ABSTRACT
Date and circumstances of composition. This poem's remarkably intense period of composition—‘three days’—is recorded in l. 36 of its dedicatory stanzas to Mary. Its date may be identified precisely as 14–16 August 1820 from Mary's journal (Mary Jnl i 329) where she records ‘W. W. A.’, likely an abbreviation for ‘write’ or ‘wrote’ ‘Witch of Atlas’, on the first two of these days and ‘Do—Finished’ on the last. S. had returned to Bagni di San Giuliano from a solitary two-day walk to Monte San Pellegrino, a peak in the Apennines in the territory of Modena, on the evening of Sunday, 13 August. Two days previously, during a period of ‘warm and delightful’ weather which made ‘[t]he Country … delicious’, he, Mary and Claire had made the brief journey to Lucca where they spent the night, the latter pair remaining there the next day to look at sites relating to the historical basis of the novel Mary had begun writing, Valperga (1823), while S. made his weekend excursion (Mary Jnl i 328–9, Claire Jnl 169–70). As GM notes, WA has the flavour of ‘a holiday-poem’. The restorative effects of the recent move to Bagni di San Giuliano on S.’s health, and the felicitous Tuscan climate and countryside in the summer months that inform the poem's energy and spirit, are captured in Mary's recollection of the atmosphere in which it was written:
We spent the summer at the baths of San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa. These baths were of great use to Shelley in soothing his nervous instability. We made several excursions in the neighbourhood. The country around is fertile; and diversified and rendered picturesque by ranges of near hills and more distant mountains. The peasantry are a handsome intelligent race, and there was a gladsome sunny heaven spread over us, that rendered home and every scene we visited cheerful and bright. During some of the hottest days of August, Shelley made a solitary journey on foot to the summit of Monte San Pelegrino—a mountain of some height, on the top of which there is a chapel, the object, during certain days in the year, of many pilgrimages. The excursion delighted him while it lasted, though he exerted himself too much, and the effect was considerable lassitude and weakness on his return. During the expedition he conceived the idea and wrote, in the three days immediately succeeding to his return, the Witch of Atlas. (1839 iv 50–1)
