Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

[citychik]

dleted

[neilgee]

There is no point in leaving my post here then...

[neilgee]

ditto

[Winifred]

Let it be said from the outset that I despised Shelley’s soupy poetry in both high school and college, and couldn’t appreciate his technical genius for his sappy, hysterical sentiment. Let it further be said that I suppose I should reread more of his work, although I still don’t like this particular poem. No one should get away with: “I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!”

I did like Ozymandias, and Ode to the West Wind, though.

Let it further be said that my life experience is probably pretty close to the opposite of his.

That said, and realizing you are stuck in the throes of major Romanticism, let me add my 2 cents worth.

I can see why you chose Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge, since Mary Shelley has Walter refer to the Coleridge poem in the preface of Frankenstein. You evidently have a tidy professor. I haven’t reread the Stevenson recently, but the dual personality Jekyll/Hyde echoes Frankenstein and his creator awfully well.

To me, the most interesting line in Hymn is: “Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;” Shelley has been contrasting Light and Dark up until this point, and, all of a sudden, it’s the shadow of Beauty that falls on him? (Derridas would have a field day, I suppose.) You could probably run with the shadow of Beauty, and Frankenstein/monster, and Jekyll/Hyde. It seems to me the mariner is more complex –although he is saved, as you say, by his acceptance of the Beauty of life - in snakes – the traditional Christian lowest of the low, the shadowy bit of nature.

[Winifred]

Glad you are poking around with it!

I'm not too sure that I couldn't see Shelley doing exactly that: i.e., walking out on the glittering grass, etc...., away from the bullying classmates, trying to make sense of the world. I was missing my access to Oxford Online Dictionary last night, to look up "shrieking." My high school copy of Norton's Anthology of Poetry says that "Intellectual Beauty" actually means "Ideal Beauty," in the Platonic sense, and I was wondering if shriek still had that strident meaning back then...although, I reflect that it echoes the shadow of Beauty, the frightening, grim side of life in the shadow of Beauty.

*goes off to look up briefly whatever is on the Internet for exiled English majors, sans university library (for now)*