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Introduction:
Casa Magni was Percy Bysshe Shelley’s last residence. Having left Pisa, the poet and his wife Mary moved there on April 30, 1822. From February 7 to 11, Percy and his friend Edward Williams had travelled to La Spezia to look for suitable accommodation for the large party wishing to spend its summer in the Gulf (Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 9 February 1822 ); however, they were able to find but one house. More attempts, all unsuccessful, were made in April. Eventually, the Shelleys and the Williamses had to settle for a shared residence: Casa Magni. (Figg. 1-3).
Percy greatly enjoyed his stay, especially as the location of the house allowed him to indulge his passion for sailing. He had a boat made in Genoa – Mary later called it “the fatal boat” – that was brought to him on May 12 (Fig. 4). On this “vessel”, the Don Juan, Percy used to leave on evening excursions with the Williamses; the wonderful sight of the bay was underscored by the tunes that Jane Played on her guitar (Percy’s letter to John Gisborne, 18 June 1822 ). These occasions probably prompted the poem With a Guitar. To Jane. Percy, who was smitten with Jane, dedicated numerous poems to her in 1822; some of them can be dated to his two-months stay at Casa Magni. In addition to With a Guitar, one such poems is To Jane (‘The keen stars were twinkling’). Moreover, as reported by Mary in the notes for the volume of her husband’s poems she edited in 1839, Percy created a large portion of “one of his most mystical compositions” over these frequent boat excursions. The title of the poem is, in retrospect, sadly ironic: The Triumph of Life. Yet, the poem by Percy Shelley that is most rooted in the place that housed him in his final months is undoubtedly Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici.
Mary’s sojourn was not equally pleasant: the time spent in Lerici was marked by acute angst and depression. The group found the house unfurnished and the necessary objects could only be found at a distance; managing so numerous a “Colony” was hard and locals were poor and “vulgar” ( Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 2 June 1822). To this should be added Mary’s worries about her father’s – philosopher William Godwin – finances, as debt forced him to close down his editorial activity. Moreover, on June 16 Mary suffered a miscarriage that, as attested by the physician, would have costed her life had Percy not promptly placed her in a bathtub filled with ice and so stopped her abundant haemorrhage ( Percy’s Letter to John Gisborne, 18 June 1822). Although isolated, however, Mary found the place of “unimaginable beauty” (“Note on the Poems of 1822”, by Mrs. Shelley), something that brought a modicum of relief to her soul (Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 15 August 1822).
On July 1st, Shelly and Edward Williams left Casa Magni to meet Leigh Hunt, who had arrived in Leghorn summoned by Shelley and Byron to create with them the periodical The Liberal. As we know, the poet never returned from this journey; Mary, after learning of the recovery of her husband’s body on the shore of Viareggio, on July 19 also left San Terenzo forever.
Documents:
- Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 9 February 1822 (in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, pp. 217-18)
Shelley is now gone to Spezia to get houses for our Colony for the summer – It will be a large one – too large, I am afraid, for unity – yet I hope not – There will be Lord Byron, who will have a large & beautiful boat built on purpose by some English navy officers at Genoa. There will be the Countess Guiccioli and her brother – The Williams’, whom you know – Trelawny, a kind of half-Arab Englishman, whose life has been as changeful as that of Anastasius & who recounts the adventures of his youth as eloquently and well as the imagined Greek. […] There will be, besides, a Captain Roberts whom I do not know – a very rough subject, I fancy – a famous angler – &c – We are to have a small boat and now that these first divine spring days are come (you know them well) – the sky clear – the sun hot – the hedges budding – we sitting without a fire & the window open – I begin to long for the sparkling waves the olive covered hills & vine shaded pergolas of Spezia – however it would be madness to go yet – yet as ceppo was bad, we hope for a good Pascua and if April prove fine we shall fly with the swallows.
