bell’, signs that death 34 35 and marriage have in her experience (as well as in the poem generally) mingled 35 and fused. Ginevra dissolves marriage into a rite of death, presenting herself 36 36 in a tragicallyProof unconventional light. Love, setCopy in opposition to expedient social 37 37 arrangements, finds its due emphasis when, a short while earlier,G inevra declares 38 38 it to be ‘unimpeachable’ by any circumstance of whatever nature, including ‘the 39 39 tyrannniczing will / Of parents’ (p. 3: 31, 23–25).67 This, in the manner of Socrates, 40 40 identifies love with virtue (areté). Since she is prevented from continuing her 41 41 42 42 43 67 There are clearly many echoes here of Shakespeare (e.g. Sonnet 116, Romeo and 43 44 Juliet) to reinforce the point. 44

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relationship with Antonio, her only recourse is death which, paradoxically, affirms 1 1 and indeed celebrates her undying love. 2 2 Though a victim of circumstance, Ginevra is all the same an active participant 3 3 struggling to affirm her authentic self against all odds. Her integrity outreaches 4 4 that of Mazenghi (her exact contemporary), but it is on account of it, one feels, 5 5 that her unhappiness is so extreme. The paradoxical alignment of virtue and 6 6 suffering recalls its extensive exploration in Rosalind and Helen, ‘Mazenghi’ and 7 7 the ‘Athanase’/‘Prince Athanase’ fragments. Subtly indicated, Ginevra’s attributes 8 8 of beauty are underplayed to lay emphasis on her exemplary character, and the 9 9 suffering that stifles her being. The Florentine ‘donna ideale’ – as we see depicted 10 in Fiordispina – is transformed into an Antigone (Shelley’s favourite female 10 11 protagonist)68 who, in unyielding opposition to vested authority, places fortitude 11 12 and death above a compromised life. Ginevra is in the good company too of 12 13 Shelley’s liberated heroines, and her outrage at being forced to conform reminds 13 14 one, from the very outset of the poem, of Beatrice Cenci (another historical yet 14 15 ‘legendary’ figure) after she has been violated by her father, a further Italian 15 16 expression of patriarchal assertion of power. These interconnections point to the 16 17 breadth of reference that, in the poet’s revisioning of the ‘donna ideale’, embraces 17 18 both antiquity and modernity, a series of tragic figures, as well as a stringent 18 19 feminist perspective. 19 20 Represented as a negation, rather than a celebration, of life and love – a 20 21 disquieting foretaste of the phantom-like attrition depicted in ‘The Triumph of 21 22 Life’ – marriage is shown to be inherently false, disillusioning, and violent (‘life’s 22 23 great cheat for a thing / Bitter to taste sweet in imagining’, MS Shelley adds. e. 8, p. 23 24 125 rev: 11a–12; PS, 36–7). The sharp juxtaposition of opposites (the sequence of 24 25 ‘bitter’ and ‘sweet’ is telling) registers the dislocation between a grievous outcome 25 26 and an appealing conception as, for example, represented in ‘Fiordispina’. Though 26 27 lacking the finish and precision of a complete poem, the writing in ‘Ginevra’ has 27 28 drive, intensity and purpose. The verse, held in momentary check by the couplets, 28 29 but repeatedly impelling itself beyond the end-rhyme to form fuller imposing 29 30 structural units – not dissimilarly from the way Shelley deploys terza rima – has 30 31 a cinematic effect of steady momentum, indicating the pressure of circumstances 31 32 weighing on the protagonist, and giving the reader little space for distance or 32 33 composure. The opening sentence of nine lines, beginning ‘Wild, pale & frenzy 33 34 weak wonder-stricken’ (p. 137 rev.: 4a) to indicate the unnerving shock received by 34 35 Ginevra, sets the tone, immediately unsettling the reader, the verse driving forward 35 36 as it does throughout the fragment. The passage proceeds not by direct description 36 37 but rather Proofby an extended Dantesque analogy Copy of a person arising from ‘mortal 37 38 fever’ (8–8a), ‘stagger[ing] forth into the air & sun’ (6–6b)’, and experiencing 38 39 extreme mental distraction. This simile (seven lines in PS, but requiring several 39 40 further lines of draft), which almost seems to spiral out of control, comes finally to 40 41 41 42 68 ‘You are right about Antigone – how sublime a picture of a woman … . Some of us 42 43 have in a prior existence been in love with an Antigone, & that makes us find no full content 43 44 in any mortal tie’ (to John Gisborne, 22 October 1821, Letters II: 364). 44

