P. B. Shelley : The Revolutionary Romantic

[Music] hello French no this is CC Gurukul live lecture series and good afternoon to you we now we begin the series and the title of the series which has been on for a number of months now is the romantic trend in English writing and all of this so we've had lectures on Wordsworth Coleridge Blake and others and today we have a lecture on PB Shelley the important romantic word the resource person with us is dr. Rita boyars who teaches English literature in Hindu College Delhi University not reachable Oz has done extensive work on writing in English in India and she also has worked on literary theory she has a book to her credit that book is called the MOOC tivo'd in our time now today she is speaking on that the title of the talk is the point TV Shelley remained a revolutionary romantic so these two words are heavy words and one has to find out what romanticism means what kind of Romanticism this person represented the time in which he wrote and in fact I would ask dr. Rita Ora's to tell us about in brief about Romanticism be the time when it emerged and TV Shelley and then we can continue the discussion in Austria with all welcome and please begin yes so with respect to P be Shelley when we are looking at then we are looking at the younger romantics we've already covered as a session on sessions on the older the elder romantics who wrote around 1798 which includes a Wordsworth and Wordsworth and Coleridge and before that is Blake so we've covered these three these were these are known to be the pioneers of romantic poetry and after that we have a set of these new writers who came to the 4tb Shelley Keats and Byron over there are semi romanticism unless they're all reviewers that see romanticism of course now has many kind of meanings today but in the time when it came to the fore particularly in the 1790s then it in a way it was one it it it emphasized imagination it emphasized the mental Faculty of human beings in a different manner in a different manner as it was perceived or conceived before this time by the Augustine age poets who looked at the mental faculty as a solely or purely rational and based on the principle of reason or rationality or going with the scientific temper of the time but when the Romantic poets come to the fore then their use of the term Romantic does not mean that they negate the mental faculties or they negate the intellectual capacities of man in fact they tried to temper rationality with a kind of imaginative or instinctual Sensibility and this is what they believed then that alters the whole way that alters the perspective of the times that one that pure rationality or pure science cannot be the answer because man for them is not just a set of rules or matter but there is feeling and emotion attached with this matter so the material reality cannot be understood in terms of scientific facts and facts can only be one part of truth for them the other truth a lies in the this domain of mystery this domain of instinct and nature and I think for them humans the human being is a complex phenomenon in itself and cannot be reduced to the very basic elements or matter in that sense I think it's quite clear now we understand what romanticism is this is based mainly on imagination even though the hand imagination there is also reason there is reason so it's not to say that this the Kutta ties from reason and they don't believe that reason in some cases of course they talk about the harmful effects that the city life or the life of them the daunting much life or the din of the city organized life organized and the socially organized life that the way it Mars or Hans the human being and yet what they feel is that the primal instinct is what keeps us alive is what brings us back to our basic self which is probably not the kind of evolutionary self that we understand ourselves to be there are cell is there so people surely in this particular framework when we when we under a tornado or PB Shelley actually then peevish Shelley is one of these one is the most fiery of the romantics in that sense and the most passionate of amongst them he there is Wordsworth is defined probably by his intensity and Coleridge also delves into the supernatural but at the same time even we return when we come to peevish Shelley then he's a poet of passion of dreams of idealism of it's that kind of Romanticism that you see in PB Shelley can you explain the word fiery you used particularly for Shelley yes fiery in the sense when I come to the biographical details of Shelley perhaps we'd be able to look at it better but whatever I say fire is that he is he's he's one of those poets who doesn't mince words he doesn't he's very clear on the side that he takes and if he's expelled from college then he doesn't mind it he'd welcome it as an event in his life right to think yes it's nice because the poet himself is so excited with what he's doing and what his duty is or what he feels he's meant to do he's one of those poets who actually believes that he is born to do something and who believes that the work he's doing is actually very important so that that is why I said that he has this fiery spirit in him and and incorrigible in that sense you know if I could use that term for him because nothing don't seem nothing can corrupt his soul and he continues he has a perspective