Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Shelley's Own Depression in Adonais
We all know the required components for an elegy--lamentation, exaltation, consolation. In fact, I charge you to find an elegiac piece that does not run through these motions. However, Shelley takes his elegy some steps further, condemning not only those critics who "crown(ed) (Keats's) Life's cup with such a draught of woe" (317-8), but also life itself. There are several passages throughout Shelley's "Adonais" that to me suggest he was battling his own depression; although I believe Shelley grieved deeply for Keats's death, this poem very well could have served an expressive outlet for Shelley's own depression at the time, as well. In stanza 39, he suggests that the living are the unfortunate ones, "lost in stormy visions ... decay(ing) like corpses in a charnel" (345-9). He indicates earlier, in stanza 26, that he would like to be where Keats is--less in the sense that Keats was more deserving of a good life than he, and more in a way that suggests death seems a more tolerable alternative to his suffering at the moment. He is "chained to Time, and cannot thence depart"(234). Besides Keats's death, what else could have been happening in Shelley's life at the time to spark such beautifully tragic expressions of hopelessness and apathy?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I agree with you Miranda, the level of profound grief in this tormented elegy also suggests to me that there is something deeper going on within this poem. Your post really got me thinking about the events of Shelley's life, so I did a little Googling! Besides being involved in a series of tumultuous affairs, Shelley experienced two suicides in a very short period of time in 1816: a half-sister of his wife Mary Godwin and his first wife Harriet pregnant with an unborn child. Then, in 1818-19, he suffered more tragedy when both his son (of fever) and infant daughter died. Considering that "Adonais" was published only a few years later(1821), it would not be suprising if he related these tragic events of his own life to the death of Keats.
ReplyDeleteI think you both make very interesting points about the mental and emotional state of Shelley. I think it is important for us to consider the influences of this elegy on Shelley's reputation as a poet. As we briefly touched on in class on tuesday, there are strong underlying sentiments of Shelley's embedded in the stanzas, which is why I found Miranda's assessment of Shelley's state of depression an interesting idea to consider. Another point Miranda made was suggesting that the "living are the unfortunate ones". I never considered it under this light, but perhaps the line "he is not dead…He hath awakened form the dream of life" (39) is Shelley's lamentation on the comforts and utility of death itself.
ReplyDelete