The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources Part 4

And Oromaze, Joshua, and Mahomet, Moses and Buddah, Zerdhust and Brahm and Foh, A tumult of strange names, which never met Before, as watchwords of a single woe, Arose; each raging votary 'gan to throw Aloft his armed hands, and each did howl "Our G.o.d alone is G.o.d!"--And slaughter now Would have gone forth, when from beneath a cowl A voice came forth, which pierced like ice through every soul.

'Twas an Iberian priest from whom it came A zealous man, who led the legioned west, With words which faith and pride had stopped in flame, To quell the unbelievers....

He ceased, and they A s.p.a.ce stood silent, as far, far away The echoes of his voice among them died; And he knelt down upon the dust, alway Muttering the curses of his speechless pride.

There is a striking resemblance between this cowled Iberian priest and the Iberian Franciscan of _The Missionary_.

The missionary looked to the conversion of the prophetess as the most effectual means of accomplishing the conversion of the nation. With this end in view he goes to Cashmere, and unexpectedly comes upon Luxima one morning, praying at a shrine. "Silently gazing in wonder upon each other, they stood finely opposed, the n.o.blest specimens of the human species...; she, like the East, lovely and luxuriant; he, like the West, lofty and commanding; the one, radiant in all the l.u.s.ter, attractive in all the softness which distinguishes her native regions; the other, towering in all the energy, which marks his ruder lat.i.tudes." They meet again and again, and the result is they fall in love with each other. It is significant from the point of view of the influence of the _Missionary_ that in Alastor Sh.e.l.ley meets his ideal love "in the vale of Cashmire."

The way the novelist develops the progress of this sentiment, which both the priest and the priestess had vowed to suppress, can scarcely be surpa.s.sed. She describes how their new mode of feeling was opposed by their ancient habits of thinking, and how their minds "struggling between a natural bliss and a religious principle of resistance, between a pa.s.sionate sentiment and an habitual self-command, become a scene of conflict and agitation."

Old age with its gray hair, And wrinkled legends of unworthy things And icy sneers is nought; it cannot dare To burst the chains which life forever flings On the entangled soul's aspiring wings.[56]

Luxima succ.u.mbed to the warfare. She overcame the traditions and laws by which she was bound; and hence Sh.e.l.ley's great admiration for her. She embraced Christianity less in faith than in love. She did not feel guilty because she thought her sentiments of love were true to all life's natural impulses. The missionary, on the other hand, must have excited in Sh.e.l.ley pity for the man and hatred for the inst.i.tutions which stood in the way of their happiness. "He had not, indeed, relinquished a single principle of his moral feeling--he had not yet vanquished a single prejudice of his monastic education; to feel, was still with him to be weak; to love, a crime; and to resist, perfection." Luxima is excommunicated, deprived of caste and declared a wanderer and an outcast upon the earth. They both elude their pursuers and join a caravan which is on its way to Tatta. On their journey the missionary tells her that they must soon separate, as duty demands that he continue the work of his ministry. He will see to it that she is well cared for in a convent at Tatta. Luxima upbraids him for his selfishness. He replies that it is not the prospect of his degradation and humiliation which deters him from staying with her, but the thought that by so doing he will commit a crime--break his vows. "Pity then," the missionary says, "and yet respect him who, loving thee and virtue equally, can never know happiness without nor with thee--who thus condemned to suffer without ceasing submits not to his fate, but is overpowered by its tyranny, and who alike helpless and unresigned opposes while he suffers and repines while he endures." Continency was unintelligible to Sh.e.l.ley, and he criticizes it in Canto XII as follows:

... that sudden rout One checked who never in his mildest dreams Felt awe from grace or loveliness, the seams Of his rent heart so hard and cold a creed Had seared with blistering ice; but he misdeems That he is wise whose wounds do only bleed Only for self; thus thought the Iberian priest indeed

And others too thought he was wise to see In pain and fear and hate something divine; In love and beauty no divinity.