and a viewpoint and he continues to abide by it in the shore life that he had of course you call him infectious because he's fiery yes in a way yes he he can he can totally take you in the flow and make you believe what he believes in it's a powerful poet in that sense that's why so the passion with which so because he genuinely believes in it so he is able to create that for the reader while what was also I think was of the category he generally believed in the experience that he had and therefore he could transfer that and make the reader believe in that experience but Shelley's more perspective oriented he knows what he's saying and he's more social or wants to mobilize the other word in your title and that word is revolutionary romantic we understand what is revolutionary yes because he's actually the poet of protest in among the romantics he's not it doesn't have share the wit of Byron or the humor of Byron he he cannot become Keith's in that sense but what is peculiar about Shelley is that he believes that society can be changed through the conscious effort of individuals and participate meaningfully in it and who intervene in processes of society in very in with a sense of purpose and they can give that kind of shape to an age so there is a lot of in that sense there's a kind of movement revolution things which are above become low and with things which are low go up yes of course so you see he is talking about how revolutions also take place and in fact Shelley is known to have come up with this theory of what he called the historical evolution and according to him this historical evolution is something that that in every epoch in society there are a set of forces that are active and one set of forces are those that belong to the despots and it is the despotic force which is active and the other is the force of Liberty and he's written an ode to Liberty as well so he says that there is an inn in every society there is this there are these two two set of forces which are active and in some cases the the despotic force is actually in a sentence and dominates the scene while in the other the you know the force of the people or the the force of freedom or Liberty is what takes hold and dominates the scene and for which he also takes up these different kind of examples such as the French Revolution and the American Revolution would be the periods when the force of Liberty gained in ascendance and on the other hand when he is talking about the despots then he refers to the ancient Rome period of ancient Rome or the period of Charles Wan in England and again the Cromwellian period then he associates with this period when the force of Liberty is in her sentence so it's that kind of a clash in fact his Prometheus Unbound is based on this kind of an equation between the despot and the the fighter who's fighting for prometheus was in Chains and is fighting for freedom so it is this kind of a relationship that he also explores in some of his poems and plays so that you have very clearly enunciated these two words romantic and revolutionary I think you can go ahead with the argument further I'm curious to know and viewers also be curious to know as to what what is thanks for okay so before that let's just briefly look at what bebe Shelley just some biographical details of PB Shelley you should be able to see them on your screen so Shelley is actually born in 1792 he's but he was born in an aristocratic family and conservative his father was a parliamentarian and Shelley was also in line to become a baron so he belongs to a well-to-do family they had enough money and he could sustain himself and so it's kind of a paradox that Shelley does not actually follow that route and does not become to take the route of the of his family and lineage and turns into this revolutionary Po and as he does so he had a good grasp of Latin and Greek because he read them in school days and at 18 he joined then Oxford a couple of months in Oxford he actually developed this kind of a religious skepticism during this time and he wrote just a few months in Oxford and he wrote this kind of a so to speak a blasphemous kind of an essay which is titled the necessity of atheism along with his friend James Hall and as first-year students and this was circulated in Oxford this pamphlet it was anonymous but everybody knew who had written this so in 1811 he published this pamphlet where he discusses the necessity of atheism and he says he actually refutes the idea of God God's existence and says in the pamphlet that well that religion is merely he says and I quote a passion of the mind and unquote so basically it's not something real it's not it doesn't have it can't be proven so therefore it is only a passion of the mind and that University he also taken took a dig at the university by suggesting that the University space was an advanced and this is within quotes an advanced squadron of the English church so unquote again very interestingly early on as early as in 1811 Shelley is able to see the complex Nexus that and the kind of strong Nexus that includes the church and the university there that is the space of teaching the space of studying the school and the church with where so you see how how ideology is passed on through these two modes or through through these two institutions is something which is very interesting which