Okay, let's start with this image. A major romantic
poet, dead at just 29, a chaotic shipwreck off
the Italian coast. Right. I mean, his whole life
was a state of intellectual and personal explosion.
But the image that really truly gets you is what
happened after he died. The cremation. The cremation
on the beach. Right. The heat, the flames, and
this human heart that just famously refused to
burn. And you know what's so fascinating is that
this one physical event, Whether it really was
his heart or maybe his liver, calcified, we don't
know for sure, it becomes the perfect symbol
for the man himself. How so? It just mirrors
the intense, fiery, and completely resistant
nature of his entire intellectual life. So today,
we are diving deep into Percy Bysshe Shelley.
And not just as the author of, you know, Ozymandias
or Ode to the West Wind, which you probably read
in school. Exactly. We're looking at him as one
of the most politically charged, skeptical and
honestly, genuinely radical intellectuals of
his entire era. Absolutely. Our mission for this
deep dive is to give you a real shortcut to understanding
the ultimate nonconformist. You'll see why his
short life was this perpetual series of crises,
self -exiles and these intellectual explosions
that led to some of the most enduring. and politically
urgent poetry of the entire Romantic period.
And that influence, it doesn't just stay in literature.
Shelley's worldview, his ideas, they directly
inspired foundational figures who are just worlds
apart. You're talking about Karl Marx. Right,
the father of communism. George Bernard Shaw,
the playwright and socialist. And maybe most
importantly, Mahatma Gandhi. The father of modern
nonviolent resistance. Exactly. So to really
understand the depth of his art, you absolutely
have to trace the ferocity of his rebellion.
So let's... start right at the beginning. How
does a boy born into the absolute heart of the
English establishment, how does he transform
himself into the country's most feared radical?
It all begins with just immense privilege. I
mean, total expectation. Shelley was born August
4, 1792, at Field Place in Sussex. He's the eldest
son of Sir Timothy Shelley. A member of parliament?
Right, a member of parliament, yes. And for you
listening, it's important to know what kind.
Sir Timothy was a Whig. Okay, let's pause there
for a second, because this is the turn of the
19th century. What does being a Whig MP actually
mean for Shelley's background? It's it's a really
crucial piece of context. So the Whigs, they
weren't the Tories. They were generally the more.
liberal reformist party. Right. They favored
constitutional monarchy. They supported Catholic
emancipation. They kind of represented this rising
professional class, a more progressive view of
government. So he was born into a family that,
while definitely aristocratic, was already leaning
toward a certain amount of intellectual freedom.
Exactly. So he wasn't rebelling against some
rigid, ultra conservative dogma. He was rebelling
against moderate reform in favor of absolute
revolution. And his early childhood was was,
by all accounts, pretty sheltered, pretty happy.
He was close to his mother, his four younger
sisters. He had this brilliant mind right from
the start. Oh, an incredible memory, a gift for
languages, a real thirst for knowledge. The path
was laid out for him. You know, inherit the baronetcy,
continue his father's political career. Simple.
But that path to the establishment gets, well,
it gets instantly derailed by the establishment.
Yes. The moment he's sent off to school, first
to Scion House Academy and then, crucially, to
Eaton College in 1804. His nonconformity just
surfaces violently. He hated it. He later called
it a period of absolute loathing. And this wasn't
just, you know, a kid being miserable at boarding
school. He was subjected to severe organized
mob bullying. They had a name for it. Shelly
Bates. It was a ritual. What was it about him?
What made him such a specific target? It was
his entire nature, really. And his principled
refusal to conform to the school's brutal social
hierarchy. Biographers point to his aloofness,
his... his general air of being different but
the big one was his refusal to participate in
fagging and for anyone not familiar with the
term fagging is it's not just doing chores no
no it was a deeply entrenched often brutal system
of servitude the older more powerful students
imposed it on the younger boys it was mandatory
often humiliating personal service form of tyranny
a microcosm of it yes for shelley this fiercely
independent idealistic mind it was an intolerable
oppression. And his refusal wasn't laziness.
It was a radical political act of resistance,
even as a teenager. The result of all this pressure,
his peers just branded him Mad Shelley. And he
was. He was prone to these sudden violent rages
that were apparently terrifying to his schoolmates.
He started having nightmares, hallucinations,
sleepwalking. Symptoms of real psychological
distress that would follow him really for the
rest of his life. And these eccentricities were
just fueled by this deep, intense interest in
science and the occult. This wasn't just passive
reading for him. No, it was action. He would
subject his sisters to these terrifying experiments
during the holidays. Right? With gunpowder, acids,
electricity. There are accounts of him blowing
up a paling fence at school trying to raise spirits
with occult rituals at Eton. He was chasing forbidden
knowledge with this terrifying energy. But it
wasn't all just explosions and ghosts. His radicalism
was also being nurtured intellectually. Yes.
In his senior years at Eton, a part -time teacher,
a man named James Lind, he really encouraged
this curiosity. He introduced Shelley not just
to the occult, but to genuinely liberal and radical
Enlightenment authors. And that led him to start
studying Plato, idealist philosophy, on his own.