- Percy’s letter to John Gisborne, 18 June 1822 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 435-36)
I have a boat here which was originally intended to belong equally to Williams, Trelawny, and myself, but the wish to wscape from the third person induced me to become the sole proprietor. It cost me £80, and reduced me to some difficulty in point of money. However, it is swift and beautiful, and appears quite a vessel. Williams is captain, and we drive along this delightful bay in the evening wind, under the summer moon, until earth appears another world. Jane brings her guitar, and if the past and the future could be obliterated, the present would content me so well that I could say with Faust to the passing moment, “Remain thou, thou art so beautiful”.
- Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 2 June 1822 (in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, pp. 236-37)
…one house was to be found for us all – it is beautifully situated on the seashore, under the woody hill. – But such a place as this is! The poverty of the people is beyond anything – Yet, they do not appear unhappy, but go on in dirty content, or contented dirt, while we find it hard work to purvey, miles around for a few eatables – We were in wretched discomfort at first, but now are in a kind of disorderly order, living from day to day as we can – […] As only one house was to be found habitable in this gulf, the Williams’ have taken up their abode with us, and their servants and mine quarrel like cats and dogs; and besides you may imagine how ill a large family agrees with my laziness, when accounts and domestic concerns come to be talked of. – “Ma pazienza” – After all, the place does not please me – the people are rozzi, and speak a detestable dialect. – and yet it is better than any other Italian sea-shore north of Naples – the air is excellent, and you may guess how much better we like it than Leghorn, where besides we should have been involved in English Society, a thing we longed to get rid of at Pisa.
- Percy’s Letter to John Gisborne, 18 June 1822 (in The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 434)
Mary will write soon; at present she suffers greatly from excess of weakness, produced by a severe miscarriage, from which she is now slowly recovering. Her situation for some hours was alarming, and as she was totally destitute of medical assistance, I took the most decisive resolutions, by dint of making her sit in ice, I succeeded in checking the hemorrhage and the fainting fits, so that when the physician arrived all danger was over, and he had nothing to do but to applaud me for my boldness. She is now doing well, and the sea-baths will soon restore her.
- “Note on the Poems of 1822”, by Mrs. Shelley (in The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, p. 323)
The scene was indeed of unimaginable beauty. The blue extent of waters, the almost landlocked bay, the near castle of Lerici shutting it in to the east, and distant Porto Venere to the west; the varied forms of the precipitous rocks that bound in the beach, over which there was only a winding rugged footpath towards Lerici, and none on the other side; the tideless sea leaving no sands nor shingle, formed a picture such as one sees in Salvator Rosa’s landscapes only. Sometimes the sunshine vanished when the sirocco raged – the ponente, the wind was called on that shore. The gales and squalls, that hailed our first arrival, surrounded the bay with foam; the howling wind swept round our exposed house, and the sea roared unremittingly, so that we almost fancied ourselves on board ship. At other times sunshine and calm invested sea and sky, and the rich tints of Italian heaven bathed the scene in bright and ever-varying tints.
- Mary’s letter to Maria Gisborne, 15 August 1822 (in The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, p. 244)
Our desolate house, the beauty yet strangeness of the scenery, and the delight Shelley took in all this – he never was in better health or spirits than during this time. I was not well in body or mind. My nerves were wound up to the utmost irritation, and the sense of misfortune hung over my spirits. No words can tell you how I hated our house & the country about it. Shelley reproached me for this – his health was good, and the place was quite after his own heart – […] My only moments of peace were on board that unhappy boat, when lying down with my head on his knee, I shut my eyes & felt the wind & our swift motion alone. My ill health might account for much of this. Bathing in the sea somewhat relieved me, but on the 8th of June (I think it was) I was threatened with a miscarriage, and after a week of great ill health, on Sunday, the 16th, this took place at 8 in the morning. I was so ill that for seven hours I lay nearly lifeless—kept from fainting by brandy, vinegar, and eau-de-Cologne, etc. At length ice was brought to our solitude; it came before the doctor, so Clare and Jane were afraid of using it, but Shelley overruled them, and by an unsparing application of it I was restored. They all thought, and so did I at one time, that I was about to die –
Illustrations:
Figg. 1-3. Villa Magni
Fig. 4. Percy Shelley's sketch of his boat (on the right), with Byron's Bolivar (on the left)
Texts:
- Percy Shelley, With a Guitar. To Jane, 1822, ll. 1-22 and 31-42
Ariel to Miranda:—Take
This slave of music for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony,
In which thou can’st, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
‘Till joy denies itself again
And, too intense, is turned to pain;
For by permission and command
Of thine own Prince Ferdinand
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit Ariel, who,
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own;
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples, he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor. […]
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still
Has tracked your steps and served your will.
