By David Gosselin “To a Skylark” is perhaps one of the greatest nests of poetic paradoxes in the history of English poetry. Its language is shaped around the creation of ironical images, starting with the enigmatic “Hail to thee, blithe Spirit/Bird thou never wert!” and proceeding to describe “unpremeditated art,” “a cloud of fire” and […]

Beyond the Lines: On Shelley’s “Ode to a Skylark”

I am sure there are great talented poets that are VERY BAD philosophers or thinkers, such is the case of ΠΑΡΜΕΝΙΔΗΣ Parmenídes compared with ΕΡΑΚΛΕΙΤΟΣ Herákleitos according to the philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, and I agree with Him. The fact is that Shelly is, in fact, a shallow and a political idiot, a pervert and degenerate who did everything he could to destabilise the values of the English society of his day…: »Let us give money to the poor, because they suffer… This way we will show we have a conscience (a bad one)«… »Oh, I want to describe life and its experiences with physical or abstract metaphors which give NO clue of NOTHING…«, but wait a minute, as I have had thought, metaphor does not describe anything unique, because they are vague ideas, concepts or conceptual schemes that are ‘universals’ which do NOT describe anything in particular and, THUS, are incapable of describing experiences or anything UNIQUE, that which anyone has lived by.

And then, one can only conclude, as the last straw or last drop «of poison», that a poet that does not talk about anything palpable, anything which hands can touch, or noses can smell, or eyes to see, anything ‘fucking’ REAL, has NO clue of what ΟΜΕΡΟΣ Hómeros «or any classical Ancient Hellenic poet» or any poet from the Renaissance, or Baroque poet has to say.

It is beyond me how anyone could see that «above, in the article mentioned (and Shelly)» as a profound work art… I would take all the work of Lord Byron before it gladly, and would even forgot about Shelly, as it is as if an empty shell.