For Wednesday: Shelley, “Ode to the West Wind,” “Love’s
Philosophy,” “The
Waning Moon,” “Song,” “Lines: When the Lamp
is
Shattered”
Q1: In many of
these poems, Shelley personifies natural forces: the moon, the West Wind,
various “Spirits,” etc. Choose a specific example and explore how this
personification changes how we see/experience this object or place. What
personality or ideas does he invest it with? How does this make a natural
object think and feel in a ‘Romantic’ sense?
Q2: In “Ode to
the West Wind,” re-read Stanza V carefully (even if you don’t understand the
rest of the poem completely): Shelley is using the metaphor of a lyre (harp)
and falling leaves to relate to his poetry. How does this work? What does he
want the West Wind to do this his verse, and what might the “west wind” stand
for in this sense? You might also consider how this ties into the autumn/spring
imagery in the poem as well.
Q3: Remember
that the philosopher Kant defined the sublime as “the tall cliffs, towering thunder clouds, volcanoes,
hurricanes, the boundless ocean… we gladly call these objects sublime
because they elevate the strength of our soul above its usual level.” How does
Shelley invoke this feeling of the sublime in his poetry? Where do the sounds,
images, or other devices make us see/feel the nature world as if in a painting
(or in real life?)
Q4: Choose one
of the stanzas in “Lines: When the Lamp is Shattered” and explore the metaphors
and images Shelley uses. What are they trying to show us? What do we ‘see’ with
each one, and how do they point to something beyond the literal? Also, how does
each one relate to the title of the poem “when the lamp is shattered”?
1.) The personification that stuck out the most to me was in "Lines: When the Lamp is Shattered." Up until the end, I was entirely aware that the poem had a feeling of death and dismay to it. He gives the trees the feeling of being alive by stating the sound made when the winds rustle through the now barren limbs is like that of a dead seamen's knell. In the last stanza, he paints such a wonderfully, dreary picture of the trees at winter time. He states part of the irony is that the sun is out on a wintry day but the tree remains laughably naked.
ReplyDelete3.) Shelley is able to invoke the feelings of the sublime first by personifying nature. He uses the elements of nature and their spirits to create a sense of ease within the reader as well as a sense of desire. We especially see this in "Love's Philosophy" where Shelley contemplates the oneness of natural forces, but begs to know why he is not part of that oneness when he asks "what is all this sweet work worth/If thou kiss not me?" It's such a beautiful depiction of his want for the sublime.
Great responses...in Q3, I think it's almost accusatory, as if to say, "how can you be in the presence of the sublime and still see yourself?" To him, anyone who 'gets it' should join as one like nature itself. Or maybe he just wants to seduce a sensitive, Romantic young girl...hard to say!
DeleteElyse Marquardt
ReplyDeleteQ1: Personification stands out in "Love's Philosophy." Shelley uses mountains and waves, especially in the first two lines of stanza II. He gives them human characteristics and human emotions; because he does this, they cease to be simply large inanimate objects and instead become huge beings with an equally huge capacity to love. It is interesting to note that Shelley begins the poem with examples of love relationships in nature, as if they are the original lovers and he is only copying them. His point seems to be that if nature loves, it is only sensible that he and his unidentified lover should have such a relationship as well. He personifies nature until it is treated as the almost supernatural example to be followed. This attitude exactly suits that of the Romantic period.
Q2: Stanza V of "Ode to the West Wind" compares Shelley to a lyre for a moment, as if he were an instrument to be masterfully played by the West Wind. He then goes on to compare himself to a leaf that would gladly be swept along in the wind's reckless path and lost in the swirl. As with all things sublime, the West Wind inspires Shelley to lose himself in its beauty. We could compare the West Wind to a lover, almost a type of "manic pixie dream girl." She is wild, unfathomable, and far less than stable; yet her zeal for life and her mindless joy are intoxicating to Shelley. He wishes for her to take him along on the ride as she careens through the world, sometimes destroying things in her recklessness, but always creating a new beauty that Shelley deeply desires and has thus far been missing. He ends the poem with a hauntingly hopeful question: "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" He seems to desperately believe that, once the West Wind has cleared his heart of the old, loveless leaves of his previous mindset, there will be room for her boundless beauty and he will be able to get lost in it.
Elyse Marquardt
Excellent responses--the West Wind is a kind of lover, or perhaps more properly a Muse in the Greek sense. He wants to be inspired by nature so nature can speak through him (the lyre metaphor) and make his words live on past his early death (which he seemed to predict). The Spring he talks about could be his literary immortality, which flowers anew whenever anyone holds his "cold dead" leaves in their hands.
DeleteAimee Elmore
ReplyDelete1.) I really saw the personification in the poem “Love’s Philosophy.” When it says “The fountains mingle with the river” or “And the waves clasp one another” he gives the fountains and the waves action that you would associate with people. When I read it the poem flows. The poem has a feeling of Love and even though he used mountains, rivers and the ocean to show that love.
3.) He shows the feeling of sublime through his use of nature like in his poem “Love’s Philosophy.” I think this poem is showing how strong the love id between these things, the mountains, rivers, ocean, and Heaven. It has the feeling that the love is really strong. It is stronger than what they have.
Yes, and note how he makes nature do what HE wants to do: kiss and clasp the lover (the "thee" of the poem). The Romantics felt that Nature reflected your inner self, so we can easily read his mind throughout this poem. Hopefully, he makes the lover look at Nature through his eyes and feel the same sublime thoughts about the Oneness of all things...and he gets that long-awaited kiss.
DeleteQ1: In the very first line of “Ode to the West Wind”, Shelley called the West Wind the “breath of Autumn’s being” which describes the season of autumn as a living thing and changes the very nature of the West Wind. By turning Autumn into an entity that we can relate to on a level of “living things need certain things to stay living” and then calling the West Wind its very breath, he has imbued the seemingly wayward force of the West Wind with a sense of life-giving purpose and consistency. He set us up from the very start to view both season and wind as not simple facts of the world that have no spark to them, but as mystical forces of Nature that are too great to properly understand.
ReplyDeleteQ2: Shelley wants the West Wind to use him as its instrument, just as the forest is also the West Wind’s instrument. As the forest is an instrument, its leaves are its “works”, and Shelley wants his own works to have a similar tone. He doesn’t just want to be an instrument, however, nor does he simply want the West Wind to be his muse. He wants the West Wind to let him be it for a little while, and blow his works around the world for everyone to see. Shelley wants his works to further the onset of winter, and bring Spring shortly after.
Great responses: he wants to be 'played upon' like a harp by nature, so that his tunes/poetry can sound throughout the ages and usher in a new spring. He feels the presence of death and wonders if anything of his life will survive to be reborn. Clearly, only our art survives us...and through this he can be immortal.
DeleteQ1. “The Waning Moon’s” personification stuck me the most. The similie of the moon being like a dying woman really made me think about how the moon is one of the most romantic things known. Yet it is also something very tragic. As the full moon means full life of love, a new moon can mean death. The waning moon means starting to die. Which is where the simile of the moon being like a dying woman. Slow, and lonely.
ReplyDeleteQ2. The fall of leaves has a pattern much like the harp. The leaves follow the seasons like the harp follows note by note.
Fall is a season of beautiful on look to death. It’s a look to the “dead” winter and a foreshadow of the bad to come. The west wind might be a woman who is always coming and going like the wind. Never staying in one place to long and is cold to the touch. Whereas the Spring wind brings life. Because sometimes when something dies (like the leaves on the ground) it can be used as a fertilizer to help the next season (in this case love) of life.
Great responses--I love the idea of dead things repopulating the earth, becoming grist for the mill of life. That's the exact sense of his metaphor, though for him, the "leaves"--poetry--can spread his own soul and create new life in the minds and thoughts of future generations. Just as they're doing right now! :)
DeleteQ1.) In the poem, “Love’s Philosophy” Shelly says, “The fountains mingle with the river/And the rivers with the Ocean” and I find this to be a beautiful metaphor. It talks about how everything has a match. They have a similarity, but they are very different. The ocean is immense while rivers can range from a mile to several miles. I love this metaphor because it really shows you that even great things can love small things. They always have each other. They almost depend on each other. I find that beautiful because the poem is about how everything has something.
