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Percy Bysshe Shelley had THE most morbidly interesting life ever.
Besides writing poetry with names like Ozymandias, he was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet on aetheism and challenged a practice at Eton which, in my book, is described as "the tyrannical system of 'fagging,' whereby upperclassmen had the privilege of abusing their juniors." British schools, I tell you... anyway, it doesn't stop there. He got eloped with a sixteen year old when he was eighteen and got her pregnant, but tired of her and eloped AGAIN with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Then his first... woman... bore him ANOTHER child, but declined to join the "menage" of Mary, Mary's cousin, and himself as "platonic sister." Mary bore him a child who died, and then he had an affair with Mary's afforementioned cousin... and he and Mary had another child, who lived. Well, lived a little.
Now that Mary's cousin was (mad, bad, and dangerous to know) Lord Byron's lover, the whole lot of them moved to Switzerland. Mary's half-sister committed suicide after finding out that she was illegitimate, and Shelley's first lover drowned herself after becoming pregnant and being rejected by a new lover. Shelley and Mary had another daughter who died, and then their living son (age three) died... they buried him in Rome, in the same cemetary Keats and eventually Shelley himself would be buried in, a place he called "an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place". And then they had another kid. And then Mary became pregnant AGAIN (fifth time in six years, poor woman) and Shelley fell in love with some woman named Jane.
This is so exciting.
And there's more!
Shelley was acquainted with Keats, and was under the impression that he died from scathing poetry reviews (whereas he actually died of tuberculosis.) He liked Keats's work, and when Shelley drowned in a storm, the only way his friends identified his "ravaged corpse" (I love this anthology) was by the 1820 volume of Keats's poetry in his pocket, which they knew he'd taken with him. They cremated him on a mountaintop, very pagany since none of these poets seemed to be Christian (or stayed that way for long), and his heart was hardened by calcium and didn't burn. So they gave it to Mary, who wrapped it in a copy of the elegy Shelley wrote for Keats, against his critics, and kept it in her desk.
That's love O_o Do you not expect this from the woman who wrote Frakenstein?
Part of that elegy, Adonais, was read by Mick Jagger at a concert in Hyde Park, to commemorate the death of a former band member. It also contains the lines:
"I weep for Adonais - he is dead!
Oh weep for Adonais..."
Bringing to mind the classic Star Trek episode "Who Weeps for Adonis" - which Adonais, according to my footnote, is derived from.
I say, damn, that's cool. His poetry, however, does not exactly grab me.
^^;;
Besides writing poetry with names like Ozymandias, he was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet on aetheism and challenged a practice at Eton which, in my book, is described as "the tyrannical system of 'fagging,' whereby upperclassmen had the privilege of abusing their juniors." British schools, I tell you... anyway, it doesn't stop there. He got eloped with a sixteen year old when he was eighteen and got her pregnant, but tired of her and eloped AGAIN with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. Then his first... woman... bore him ANOTHER child, but declined to join the "menage" of Mary, Mary's cousin, and himself as "platonic sister." Mary bore him a child who died, and then he had an affair with Mary's afforementioned cousin... and he and Mary had another child, who lived. Well, lived a little.
Now that Mary's cousin was (mad, bad, and dangerous to know) Lord Byron's lover, the whole lot of them moved to Switzerland. Mary's half-sister committed suicide after finding out that she was illegitimate, and Shelley's first lover drowned herself after becoming pregnant and being rejected by a new lover. Shelley and Mary had another daughter who died, and then their living son (age three) died... they buried him in Rome, in the same cemetary Keats and eventually Shelley himself would be buried in, a place he called "an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place". And then they had another kid. And then Mary became pregnant AGAIN (fifth time in six years, poor woman) and Shelley fell in love with some woman named Jane.
This is so exciting.
And there's more!
Shelley was acquainted with Keats, and was under the impression that he died from scathing poetry reviews (whereas he actually died of tuberculosis.) He liked Keats's work, and when Shelley drowned in a storm, the only way his friends identified his "ravaged corpse" (I love this anthology) was by the 1820 volume of Keats's poetry in his pocket, which they knew he'd taken with him. They cremated him on a mountaintop, very pagany since none of these poets seemed to be Christian (or stayed that way for long), and his heart was hardened by calcium and didn't burn. So they gave it to Mary, who wrapped it in a copy of the elegy Shelley wrote for Keats, against his critics, and kept it in her desk.
That's love O_o Do you not expect this from the woman who wrote Frakenstein?
Part of that elegy, Adonais, was read by Mick Jagger at a concert in Hyde Park, to commemorate the death of a former band member. It also contains the lines:
"I weep for Adonais - he is dead!
Oh weep for Adonais..."
Bringing to mind the classic Star Trek episode "Who Weeps for Adonis" - which Adonais, according to my footnote, is derived from.
I say, damn, that's cool. His poetry, however, does not exactly grab me.
^^;;
