A study in Shelley's "Triumph of life"

Abstract

Shelley's last long poem, the "Triumph of Life," was written at Lerici, on the Bay of Spezzia, in the spring and summer of 1822, the last year of Shelley's life. Of those days at Lerici and of the writing of the "Triumph of Life" Mrs. Shelley wrote: In the wild hut beautiful bay of Spezzia, the winds and waves which he loved became his playmates. His days were chiefly spent on the water; the management of his boat, its alterations and improvements, were his principal occupation. At night, when the unclouded moon shone on the calm sea, he often went alone in his little shallop to the rocky eaves that bordered it, and sitting beneath their shelter, wrote the "Triumph of Life," the last of his productions.... The poem was left a fragment. Since it is the last of Shelley's works, it has occasioned a great deal of speculation as to how Shelley meant to finish it: whether he meant to prepare another utopia in which the sordid masses of humanity, plctured in the fragment, are redeemed from wretchedness, or whether he meant to leave them a deluded, drifting throng.