Arethusa

Of Myth and Reality. My Visit to the Beach at Viareggio.

Of Myth and Reality. My Visit to the Beach at Viareggio.

In May of this year, I visited the places in and around Viareggio on the Italian Coast at the Gulf of La Spezia.  This is where Shelley lived out the last few days of his short life. The video which is at the heart of this post was recorded on the beach at Viareggio.  Somehow standing on that beach made it possible to strip away the accretion of the mythology and to confront the numbing reality of his death.  I found the moment almost overwhelming.I invite you all to join me on this virtual pilgrimage; and to pause for reflection.

My Father's Shelley; a Tale of Two Shelleys

My Father's Shelley; a Tale of Two Shelleys

My father’s Shelley, as I VERY quickly discovered, was very different from mine. He loved the lyric poet.  He loved the Victorian version. He loved Mary’s sanitized version.  In a weird way he bought into Mathew Arnold's caricature of Shelley (“a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating his wings in a luminous void in vain.”) – and loved him the more for it.  He hated the idea that Shelley was a revolutionary.