Ineffectual in Purgatory: Confidence and Anxiety in "Ode to the West Wind" Leah Katz College

In 1819, the Shelleys were residing in Florence, Italy and, after quickly reconnecting with Lord Byron, Percy Shelley had renewed inspiration to write. “Ode to the West Wind” emphasizes Shelley’s sadness at being separate from the political and social turmoil of his home. Because Shelley is so politically and socially radical, his time away from the centers of this activity depresses him as he resigns himself to his powerlessness in the countryside. Through “Ode to the West Wind,” Shelley gives the west wind spiritual significance in his purgatory-like existence as he dually asserts his intellectual confidence while bemoaning the loss to society should he never be able to share it.

In this poem, Shelley repeatedly calls to the west wind to help him spread his knowledge. When he says, “If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear; If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee,” he utilizes a popular Romantic strategy of postulating and speaking directly to nature (43-44). In doing this, Shelley not only seems desperate to be reunited with a place where his opinions can be heard, but also seems mildly presumptuous in assuming that the west wind thinks his ideas are important enough for natural intervention. In personifying this aspect of...