Sh.e.l.ley believed that "the worthiness of every action is to be estimated by the quant.i.ty of pleasurable sensation it is calculated to produce,"[57]

that the ideal of man was to love and to be loved. Luxima says: "Be that heaven my witness that I would not for the happiness I have abandoned and the glory I have lost, resign that desert whose perilous solitudes I share with thee. Oh! my Father, and my friend, thou alone hast taught me to know that the paradise of woman is the creation of her heart; that it is not the light or air of heaven, though beaming brightness and breathing fragrance, nor all that is loveliest in Nature's scenes, which form the sphere of her existence and enjoyment! It is alone the presence of him she loves; it is that mysterious sentiment of the heart which diffuses a finer sense of life through the whole being; and which resembles, in its singleness and simplicity, the primordial idea which in the religion of my fathers is supposed to have preceded time and worlds, and from which all created good has emanated."[58]

In the preface to _The Revolt of Islam_ Sh.e.l.ley writes that he "sought to enlist the harmony of metrical language ... and the rapid and subtle transitions of human pa.s.sion in the cause of a liberal and comprehensive morality." For this purpose he chose "a story of human pa.s.sion in its most universal character, diversified with moving and romantic adventures and appeal, in contempt of all artificial opinions or inst.i.tutions to the common sympathies of every human breast. What is the _Missionary_ but "a story of human pa.s.sion appealing in contempt of all artificial opinions or inst.i.tutions to the common sympathies of every human heart?" When _The Revolt of Islam_ first appeared, Laon and Cythna were brother and sister.

Their love like that of the missionary and priestess is considered illicit. Not only are the motifs of both very similar, but many of the incidents are identical. The influence of the _Missionary_ on the _Revolt_ will perhaps appear more clearly if we put these incidents in parallel columns. In the second canto--

Laon and Cythna must part that they When the missionary tells Luxima may spread their doctrines among that they must separate, in order men. that he may continue the work of his ministry, Luxima says she Cythna says: will not long endure the agony of separation. "Thinkest thou," she "We part! O Laon, I must dare, exclaims, "that I shall long nor tremble survive his loss for whom I have To meet those looks no more! sacrificed all?"

Oh heavy stroke Sweet brother of my soul! can I dissemble The agony of this thought?"

Laon and Cythna are seized by the The missionary and Luxima are officers of the State, and during seized by the officers of the the struggle Laon overcomes three Inquisition, and the missionary of the tyrant's soldiers in overcomes three soldiers in defense of Cythna. defense of Luxima.

"--a feeble shriek "But the _feeble_ plaints of It was a feeble shriek, faint, Luxima, who was borne away in far, and low the arms of one of the a.s.sailants _Arrested me_--my _mien grew _recalled to his bewildered mind_ calm and meek_-- a consciousness of their mutual 'Twas Cythna's cry." sufferings and situations."

After the overthrow of the tyrant Their fellow travelers boldly Othman the people demand advanced to rescue the missionary that he be put to death. and Luxima, and awaiting his orders, asked: "Shall we throw those men under the camels' feet or shall we bind them to those rocks and leave them to their fate?"

Laon answers: "The missionary cast on them a glance of pity and contempt and "'What do ye seek? What fear looking round him with an air at ye,' then I cried, once dignified and grateful, he Suddenly starting forth, said: 'My friends, my heart is 'that ye should shed deeply touched by your generous The blood of Othman? If your sympathy; good and grave men hearts are tried ever unite, of whatever religion In the true love of freedom or whatever faith they may be; cease to dread but I belong to a religion whose This one poor lonely man.'" spirit is to save, not to destroy; suffer these men to live; they are but the agents of a higher power whose scrutiny they challenge me to meet.'"

From his prison Laon sees a ship On the way to Goa the missionary sailing by in which he thinks notices a covered conveyance Cythna is imprisoned. going by in which he feels sure Luxima is imprisoned. "He "I knew that ship bore Cythna shuddered and for a moment the o'er the plain heroism of virtue deserted him.

Of waters, to her blighting He doubted not that she would be slavery sold conveyed in the same vessel with And watched it with such him to Goa."

thoughts as must remain untold."

Cythna is imprisoned in a cavern, Luxima is imprisoned in a convent and her mind is deranged for a at Lah.o.r.e. The exciting incidents time. of their arrest and separation had deranged her mind for a time.

"The fiend of madness which had made its prey Of my poor heart was lulled to sleep awhile."

The part taken by Laon and Cythna The natives are on the point of in the insurrection of the people rebelling, and Spanish authority has already been explained. in India is on the brink of extinction. The missionary is Laon and Cythna are condemned to condemned to death, by the death through the instigation of Inquisition. The morning of the the priests. missionary's execution has arrived.

