Adonaïs

Adonaïs: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats, Author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. (Adonaies) (pronounced /ˌædɵˈneɪ.ɨs/) is a pastoral elegy written by Percy Bysshe Shelley for John Keats in 1821, and widely regarded as one of Shelley's best and most well-known works. The poem, which is in 495 lines in 55 Spenserian stanzas, was composed in the spring of 1821 immediately after April 11, when Shelley heard of Keats' death seven weeks earlier. It is a pastoral elegy, in the English tradition of John Milton's Lycidas. Shelley had studied and translated classical elegies. The title of the poem is likely a merging of the Greek "Adonis", the god of fertility, and the Hebrew "Adonai" (meaning "Lord"). Most critics suggest that Shelley used Virgil's tenth Eclogue, in praise of Cornelius Gallus, as a model.

It was published by Charles Ollier in July 1821 with a preface in which Shelley made the mistaken assertion that Keats had died from a rupture of the lung induced by rage at the unfairly harsh reviews of his verse in the Quarterly Review and other journals. He also thanked Joseph Severn for caring for Keats in Rome. This praise increased literary interest in Severn's works.

Shelley was introduced to Keats in Hampstead towards the end of 1816 by their mutual friend, Leigh Hunt, who was to transfer his enthusiasm from Keats to Shelley. Shelley's huge admiration of Keats was not entirely reciprocated. Keats had reservations about Shelley's dissolute behaviour, and found some of Shelley's advice patronising (the suggestion, for example, that Keats should not publish his early work). It is also possible that Keats resented Hunt's transferred allegiance. Despite this, the two poets exchanged letters when Shelley and his wife moved to Italy. When Keats fell ill, the Shelleys invited him to stay with them in Pisa but Keats elected to travel with Severn. Despite this rebuff, Shelley's affection for Keats remained undimmed until his death in 1822 when a copy of Keats' works was found in a pocket on his drowned body. Shelley said of Keats, after inviting him to stay with him in Pisa after Keats fell ill: "I am aware indeed that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me and this is an additional motive & will be an added pleasure."

Shelley regarded Adonais the "least imperfect" of his works.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: Adonaïs

Synopsis

Stanzas 1-35

Adonais begins with the announcement of his death and the mourning that followed: "I weep for Adonais—he is dead!" In Stanzas 2 through 35 a series of mourners lament the death of Adonais. The mother of Adonais, Urania, is invoked to arise to conduct the ceremony at his bier. The allusion is to Urania, the goddess of astronomy, and to the goddess Venus, who is also known as Venus Urania.

The overriding theme is one of despair. Mourners are implored to "weep for Adonais—he is dead!" In Stanza 9 the "flocks" of the deceased appear, representing his dreams and inspirations. In Stanza 13, the personifications of the thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and skills of the deceased appear. In Stanza 22, Urania is awakened by the grief of Misery and the poet. The lament is invoked: "He will awake no more, oh, never more!" Urania pleads in vain for Adonais to awake and to arise.

In Stanzas 30 through 34 a series of human mourners appears. The "Pilgrim of Eternity" is Lord Byron, George Gordon, who had met and was a friend of Shelley's but who had never met Keats. The Irish poet Thomas Moore then appears who laments the sadness and loss that time causes. Shelley himself and Leigh Hunt are also part of the "procession of mourners". In Stanzas 31 through 34 the mourner is described as "one frail Form" who has "fled astray," "his branded and ensanguined brow," a brow "like Cain’s or Christ’s." Stanzas 36-55

The sense of despair and hopelessness continues. In Stanza 37 the poet muses over a just punishment for the "nameless worm" and "noteless blot" who is the anonymous (now known to be John Wilson Croker) and highly critical reviewer of Keats’s Endymion (1818), who, in Shelley’s opinion, traumatized John Keats, worsening his condition. The worst punishment that Shelley can contrive is that such a scoundrel should live: "Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame!/ Live!" Faced with the contradiction that he would wish a long life upon the miscreant who took his hero’s life, in stanza 38 the poet bursts open the gates of consolation that are required of the pastoral elegy: "Nor let us weep that our delight is fled/ Far from these carrion kites." In stanzas 35 and 36, Shelley laments that—like Thomas Chatterton, Sir Philip Sidney, and Lucan—Keats died young and did not live to develop as a poet . Keats transcends human life and has been unified with the immortal: "He has outsoared the shadow of our night;/Envy and calumny and hate and pain,/ ... Can touch him not and torture not again.... He is made one with Nature." Keats is as one with Nature, the Power, the One, and the one Spirit.