later on would be explored in detail by writers theoreticians including Marx later on so well as a result of this pamphlet that Shelley wrote he was expelled from Oxford in the same year but I'd like before I actually go and like dr. hunt regards to you know make a comment on this on Shelley's idea in necessity of atheism when he says that the university is the advanced squadron of the English church of what now you have very clearly you know are you in favor of Shelly being an atheist and a critic of religion at that time and I think it was in the air because Wordsworth and Coleridge both of them you would talk about the mind the working of the mind sometimes spiritualism also when calls those concerned but romantics were deeply rooted in the atheistic idea of the world and they would new dreamers like and yet they are criticized for being mystics or there is a sense of mysticism you know often you when you read up on Shelley or you read up Coleridge they're often accused of being mystics of saud because they believe in this kind of a hidden mysterious power and that becomes open to interpretation mysticism is available to human beings mysticism is something which is which can be called the product of the human mind and when human mind you know breaks the chains of the reality around around itself and starts having a kind of flight into the unknown the mysterious that is what mysticism is so I think it's a broadly a part of what is called you know a critique of religion because religion would always find answers but these people explore and they enjoy exploration and and they are also struck by the idea of mystery so that is very true but the point that we are making regarding you know being precursor to the later revolutionaries I think this person stands out as you have already explained he's born in the year you know 1792 so three years after the French Revolution no started and this this one and at the back was also the American Revolution American War of Independence and before that is at crome religion revolution so I think he seems to be a kind of crystallization of the ideas that you know started the movement in the 17th century England and in the 18th century when American and the indifference revolution occurred so he takes that idea forward and he's a he has an open mind and he you know breeds up the values of the University where minds are trained and he realized that the training of the mind sometimes takes most of the scholars towards religion and there he has I think that this is a particular thing that you said about you know the Socratic family and religious skepticism so he understands religion he accepts it and then he becomes a doubtful about it doubting about it and when he explores all these things then he realizes that the world is made by human beings yes so I'm a knightly you said that this is something which is in the air at that time because of the new Sciences and new areas of study that have come up including economics and political theory etc and yet I feel that if one were to talk about room the Romantics relationship with religion I think that they become very interested in the in the subject of the mind itself and they try to explore the mind of the human being and all romantics in fact you know it's it's a it's a very deep exploration of the mind of a human being and it is that it is this inward movement that actually and you know at one place when Shelley says that he he actually says that because we have an in this isn't one of his poems in him to intellectual beauty he says that well because we could not find answers to questions therefore we created God and you know that's how we created God and that's how we that that's how we that God came alive because we could not answer questions he created God yeah maybe I can yes yes no no not just he created God but I just wanted to maybe I can a quote from the the very poem itself so we actually understand what I'm trying to say so if you was you can see on the screen this is him to intellectual Beauty which was written in 1816 now and here he when he talks about you know the trumpet of prophecy and wind if no not this sorry let me go to the this is the other one tell us about the time in the meantime you this is 1810 1815 the Napoleonic war is ended and you know people are thinking of making history there are themself participants in the historical process and they are thinking about the world in which they live and then they want to change it so that way that they are precursor and this is the air so at you know in one band in the poem this particular section that I was talking about he says I called on the poisonous names with which our youth is fed so he's actually referring to God's name as the poisonous name with which our youth is fed I was not heard I saw them not so and and when musing deeply on the lot of life at that sweet time when winds are wooing and and then he goes towards nature so you see it the point is the point that I'm trying to make is that he's conscious of how the theory of God has also evolved and how it has helped human beings to find answers to things that one did not find answers to earlier and you know one is fed with also stories of ghosts so he came out as much as he came out of the idea of God he also came out of the idea of ghosts and superstitions so these are things which he thinks