#shelley

Had Mary Shelley fretted so? Maybe yes, maybe no. She’d begun her classic work on a dare. Had culled a dream to bring it into being. But it was not lost on Laura that the story might be a prolonged exercise in Shelley’s personal terrors. The subtitle of the work was 'Prometheus Unbound,' and Laura wondered if Shelley herself was not Prometheus in the form of the wandering monster, who desperately sought love and acceptance but was ultimately driven to face an icy landscape that seemed almost fantastical—the way our own subconscious could be, white and frozen-slippery. ↗

— L.L. Barkat

#mary-shelley #writers #writing #dreams

We had a lot in common. I loved him and he loved him. ↗

— Shelley Winters

#shelley-winters #humor

I do know that for the sympathy of one living being, I would make peace with all. I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#frankenstein #horror #killer #mary-shelley #monster

Abyssinias "I met a traveler from an antique land Who said: A huge four-footed limestone form Sits in the desert, sinking in the sand. Its whiskered face, though marred by wind and storm, Still flaunts the dainty ears, the collar band And feline traits the sculptor well portrayed: The bearing of a born aristocrat, The stubborn will no mortal can dissuade. And on its base, in long-dead alphabets, These words are set: "Reward for missing cat! His name is Abyssinias, pet of pets; I, Ozymandias, will a fortune pay For his return. he heard me speak of vets -- O foolish King! And so he ran away. ↗

— Henry N. Beard

#humor #ozymandias #percy-bysshe-shelley #humor

Maybe the real problem wasn’t that she had nothing to write about, but that she had too much. Maybe she wasn’t afraid of her finiteness after all, but rather Infinity and how it called her to begin somewhere, anywhere. To begin might be an acceptance that indeed she was some kind of creator, with tremendous powers. It might mean taking people’s lives into her hands–her own life, her friends’, even her father’s or mother’s. And maybe she was afraid they would think she had animated a wandering Frankenstein no one wanted to hold. ↗

— L.L. Barkat

#mary-shelley #writer-s-block #writing #writers-block

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#before #critic #critics #i #i remember

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. ↗

— Mary Shelley

#mary-shelley #life

[Poetry] strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bear the naked and sleeping beauty which is the spirit of its forms. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#poetry #beauty

Love withers under constraints. Its very essence is liberty; it is comparable neither with obedience, jealousy, nor fear; it is there most pure, perfect, and unlimited where its votaries are in confidence, equality and unreserve. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#obedience #percy-shelley #equality

And others came... Desires and Adorations, Winged Persuasions and veil'd Destinies, Splendours, and Glooms, and glimmering Incarnations Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phantasies; And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the gleam Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, Came in slow pomp; the moving pomp might seem Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream. ↗

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

#schiltz #shelley #splendors-and-glooms #family