One such for
this reader is Percy Bysshe Shelley, whose name is still cavalierly coupled
with Keats’. Shelley is the template for every subsequent narcissist who
fancied himself a bard. No, poets are not “the unacknowledged legislators of
the world,” thank God, and I’ll take Johnny Mercer over Shelley when it comes
to skylarks. A Marxist professor once tried to set me straight. He made the case
for Percy the People’s Poet. No thanks. Shelley and his wife are still hacks
and life is short. Charles Lamb agreed, with qualifications. On this date, Aug.
17, in 1824, more than two years after Shelley’s death, he writes in a letter to Benjamin Barton:
“I can no
more understand Shelly than you can. His poetry is ‘thin sewn with profit or
delight.’”
Lamb
concedes that one of Shelley’s sonnets is “conceived and expressed with a witty
delicacy,” but adds: “For his theories and nostrums they are oracular enough,
but I either comprehend ’em not, or there is miching malice and mischief in ’em.
But for the most part ringing with their own emptiness. Hazlitt said well of ’em--Many
are wiser and better for reading Shakspeare, but nobody was ever wiser or
better for reading Sh----y.”
“Miching
malice and mischief” is typical Lamb playfulness and fooling around. About “miching”
I wasn’t certain. It’s an old word and the OED
gives an alternate spelling, mitching,
and a meaning that mutated over time: “Originally: pilfering (obsolete). In later use: skulking,
lurking; playing truant. Formerly also (occasionally): pretending poverty (obsolete).” The Dictionary also notes that mitching
is etymologically related to the more familiar mooching and mooch.
4 comments:
All true, but Ozymandias is surely a very fine sonnet.
Both criticism and adulation of Shelley's body is heavily infected with politics and biographical oddities. In my view, when Shelley is bad he is very bad. Good work is there, however. I have never read a decent challenge to Prometheus Unbound as a work of stupendous beauty.
"...impassable sludge." Yep, you nailed it with Shelley. I had exactly the same experience. I think his status persists due to the notoriety of his personal life and approved political views rather than any intrinsic literary merit.
Although, yes, "Ozymandias" is rather good.
Shelley is like Johnson, in that the memory of the artist keeps his works alive, rather than the more normal vice versa.
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