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Michael Rossington. 'The destinies of the world': Shelley's reception and transmission of European news in 1820-21 . Romanticism 2007, 13 3 233-243. Further information on publisher website: http://www.euppublishing.com/journal/rom
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The definitive version of this article, published by Edinburgh University Press, available at the citation below:
The destinies of the world’: Shelley's reception and transmission of European news in 1820–21
Michael Rossington
Citation Information. Volume 13, Page 233-243 DOI 10.3366/rom.2007.13.3.233, ISSN 1354-991x, Available Online October 2007.
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Michael Rossington
‘The destinies of the world’: Shelley’s reception and transmission of European news in 1820–21 1
Between March 1820 and April 1821 Percy received it, and some examples of his earlier Bysshe Shelley, then residing in Tuscany, writings prompted by widely-reported political awakened to the idea that he might assume events. agency as the mediator of anxious expectation A significant amount of Shelley’s poetry at a time of political crisis in Europe. This essay and prose was occasioned by news reports and examines one of his sources of news during this intended for immediate public consumption. period, Galignani’s Messenger , an English- The Mask of Anarchy , written in September language daily newspaper published in Paris 1819 in Livorno and sent to Leigh Hunt later and distributed on the continent. It also that month for publication in his London considers Shelley’s use of the London-based weekly newspaper, the Examiner but not Morning Chronicle as a vehicle for publishing published until 1832, is only the most a poem and letter that raised awareness of celebrated example. This poem and some of the contemporary political events in Naples and prose pamphlets he published while living in Greece. Finally, it suggests that in early 1821 England testify to his ability to identify and re- he may have had in mind the publication of present events that encapsulated civic division a poem and a prose-piece in Italian in a with the aim of instilling debate and shifting Florentine newspaper or monthly review to the public opinion. This opportunistic bent may be same end. As well as seeking to avail himself of seen as evidence of an early political instinct the fastest possible means of publishing that in a letter of June 1822, one of his last, he responses to breaking news, daily newspapers both acknowledged but was glad to have kept in enabled him to secure audiences denied by abeyance: ‘I once thought to study these affairs the poor sales of volumes of his poetry. & write or act in them – I am glad that my Furthermore he could circumvent the editors good genius said refrain .’ 2 Earlier cases in point with whom he had placed much of his work are A Letter to Lord Ellenborough (1812), since autumn 1816, Leigh Hunt and Charles ‘occasioned’, its title-page states, by the Ollier, both of whom from autumn 1819 had imprisonment of Daniel Isaac Eaton on a charge been hesitant about publishing some of the of publishing a blasphemous libel attributed to works he had sent them. Before examining Thomas Paine entitled The Age of Reason: Part instances of this newspaper-genre of his the Third , and An Address to the People on the oeuvre, an outline is offered of why news Death of the Princess Charlotte (1817), was important to Shelley between March 1820 prompted by the ‘news … nearly at the same and April 1821, the channels through which he time’ as the death of the Regent’s daughter in 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 234
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November 1817, of the hanging of three the aftermath of Peterloo, he was acutely aware Nottinghamshire men, Jeremiah Brandreth, of his remoteness from, and anxious to be Isaac Ludlam, and William Turner for high nourished by, the latest reports from England, treason. In these instances, widely-circulated as his plea to Thomas Love Peacock in London national news provided the pretext for Shelley makes clear: ‘Pray let me have the earliest to instruct an already-educated audience political news which you consider of philosophically and historically in the importance at this crisis’ ( Letters , ii. 119). extendedly discursive manner appropriate to From Livorno in June 1818 Shelley had the pamphlet form. Milton must have been a requested the Examiner regularly ( Letters , ii. prominent role-model in this regard along with 18), a commission undertaken over the next William Godwin. As recent editors have noted, three years by Peacock who also sent other accounts Shelley read in ‘American papers’ periodicals including Cobbett’s Political (Letters , i. 