Adonais
At this point, it is impossible for me to write a paper on Adonais. My own life is entrenched with deep feeling and emotion, and I can grasp nothing with which to relate this in Shelley's poem. However beautiful it may be, it seems hardly more than a lengthy and shallow medium through which Shelley exercises his own poetic prowess. I know about getting so involved with one's own creative tendencies that true meaning seems to fall by the wayside and lend itself to more transparent frills, insinuating meanings which just are not there.
Shelley barely knew Keats and had no great respect for him as a poet. Adonais was merely a celebration of his own talent with words and served as a means through which he could lash out at the Quarterly Review for previously slandering his own work. The poem is beautiful. The fact that he may have written it as a tribute to John Keats is noble. However, I feel that Shelley's intentions were neither beautiful nor noble. His extreme political inclinations bore through his mind and transformed themselves into a real cause for Shelley. He was so engulfed in his own creative energy that he invented a connection, placed himself alongside Keats (but higher up), and poured forth some of the most enchanting words ever penned.
These words conjure up the most glorious images and surround the reader in a sort of glowing dream-like state, but when it all comes down to it, there is not enough substance. Shelley's thoughts twisted their way through his being, emerging as an elegy that has been revered for well over a hundred years.
I revere it as a conglomeration of entreating imagery and clever allusions, but as an elegy for John Keats (whose work has yet to fail me emotionally), it fails.
13 March 1998