INTRODUCTION 1. in Explanation of His Point, Sperry Writes: 'It Is Not Just
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Notes INTRODUCTION 1. In explanation of his point, Sperry writes: 'It is not just that the poetry is taken up in isolation from the life of the poet, from the deeper logic of his career both in itself and in relation to the history of his times, although that fact is continuously disconcerting. It is further that in reducing the verse to a structure of ideas, criticism has gone far toward depriving it of all emotional reality'(14). 2. See, in particular, Federico Olivero's essays on Shelley and Ve nice (1909: 217-25), Shelley and Dante, Petrarch and the Italian countryside (1913: 123-76), Epipsychidion (1918: 379-92), Shelley and Turner (1935); Corrado Zacchetti's Shelley e Dante (1922); and Maria De Courten's Percy Bysshe Shelley e l'Italia (1923). A more recent, and important, work is Aurelio Zanco's monograph, Shelley e l'Italia (1945). Other studies of note are by Tirinelli (1893); Fontanarosa (1897); Bernheimer (1920); Bini (1927); and Viviani della Robbia (1936). 3. In researching this field of study, Italian critics have found Shelley to be their best spokesman. 4. A work such as Anna Benneson McMahan's With Shelley in Italy (1907) comes to mind. Hers is a more inclusive anthology than John Lehmann's Shelley in Italy (1947) but needs to be brought up to date. 5. There has been a growing recognition of the importance of the Italian element in Shelley's poetry. Significant studies in English since those of Scudder (1895: 96-114), Toynbee (1909: 214-30), Bradley (1914: 441-56) and Stawell (1914: 104-31) are those of P. N. Roy, Shelley's Epipsychidion (1938) and Shelley and Italian Literature (1943); John Lehmann, Introduction to Shelley in Italy: An Anthology (1947: 7-40); Milton Wilson, 'Shelley's Italian Imagery' in Shelley's Later Poetry (1959: 102-28); Neville Rogers, 'Italian Platonics and Epipsychidion' in Shelley at Work (1967: 230-48); Timothy Webb, 'The Secret Things of Love: Shelley, Dante, and Italy' and 'Translating the Untranslatable: The Divine Comedy' in The Violet in the Crucible (1976: 276-336); and Katherine Folliot, Shelley's Italian Sunset (19831st pub. 1979). Webb's study provides the fullest examination in English to date of Shelley's Italian studies, and his conclusions regarding the importance of the Italian strain are a landmark in this field of research. He pointedly asserts that 'Italy had a profound influence on Shelley and his work' (1976: 277). There is a harmonious interplay between Shelley's de veloping powers and the creative presence of Italy, with the result that in Italy 'Shelley produced nearly all of his best work' (277). 248 Notes to pp. 2-6 249 Webb shows a firm grasp of the way Shelley's Italian experience came to fruition in his poetry. Of the essays dealing specifically with Shelley's Italian experience in the last twenty-five years, one must cite, in particlar, the work of Frederic S. Colwell on Shelley's response in Italy to sculpture and painting (1979: 59-77; 1980: 43-66); Steve Ellis on Shelley's assessment of Dante (1983: 1-35); Daniel Hughes on the correspondence between Shelley and Leonardo da Vinci (1970: 195-212); Fred L. Milne on The Cenci and the Ninth Circle of Dante's Hell (1977: 117-32); George Yost on the possible influence of Pieracci on The Cenci (1986: 1-52); Richard E. Brown on the role of Dante in Epipsychidion (1978: 223-35); Earl J. Schulze on Shelley's engagement with Dantean and Petrarchan elements in Epipsychidion and The Triumph of Life (1982: 191-216; 1988: 31-62); and Richard Fogle on Dante's links with Adonais (1967: 11-21). 6. Webb breaks new ground by suggesting that the 'intellectual' and 'sensual' aspects of Shelley's 'enriching' experience should not be considered as separate and distinct functions (1976: 276-7). 7. In A Map of Misreading, Harold Bloom writes that '[i]nfluence ... means that there are no texts, but only relationships between texts' (1975: 3), adding that 'to interpret a poem, necessarily you interpret its difference from other poems' (75). One should add that interpretation equally involves discerning the similarities between poems. The concept of 'intertextuality' has been explored by Julia Kristeva (Semiiotike, Paris, Seuil, 1969) and is defined by Gerard Genette 'as an "eidetic" relation of co-presence between two or more texts, and more often as the effective presence of one text in another' ('par une relation de copresence entre deux ou plusieurs textes, c'est-a-dire, eidetiquement e le plus souvent, par la presence effective d'un texte dans un autre', 1982: 8). 8. Shelley's constructive engagement with the past is given theoretical backing in A Defence of Poetry. 