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| ] as seen from Chamonix]] | ] as seen from Chamonix]] | ||
| '''Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni''' is a poem by the ] ] composed between ] ] and ] ]. It was first published in 1817 in ''History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, German and Holland'' by Percy Shelley and ]. | '''"Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni"''' is a poem by the ] ] composed between ] ] and ] ]. It was first published in 1817 in ''History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, German and Holland'' by Percy Shelley and ]. | ||
| ==Background== | ==Background== | ||
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| ==Poem== | ==Poem== | ||
| ⚫ | "Mont Blanc" is a 144 line natural ode divided into five stanzas and marked with irregular rhyme.<ref name="Bloom p. 293">Bloom 1993 p. 293</ref> It serves as Shelley's response to ] '']'' and as a "defiant reaction" against the "religious certainties" o] "Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni",<ref name=Wu/> which "credits God for the sublime wonders of the landscape".<ref name=Reiman/> | ||
| The narrator, when he looks upon Mont Blanc, is unable to agree with Wordsworth that nature is a benevolent force. Instead, Shelley believes that nature is a powerful force when he begins:<ref name="Bloom p. 293"/> | |||
| :"The everlasting universe of things | |||
| :Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, | |||
| :Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom - | |||
| :Now lending splendour, where from secret springs | |||
| :The source of human thought its tribute brings | |||
| :Of waters" - (Lines 1–5) | |||
| ===Variations=== | ===Variations=== | ||
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| ==Themes== | ==Themes== | ||
| The poem's main theme is the relationship of the human mind with the universe.<ref name=Wu/> There is a conscious force in the universe that the human mind connects to and is influenced by.<ref>Bloom 1993 p. 295</ref> | |||
| ⚫ | |||
| ==Critical response== | ==Critical response== | ||
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| ==References== | ==References== | ||
| * Bloom, Harold. ''The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. | |||
| * O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley's Lyric Art" in ''Shelley's Prose and Poetry'', 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 616–626. New York: Norton and Co., 2002. | * O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley's Lyric Art" in ''Shelley's Prose and Poetry'', 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 616–626. New York: Norton and Co., 2002. | ||
| * Reiman, Donald H. and Fraistat, Neil. "Mont Blanc" in ''Shelley's Prose and Poetry'', 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 96-97. New York: Norton and Co., 2002. | * Reiman, Donald H. and Fraistat, Neil. "Mont Blanc" in ''Shelley's Prose and Poetry'', 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 96-97. New York: Norton and Co., 2002. | ||
Revision as of 01:46, 8 October 2008
"Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni" is a poem by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley composed between 22 July 1816 and 29 August 1816. It was first published in 1817 in History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, German and Holland by Percy Shelley and Mary Shelley.
Background
"Mont Blanc" was written when Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and Claire Clairmont (Mary Godwin's half-sister by marriage), were touring the Chamonix Valley and visited Mont Blanc, Europe's highest mountain, at the end of July 1816. Shelley finished a draft of the poem before September, and the poem was first published in 1817 along with History of a Six Weeks' Tour. The published edition was not printed from the first finished copy of Shelley's poem, but instead from a second created after Shelley lost. This edition, with many differences from the first published edition, was discovered in December 1976.
The setting of the poem and the place Shelley was inspired to write the poem is a bridge over the Arve River in the Valley of Chamonix in Savoy, near Geneva. Mary Shelley wrote that the poem "was composed under the immediate impression of the deep and powerful feelings excited by the objects which it attempts to describe; and, as an undisciplined overflowing of the soul, rests its claim to approbation on an attempt to imitate the untamable wilderness and inaccessible solemnity from which those feeling sprang".
Poem
"Mont Blanc" is a 144 line natural ode divided into five stanzas and marked with irregular rhyme. It serves as Shelley's response to William Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey and as a "defiant reaction" against the "religious certainties" oSamuel Taylor Coleridge's "Hymn before Sun-rise, in the Vale of Chamouni", which "credits God for the sublime wonders of the landscape".
The narrator, when he looks upon Mont Blanc, is unable to agree with Wordsworth that nature is a benevolent force. Instead, Shelley believes that nature is a powerful force when he begins:
- "The everlasting universe of things
- Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
- Now dark - now glittering - now reflecting gloom -
- Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
- The source of human thought its tribute brings
- Of waters" - (Lines 1–5)
Variations
The first published edition varies from both the copy found in the Scrope Davies Notebook copy of the poem and the original manuscript draft in terms of language and philosophical view. An important distinction between the text is in the first published edition's line "But for such faith", which reads "In such a faith" in the Scrope Davies edition, with the manuscript agreeing with the Scrope Davies edition. The critic Michael O'Neill emphasizes that the Scrope Davies's version "makes the more evident sense, though it possibly sacrifices some of the tension" while the first published edition's version "is cryptic and tortuous, and yet the fact remains that Shelley chose to print the poem with this reading in his lifetime."
Themes
The poem's main theme is the relationship of the human mind with the universe. There is a conscious force in the universe that the human mind connects to and is influenced by.
Critical response
Notes
- ^ Reiman and Fraistat 2002 p. 96
- ^ Wu 1998 p. 845, note 1.
- ^ Bloom 1993 p. 293
- O'Neill 2002 p. 618
- O'Neill 2002 p. 619
- Bloom 1993 p. 295
References
- Bloom, Harold. The Visionary Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
- O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley's Lyric Art" in Shelley's Prose and Poetry, 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 616–626. New York: Norton and Co., 2002.
- Reiman, Donald H. and Fraistat, Neil. "Mont Blanc" in Shelley's Prose and Poetry, 2nd ed., Ed. Donald H. Reiman and Neil Fraistat, 96-97. New York: Norton and Co., 2002.
- Wu, Duncan. "Mont Blanc" in Romanticism: An Anthology, 2nd ed., Ed. Duncan Wu. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.