Books: Percy Bysshe Shelley
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John Addington Symonds >> Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Their first meeting must be told in Trelawny's own words--words no less
certain of immortality than the fame of him they celebrate. "The
Williamses received me in their earnest, cordial manner; we had a great
deal to communicate to each other, and were in loud and animated
conversation, when I was rather put out by observing in the passage near
the open door, opposite to where I sat, a pair of glittering eyes
steadily fixed on mine; it was too dark to make out whom they belonged
to. With the acuteness of a woman, Mrs. Williams's eyes followed the
direction of mine, and going to the doorway she laughingly said, 'Come
in, Shelley, its only our friend Tre just arrived.' Swiftly gliding in,
blushing like a girl, a tall, thin stripling held out both his hands;
and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at his flushed,
feminine, and artless face, that it could be the poet, I returned his
warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies he sat down
and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it possible this
mild-looking, beardless boy, could be the veritable monster at war with
all the world?--excommunicated by the Fathers of the Church, deprived of
his civil rights by the fiat of a grim Lord Chancellor, discarded by
every member of his family, and denounced by the rival sages of our
literature as the founder of a Satanic school? I could not believe it;
it must be a hoax. He was habited like a boy, in a black jacket and
trousers, which he seemed to have outgrown, or his tailor, as is the
custom, had most shamefully stinted him in his 'sizings.' Mrs. Williams
saw my embarrassment, and to relieve me asked Shelley what book he had
in his hand? His face brightened, and he answered briskly,-
"'Calderon's "Magico Prodigioso"--I am translating some passages in it.'
"'Oh, read it to us.'
"Shoved off from the shore of commonplace incidents that could not
interest him, and fairly launched on a theme that did, he instantly
became oblivious of everything but the book in his hand. The masterly
manner in which he analysed the genius of the author, his lucid
interpretation of the story, and the ease with which he translated into
our language the most subtle and imaginative passages of the Spanish
poet, were marvellous, as was his command of the two languages. After
this touch of his quality I no longer doubted his identity; a dead
silence ensued; looking up, I asked,--
"'Where is he?'
"Mrs. Williams said, 'Who? Shelley? Oh, he comes and goes like a spirit,
no one knows when or where.'"
Two little incidents which happened in the winter of 1821-2 deserve to
be recorded. News reached the Pisan circle early in December that a man
who had insulted the Host at Lucca was sentenced to be burned. Shelley
proposed that the English--himself, Byron, Medwin, and their friend Mr.
Taafe--should immediately arm and ride off to rescue him. The scheme
took Byron's fancy; but they agreed to try less Quixotic measures before
they had recourse to force, and their excitement was calmed by hearing
that the man's sentence had been commuted to the galleys. The other
affair brought them less agreeably into contact with the Tuscan police.
The party were riding home one afternoon in March, when a mounted
dragoon came rushing by, breaking their ranks and nearly unhorsing Mr.
Taafe. Byron and Shelley rode after him to remonstrate; but the man
struck Shelley from his saddle with a sabre blow. The English then
pursued him into Pisa, making such a clatter that one of Byron's
servants issued with a pitchfork from the Casa Lanfranchi, and wounded
the fellow somewhat seriously, under the impression that it was
necessary to defend his master. Shelley called the whole matter "a
trifling piece of business;" but it was strictly investigated by the
authorities; and though the dragoon was found to have been in the wrong,
Byron had to retire for a season to Leghorn. Another consequence was the
exile of Count Gamba and his father from Tuscany, which led to Byron's
final departure from Pisa.
