A SALUTE TO GENIUS

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 118, 14 November 1925, Page 16

A SALUTE TO GENIUS

WHERE THE POET' gBEI&SV PIED.

Qne of the great romantic tragedis* of the world is centred about' 0»3» Magni, a eb»bby white utone house with cloged, shutters, on the Very edge of t^e pea (write? JJeekley Wilsim in the ■«• Daijy Mail")' Fo * th? Bea *? the Gulf pf BpesU,-where a century ago Percy Byashe Shelley %m drowned with nig cpmpanion, clutching a copy of Sophocles!, Th.c house i§ today very much as the gheHsya left it, and as it yfw described by I<eigb fjunt and Byroß »M Trel*wney, T.n its thick masonry and heavy #l»Httprs, its d«U stpns staircases as 4 p»'prpt cliairtberp, jt seems bwrdejjed and brooding with memories. Jt had a strange history eyen before tlia Shei? Ify3 came to live in ;t. Although, owned to-day by an English ,lady, it is pntenanted fpr more than half the year. You stand PUt pn the famous tflrr&se leve} with tbQ grpt floor, whi?re . M.ary Shelley (dtttltpresg of "J>ii»lit:)i&t(3i-4 lV 3.wi J»W? Wi3lia«B and Claro Clairnont stood fearfully gazing seaward that fatal July day while the etora was raging. What a hguseh,old!

~jt wa.s into this brilliant cjrele that sgaroe a week; before thq poet had road.o his oftrdescribed retuiiifrpfji his fiea batli, starkTjiakofl Uke Ariel, oblivious of his clothes. Here he had l'Ughed about in the night awakened from a dream so terribje thftt it froze .tlje bipod of bis- hearers, A corner pf the ground flopr is now let §a a ljttlq estaniinet-^Bcl Vedprp the youthful peopriotoi- calls, it. And there is actually a "Caffo Cheljey" ]iard by the village of gan Tpreu^o ' (th? Shelley c}reje ajway? wrpto it ,Sant Areii?* an 4 Shelley's editors Still continue the bjunejer), and there tjipy tejl you more, I even found an ojd man who recited for wo "(juando ]c vo&i dolci vanjseono'' (When soft voices die), and the beautiful lings on Lerii'i, But there are grpwing to be sp many tourjists^Q, so many tourists to San Torenzo, who gather QflW' tities pf the laurel whjeh grpvirp in puch profusion behind the Casa Magni.' And one of these tourists— from Chicago—had shown tile padrone of the Caffe'GhelJey how to nijjc and (Jispenße-^O, horrorstr-rra Shelley cpektail. Yet it may be-r-who knows? ■. —tliat Shelley woujd have smiled--* is smiling now. One salutes genius as one can, in one's own fashion. Perhaps if the author of "Prometheus Unbound" Jmd drunk cocktails lictbnt this is to enter on a speculation as deep as the waters which engulfed his fraU, yet mighty, spirit,