Adonais "is not dead …/ He hath awakened from the dream of life." Shelley turns his grief from Adonais to "we" who must live on and "decay/ Like corpses in a charnel," and after a series of stanzas (39–49) in which he celebrates the richer and fuller life that Adonais must now be experiencing, the poet becomes mindful that he is in Rome, itself a city rife with visible records of loss and decay. Moreover, he is in the Protestant cemetery there, where Shelley’s three-year-old son is buried as well; and yet, as if mocking all despair, a "light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread." Nature does not abhor death and decay, he sees; it is humans, who fear and hate in the midst of life, who do. "What Adonais is, why fear we to become?" he asks in stanza 51.

The reversal of attitude is completed, and in stanza 52 Shelley makes one of the most profound professions of faith in the everlasting and transcendent to be found in all English poetry. It is life’s worldly cares—that obscuring and distracting "dome of many-coloured glass"—not Death that is the enemy and the source of human despair. "Follow where all is fled," he urges, and he goads his own heart into having the courage to face not extinction but "that Light whose smile kindles the Universe." The poem concludes by imagining Adonais to be a part of "the white radiance of Eternity." At the end of the elegy, "like a star," the soul of the dead poet "Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are."

Notable performances

Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones read a part of Adonais on the Brian Jones memorial concert at London's Hyde Park on July 5, 1969. Jones, founder and guitarist of the Stones, had drowned July 3, 1969 in his swimming pool. Before an audience estimated at 250,000 to 300,000, Jagger read the following verses from Adonais:

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
He hath awakened from the dream of life
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. -We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. - Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! - Rome's azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

Actor Vincent Price read Adonais on a Caedmon Records recording which was released, originally in 1956, as an LP record and a cassette recording, Caedmon CPN 1059 and TC 1059. The recording was re-released in 1996.

The English rock band The Cure has recorded a song entitled "Adonais" based on the Shelley elegy as a B side single and on the collection Join The Dots: B Sides and Rarities, 1978-2001 (2004). "Adonais" was originally the B-side to "The 13th", released in 1996.

Star Trek episode

"Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats" by Percy Bysshe Shelley was referenced in "Who Mourns for Adonais?", a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It was episode 31, first broadcast on September 22, 1967 and repeated May 10, 1968 on NBC. The episode was written by Gilbert Ralston and Gene L. Coon, and directed by Marc Daniels. The title is derived from line 415 of the Shelley elegy. In Greek mythology, Adonis was the god of fertility.

References

• "Percy Shelley: Adonais", John Keats (February 12, 2004). Retrieved June 30, 2005.
• Sandy, Mark. 'Adonais (1821)', The Literary Encyclopaedia (September 20, 2002). Retrieved June 30, 2005.
• Beatty, Bernard. "The Transformation of Discourse: Epipsychidion, Adonais, and some lyrics". In: Essays on Shelley, ed. Miriam Allott. Liverpool University Press, 1982.
• Bertoneche, Caroline. "From Poet to Poet or Shelley’s Inconsistencies in Keats’s Panegyric: Adonais as an Autobiographical Work of Art", 2007, [En ligne], mis en ligne le 15 juin 2007. URL: http://erea.revues.org/index180.html. Consulté le 07 mai 2009.
• Brigham, Linda C. (1999). "Disciplinary Hybridity in Shelley's Adonais." Mosaic (Winnipeg), Vol. 32.
• Epstein, Andrew. (1999). "'Flowers that Mock the Corse Beneath': Shelley's Adonais, Keats, and Poetic Influence." KSJ, 48, pp. 90–128.
• Everest, Kelvin. (2007). "Shelley's Adonais and John Keats." Essays in Criticism, 57(3), pp. 237–264.
• Mahony, Patrick. J. (1964). "An Analysis of Shelley's Craftsmanship in Adonais." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 4. pp. 555–68.
• Meirelles, Alexandre. Adonais. Book Review. August 26, 2007.
• O'Leary, Joseph S. "Plotinus in 'Mont Blanc' and 'Adonais'." Essays on Literary and Theological Themes. Link: http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/08/plotinus_in_mon.html
• Roberts, Charles G.D. Shelley's Adonais and Alastor. NY: Silver, Burdett, 1902.
• Sharp, Michele Turner. (Summer, 2000). "Mirroring the Future: Adonais, Elegy, and the Life in Letters." Criticism, 42, 3.
• Ward, J.V. (2003). "The Constant Theme of Death in the Works of Keats and Shelley." Online link: http://www.english-literature-essays.com/keats_and_shelley.htm
• Weeks, Jerome. "O, weep for Adonais -- for he is being adapted by Hollywood." book/daddy, Jerome Weeks on books: http://www.artsjournal.com/bookdaddy/2007/04/o_weep_for_adonais_for_he_is_b.html