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a halt with the delayed main clause – ‘Ginevra from the nuptial altar went’ (15) – 1 1 this being the only indication of an actual event that undergirds the psychological 2 2 drama and its due consequences. 3 3 There is no letting up of this forward pressure until the end of the 4 4 fragment. Propulsion of this nature achieves its marked effects in capturing the 5 5 overdetermined formality of marriage – its opulent, factitious festivity – which, in 6 6 its hostility to the sensitive, emancipated female spirit, appears to glare coldly like 7 7 the chariot of death in ‘The Triumph of Life’. This surreal manifestation inimical 8 8 to personal agency and well-being is shown less in the celebrations themselves, 9 9 deceptively buoyant in the marriage feast, than in Ginevra’s noble but bewildered 10 or life-threatened aspect. Though flamboyantly arrayed with gold and jewels, the 10 11 procession projects upon Ginevra’s consciousness a ‘weary glare’ which ‘Lay like 11 12 a chaos of unwelcome light / Upon the sense Vexing the sense with [f]gorgeous 12 13 undelight’ (p. 129 rev.: 3a–3, 4–5a). Abnormal jarring conflict is underlined by 13 14 the substitution of ‘Vexing’, the negating prefixes and oxymoronic phrasing. The 14 15 glowing occasion registers its glaring falsity. A ‘glare’ again emanates from Ginevra 15 16 herself in later passages, explicitly when her death-like state is contemplated: 16 17 17 18 If it be death when there is felt around 18 19 A sense smell of clay, a pale & icy glare 19 20 And silence [ … .] (adds. e. 18, p. 17 : 14–17) 20 21 21 22 The ‘icy glare’, re-evoking the ‘fixed & glaring glassy light’ of Ginevra’s ‘open 22 23 eyes’ (12/11), indicates that the festive celebration of matrimony in ‘Gherardi’s 23 24 hall’ inhabits death, like the Tower of Famine, and now stripped of its ostentatious 24 25 glitter, seems to haunt the inert body of Ginevra with its spectral presence. But 25 26 while the ‘smell’ (rather than ‘sense’) ‘of clay’ is equally ominous, and the tragic 26 27 note unmistakable, a doubt is instilled through the repeated question – ‘if it be 27 28 death’ (8), ‘If it be death’ (15/14) – whether Ginevra is only in a death-like state and 28 will revive. Since her ‘death’ raises her (like Antigone) above her circumstances, 29 29 effectually reconstituting the nuptials as a funeral rite and her love as incorruptible, 30 30 it may well be that ‘the glare’ signals the defeat of marriage, rather than its deathly 31 31 triumph over Ginevra. The rough inconclusive draft, marked finally by heavy 32 32 indications of mortality, enhances the ambiguity, leaving the outcome unsettled 33 33 and enigmatically unresolved. 34 34 35 35 36 CompanionshipProof in Tuscany: ‘The Boat on Copythe Serchio’ and ‘The 36 37 Zucca’ (1821/2) 37 38 38 39 Noted for its autobiographical poignancy, but seldom discussed in any detail,69 39 40 ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ (as Mary Shelley called it in PP) is among the more 40 41 41 42 69 Notable exceptions in matters of textual scholarship are Joseph Raben, ‘Shelley’s 42 43 “The Boat on the Serchio”: The Evidence of the Manuscript’. Philological Quarterly 46 43 44 (1967), pp. 58–68 and Nora Crook, ‘“The Boat on the Serchio”’. Keats-Shelley Review 44

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open-ended of Shelley’s Italian fragments. Departing from the greater formalities 1 1 of ‘Ginevra’ and Adonais (wherein the presence of mortality is all too prevalent), 2 2 its quizzical review of earthly endeavour and its outgoing, warm-spirited record of 3 3 companionship, in the late spring of 1821, recall the half-serious musings of the 4 4 ‘Letter to Maria Gisborne’, written at Livorno almost exactly a year previously. Its 5 5 ostensible subject – a carefree sailing expedition along the waterways of central 6 6 Tuscany – brings us perhaps closer to the quotidian Shelley and his friendship 7 with Edward Williams than any other of his compositions. Yet its unconscious 7 8 premonition of their fatal drowning off the coast of Viareggio a year or so later, in 8 9 July 1822, injects a disturbing as well as uncanny tragic quality that is sometimes 9 10 hinted at, even playfully, in the writing. 10 11 The work has suffered from defective editions that have intensified its 11 12 fragmentation, leading to both its absence from present-day volumes of Shelley’s 12 13 poetry and to its sporadic reception. The received holograph manuscript, in Bod. 13 14 MS Shelley adds. e. 17, p. 218–p. 208 rev.,70 provides the rough draft of only the 14 15 second half of the fragment (lines 70–139 in PS IV); that of the first half is lost, 15 16 surviving only in Mary Shelley’s transcript of it in her copybook, MS Shelley 16 17 adds. d. 7, no. 79, fols 48–53,71 and in PP, where her reading is slightly corrected.72 17 18 Publications, following PP, have continued to bring transcript and manuscript 18 19 together into one poem and gradually restored intelligible lines of verse, but it is 19 20 only since 1992 that Nora Crook and, more recently, Michael Rossington, have 20 21 provided meticulously reliable and more or less ‘complete’ readings – as far as it 21 22 is possible to determine. However, it should be emphasized that the work is a very 22 23 rough draft that, like the other fragments under consideration in this essay, was 23 24 left to posterity without further revision and, as far as can be ascertained, without 24 25 much thought to its completion. 