The even current of Shelley's life was not often broken by such
adventures. Trelawny gives the following account of how he passed his
days: he "was up at six or seven, reading Plato, Sophocles, or Spinoza,
with the accompaniment of a hunch of dry bread; then he joined Williams
in a sail on the Arno, in a flat-bottomed skiff, book in hand, and from
thence he went to the pine-forest, or some out-of-the-way place. When
the birds went to roost he returned home, and talked and read until
midnight." The great wood of stone pines on the Pisan Maremma was his
favourite study. Trelawny tells us how he found him there alone one day,
and in what state was the manuscript of that prettiest lyric, "Ariel, to
Miranda take". "It was a frightful scrawl; words smeared out with his
finger, and one upon the other, over and over in tiers, and all run
together in most 'admired disorder;' it might have been taken for a
sketch of a marsh overgrown with bulrushes, and the blots for wild
ducks; such a dashed-off daub as self-conceited artists mistake for a
manifestation of genius. On my observing this to him, he answered, 'When
my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils, and throws off images
and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled
down, out of the rude sketch as you justly call it, I shall attempt a
drawing."
A daily visit to Byron diversified existence. Byron talked more sensibly
with Shelley than with his commonplace acquaintances; and when he began
to gossip, Shelley retired into his own thoughts. Then they would go
pistol-shooting, Byron's trembling hand contrasting with his friend's
firmness. They had invented a "little language" for this sport: firing
was called tiring; hitting, colping; missing, mancating, etc. It was in
fact a kind of pigeon Italian. Shelley acquired two nick-names in the
circle of his Pisan friends, both highly descriptive. He was Ariel and
the Snake. The latter suited him because of his noiseless gliding
movement, bright eyes, and ethereal diet. It was first given to him by
Byron during a reading of "Faust". When he came to the line of
Mephistopheles, "Wie meine Muhme, die beruhmte Schlange," and translated
it, "My aunt, the renowned Snake," Byron cried, "Then you are her
nephew." Shelley by no means resented the epithet. Indeed he alludes to
it in his letters, and in a poem already referred to above.
Soon after Trelawny's arrival the party turned their thoughts to
nautical affairs. Shelley had already done a good deal of boating with
Williams on the Arno and the Serchio, and had on one occasion nearly
lost his life by the capsizing of their tiny craft. They now determined
to build a larger yacht for excursions on the sea; while Byron, liking
the project of a summer residence upon the Bay of Spezia, made up his
mind to have one too. Shelley's was to be an open boat carrying sail,
Byron's a large decked schooner. The construction of both was entrusted
to a Genoese builder, under the direction of Trelawny's friend, Captain
Roberts. Such was the birth of the ill-fated "Don Juan", which cost the
lives of Shelley and Willliams, and of the "Bolivar", which carried
Byron off to Genoa before he finally set sail for Greece. Captain
Roberts was allowed to have his own way about the latter; but Shelley
and Williams had set their hearts upon a model for their little yacht,
which did not suit the Captain's notions of sea-worthiness. Williams
overruled his objections, and the "Don Juan" was built according to his
cherished fancy. "When it was finished," says Trelawny, "it took two
tons of iron ballast to bring her down to her bearings, and then she was
very crank in a breeze, though not deficient in beam. She was fast,
strongly built, and Torbay rigged." She was christened by Lord Byron,
not wholly with Shelley's approval; and one young English sailor,
Charles Vivian, in addition to Williams and Shelley, formed her crew.
"It was great fun," says Trelawny, "to witness Williams teaching the
poet how to steer, and other points of seamanship. As usual, Shelley had
a book in hand, saying he could read and steer at the same time, as one
was mental, the other mechanical." "The boy was quick and handy, and
used to boats. Williams was not as deficient as I anticipated, but
over-anxious, and wanted practice, which alone makes a man prompt in
emergency. Shelley was intent on catching images from the ever-changing
sea and sky; he heeded not the boat."
CHAPTER 7.
LAST DAYS.
The advance of spring made the climate of Pisa too hot for comfort; and
early in April Trelawny and Williams rode off to find a suitable lodging
for themselves and the Shelleys on the Gulf of Spezia. They pitched upon
a house called the Villa Magni, between Lerici and San Terenzio, which
"looked more like a boat or a bathing-house than a place to live in. it
consisted of a terrace or ground-floor unpaved, and used for storing
boat-gear and fishing-tackle, and of a single storey over it, divided
into a hall or saloon and four small rooms, which had once been
white-washed; there was one chimney for cooking. This place we thought
the Shelleys might put up with for the summer. The only good thing about
it was a verandah facing the sea, and almost over it." When it came to
be inhabited, the central hall was used for the living and eating room
of the whole party. The Shelleys occupied two rooms facing each other;
the Williamses had one of the remaining chambers, and Trelawny another.