are created by the mind and therefore you know and and therefore he explores the mind further is something that I feel he's doing here which means that he thinks that human mind is not easy to understand and that it has his own functionality and that when you start thinking about the mind then in fact you enter the domain of mysticism the domain of the dark the domain of the possible domain of the potential so romanticism gets very clearly defined by Shelley in his poetry in his struggle to find out answers to the question that you think he raised so raising what the question is I in the early 19th century and finding answers to them sometimes succeeding sometimes not succeeding and yet going on that seems to be the essence of so this is this is what explains skepticism which is largely there with respect to every field and in which which defines the larger framework of romantic writing as well in that sense so let me go back to talking about a bit about Shelley and then we can continue to also talk about some of his poems which are there so I left where at basically the point when I said that Shelley was expelled from the University Oxford University and after that he obviously his father asked him to recant but Shelley did not and he decided to stay out of the you never graduated in that sense a difficult world what does he can't he can't means to take his work back what he had said he must take it back so his father wanted him to do that but he did not do so and was continued to was it because of a youthfulness he would be 20 in his 2011 then yeah in 19 years right and when his father asked him to recant - to apologize take the words back then this young man says no he doesn't yes he doesn't so I mean he that was in 1811 and in 8 by 1813 he actually comes in touch with William Godwin who had already was this kind of a progressive figure at the time who was writing about democracy about the rights of people and about explaining also you know the kind the new phenomena and with him he shall I then became the disciple of William Godwin and later on he published his poetic work queen map around the same time he fell in love with Godwin's daughter Mary and married her in 1818 Mary of course is Mary Shelley as we know her famously who wrote Frankenstein a gothic novel and this is after that they also moved to Italy and the he'd wrote extensively during this period and this is also the time when he meant Byron Shelley wrote the his Prometheus Unbound which is a plane was an Adonis around this time a tourist was of course dedicated to kids and he wrote about kids death as well and the suffering that the poet hand of course Shelley very soon would himself die he died in 1822 by drowning so he was hardly 29 years old so Keith's died when he was 25 and Shelley when he was barely 29 eventful life yes the life of 30 years yeah yes so in terms of Keats generally it is suggested that he is a poet who left certainly of his poetic fulfillment unfulfilled but with Shelley that kind of a label is generally not attached it's like the kind of a blaze that he has had this short life and in which he was able to write so much and also dabble with writing some kind of a epic again being very much influenced by Milton and and his friends would all sometimes also refer to him as Satan or snake and he's also written a poem on that when the serpent is shut out so that anyway so Shelley wrote figure yes of course as somebody who has a rebellious figure as somebody who stood for protest and rebellion in his own time and his great promise yes read so much he is the thought so I think the world fiery properly explains him and he lives his ideas and he theorizes you know it's not something that Shelley's it surely is a point of ideas also he's a passionate poet but it's not just passion without ideas he's he's a poet with ideas because he's constantly struggling to explain what how revolutions take place how how things change what they what is the process of change what what happens in the process to writers thinkers artists so he is also in that sense explaining exploring these areas before I say how do you react so what I say that in France people you know wrote about the revolution society these people didn't have society to bring revolutionary maybe that's why because they were they were distanced from that reality I think in France they were too close to that reality and that reality was as daunting as it was optimistic God gave them hopes and yet there was so much violence so with poets at in England they could see things in the distance and in fact evaluate better when they saw the revolution from afar so to speak and it wasn't something which was troubling them at home so they could also write about it and they could also evolve a kind of theory around it I enjoyed protection of the of the high family so there was there was a sense of comfort and yet from that position he could write what he did he wrote for freedom and he was all the time thinking of the world you know that he didn't like but then he was actually optimistic about the world that he did not like he wasn't among the poet's who thought that nothing could happen it was a world he hated and despised with full power and yet he knew that there was something else which which we could work for so you know the point of sadness not at all not a disappointment