272) – that is, presumably, reports Register and the Quarterly Review .4 An from American sources reproduced in the opportunity to compensate for his feeling of British press – inspired an early poem, ‘To the dependency on reports from England evident in Republicans of North America’ (written in 1812 the autumn of 1819, presented itself between but not published until 1890), addressed to September 1820 and April 1821 when he tried Mexican rebels against Spanish colonial rule. 3 to take on the role of foreign correspondent, a But what of his writings published in transmitter to England and, it seems, within newspapers before his removal to Italy in Tuscany, of the breaking news of revolutions March 1818? On returning from Switzerland in southern Italy and of the Greek uprising in autumn 1816 he submitted ‘Hymn to against the Ottoman Empire. Such a role was Intellectual Beauty’ to Hunt for publication in complicated during this period – when he was the Examiner (where it appeared on 19 January living in, or near, Pisa – by a tranquillity in his 1817), that paper also publishing his review of places of residence that amounted to isolation, Godwin’s novel Mandeville (28 December partly a consequence, he noted, of Tuscany’s 1817) and what has come to be his best-known enlightened government relative to the rest of sonnet ‘Ozymandias’ (11 January 1818). But the Italian states ( Letters , ii. 177). To get news such publications owe as much to Hunt’s there he had to go out and seek it. method of patronizing young poets as to The two-and-a-quarter-year period from Shelley actively seeking a newspaper outlet for January 1819 until April 1821 was one of hope writings that were, anyway, hardly ‘occasioned’. for liberals such as Byron and Shelley whose The obvious point that daily newspapers hardly publications had been critical of the principles feature as conduits of his writings during his of the Restoration of 1814–15. It marked a time in England because there is little evidence phase when the fabric of the political order that he sought to publish in them has some established after Napoleon’s defeat seemed, to weight. But another reason that even the some contemporary observers, on the verge of possibility of this channel was closed to him crumbling. Between the uprising in Cadiz on was his inability, in marked contrast with 1 January 1820 and 8 April 1821 when the Byron, to command a profile early in his career Piedmontese revolutionaries were defeated by such as to make him sought after by influential Austrian troops at Novara, widely-reported editors and publishers of newspapers and rebellions took place in Naples, Sicily, Portugal periodicals. and Modena. Some were instigated by Residence in Italy from April 1818 altered disaffected military leaders and carbonari and his relationship to news. In September 1819, in resulted in monarchs being forced to accept 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 235
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constitutionalist principles, amongst them – that their copies of the Messenger were and significant, in light of the topic of this essay collected from the Post Office in Pisa or the – freedom of the press. The constitutionalists’ bookseller in Livorno as advertised: ‘English cause which Shelley so publicly supported was Travellers in Tuscany are respectfully informed, republican in spirit yet tolerated a monarchy that subscriptions to GALIGNANI’s with limited powers, and, as suited his MESSENGER are received at Pisa, by preference, was not revolutionary but reformist M. Averani, Director of the Post-Office; at (Letters , ii. 223). However, these constitutional Leghorn, by M.G. Masi, bookseller; and at governments were regarded as seriously Florence, by M.G. Piatti, bookseller’ ( G, threatening by the ‘Holy Alliance’, as evidenced 12 October 1819, 4). Between August and by Metternich’s use of the Austrian army to October 1820, while at Bagni San Giuliano, terminate them. It was from a wish to hear that their reading must have been more sporadic the efforts of the Austrians and of monarchist since they had to fetch it, or have it collected elements in Spain to destroy constitutionalism by others. The relationship between where he had failed that Shelley sought news between lived in Tuscany and his awareness of events spring 1820 and spring 1821. As Mary Shelley in Europe is significant. It would be fitting if later recollected of this period: ‘Shelley … Livorno were his first point of acquaintance looked upon the struggles in Spain and Italy as with the Messenger given the cosmopolitanism decisive of the destinies of the world, probably of that free port and its British factory. But it for centuries to come. … Day after day, he read should be noted that while Livorno and Pisa the bulletins of the Austrian army, and sought yielded regular reports in English- and French- eagerly to gather tokens of its defeat.’ 