Now in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave. —
From you he only dares to crave,
For his service and his sorrow,
A smile today, a song tomorrow.
- Percy Shelley, To Jane (‘The keen stars were twinkling’), 1822, ll. 1-24
The keen stars were twinkling,
And the fair moon was rising among them,
Dear Jane!
The guitar was tinkling,
But the notes were not sweet till you sung them
Again. –
As the moon’s soft splendour
O’er the faint cold starlight of Heaven
Is thrown,
So your voice most tender
To the strings without soul had then given
Its own.
The stars will awaken,
Though the moon sleep a full hour later,
To-night;
No leaf will be shaken
Whilst the dews of your melody scatter
Delight.
Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with your dear voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
- Percy Shelley, The Triumph of Life, 1822, ll. 1-40
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour, and the mask
Of darkness fell from the awakened Earth—
The smokeless altars of the mountain snows
Flamed above crimson clouds, and at the birth
Of light, the Ocean’s orison arose,
To which the birds tempered their matin lay.
All flowers in field or forest which unclose
Their trembling eyelids to the kiss of day,
Swinging their censers in the element,
With orient incense lit by the new ray
Burned slow and inconsumably, and sent
Their odorous sighs up to the smiling air;
And, in succession due, did continent,
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear
The form and character of mortal mould,
Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear
Their portion of the toil, which he of old
Took as his own, and then imposed on them:
But I, whom thoughts which must remain untold
Had kept as wakeful as the stars that gem
The cone of night, now they were laid asleep
Stretched my faint limbs beneath the hoary stem
Which an old chestnut flung athwart the steep
Of a green Apennine: before me fled
The night; behind me rose the day; the deep
Was at my feet, and Heaven above my head,—
When a strange trance over my fancy grew
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O'er evening hills they glimmer; and I knew
That I had felt the freshness of that dawn
Bathe in the same cold dew my brow and hair,
And sate as thus upon that slope of lawn
Under the self-same bough, and heard as there
The birds, the fountains and the ocean hold
Sweet talk in music through the enamoured air,
And then a vision on my brain was rolled…
- Percy Shelley, Lines Written in the Bay of Lerici, 1822, ll. 45-58
And the wind that wing’d their flight
From the land came fresh and light,
And the scent of winged flowers,
And the coolness of the hours
Of dew, and sweet warmth left by day,
Were scatter'd o'er the twinkling bay.
And the fisher with his lamp
And spear about the low rocks damp
Crept, and struck the fish which came
To worship the delusive flame.
Too happy they, whose pleasure sought
Extinguishes all sense and thought
Of the regret that pleasure [ ],
Destroying life alone, not peace.
References:
Shelley, Mary, The Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, ed. B. T. Bennett, Baltimore and London, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, 3 vols.
Shelley, Mary, The Journals of Mary Shelley, 1814-1844, eds P. R. Feldman and D. Scott-Kilvert, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1987, 2 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by Mrs. Shelley, London, Edward Moxon, [1839].
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, ed. F. L. Jones, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1964, 2 vols.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, Opere poetiche, a cura di F. Rognoni, Milano, Mondadori, 2018.
Ultimo aggiornamento
21.11.2024