Was percy byshe shelly gay

Photograph Jenner Collins, Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from Univ inalong with his close friend Thomas Jefferson Hoggfor circulating a paper on atheism. As is so often the case, historians are thwarted by deliberate attempts to hide the facts of sexual nonconformity in the lives of famous figures.

Shelley wrote:. You have chosen me, and we are inseparable. How I have loved you! I was even ashamed to tell you how! It was inaugurated on 14 June The statue, however, was too large for the site and so Lady Shelley offered it to Univ where it was duly accepted, although from the outset there was a marked lack of enthusiasm for the provocative artistic tropes of the object.

Gloriously ambiguous in a number of ways, the languid figure of the drowned poet lies on a marble slab supported by two winged lions. The muses of poetry stand close by. The figure is also decidedly androgynous, echoing a common trope in depictions of Shelley it has been suggested that Onslow Ford used a young woman as a model, although his son claimed that it had been him.

“The obscure parts of my own nature”: Did Percy Bysshe Shelley suffer from a personality disorder?

As such, the statue is iconic of the aesthetics and sexual politics of late-Victorian Hellenism, a situation shelly has only been fully appreciated in recent years. The housing of the monument in an all-male environment undoubtedly exacerbated the queer tensions of the piece Univ only accepted female undergraduates from It has long gay the butt of student jokes and pranks, variously being adorned with lipstick and a wig, having its toenails varnished blue, and its percy byshe with water and goldfish to name just a few of the japes that the marble Shelley has endured through the years.

Is was our old friend, Percy Bysshe, Described with such technique and vigour? Can you not hear the very swish Of waves against his Attic figure? How marvellous! What could be Greeker? I wonder what would Percy Bysshe do If he could see his fair replica Stuck on a pedestal with fish-glue! The College that had sent him down Raised in his memory this excrescence, Behold he lies, sans cap, sans gown, A useless lump of opalescence.

And there he lies, unique, obscene, Open to what interpretation? His face so perfect, so serene, Fills me with endless irritation. Stain on the University, O blot upon its fair escutcheon! Another poem, published in The Isis in the edition dated 4 Mayis more serious, but still conveys the passionate feelings evoked by the statue:.

White listless cold recumbent marble form; White piteous proud ethereal drowned face; Shelly, thou liest in such sovereign grace That we can nigh forgive the Spezzian storm Which reft theeof that witful vivid warm Enkindling soul, whereunto time and space Were bonds intolerable and in place Of breath abnormal gave thee death for norm.

Here in this azure-vaulted calm retreat Death seems so restful. Shelley,—seems so sweet; Fearfully therefore, lest it come amiss That one as I unworthy should do this, I stoop and leave upon thy marble feet Behold the reverent tribute of a kiss.