ReplyDeleteQ3. I realize that the sublime is often compared to nature, however in “The Waning Moon” I felt a strong sense of the sublime. I think it is the inevitable future I have to look forward to. I know I am going to grow old. I know I am eventually going to die. Reading this poem gave me this overpowering feeling of what is coming for me in the end. Shelly says, “... led by the insane/And feeble wanderings of her fading brain” which petrifies me because I am so terrified of dementia. The word “insane” really throws you for a loop in this because when you lose your mind, you practically are insane. I find that quite terrifying. I do find death interesting because it’s what makes you truly think about life after death. I find satisfaction in the thought of meeting God after I grow old. This poem really brings out the natural state of growing old.
I love your response to Q3, and glad you shared this in class. This is a great way of examining the metaphor, since it suggests that the moon is "us"--we'll all be the waning moon, yet instead of fading into a horrible death we'll becoming something new, which not even the poet can see or imagine yet.
DeleteQ1: "The Waning Moon," though short, is overwhelmingly filled with personification of the moon. Shelley describes the moon "like a dying lady, lean and pale,/Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil" (lines 1-2). The idea of the moon as an elderly women is powerful; I think it places emphasis on the cycle of life as compared to the cycle of the moon. A waning moon is fading out from being a full moon. In the same way, an elderly woman is waning from the fullness of life she once experienced. This poem urges the reader to evaluate their life and ponder upon what will happen when it ends, which is very romantic.
ReplyDeleteQ4: In Stanza I, Shelley creates images of the end. Light can fade away. Rainbows disappear. Music stops playing. Words are forgotten. I think by showing us the fallibility of things we believe to be concrete, Shelley is making a strong impact with the audience. Each "broken" thing relates back to the broken lamp. In an instant, the light from the lamp "in the dust lies dead" (line 2). Similarly, things change in an instant, and me must deal with the outcome. This poem evaluates the frailty of our ever-changing world.
Great responses, particularly in how Romantic poets see the cyclical nature in all things, and help us see ourselves in nature. Life ends, light darkens, but nothing goes away; we simply transmute into something new and sublime.
DeleteQ1: In "The Waning Moon", Shelley personifies the full moon as an old woman who is dying in order to make room for the new moon. It is romantic in the sense that the moon is presented as a person who is coming to the end of her life when in reality the moon simply goes through cycles of visibility with no "death" involved. The idea that the when the full moon is in the sky one night, then blacked out the next is indicative of death and new life has a mystical quality to it.
ReplyDeleteQ4: In stanza I, the metaphors represent what is lost when one element is taken away. The speaker is talking about a lost love and how it has affected him. In lines 1-2, the lamp is the lost love and the speaker is the dust whose metaphorical "light" is now missing without the love.
Good responses: I like the idea that there is no death--instead, the terrifying old lady simply becomes a white mass, an egg, or something new that is hard to distinguish. The cyclical nature of life, perhaps.
Deleteq1. In Love's Philosophy, Shelley personifies the fountains by giving them the human action of mingling, the mountains and moonbeams are kissing Heaven and sea, and waves and sunlight are clasping each other. I think his intentions in personifying these natural things is to be beyond romantic; sort of dramatically romantic. Cheesy. But by telling us, for example, that the fountains are mingling with the river, all readers develop a common image: One where two sources of water are being mixed together. In this poem, he's just using pretty language to suggest that this is where the mountains meet the sky and the sunlight meets the earth. (See? Saying it that way isn't romantic at all.)
ReplyDeleteq3. It seems like Shelley has a thing for nature, so I can't just limit his use of the sublime to one poem. In Love's Philosophy, we read of the mountains and the sunlight, the fountains and the winds. From these places things we can understand the way the poem is supposed to feel. We can't see the wind and we don't normally notice sunbeams in the average day, but this description makes us suddenly super aware of the mist from a fountain that could connect to your skin by the blowing of the wind. I think it's interesting that near the end he basically says "why am I saying all these cheesy things if you're not going to kiss me?" I think there's probably something to draw from that, but I'm not sure where to start.
Great responses--particularly the idea that Shelley acknowledges that his "cheesy sayings" might be wasted without a kiss! Not sure if he felt they were cheesy (I bet they didn't quite understand that word yet), but the poetry is supposed to be something of an illusion to disguise his true intention.
ReplyDelete