‘Time is flying’: Lyrical And Historical Time in the Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley

Year 2019, Vol 18 IDEA Special Issue, 37 - 49, 31.12.2019

Cian Duffy

https://doi.org/10.21547/jss.602615

Cited By: 1

Abstract

The quotation in the title of this essay is taken from a
manuscript fragment composed by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
a few weeks before his death in July 1822. 
As a reflection on the calamities which time can unleash, this fragment
might seem eerily prescient.  But as this
essay shows, Shelley’s fragment – together with his contemporary poem ‘The
Triumph of Life’, left unfinished at his death – is only the latest instance of
a sustained interrogation, in Shelley’s poetry, of the nature and implications
of time.  Shelley’s major political works
often headline confidence in a linear, progressive interpretation of historical
progress, with natural and social processes cooperating to produce meliorative
change over long periods of time.  Beneath
this prima facie confidence, however, these same works often betray an anxiety
that time might rather be an unbroken and unbreakable, catastrophic cycle of
creation and destruction.  My essay
traces this tension in a selection of Shelley’s political and lyrical verse and
links it to key contemporary debates in political theory and natural
philosophy.  Studying Shelley’s
engagement with time sheds new light not only on Shelley’s thought but also on
the ways in which Romantic poetry could embody this key facet of human
experience. 

Keywords

Shelley, time, lyricism

‘Zaman Uçuyor’: Percy Bysshe Shelley’nin Şiirlerinde Lirik ve Tarihsel Zaman

Abstract

Bu makalenin başlığındaki alıntı, İngiliz Romantik şair Percy Bysshe Shelley’nin Temmuz 1822’deki ölümünden birkaç hafta önce yazdığı bir fragmandan alınmıştır. Zamanın sebep olabileceği felaketler üzerine bir düşünce olarak bu fragmana ürkütücü bir öngörü olarak bakılabilir. Ancak bu makalenin de ortaya koyduğu gibi, Shelley’nin bu fragmanı -kendisinin ölümüyle yarım kalmış aynı dönem şiiri ‘Yaşamın Zaferi’ ile birlikte- Shelley’nin şiirlerinde zamanın doğası ve manası üzerine hep sürdürdüğü sorgulamaların sadece en son örneğidir. Shelley’nin başlıca politik eserleri genellikle düzçizgisel, ilerlemeci bir tarih yorumunu doğal ve toplumsal süreçlerin katkısını da hesaba katarak uzun yıllar içinde iyiye doğru evrilen bir tarihsel bakış açısıyla ele alır. Ancak ilk bakışta öyle görünse de, aynı eserler genellikle zamanın kırılmamış ve kırılamaz bir yaratım ve yıkım döngüsü olabileceği endişesini de gizleyemez. Bu çalışma, bahsi geçen gerilimin izini, Shelley’nin bazı politik ve lirik şiirleri üzerinden sürüp, bu gerilimi günümüz politik kuramı ve doğa felsefesindeki kilit tartışmalara bağlamayı hedeflemektedir. Shelley’nin zamanla ilişkisini çalışmak yalnızca Shelley’nin düşüncelerine değil, aynı zamanda insanlık deneyiminin bu temel alanına Romantik şiirin nasıl şekil verdiğini kavrama yollarına da ışık tutacaktır.

Keywords

Shelley, Zaman, Lirizm

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