25 26 In consequence, there are several cruxes in the fragment that may never be 26 27 satisfactorily resolved. In the surviving draft manuscript and transcription, Shelley 27 28 provides no speech marks for the protagonists, Lionel and Melchior (representing 28 29 himself and Williams), and this leaves open the question of who speaks several 29 30 of the lines, including those that open the poem. ‘Our boat is asleep in Serchio’s 30 31 stream’ (d. 7, f. 48: 1) might suggest that it is Lionel and not the narrator (and this 31 32 is Crook’s provisional solution in her 1992 paper), but at this early point there are 32 33 no narrative signals to give it credence. The succeeding lines, in the third person, 33 34 are not very different in character. Perhaps initially poet-protagonist and narrator 34 35 were identical, and only later in the draft came the idea to separate them as narrator 35 36 and Lionel, that is, under a fictional guise. The problem is compounded by the 36 37 chasm betweenProof Mary’s transcript and the extant Copy manuscript draft, which provides 37 38 38 39 7 (January 1992), pp. 85–97. See also Michael Rossington’s valuable headnote in PS IV: 39 350–56. 40 40 70 See Crook, BSM XII: 391–370. 41 41 71 See Massey, BSM II: 98–109. 42 72 Mary Shelley transcribed the second half separately, under the title ‘The Boat’, in 42 43 adds. d. 7, no. 133, fols 107–9 (BSM II: 217–21). Her rendering omits lines restored by 43 44 Crook. 44

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no adequate lead-in to the evocative terza rima lines descriptive of the Serchio’s 1 1 tumultuous passage via canal to the Arno and the sea. Crook gives these lines to 2 2 Melchior rather than the narrator, though they are not characteristic of his easy 3 3 repartee, while editors prior to her, following Mary Shelley, have generally placed 4 4 them at the end of the fragment, following the friends’ setting out upstream. This 5 5 device, lacking the poet’s authority, finally obscures the boat journey which was to 6 6 have returned to Pugnano by starlight on the same day, as Lionel indicates (adds. 7 e. 17, p. 215 rev.: 7–9; d. 7, f. 108: 19–20), and not continued beyond Pisa through 7 8 the marshes to the mouth of the river (in the vicinity, one notes, of the setting for 8 9 ‘Mazenghi’). 9 10 ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ has earned the appropriate description of ‘verse 10 11 journal’ – a style of composition that unpretentiously records a day’s impressions, 11 12 marking what appears to have been an actual round trip, or at least return trip via 12 13 Lago di Bientina,73 undertaken by Shelley and Williams on 31 May 1821 (MS 13 14 Journals: 368). In manuscript it finds itself (at least the portion that survives) in 14 15 a homemade booklet of drafts, fragments and jottings which was shared by the 15 16 Shelleys and is now designated ‘The “Charles the First” Draft Notebook’. ‘Boat’ 16 17 appears in reverso after Mary’s notes for Valperga,74 and the journey undertaken 17 18 and recorded may have been triggered by one of her sources, Giovanni Targioni 18 19 Tozzetti’s Viaggi in Toscana,75 which describes the surrounding area and network 19 20 of canals. Given the informality of presentation and the rough abandoned text, it is 20 21 perhaps wisest to regard the fragment as a casual, though by no means insignificant, 21 22 improvise, one which is the epitome of the Shelleyan sketch, careless of itself 22 23 and of where it might be going (like the intended voyage) and yet touching, in 23 24 an arcane manner, and almost it might seem by default – in view of pleasure 24 25 anticipated – on much that weighed upon the poet in exile, a factor which, as we 25 26 have seen, has characterized his experience of Italy from the outset. The reference, 26 27 for example, to ‘Dreams and terrors’ that prey on the brains of sleepers, and flee 27 28 with ‘the morning ray’ (d. 7, f. 50: 32, 34; corr. PP) acknowledges an unsettled 28 29 state of mind that seems socially endemic – reflective perhaps of local religious 29 30 fear, of heaven and hell – and their flight ‘Like a flock of rooks at the farmer’s 30 31 gun’ (31) hardly conveys a more appealing notion of presence of mind in daylight. 31 32 There is an intimation here of the proliferating shadows that haunt the surreal 32 33 procession in ‘The Triumph of Life’, and the same sense of ambiguity prevails as 33 34 in the later fragment regarding dawn’s awakening (characteristically the stars are 34 35 ‘burnt out’ and the moon ‘lay withering’, f. 49: 8, 9; corr. PP). Likewise, in the 35 36 recollection of the relished transgression of ‘wanton schoolboys’ (e. 17, p. 212 rev.: 36 7–8) at EtonProof (where Shelley and Williams wereCopy adolescent contemporaries), the 37 37 38 nostalgia of youthful abandon seems drawn into the present English camaraderie 38 39 39 40 40 73 My thanks to Nora Crook who has drawn my attention to this significant detail. 41 74 Written from September 1820 to April or June 1821 (BSM XII: xlix). The river 41 42 Serchio in the vicinity of the plain of Lucca is a landmark in Valperga. 42 43 75 Relazione d’alcuni viaggi fatti in diverse parti della Toscana, 2nd edn. Firenze, 43 44 1768–79. 44