So by the time he gets to University College
Oxford in October 1810, he's already a published,
if... unconventional literary figure. Right.
He'd already published a Gothic novel, Testarazzi.
A collaboration of poetry with his sister and
another Gothic novel, St. Irvine. He arrives
at Oxford already armed with a sharp pen and
a very volatile mind. And once he's there, the
traditional academic structure just holds zero
interest for him. None whatsoever. He skipped
most lectures. He preferred to spend hours reading
on his own and, of course, dedicating himself
to those volatile scientific experiments he set
up right there in his college room. And his political
views just crystallized under the influence of
his closest friend, Thomas Jefferson Hogg. Hogg
was another sharp, rebellious mind. And together,
they quickly developed these genuinely dangerous,
anti -Christian and subversive political ideas.
Ideas, we should note, that his father had specifically
warned. him against. Sir Timothy knew his son
was a bit of a firebrand, but he completely underestimated
the depth of his atheistic convictions. Which
led directly to his downfall. In the winter of
1810, 1811, he and Hogg, they co -author and
privately publish a pamphlet that, well, it left
nothing to the imagination. The Necessity of
Atheism. And this is where Shelley proves he's
more than just a thinker. He's an agitator. He
doesn't hide it. He escalates the confrontation.
How? He ensures the message gets out. He mails
copies directly to every single bishop and every
head of college at Oxford. He literally forced
the institution's hand. That is just guaranteed
to cause a confrontation, isn't it? He was called
before the college fellows and the dean. What
exactly went down in that meeting? They asked
him directly, did you write this? And his downfall
wasn't based on the content of the pamphlet itself.
Not really. It was based on his refusal to acknowledge
their authority. So he stood on principle. Absolute
intellectual freedom. He refused to confirm or
deny authorship. And that refusal, that unforgivable
act of nonconformity to the college authorities,
was grounds for immediate dismissal. On March
25, 1811. Both he and Hogg were expelled. So
he didn't actually lose his place because he
was an atheist. He lost it because he refused
to answer a question. Exactly. It was a rejection
of the institution's right to demand obedience
and confession from him. And this decision, the
expulsion, that was the point of no return with
his family. So Timothy was furious. Furious.
He threatened to cut off all contact unless Shelley
came home, submitted, and agreed to study under
tutors the family chose. Shelley's refusal was
instantaneous. He chose intellectual honesty
and his... radical beliefs over his birthright
and his financial security. So this brings us
to a really crucial phase. He's cut off from
his family, cut off from his entire expected
future, and he has to immediately start living
this radical philosophical life he'd been talking
about. And instead of some kind of utopia, he
finds just chaos. Yeah. And it began almost immediately
with his spontaneous marriage to Harriet Westbrook.
Just months after his expulsion, August 1811,
he impulsively elopes to Scotland with a 16 -year
-old Harriet. Which is just, it's astonishing
when you remember that, philosophically, Shelley
was fundamentally against the institution of
marriage. He saw it as tyranny, right? As a property
exchange. Yes. So why on earth does he go get
a marriage certificate? It seems like a massive
contradiction right out of the gate. Was it just
societal pressure trying to protect her reputation?
Probably a combination of youthful impulse and,
yes, a desire to protect Harriet's reputation.
But it just reveals this inherent difficulty
in translating radical philosophy into real world
action. And the consequences were immediate.
And entirely predictable. Both his father and
Harriet's father, a man named John Westbrook,
they cut off their allowances. And Shelley's
father viewed the match as a total disaster,
didn't he? Oh, completely. Sir Timothy felt his
son had married entirely beneath him. Harriet's
father was a prosperous butcher, a tavern and
coffeehouse owner. He was in trade, not gentry.
Exactly. And this just compounded Shelley's social
isolation. Now, he wasn't just a radical. He
was a pauper who had married into the wrong class.
They're relying heavily on borrowed money. And
almost instantly, they try to create this first
chaotic experiment in communal living. He invites
his dearest friend, Thomas Jefferson Ogg, to
live with them. Then Harriet's older sister,
Eliza, moves in as well. I mean, you can just
feel the emotional tinderbox being built. It
sounds like an absolute powder keg. This attempt
to live out his ideals of free love, where intellectual
friendships are supposed to trump traditional
marriage boundaries, it failed pretty quickly.
Almost instantly. The whole experiment just fractures
dramatically when Hogg attempts to seduce Harriet
while Shelley is away trying to get money from
his father. Okay, now, a conventional husband
would be livid. He'd end the marriage and the
friendship. How did Shelley, the great theorist
of free love... react to that kind of betrayal.
And this is where his radical theory just clashes
violently with raw human emotion. Despite the
immense trauma Harriet suffered, she was genuinely
hurt and disturbed by this. Shelley sticking
rigidly to his theories against jealousy and
exclusivity later forgives Hogg. He forgives
him. and insists on continuing their friendship.