The morning of Laon's execution has arrived. "The secular judges had already taken their seats on the "And see beneath a sun-bright platform, the Grand Inquisitor _canopy_, and the Viceroy had placed Upon a platform level with the themselves beneath their pile, respective _canopies_." The The anxious Tyrant sit enthroned Christian missionary is led to on high the pile, "_the silence which Girt by the chieftans of the belongs to death reigned on host. every_ side; thousands of persons were present;... Nature was There _was silence through the touched on the master spring of host_ as when emotion, and betrayed in the An earthquake trampling on some looks of the mult.i.tude feelings populous town, of _horror_, of _pity_, and of Has crusht ten thousand with one admiration, which the bigoted tread, and men vigilance of an inhuman zeal Expect the second. would in vain have sought to suppress.

_Tumult_ was in the soul of all beside, Ill joy, or doubt, or fear; but those who saw Their tranquil victim pa.s.s felt wonder glide, Into their brain, and became calm with awe."

As burning torches are about to be On the day of the execution applied to the pyre on which Laon Luxima noticed a procession is to die, a steed bursts through moving beneath her window and her the rank of the people on which a eyes rested on the form of the woman sits. missionary. "She beheld the friend of her soul; love and "Fairer, it seems than aught reason returned together." She that _earth can breed_, escapes the vigilance of her Calm, radiant, like a phantom guardian, and seeks the place of the dawn. where her beloved is to die.

A spirit _from the caves_ of While officers were binding the _daylight_ wandering gone. missionary to the stake "a form All thought it was _G.o.d's _scarcely human_ darting with the Angel_ come to sweep velocity of lightning through the The lingering guilty to their mult.i.tude reached the foot of the fiery grave. pile and stood before it in a grand and aspiring att.i.tude ...

thus _bright and aerial_ as it stood, it looked like a spirit _sent from heaven_ in the awful moment of dissolution to cheer and to convey to the regions of the blessed, the soul which would soon arise pure from the ordeal of earthly sufferings. The sudden appearance of the singular phantom struck the imagination of the credulous and awed mult.i.tude with superst.i.tious wonder....

The Christians fixed their eyes upon the cross, which glittered on a bosom whose beauty scarcely seemed of mortal mould, and deemed themselves the witnesses of a miracle wrought for the salvation of a persecuted martyr, whose innocence was a.s.serted by the firmness and fort.i.tude with which he met a dreadful death."

Cythna has come not to save Laon Luxima springs upon the pyre to but to die with him. die with the missionary.

At the sight of Cythna At the sight of Luxima the people rise in rebellion.

"They pause, they blush, they gaze--a gathering shout "The timid spirits of the Hindus Bursts like one sound from the rallied to an event which touched ten thousand streams their hearts, and roused them Of a tempestuous sea." from the lethargy of despair--the sufferings, the oppression, they (All through the poem Cythna had so long endured, seemed now exerts a wonderful influence epitomized before their eyes in over the people.) the person of their celebrated and distinguished prophetess ...

"The tyrants send their armed they fell with fury on the slaves to quell Christians, they rushed upon the Her power; they, even like a cowardly guards of the thunder-gust Inquisition who let fall their Caught by some forest, bend arms and fled in dismay."

beneath the spell Of that young maiden's speech, and to their chiefs rebel."

It did not suit Sh.e.l.ley's purpose The officers of the Inquisition to have the people use force called on by their superiors against the tyrants, so he makes sprang forward to seize the Cythna persuade the people missionary; "for a moment the timid mult.i.tude were still as "--though unwilling her to bind _the pause of a brooding storm_."

Near me among the snakes."

A priest commands the mult.i.tude to seize Cythna,

"Slaves to the stake Bind her, and on my head the burden lay Of her just torments ...

They trembled, but replied not nor obeyed _Pausing in breathless silence_.

Laon escaped from his first prison During the confusion caused by in a boat which belonged to an old the insurrection the missionary man who represents Sh.e.l.ley's tutor and Luxima escape in a boat which at Eton, Dr. Lind. was provided by his old tutor, the Pundit.

The missionary and Luxima reach a cavern which bears a slight resemblance to the caverns of _The Revolt_. He discovers that the priestess is dying from a wound received during the melee at Lah.o.r.e. "Answering the eloquence of her languid and tender looks, he exclaims, 'Yes, dearest, and most unfortunate, our destinies are now inseparably united! Together we have loved, together we have resisted, together we have erred, and together we have suffered; lost alike to the glory and the fame which our virtues and the conquest of our pa.s.sions obtained for us; alike condemned by our religions and our countries, there now remains nothing on earth for us but each other.'" This recalls to mind the dedication of _The Revolt of Islam_--

There is no danger to a man that knows What life and death is; there's not any law Exceeds his knowledge: neither is it lawful That he should stoop to any other law.

