?A Curious Cat?: Elizabeth Bishop and the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

I n 1973 Elizabeth Bishop signed five-year contract to teach creative writing at Harvard. On one of first examination papers, she cited following famous lines from Percy Bysshe Shelley's A Defence of Poetry: great secret of is love; or going out of our own nature, an identification of ourselves with beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. Bishop's instructions to students were simple, if not particularly helpful. Consider this very carefully, she urged, and decide, first of all, if you agree with Shelley's reasoning or not. [...] This should take you at least two hours. I'd be grateful for typed papers, but careful hand writing will do.1 Bishop was notoriously hard teacher to please. Although she characterized herself to friends as a scared elderly amateur 'professor,'2 she cut far more intimidating presence in class, regularly awarding even best students Cs Ds on their term papers. I have often wondered whether she had an answer prepared to this particular question. Did she expect class to agree with Shelley or not? Was love the great secret of morals for too? In this essay, I would like to consider Shelley's definition of love in relation to Bishop's defini? tion ofthe poet as a lonely young man, his eyes fixed on facts minute details, sinking or sliding giddily off into unknown.3 As Thomas Travisano points out, her mature work every where dis? play s an affinity for one of Shelley's principle values ? imaginative empathy, putting of oneself 'in place of another world of many others.'4 The extent to which Shelley was an early model for Bishop is clear in following piece of juvenilia, written when she was just sixteen years old. In it, she recalls devoting all of my reading time to Shelley, even when on holiday: