Hymn to Intellectual Beauty
In 1816, as he was surrounded by the beauty of Switzerland and the view of Mont Blanc, Percy Bysshe Shelley composed his Hymn to Intellectual Beauty which Kelly A. Weisman refers to as one of his “songs of struggle over the meditation between desire and its tropes” (42). Like most other works from the Romantic period, nature, individualism, and imagination are each a major part this poem.
By reading the title one would think that the poem is about beauty of the mind however this is not the case. Shelley writes about a spirit that is supreme to us and describes it as a power that we can hold in our hearts; so rather than the intellectual mind itself, Shelley’s hymn refers to the intellectual idea of beauty and an abstract inspiration of the "Spirit of Beauty" (13). The poem explores the qualities of beauty through images of nature and the impact it has on human beings – “Love, Hope, and Self-esteem” (37).
Shelley is able to convey his emotion through similes, metaphors, and repetition. As in most of his work, “he takes exceptional care with the pattern of end rhyming, a technique consistent throughout his career” (Morton 47). Each stanza has the same rhyme scheme (ABBAACCBDDEE) and the corresponding lines of each stanza follow the same pattern in iambic rhythm; lines one through four, along with the final twelfth line of each stanza are written in pentameter, the fifth line of each stanza is in hexameter, and the remaining of each stanza in tetrameter. The speaker of the poem has dealt with a childhood experience that changed him, and the poem that the adult is writing “enacts this change artistically by building up a trend of imagery” (Hall 37).
Jean Hall suggests that the speaker presents his intuitions through the way he sees things and speaks about them; this means that the poem itself must be fiction (38). However Shelley reveals the fictions as “consciously constructed” ones and the “very strength of the ‘Hymn’ is a function of its obviously fictional
By reading the title one would think that the poem is about beauty of the mind however this is not the case. Shelley writes about a spirit that is supreme to us and describes it as a power that we can hold in our hearts; so rather than the intellectual mind itself, Shelley’s hymn refers to the intellectual idea of beauty and an abstract inspiration of the "Spirit of Beauty" (13). The poem explores the qualities of beauty through images of nature and the impact it has on human beings – “Love, Hope, and Self-esteem” (37).
Shelley is able to convey his emotion through similes, metaphors, and repetition. As in most of his work, “he takes exceptional care with the pattern of end rhyming, a technique consistent throughout his career” (Morton 47). Each stanza has the same rhyme scheme (ABBAACCBDDEE) and the corresponding lines of each stanza follow the same pattern in iambic rhythm; lines one through four, along with the final twelfth line of each stanza are written in pentameter, the fifth line of each stanza is in hexameter, and the remaining of each stanza in tetrameter. The speaker of the poem has dealt with a childhood experience that changed him, and the poem that the adult is writing “enacts this change artistically by building up a trend of imagery” (Hall 37).
Jean Hall suggests that the speaker presents his intuitions through the way he sees things and speaks about them; this means that the poem itself must be fiction (38). However Shelley reveals the fictions as “consciously constructed” ones and the “very strength of the ‘Hymn’ is a function of its obviously fictional
Cited: Shelley, Percy Bysshe. "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Major Authors. Ed. M. H. Abrams, et al. 7th ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 1717-1718. O’Neill, Michael. The Human Mind’s Imaginings: Conflict and Achievement in Shelley’s Poetry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Hall, Jean. The Transforming Image: A Study of Shelley’s Major Poetry. Urbana, IL: Illinois UP, 1980. Weisman, Karen A. Imageless Truths: Shelley’s Poetic Fictions. Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania UP, 1994. Watson, J. R. “Shelley’s ‘Hymn to Intellectual Beauty’ and the Romantic Hymn.” Durham University Journal 85.54 (1993): 203-210. Morton, Timothy. The Cambridge Companion to Shelley. Cambridge, Eng: Cambridge UP, 2006.