He believed jealousy was just a destructive social
construct, not natural emotion, and he refused
to let it contaminate his intellectual union
with Hogg. This dedication to theory over the
immediate emotional reality was a recurring and,
frankly, tragic flaw. So in the middle of this
domestic storm, he completely shifts gears and
dives headfirst into political activism. In 1812,
he and Harriet travel to Dublin. Why Dublin?
Why there specifically? Dublin was a hotbed of
political tension, and he went there with a mission
to actively distribute two political tracks he
had written. An address to the Irish people and
proposals for an association of philanthropists.
And he wasn't just publishing from afar. You
have to picture this. He was on the street handing
out pamphlets himself. What was the core message
he was trying to push in Ireland? It was explosive.
comprehensive he was calling for catholic emancipation
for the repeal of the acts of union between britain
and ireland and for a direct end to the poverty
and oppression of the irish poor but and this
is a really crucial nuance that connects to his
later non -violence theory he explicitly warned
against a violent revolution he did he stated
and i'm quoting here i do not wish to see things
change now because it cannot be done without
violence He had learned from the chaotic aftermath
of the French Revolution. He feared that violence
would just lead to military despotism, which
he saw as the greater long -term tyranny. But
even with those cautionary words, his public
activism brought immediate, unwanted attention
from the English government. placed under surveillance
almost immediately. They had to flee Linmouth
and Devon after his 15 -year -old Irish servant
was arrested just for distributing his pamphlets,
including this radical text called the Declaration
of Rights. So he was forced to see the real world
risk his beliefs pose, not just to himself, but
to everyone around him. Right. And yet, this
period of intense political activity, it produces
his first major long poem, Queen Mab, in 1813.
Was this poem just a summary of all his political
ideas? It was a privately published utopian allegory,
but its real significance is in the prose notes
that came with it. These notes were basically
a complete revolutionary manifesto. What do they
cover? Everything. Virulent atheism, radical
republicanism, free love, and notably vegetarianism.
It was a comprehensive blueprint for overthrowing
the establishment socially and politically. And
publishing it in a private edition of 250 copies
was a necessary shield against prosecution. A
very real and immediate risk of prosecution for
seditious and religious libel. So by 1814, that
chaotic first marriage is just collapsing. He
resents Harriet's sister, Eliza. He's finding
emotional connection outside the marriage. But
the real emotional earthquake happens when he
starts visiting his intellectual idol, William
Godwin, almost daily. Shelley saw Godwin, the
famous philosopher, as a kind of spiritual father.
But he soon became captivated by Godwin's 16
-year -old daughter, Mary. Mary Godwin. Her mother
was the late pioneering feminist philosopher,
Mary Wollstonecraft. So Mary was, in a sense,
radical aristocracy herself. She absolutely was.
And the famous story, the height of romantic
drama, is that they declared their love for each
other at her mother's gravesite. It's just, you
can't make that up. And the drama only escalated.
Shelley confessed to Godwin that he was going
to leave Harriet, who was pregnant with her second
child at the time, and live openly with Mary.
And Godwin, the great philosopher of free love,
was horrified by the practical reality of it.
He immediately banned Shelley from his house.
But they defied him. On July 28, 1814, they fled
to Europe. And they took Mary's stepsister, Claire
Claremont, with them. Claire would become another
permanent fixture in their tumultuous lives.
And this elopement caused immediate and devastating
social fallout. It was twofold, right. First,
they were broke. Completely. Shelley spent the
next few months literally dodging debt collectors
and bailiffs. Even after his grandfather died
and he inherited a substantial estate, the financial
settlements took over a year to process. And
second, the public scandal was just immense.
Rumors were flying that Godwin, desperate for
money, had basically sold his daughters to Shelley.
It tarnished both their reputations permanently.
And the emotional price kept being paid. During
this time, Mary gave birth prematurely to a baby
girl who only lived for 10 days, and this plunged
Mary into a deep, sustained depression. This
depression, combined with Shelley's... continued
adherence to his free love theories led to even
more bizarre and emotionally damaging situations.
Thomas Jefferson Hogg temporarily moved back
into the household. It is highly likely, based
on letters and later confessions from Claire,
that Shelley was having a sexual relationship
with Claremont at this time. And, incredibly,
there is strong biographical evidence that Shelley
actually encouraged a sexual relationship between
Hogg and Mary as well. Wait, he encouraged his
wife to be intimate with his friend? I mean,
how did that complex arrangement, this attempt
to live out this lofty ideal, actually work on
a day -to -day emotional level? It was a disaster.
Yeah. I mean, it was an absolute disaster. Shelley
truly believed that open, non -exclusive affection,
free of jealousy was the ideal state. But for
Mary, who was grieving her lost child, and for
Harriet, who was dealing with abandonment, it
just created immense emotional instability and
trauma. They were trying to be hyper -rational
in a deeply irrational environment. emotional
world, and their closest relationships were the
collateral damage. This volatility then leads
us to that infamous summer of 1816, the Geneva
meeting with Lord Byron. Right. Claremont, who
had followed them, had already initiated a sexual
relationship with Byron and was now pregnant
with his child, Allegra. The famous Diodati gathering.