he did disappointment enter him the way it does with you know for instance Coleridge for instance that kind of dejection is not - even when he writes ODEs and talks about tragic loss or talks about like in revolt of Islam he actually talks about how the French Revolution came up and how then it was taken over but the tyranny that took place you know or the tyranny afterwards even there he's talking about he he is able to maintain his intellectual stamina whether we describing what's going on rather than emotionally becoming involved in the process I see so which means that he's not a point of sadness of melancholy the way Kate says he writes Keats otherwise but Gates is melancholy there doesn't touch him at all right this kind of thing is important and what is what is next there's something yes so Shelley wrote two short essays also around this time on love and on life and respectively and explored the realm of each visibly human and ever very few of us actually know Shelley to be a poet of love as well so and a poet of life yeah so this is this is something that we can probably take up you know in in brief after okay so so Shelley wrote these two essays and then he explored the realms of each wizard we human endeavor and again after that you see when we look at love and we'll I can actually refer to one of the poems that he has written on love and what he says in the poems this is from this he's not known as the food of love exactly more yeah and there are a couple of them where he is actually talking about the experience of love and you know the kind of relationship that he shares with the beloved now in this particular poem which is one word is too often profaned written in eighteen of course written around eighteen twenties but published posthumously in 1824 so this is one word is too often profaned and here you notice that one word is too often profaned for me to profane it one feeling to falsely disdain for thee to disdain it a one hope is to like despair for prudence to smother and pretty and pity from the more dear than that from another I can give not what men call love but wilt thou accept not the worship the heart lifts above and the heavens rejects not the desire of the moth for the star of the night for the morrow the devotion of to something afar from the sphere of a sorrow this is how he ends the poll what do you think is the emotion of the spoil yes he's he's trying to again this what I found interesting was that he's not the supposed or cliched love poet that we understand so he is talking about the feeling that one that he has with the beloved and that he cannot express or cannot be called or cannot be termed in this to used or cliched word like love so that word which is profaned is actual the word love that it has been profaned to such degree that it cannot carry my feelings and cannot carry the difficulties yes and he's a bit puzzled also and he wants to come out of it so there is a kind of Faro and the hidden behind yes so there is a so there is this kind of the idea of love here is not something which is romance yes it is in fact on the other hand it is it is talking about this kind of devotion or that kind of a self annihilation as well when he says the desire of the moth for the star yeah how or when he says the devotion to something afar from the sphere of our sorrow would you take that as my love towards her oh yes the strikes me what does it signify yes no but from from the sphere of our sorrow from this world of sorrow okay from this world where with that we inhabit of course he he knew nothing was right about his world and he despised it and yet the devotion to something afar from the sphere of her sorrow it is that devotion it is that which he terms love it is this desire the of the moth to towards that then that goes towards the star and he says I can I can give not what men call love but wilt thou accept that the worship the heart lifts above and the heaven rejects not will you accept that as my love so you see also he is trying to define his love how his love is not the general profaned term that love is it's a kind of a dialectic on one side is the difficulty on the other side is the will to survive yes and then and the two can get together and make a one to hold all right and of course in the coming back to Shelley's essay on love when he talks about there - he's trying to describe love what is love what is this kind of so in the interesting he actually says that human beings lack something innately and it is to fill this gap or this lack that they look towards this kind of affection from others so this is how he tries to theorize even love in his poem he in his essay now he wrote the different shell is also famously known for writing a defense of poetry and which he which was of course published posthumously shally wrote a defense of poetry as a kind of a reaction against what Thomas loved peacock the contemporary poet thinker had written now Thomas love peacock had written this essay titled the four ages of poetry and here in the four edges of poetry what peacock said was that the poetry had already gone through its finest stages its golden period he actually divides them into these different stages such as the iron gold silver and bronze and he says that the the the age of satire and the age of reason was too daunting for the populace and which is why there