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The Symbolism of The Wind and The Leaves in Shelley's “Ode To The West Wind”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

I. J. Kapstein
I. J. Kapstein*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

The “Ode to the West Wind” has received considerable special comment from a number of students of Shelley. H. B. Forman has indicated, in part, its emotional background; Professor H. C. Pancoast has discussed it in relation to the scene and climate in which it was written; W. E. Peck has pointed out parallels of its thought and imagery in Shelley's earlier work; and Professor B. P. Kurtz has recently shown in an admirable study the relation of its theme of life and death and regeneration to the poet's “pursuit of death” throughout his work. There is wanting, however, a detailed account of the sources, the development, and the significance of the poem's central symbols, the Wind and the Leaves, and of the intellectual and emotional disturbances, associated for Shelley with the symbols, which may have been the direct causes of his writing the “Ode.” This study attempts such an account.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1936 , pp. 1069 - 1079
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 “How Shelley Approached the ‘Ode to the West Wind’,” Bulletin and Review of the Keats-Shelley Memorial, Rome (London, 1913), i, No. 2, 6.

2 “Shelley's ‘Ode to the West Wind’,” MLN, xxxv, 97.

3 Shelley: His Life and Work (New York, 1927).

4 The Pursuit of Death (New York, 1933).

5 Roger Ingpen, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1914), ii, 746.

6 The relation of the note to the letter in the dating of the poem is noted by Ingpen, op. cit., ibid.

7 H. B. Forman, The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1880), i, 260.

8 H. B. Forman, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley by Thomas Medwin (London, 1913), p. 50.

9 Letters, i, 99.

10 Op. cit., ii, 159.

11 Prose Works, i, 386.

12 Ibid.

13 Paul Heinrich Dietrich, baron D'Holbach, Système de la Nature, ou Des Loix du Monde Physique et du Monde Moral (London, 1770). That Shelley had been reading this work early in 1812 is shown by a letter written to Godwin on June 3, 1812: “I have just finished reading ”La (sic) Système de la Nature.“ Do you know the real author? It appears to me a work of uncommon powers” (Letters, i, 315). Again, he wrote to Godwin on July 29, 1812: “I have read ‘Le Système de la Nature,‘ and suspect this to be Helvetius's by your charges against it. It is a book of uncommon powers …” (Letters, i, 347). Shelley even considered translating the work; he wrote to Hookham the publisher on August 18, 1812: “I am about translating an old French work, professedly by M. Mirabaud …, ”La (sic) Système de la Nature“ (Letters, i, 360).

14 Système de la Nature, i, 30–31. Shelley probably read also the footnote to this passage in which Holbach quoted several classical writers on the power of Change over Nature: “Omnium quæ in sempiterno isto mundo fuerunt futuraque sunt, aiunt principium fuisse nullum, sed orbem esse quemdam generantium nascentiumque, in quo uniuscujusque geniti initium simul & finis esse videatur. (V. Censorin, De Die Natali.) Le Poëte Manilius s'exprime de la même façon dans ses beaux vers:

Omnia mutantur mortali lege creata,

Nec se cognoscunt terræ vertentibus annis,

Exutas variam faciem per sæcula gentes.

At manet incolumnis Mundus suaque omnia servat,

Quæ nec longa dies auget, minuitque senectus,

Nec motus puncto currit, cursusque fatigat;

Idem semper erit, quoniam semper fuit idem.

(Manilii Astronom. Lib. i.)

Ce fut encore le sentiment de Pythagore, tel qu'il est exposé par Ovide au livre xv, de ses Métamorphoses Vers 165 & suiv.

Omnia mutantur, nihil interit; errat & illinc

Huc venit, hinc illuc. c. (Ibid.)

15 Op. cit., i, 38–39.

16 Edward Dowden, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1886), i, 336.

17 Letters, i, 445.

18 Letters, i, 446.

19 The resemblance of these two stanzas to the “Ode” are noted by W. E. Peck, op. cit., ii, 159; he suggests also comparison with canto ii, ll. 928–939, where Shelley, though he does not use the imagery of the wind and the leaves, asserts the power of poetry to reform mankind as in the concluding lines of the “Ode.”

20 Cf. Byron in the fourth canto of Childe Harold (878–882), also composed in 1817:

Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the rind,

Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and little worth,

But the sap lasts, and still the seed we find

Sown deep, even in the bosom of the North;

So shall a better spring less bitter fruit bring forth.

21 Letters, ii, 561.

22 Letters, ii, 564.

23 See also ll. 247–260; 290–292.

24 Note Books of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Saint Louis, 1911), i, 183.

25 It was on the MS of this work that Shelley wrote the footnote appended to the “Ode to the West Wind.” See T. W. Rolleston, A Philosophical View of Reform by Percy Bysshe Shelley (London, 1920), p. 94.

26 Cf. Byron in Childe Harold:

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree

I planted: they have torn me, and I bleed: (iv, 88–89).

27 On October 15, 1819, Shelley wrote to Charles and James Ollier: “The droll remarks of the Quarterly, and Hunt's kind defence, arrived as safe as such poison, and safer than such an antidote, usually do.” (Leiters, ii, 727.)

28 H. B. Forman says: “There is no doubt that the indifference to Shelley's poetic merits evinced by his countrymen causes him far more chagrin than their attacks upon his political attitude or even his morals; and it was not a matter for much surprise to find him contemplating in the autumn of 1819 a poem in which his feelings upon the question should be set forth with some pique.” (“How Shelley Approached the ‘Ode to the West Wind’,” loc. cit., p. 6.) Forman shows that the two fragments, the first, beginning:

What art thou, Presumptuous, who profanest

The wreath to mighty poets only due,

and the second, beginning:

And that I walk thus proudly crowned withal

Is that 'tis my distinction;

both found in the “Ode to the West Wind” portions of Shelley's notebooks, and both expressive of his chagrin, are discarded early fragments of the “Ode.” For further proof of the relation of these fragments to the “Ode,” see Forman, Note Books of Percy Bysshe Shelley, i, 171–180.

29 This is the suggestion of Professor N. I. White, The Best of Shelley (New York, 1932), p. 490: “Shelley was at this time engaged in describing the rebirth of humanity in the third act of Prometheus Unbound. Probably it is that poem in particular that Shelley has in mind as the ‘trumpet of a prophecy’ to ‘unawakened earth’.”

30 Letters, ii, 744.

31 Letters, ii, 746.