A holiday....

[fajrdrako]

Today is an important day for me. Not because it's a bank holiday - it's Civic Holiday, a holiday designation that means absolutely nothing, but it's nice to get the day off. I think the city has designated it "Colonel By Day" - a silly name, based on the founder of our city. He was a fine man who looked good in his uniform, but does he have anything to do with today? Not that I know.

He certainly doesn't make it an important day for me.

No, it's important because it's Shelley's birthday. He was born today, in 1792.

Why Shelley?

When I was about 11 years old my mother told me about the romance of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and I thought it was a wonderful story. I then read the playscript of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" and read a bunch of poetry by Browning, whose work I liked, and have always liked. Elizabeth's poems - not so much.

Then, because I get obsessive and tend to excess (I know none of you would guess that, given my normal restraint) I read a bunch of biographies of Robert Browning. I suppose by the time I got that far I was 13 or so.

Browning's biggest early influence was Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Well, I thought, I might as well read something about this person who influenced Browning so much. So I did, staring with "Ariel" by Andre Maurois, and "The Olympians" by Guy Bolton.

And I fell in love as only an adolescent can: with this man, his ideas, his inspirational qualities. I think he would like to know that so many years after his death (in 1822) he shaped the philosophical life of a Canadian anarchist/pantheist. Though I suppose also he would be shocked by my fondness for monarchism.

Today: his birthday. Sometimes I celebrate with a party. My friends ignore the Shelley part, and enjoy the party. This year... I will simply remember him fondly, and quote him:

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. (from A Defence of Poetry)

Comments

[kelex.livejournal.com]

I met a traveler from an antique land who said
"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert.
Near them, half-sunk, a shattered visage lies,
Whose frown and wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command tell that it's sculptor well those passions read which yet survive stamped on those lifeless things.

And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that collosal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away."

I had to memorize Ozymandias in junior high, and it one of the few things (along with Julius Caesar and my entire Romantic poetry unit) that got me started with my love of literature. Keats, Shelley, and Byron especially, but I've never *forgotten* memorizing this poem, and then later, seeing the Ramses exhibit at a local museum and seeing exactly what had inspired that poem. I saw pictures of the broken Ramses, I saw pieces of it on display in the traveling Ramses exhibit, and every time I've seen it... I've remembered this poem.

Again, later in life, one of my favorite Beauty and the Beast episodes, "Ozymandias", was titled after this poem, and the "king of kings" line quoted. Knowing the poem and understanding the reference made that all the more enjoyable.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Ozymandias has stayed in my psyche in a similar fashion. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair" puts a shiver down my back. And I "like* Ramses.

I love it that they used it in "Beauty and the Beast".

[dargie.livejournal.com]

"Rarely, rarely comest thou,
Spirit of Delight!"

Many happy returns, Percy.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that you need to write a biography of Shelley, turn it into a screenplay (um, I can do that part, if you don't want to -- plays being one of my loves to write), and have Johnny Depp star in it.

What do you think?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

"Spirit of Delight" - ah. A nice description for a lot of my heroes.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Johnny Depp as Shelley? What an interesting idea. Who would you cast as Mary?

I sure wouldn't argue against it.

Valentine Pelka did a great job in the Shelley role in "Rowing With the Wind".