Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
CraniOcean Unbound, August 9, 2007
This book is totally awesome. It's best to read it out loud. I never knew this other side of Percy B. Shelly.
Both Percy and his dear wife, Mary, were great fans of what Benjamin Franklin was doing at the time, and taken by Franklin's miraculous discovery of...electricity! This was in the days of the great American Statesmen...Franklin was seen then as very cool and his discovery shook the world. Suddenly, this fire from the heavens could be contained in glass jars...
His dear wife, Mary Shelly, started her own book, "Frankenstein," when Percy was halfway into the writing of Prometheus Unbound. This historical event gives much to wonder about as you read. It has nothing to do with the Aeschylus, "Prometheus Bound"--you can skip the Aeschylus and go straight to the Shelly. (And I think...Shelly himself said it had nothing to do with the Greek play, "Prometheus Bound") Either way, you can speed to the Shelly.
This book was suggested by a highly refined gentleman in L.A., Roger Weir, the developer of the LEARNING CIVILIZATION. Weir shared the some of the history of the book that I'm including here, as it added to my enjoyment of the book. Weir suggests Prometheus Unbound to be read along with Fredrick Schiller's "On the Aesthetic Education of Man," as a pair, a complement of two books. As you read, and approach the last part the book, suddenly you connect with the feeling of Schiller's poetry at the end of the Ninth Symphony (the chorous) and you are transported beyond the canopy of the stars...!
"Prometheus Unbound" is one of the finest books in the English Language. It's actually a play, and as readable as Shakespeare, and at an even higher level of refinement and vibration. It's like sitting alone with a spiritual master and listening, listening. Then... BEING... into the unknown unbound...
It might be useful to recall the myth of Prometheus before this superlative reading adventure:
Prometheus was one of the Titans and helped the god Jupiter(Zeus) take over the Heavens to be number-one-God. After this, Prometheus took pity on mankind and stole fire to give to man. Now, Jupiter (Zeus) could not have such a creative thinker roaming heaven and earth and doing favors for men and women. And so Prometheus was chained to a rock in the frozen wastes of what we now call, Sibera. Each day his guts and innards would be plucked out by ravenous birds, and each night his guts and innards would heal and mend--only to be torn out the next day, and the next, to eternity.
Just as the mythological Prometheus liberated man with stealing fire from the Gods--an act for which he is punished by Jupiter (Zeus)...ya know....don't let any man be at the level of Heaven, only below it...don't let any man discover the divine fire within...this book liberates.
(I do "therapy" with people in the ocean-CraniOcean-and work with dolphins --and this book is along a session flow in the ocean. A perfect compliment for meeting the ocean...without and within...for meeting the organic oceanic spiraling waves in love and with freedom.)
After this book, I saw the very first (and best) original "Frankenstein" black and white movie--made in 1931, directed by the great James Whale--and I really got it for the first time...I began to see the Frankenstein image interpenetrating corporate-run-culture, especially in foods at any grocery store in the United States, frozen coagulates of hot dogs, old meat balls, genetic altered fruits...
Percy and Mary were also a pair--the divine united. Percy the blade, Mary the chalice. Their bonding one of the love stories of English poetry.
Awesome read! So grateful it was pointed out to me, and that sat to read it aloud. It took a few hours over two late afternoons. One of the required reads of Western Civilization, especially now!
Thank you for letting these inspirations rest here with your own.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nice edition of classic play, June 1, 2008
This is a nice edition of Shelley's classic play. Includes both Shelley's own foreward to the play and Mary Shelley's afterward. Recommended.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Poor Edition , April 29, 2008
Before examining the text itself, I would like to note that this text merely includes Shelley's introduction to the text, and thus lacks an editor's introduction. This is highly unfortunate, since many characters merely appear and make speeches throughout the lyrical drama, and yet their proper role is not identified. A reader will have no idea that "Asia" is Prometheus' wife if one does not read Mary Shelley's afterword BEFORE reading the text (It's included in the back; hence, "afterward." Even with a background in Mythology, one may not precisely remember this, even after reading "Prometheus Bound" in Aeschylus first, since there is no Asia in that play (As I did, but we should remember this is not a historical renactment of Aeschylus' Prometheus Unbound; nonetheless, I am trying to draw the point that the character roles are very vague) I believe that the lack of an introduction to this text is a serious miscalculation, because this is a play which demands one, considering the fact that the language is highly ambigious and vague throughout the four acts, and the characters' overall language can be digressive.
