The poet and political radical Percy Bysshe Shelley was born in England in 1792.
From a young age, he was fascinated by ghost stories and gothic imagery, and many of his poems are meditations on ‘terror’.
Some were responses to acts of political violence.
For example, one of his most famous poems, The Mask of Anarchy, was a reaction to the Peterloo Massacre (1819) - during which the cavalry maimed and killed hundreds of innocent protestors at a political rally in Manchester.
It portrays the Church and State as ‘Anarchy’ - as a psychopathic killer.
Shelley also rejected the whole notion of an all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving Creator.
Instead, he often depicted ‘nature’ as terrifying and brutal.
One of the most powerful examples of this is his poem Mont Blanc.
This describes the highest mountain in Western Europe as ‘still, snowy, and serene’, and ‘blue as the overhanging heaven’, but also as ‘peopled by the storms alone’ - as ‘ghastly, and scarred, and riven’.
Shelley’s fascination with notions of terror was reinforced by his own tragic life experiences.
His father disowned him; a couple of years after they separated, his first wife, Harriet, committed suicide; he lost custody of both his eldest children; and, after falling in love with Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter (the author of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley), three of their four children died during early childhood.
Despite this, there’s a palpable sense of optimism and hope underpinning much of Shelley’s writing.
For example, some of his most radical poems (e.g. Queen Mab and The Mask of Anarchy) are rallying calls that encourage the masses to assert their rights and overthrow exploitative political systems.
And, in Ozymandias, Shelley highlights the fragility of oppressive political systems by depicting the despotic rulers of the past as impotent and forgotten.
Although he shone a light on exclusionary forces, ultimately, Shelley was a utopian.
His lyrical drama Prometheus Unbound concludes with uplifting images of a future when freedoms are enjoyed, and the Earth celebrates the dawn of a blissful new era.
It is difficult to condone aspects of Shelley’s life/behaviour.
He constantly lived beyond his means, accumulated huge amounts of debt, and ran off to the continent with sixteen-year-old Mary (and her half-sister, Claire) whilst his wife was expecting their second child.
But he was also generous, and a loyal friend to some of the most celebrated figures of his age (e.g. Leigh Hunt and Lord Byron).
At a time when publicly criticising the monarchy, or simply calling for parliamentary reform, could land you in jail, the way Shelley challenged the status quo was courageous and altruistic.
It angered the authorities, alienated him from the establishment, and eventually drove him into exile - he ended up moving to Italy.
When reflecting on the most chaotic phases of Shelley’s life, it’s also important to realise how young he was.
He married his first wife, Harriet, when he was just nineteen; ran off with Mary when he was twenty-two; had to come to terms with Harriet’s suicide when he was twenty-four; and by the time he was twenty-seven several of his children had died.
And then the inevitable happened.
Despite never having learnt how to swim, Shelley became a keen sailor in his late-twenties.
Over the summer of 1822, he was sailing back from Livorno to his home in Lerici when a storm blew up.
Shelley drowned, his body was cremated on the beach where it was found, and his ashes were later interred in a tomb at the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.
He was just twenty-nine years old.
There are lots of collections of Shelley’s poetry (e.g. Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Major Works).
The biography Shelley: The Pursuit by Richard Holmes is brilliant too.
Much enjoyed reading this James. Shelley is a favourite poet of mine (you might have seen my note of a few days ago on his writing of his ode 'Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’) and Mask of Anarchy a favourite poem. Have you read the other Ozymandias poem by his friend and fellow poet, Horace Smith? You probably know that the two men each agreed to write a sonnet ‘in competition’ on the subject of Rameses II. Smith’s isn’t bad but Shelley’s is clearly superior in its imagery. When I lived near Bath I went on a walk around the city on the theme of Mary Shelley’s writing of Frankenstein (you’ll be aware most of it was written in Bath). The walk gave an interesting insight into the Shelleys and their constant moves around Europe to avoid their creditors.
Such a fun diversion for me reading this.