As the end of Luxima approaches she bids her beloved live and preach peace and mercy, and love to Brahmin and Christian. "But should thy eloquence and thy example fail, tell them my story! tell them how I have suffered, and how even thou has failed--thou, for whom I forfeited my caste, my country and my life; for 'tis too true, that still more loving than enlightened, my ancient habits of belief clung to my mind, thou to my heart; still I lived thy seeming proselyte, that I might still live thine; and now I die as Brahmin women die; a Hindoo in my feelings and my faith--dying for him I loved and believing as my fathers believed."[59]

This bears some resemblance to that part of Cythna's speech in the cavern, Canto IX, where she glories in the triumph of their love over the opposition of the world.

I fear nor prize Aught that can now betide unshared by thee.

Cythna thinks that she _will soon die_ and believes like Luxima that the story of their love will be a source of inspiration to mankind

Our many thoughts and deeds, our life and love, Our happiness, and all that we have been Immortally must live and burn and move When we shall be no more.

There are, of course, some differences between the two stories, especially in the conclusions (Cythna and Laon are burned, while Luxima alone dies and the Missionary is never heard of again); but many of the incidents of both are so alike as to justify us in believing that those in _The Revolt_ were derived from _The Missionary_. This is confirmed by the fact that Sh.e.l.ley makes more attacks in this poem on priests and the celibacy of the clergy than in any other. In the preface to the poem, Sh.e.l.ley says that "although the mere composition occupied no more than six months, the thoughts thus arranged were slowly gathered in as many years." It is suggestive that the idea of composing the poem came to him in 1811, the year in which he first read the _Missionary_. In this same year he wrote a little poem ent.i.tled an _Essay on Love_, no copy of which is now extant.[60] Should one ever come to light, it may show remarkable similarity to the love poem _The Revolt of Islam_, where "love is celebrated everywhere as the sole law which should govern the moral world."[61]

It has been said that Sh.e.l.ley was a libertine, but there seems to be no proof for this a.s.sertion. Hogg, who was his most intimate friend at Oxford, says the purity and sanct.i.ty of Sh.e.l.ley's life were most conspicuous. "He was offended, and indeed more indignant than would appear to be consistent with the singular mildness of his nature at a coa.r.s.e and awkward jest, especially if it were immodest and uncleanly; in the latter case his anger was unbounded, and his uneasiness preeminent." With the exception of his elopement with Mary G.o.dwin there is nothing in his life to indicate that he was licentious. "Die ruhe, klarheit, sicherheit und starke seines geschlechtlichen empfundens, das frei ist von aller l.u.s.ternheit oder unnaturlichkeit ist bei seiner feinfuhligen, nervosen korperanlage besonders bemerkenswert."[62]

True, Sh.e.l.ley loved many women, but this does not prove that he was immoral. His love is platonic and not sensual. Platonic love is described by Howell as "a love abstracted from all corporeal gross impressions and sensual appet.i.tes, but consists in contemplations and ideas of the mind."[63] It is a pa.s.sion having its source in the enjoyment of beauty and goodness.

"What is love or friendship?" Sh.e.l.ley asks. "Is it capable of no extension, no communication?" Lord Kaimes defines love to be a particularization of the general pa.s.sion, but this is the love of sensation, of sentiment--the absurdest of absurd vanities; it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness. The one is a love which is self-centered, self-devoted, self-interested ... selfishness, monopoly in its very soul; but love, the love which we worship--virtue, heaven, disinterestedness--in a word."[64] Love seeks the good of all, not because its object is a minister to its pleasures, but because it is really worthy.

Platonism, laying emphasis upon the function of the soul as opposed to the senses, treats "love as a purely spiritual pa.s.sion devoid of all sensuous pleasure."[65] Beauty is a spiritual thing, the splendor of G.o.d's light shining in all things. It is that quality of an object which draws us to it and makes us love it. Man should love everything and everybody because they are all beautiful. Sh.e.l.ley says:

True love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away Love is like understanding, that grows bright Gazing on many truths;[66]