5 language newspapers like the Messenger and le Constitutionnel , such sources of printed I —————— news were frequently, in respect of Italian Galignani’s Messenger played a part in affairs, neither as fresh nor as authentic as his mediating political, literary and commercial appetite required. This is clear from his letter news to Shelley in these months in a way that of 18 February 1821 to Claire Clairmont in has not been possible to assess in detail hitherto Florence, in which he seeks information about because complete runs for 1819–21 are hard to the ominous progress of the Austrian army locate. 6 From a reference to news from England southward. Her location meant she had access communicated by ‘some Paris Papers’ in to authoritative oral and published information August 1819 ( Letters , ii. 115), it seems that in Italian that he did not: ‘You send us news of Shelley was familiar with the Messenger by Naples & Neapolitan affairs; we know nothing then, if not earlier, perhaps even in May 1818 of them except what we hear from Florence’ when he first visited Livorno. In May and July (Letters , ii. 266). Thus, to Shelley, as will be 1820 he noted that the household took in shown below, the Messenger was in many ‘Galignani’s paper’ ( Letters , ii. 193, 213), as did respects limited, partial and unsympathetic in Mary Shelley in March and August. 7 These, and its coverage of constitutionalist developments other references to ‘papers’ in December ( MWS on the continent as well as representative of an Letters , i. 168–9), as well as the phrase ‘take in’ outlook on English politics to which Shelley (Letters , ii. 193), suggest that from the begin - was opposed. ning of 1820, the Shelleys purchased and The thoroughness of the Galignanis’ renewed the first of its three categories of circulation of news is illuminated by Mary subscription ‘out of France’, three months, six Shelley’s observation to Maria Gisborne a few months and one year. It seems almost certain days after the latter’s departure for England in 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 236
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May 1820: ‘perhaps [you] will know more of fine hallowed and equal institutions, and make the state of your Country from reading indeed a desert of England’s enviable soil’ ( G, Galignani at Leghorn, than in England itself –’ 26 October 1819, 3). Had he read it, this kind (MWS Letters , i. 145). This remark may be of language would no doubt have given added explained by the Messenger ’s renown for edge to Shelley’s entirely different judgement reprinting generous extracts from a variety of of Carlile’s trial in a letter ( Letters , ii. 136–48) sources including British and continental dailies to the editor of the Examiner that Hunt did and weeklies. It did so with notably more not publish. A few months later, in marked latitude than explicitly constitutionalist organs contrast with the jubilation expressed in the such as the Examiner and the Constitutionnel Constitutionnel and the Examiner , the that also adopted this practice. Such a method Messenger reacted to news of the uprising in of bricolage was, as Diana Cooper-Richet Naples of 1–2 July with regret: ‘We are sorry indicates, strategic: ‘Cette façon de travailler to inform our readers that, by accounts from est à la fois économique et sage; elle n’entraîne Naples, which reached Paris yesterday, several de la part des responsables aucune prise de Regiments were in a state of insubordination position pour ou contre des régimes qui, there, demanding a new Constitution similar jusqu’en 1881, se méfient de la presse et to that lately granted to Spain. We hope, in our souhaitent la contrôler’ [this way of working next, to be able to announce the restoration of was both economical and prudent; on the part tranquillity in that Capital’ ( G, 18 July 1820, 4). of those responsible it did not involve any But the Messenger ’s politics was not adoption of an opinion in favour or against consistently reactionary as is evident from its regimes which, until 1881, distrusted the press publication, as Shelley began to draft his ‘Ode and wished to control it]. 