They rented a house near Byron's villa. They
spent nights discussing literature, science,
the supernatural. A peak of intellectual excitement.
But also a low point for Shelley's mental stability.
What happened? One night, while Byron was reciting
a poem by Coleridge, Shelley suffered a severe
panic attack. He had vivid hallucinations, reportedly
screaming about seeing a vision of Mary with
eyes in her nipples. Wow. It just reflects the
intense psychological strain he was under. Yet
in that same atmosphere of intellectual ferment
and psychological breakdown, Mary has the productive
vision, a dream, that inspires her to write Frankenstein.
The darkness of his reality was fueling her gothic
imagination. And 1816 just ended in a series
of absolute tragedies. Mary's half -sister, Fanny
Imlay, committed suicide in October. Godwin believed
she had been secretly in love with Shelley. And
then in December, his estranged first wife, Harriet.
Pregnant and abandoned by a new lover, she tragically
drowned herself in the Serpentine River in London.
The sequence is just brutal. Harriet's death
finally allowed Shelley to legally marry Mary
Godwin on December 30. of 1816. He did this primarily
to legitimize their relationship in society's
eyes, but strategically it was so he could try
and get custody of his two living children by
Harriet. But even a legal marriage didn't protect
him. The court of chancery denied him custody
of his children. What was the specific legal
rationale for that? The court cited his proven
history of atheism and his abandonment of Harriet
for Mary without cause. This is the ultimate
proof that the state viewed his philosophical
defiance, his free love theories, his atheistic
publications as disqualifying him from being
a father. His refusal to conform had cost him
his own children. So their social and legal standing
in England is just completely destroyed. They're
under this constant threat of scandal, of surveillance.
So the Shelleys, along with Claire, They permanently
left England in March 1818. A necessary self
-exile. Both to escape what he called the tyranny
civil and religious of Britain and also to find
a better climate for his chronic lung complaint,
which was likely tuberculosis. They arrive in
Italy and this immediately kicks off an astonishing
period of creative genius. It's really the zenith
of his poetic career. But it was still framed
by continuous personal tragedy. It's almost as
if his genius required suffering as fuel. That
analogy is tragically apt, isn't it? Just six
months after they arrive, September 1818, their
daughter Clara dies in Venice. This was the second
child Mary had lost. And it plunged her into
a long, deep period of depression and emotional
estrangement from Shelley. Biographers really
suggest she never fully recovered her prior affection
for him after this loss. And it is immediately
after this, in Naples, that one of the most persistent
and genuinely bizarre mysteries of Shelley's
life happens. The case of Elena Adelaide Shelley.
Yes. In December 1818, Shelley registers the
birth and baptism of a baby girl, Elena Adelaide
Shelley. But he falsely names Mary as the mother.
The sheer deception of that act. I mean, the
outright lie on official documents. It goes against
his core principle of intellectual honesty. This
is the man who got expelled from Oxford for refusing
to lie. And now he's putting a lie on a birth
certificate. So why the deceit? And whose child
was this, really? The truth is still debated,
isn't it? It is. But the theories are dark. And
they reveal the extent of the emotional void
he was trying to fill. Was she adopted to console
the grieving Mary? Did he believe he had a secret
love child? Biographers have floated possibilities
ranging from her being his child by Claire Claremont
or his servant Elise Foggy. Or maybe the child
of some mysterious lady he had met. But the crucial
point isn't just the parentage. It's what happened
to her. Regardless of who the mother was, Shelley
left Elena with Italian carers the very next
day, and she died two years later in 1820. Exactly.
This secretive, dishonest act, followed by abandonment,
it just highlights the depth of depression and
emotional strain he must have been experiencing.
There's a theory that this whole situation was
rooted in a blackmail attempt against Shelley,
which would explain the secrecy. He was desperately
trying to maintain some outward appearance of
order while his inner life was just fragmenting.
And despite all this chaos, despite being physically
unwell, he's likely suffering from nephritis
and tuberculosis. The time he spent in Rome in
1819 produced this incredible burst of creativity,
the Rome Trilogy. Indeed. He begins with Julian
and Medallo, which is this intensely autobiographical
poem that explores his complex, almost adversarial
relationship with Byron. It's a public analysis
of his own personal crises. Then came Prometheus
Unbound. A massive four -act lyrical drama. It's
considered one of his definitive statements on
revolutionary hope. Let's talk about Prometheus
Unbound for a moment. What's the central, enduring
message of a work that takes on this myth? of
a titan chained to a rock shelley completely
repurposes the classical myth it's a profound
utopian allegory about the triumph of human benevolence
over tyranny and superstition prometheus who
symbolizes humanity and intellect is ultimately
freed not by force but by moral resilience and
the power of love and hope so it's the poetic
embodiment of his ideal society a world redeemed
not by violence but by intellectual and ethical
awakening and then the third part of the trilogy
the chenchi which was surprisingly a huge commercial
success for him in his lifetime. It was. It's
a verse drama based on this horrific, true Renaissance
story of Beatrice Chenchi. It involves rape,
murder, and incest. And while his other great
works barely sold 250 copies, the Chenchis went
to two authorized editions. It tapped into the
public's taste for Gothic tragedy. It did, but
it also allowed Shelley to explore his consistent
preoccupation, righteous rebellion against absolute
corrupt power. But before the high of that success
could really register, the personal suffering
returned. In June 1819, his three -year -old
son, William, died, probably of malaria. This
was the third child Mary had lost. And it was
just crushing. This deepened Mary's depression
to a point of near -total emotional collapse.
