Visit the NYPL for Shelley’s Ghost: The Afterlife of a Poet

The last time we reported on the NYPL, writers were up in arms over the proposed $300,000,000 improvement plan. As you can see, folks are still up in arms—but there's still something to be happy about at the NYPL. There's a Shelley exhibit up! The New York Post's Page Views blog writes:

Shelley’s Ghost: The Afterlife of a Poet is an exhibition that runs through June 24 at the Stephen A. Schwartzman Building of The New York Public Library. The displays range from the amusing (Shelley’s baby rattle), to the rare (early drafts of poems in Shelley’s handwriting) and the macabre (fragments of Shelley’s skull).

The exhibition, which is being staged in conjunction with Oxford University’s Bodleian Library, offers a rare, personal glimpse of Shelley and his circle.

Among the artifacts are Mary Shelley’s diary, a letter from Lord Byron’s daughter and a draft of Shelley’s poem “Ode to the West Wind.”

Why a Shelley exhibition? Quite simply, because Shelley still matters.

Some of Shelley’s words are reminiscent of recent public unrest embodied in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and similar protests around the world. His Declaration of Rights, where he writes that “No man has a right to monopolize more than he can enjoy,” mirrors the protesters’ call for economic equality.

The works of William Godwin, his father-in-law, form much of the context for Shelley’s bold declarations. Among the works displayed in the exhibition is a copy of Godwin’s “An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice,” a book in which he espouses political philosophy that every man has the potential to better himself and the world around him without the need for government.

Indeed, Godwin believed governments tend to get in the way of men’s progress: “By its very nature political institution has a tendency to suspend the elasticity, and put an end to the advancement of the mind. Every scheme for embodying imperfection must be injurious.”

Shelley placed emphasis on the latter sentence in his copy, and wrote one word in the margin: “Admirable.” Godwin’s influence is clear in the young poet’s own work of political philosophy, “A Philosophical View of Reform.” Like his wife’s father, Shelley emphasized individual responsibility for social reform, as opposed to governmental control.