8 In relaying and to Liberty’, of ‘An Ode, Sung at the Spanish distributing news, the Messenger was also Dinner in London; Freely Translated from the reliably fast. Typically its reports from sources Spanish of Mr. Segura’. The poem begins: such as the London Times , the Courier (a ‘Raise the song, for all around / Liberty and conservative populist daily described by Mary Love resound! / Terror lives no more in Spain, / Shelley as ‘the most detestable of all papers’, Terror now has ceas’d to reign’ ( G, 2 May MWS Letters , i. 75), and regional newspapers, 1820, 3). Moreover, occasionally the sheer are dated four or five days previously. However breadth of the Messenger ’s coverage was a Shelley’s letters show that, for them, the means to direct inspiration, as in July 1820, Messenger was an ideologically impoverished when it ‘copied some excellent remarks from source. With regard to England post-Peterloo the Examiner ’ ( Letters , ii. 213) about the trial he complained to Hunt in May 1820, ‘Of the of Queen Caroline that must have fuelled politics of the day you never speak’, and went Oedipus Tyrannus (1820). Quite probably on to lament it being his sole news-channel: Shelley felt distant from, if not wished to see ‘I only see a Paris Paper in English filled with himself as altogether outside the readership extracts from the Courier ’ ( Letters , ii. 191). Cooper-Richet identifies as targeted by the The tone of an editorial published in the Galignanis: ‘l’aristocratie et la bourgeoisie Messenger shortly after the trial and conviction cosmopolites, les gens de lettres et les for blasphemy of the republican Richard Carlile intellectuels, les hommes d’affaires et les indicates its hostility towards reform: ‘There is industriels internationaux’ [the aristocracy evidently a patricidal spirit abroad … which if and cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, intellectuals and not checked … will … in its pestilential and men of letters, businessmen and international relentless course, remove every vestige of our industrialists] (130). Notwithstanding such a 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 237
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clientele, the paper’s commercial orientation (G, 8 February 1820, 4). The Messenger had its uses. Advertisements in the Messenger therefore would have been for Shelley a of 2, 5 and 7 June 1820 prompted Mary merely smart ‘quality’ broadsheet that in Shelley’s awareness of a rival scheme to its commercial orientation, espousal of that sponsored by Shelley through Maria conservative opinion and promotion of literary Gisborne’s son, Henry Reveley, for the celebrity reminded him what he was up against. construction of a steamboat that would ply the Mediterranean ( MWS Letters , i. 155). II —————— Above all, Shelley would have found in the By contrast, the Morning Chronicle was a pages of the Messenger further affirmation of natural home for up-to-the-minute continental his poetry’s lack of worldly success. On 12 April news and offered Shelley an opportunity to 1820, a small advertisement for The Cenci raise his profile with a more sharply defined, appeared at the foot of the middle column on metropolitan audience. It was ‘liberal’ in the the back page. The wording – which to my sense of ‘favourable to constitutional change’, knowledge has not been recorded hitherto – a recently-established English usage ( OED 5) confirms the received view 9 that the Shelleys that, as Peter Thorslev notes, finds an echo in were in error in believing the play to have been the description of Spanish constitutionalists in pirated by the ‘rascal’ Galignani ( Letters, ii. 188, the early nineteenth century as ‘ liberales ’. 11 188 n. 1 and MWS Letters , i. 155, 157 n. 6): Shelley’s familiarity with the Morning ‘This Day is Published, price 3 Francs, / THE Chronicle may be embedded in the hinterland CENCI, A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS, / BY of his upbringing in a Whig home that Ian PERCY B SHELLEY. / To be had at Galignani’s Gilmour notes was sufficiently ‘conservative’ Library, 18, Rue Vivienne, [P]aris’ ( G, 12 April to foster dissent. 12 At the age of seventeen he 1820, 4). The first edition of The Cenci had been aspired, albeit jokingly, to place his poetry in printed at Livorno the previous September then it ( Letters , i. 16). While at University College, published in London in March. Rather than Oxford he placed advertisements in the reprinting it, as the Shelleys supposed, it Morning Chronicle , the Times , and the the appears that the Galignanis had instead Oxford University and City Herald for the acquired copies to sell in Paris at less than the publication of his Poetical Essay on the Existing London price. 10 There are further reasons why State of Things (1811; recently rediscovered), 13 Shelley was hostile to the Messenger in respect which was itself intended to attract funds for of its literary coverage which was discerning the Irish journalist, Peter Finnerty, then and stylish. It included prominent languishing in prison for an alleged libel on advertisements of the Galignanis’ in-house Castlereagh. On 9 December 1817 the Morning editions of the poetical works of Byron and Chronicle published, at Godwin’s behest and Moore, a reminder of their lowly method of unknown to Shelley (though apparently to his retailing his tragedy. The paper recorded Maria gratification), a modified part of his letter to Edgeworth’s arrival in Paris ( G, 28 April 1820, Godwin praising Mandeville , under the heading 3), reproduced an article from The Scotsman ‘Extract of a Letter from Oxfordshire’. 