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(like the equally relished nautical jargon) to instil in the Italian scene an attraction 1 1 it would otherwise lack. Dantean or Virgilian allusions also darken the mood, 2 2 eliciting memories of Count Ugolino who, at nearby Lucca, had a premonition 3 3 of his betrayal (Inf. XXXIII), and of Charon, on the river Styx, guiding the eager 4 4 souls of the departed to the underworld (Inf. III, Aen. VI) – the boatman Dominic 5 5 recalling as well the saint as both celebrated authority in the Paradiso, and famed 6 6 proponent of religious persecution. 7 Free from the adoption of any regular form or genre, which might constrain 7 8 its easy, unformulated progression, ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ acquires some 8 9 affinity with the Virgilian eclogue, allowing scenic description and conversational 9 10 dialogue to set the pace and to make way for seamless shifts in tone and register. 10 11 Once the sleeping boat on the canal is remarked, as focus of the action to come, the 11 12 narrative voice provides a locus for it in the awakening surroundings of a hillside 12 13 retreat, evidently at Pugnano (where Edward and Jane Williams had their summer 13 14 residence, not far from the Shelleys at San Giuliano Terme). Unlike the rural scene, 14 15 which seems to come alive of its own volition, under the impress of ‘Day’ (d. 7, 15 16 f. 49: 16), and is yet bound to the diurnal tasks it must fulfil, in service of a God 16 17 who seems very much the taskmaster (as inscribed in Genesis), the boat requires 17 18 human animation, and when attention inevitably returns to it (f. 52: 70), there is 18 19 room for some breezy interchange between the friends as preparations are made 19 20 for rousing the boat from its slumber. It is evident that the resourceful protagonists 20 21 are, like the Witch of Atlas, to ‘put a soul into her’ (f. 53: 87),76 by untethering it, 21 22 equipping it with sail and rigging, and, once off on its way, allowing the winds 22 23 to guide it against the strong current. Brought to life, the boat becomes an aid to 23 24 companionship, indeed the friends’ mutual companion – recalling Dante’s sonnet 24 25 to Cavalcanti (‘Guido, io vorrei’), which Shelley translated in 1815.77 25 26 While the boat and the river upon which it sleeps or is awakened provide an 26 27 emblematic framework for the fragment, the line of narration takes a while to 27 28 materialize, is finally aborted, and is moreover, at first discontinuous. Sixty-two 28 29 lines of introductory scene-painting largely suspend any development of events. 29 30 They do however illustrate the boat’s passivity and seeming exemption from God’s 30 31 imposition of tasks on ‘Man and beast’, whether at ‘work or play’ (f. 50: 35). 31 32 Action proper is anticipated with the appearance of Lionel and Melchior who, like 32 33 Dante and Virgil, ‘from the throng of men had stept aside / And each one following 33 34 each his own unerring nose / And Had made his home under a green hill-side 34 35 –’ (f. 51: 60–62). This independence of spirit, unassertively yet with instinctive 35 36 assurance opting out of the daily pursuit, is the spring of the action, a sportive 36 37 occasion that,Proof as an end in itself, finds its naturalCopy outlet on the powerful though 37 38 38 76 39 Cf. ‘The Witch of Atlas’, ll. 313–15 (stanza 34): 39 This boat she moored upon her fount, and lit 40 40 A living spirit within all its frame, 41 41 Breathing the soul of swiftness into it. 42 77 See Alan Weinberg, ‘Shelley and the Italian Tradition’, in The Oxford Handbook of 42 43 Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Michael O’Neill and Anthony Howe. Oxford: Oxford University 43 44 Press, 2013, pp. 444–59 (p. 448). 44

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navigable river – this last vitally unresponsive to any will other than its own but, 1 1 unlike the putative deity, clearly not itself a disciplinarian. 2 2 Accompanying the contrasting suspension and release of the narrative, the shifts 3 3 in presentation from lyrical to conversational might be considered disjunctive as 4 4 two quite different styles are conjoined. While the fragment remains loosely and 5 5 not quite satisfactorily organized, what aligns these two contrasting elements is 6 6 the ironic tone that, on the one hand, undercuts the full lyrical promise of the 7 7 spring morning and, on the other, in vigorous banter, light-heartedly intensifies the 8 8 pleasures of youthful companionship. The one counterbalances and complements 9 9 the other, experimentally anticipating the Dantean scenes and interchanges of ‘The 10 Triumph of Life’. The animated scene at dawn is routinized, liltingly closed off, 10 11 and this is underlined in the world-weary Hamletian reflection on the ‘soldier’, 11 12 ‘priest’, ‘lawyer’ and ‘statesman’ (f. 51: 48–50) – the first forever destined to wake 12 13 to ‘kill’ (‘why, – God who made / His heart and the sword cutler’s, knows, not I’, 13 14 48–9), the others, ‘like conjurers’, to dupe the credulous public – ‘the great world 14 15 that gaped and knew not why’ (51, 52). By contrast, preceded and followed by two 15 16 riverscapes, whose fluidities are enhanced in the first instance by terza rima and, 16 17 in the second, when the poem breaks off, by trochaic rhymed couplets, the dialogic 17 18 passages (mostly in evidence in the draft in adds. e. 17) are open-ended, geared to 18 19 lively exchange of thoughts, and to directed action. In their easy flow, they seem 19 20 attuned to the untrammelled force of inanimate nature, an unpredictable expedition 20 21 and, by implication, an unconstrained future. Paradoxically, and possibly without 21 22 intention, the fragmentary poem seems in tandem with the indeterminacies of an 22 23 intrepid sailing adventure. This congruency of incomplete form and unresolved 23 24 subject gives a certain resonance to ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ that a more studied 24 25 composition might well have lacked. 