Shelley, Poetry, and the Issue of Greek Heritage

While reading Shelley’s A Defense of Poetry, I was struck by similarities between the reasons he cites in this work and those he puts forth in his arguments for European support of the Greeks in their War of Independence. Elevating the legacy of poetry as the determinate of its importance, Shelley states, “A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds,” effectively minimizing the person of the poet himself in relation to his output (1171). In his arguments for British intervention in the Greeks’ struggle, he chooses to emphasize the cultural value of Greece as the birthplace of art and literature rather than balk at the physical violence of the conflict. Speaking of the lyrical Poets of Athens, he proclaims “never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue been developed,” and continues, “it is Poetry alone…which has rendered this epoch memorable above all others” (1172). Because poetry has the capacity to transcend time and individual memories, Shelley defends its compositional practice and consumption, an idea I imagine he also applied to his reasoning for siding with Greece to preserve the birthplace of this poetic tradition.

                                                                                Delacroix's Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi.