Sasha's Class Summary BRL 2/1/11

“You know it’s a good day when it’s a Percy Shelley day,” Dr. Foss enthusiastically declared. I smiled to myself at this comment. Usually, Dr. Foss would greet us with a hearty, “Good afternoon,” and let it go at that. Today, however, it was clear that he was eager to discuss Shelley’s works with us. Truthfully, so was I. Out of the “Big Six” whom we had studied so far, Shelley was the most intriguing and enjoyable to me.

That discussion was put on hold, however, as we had to take another reward quiz. After doing so, one of the students asked about how they were graded. As Dr. Foss explained the scoring process for quizzes, another student in the back began to sneeze repeatedly. When Dr. Foss finished his explanation, another student sneezed, to which he jokingly informed us that quizzes were nothing to sneeze at. We then launched into Shelley’s poems, starting with, “Mont Blanc.” Dr. Foss prefaced the poem by saying that Shelley was one of his favorite writers (the other being Oscar Wilde), and proudly pointed out a large button on his jacket that displayed a picture of Shelley himself. He then read the poem to us.

As a prompt for our small group discussions, Dr. Foss posed some examples of mountains and how they represented ultimate enlightenment. One of them was Moses going to the mountaintop in order to find answers. The question then arose: was Shelley himself trying to find answers through this poem?

In “Mount Blanc,” Shelley questioned many contrasting ideals such as life, death, light and darkness. Instead of coming to a firm resolution at the end of the poem, he asked:

“And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea, If to the human mind’s imaginings Silence and solitude were vacancy?” (p. 1064, lines 142-144)

We considered the purpose of Shelley’s cliff-hanger inquiry. Was it rhetorical, or was he genuinely expressing his skepticism and uncertainty about the universe?

My group related the themes of doubt and the unknown in “Mont Blanc” to the idea of romantic imagination. He seemed to be asking the reader what the world would be like without imagination. Moreover, he was questioning if the universe that we inhabited was real, or if it only excited because of our imagination. We believed that Shelley did not know the answer himself.

We also agreed that it his comparison of death to dreams was ironic, and wondered if Shelley envisioned death as one large dream. “Has some unknown omnipotence unfurled The veil of life and death? or do I lie In dream, and does the mightier world of sleep Spread far around and inaccessibly In circles?” (p. 1063-1064, lines 53-57)

Shelley seemed to be inferring that the human existence itself could be one whole dream; a stream of supposed consciousness in regard to what we think is real versus what is actually happening. In other words, he suggested that we might all be dead, floating in an endless dream world where no questions are ever answered, and our desires are forever out of our reach.

As we looked through Shelley’s other poems to search for compatible themes, we discovered that “To a Skylark” had a similar idea to that of “Mount Blanc.” While the latter poem described an unreachable utopia, Shelley used a skylark’s song to illustrate the concept of unattainable joy. However, Shelley admitted that without pain, the human race would not be able to experience any kind of joy. “We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” (p. 1139, lines 86-91)

When the large group discussion began, similar points about “To a Skylark” were reiterated by other students. Dr. Foss compared it to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, “Kubla Khan,” in that the speaker wants to learn the secret song that will ultimately make him a better poet, the key to his permanent paradise. Likewise, Shelley wants to learn the skylark’s song, and knows he would be transformed forever if that were possible. “Teach me half the gladness That my brain must know, Such harmonious madness From my lips would flow The world should listen then- as I am listening now.” (p. 1139, lines 101-105)

The class agreed that Shelley was yearning for a connection to this outside source of happiness, fulfillment and understanding. We used more of Shelley’s poems as evidence, including “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty.” Dr. Foss argued that this was Shelley’s way of praying for beauty’s power to descend and usher in a loving utopian world. He stated that Shelley believed beauty had the power to create such a place. The question was, could that actually happen? Like “Mount Blanc,” was this an affirmative prayer in regard to what Shelley believed was possible, or a desperate prayer to reveal the answers to the impossible?

We also discussed Shelley’s use of romantic imagination in his poem, “To Wordsworth.” Some students said that Shelley felt a strong attachment to Wordsworth because of the similar emotions reflected in their poetry. In other words, Wordsworth’s voice matched Shelley’s feelings. When Wordsworth withdrew from poetry, Shelley expressed his despair through writing, which we interpreted as the use of romantic imagination to highlight his feelings of loss.

Dr. Foss explained that the described relationship leaves us with a profound sense of loss as well. The irony of that is, once the poem is finished, we do not feel that way anymore. This prompted several comments about the importance of empathy in poetry; Shelley reached out to Wordsworth in his tribute poem, thereby reaching out to any readers who had also felt a sense of loss or disconnection. Dr. Foss compared Shelley to a Byronic writing stylist: he tried to connect to outsiders who read his work, but at the same time remained isolation based. We concluded the class with Dr. Foss’s explanation of what several critics thought of Shelley’s work. Some read his poetry as works of an idealist while other believed him to be a skeptic. Some even mixed the two and claimed his poetry was skeptical idealism. Be that as it may, we agreed that Shelley’s poetry was an important contribution to the Romantic Era of literature. He introduced the idea that not all poets know the answers to life’s questions; in fact, some poets write in order to try and figure out what they are.