was this inclination towards nature and it is only because people sort novelty in this kind of pseudo simplicity otherwise there isn't really nothing in this epoch for poetry in fact a peacock urged intellectuals to move towards the new Sciences and leave poetry behind they said that he said that stop wasting time in writing poetry and do some serious and and engage with serious subjects this actually angered shelley and in response to this he outlined in a defense of poetry the relevance and the power of poetry in in the following in the times there was a kind of prejudice against poetry at the time of course and people preferred philosophy to poetry philosophy reason right oh yes the new sciences which were coming to the fore again political theory had recently come in as a subject that could be understood or read economics too at the time so poetry somehow took a backseat and it was considered a kind of a was a waste of time it was a waste of time yes for many boys it was an effort to express one's feelings which were unreal romantics were also there was a lot of prejudice against the Romantic poets as such because they were seen to be a crazy lot including me I mean yeah they that's the kind of words that they that critics often use for Coleridge for instance that you know this person has lost is is riding in a state of intoxication in fact Coleridge P compelled to justify why he's riding Kubla Khan when he says well let me justify while I'm rhyming I was intoxicated I was under the effect of a medicine so right as to felt that they need to project a kind of defense the very idea of defense it tells you that you have been put you have been made the target and that you must defend your stance now so Shelley also feels compelled to defend the sounds of poetry and the relevance of poetry imagine as you were explaining this idea I thought of Wordsworth I thought of Coleridge and and I thought and I thought of Shelley and I found that the problems that they created for themselves and for others were explained by Shelley in philosophical terms yes in terms you know that would give a kind of base to about this end so there is no spontaneity here there are no feelings there but feelings are always you know conditioned by the idea that Shelley has yes so you see if I could quote from the very essay that we are speaking of he says that poetry turns all things to loveliness it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful and it adds Beauty to that which is most deformed so poetry can change things in such a manner what is beautiful can be turned into a higher degree and what is deformed can also appear beautiful in poetry and he says he map it Mary's exaltation and horror grief and pleasure eternity and change its subdues to Union under its light yoke all iroquois irreconcilable things again the idea is of synthesis that poetry synthesizes disparate things or disparate elements and it can create a unity or and give it a pattern and a form so in fact human sciences well more towards are creating your society and romantics were for creating life as such write down the one side was society with its structure on the other world the Romantic poets with the human mind which had imagination but very interestingly Shelley says that we are not outside the structure in his preface to Prometheus Unbound Shelley observes and I quote that poets not otherwise than philosophers painters sculptures and musician are in one sense the creators and in another the creations of their age from this subjection the loftiest do not escape unquote so the idea is that they create they are creators they are also or building an alternate model and yet they are apparently are created in their age and they're created by their age and he says from this subjection the Loftis do not escape even the best and the loftiest can't escape the subjection it's a great statement submission of humility you know he called himself a creative person or conditioned by circumstance circumstances and the word subjection is very important he says from this subjection the loftiest do not escape what is subjection if we look at it from from of course the our own view from hindsight a looser theorizes subjection he talks about the subject and subjection of the the masses and he how they are molded in the tradition in the 20th century how he theorizes the whole idea of subjection and the relationship between the biggest subject and the smallest subject and this romantic genius in the ninth century is able to anticipate right the problem yeah so no wonder Shelley said that poets aren't the unacknowledged legislators of the world so in that sense he is able to pick up certain things which would be theorized later on my feeling this is phrasing that is litter those who create laws those who write the laws write the law on and off society how society should function and therefore philosophy also enters you know philosophy is all about writing laws of life in that sense so interesting how Shelley's able to Shelley's in that sense also a philosopher in his own right and yet what Shelley how Shelley is perceived now one of the critics here GM Matthews in his essay a volcano's voice in Shelley says that there is still a perilous tendency towards dualism in Shelley studies and what is the dualism he says those preoccupied by the poet's symbols maintain or