Access to these smaller apartments could only be got through the saloon;
and this circumstance once gave rise to a ludicrous incident, when
Shelley, having lost his clothes out bathing, had to cross, in puris
naturalibus, not undetected, though covered in his retreat by the clever
Italian handmaiden, through a luncheon party assembled in the
dining-room. The horror of the ladies at the poet's unexpected
apparition and his innocent self-defence are well described by Trelawny.
Life in the villa was of the simplest description. To get food was no
easy matter; and the style of the furniture may be guessed by Trelawny's
laconic remark that the sea was his only washing-basin.
They arrived at Villa Magni on the 26th of April, and began a course of
life which was not interrupted till the final catastrophe of July 8.
These few weeks were in many respects the happiest of Shelley's life. We
seem to discern in his last letter of importance, recently edited by Mr.
Garnett, that he was now conscious of having reached a platform from
which he could survey his past achievement, and whence he would probably
have risen to a loftier altitude, by a calmer and more equable exercise
of powers which had been ripening during the last three years of life in
Italy. Meanwhile, "I am content," he writes, "if the heaven above me is
calm for the passing moment." And this tranquillity was perfect, with
none of the oppressive sense of coming danger, which distinguishes the
calm before a storm. He was far away from the distractions of the world
he hated, in a scene of indescribable beauty, among a population little
removed from the state of savages, who enjoyed the primitive pleasures
of a race at one with nature, and toiled with hardy perseverance on the
element he loved so well. His company was thoroughly congenial and well
mixed. He spent his days in excursions on the water with Williams, or in
solitary musings in his cranky little skiff, floating upon the shallows
in shore, or putting out to sea and waiting for the landward breeze to
bring him home. The evenings were passed upon the terrace, listening to
Jane's guitar, conversing with Trelawny, or reading his favourite poets
aloud to the assembled party.
In this delightful solitude, this round of simple occupations, this
uninterrupted communion with nature, Shelley's enthusiasms and
inspirations revived with their old strength. He began a poem, which, if
we may judge of its scale by the fragment we possess, would have been
one of the longest, as it certainly is one of the loftiest of his
masterpieces. The "Triumph of Life" is composed in no strain of
compliment to the powers of this world, which quell untameable spirits,
and enslave the noblest by the operation of blind passions and
inordinate ambitions. It is rather a pageant of the spirit dragged in
chains, led captive to the world, the flesh and the devil. The sonorous
march and sultry splendour of the terza rima stanzas, bearing on their
tide of song those multitudes of forms, processionally grand, yet misty
with the dust of their own tramplings, and half-shrouded in a lurid robe
of light, affect the imagination so powerfully that we are fain to
abandon criticism and acknowledge only the daemonic fascinations of this
solemn mystery. Some have compared the "Triumph of Life" to a
Panathenaic pomp: others have found in it a reflex of the burning summer
heat, and blazing sea, and onward undulations of interminable waves,
which were the cradle of its maker as he wrote. The imagery of Dante
plays a part, and Dante has controlled the structure. The genius of the
Revolution passes by: Napoleon is there, and Rousseau serves for guide.
The great of all ages are arraigned, and the spirit of the world is
brought before us, while its heroes pass, unveil their faces for a
moment, and are swallowed in the throng that has no ending. But how
Shelley meant to solve the problems he has raised, by what sublime
philosophy he purposed to resolve the discords of this revelation more
soul-shattering than Daniel's "Mene", we cannot even guess. The poem, as
we have it, breaks abruptly with these words: "Then what is Life? I
cried"--a sentence of the profoundest import, when we remember that the
questioner was now about to seek its answer in the halls of Death.
