Percy Bysshe Shelley

I had a really hard time trying to understand what Shelley was trying to say in Mont Blanc, and I really still do not. There are many ways to interpret his reading, but to actually understand what he thought takes a lot. I think he is contrasting the mountain of Mont Blanc with society or human nature.

“Of heaven is as a law, inhabits thee!

And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea,

If to the human mind’s imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?

He seems to contrast the mountain with many aspects of social behavior. He describes society as “Now dark-now glittering-now reflecting gloom”(pg. 393) . He was at the forefront of radicalism and was appreciated by Karl Marx. I think his growing up pushed him away from normality. As noted on page 391 he was the grandson of a wealth land owner and his father was a member of Parliament.

From the above passage Shelley is saying that without imagination there is no future. For a society to move forward there has to be a vision or plan to do so. Shelley writes with dark language but only to describe the stagnant thoughts of society. I think he is talking about how it takes great change to move mountain and not by only one hand. He was a radicalist who upheld atheism. He was trying to understand himself why others were filled with “silence and solitude” and not questioning their beliefs or ideals.

In “Ozymandias” the traveler meets a man who tells him the story of a statue lying in the desert which is in pieces. On the statue it reads,

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

This is ironic because the statue is laying in the middle of the desert with nothing around it. There is nothing to be king of for the landscape the statue is in. Shelley uses this situation to explain the lonliness of man. No matter how powerful or the amount of possessions owned, one can not buy happiness or love.