"Ode to West Wind" and Greek Sculptures of the Nereids

The Three Nereids from the Nereid Monument are an interesting pair with Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind.”  Both are about life and death.  “West Wind” is about the wind which comes and goes as the seasons pass and symbolize the cycle of life and death.  Life and death are more overt subject matter in the sculpture, which shows the Nereids escorting the souls of the deceased to the afterlife.

Wind, too, links both works of art concretely in that it is both the subject of the poem and a feature of the sculpture in the figures’ clothes being blown as they journey over the sea.  And while wind is a more overt metaphor for the cycle of life and death in the poem, it is also symbolic in the sculpture, where it could be seen as an embodiment of the deceased souls rushing along over the sea.

Both works are very tactile.  The poem goes to great lengths to make the reader feel the main subject—the wind—and the metaphors used throughout, like the grand storm in the second section.  Looking at the sculpture, one can also very much feel the wind blowing and the spray of the sea very dramatically against the figures in all the dynamic wrinkles and wet transparence of the clothes as well as the sea bird and the partially visible dolphins.

Rather than totally reflect, the works also complement each other.  While the speaker of the poem calls the West Wind “Destroyer and Preserver,” the sculpture represents neither destruction nor preservation but a process that lies in some kind of space in between those two but is likewise a never-ending process.