Erotic literature -- History and criticism; Psychoanalysis and literature; Sex in literature
It is the same with _The Ode to the Skylark_, written nearly a year
later. He envies the bird its happiness. "Shadow of annoyance never
came near thee," he says to it. "Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's
sad satiety." Here he betrays himself by a few words. He has had his
satiety of love, and sad it was, without satisfying him. He doesn't
love his present wife; he never cared deeply for his first wife; his
first sweetheart rejected him; and he had been loved by girls he did
not love. All these facts justify us in selecting the words, "love's
sad satiety" and assigning them a definite meaning. Had we known
nothing of the poet's biography we could not have spoken with such
conviction. He sings "our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest
thought." His saddest thoughts have been those about the difficulties
of finding love's ideal, and of loving another when pledged to some one
else. Then we have the unconscious sex symbolism in the wish to be
happy like the flying singing bird.
Psychoanalytic methods applied to Shelley reveal him then, in his love
poems and in lyrics which were not supposed to deal with love, as a
chaste man with polygamous inclinations and married to a woman he did
not love passionately. There is a connection between this state of
affairs and his interest in scattering liberal ideas. That he also
mistook real love for platonic love may be seen by _Epipsychidion_ and
the poems to Mrs. Williams. Unconscious love elements were at the basis
of other poems of his, like the _Ode to Dejection_.
_Alastor_, _Julian and Maddalo_ and _Epipsychidion_ of the longer
poems, his dozen lyrics inspired by love for Mrs. Williams, and his two
famous odes represent the personal Shelley from the love side, and are
among the greatest poems in any language.
A few words should be said about _Adonais_, his great elegy on Keats.
It is one of his personal poems, and among the best known lines are
those describing himself, "who in another's fate wept his own." The
critics who attacked the work of Keats, though they did not, as Shelley
erroneously thought, drive Keats to death, were the very reviewers who
attacked Shelley and his ideas. Even in this grand elegy Shelley was
also bemoaning unconsciously his failure, and complaining that his
ideas on free love, liberal religion and republicanism were attacked.
CHAPTER XVI
EDGAR ALLAN POE
I
Edgar Allan Poe proves an interesting study from the point of view of
psychoanalysis. He has been analysed by pathologists and psychologists,
but there remains much to be said about the work of this baffling
genius. I can take up only a few phases of the pathetic life and great
work of Poe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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