14 announcing the publication of Scott’s The Shelley’s interventions in the Morning Monastery (G, 7 April 1820, 3), and published Chronicle in 1820–21 are illuminated too by poems by, amongst others, Hogg ( G, 24 his expedition to Dublin in 1812. As Timothy November 1819, 3), Clare ( G, 25 November Webb notes, recollections of this visit were no 1819, 4), Campbell ( G, 27 November 1819, 3), doubt prompted in Pisa in March 1820 by his Burns ( G, 30 December 1819, 3), and Moore meeting Lady Mountcashell (‘Mrs Mason’) 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 238
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who had associated in 1798 with some of those deplored its politics, referred angrily at this United Irishmen Shelley had met in 1812. 15 His time to its “amazing circulation”’. 22 This memories of Ireland must also have been re- reputation apparently extended to the post-war ignited by reports in the Messenger of renewed period and circulated on the continent. Byron unrest there involving the Ribbonmen in the informed Douglas Kinnaird in a letter of March early months of 1820. 16 One of the pamphlets 1817 from Venice that, ‘The Morning Chronicle he published in Dublin, An Address to the Irish has been taken out of your letter I suppose in People (1812), invoked the famous judgement France – it is useless to send newspapers – they in favour of James Perry, editor of the Morning hardly ever arrive – at least the opposition Chronicle , at his trial in 1793 ( Prose , 32). ones.’ 23 Its specialism in European news, as well However, to identify the Morning Chronicle as as Godwin’s connection with Perry, explain its a ‘Whig opposition newspaper’ 17 during the era publication in January 1819 of a letter by of the Liverpool administration is not quite Charles Clairmont (half-brother of Claire) from accurate and underestimates its forthright Valencia. In 1814 Ferdinand VII, newly restored reputation. The Whig party was frustrated at to his throne in Spain, had declared the Perry’s unwillingness to toe the line and Constitution of 1812 null and void. In his letter, Cobbett praised its ‘spirit of independence Clairmont reported the brutal suppression by rarely to be met with’. 18 Shelley was very General Elio of a carbonarist uprising, including likely to have been aware that its publication a vivid eye-witness account of the execution of of politically-engaged verse for an educated its leaders. His final sentence foresees the readership in the 1790s included Robert future of the restored monarchy in Spain as Southey’s two first published poems, one of untenable: ‘the eyes of the Spaniards have been them a ‘Botany-Bay Eclogue’. 19 Perry’s links opened by the French war to the state of with Leigh Hunt must also have been known political and religious tyranny under which to him. In 1810, after reprinting a paragraph they have sufficiently groaned, and certain it is critical of George III from the Examiner , he that neither can be of long duration’ ( Morning was tried for libel (though found ‘not guilty’). 20 Chronicle , 13 February 1819, 4). The The Morning Chronicle ’s affinity with the anticipated triumph of the constitutionalists’ Examiner in its willingness to risk prosecution cause is thus set against the violence used to try by criticizing the British monarchy is one to suppress it. In this way, Clairmont’s 1819 pertinent context for its selection by Shelley as letter anticipates Shelley’s use of the Morning a medium to promote the European constitu - Chronicle in 1820–21 as a medium for tional revolutions of 1820–21. Another was appealing to the British public from the front that from the beginning of Perry’s editorship – line of southern Europe to support a political when he had gone to Paris to report on the new cause with momentum but with no guaranteed revolutionary government in 1792, to Shelley’s success, prophesied rather than achieved. time in Italy, when ill health forced him to As first noted by Charles E. Robinson, retire – the Morning Chronicle had a pre- Shelley’s ‘Ode to Naples’ was first published in eminent reputation as the national daily most the Morning Chronicle on 26 September 1820 committed to reporting continental news from above the initials ‘P. B. S’. 24 Shelley may have first-hand sources. 21 been aware that the Constitutionnel had, on Ian Christie notes that, in the 1790s, ‘there 12 February 1820, reproduced reports of the is no doubt that Perry’s dispatches from Paris uprising in Cadiz from the Morning Chronicle . helped to make the Morning Chronicle a The possibility therefore of the ode’s phenomenal success. Edmund Burke, who publication leading to further outings, perhaps 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 239
