Special event at SPC
Wed. March 30 at 7:30pm
Dr. Jonas Cope explores Shelley’s “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”
Free to the public
1719 25th Street between Q and R
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote the “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty” while sailing around Lake Geneva with Lord Byron in late June 1816. Though the “Hymn” is arguably one of the finest poems in the British Romantic canon, it has received far less attention—unjustly—than some of Shelley’s larger and more famous poems, like Queen Mab and Prometheus Unbound. Part of its fascination lies in the fact that there are two different versions of the “Hymn”: one written in a notebook—lost in a trunk in 1816 and only recently discovered in 1976—the other one serving as the copy text (still lost!) for the “Hymn” as it appears in print in Leigh Hunt’s radical periodical, The Examiner (1817). Thus the poem can be thought of as having been brought to completion twice: in this sense it is released from the absolute marble of one final verbal form, permitted to live again in other shapes—strikingly like the very Intellectual Beauty that the “Hymn” describes. Join Dr. Jonas Cope, Assistant Professor of English at California State University, Sacramento, as he explores the biographical, literary, political and philosophical contexts that merged to produce simultaneously one of the most enigmatic and wonderful poems in British literary history. Participants are strongly encouraged to read the (relatively short) “Hymn” in advance of the talk. A copy of the two main versions of the “Hymn” will be provided to audience members for convenience.
Poetry Foundation’s link to “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”
