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O! there are spirits of the air
O! there are spirits of the air
And genii of the evening breeze,
And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair
As star-beams among twilight trees:—
Such lovely ministers to meet
Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.
With mountain winds, and babbling springs,
And moonlight seas, that are the voice
Of these inexplicable things
Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice
When they did answer thee; but they
Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.
And thou hast sought in starry eyes
Beams that were never meant for thine
Another’s wealth:—tame sacrifice
To a fond faith I still dost thou pine!
Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,
Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands!
Ah! wherefore didst thou build thine hope
On the false earth’s inconstancy!
Did thine own, mind afford no scope
Of love, or moving thoughts to thee!
That natural scenes or human smiles
Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.
Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled
Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted;
The glory of the moon is dead;
Night’s ghosts and dreams have now departed;
Thine own soul still is true to thee,
But changed to a foul fiend through misery.
This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever
Beside thee like thy shadow hangs,
Dream not to chase;—the mad endeavour
Would scourge thee to severer pangs.
Be as thou art. Thy settled fate,
Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)
O! there are spirits of the air
1886
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The Cloud
I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.
I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ’tis my pillow white,
While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.
The sanguine Sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,
When the morning star shines dead;
As on the jag of a mountain crag,
Which an earthquake rocks and swings,
An eagle alit one moment may sit
In the light of its golden wings.
And when Sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,
And the crimson pall of eve may fall
From the depth of Heaven above,
With wings folded I rest, on mine aëry nest,
As still as a brooding dove.
That orbèd maiden with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the Moon,
Glides glimmering o’er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;
And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,
May have broken the woof of my tent’s thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;
And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,
Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,
Till calm the rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,
Are each paved with the moon and these.
I bind the Sun’s throne with a burning zone,
And the Moon’s with a girdle of pearl;
The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,
Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,
The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march
With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the Powers of the air are chained to my chair,
Is the million-coloured bow;
The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,
While the moist Earth was laughing below.
I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)
The Cloud
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Love’s Philosophy
The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
in one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?-
See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)
Love’s Philosophy
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Mary Shelley verblijft op haar veertiende bij een familie in Schotland, waar een innige vriendschap ontstaat met Isabella Baxter.
Samen dwalen ze in het gebied dat al eeuwen verhalen herbergt over monsters en geesten, en op een dag stuiten ze diep in het bos op een man die geen man is. De ledematen log en lelijk, een hoofd dat noch menselijk, noch dierlijk is.
Vier jaar later brengt Mary met haar geliefde Percy Shelley een bezoek aan haar vrienden John Polidori en Lord Byron, bij het Meer van Genève. ’s Avonds bij het haardvuur vertellen ze elkaar verhalen. Een flintertje herinnering brengt haar terug naar haar tijd met Isabella in Schotland, en ook naar David Booth, een zeer intelligente, charismatische, maar tegelijk ook griezelige man, die een grote interesse in Mary en Isabella ontwikkelde. Dan dient ook het monster uit het bos zich weer aan, en vanuit die gedachte ontstaat haar verhaal over het monster van Frankenstein.
Mary is een ode aan de verbeelding, een verhaal over creëren, over de onlosmakelijke band tussen fantasie en werkelijkheid. En evenals Mary Shelley toont Anne Eekhout de kracht van een vrouw wanneer die iets ter wereld brengt wat niemand voor mogelijk had gehouden.
Anne Eekhout debuteerde in 2014 met de roman Dogma, die werd genomineerd voor de Bronzen Uil voor het beste debuut, op de longlist stond van de AKO Literatuurprijs en die wordt vertaald in het Duits. In 2016 verscheen Op een nacht (genomineerd voor de BNG Literatuurprijs) en in 2019 Nicolas en de verdwijning van de wereld, dat de prijs voor het Beste Boek voor Jongeren won. In november 2021 verschijnt de roman Mary waarin met verbluffende verbeeldingskracht de achttienjarige schepper van het meesterwerk Frankenstein tot leven wordt gewekt.
# new novel
Mary
Auteur: Anne Eekhout
Type: Gebonden
ISBN: 9789403153315
NUR: 301
Aantal pagina’s: 384
Uitgever: De Bezige Bij
Verschijningsdatum: 18-11-2021
Prijs: 24,99
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Shelley’s Vision
Wandering late by morning seas
When my heart with pain was low–
Hate the censor pelted me–
Deject I saw my shadow go.
In elf-caprice of bitter tone
I too would pelt the pelted one:
At my shadow I cast a stone.
When lo, upon that sun-lit ground
I saw the quivering phantom take
The likeness of St. Stephen crowned:
Then did self-reverence awake.
Herman Melville
(1819 – 1891)
Shelley’s Vision
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Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
Impressions are like winds; you feel their cool
Swift kiss upon the brow, yet know not where
They sprang to birth: so like a pool
Rippled by winds from out their forest lair
My soul was stir’d to life; its twilight fled;
There passed across its solitude a dream
That wing’d with supreme ecstasy did seem;
That gave the kiss of life to long-lost dead.
A lark trill’d in the blue: and suddenly
Upon the wings of his immortal ode
My soul rushed singing to the ether sky
And found in visions, dreams, its real abode –
I fled with Shelly, with the lark afar,
Unto the realms where the eternal are.