This is the period when she wrote that devastatingly
bitter quote that just captures the absolute
ruin of their personal life. What was it? We
have now lived five years together, and if all
the events of the five years were blotted out,
I might be happy. Wow. That's not just grief.
That is an assessment of total failure in their
attempt to build an ideal life together. And
that failure, the collapse of his private utopia,
seems to be the final catalyst that shifted his
genius entirely back toward public prophecy.
In September 1819, he gets the news of the Peterloo
Massacre. Right, in Manchester. A brutal moment
of state violence. Peaceful protesters demanding
parliamentary reform were attacked by cavalry.
Many deaths. many injuries shelly was in livorno
when he heard the news and he just channeled
his profound rage and grief into the mask of
anarchy within two weeks this political ballot
is so immediate so raw Why was it considered
so incredibly dangerous at the time? Because
it was a direct, visceral condemnation of the
government. He lists key figures like Lord Catheray
and Lord Eldon and calls them murder and hypocrisy.
His friend Lee Hunt was so terrified of being
prosecuted for seditious libel that he refused
to publish it until 1832, a decade after Shelley's
death. It just shows that Shelley's political
poetry was an abstract art for him. It was criminal
propaganda. It was a weapon. And yet in the same
incredibly fraught year, 1819, he pens the Ode
to the West Wind, a work that just encapsulates
all his hope, his despair, and his revolutionary
desire in one perfect lyrical package. It's a
masterpiece. It marries his political fire with
this profound understanding of nature's cyclical
power. And when he asks the West Wind to scatter
his words among mankind and ends with that famous
unforgettable conclusion. A wind. If winter comes,
can spring be far behind? He is talking about
political revolution. He's saying that the current
season of despair and state tyranny must inevitably
lead to renewal. It is revolutionary hope encased
in sheer beauty. And we can't overlook Ozymandias
from 1818. He wrote this short, devastating sonnet
as part of a friendly competition with a friend,
Horace Smith. How does this little poem capture
the core of his anti -tyranny philosophy? It
captures the absolute futility of colossal power
over time. A traveler finds a shattered statue
in the desert. The inscription boasts, My name
is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works,
ye mighty, and despair. But immediately after
that boast, the poem says, Nothing beside remains.
It's brilliant. The mighty king is telling people
to despair in his works. But the despair is caused
by the lack of works. by the rubble and the empty
sand. Exactly. It's a timeless warning to every
tyrant, every absolute government. Your power,
no matter how immense now, will ultimately be
reduced to sand and ruin. It's a perfect articulation
of his unwavering skepticism. As his life wound
down, his creative energy just remained relentless.
After the death of John Keats in 1821, whom Shelley
had invited to stay with him in Pisa, Shelley,
wrote Adonais. Which the critic Harold Bloom
called one of the major pastoral elegies in the
English language. And just for you listening,
a pastoral elegy is a formal poem mourning a
friend's death. often placing them in this idealized
natural setting. And Shelley uses that form to
lament Keats' death, but he quickly transforms
the grief into an attack on the savage critics
he believed killed Keats, and then he elevates
Keats into an immortal part of nature itself.
It's a powerful fusion of grief and radical social
critique. Shelley also used this time to write
his most critical piece of literary theory, A
Defense of Poetry, in 1821. This essay, unpublished
in his lifetime, is arguably his most crucial
contribution to intellectual discourse. It contains
that extraordinary, electrifying line. Poets
are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
That is such a massive claim. What did he mean
by that? That poets are more important than parliaments?
He argued that legislators and politicians, they
just codify existing social morals and laws.
But poets, by appealing to the human imagination,
feeling, and creativity, they unconsciously shape
the very emotional and ethical foundations upon
which future laws are built. So they plant the
seeds of moral and social change long before
the politicians even know a shift is happening.
It is the purest statement of his belief in the
transformative political power of imaginative
art. During his final years, he moved to Pisa,
forming the Pisan Circle with Byron and others.
But even that intellectual community couldn't
stop the personal chaos. He became intensely
infatuated with Jane Williams, who was living
nearby with her partner, Edward Williams. And
this infatuation, which led to these beautiful
late lyrical poems like With the Guitar to Jane,
certainly caused increasing emotional tension
between Shelley and Mary. It reflected his constant
spiritual quest for what he called the ideal
other, an epistachydion, a soul. out of his soul.
