SUN AND SHAPE IN SHELLEY'S THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE
1962; Oxford University Press; Volume: XIII; Issue: 49 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/res/xiii.49.40
ISSN1471-6968
Autores Tópico(s)Science Education and Perceptions
ResumoT HE Triumph of Life has been much praised, but the variety of interpretations shows that there is still a good deal of uncertainty as to its exact meaning. The central theme, 'the contagion of the world's slow stain', is clear enough. Shelley's mind in his last years was moving away from hopes of a millennium on earth. In Prometheus Unbound the earthly paradise is attained as a result of Prometheus casting out hatred from his mind; Jupiter is overthrown, and man becomes 'free . . . unclassed ... just, gentle, wise'; but joy in this achievement is soon crossed by yearning for a state of being beyond any earthly life, however perfect, for a state of being unclogged by chance, death, and mutability. Similarly Epipsychidion goes beyond the celebration of the perfect consummation of human love in an island paradise towards a kind of union which can be imagined only outside space and time. So far the two goals of a perfected life on earth and eternal life are both present and are not sharply opposed. In the next major poem, Adonais, we see Shelley moving towards a rejection (or, at any rate, abandonment of hope) of the first in favour of the second. The soul of the dead Adonais beacons us to join him in eternity rather than to try to improve life here. Nevertheless eternal beauty is still presented as mirrored in, as active in, the physical world. Life in its many hues mirrors, even if imperfectly, the white light of eternity, and the one Spirit's plastic stress sweeps through the dull, dense world and manifests itself in earthly things. The Triumph of Life takes a step farther in the direction in which Shelley seems to have been moving in these last years. It offers no hope of an improvement in the human condition on earth. Life is shown as almost inevitably corrupting; the only way to escape the contagion is, like Christ and Socrates, voluntarily to accept death.' Though the general theme of the poem is clear, the right interpretation of some important passages has been much disputed. The chief problem is how to take the Shape all light. Most critics have assumed that she is the successor of Shelley's other ideal maidens such as Asia and Emily, and that she represents something like the reflection in earthly things of the eternal beauty symbolized by the sun. The difficulty about this is that the effect on Rousseau of the cup she offers him appears to be bad. Some See Milton Wilson's excellent Shelley's Later Poetry (New York, 1959) for a fuller examination of the theme of this paragraph.
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