John William (Will) Streets
(1886 –1916)
Shelley in the Trenches 2nd May 1916
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More in: - Archive Tombeau de la jeunesse, Archive S-T, Shelley, Percy Byssche, Streets, Will, WAR & PEACE
In the period between 1815 and 1820, Mary Shelley wrote her most famous novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, as well as its companion piece, Mathilda, a tragic incest narrative that was confiscated by her father, William Godwin, and left unpublished until 1959. She also gave birth to four—and lost three—children.
In this hybrid text, Rachel Feder interprets Frankenstein and Mathilda within a series of provocative frameworks including Shelley’s experiences of motherhood and maternal loss, twentieth-century feminists’ interests in and attachments to Mary Shelley, and the critic’s own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood.
Harvester of Hearts explores how Mary Shelley’s exchanges with her children—in utero, in birth, in life, and in death—infuse her literary creations. Drawing on the archives of feminist scholarship, Feder theorizes “elective affinities,” a term she borrows from Goethe to interrogate how the personal attachments of literary critics shape our sense of literary history.
Feder blurs the distinctions between intellectual, bodily, literary, and personal history, reanimating the classical feminist discourse on Frankenstein by stepping into the frame.
The result—at once an experimental book of literary criticism, a performative foray into feminist praxis, and a deeply personal lyric essay—not only locates Mary Shelley’s monsters within the folds of maternal identity but also illuminates the connections between the literary and the quotidian.
Rachel Feder is an assistant professor of English and literary arts at the University of Denver. Her scholarly and creative work has appeared in a range of publications including ELH, Studies in Romanticism, and a poetry chapbook from dancing girl press.
Rachel Feder (Author)
Harvester of Hearts
Motherhood under the Sign of Frankenstein
Cloth Text – $99.95
ISBN 978-0-8101-3753-0
Paper Text – $34.95
ISBN 978-0-8101-3752-3
August 2018
Women’s Studies
Literary Criticism
152 pages
Northwestern University Press
new books
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More in: - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive E-F, Archive S-T, Art & Literature News, Mary Shelley, Shelley, Mary, Shelley, Percy Byssche, Tales of Mystery & Imagination
The year 1818 saw the publication of one of the most influential science-fiction stories of all time.
Frankenstein: Or, Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley had a huge impact on gothic horror and science-fiction genres, and her creation has become part of our everyday culture, from cartoons to Hallowe’en costumes. Even the name ‘Frankenstein’ has become a by-word for evil scientists and dangerous experiments. How did a teenager with no formal education come up with the idea for an extraordinary novel such as Frankenstein?
Clues are dotted throughout Georgian science and popular culture. The years before the book’s publication saw huge advances in our understanding of the natural sciences, in areas such as electricity and physiology, for example. Sensational science demonstrations caught the imagination of the general public, while the newspapers were full of lurid tales of murderers and resurrectionists.
Making the Monster explores the scientific background behind Mary Shelley’s book. Is there any science fact behind the science fiction? And how might a real-life Victor Frankenstein have gone about creating his monster? From tales of volcanic eruptions, artificial life and chemical revolutions, to experimental surgery, ‘monsters’ and electrical experiments on human cadavers, Kathryn Harkup examines the science and scientists that influenced Shelley, and inspired her most famous creation.
Kathryn Harkup is a chemist and author. Kathryn completed a PhD then a postdoc at the University of York before realising that talking, writing and demonstrating science appealed far more than spending hours slaving over a hot fume-hood. Kathryn went on to run outreach in engineering, computing, physics and maths at the University of Surrey, which involved writing talks on science and engineering topics that would appeal to bored teenagers, and she is now a science communicator delivering talks and workshops on the quirky side of science.
Making the Monster
The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
By: Kathryn Harkup
Published: 08-02-2018
Format: Hardback
Edition: 1st
Extent: 304 pp
ISBN: 9781472933737
Imprint: Bloomsbury Sigma
Illustrations: 11 black and white illustrations
Dimensions: 216 x 135 mm
£16.99
new books
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
Ozymandias of Egypt
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on those lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)
Good-night
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood —
Then it will be — good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.
Percy Bysshe Shelley poetry
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More in: Archive S-T, Percy Byssche Shelley, Shelley, Percy Byssche
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822)
Good-night
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood –
Then it will be — good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light
The night is good, because, my love,
They never say good-night.
Slaap zacht
Slaap zacht? o nee, het uur valt zwaar
Dat binden moest wie scheiden wacht;
Verblijven wij steeds bij elkaar,
Dan wordt het pas: slaap zacht.
Hoe noem ik slapen “zacht”, alleen,
Al steunt ’t zijn vlucht als jij ’t lief zegt?
Maar komt voor ’t zeggen, ’t wensen, geen
Moment, volgt slaap zacht echt.
Voor harten altijd dicht tesaam,
Van ’s avonds laat tot ’s morgens vroeg,
Is nachttijd, liefste, aangenaam
En slaap al zacht genoeg.
Vertaling Cornelis W. Schoneveld 2012
Percy Bysshe Shelley poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
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Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792 – 1822)
Good-night
Good-night? ah! no; the hour is ill
Which severs those it should unite;
Let us remain together still,
Then it will be good night.
How can I call the lone night good,
Though thy sweet wishes wing its flight?
Be it not said, thought, understood —
Then it will be — good night.
To hearts which near each other move
From evening close to morning light,
The night is good; because, my love,
They never say good-night.
Percy Bysshe Shelley poetry
kempis.nl poetry magazine
More in: Archive S-T, Percy Byssche Shelley, Shelley, Percy Byssche
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