My spirit

After our class discussion of Ode to the West Wind, we seemed to conclude that Shelley is at a sort of competitive odds with the wind and its invisible force. We noted that the poem's sonnet structure is indeed Shelley's attempt to describe an uncontrollable force through a hyper-organized framework. By manipulating the free-spirited wind into a regulated structure, Shelley appears to have conquered its invisible power and successfully proven that he, as a poet, can control Nature. However, one is led to wonder: is Shelley indeed at odds with the wind or is he actually comparing the wind to himself and his own nature?

In Wu's biographical section of Shelley, he cites Hazlitt's essay on Shelley - 'On Paradox and Commonplace' - declaring that Shelley:

"is clogged by no dull system of realities, no earth-bound feelings, no rooted prejudices, by nothing that belongs to the mighty trunk and hard husk of nature and habit, but is drawn up by irresistible levity to the regions of mere speculation and fancy, to the sphere of air and fire, where his delighted spirit floats in 'seas of pearl and clouds of amber.'"

Perhaps Shelley does not see himself at odds with the wind, but conversely, sees the wind as an embodiment of his own free will and free thinking. Perhaps the wind truly represents "My Spirit." One may argue that wind is the only natural entity that can aptly represent Shelley's immense energy and spontaneous movement. While Shelley writes his Ode in a hyper-organized structure, one is led to wonder if Shelley himself resents this poetic structure (much as the wind most likely does) and only formats his poem in this manner as a sort of message to his reader: I, like the wind, cannot fully represent myself in any solid structure or calcified written form - poetry is the best means to my end, but even that, limits my genius.

In his essay On Life, Shelley seems to support these notions. In regard to the humble art of poetry, Shelley argues that "thoughts and feelings arise, with or without our will, and we employ words to express them…how vain is it to think that words can penetrate the mystery of our being!" Shelley (like Ralph Waldo Emerson) seems to imply that language is always a step behind original thoughts and experiences. Words, as Shelley argues, cannot even aptly describe the true nature of our being. In On Life, Shelley also implies that he wishes that he were a spontaneous and free moving spirit, for he wants to return to the days of childhood when "we less habitually distinguished all that we saw and felt from ourselves." Shelley continues by stating that he wished that his nature could be "dissolved into the surrounding universe," much like the gusts of wind are dissolved into the trees and branches and leaves.