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even translation, in other constitutionalist topical reference. Here Shelley invites the newspapers and periodicals in Britain and on notorious Visconti warlords of medieval Italy to the continent cannot have escaped him. Nor be seen as direct ancestors of Francis I (Emperor could the possible extent of its audience. It of Austria since 1806). Both poems thus seek, at may in fact have been the most read, or most different moments in the post-war, Restoration potentially read, poem of Shelley’s published in era, to make the British public conscious of the his lifetime. The daily circulation figure for the absurdity of the Italian peninsula being in Morning Chronicle in 1820 was about 3,100, thrall to Northern tyrants. The close of Byron’s admittedly less than its chief rivals, the Times ode predicts the violent demise of the newly- at 7,000 and the Courier at 5,000, but still restored régimes, a prophecy and threat he later enough to give the poem significant reach insisted was confirmed by the assassination of through Coffee Houses and other means of the Bourbon Duc de Berri in February 1820: 28 circulation. 25 First recorded by White (ii. 223), Even in this low world of care, there was a subsequent two-part printing on Freedom ne’er shall want an heir, 1 and 8 October 1820 in the Military Register Millions breathe, but to inherit, Historical, Political, Literary & c. for the Army, Her unconquerable spirit – Navy, Colonies, and Fashionable World , a When once more her hosts assemble, weekly ‘circulated throughout the United Let the tyrants only tremble; – Kingdom and to the British Isles, the Continent Smile they at this idle threat? of Europe, Mediterranean, East Indies, British Crimson tears will follow yet. Africa, America, and the West Indies, including (Morning Chronicle , 15 March 1816, 3). Hayti’. In its Morning Chronicle incarnation Four-and-a-half years later, the speaker in the Shelley’s ode may also be read as an answering- concluding Epode of Shelley’s ode invokes the call to Byron’s ‘Ode (From the French)’ of ‘Great Spirit, deepest Love!’ (149), also March 1816, one of several he had published addressed as ‘Spirit of beauty!’ (155), within an anonymously in the same paper. Its single note, idiom of typically Shelleyan complexity as, at ‘Murat’s remains are said to have been torn once, having the capacity to destroy the enemy from the grave and burnt’, refers to the and to inject hope: vengeful behaviour of the restored King of Bid the Earth’s plenty kill! Naples, Ferdinand IV, after defeating Joachim Bid thy bright Heaven above Murat who had, in 1815, called upon Italians ‘to Whilst Light and Darkness bound it liberate themselves from foreigners and set up Be their tomb, who planned an independent state’. 26 Murat, who was a hero To make it ours and thine! of quasi-Napoleonic proportions to Byron Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill (Byron L&J , iv. 330), supplies an echo for And raise thy sons, as o’er the prone horizon Shelley’s ode because it was residual Muratist Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with elements who were partly responsible for the fire! Neapolitan uprising of July 1820. 27 Further - Be man’s high hope and unextinct desire more the note explaining the significance of the The instruments to work thy will divine! viper in ‘Fair Milan / Within whose veins long (ll. 160–9) 29 ran / The Viper’s palsying venom’ (ll. 110–12) – ‘The device of the Visconti – whose tyranny Yeats’s gloss on these lines is enlightening: has been inherited by the German Emperors’ ‘[Shelley] calls the spirit of beauty liberty, – resonates with Byron’s in the precision of its because despotism, and perhaps … all authority, 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 240
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pluck virtue from her path towards beauty, and III —————— because it leads us by that love whose service is The prose-piece, a manuscript draft known as perfect freedom’. 30 It allows us to see that they the ‘Sgricci review’, has been discussed by its are to be read as provisional. They refuse the editors elsewhere but requires brief mention. 32 idea that the constitutional government’s It is an account of an ‘accademia’ [performance] future is a foregone conclusion in order to of a tragedy, La Morte di Ettore [The Death of make clear that its success is conditional on Hector], by the ‘improvvisatore’ [improviser] the newspaper’s readers embracing its cause. Tommaso Sgricci, attended by the Shelleys in Yet the fiery imagery of the ‘high hope and Pisa on 22 January ( MWS Letters , i. 181–2). unextinct desire’ (l. 168) (‘unextinct’ in the As William Michael Rossetti first observed, it sense of ‘unextinguished’) which follow from ‘appears to have been done for publication in its ‘sons’ being filled with ‘harmonizing some review’. 