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I forgot the tendency of early 19th century reviews to quote whole pages at a time, so Hazlitt's exasperated take on Posthumous Poems had me suddenly reading Shelley.

Have I been in flight from him? I've read bits here and there, these last years, but my guard was up - I set myself about it. Turned off some lights in my mind before beginning. This time turned a corner he was there.

Did something of mine become bound up in what he wrote? It's so personal to me. I was immediately, I mean immediately, both happier and sadder than I've been in ages.

But I was too when I read him first. He's like nothing else. Maybe Proust or Shakespeare or someone builds to something similar. But Shelley's there at once.

Part of me admires people who have no favorites, who disregard names, who pick up the new thing as if newly born. For me it's different.

Date: 2013-04-22 12:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nightspore.livejournal.com
Shelley's unutterably amazing. Where he gets it from is Dante. Each makes me more amazed by the other.

Also: this week we talk about every line in The Triumph of Life.
Edited Date: 2013-04-22 12:14 pm (UTC)

Date: 2013-04-24 05:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] proximoception.livejournal.com
Dante on fast forward. Reading it now.

Date: 2013-04-24 05:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] proximoception.livejournal.com
Also: the same sorts of phrases Hazlitt uses to praise Dante come up in his condemnations of Shelley.

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