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ODE TO THE WEST WIND

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)
ODE TO THE WEST WIND

1. P.B. SHELLEY’S COMPLETE WORK
Though he lived only 30 years (1792 – 1822), Shelley is the author of many books and poems. He is one of the representative poets of the English Romanticism. His most important works are: Queen Mab (a philosophical poem), Alastor (or The Spirit of Solitude), The Revolt of Islam (who contains twelve canto-s), Rosalind and Helen (a modern eclogue), Julian and Maddalo(a conversation), Prometheus Unbound(a lyrical drama in four acts), The Cenci(a tragedy in five acts), etc. He also published some essays like “The necessity of Atheism”, “Essay on Christianity, On Life, On a Future State” and “A Refutation of Deism”.

Shelley was recognized as a fighter for the freedom of the human spirit. Together with Byron, Keats, Hunt and others, he is the spirit of the English Romanticism.

2. ROMANTICISM AND SHELLEY’S “ODE TO THE WEST WIND”
M.H. Abrams wrote, "The Romantic period was eminently an age obsessed with fact of violent change" ("Revolution" 659). And Percy Shelley is often thought of as the quintessential Romantic poet (Appelbaum x). The "Ode to the West Wind" expresses perfectly the aims and views of the Romantic period.
Shelley's poem expresses the yearning for Genius. In the Romantic era, it was common to associate genius with an attendant spirit or force of nature from which the genius came; the Romantics perceived the artist as a vessel through which the genius flows. For instance, in "A Defence of Poetry," Shelley says that poets are

the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration, the mirrors of
the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present . . .
(Defence 817)

In "Ode to the West Wind," Shelley implores the West Wind, a powerful force of nature that Shelley identifies with his rapidly-changing reality, to "lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!" He also expresses his almost-melancholy wish that he could be as

I were in my boyhood, and could be
The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven (Ode 815)

"Ode to the West Wind" invokes the attendant spirit from which Genius comes to grant Creativity also. "If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear," he pleads, "If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee" (Ode 815). In the fifth section, he begs the West Wind (which he identifies with himself early in the section) to

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth,
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! (Ode 815)

Again, Shelley is asking the force that provides inspiration to act through him.
"Ode to the West Wind" also expresses the hungering for Imagination. Not only does Shelley want the force to make him the "trumpet of a prophecy" (Ode 815), but he also is trying to forge a oneness with the West Wind in the middle of the fifth section ("Be thou, Spirit fierce, / My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!"). A common Romantic notion was the idea that Imagination was the side of the mind that allowed a person to forge a link with someone or something.
Another of the central ideas of the Romantic literary figures was the inherent value of the "primitive and untrammeled" (Revolution 657). Shelley fills the third section of "Ode to the West Wind" with images of innocence and serenity. Descriptions of "azure moss and flowers," "sea-blooms," and "oozy woods" dominate this part of the poem.
The fifth section also expresses Shelley's belief that the quest for beauty is important. At the beginning of the fifth section, Shelley conjures the wind to "make methy lyre" (Ode 815). The lyre is one of few instruments that existed in the seventeenth century which had taken the same form since ancient Greece. It is a symbol of art and beauty; it is also a frequent symbol for the artist being played by inspiration (Ode 815).
What is perhaps most important is that "Ode to the West Wind" expresses the aspect of the Romantic Movement which emphasized the search for individual definitions of morality rather than blindly accepting religious dogmas. As William Blake had his "Marriage of Heaven and Hell," which emphasized the belief that traditional ideas of good and evil needed reconsidering, so Shelley believed that in some (but hardly all) cases, good could come from evil ("Percy" 811-12). Shelley does not support this idea in any particular place in the poem, but rather by the way the poem develops throughout.
For instance, Shelley supports this idea in the way he orders the sections. The first two sections contain images of violence, death, and the coming Winter: the West Wind itself; the "leaves dead"; the colors yellow, black, pale, and "hectic red"; the "corpse within a grave"; the "angels of rain and lightning"; the Mænad, and the "approaching storm." In short, these first two sections describe images of evil: the West Wind brings death, cold, and hardship. The third section describes images of peace and serenity: the "blue Mediterranean," "summer dreams," "sleep," "old palaces and towers," the "azure moss and flowers," and the "oozy woods." These images and serenity are disturbed only by the coming of the West Wind, which threatens to disturb the balance of the peaceful life.
In the fourth and fifth sections, Shelley begins to identify himself with the Windand beseeches the Wind to work through him for the good of humanity; he wants the wind to

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth! (Ode 815)

Shelley is saying here that although the Wind can be a force for evil, he wants the Wind to work through him because good can come from evil; here, a "new birth" of Imagination, Genius, and Creativity can come from death, darkness, and hardship.
In the fifth section, the West Wind is also the symbol of hope in a better life, in the renaissance of nature, the resurrection of the human spirit:

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind ,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Shelley is essentially a visionary of this change; he invokes the powerful West Wind, a force he identifies with evil, his ever-changing world, and his own subconscious, to work through him to bring about the change that he so badly desires for the world, and believes could be possible. Shelley's poem is his attempt to let the West Wind work through him.

3.SYMBOLISME IN “ODE TO THE WEST WIND” - SHELLEY’S LIFE MASTERPIECE
Romanticism is a literary current that is unique because of his magnificent symbols. Shelley hadn’t been an exception of this rule. In fact, “Ode to the West Wind” is a brilliant example of romantic symbols. The most important of them is the West Wind who identifies itself with the author’s ego. The West Wind is the perfect metamorphosis of man’s hope in the rebirth of nature, the one who preserves in its identity humanity’s message of love, peace and harmony to the Universe.
It seems that the poet becomes one spirit with the West Wind. He expresses directly his feelings of love and admiration for nature infinity and eternity. This gives the poem an original dramatic character. Of course, the classic symbols are present too: the poet’s rhetoric interrogations-symbols of man’s tragic condition to fight the opponent destiny with the price of his life.
There are of course other secondary symbols with their importance in the text. There are the leaves that represent on one hand Shelley’s ideas that are taken by the Wind in the whole Universe and on the other hand they represent Time’s tragic passing that causes the poet’s melancholy. Another important romantic symbol is the seeds that carry in them not only the Infinity of a terrific nature but also Shelley’s most sincere thoughts of love and the hope of a bright future.

4.CONCLUSIONS
The spirit of Shelley can be found in the words of “Ode to the West Wind” because this poem is the symbol of his love for life and for nature, his wish to become one with the latter . His joy is very big in front of the show of the Mother Nature’s high powers. That’s why we can consider this poem Shelley’s message of peace and love to the mankind, to the next generations and to the entire Universe.