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The following is a tragic tale about how valuable work of literature was rediscovered, and then undiscovered. This loss for the arts was not due purely to negligence or accident, but to a selfish violation to the memory of Percy Bysshe Shelley. Even if you don't read Shelley, you should, at the very least, be profoundly perturbed by the ways in which the wealthy claim exclusive ownership over our cultural history. Shelley was a victim of avaricious entitlement.
In 2010, The Guardian reported a finding the rocked the literary world. Daisy Hay, a Cambridge graduate, was snooping through the library, as most graduates do, and came across an old manuscript. It turns out that these writings were the unpublished memoirs of one Claire Clairmont, Byron's former lover and a friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley. In these memoirs, she described these two poets in no genial terms, calling them "monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery." Clairmont, who was at that point a Catholic, branded Byron and Shelley as worshipers of "free love", who ruined the lives of women. Clairmont had personal experience with this ruination, and good reason to be sour. Soon after getting her pregnant with Allegra (who died at age eight), Byron abandoned Clairmont, presumably because he was married to another woman at the time. For this, she labelled him, "a human tyger [sic] slaking his thirst for inflicting pain upon defenceless women" (Alberge).
The writings have proved to be a boon to historians and biographers everywhere, and has helped to increase our understanding of the relationship between Clairmont and the Shelley's. Imagine, however, if Hay decided to sell Clairmont's memoirs to the highest bidder with the new owner refusing to allow anyone else to read the memoirs except himself. Such an action would be rightfully denounced as a greedy theft of history, a selfish attempt to claim personal rights to our global cultural heritage. Distasteful though it may be to entertain such callous contempt for the ever fragile past, it isn't beyond the depravity of some human beings to do so. Daisy Hay was not such an entity. Quaritch Rare Books & Manuscripts, it appears, is.
Of course, when Quaritch sold the recently discovered "Poetical Essay" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, they may have assumed that the owner would be generous enough to share Shelley's words with the public. Though if so, then it would've certainly been little trouble to ask. They were careless, however, in hastily selling off the "Poetical Essay" to the one with the fattest wallet. Quaritch knew how valuable this piece of Shelley's was, (or at least they should have) yet they felt no responsibility to alert local historians? Shameful. I don't have to tell you the exact amount of money paid to Quaritch for selling the "Poetical Essay", except that it weighed about the same as the silver coins paid to Judas Iscariot.
The news of the "Poetical Essay's" rediscovery was the toast of The Guardian in 2006,
"The revelation in today's Times Literary Supplement that an early poem by the great Percy Bysshe Shelley has come to light, and is in the possession of a London bookseller, will cause even more excitement than most. This is a wonderful discovery: few Shelley scholars ever believed the poem, Poetical Essay, would resurface and some even doubted its existence. It is a fantastic chance to learn more about the political and poetic development of the young Shelley," (O'Brien).
However, four years later, the same year, mind you, that Daisy Hay found Clairmont's memoirs, the "Poetical Essay" had vanished once more from the public eye. Michael Rosen noted that the poem in it's entirety was never made available, the reason being that only three people had read it: owner at Quaritch, the person who bought the poem, and some lucky professor by the name of Henry R Woudhuysen. The new owner, apparently, isn't interested in letting any of us peasants read his new treasure. More odd to Rosen, though, was the lack of outrage over the whole scandal, "we were approaching the fourth anniversary of the rediscovery of Shelley's "Poetical Essay" and that we, the public, were no nearer to reading it." (The Guardian) Rosen succinctly expresses his anger well in this paragraph,
"First of all, I would like the poem to be available to read by anyone who is interested. I believe that should have happened the moment it was rediscovered. Secondly, I want to know why Professor Woudhuysen was given the right to look at the poem, but no one else was. Thirdly, I want to know why this situation doesn't seem to bother anyone in the great republic of letters, least of all that guardian of literary precision and exactitude, the TLS. Isn't it an outrage, that a long dead, great writer's work can be hidden away in its owner's drawer?"
Rosen is completely correct here, "Owning manuscripts is one thing: owning the contents is quite another." Copyright laws back him up, too. In general, works fall into public domain 70 years after the death of the creator. This has recently been stalled in the United States by corporations such as Disney, but that's a discussion for another time. What matters, for the moment, is that Shelley's "Poetical Essay" was written in 1811, well past due any claims to copyright. Thus, the "Poetical Essay" is in the public domain, meaning: it belongs to us, the public. We, collectively, have a right to the contents of Shelley's essay, and it is illegal, let me repeat, illegal for the current owner to claim otherwise. There should be a manhunt for this shrewd, elitist coward, I want a subpoena for his arrest. Quaritch should be, at the very least, fined for their blatant carelessness with such a historical artifact. Their hands aren't clean in this affair. They are complicit, in every sense of the word.
So just what was Shelley's "Poetical Essay" all about? It is an anti-militarist piece, written in defense of Peter Finnerty, a critic of Britian's suppression of an Irish revolt, who was later imprisoned for speaking out. Paul O'Brien gave the poem background upon its discovery,
"But his first and defining political campaign was about Irish religious and political freedom - and it is here where the discovery of Poetical Essay is most relevant. Shelley published it in support of Peter Finnerty, the Irish journalist jailed for libelling Viscount Castlereagh, the Anglo-Irish politician who was sent to Ireland in 1797 to crush the United Irishmen rebelling against British rule. Castlereagh's brutality made him the most hated man in Ireland. Shelley was a professed admirer of the United Irishmen, and the events and personalities of the 1798 rebellion were crucial to his political and intellectual development. His abiding hatred for Castlereagh was venomously expressed in the Mask of Anarchy:
"I met murder on the way -
He had a mask like Castlereagh -
Very smooth he looked, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him
"Finnerty was the editor of the Dublin newspaper the Press and a man of great courage. He was indicted for an article which denounced the actions of Castlereagh, found guilty of sedition, imprisoned for two years and sentenced to stand for an hour in the pillory in Green Street in Dublin. Shelley, then a young undergraduate at Oxford University, was eager to show support for Finnerty. He placed an advertisement in the Oxford Herald announcing the new work, a Poetical Essay, "for assisting to maintain in prison Mr Peter Finnerty", for sale "price two shillings" (The Guardian).
This showed great courage on Shelley's part (though his relations with women may be another matter), and made me think of another great poet who wrote on behalf of Irish suffering, William Butler Yeats. A fragment of Shelley's "Poetical Essay" has made its way into public. It's sharp and rhythmic, certainly, but what I want is meat, when we've been fed only the bone. Regardless, take it away, Shelley.
"Millions to fight compell'd, to fight or die
In mangled heaps on War's red altar lie . . .
When legal murders swell the lists of pride;
When glory's views the titled idiot guide.
* * *
Man must assert his native rights, must say
We take from Monarchs' hand the granted sway;
Oppressive law no more shall power retain,
Peace, love, and concord, once shall rule again,
And heal the anguish of a suffering world;
Then, then shall things which now confusedly hurled,
Seem Chaos, be resolved to order's sway,
And error's night be turned to virtue's day."
Bibliography
Alberge, Dalya. "Byron's lover takes revenge from beyond the grave." The Guardian, March 27, 2010. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/mar/28/byron-and-shelley-were-monsters
O'Brien, Paul. "Prophet of the revolution." The Guardian, July 14, 2006. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/14/poetry.comment
Rosen, Michael. "Owning manuscripts is one thing: owning the contents is quite another." The Guardian, July 23, 2010. Web. http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2010/jul/23/owning-manuscripts-owning-contents
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