The Radicalism of Shelley and Its Sources Part 5

In another place he says "the meanest of our fellow beings contains qualities, which, developed, we must admire and adore." Beauty is something more than outward appearance. The source of its power lies in the soul. "The platonic theory of beauty teaches that the beauty of the body is a result of the formative energy of the soul." According to the Platonist Ficino the soul has descended from heaven and has framed a body in which to dwell. True lovers are those whose souls have departed from heaven under the same astral influences and who, accordingly, are informed with the same idea in imitation of which they frame their earthly bodies."[67] "We are born," writes Sh.e.l.ley, "into the world, and there is something within us which, from the instant that we live, more and more thirsts after its likeness.... The discovery of its ant.i.type; the meeting with an understanding capable of clearly estimating our own ... with a frame whose nerves like the chords of two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own;... this is the invisible and unattainable point to which love tends."[68] According to Plato wisdom is the most lovely of all ideas and the human being who has the greatest amount of wisdom is the most lovable.

Platonic love then concerns only the soul, and the union of lover and beloved is simply a union of their souls. "I am led to love a being,"

Sh.e.l.ley says, "not because it stands in the physical relation of blood to me but because I discern an intellectual relationship."[69] Whenever Sh.e.l.ley sees one possessing beauty and virtue he cannot help loving that person.

I never was attached to that great sect Whose doctrine is that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend And all the rest though fair and wise commend To cold oblivion;[70]

Again

Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

This is the doctrine of Diotima in Plato's _Symposium_, which Sh.e.l.ley has translated as follows: "He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms.... He ought then to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preferences towards one, through his perception of the mult.i.tude of claims upon his love."

In the preface to _Alastor_ Sh.e.l.ley says that the poem represents a youth (himself) of uncorrupted feelings led forth to the contemplation of the universe. "But the period arrives when these objects cease to suffice. His mind is at length awakened, and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to himself. He images to himself the Being whom he loves." This image unites all of wonderful or wise or beautiful which the poet could depict. Sh.e.l.ley sought this ideal all through life, and when he thought he found it went into raptures. Disillusionment, however, soon followed, and _Alastor_ is the expression of his despair at not finding an embodiment of his ideal.

If we keep in mind that Sh.e.l.ley was a platonist, we shall be able to form a more intelligent estimate of his love lyrics and his relations with women. In his first wife, Harriet, he saw courage, a desire for freedom, and a willingness to learn his doctrines.

Thou art sincere and good, of resolute mind Free from heart-withering customs' cold control, Of pa.s.sion lofty, pure and subdued.

As soon as she ceased to take interest in his studies, his love for her began to wane. "Every one must know," he tells Peac.o.c.k, "that the partner of my life should be one who can feel poetry and understand philosophy." A month or two after his first marriage he tells Elizabeth Hitchener that he loves her. Seeing that she possessed high intelligence, great love of mankind, and a tendency to oppose existing inst.i.tutions, he straightway calls her the "sister of his soul."

Later on he meets a beautiful, sentimental Italian girl, Emilia Viviani, imagines she is the perfect ideal which he had formed in his youth, and writes the _Epipsychidion_. "Emilia," says Professor Dowden, "beautiful, spiritual, sorrowing, became for him a type and symbol of all that is most radiant and divine in nature, all that is most remote and unattainable, yet ever to be pursued--the ideal of beauty, truth, and love."[71]

_Epipsychidion_ is the poetic embodiment of the feelings awakened in Sh.e.l.ley by this supposed discovery of the incarnation of the ideal. Emilia turned out to be an ordinary human creature, and then Sh.e.l.ley wished to blot out the memory of her entirely. In a letter to Mr. Gisborne, June, 1822, Sh.e.l.ley says: "I think one is always in love with something or other; the error--and I confess it is not easy for spirits cased in flesh and blood to avoid it--consists in seeking in a mortal image the likeness of what is, perhaps eternal." "Such illusions," says Dowden, "may be of service in keeping alive within us the aspiration for the highest things, but a.s.suredly they have a tendency to draw away from real persons some of those founts of feeling which are needed to keep fresh and bright the common ways and days of our life."[72]

Some of Sh.e.l.ley's views on women and the family were derived from Mary Wollstonecraft's _Vindication of the Rights of Women_. "According to the prevailing opinion," says Mrs. Wollstonecraft, "women were made for men."

All their cares and anxieties are directed towards getting husbands. They deck themselves out with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a short lived tyranny. "Love in their bosoms, taking place of every n.o.bler pa.s.sion, their sole ambition is to look fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ign.o.ble desire, like the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength of character."[73] Women then should not depend on their charms alone, because these have little effect on their husband's heart "when they are seen every day when the summer is past and gone." Her first care should be to improve her mind, to exercise her G.o.d-given faculties, a.s.sert her individuality. This can never be, though, as long as she is the plaything of man. If one may contest the divine right of kings one may also contest the divine right of husbands. Women should bow only to reason and cease being the modest slaves of opinion. It is a violation of the sacred rights of humanity to exact blind obedience and meek submission of women. "The being who patiently endures injustice will soon become unjust."

