Evidence: | 'You must be tired of my ugly handwriting - yet your book is so suggestive that one wants to talk about it - the more I read the more I am enchanted by it. - I have been struck however by your mention of Dante - which seems founded entirely on the Inferno - a poem I can only read bits of - the subject being to me so antipatetica but the Purgatorio & Paradiso - the Poet revels in beauty & joy there to the full as much as the horrors below - and some of his verses & even whole Cantos lap one in a gentle sort of Elysium - or carry one into the skies - Can anything be so wondrously poetical as the approach of the boat with souls from earth to Purgatory - Shelley's most favourite passage - the Angels guarding Purgatory from infernal spirits - the whole tone of hope - & the calm enjoyment of Matilda is something quite unearthly in its sweetness - & then the glory of Paradise - I do not rely on my own taste but the following verses appear to me to belong to the highest class of imagination; they occur in the last Canto of the Pardiso after the vision he has of beatitude
-il mio veder fu maggio
Che'l parlar nostro, ch'a tal vista cede.
E cede la memoria al tanto oltraggio
Quale e colui ch soguando vede,
E dopo 'l sogno la passione impressa
Rimane, e l'altro alla menta non riede
Cotal son io, che quassi tutta cessa
Mia visione, e ancor mi distila
Nel cuor lo dolce, che nacque da essa.
Cosi la neve al sole disigilla
Cosi al vento nele foglie lievi
Si perdea la sentenzia di Sibilla -
Will you think me hypercritical about a most beautiful stanza of Keats - It was the sky lark not the nightingale that Ruth heard "amid the alien corn" - the sky lark soars and sings above the shearers perpetually - The nightingale sings at night - in shady places - & never so late in the season - May is her month -
Excuse all this'
[letter to Leigh Hunt] |
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Century: | 1800-1849 | ||||||||||
Date: | Between 1 Sep 1844 and 15 Nov 1844 | ||||||||||
Country: | England | ||||||||||
Time: | n/a | ||||||||||
Place: | city: London specific address: Putney |
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Type of Experience (Reader): |
|
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Type of Experience (Listener): |
|
Reader: | Mary Shelley |
Age | Adult (18-100+) |
Gender | Female |
Date of Birth | 30 Aug 1797 |
Socio-economic group: | Gentry |
Occupation: | writer |
Religion: | n/a |
Country of origin: | England |
Country of experience: | England |
Listeners present if any: (e.g. family, servants,
friends, workmates) |
n/a |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Author: | Leigh Hunt |
Title: | Imagination and Fancy; or, Selections from the English Poets |
Genre: | Poetry, Miscellany / Anthology |
Form of Text: | Print: Book |
Publication details: | n/a |
Provenance: | unknown |
Record ID: | 16931 | |
Source - | ||
Author: | n/a | |
Editor: | Betty T. Bennett | |
Title: | The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | |
Place of Publication: | Baltimore / London | |
Date of Publication: | 1988 | |
Vol: | III | |
Page: | 161 | |
Additional comments: | n/a |
Citation: | Betty T. Bennett (ed.), The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (Baltimore / London, 1988), III, p. 161, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=16931, accessed: 28 March 2024 |
Reading Experience Database version 2.0. Page updated: 27th Apr 2016 3:15pm (GMT)