And this intense, slightly despairing search
for impossible perfection, it culminates in his
final unfinished work, The Triumph of Life in
1822. This poem is a profound reflection on the
crushing power of the conventional world fame,
power, morality over the individual spirit. It's
a very dark contrast to the optimism of Prometheus
Unbound. Harold Bloom called it the most despairing
poem he wrote. It really shows a man defeated
by the weight of personal tragedy and social
rejection, just struggling to hold on to his
idealism. We've seen how Shelley's life was just
dictated by his principles, often at a huge personal
cost. Let's really dedicate some time to his
uncompromising philosophical creed, because he
wasn't just a poet. He was, as you said, a philosophical
combatant. He weaponized poetry to attack the
social and religious foundations of the British
state. And his core identity was undeniably that
of an avowed atheist. He was deeply influenced
by materialist thinkers. from the French Enlightenment
like Holbeck. For Shelley, the issue was never
just about whether God existed. No, it was political.
It was completely political. He viewed organized
religion as inextricably linked to state power,
aristocratic privilege, social oppression. So
for him, attacking the church was attacking the
state. Which made his atheism inherently seditious
in early 19th century England. We saw the legal
dangers right away with his expulsion from Oxford.
But what about later? The danger. was constant.
His sustained attacks on the priesthood and established
religion in the notes to Queen Mab were so incendiary
that they resulted in two separate prosecutions
in 1821. The Society for the Suppression of Vice.
This was a private organization dedicated to
enforcing morality, and they saw Shelley as a
direct threat to public order. He was literally
practicing his philosophy under the constant
threat of going to prison for religious libel.
And this rejection of established religion and
social conformity, it extended directly to the
institution institution of marriage. This leads
to his controversial and personally destructive
advocacy of free love. Shelley's concept of free
love, and this is important, it wasn't about
hedonism. It was based on the philosophical premises
of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. It
argued that human connection should be based
purely on spontaneous mutual affection. Not on
economic contracts or religious ceremony. Exactly.
He saw traditional marriage as a form of social
and financial slavery that just stifled individual
liberty. Let's look at the specific language
he used in the notes for Queen Mab. He didn't
just criticize marriage. He tore it down. He
called it a system studiously hostile to human
happiness. He was particularly concerned with
the effect it had on children. He argued that
kids born into unhappy or forced marriages are
nursed in a systematic school of ill humor, violence
and falsehood. So he believed that forcing two
people to stay together when the love had died
just created this toxic domestic environment
that perpetuated corruption and misery in the
next generation. Right. His ideal was a relationship
based purely on the duration of mutual love.
Did he think this would lead to rampant promiscuity,
which is what his conservative detractors were
always claiming? He absolutely denied that. He
argued that if sexual connection were based purely
on affection, it would lead to more stable, honest
and moral unions because people would only engage
when they felt genuine, enduring love. He thought
the lack of freedom, the enforcement of unhappy
unions was what truly led to moral decay. But.
as we've already discussed. His attempts to apply
this personally, the communal living, the attempted
relationships between Hogg and Harriet, Hogg
and Mary, it caused immense human cost and trauma.
How do we reconcile the beautiful ideal with
the ugly, practical fallout? That is the central
dilemma of Shelley's life. He was a radical idealist
who believed human nature was perfectible and
would naturally choose love and generosity if
tyranny was removed. But he failed to account
for the deeply ingrained psychological effects
of social conditioning, jealousy, possessiveness,
grief, that his theories couldn't just magically
erase. His personal life became the laboratory
where his ideals were tested. And ultimately
failed. And that failure contributes directly
to the despair we see in his later poetry. OK,
let's move to the third major pillar of his creed,
his development of nonviolent resistance theory,
which has had this profound long term global
influence. His position on violence was complex.
It was directly forged by his study of the French
Revolution. He believed that even successful
revolutionary violence was often self -defeating.
Because it just replaced one tyranny with another.
Usually a military despotism. Yeah. So his preferred
method was intellectual and ethical resistance.
And we saw this really early on, didn't we? His,
an address to the Irish people in 1812 was explicit
in its caution against force. Yes, he stated
clearly that no change, however good, is worth
achieving if it requires force. He was arguing
for a moral victory, a change of heart and mind,
not a military coup. But he wasn't a total pacifist.