In _The Revolt of Islam_, Cythna says:

Can man be free if woman be a slave?

Chain one who lives and breathes this boundless air, To the corruption of a closed grave!

Can they whose mates are beasts condemned to bear Scorn, heavier far than toil or anguish, dare To trample their oppressors?

According to Pope "every woman is at heart a rake." "Rendered gay and giddy by the whole tenor of their lives, the very aspect of wisdom or the severe graces of virtue must have a lugubrious appearance to them." "Till women are led to exercise their understandings they should not be satirized for their attachment to rakes."[74]

Sh.e.l.ley's opinion of women is even less complimentary:

Woman! she is his slave, she has become A thing I weep to speak--the child of scorn, The outcast of a desolated home.

Falsehood, and fear, and toil, like waves have worn Channels upon her cheek, which smiles adorn, As calm decks the false ocean....[75]

"The parent," Mrs. Wollstonecraft writes, "who pays proper attention to helpless infancy has a right to require the same attention when the feebleness of age comes upon him. But to subjugate a rational being to the mere will of another, after he is of age to answer to society for his own conduct, is a most cruel and undue stretch of power, and perhaps as injurious to morality as those religious systems which do not allow right and wrong to have any existence, but in the Divine will." Children should be taught early to submit to reason, "for to submit to reason, is to submit to the nature of things, and to that G.o.d who formed them so, to promote our real interest."[76]

But children near their parents tremble now Because they must obey ...

... and life is poisoned in its wells.[77]

"Obedience (were society as I could wish it) is a word which ought to be without meaning."[78]

Another book that interested Sh.e.l.ley very much was the "_Memoires relatives a la Revolution Francaise_" of Louvet. Louvet was a licentious novelist and ardent Republican. He strongly opposed the tyranny of Marat and of Robespierre and the work of the commune of Paris. He was very courageous and often endangered his life by his opposition to the arbitrary measures of the Council. In 1793 he was obliged to flee for his life and the _Memoirs_ contains interesting details of this flight. He and his wife were very devoted to each other, and this together with the man's courage made a strong impression on Sh.e.l.ley. "Je te laissai, mon cher Barbaroux; maix tu me le pardonnes; tu sais quelle pa.s.sion j'avais pour elle, et comme elle en etait digne!" He goes to Paris in spite of the fact that he runs the risk of being seized and guillotined. "Quiconque n'epouvva point un pariel supplice ne saurait en avoir une juste idee. O Ladoiska! sans le souvenir de ton amour, qui donc aurait pu m' empecher de terminer mes peines?"[79]

Louvet and Ladoiska are reunited again, but only to be arrested soon afterwards. This causes her to exclaim, "Non, je jure que sans toi, la vie m'est tourment, un insupportable tourment, seule, je perirais bientot, je perirais desesperee. Ah! permets, permets que nous mourions ensemble."[80]

This work may have suggested to Sh.e.l.ley the idea of making Laon and Cythna die together. Cythna tells Laon

Darkness and death, if death be true, must be Dearer than life and hope if unenjoyed with thee.[81]

CHAPTER III

POLITICS

Someone has said that if Sh.e.l.ley had not been a poet he would have been a politician. Certain it is that he gave to politics a great deal of thought and study. On January 26, 1819, Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Peac.o.c.k: "I consider poetry very subordinate to political science, and, if I were well, certainly I would aspire to the latter, for I can conceive a great work embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the contending creeds by which mankind have been ruled."[82] Sh.e.l.ley was not one who

beheld the woe In which mankind was bound, and deem'd that fate Which made them abject, would preserve them so.

On the contrary, he firmly believed in man's capacity to work out his own regeneration. His tuneful lyre was ever at the service of the G.o.ddess of Freedom; and he took occasion often to pour forth music calculated to rouse the nations from their apathy.

Very many of Sh.e.l.ley's views on political and social questions can be traced to G.o.dwin's _Political Justice_. G.o.dwin doubts that one can be said to have a mind. It may still be convenient to use the word "mind," but in fact what we know by that name is merely a chain of "ideas." Since man's mind is but an aggregate of ideas, man himself is capable of indefinite modification. Differences in men result wholly from differences of education. Feed a sinner on syllogisms and you can transform him into a saint. It is impossible for one to resist a clear exposition of the advantages of virtue. It follows, too, that we can easily abolish existing inst.i.tutions and rearrange the whole structure of society on new principles infallibly correct. The force which is to spur us on to do this is reason. It is "omnipotent."