9. Discussing the Italian tourist vogue which reached its peak between the years 1819 to 1828, C. P. Brand writes that the interest of English visitors 'centred in general on the scenery, arts, antiquities and literature of Renaissance and medieval Italy, and they usually showed little sympathy for the character, way of life, culture or political aspirations of the modern Italians' (1957: 25). Brand adds that a small, but influential group did express deep concern for the Italians (25). 10. In his political treatise, Della tirannide (On Tyranny, 1789), 'Alfieri presented the very core of his literary inspiration: hatred of tyranny and an inexhaustible thirst for freedom' (Bondanella and Bondanella 1979: 9). 11. Contrary to popular belief, based on distorted or unqualified read ings of The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli was a devout republican whose intellectual contribution to the 'Risorgimento', by way of Alfieri, is considerable. Shelley's high regard for Machiavelli's thought is suggested in A Defence of Poetry, PP: 492 and L: II, 278. 12. In spite of similarities in the style and thought of both poets, there 250 Notes to pp. 6-13 is little concrete evidence to prove that Leopardi and Shelley had any acquaintance with each other's work. On connections between Leopardi and Shelley, see Zanella (1883: 409-29), Chiappelli (1900: 137-44) and Mariani (1987: 1-22). 13. Histoire des R.epubliques ltaliennes du Moyen Age. Dante's Commedia was another excellent guide to Italian history and politics. 14. The glamour of Italy can have been little recompense for the loss, within the space of nine months (September to June 1818/19), of both Shelley's children; or for the mood of disquiet which, at frequent intervals, seems to have weighed upon the Shelleyan household. 15. These included Turin, Milan, Como, Leghorn, Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, Rome, Naples, Florence, Pisa and Ravenna. In a sense, Shelley successfully completed the Grand Tour. He also lived in the Euganean Hills, at the Baths of Lucca, the Baths of Pisa and Lerici, and was acquainted with towns such as Piacenza, Parma, Modena, Padua, Este, Rovigo, Faenza, Cesena, Rimini, Pesaro, Fano, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni, Capua, Gaeta, Terracina, Velletri, Lucca, Empoli, Pietra Santa, and La Spezia. 16. Taafe, Medwin, Williams (and Trelawny) have all signalled their admiration for Shelley's poetry. On Shelley's relations with the Pisan circle, see Cline (1952). 17. See De Courten (1923: 121-257). Carducci spoke of Shelley as 'il poeta del Iiberato mondo' ('the poet of the liberated world', Presso l'urnil di P. B. Shelley, 245), D' Annunzio considered Prometheus Unbound 'il piu gran poema di questo secolo, piu grande forse anche del Faust goethiano' ('the greatest poem of this century [nineteenth], even greater perhaps than Goethe's Faust', 253). 18. For the diversity of critical reactions to Shelley, see, for example, White (1972: II, 420). 19. 'Libeccio', the south-west wind. 20. Both are commercial and maritime cities. 21. Olivero writes: 'Soprattutto l'ammira quando la mette a paragone collo squallore nativo, come nella Lettera aM. Gisborne' ('Above all he admires it [Italy] when he compares it with the squalor of his native England, as in the Letter to Maria Gisborne', 1913: 155). Whereas in Peter Bell the Third 'Hell is a city much like London', in Julian and Maddalo, Italy is the 'Paradise of exiles'. 22. Shelley's debt to Dante has long been noted, if not always appre ciated. In 1898 Oscar Kuhns claimed that '[a]mong all the English poets none shows a wider and deeper influence of Dante than Shelley' (161). Kuhns's view has been echoed throughout the twentieth century, significantly in a full length study on Dante and Shelley by Corrado Zacchetti (1922), and notably by T. S. Eliot who, observing that The Triumph of Life contained 'some of the greatest and most Dantesque lines in English', added that 'Shelley is the English poet, more than all others, upon whom the influence of Dante was remarkable' (1965: 30). More recently, Timothy Webb has added his voice to the growing recognition that, of all English poets, Shelley is probably the most attuned to the great Notes to pp. 13-22 251 Italian poet. Introducing the notion of intertextuality which Cronin has so effectively applied to Shelley's work in general, Webb points to Shelley's 'fruitful grafting of the imported bloom on to the native stock' (1976: 303). Shelley 'steeped himself in Dante through reading, discussion and translation', and 'assimilated what was most relevant to his own purposes' (304). He adds that 'the particular importance of Dante can only be properly understood when it has been placed in the full perspective of Shelley's Italian experience' (276-7). 23. Federico Olivero (1913: 139-152) was one of the first critics this century to acknowledge the Petrarchan element in Shelley's poetry. His essay was directly followed in England in studies of The Triumph of Life by A.