He seemed to make exceptions when armed force
was used to suppress the national will. That's
the pragmatism in him. He conceded that insurrection
was the last resort of resistance if armed force
was being used to explicitly counteract the will
of a nation. This is why he could simultaneously
condemn Peterloo but support armed rebellions
against absolute monarchies like the uprisings
in Spain in 1820 or Greece in 1821. So he drew
a line between offensive violence, which he opposed,
and defensive resistance against established
despotism. Exactly. But his most enduring legacy
in this area comes from The Mask of Anarchy,
written right after the Peterloo Massacre. That
poem is a pure, powerful call to collective nonviolent
action. Scholars now widely consider it perhaps
the first modern statement of the principle of
nonviolent resistance. The Palm urges the victims
of state violence to refuse to fight back, to
maintain their moral high ground, and to allow
the state's violence to be exposed. Rely on public
opinion and moral pressure. And this doctrine
connects him directly, if indirectly, to global
change. It does. While the connection is complex,
it probably runs from Shelley to Henry David
Thoreau's civil disobedience, and then from Thoreau
to Mahatma Gandhi. The philosophical blueprint
for modern civil resistance can absolutely be
traced back to those powerful stanzas he wrote
in response to Peter Liu. Finally, we have to
touch on a key ethical component of his creed
that is so surprisingly modern. His deep commitment
to vegetarianism. Shelley converted to a vegetable
diet in early March 1812. He sustained it with
only occasional lapses for the rest of his life.
And this wasn't some trendy health kick. It was
a profound philosophical stance. Influenced by
classical authors like Pythagoras, but also by
contemporary proponents. Right, like John Frank
Newton. But what makes him a true pioneer is
the rigor he applied to the practice, especially
in his essay, A Vindication of Natural Diet.
What were his arguments? Very contemporary. Strikingly
so. Yes, he cited the spiritual and health benefits
and alleviating animal suffering, the ethics
of cruelty. But he also applied political and
economic logic. He focused on the sheer inefficiency
of agricultural land use required for animal
husbandry compared to growing plants. So he was
making an early proto -environmental and economic
justice argument. Precisely. He argued that the
commercialization of animal food production worsened
economic inequality. It consumed resources. that
could otherwise feed the poor, and it ensured
the land was inefficiently managed for profit,
not for sustenance. For Shelley, your diet was
a fundamental ethical and political issue linked
directly to the social structure. And this was
a theory that had concrete, practical results.
Absolutely. His advocacy directly inspired the
founding of the Vegetarian Society in England
in 1847, and it influenced the lifelong vegetarianism
of major public intellectuals, including George
Bernard Shaw. It just demonstrates that Shelley's
radical ideas were durable. They transformed
from philosophical tracts into real -world social
movements decades after he died. The life of
this brilliant, frantic, and uncompromising radical
came to its sudden, dramatic... and tragic end
at sea. He was just 29. On July 8, 1822, Shelley,
his friend Edward Williams, and their boat boy
set sail from Livorno, heading back to Larisi.
They were on the Don Juan, a small, open boat
that was custom -built for Shelley. What caused
the wreck? Was it just the storm? Or was there
something more sinister, as was rumored? The
boat was lost just a few hours later in a severe
storm. And while Mary Shelley would later cling
to the belief that the boat had a defect or that
they were intentionally run down, it was most
likely a lethal combination of the terrible weather
and the crew's poor seamanship. Unfortunately,
yes. Shelley and Williams, despite their love
for sailing, were notably poor sailors. Ten days
later, his badly decomposed body washed ashore
near Viraggio. How was he identified? Edward
Trelawney, who organized the search, was able
to identify the body from the clothing, and in
a moment that just perfectly fuses the personal
and the poetic, by a small volume of John Keats'
Lamia found tucked into his jacket pocket. Keats.
The poet Shelley had both admired and elegized
in Adonais. He was literally with him at the
moment of his death. Now we arrive at that macabre
aftermath that really solidified. The Shelley
legend, the cremation on the beach. Why did they
have to burn his body? Strict Italian quarantine
laws, right, to prevent the spread of disease.
Exactly. Bodies washed ashore often had to be
cremated immediately where they were found. Trelawney
arranged for the cremation on the beach near
Via Reggio. It was this intensely powerful, almost
pagan scene witnessed by Byron and Lee Hunt.
And this brings us to the famous, bizarre legend
of the heart that refused to burn. Yes. The story
goes that Shelley's presumed heart, the organ
at least, resisted the intense fire and was retrieved
from the ashes by Trelawney. There's scientific
speculation about that, isn't there? Yes, that
it was either his liver or perhaps a heart that
had been calcified from an earlier tubercular
infection, which would make it more resistant
to the flames. So Trelawney retrieves this scorched
relic. What happens to it? Does he give it to
Mary? Not right away, which caused yet another
emotional battle. Trelawney initially gave the
organ to Lee Hunt, who preserved it in spirits
of wine. Mary Shelley had to fight intensely
for the return of her husband's remains. Hunt
famously refused to relinquish it until much
later. And his ashes. They were eventually buried
in the Protestant cemetery of Rome, bearing the
poignant Latin inscription, Cordium Heart of
Hearts, and those evocative lines from Shakespeare's
The Tempest. Nothing of him that doth fade, but
doth suffer a sea change. into something rich
and strange. That imagery of sea change, of transformation,
was such a powerful contrast to the immediate
brutal hostility his death was met with back
in Tory England. The establishment's hatred was
just palpable. The Tory London newspaper, The
Courier, printed an editorial that summed it
all up with appalling bluntness. Shelley, the
writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned.
