''Epipsychidion'' is a major poetical work published in 1821 by

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was an English writer who is considered one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame durin ...

. The work was subtitled: ''Verses addressed to the noble and unfortunate Lady Emilia V, now imprisoned in the convent of''. The title is Greek for "concerning or about a little soul", from ''epi'', "around", "about"; and ''psychidion'', "little soul".

Background

Countess Teresa Viviani, the daughter of the governor of

Pisa Pisa ( ; ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Tuscany, Central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for the Leaning Tow ...

, was nineteen years old. Her father had placed her in the Convent of

Saint Anna According to apocrypha, as well as Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the Bible's canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's na ...

. Shelley had visited her several times and had corresponded with her briefly. After the work was published by Charles and James Ollier in London, Shelley asked them to withdraw it. One possible concern was that readers would interpret the poem biographically. Shelley referred to it as "an idealized history of my life and feelings". The poem contains autobiographical elements, consisting of 604 lines written for Viviani, whom Shelley met while she was "imprisoned" in 1820. The theme of the work is a

meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...

on the nature of ideal love. Shelley advocates

free love Free love is a social movement that accepts all forms of love. The movement's initial goal was to separate the State (polity), state from sexual and romantic matters such as marriage, birth control, and adultery. It stated that such issues we ...

, criticising conventional marriage, which he described as "the weariest and the longest journey". ''Epipsychidion'' opens with an invocation to Emilia as a spiritual sister of the speaker. He addresses her as a "captive bird" for whose nest his poem will be soft rose petals. He calls her an angel of light, the light of the moon seen through mortal clouds, a star beyond all storms. In a letter of 18 June 1822, Shelley described the work: ''Epipsychidion'' was composed at Pisa, in January and February 1821, and was published anonymously in 1821 by Charles and James Ollier, London. The poem was included by

Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ( , ; ; 30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel ''Frankenstein, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'' (1818), which is considered an History of science fiction# ...

in the ''Poetical Works'' in 1839, both editions. The

Bodleian Library The Bodleian Library () is the main research library of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1602 by Sir Thomas Bodley, it is one of the oldest libraries in Europe. With over 13 million printed items, it is the second-largest library in ...

has a first draft of ''Epipsychidion'', "consisting of three versions, more or less complete, of the 'Preface dvertisement; a version in ink and pencil, much cancelled, of the last eighty lines of the poem; and some additional lines which did not appear in print". Shelley informed his publisher Charles Ollier that he wanted ''Epipsychidion'' to be circulated only to the ''sunetoi'', the initiated, the cognoscenti, the enlightened, the "esoteric few".Lauritsen, John. "Homoeroticism in ''Epipsychidion''". 2008.
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Legacy

E. M. Forster Edward Morgan Forster (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970) was an English author. He is best known for his novels, particularly '' A Room with a View'' (1908), ''Howards End'' (1910) and '' A Passage to India'' (1924). He also wrote numerous shor ...

's second novel, ''

The Longest Journey ''The Longest Journey'' () is a 1999 Adventure game, point-and-click adventure video game, written by Ragnar Tørnquist, developed by Norwegian studio Funcom, and released on Microsoft Windows in November 1999; an iOS version was later develope ...

'' (1907), takes its title from a line from the poem.

References

Sources

*Brown, Richard E. "The Role of Dante in ''Epipsychidion''". ''Comparative Literature'', Vol. 30, No. 3, Summer, 1978. *Cameron, Kenneth Neil. "The Planet-Tempest Passage in ''Epipsychidion''." ''PMLA'', 63 (1948), 950–72. *Goslee, Nancy Moore. "Dispersoning Emily: Drafting as Plot in ''Epipsychidion''." ''Keats-Shelley Journal'', Vol. 42, 1993. *Hughes, D.J. "Coherence and Collapse in Shelley, With Particular Reference to ''Epipsychidion''." ''ELH'', Vol. 28, No. 3, September 1961. *McConnell, Frank. "Shelleyan 'Allegory": ''Epipsychidion''." ''Keats-Shelley Journal'', Volume XX (1971), pp. 100–112. *McDayter, Ghislaine. "'O'er Leaping the Bounds': The Sexing of the Creative Soul in Shelley's ''Epipsychidion''." ''Keats-Shelley Journal'' 52 (2003): 26. *Schulze, Earl. "The Dantean Quest of ''Epipsychidion''." ''Studies in Romanticism'', Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer, 1982. *Warren, Andrew. "'Unentangled Intermixture': Love and Materialism in Shelley's ''Epipsychidion''." ''Keats-Shelley Journal'', 2010. *Ulmer, William. ''Shelleyan Eros: The Rhetoric of Romantic Love''. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. *Pinch, Adela. "Romantic Passions: Thinking about the Other in Romantic Love". ''Romantic Circles''. Praxis Series. Web link: http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/passions/pinch/pinch.html *O'Neill, Michael. "Shelley's ''Epipsychidion'': The Before Unapprehended Relations of Things". ''Essays in Criticism'', (1987) XXXVII (2): 135–157. *Jones, Frederick L. "Two Notes on ''Epipsychidion''". ''Modern Language Notes'', Vol. 50, No. 1 (January 1935), p. 40. *Lauritsen, John. “Hellenism and Homoeroticism in Shelley and his Circle”. ''The Journal of Homosexuality'', Volume 49, Numbers 3/4, 2005. *Symonds, John Addington. ''Shelley''. New Edition. English Men of Letters series, edited by John Morley. London: Macmillan, 1887. Originally published in 1878. *Vatalaro, Paul A. ''Shelley's Music: Fantasy, Authority, and the Object Voice''. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009. *Verma, K.D. ''The Vision of "love's rare universe": A Study of Shelley's ''Epipsychidion''. ''Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1995. *Wroe, Ann. ''Being Shelley: The Poet's Search for Himself''. Pantheon, 2007.

External links

Audiorecording of ''Epipsychidion'' on LibriVox, selection 45, read by Leonard Wilson.

eNotes Study Guide for ''Epipsychidion''.

{{Authority control 1821 poems Works about marriage English poetry Love poems Works by Percy Bysshe Shelley Poetry by Percy Bysshe Shelley