25 26 The last of the group of unfamiliar Italian fragments, ‘The Zucca’ is an 26 27 intermediate holograph, mostly drafted in MS Shelley adds. e. 17, p. 198–p. 186 27 28 rev. It appears in fairly close proximity to ‘The Boat on the Serchio’, though 28 29 several months separate the two ‘Italian’ compositions, and precedes the opening 29 30 scenes of ‘Charles the First’, an ambitious historical tragedy, likewise abandoned 30 31 or temporarily put aside. Reference to the cold, and more specifically ‘infant 31 32 Winter’ early on in the manuscript (p. 198 rev.: 2), and ‘the darkest of December 32 33 hours’ (winter solstice) in its last fragmented stanza (p. 186 rev.: 10) indicates 33 34 that, like ‘Charles the First’, ‘The Zucca’ was composed in the winter of 1821–22, 34 35 in the vicinity of Pisa, and most probably late December to early January (see 35 36 Donovan,Proof forthcoming, PS V).78 Much of Shelley’sCopy writing at this time seems to 36 37 have been provisional, testing out the possibilities of narrative, lyric or drama 37 38 (all of which qualities are equally present in ‘The Triumph of Life’, as they are in 38 39 Dante’s Commedia). As ever, the mood alternates from dark to light, sometimes 39 40 within the same composition (as in ‘The Boat on the Serchio’ and Hellas, which, 40 41 though completed, Shelley called a ‘mere improvise’). In the case of ‘The 41 42 Zucca’, Shelley experiments with the traditionally playful, Italianate ottava rima, 42 43 43 44 78 Jack Donovan has kindly sent me a draft of his edition of ‘The Zucca’ (with notes). 44

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employing it like Tasso in contemplative narrative verse but, as in the lighter style 1 1 of the ‘Hymn to Mercury’ translation and ‘The Witch of Atlas’, idiosyncratically 2 2 blurring the metrical demarcations of stanza form (ab ab ab cc) with a variety of 3 3 fluid or unconventional enjambments. 4 4 ‘The Zucca’ might be regarded as the most elusive of the Italian fragments. 5 5 Breaking off suddenly towards the end of the eleventh stanza, the draft MS gives 6 6 little indication of where its narrative might have been leading. Italian features of 7 7 the subject and setting are largely absorbed into a lyric statement that, like the Ode 8 8 to the West Wind or The Sensitive-Plant (a poem with similar subject), transcends 9 9 its immediate context. Nevertheless, given that the poet himself gave the work its 10 Italian title, and given too that a ‘gourd’ – to which the title generically refers (in 10 11 everyday usage a ‘pumpkin’) – became, with Love’s invention, the marvellous 11 12 fleeting ‘boat’ in ‘The Witch of Atlas’,79 and was soon to appear as type of the 12 13 magic plant in ‘Fragments of an Unfinished Drama’ (dated February–April 1822),80 13 14 it is important to take heed of the specific designation and to consider its possible 14 15 significance. Beyond its reference in the title, written boldly in Shelley’s hand, the 15 16 zucca is never again mentioned by name. From the moment it is first observed in 16 17 the sixth stanza, the zucca – which thereafter takes centre stage in the fragment – 17 18 is neutrally or impersonally ‘the plant’ or ‘it’ (like ‘the boat’ on the Serchio). This 18 19 device effectively endows the mundane plant with an emblematic quality that, 19 20 like the gourd in the ‘Unfinished Drama’, incorporates, and extends beyond, its 20 21 biological self. 21 22 The exceptionally harsh Italian weather at Pisa (noted in the Shelleys’ letters 22 23 of that period)81 seems to have induced or exacerbated in Shelley a mood of 23 24 saddened reflection regarding the ‘death’ of Summer and ‘expiring Autumn’, as 24 25 he puts it at the beginning of the fragment (p. 198 rev.: 2), in marked contrast 25 26 to the exhilaration of the earlier boating expedition with his friend, Williams. 26 27 This decline, or intimation of mortality, is exemplified by the humble zucca, so 27 28 obviously associated with a warm, hospitable Mediterranean climate, discovered 28 29 by ‘the rivers margin’ (perhaps the Arno) just surviving the frost but ‘blighted’ by 29 30 the ‘thaw’ (p. 190 rev.: 2, 7, 6) – ‘blighted’ substituting for ‘withered’, indicating 30 31 disease as well as decay. Its cause is lost, but for the intervention of the sorrowing 31 32 speaker (a Shelleyan persona), who restores the plant to its former vitality by 32 33 transporting it to his lodgings, successfully growing it indoors, nurtured by his 33 34 tears and protected by the window pane that safely, and ‘obliquely’, transmits 34 35 the winter sunlight and keeps out the inclement cold.82 By these means Shelley 35 36 36 37 37 79 Proof Copy 38 A boat which shares many characteristics with the one brought to life by the friends 38 in ‘The Boat on the Serchio’. See note 76. 39 39 80 MS Shelley adds. e. 18 (The Faust Draft Notebook), pp. 136–124 rev. (dated 40 40 February–April 1822), Nora Crook, BSM XIX: 259–236. 41 81 See for example Letters II: 367, 370. 41 42 82 Similarly, in ‘Fragments of an Unfinished Drama’, the ‘magic gourd’ is grown from 42 43 melon seeds indoors, nurtured in winter in part by the Lady (Zelica’s) tears. Cf. MS Shelley 43 44 adds. e. 18, p. 137 rev.: 32; p. 138 rev.: 31; p. 134 rev.: 17; p. 133 rev.: 18–20. 44