assume that what is worth attention on the profoundest level is his work is to be sought in domes of poetic consciousness whales of in reality and reality and caves of Gnostic power those concerned with his social interest on the other hand concentrate on biography and radical theory so this is also how Shelly has been read and perceived over the centuries and what is so this kind of dualism is maintained some of them think him to be a poet of mystery of you know of men of images intense images and work on that and the others think him to be in this kind of building up a kind of revolutionary theory dualism that he used I think is a very important word here because dual is the mean that he is not uni linear he's not just following a straight line but dualism also means that he seems to be a paradox that he projects absolutely different attributes that seem to not go here with one another and therefore there is a kind of a paradox and a kind of a contradiction or I don't know in in Shelley or this is what the criticism contradiction in the criticism that has followed so far so viewers let's look at what what Shelley is let's try to just pin it down to what Shelley is known to be so he's a poet of ideas and of conviction he's a passionate Crusader of political social change symbols intense and mysterious our take take over all of his poetry he sees the latent potential in things and human beings he combines a social thought with philosophy science and secular ethics these could be some pointers that we could use to analyze and understand Shelley would you say something about a nurse yes is associated with senselessness and Keats for instance he is a very sensuous poet in fact he's able to evoke the kind of and you say the whole idea he writes he writes this poem him to intellectual Beauty now the idea some of the people have believed that because it's a hymn to intellectual beauty it negates the the sensuous part of his nature because it's him and then a kind of a song in praise of the beauty of the intellect it probably negates sensuousness so again and sensuousness is at the center of romantic poetry as such and also yeah you know instinct combines with the senses he or Shelley is talking about intellectual beauty which is which probably would negate both instinct and sensual beauty would duty in it would actually add the dimension of senselessness to intellect right it's supposed to be drive very very theoretical very very rational but when you know I associate beauty with intellect that means that it starts inspiring and inspiring people to work further for the goals that they have right so in fact he is able to render intellect also sensuous in that some people just beautiful because appealing to the to the sight of the person but he refers to it as a kind of a spirit as a kind of a special power as kind of a shadow he refers to this kind of intellectual beauty which is fleeting also which stays and gives meaning to life which differ gives a kind of definition or absent of a sense of purpose and yet that is it is mysterious so in a way that kind of a problematic is created but ishani does not do so for surely this intellectual beauty actually gives meaning to and gives form to the sensuous life as well it gives meaning to everything that nature is and in fact it resides in nature it is through nature that this intellectual beauty enters the life of human being so it's not something which is outside sensuousness what is outside the sensuous the sensuous is the intellectual beauty is reflected in sensuousness and and that sensual then the sensuous world around the world of nature the winds that he speaks about the very specific detailing that are available of the natural world in fact they actually suggest this kind that sensuousness is is a kind of a purposeful sensuousness it's not at the level of experience but that experience is guided by thought and idea and that experience then is felt in its intensity visibly that thought an idea analysis takes me to as famous boy and you ask why talks about the poetic imagination right that flood that flies all that that flies off and that takes water takes one to distant lands and where the human mind starts creating things in fact another poem of his mutability he visualizes the poet is the cloud and in the second stanza he says or the liar that his poetry has clouds and if I could quote from that as well he says that we are as clouds that wail the midnight moon how restlessly the speed and gleam and quiver streaking the darkness radiantly yet soon night closes round and they are lost forever darkness radiantly yes super on kind of a he's very famous for that in fact in fact all romantics are cold rich I think at one moment says at this dull pain which is also a kind of a oxymoron yes and then in the second case he says he refers to this clouds as the liar or the the the the poetry itself instrument yeah and for for Shelley again the Aeolian harp is very important where the you know where wind passes through the instrument and creates music so this kind of poetic inspiration on nature or intellectual beauty needs this kind needs to mediate needs to work upon the poet who is who is visualized as the Aeolian harp and who can write poetry so the poet doesn't carry it doesn't have that innately it is something that is given to him through through the medium