33 Of the ‘Sgricci review’, P.M.S. ardours’ makes it natural that the ultimate Dawson notes that ‘it is of interest that Shelley success of that cause is assured. Thus, in the uses the first person plural to associate himself manner of ‘A Defence of Poetry’, his ode with his Italian audience.’ 34 In a letter in Italian constitutes writing as poetic legislation. So does to Hunt of 3 December 1820, Mary Shelley had the final instalment in his Morning Chronicle commented that Sgricci’s subject ‘era il destino corpus, the translation he made with Mary futuro d’Italia’ [was the future destiny of Italy] Shelley of the Greek General Ypsilanti’s (MWS Letters , i. 163). That both Shelleys ‘eloquent & Beautiful Cry of War to his wrote in Italian in December 1820 to February countrymen’ ( MWS Letters , i. 188), 1821, at the very time when they were most communicated to them by Alexander entranced by Sgricci’s powers and when the Mavrocordato and sent with a covering letter constitutionalists’ cause was at its most critical by Shelley to the Morning Chronicle on 5 April juncture, is suggestive. Their assumption of an 1821. Although their translation, the draft Italian voice seemed to be a means of manuscript of which has been edited twice in authenticating their commitment to that cause, the past decade, 31 was anticipated by another a posture that was encouraged by Sgricci’s printed on 13 April, his letter appeared later ability to speak, apparently spontaneously, that month. Alan Weinberg’s comment that in any number of different voices. ‘[i]n actively promoting the Greek cause, the The second example of Italian Shelleys were encouraging the British ventriloquizing is the surviving portions of Government to abandon its possible support Shelley’s draft and fair copy of ‘Ode alla for the Turks’ (30) poises this intervention, like Libertà’, a translation of his ‘Ode to Liberty’ ‘Ode to Naples’, between alarmism and hope. based on the text of the poem published in In my concluding remarks, I speculate that Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in another ode and prose-piece by Shelley, this Four Acts, with Other Poems (1820). 35 Its time written in Italian, may have been intended command of Italian is comparable to that of the to further the cause that had prompted his ‘Ode ‘Sgricci review’ and superior to his translations to Naples’ of August–September 1820. His of passages from Laon and Cythna and medium now would possibly be the columns Prometheus Unbound which were probably of a Florentine newspaper or periodical whose done in late October or November 1820. 36 Jean readers he wanted, in a similar way to those of de Palacio thought the translation of the ode the Morning Chronicle , to enjoin to reformist was made ‘pour l’édification de la Contessina’ aspiration. [for the edification of the daughter of the Count [i.e. Emilia Viviani]]’, 37 but, like the ‘Sgricci 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 241
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review’, its intended destination is more likely historically-entrenched divisions in the Italian to have been a Florentine newspaper such as peninsula through an English idiom of political the Gazzetta di Firenze , or the Antologia (a freedom to be found in the columns of the cosmopolitan literary monthly edited by G.P. Morning Chronicle and the Examiner . Thus Vieusseux launched in January 1821 with an it may be proposed that the translation of his explicit commitment to publishing translations ‘Ode to Liberty’ from a Spanish to an Italian of reviews and poems from other European context, and from the English to Italian languages into Italian). It seems reasonable to language, is accompanied by a re-orientation suppose that the purpose of the ode’s Italian in respect of audience, from a London-based incarnation was thus to shape Italian public readership of a volume of poems (all too small, opinion in favour of the cause of the Neapolitan in Shelley’s case), to a Tuscan newspaper- constitutional government now under threat reading intelligentsia. If this hypothesized both from the advancing Austrian army and destination of these two Italian writings by internal divisions within Italy and Naples itself. Shelley is correct, then newspapers and This threat from within is noted in a report periodicals may be seen as his readiest means from Naples in Galignani’s Messenger of to shape the world’s destinies in international 12 January 1821 that indicates the scope for fashion. such a rallying cry to unite the constitu - tionalists. It announces