To separate any single passage from a poem which owes so much of its
splendour to the continuity of music and the succession of visionary
images, does it cruel wrong. Yet this must be attempted; for Shelley is
the only English poet who has successfully handled that most difficult
of metres, terza rima. His power over complicated versification cannot
be appreciated except by duly noticing the method he employed in
treating a structure alien, perhaps, to the genius of our literature,
and even in Italian used with perfect mastery by none but Dante. To
select the introduction and part of the first paragraph will inflict
less violence upon the "Triumph of Life" as a whole, than to detach one
of its episodes.
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth.
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean's orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray,
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them.
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep,
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine. Before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,--
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent that the scene came through
As clear as, when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills, they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains, and the ocean, hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air.
And then a vision on my brain was rolled.
Such is the exordium of the poem. It will be noticed that at this point
one series of the interwoven triplets is concluded. The "Triumph of
Life" itself begins with a new series of rhymes, describing the vision
for which preparation has been made in the preceding prelude. It is not
without perplexity that an ear unaccustomed to the windings of the terza
rima, feels its way among them. Entangled and impeded by the
labyrinthine sounds, the reader might be compared to one who, swimming
in his dreams, is carried down the course of a swift river clogged with
clinging and retarding water-weeds. He moves; but not without labour:
yet after a while the very obstacles add fascination to his movement.
As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,
This was the tenour of my waking dream:--
Methought I sate beside a public way
Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream
Of people there was hurrying to and fro,
Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,
All hastening onward, yet none seemed to know
Whither he went, or whence he came, or why
He made one of the multitude, and so
Was borne amid the crowd, as through the sky
One of the million leaves of summer's bier;
Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,
Mixed in one mighty torrent did appear:
Some flying from the thing they feared, and some
Seeking the object of another's fear;
And others, as with steps towards the tomb,
Pored on the trodden worms that crawled beneath,
And others mournfully within the gloom
Of their own shadow walked and called it death;
And some fled from it as it were a ghost,
Half fainting in the affliction of vain breath.
But more, with motions which each other crossed,
Pursued or spurned the shadows the clouds threw,
Or birds within the noon-day ether lost,
Upon that path where flowers never grew--
And weary with vain toil and faint for thirst,
Heard not the fountains, whose melodious dew
Out of their mossy cells for ever burst;
Nor felt the breeze which from the forest told
Of grassy paths, and wood-lawn interspersed,
With over-arching elms, and caverns cold,
And violet banks where sweet dreams brood;--but they
Pursued their serious folly as of old.
Here let us break the chain of rhymes that are unbroken in the text, to
notice the extraordinary skill with which the rhythm has been woven in
one paragraph, suggesting by recurrences of sound the passing of a
multitude, which is presented at the same time to the eye of fancy by
accumulated images. The next eleven triplets introduce the presiding
genius of the pageant. Students of Petrarch's "Trionfi" will not fail to
note what Shelley owes to that poet, and how he has transmuted the
definite imagery of mediaeval symbolism into something metaphysical and
mystic.
And as I gazed, methought that in the way
The throng grew wilder, as the woods of June
When the south wind shakes the extinguished day;
And a cold glare, intenser than the noon
But icy cold, obscured with blinding light
The sun, as he the stars. Like the young moon--
When on the sunlit limits of the night
Her white shell trembles amid crimson air,
And whilst the sleeping tempest gathers might,--
Doth, as the herald of its coming, bear
The ghost of its dead mother, whose dim form
Bends in dark ether from her infant's chair;
So came a chariot on the silent storm
Of its own rushing splendour, and a Shape
So sate within, as one whom years deform,
Beneath a dusky hood and double cape,
Crouching within the shadow of a tomb.
And o'er what seemed the head a cloud-like crape
Was bent, a dun and faint ethereal gloom
Tempering the light. Upon the chariot beam
A Janus-visaged Shadow did assume
The guidance of that wonder-winged team;
The shapes which drew it in thick lightnings
Were lost:--I heard alone on the air's soft stream
The music of their ever-moving wings.