of the wind nature or the muse and which is how he creates poetry finally at the end please throw some light on his attitude towards nature we use the word nature as a central concept in his writing what does it think about nature yes and I would speak I would like to take the example of ode to the west wind for that now when he speaks off the old when he speaks of the west wind then he is referring to the wind asked this kind of an agent of change so for him nature's becomes that agent of change for him he is also that agent of change in society so the wind can work on the things around it can create it can it can awaken the sleeping Mediterranean as he says it can lift the leaves etc and yet it cannot bring in that kind of revolution that he visualizes for that that particular object has to rise up so people have to rise up to the occasion and bring in change while nature can assist them nature in that sense in Shelley assists human being and by nature what he means is his it's primal self the the primal instinct or the primal sense of nature also then the human right human being is a part of nature and it is and carries that is sense of nature which is of course forgotten or taken over by the city life and yet that that human being is very much a part of nature as wind is and the poet for Shelley is most close to nature is more close to nature than others are because he sensitively he becomes one with the natural world and is able to bring back that kind of zest and that kind of vigor to add to life so the Romantic poet identify his nature outside himself and identified nature inside himself right and he is able to see the link between the two and therefore I think it is very much about this kind of organic unity that that Wordsworth probably showcases in his poetry and here in such as an oath to west wind he he talks about the west wind how the west wind in autumn you know goes over these different lands so it takes the leaves from one place it can bring it in at another place it can throw the seeds but finally the seeds will come to life much later so the poet skills the poet can spread his ideas and but they will take time to shape and take shape later but there is a kind of optimism in this kind of lame also as in nature as in the seasons like in ode to west wind heat refers to all the seasons in this particular boom it's it's as if Shelley very clearly means that life is life has these different seasons and if there is a moment of you know of oppression then it is bound to be taken over by the forces of liberation and so it and hence the Revolution as well you know how the seasonal change is also seen to be a kind of change in life so he so the forces of active in society which are oppressive will be overtaken by forces which actually are free in point in poetry and in life according to Shelley so please have put these ideas together and and conclude in your own yes so basically when we are speaking of Shelley then we need to look at him as much as a poet who is a poet of nature as we take all romantic points to be but he is very much also a poet of society because he is not he is not escaping from society he's actually not even building an alternate world somewhere else when he builds a world he is actually reflecting his in a way drawing an analogy between real life and the life that he projects in his poems in fact he uses poetry very effectively to to explain the complex phenomena of change of of historical processes as they take place in life so I think he he in fact mingles or blends this the historical approach with the Romantic in his verses this is my understanding of one side human being on the other and that in fact breaks the barriers of nationalism he's not an English poet is a European poet is a poet of humanity that is a point of change right this seems to be the framework you know in which you have movement and very very effectively so viewers dr. pooja has talked about Shelley as a Romantic poet who was also a revolutionary and by revolutionary is meant that you know positive intervention that human beings make in order to make the world there and for that you know the the mind is to be used nature is to be involved social structures have to be reinterpreted and then you know the Romantic poet will be able to do his task appropriately so I believe that there are important points here there are no definitive answers anywhere because Shelley is a poet of experiment Shelley's reporter for exploration and in fact he excites us he makes us conscious about the the human tasks you know that all of us have and and and whichever one to walk for so well I think it's a that that way a lecture which gives us a food for thought and we have to go further into it and we have to see the link between what Shelley imagined in the early part of the 19th century with you know what later on happened so over this lecture we come to the end of for the discussion on on Shelley and I will be taking up other poets of the Romantic trend later thank you thank you thank you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: cec

Views: 6,484

Rating: 4.8444443 out of 5

Keywords: P. B. Shelley : The Revolutionary Romantic, CEC, CEC Edusat, CEC New Delhi, CEC-UGC, Dr. Richa Bajaj, English, 1-5-19

Id: JACXXr3GXhw

Length: 50min 18sec (3018 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2019