Evaluate Adonais as a Pastoral Elegy

Adonais is a pastoral elegy that Shelley wrote on the death of his contemporary poet John Keats. The word ‘elegy’ comes from the Greek word ‘elegos’ meaning ‘song’. An elegy is a mournful poem about the death of a person or more rarely a group. Like Milton's 'Lycidas', it is an English adaptation of the classical form of elegy perfected by poets as early as the classical Greek times of Homer and Virgil. 'Adonais' is written mainly in the classical pattern, though Shelley has adapted and added some of the elements. It begins with an invocation and mournful tone; then it describes the nature’s participation in the bereaved shepherds/poets’ mourning for the deceased one; there follows a procession of mourners (among them are Shelley himself and Lord Byron); then the speaker attacks on the worst literary critics who damaged the self-esteem and honor of the growing artist Keats, before moving to the consolation as a conclusion.

In keeping with the tradition, he does not identify the characters by their actual names, but by their shepherd names or by characteristics typical of natural rather than the social environs. Since the tradition is Greek, he harks back to classical myth and imagery. The Greek legend of Adonis is a tale about a handsome youth who was equally admired by Aphrodite (Urania), Queen of Love, and by Persephone, Queen of Underworld. (However, Shelley makes Urania into Adonis’ mother in this elegy.) Unable to agree on which Goddess shall have him, Zeus decided he would spend half the year on Earth with Aphrodite and half the year in the underworld with Persephone. During a summer hunt, Adonis pierced a boar with his spear, wounding but not killing the beast. In retaliation, the boar charged Adonis and stabbed him with his tusk, causing a lesion that would eventually kill the young and beautiful prince. When he died in the arms of lamenting Aphrodite, she poured nectar over his blood, and the flower anemone emerged. It was said that every year the Greek women would mourn for Adonis when he died, then rejoice when he was resurrected in the form of the windflower. Using this myth as the central theme in the elegy, Shelley is hoping, or suggesting, that Keats shall be as immortal as the young Adonis. Beyond the obvious parallel that both were taken at a young age, Shelley uses this poem to exhort readers to mourn him in his death, but hold onto him in memory and rejoice in his virtual resurrection by reading his words.

Shelley also blames Keats’ death on literary criticism that was recently published (lines 150-53) as he was probably unaware that Keats was suffering from tuberculosis. He urges that as Adonis was killed by the attack of the wild boar, Keats too had to lose his life due to the attack of those insensitive critics who published a scathing review of Keats’s poem “Endymion” in the April issue of 1818 Quarterly Review. Shelley is referring to this literary critic when he speaks of the devastating effect of his review on his beloved and sensitive friend as “the curse of Cain / Light on his head who pierced thy innocent breast, / And scared the angel soul that was its earthly guest!” Shelley’s tirade, both within the preface, where he states that “these wretched men know not what they do,” and throughout the poem, cost Shelley his already tentative relationship with Blackwood’s magazine. But in terms of the poem, Shelley’s weaving together of a contemporary situation with the primarily classical depiction of Adonis makes the work still more complex.

At the beginning of the poem, the speaker (Shelley) tells the readers that Adonais is dead and is calling Urania, his mother, who is now in paradise, to come and mourn his dead son. Shelley referred Uraina as the “most musical of mourners.” The dreams and thoughts of Adonais or Keats come to see him and mourn his death. Shelley says that these dreams and thoughts are like flocks of sheep and Keats is the shepherd. These sheep graze near the stream of Keats’ beautiful spirit and live on its water. If Keats had lived, he would have communicated these thoughts to other people but now he is dead and these thoughts are fading and lamenting their unhappy fate. This image of flocks of sheep and herdsmen returning to their homes is very common in pastoral elegy for they focus on the beauty and simplicity of rural life.

In the morning, the thunder, the ocean, and the wild winds mourned Keats’ death. The morning appeared in the east, her hair was loose and untied. Dew drops fell on the ground at dawn but upon knowing Keats’s death, the dew took the shape of clouds and darkened the sky. The ocean remained sad and calm and the thunder moaned. Echo, nymph of the mountain, is so grief-stricken over the death of Keats that she lost her will to speak. Her silence makes the mountains voiceless. Echo will not reply to the birds chirping on the young tree branches, or herdsman's horn, or bell which can be heard while at the end of the day. Here Shelley talks about the end of the day and the approach of night. Night symbolizes death and sadness. Keats used to be a source of pleasure for the Spring season. His death made Spring wild in grief. It lost its spirit. During Spring, new leaves grow on trees but after Keats’ death leaves fall off from trees. Spring is so sad that it acted like Autumn. This involvement of nature in the mourning is another prominent feature of pastoral elegy.

In stanzas 30–35, Shelley turns his attention to a procession of mourners, “the mountain shepherds.” In the context of “Adonais,” these poetic practitioners are worthy of esteem and preeminent among them is the poet Byron: “The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame / Over his living head like Heaven is bent.” This is a reference to Byron’s poem, “Childe Harold,” concerning a young and eloquent noble of the same name who travels through a wasteland, “a place of agony and strife,” like one outcast (similar to Shelley), an “outlaw of his own dark mind.”

At the end of a pastoral elegy, the poet represents his thoughts and ideas on life and death and provides consolation to the readers. Shelley also did the same thing in “Adonais”. As the poem closes, the poet calls for an end to mourning, recognizing that Adonais has achieved the happiest state of all as he has become one with nature. He is hopeful that Keats is not dead but will continue to live forever in nature. This poetic spirit, immortal and unchanging, will be a source of beauty, inspiration, and light for all ages to come.

Thus, the poem follows the structure and themes of a pastoral elegy including Greek reference, mourning for the deceased, involvement of nature, attack on the killer, procession of poets, and realization of immortality.