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establishes an allegiance with the zucca which points to self-identification. He 1 1 also, like the faithful gardener, ‘works’ nature to his own ends, outwitting the 2 2 winter cold. 3 3 As in Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, the speaker has been lamenting the 4 4 ‘instability’ of that ineffable unearthly presence that enhances the quality of all 5 5 things, the earth in particular, and that seems to be the prime mover of love or 6 6 goodness.83 It is felt in ‘the rare smile of woman’, the occurrence being both 7 7 infrequent and precious (‘rare’).84 When first introduced, the zucca ‘lie[s] / Like 8 8 one who lived? loved beyond his nature’s law / And in despair had cast him 9 9 down to die’ (p. 190 rev.: 2–5). The romantic simile (possibly highlighted by the 10 10 substitution of ‘loved’ for ‘lived’)85 points to an analogous relationship between 11 11 zucca and speaker that encompasses his mood of disquiet, as if to intimate the 12 12 inevitable result for him of overreaching and unattainable love. This tragic 13 13 circumstance, echoing several poems, most notably Alastor and ‘Prince Athanase’, 14 14 seems intrinsic to the Italian scene. Nature in this instance is the antagonist, and 15 15 this is dramatically portrayed in the succeeding stanza (7) which, aborted after just 16 16 two lines, seems all the more emphatic in its harsh assertion: ‘the Earth / Enviously 17 17 Had crushed it on her unmaternal breast’ (15–18). Motiveless cruelty and betrayal 18 18 on the part of the earth-mother are dominant motifs, and in the latter section of 19 19 the poem, the speaker brings himself ever closer to the lowly surviving plant, in 20 20 a surrogate manner, maternally protective, and sorrowing over it – such sorrow 21 21 intensified by the ‘stringed melodies’ of a seductively appealing soft female voice. 22 22 It’s as if its vulnerability or humble fragility were his own, or his own thwarted 23 23 soul, which he must sustain in an indifferent universe. The tie forged with the 24 24 zucca seems to embody the ‘love’ each seeks to preserve. In the final stanza (11), 25 25 itself left unfinished (the aborted concluding couplet succeeded by a blank stanza, 26 26 marked ‘12’), the provisional safety of the plant, and the violence of the storm 27 27 outdoors, point to an unresolvable contradiction in the nature of things. 28 28 In ‘The Zucca’, the absence of a resolution provides an indeterminate context 29 29 for understanding human responsiveness to vulnerability, loss and oppression. 30 30 The same might be said for the earlier Italian fragments, as well as for ‘The 31 31 Triumph of Life’, written at Lerici in May–June 1822. Much as one regrets the 32 32 incompletion of these works, it may be that this defect (if one can call it that) gives 33 33 them a beguiling, even tragic, resonance and appeal. In that case, it is well to read 34 34 fragmentation, even imperfection, as an intrinsic aspect of their significance. 35 35 36 36 83 ForProof further discussion on this aspect andCopy the ‘principle of life’ in ‘The Zucca’, 37 37 38 see Timothy Webb, Shelley: A Voice Not Understood. Manchester: Manchester University 38 Press, 1977, pp. 239–41. See also my chapter on ‘Athanase’/‘Prince Athanase’, pp. 174–5. 39 39 84 The double entendre recalling Vita Nova XXI, 12–14: ‘quando un poco sorride / … 40 40 si è novo miracolo e gentile’, which Shelley in 1815 had playfully translated (with reference 41 to Mary and not Beatrice) ‘when she a little smiles … It is a miracle so new, so rare’ (PS I: 41 42 447, ll. 1, 3). 42 43 85 ‘Lived’ is a possible reading (BSM XII: 336 n). The word deleted might be a poorly 43 44 executed first attempt at ‘loved’. 44

The Neglected Shelley.indb 306 9/11/2015 4:29:39 PM 1 Bibliography 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 Primary Sources 5 6 6 7 A. Shelley Texts 7 8 8 9 Alastor; or, The Spirit of Solitude: and Other Poems. London: Baldwin, Cradock, 9 10 and Joy, 1816. 10 11 ‘Athanase’, Kelvin Everest. Keats-Shelley Review 7.1 (Jan. 1992), pp. 62–84. 11 12 ‘“The Boat on the Serchio”’, Nora Crook. Keats-Shelley Review 7.1 (Jan. 1992), 12 13 pp. 85–97. 13 14 Bodleian Shelley Manuscripts [BSM], gen. ed. Donald H. Reiman. 23 vols. New 14 15 York: Garland Press, 1986–2001; New York and London: Routledge, 2002. 15 16 16 17 Individual editions 17 18 I (Donald H. Reiman, 1986) MS Shelley adds. c. 5 fols 50–69; MS Shelley adds. 18 19 c. 4 fols 18–58. ‘Peter Bell the Third’ and ‘The Triumph of Life’. 