Volney, Rousseau, Holbach, and the rest of this stamp, although condemning past systems of government, admitted that some form of government was necessary for the well-being of mankind. G.o.dwin, on the other hand, denounced all government as "an inst.i.tution of the most pernicious tendency." There is only one power to which man should yield obedience and that is the decision of his own understanding. Conditions being such as they are, government may be required for a while to restrain and direct men, but as soon as men will learn to follow reason, government will disappear altogether.

G.o.dwin taught that every voluntary action flows solely from the decision of one's judgment. "Voluntary actions of men originate in all cases in their opinions," _i. e._, in the state of their minds immediately previous to those actions. The nature of a man's actions, therefore, depends on the nature of his opinions. If he has just and true opinions his actions will be good; if erroneous ones, his actions will be bad. But "sound reasoning and truth adequately communicated must be victorious over error."[83] Man will always accept the truth if presented to him properly. It follows, then, that "reason and conviction appear to be the proper instruments for regulating the actions of mankind." Man's conduct should not conform to any other standard but reason. Obedience to law then is immoral, unless of course its mandates correspond to the decision of our own judgments.

Sh.e.l.ley has the same idea

The man Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys, Power, like a devastating pestilence Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth, Make slaves of men, and of the human frame A mechanized automaton.[84]

Again and again he exclaims against kings and autocracy. His sonnet, "England in 1819," is a terrible castigation of the Hanoverian Kings:

An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king; Princes the dregs of their dull race, who flow Through public scorn--mud from a muddy spring, Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling, Till they drop blind in blood without a blow, etc., etc.

To aid republicanism he espoused the cause of the unhappy Caroline of Brunswick and on her account wrote "A New National Anthem," and the satirical piece, "Swellfoot the Tyrant." In "h.e.l.las" we find him advocating the cause of Greece, and it is believed that this poem moved his friend Byron to take up arms in defense of that country.

"A king," writes G.o.dwin, "is necessarily and unavoidably a despot in his heart." With him the words "ruler" and "tyrant" are synonymous. A king from the very nature of his office cannot be anything but vicious. Sh.e.l.ley expresses his opinion of kings as follows:

The king, the wearer of a gilded chain That binds his soul to abjectness, the fool Whom courtiers nickname monarch, whilst a slave Even to the basest appet.i.tes.[85]

One wonders at first why Sh.e.l.ley should have represented evil as an eagle in _The Revolt of Islam_. The reason for this becomes clear when one considers that the eagle is often called a king among birds and is used as a symbol for authority.

Sh.e.l.ley, however, did not believe in violent revolutions. In _The Revolt of Islam_, Irish pamphlets, &c., he advocates reformation without recourse to force. A change must take place; kings must be done away with, but not until the people are prepared for the change. "A pure republic," he writes, "may be shown, by inferences the most obvious and irresistible, to be that system of social order the fittest to produce the happiness and promote the genuine eminence of man. Yet nothing can less consist with reason or afford smaller hopes of any beneficial issue than the plan which should abolish the regal and the aristocratical branches of our const.i.tution, before the public mind, through many gradations of improvement, shall have arrived at the maturity which shall disregard these symbols of its childhood."

G.o.dwin and Sh.e.l.ley maintain that the state should make as little use as possible of coercion and violence. "Criminals should be pitied and reformed, not detested and punished." The punishment of death is particularly obnoxious to them. Sh.e.l.ley argues against it in his essay on _The Punishment of Death_. He claims that the punishment of death defeats its own end. It is a triumphant exhibition of suffering virtue, which may inspire some with pity, admiration and sympathy. As a consequence it may incite them to emulate their works, especially the works of political agitators. Punishment of death, again, excites those emotions which are inimical to social order. It strengthens all the inhuman and unsocial impulses of man. The contempt of human life breeds ferocity of manners and contempt of social ties. Hence it is, Sh.e.l.ley believes, that those nations in which the penal code has been particularly mild have been distinguished from all others by the rarity of crime.

Neither should the citizens of a state use violence in putting down oppression. In his address to the Irish he tells them that violence and folly will serve only to delay emanc.i.p.ation. "Mildness, sobriety, and reason are the effectual methods of forwarding the ends of liberty and happiness." Violence and falsehood will produce nothing but wretchedness and slavery and will make those who use them incapable of further exertion. Violence will immediately render their cause a bad one. G.o.dwin likewise maintains that "force is an expedient the use of which is much to be deplored. It is contrary to the nature of intellect which cannot be improved but by conviction and persuasion. It corrupts the man that employs it and the man upon whom it is employed."[86] In _The Revolt of Islam_ Sh.e.l.ley says:

Oh wherefore should ill ever flow from ill, And pain still keener pain forever breed?

We are all brethren--even the slaves who kill For hire are men; and to avenge misdeed On the misdoer doth but misery feed With her own broken heart![87]

G.o.dwin would reform society by means of education, so also would Sh.e.l.ley.

They seem to differ though in their views with regard to the relations that exist between inst.i.tutions and individuals. G.o.dwin holds that tyrranical inst.i.tutions must be abolished before men can become free.