All the four faces of that charioteer
Had their eyes banded; little profit brings
Speed in the van and blindness in the rear,
Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun,
Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere
Of all that is, has been, or will be done.
So ill was the car guided--but it past
With solemn speed majestically on.
The intense stirring of his imagination implied by this supreme poetic
effort, the solitude of the Villa Magni, and the elemental fervour of
Italian heat to which he recklessly exposed himself, contributed to make
Shelley more than usually nervous. His somnambulism returned, and he saw
visions. On one occasion he thought that the dead Allegra rose from the
sea, and clapped her hands, and laughed, and beckoned to him. On another
he roused the whole house at night by his screams, and remained
terror-frozen in the trance produced by an appalling vision. This mood
he communicated, in some measure, to his friends. One of them saw what
she afterwards believed to have been his phantom, and another dreamed
that he was dead. They talked much of death, and it is noticeable that
the last words written to him by Jane were these:--"Are you going to
join your friend Plato?"
The Leigh Hunts arrived at last in Genoa, whence they again sailed for
Leghorn. Shelley heard the news upon the 20th of June. He immediately
prepared to join them; and on the 1st of July set off with Williams in
the "Don Juan" for Leghorn, where he rushed into the arms of his old
friend. Leigh Hunt, in his autobiography, writes, "I will not dwell upon
the moment." From Leghorn he drove with the Hunts to Pisa, and
established them in the ground-floor of Byron's Palazzo Lanfranchi, as
comfortably as was consistent with his lordship's variable moods. The
negotiations which had preceded Hunt's visit to Italy, raised
forebodings in Shelley's mind as to the reception he would meet from
Byron; nor were these destined to be unfulfilled. Trelawny tells us how
irksome the poet found it to have "a man with a sick wife, and seven
disorderly children," established in his palace. To Mrs. Hunt he was
positively brutal; nor could he tolerate her self-complacent husband,
who, while he had voyaged far and wide in literature, had never wholly
cast the slough of Cockneyism. Hunt was himself hardly powerful enough
to understand the true magnitude of Shelley, though he loved him; and
the tender solicitude of the great, unselfish Shelley, for the smaller,
harmlessly conceited Hunt, is pathetic. They spent a pleasant day or two
together, Shelley showing the Campo Santo and other sights of Pisa to
his English friend. Hunt thought him somewhat less hopeful than he used
to be, but improved in health and strength and spirits. One little touch
relating to their last conversation, deserves to be recorded:--"He
assented warmly to an opinion I expressed in the cathedral at Pisa,
while the organ was playing, that a truly divine religion might yet be
established, if charity were really made the principle of it, instead of
faith."
On the night following that day of rest, Shelley took a postchaise for
Leghorn; and early in the afternoon of the next day he set sail, with
Williams, on his return voyage to Lerici. The sailor-boy, Charles
Vivian, was their only companion. Trelawny, who was detained on board
the "Bolivar", in the Leghorn harbour, watched them start. The weather
for some time had been unusually hot and dry. "Processions of priests
and religiosi have been for several days past praying for rain;" so runs
the last entry in Williams's diary; "but the gods are either angry or
nature too powerful." Trelawny's Genoese mate observed, as the "Don
Juan" stood out to sea, that they ought to have started at three a.m.
instead of twelve hours later; adding "the devil is brewing mischief."
Then a sea-fog withdrew the "Don Juan" from their sight. It was an
oppressively sultry afternoon. Trelawny went down into his cabin, and
slept; but was soon roused by the noise of the ships' crews in the
harbour making all ready for a gale. In a short time the tempest was
upon them, with wind, rain, and thunder. It did not last more than
twenty minutes; and at its end Trelawny looked out anxiously for
Shelley's boat. She was nowhere to be seen, and nothing could be heard
of her. In fact, though Trelawny could not then be absolutely sure of
the catastrophe, she had sunk, struck in all probability by the prow of
a felucca, but whether by accident or with the intention of running her
down is still uncertain.
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