Poetry for the Inner Ear

Prometheus Unbound is a four-act play by the greatest Romantic poet P. B. Shelley. The play opens a Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. PROMETHEUS is discovered in chains bound to the Precipice. Prometheus is tormented by Zeus. Ultimately, Prometheus is liberated. He is a symbol of the liberation of mankind. He may be described as the correct manifestation of the highest moral and intellectual nature. He is often compared with Satan in Milton’s Paradise. But we should remember that he is devoid of any feeling of revenge or envy that we find in Satan. Shelley himself says: “Prometheus is, in my judgment, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest.” This book reveals Shelley’s revolutiona...

The Eliad of Homer The Eliad written in 6th century BC is an epic poem by Homer, the blind bard. Singing bards were often blind in ancient Greece. The 24 books of the Eliad have over 15,000 lines about the battles between King Agamemnon and Achilles. In the Trojan war we find that the Greek gods like Zeus and Apollo, and goddesses also have a great role to play. The rhythm of Homer’s verses resembles that of the army he describes, Hoid’ ar’ isan hosei te puri chthon pasa nemoito. “They pour along like a fire that sweeps the whole earth before it.” Alexander Pope who translated this Greek epic into English aptly says: “This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: In Milton it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in Shakespeare it strikes before we are aware...