19 20 II (Irving Massey, 1987) MS Shelley adds. d. 7. Mary Shelley’s Second Copybook. 20 21 III (P.M.S. Dawson, 1987) MS Shelley e. 4. Shelley’s ‘Essay on Christianity’ 21 22 Notebook. 22 23 IV (1 and 2) (E.B. Murray, 1988) MS Shelley d. 1. Defence of Poetry and 23 24 Notebook. 24 25 V and VI (Carlene A. Adamson, 1997, 1992) MS Shelley adds. e. 6. MS Shelley 25 26 adds. e. 8. The ‘Witch of Atlas’ Notebook; Shelley’s Pisan Winter Notebook 26 27 (1820–1821). 27 28 VII (Donald H. Reiman and Hélène Dworzan Reiman, 1990) MS Shelley adds. 28 29 e. 20; MS Shelley adds. e. 15; MS Shelley adds. c. 4 fols 212–46. Shelley’s 29 30 Last Notebook, drafts for ‘Peter Bell the Third’, and fair copy of ‘A Defence of 30 31 Poetry’ (conclusion). 31 32 VIII (Tatsuo Tokoo, 1988) MS Shelley d. 3. The ‘Laon and Cythna’ Fair / Press 32 33 Copy. 33 34 IX (Neil Fraistat, 1991) MS Shelley e. 1, MS Shelley e. 2, MS Shelley e. 3. The 34 35 ‘Prometheus Unbound’ Notebooks. 35 36 X (Charles E. Robinson and Betty T. Bennett, 1992) MS Shelley d. 2, MS Shelley 36 37 Proof Copy 37 adds. e. 13. Mary Shelley’s Mythological Dramas: ‘Proserpine’ and ‘’, 38 and translation of ‘Relation of the Death of the Family of the Cenci’. 38 39 XI (Michael Erkelenz, 1992) MS Shelley adds. e. 16; MS Shelley c. 4 fols 63, 65, 39 40 71, 72. The Geneva Notebook of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 40 41 XII (Nora Crook, 1991) MS Shelley adds. e. 17. The ‘Charles the First’ Draft 41 42 Notebook. 42 43 43 44 44

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XIII (Tatsuo Tokoo, 1992) MS Shelley adds. e. 14; MS Shelley adds. e. 19. Drafts 1 1 for ‘Laon and Cythna’. 2 2 XIV (P.M.S. Dawson and Timothy Webb, 1993) MS Shelley adds. e. 9. Shelley’s 3 3 ‘Devils’ Notebook. 4 4 XV (Steven E. Jones, 1990) MS Shelley adds. e. 11. The ‘Julian and Maddalo’ 5 5 Draft Notebook. 6 6 XVI (Donald H. Reiman and Michael J. Neth, 1994) MS Shelley adds. e. 7. The 7 7 ‘Hellas’ Notebook. 8 8 XVII (Steven E. Jones, 1994) MS Shelley adds. e. 10. Drafts for ‘Laon and 9 9 Cythna’ Cantos V–XII. 10 10 XVIII (Nancy Moore Goslee, 1996) MS Shelley adds. e. 12. The Homeric Hymns 11 11 and ‘Prometheus’ Drafts Notebook. 12 12 XIX (Nora Crook and Timothy Webb, 1997) MS Shelley adds. e. 18. The ‘Faust’ 13 13 Draft Notebook. 14 14 XX (Michael O’Neill, 1994) MS Shelley adds. e. 6; MS Shelley d. 8. The ‘Defence 15 15 of Poetry’ Fair Copies. 16 16 XXI (E.B. Murray, 1995) MS Shelley adds. c. 4 etc. Miscellaneous Poetry, Prose 17 17 and Translations. 18 18 XXII (1 and 2) (Alan M. Weinberg, 1997) MS Shelley adds. d. 6; MS Shelley adds. 19 19 c. 5. Fair Copies for ‘A Philosophical View of Reform’ and Other Writings; 20 20 Miscellaneous Mary and Percy Shelley MSS. 21 21 XXIII (Tatsuo Tokoo, B.C. Barker-Benfield, 2002) Catalogue and Index to vols 22 22 I–XXII with Shelleyan Writing Materials in the Bodleian. 23 23 The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. Neville Rogers. 2 vols: 24 24 1802–13; 1814–17 (discontinued). Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972; 1975. 25 25 The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley [CPPBS], eds Donald H. Reiman 26 26 and Neil Fraistat [I–II]; Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat and Nora Crook [III]. 27 27 3 vols to date. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000–04; 28 28 2012. 29 29 The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, eds Roger Ingpen and Walter E. 30 30 Peck. The ‘Julian Edition’. 10 vols. London: Ernest Benn, 1926–30. 31 31 Essays and Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, ed. Mrs [Mary 32 32 Wollstonecraft] Shelley. 2 vols. London, Edward Moxon, 1840. 33 33 An Examination of the Shelley Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, C.D. Locock. 34 34 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903. 35 35 Frankenstein [a review]. The Athenæum: Journal of English and Foreign 36 36 Literature,Proof Science, and the Fine Arts , 10Copy Nov. 1832, p. 730; rpt in Thomas 37 37 Medwin, Memoir of Percy Bysshe Shelley; and Original Poems and Papers by 38 38 Percy Bysshe Shelley: Now First Collected. London: Whittaker, Treacher, & 39 39 Co., 1833, pp. 165–70. 40 40 History of a Six Weeks’ Tour [with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley]. London: T. 41 41 Hookham, Jun., and C. and J. Ollier, 1817. 42 42 ‘Hogg-Shelley Papers of 1810–12’, B.C. Barker-Benfield. The Bodleian Library 43 43 Record 14.1 (Oct. 1991), pp. 14–29. 44 44