As for the work itself; "Prometheus Unbound" is highly acclaimed as the epitome of the Romantice Movement, in respect to at least its notion of the "Romantic Hero," the "Promethean." Ironically enough this label, and presupposition is highly misleading. Prometheus is present during two acts of the four, one of which, the final one, he merely has a single speech. The play is hardly at all about Prometheus; much more so, the play is about mankind, but even this point is distracted by the semichoruses and chorsuses of "Spirits," which have a penchant for popping up at awkward moments, and their dialogue is often completely muddled and unnecesary. The final act in which Heracles secures the freedom of Prometheus is in fact entirely dominated by dialogue between Asia, and the only memorable lines make up the final stanze which is voiced by Demogorgon, some sort of Oceanide who challenges Zeus in Heaven, which means that he is the son of Juppiter and Thetis ... Much of the poetic language used in the play is, unfortunately, devoted to nothing related directly to the plot. The dialogue of irrelevant metaphors, particularly after Prometheus is free during Act IV, is spent concerning the way nature responds to man's new nature, and yet even this language is highly abstract at times and difficult to conceptualize. The theme of Juppiter the tyrant, although widely trumpeted as a major part of the play, is hardly done, with the exception of a few instances. Another point seriously must be made regarding the work.
I was expecting an outstanding performance by Shelley, who is one of the most esteemed Romantic poets. After reading Milton's Paradise Lost, which was pure genius, I was lookign forward to diving into something which was inspired by Milton's Satan. And yet, the Milton language, the language which Shelley admits to admiring in his introduction, is completely missing. He wanted to create a "better" (in the moral sense) hero than Satan, and yet, Prometheus hardly gets any chance to talk. Instead there is talk about supernatural connections between Asia and Prometheus, and little time is spect developing Shelley's purpose; the Romanticization of Prometheus, and yet that is what this work is praised for. I see Milton's Satan, Shelley's model, as a completely more compelling character than Prometheus, whose character wasn't developed in this lyrical drama of four acts.
Shelley does use very nice, poetic language. Unforutantely, the rythmic tone hardly ever is used to develop his characters. There are a jumble of choruses and mini - choruses, which seriously muddle the message that is attempting to be communicated to the reader. In fact, much of this language that is poetic is used simply to describe irrelevant notes on the natural world. I have no problem with description of scenery, provided it is done with a purpose; even the decriptions in, say, "The Scarlett Letter" were outstanding, because they were beautiful and yet had a purpose to cultivating the mood. But it seems as though in this, the scenery certainly is described far more than the actual character development is, and there doesn't seem to be a higher purpose, even when is describes the state of man after the reinstitution of Prometheus.
This was highly dissapointing to me, and, I must say, I was expecting a piece of Romantic masterpiece. How experts in this field can constantly point to the "Promethean" model seriously troubles me, since while Prometheus is indeed heroic, he nevertheless doesn't get any substantial characterization in the work. Of course, the point is drawn that he is the hero, he won't surrender, but it's in a few lines, not at all as it is made out to be. It is troubling how the concept of "Romantic Hero" has drawn so much from this book, when actually focusing on the hero is hardly ever done. Further, the allusions to the Garden of Eden, clearly drawing from "Paradise Lost," which seriously dry. Overall, read "Paradise Lost" for a more compelling play which properly utilizing language to a purpose, and yet is able to efficiently characterize scenery and setting without ambigious, equivocal, excessively abstract language.
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by Philip Vellacott
by T. S. Eliot
by John Milton
by Thomas C. Foster