Now he knows whether there is God or no. Wow.
It just shows that even in death, he was perceived
as a danger, an infidel who deserved divine retribution.
And despite that hostility and the fact that
he sold poorly in his lifetime, we're talking
average editions of only 250 copies, his poetry
quickly gained traction posthumously. But in
very specific circles. Crucially, yes. His work
became immensely popular in radical and reformist
circles. It was adopted by the Owenists, who
were early British socialists, and the Chartists,
who were campaigning fiercely for working class
political reform. They saw his work not as abstract
literature, but as a practical political rallying
cry. But his transition into the literary mainstream,
that seems to have been heavily mediated. mostly
by his own wife, Mary Shelley. That's a highly
contested but widely accepted point among biographers.
Mary Shelley, in her attempts to establish his
reputation and ensure his survival in the conservative
literary world, heavily edited his poems for
publication in 1824 and again in 1839. What was
she cutting out? She was intentionally downplaying
or removing his most aggressively radical political
and religious ideas. She was sanitizing his legacy.
She chose to emphasize his pure, ethereal...
the side of him that wrote beautiful odes over
the fiery political agitator who wrote The Mask
of Anarchy. And this sanitization, in turn, shaped
how subsequent generations of critics viewed
him. It absolutely did. It set the stage for
much of the 20th century critical debate. Influential
modernists like T .S. Eliot and F .R. Leavis,
they often focused on what they saw as stylistic
flaws or just found his radical ideas repellent.
Which all solidified into Matthew Arnold's famous
backhanded compliment that Shelley was a beautiful
and ineffectual angel. But wait, how can someone
who inspired Marx and Gandhi be described as
ineffectual? Isn't that a profound misreading
based on the very version of Shelley that Mary
presented? It's precisely that. Arnold's reading
focuses on the lyrical, ethereal Shelley, the
one detached from harsh political reality. He
missed the profound, tangible influence. Fortunately,
the critical tide has completely reversed since
the 1960s. Modern scholarship now acknowledges
his full complexity. They celebrate him as...
A superb craftsman, a lyric poet without rival,
and surely one of the most advanced skeptical
intellects ever to write a poem, they've reintegrated
the political mind with the lyrical genius. Speaking
of complex literary connections, we have to address
the long -running Frankenstein controversy. Given
the intense intellectual ferment and shared trauma
of their lives, how much did Percy Bysshe Shelley
actually influence Mary's novel? This is a major
area of scholarly contention. Some researchers
like Charlie Robinson have analyzed the original
manuscripts and argue that Shelley's contributions,
his editing, his revisions, his suggestions were
so extensive that he should be considered a genuine
collaborator. They believe he helped shape some
of the novel's philosophical density. Yes. But
the opposing view argues that while he provided
numerous corrections, his work was no more than
what a good, high -level line editor would provide
today. They argue the novel's core vision, the
critique of patriarchal science, the psychological
horror that remained Mary's own. But regardless
of the final percentage, it's undeniable that
the intense intellectual and emotional atmosphere
he created was the perfect catalyst for Frankenstein's
creation. And finally, a century after his death,
you get organizations like the Keats Shelley
Memorial Association, founded in 1903. They now
maintain his grave. They run the Keats Shelley
Memorial House in Rome. It's a recognition that
despite all the attempts to silence him, the
profound power of the romantic movement he helped
define could not be extinguished. Hashtag hashtag
outro. Percy Buscelli packed the lifetime of
rebellion into just 29 years, dying before his
work was truly recognized. He is the ultimate
romantic paradox. A sensitive, ethereal lyric
poet obsessed with purity and beauty. Who was
simultaneously a revolutionary political agitator,
a public atheist, and a social radical who suffered
severe personal crises and continuous persecution
for his refusal to conform. He was forcing his
world to confront ideas that were simply unthinkable
at the time. Nonviolent resistance, anti -clericalism,
free love, proto -environmentalism. Two centuries
before they became part of the accepted discourse.
And he played the ultimate price for that nonconformity.
He lost his family, his fortune, and his social
standing. And remember the historical irony here.
Shelley died believing his revolutionary poetry
had ultimately failed to impact the world. Mostly
because so many of his core political works,
like The Mask of Anarchy and A Defense of Poetry,
were suppressed or unpublished in his lifetime
out of fear of sedition. But those ideas didn't
just vanish. They persisted as a blueprint, later
armed and deployed by revolutionary figures across
the globe. The knowledge you've gained today
is knowing that the fire he faced for his radicalism
was the very crucible that forged the foundations
of global movements. And that raises an important
final question for you, the listener, to carry
forward. Shelley's most fundamental nonconformities,
his atheism, his views on marriage, were seen
as madness. They were cause for his expulsion
and for the loss of his children. so what radical
beliefs do you hold today that are persecuted
dismissed or maybe just ridiculed by the establishment
now but may a century from now become the necessary
foundational principles for world -changing political
and ethical movements the poet's job after all
is to be the trumpet of a prophecy