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The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley [Letters], ed. Frederick L. Jones. 2 vols. 1 1 Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964. 2 2 Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics [MYR: Shelley], gen. ed. Donald H. 3 3 Reiman. 9 vols. New York and London: Garland, 1985–97. 4 4 5 5 Individual editions 6 6 I (Donald H. Reiman, 1985) Carl H. Pforzheimer Library. The Esdaile Notebook. 7 7 II (Donald H. Reiman, 1985) British Library, Library of Congress, University of 8 8 Iowa. The Mask of Anarchy Intermediate Fair Copy / Press Copy and two Hunt 9 9 MSS. 10 10 III (Donald H. Reiman, 1985) Henry E. Huntington Library. Hellas: A Lyrical 11 11 Drama Press Copy Transcript and other fair copies. 12 12 IV (Mary A. Quinn, 1990) Huntington MS HM2177. The Mask of Anarchy Draft 13 13 Notebook. 14 14 V (Donald H. Reiman, 1991) Harvard. Shelley Poetic Manuscripts. 15 15 VI (Mary A. Quinn, 1994) Huntington MS HM 2176. Shelley’s 1819–1821 16 16 Huntington Notebook. 17 17 VII (Mary A. Quinn, 1996) Huntington MS HM 2111. Shelley’s 1821–1822 18 18 Huntington Notebook. 19 19 VIII (Donald H. Reiman and Michael O’Neill, 1997) European and American 20 20 Libraries. Fair Copy Manuscripts of Shelley’s Poems in European and 21 21 American Libraries. 22 22 IX (1 and 2) (Charles E. Robinson, 1996) Abinger Collection (Bodleian). The 23 23 Frankenstein Notebooks. 24 24 ‘New Shelley Letters in a John Gisborne Notebook’, David M. Stocking and Marion 25 25 Kingston Stocking. Keats-Shelley Memorial Bulletin 31 (1980), pp. 1–9. 26 26 ‘A New Text of Shelley’s “Scene for Tasso”’, G.M. Matthews. Keats-Shelley 27 27 Memorial Bulletin 11 (1960), pp. 39–47. 28 28 Original Poetry; by Victor and Cazire [with Elizabeth Shelley]. Worthing: Printed 29 29 by C. and W. Phillips, for the Authors; and Sold by J. J. Stockdale, 1810. 30 30 Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire [with Elizabeth Shelley], ed. Richard 31 31 Garnett. London: J. Lane, 1898. 32 32 Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works, eds Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill. 33 33 2003; Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford World’s Classics), 2009. 34 34 Percy Bysshe Shelley: Poems and Prose, ed. Timothy Webb. London: J.M. Dent 35 35 (Everyman), 1995. 36 36 The Platonism of Shelley: A Study of Platonism and the Poetic Mind [Includes 37 Proof Copy 37 texts of Shelley translations of Plato and essays on ancient Greeks], James 38 38 A. Notopoulos. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1949; rpt New York: 39 39 Octagon Books, 1969. 40 40 The Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. C.D. Locock, intro. A. Clutton-Brock. 2 41 41 vols. London: Methuen, 1911. 42 42 The Poems of Shelley (1804–21) [PS], eds Geoffrey Matthews and Kelvin Everest 43 43 [I]; Kelvin Everest and Geoffrey Matthews (contributing eds Ralph Pite, Jack 44 44

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Donovan and Michael Rossington) [II]; Jack Donovan, Cian Duffy, Kelvin 1 1 Everest and Michael Rossington [III]; Michael Rossington, Jack Donovan 2 2 and Kelvin Everest [IV]. Longman Annotated English Poets. 4 vols to date. 3 3 London: Longman (Pearson Education), 1989, 2000, 2011; London and New 4 4 York: Routledge, 2014. 5 5 The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley [PW], ed. Mrs [Mary] Shelley. 4 vols. 6 6 London: Edward Moxon, 1839. 7 7 Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, ed. H. Buxton Forman. Facsimile 8 8 reprint. N.p.: Private Distribution, 1877. 9 9 Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd. 10 10 Facsimile reprint. N.p.: n.p., ca. 1870. 11 11 Posthumous Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley [PP], [ed. Mary Shelley]. London: 12 12 John and Henry L. Hunt, 1824. 13 13 Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts, with Other Poems. London: 14 14 C. and J. Ollier, 1820. 15 15 The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. E.B. Murray. 1 vol. to date. Oxford: 16 16 Clarendon Press, 1993. 17 17 Relics of Shelley, ed. Richard Garnett. London: Edward Moxon & co, 1862. 18 18 Selected Poems, ed. Timothy Webb. Everyman’s Library. London, J.M. Dent and 19 19 Sons, 1977. 20 20 Selected Poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. John Holloway. London: Heinemann 21 21 Educational Books, 1960. 22 22 Shelley and His Circle, 1773–1882 [SC], eds Kenneth Neill Cameron [I–IV]; 23 23 Donald H. Reiman [V–VIII]; Donald H. Reiman and Doucet Devin Fischer 24 24 [IX–X]. 10 vols to date. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961– 25 25 70; 1973–86; 2002. 26 26 Shelley and Mary: A collection of letters and documents of a biographical 27 27 character in the possession of Sir Percy and Lady Shelley, ed. Jane, Lady 28 28 Shelley. 4 vols. N.p.: Privately Printed, 1882. 29 29 Shelley’s Ghost: Reshaping the Image of a Literary Family, eds Stephen Hebron 30 30 and Elizabeth C. Denlinger. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2010. 31 31 Shelley’s Guitar: A bicentenary exhibition of manuscripts, first editions and relics 32 32 of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Catalogue by B.C. Barker-Benfield.O xford: Bodleian 33 33 Library, 1992. 34 34 Shelley’s Poetry and Prose [SPP], eds Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat. 2nd 35 35 edn. New York: Norton, 2002. 36 36 Shelley’s ProofProse or The Trumpet of a Prophecy Copy, ed. David Lee Clark (1954, corr. 37 37 1966); rpt New York and London: Fourth Estate, 1988. 38 38 Shelley: Selected Poems and Prose, ed. G.M. Matthews. London: Oxford 39 39 University Press, 1964. 40 40 ‘Shelley’s “The Boat on the Serchio”: The Evidence of the Manuscript’, Joseph 41 41 Raben. Philological Quarterly 46.1 (Jan. 1967), pp. 58–68. 42 42 43 43 44 44

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