the intention of their Notes —————— general, Guglielmo Pepe, to ‘place before the 1. I am grateful to the following institutions and eyes of the Prince Regent … the names of the their staff for enabling the research undertaken Intendants [etc.] … who do not display all the here: All Souls College, the Bodleian Library and necessary energy in order to second the the Taylor Institution Library, University of national enthusiasm, in a moment so decisive Oxford, the Arts and Humanities Research of the glory of the people which compose the Council, the British Library, Geheimes Two Sicilies’ (4). Staatsarchiv PK, Berlin, and Newcastle University. For help of various kinds I am indebted to Dr. It seems very likely that Shelley would have Kiera Chapman, Dr. J.P. Donovan, Dr. Ann known the five odes that make up Vittorio Gardiner, Prof. Dr. J. Kloosterhuis, Prof. Nicholas Alfieri’s L’America libera (1781–3) and Ugo Roe, Dr. Susanne Schmid, Dr. Elinor Shaffer and Foscolo’s two odes of 1797, Bonaparte anonymous readers. Translations are mine unless Liberatore and Ai Novelli Repubblicani . His otherwise indicated. Gerald Bevan kindly Italian translation of ‘Ode to Liberty’ allowed it corrected my translations from the French. to be identified with this recent, native tradition 2. The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley , ed. Frederick L. Jones (2 vols, Oxford, 1964), ii. 442. of politically libertarian odes. He must have 3. The Poems of Shelley , ed. Geoffrey Matthews and been aware too that a translation into Italian (in Kelvin Everest (2 vols to date, London, 1989–), i. a portion of the manuscript of ‘Ode alla Libertà’ 206–8; The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe that is now lost) of his ode’s call upon Italy to Shelley , ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat free itself from Austrian domination would (2 vols to date, Baltimore, 2000–), ii. 45–8 and have resonated directly with the sentiments of 369–73. many Italians in early 1821: ‘O Italy, / Gather 4. The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock , ed. Nicholas A. Joukovsky (2 vols, Oxford, 2001), i. 130, 155–6, thy blood into thy heart; repress / The beasts 160–1, 178. who make their dens thy sacred palaces’ (‘Ode 5. ‘Note on Hellas’ (1839) in The Novels and to Liberty’, ll. 208–10). Shelley’s imperfect Selected Works of Mary Shelley , gen. ed. Nora Italian in both efforts is accompanied by a bold Crook (8 vols, London, 1996), ii. 288. and, in retrospect, vain attempt to challenge the 6. I have consulted September 1819–June 1821 13.3 02 pages 199-302 Q7:Layout 1 3/10/07 17:44 Page 242
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issues at the Geheimes Staatsarchiv PK, Berlin, (eds), Shelley: Poet and Legislator of the World to my knowledge, the only extant and publicly- (Baltimore, 1996), 63–72, 63. available complete run between these dates in 18. A. Aspinall, Politics and the Press c. 1780–1850 Europe. (Brighton, 1973), 295. 7. The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley , 19. Michael Scrivener (ed.), Poetry and Reform: ed. Betty T. Bennett (3 vols, Baltimore, 1980–8), Periodical Verse from the English Democratic i. 140–1, 158. Press, 1792–1824 (Detroit, 1992), 37–47, and 8. ‘Les imprimés en langue anglaise en France au Lynda Pratt (ed.), Robert Southey: Poetical Works XIXe siècle: rayonnement intellectuel, circulation 1793–1810 (5 vols, London, 2004), v. xvi, 3–8. et modes de pénétration’, in Jacques Michon and 20. Nicholas Roe, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh Jean-Yves Mollier (eds), les mutations du livre et Hunt (London, 2005), 112–13. de l’édition dans le monde du XVIIIe siècle à l’an 21. E.A. Smith, ‘Perry, James (1755–1821)’, Oxford 2000 (Paris, 2002), 122–40, 130. For a thorough Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) account of the Galignanis’ enterprise, see Diana
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The ‘Charles the First’ Draft Notebook: A and Translations from Bodleian MS. Shelley adds. Facsimile of Bodleian MS. Shelley adds. e. 17 , c. 4, etc. , BSM 21 (New York, 1995), 36–49, BSM 12 (New York, 1991), xlii, 28–49; Francesco 453–61. Rognoni, Shelley: Opere (Turin, 1995), 1332–4, 36. For an assessment of Shelley’s grasp of Italian in 1807–8. ‘Ode alla Libertà’, see Antonella Braida, Henry 33. William Michael Rossetti (ed.), The Poetical Francis Cary’s The Vision, its literary context, Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (2 vols, London, and its influence (MS. D.Phil. Oxford University 1870), i. cxxx n. 1997), 156–7. 34. Dawson, 20. 37. Jean de Palacio, ‘Shelley traducteur de soi-même’, 35. For a facsimile, transcription and commentary, Revue des sciences humaines , 40 (1975), 223–44, see E.B. Murray (ed.), Miscellaneous Poetry, Prose 224.