PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, A DEFENCE OF POETRY (1821)

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1 1 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, A DEFENCE OF POETRY (1821) Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defence of Poetry. Critical Theory Since Plato. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, The Author (The Expressive Pole): Who Are Poets? (519) Read from According to one mode... (p. 516) to... still more decisive. (p.517); from Poetry is indeed something divine... (p.527) to... the most enlarged imagination (p. 527); and from A poet, as he is the author... (p.528) to... unacknowledged legislators of the world. (p.529). One of the key questions which Shelley believes he must address is, who are poets? (519). In a famous definition which signals the definitive shift towards the author-oriented or expressive model of literature which comes to predominate from about the late eighteenth century, Shelley argues that poetry is the expression of the imagination (516) (of the poet, evidently). To put this another way, the mental faculty called the imagination manifests itself in and through poetry. Near the end of the essay, Shelley concludes, for reasons which he will advance in the course of the essay, that poets are compelled to serve (529) that regal power which is seated on the throne of their own soul (529). Accordingly, Shelley believes that to understand poetry, one must seek to understand the poet for which reason, in turn, one must first seek to understand the nature of the human mind. Alluding almost certainly to Coleridge s The Aeolian Harp, Shelley begins by comparing man s mind to an aeolian lyre (or harp), a musical instrument which, like chimes, makes sounds in response to the wind which blows over its strings. In Coleridge s poem, the influence of German Idealism in general and Schelling in particular is obvious: the mind (geist) is compared to a harp, thought to the sounds made by the harp as the wind blows over its strings, and the wind, appropriately deemed an intellectual breeze, to the workings of the universal mind (Geist). The implication here is that the thoughts which our minds think emanate from that collective consciousness which inhabits, in-forms and, thus, grants rational purpose to the universe of things. In this essay, Shelley contends that the mind is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternation of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever changing melody (my emphasis; 516). In other words, Shelley argues that the mind (compared to a lyre) produces a sequence of ideas which, in its ideal state, would take a logical form (this is compared to the melody, which is a sequence of musical notes). This occurs partly in response to external forces (the wind blowing on the strings) and partly in response to internal factors (the very existence, for example, of the strings themselves which is indispensable if sounds are to be produced at all). Shelley s model of the mind stands in stark contrast to Coleridge s: his claim is, simply, that human consciousness is shaped partly by extrinsic forces (that is, the impact thereon of the universe of things ) and partly by the existence of certain features intrinsic to the constitution of the mind. He may have in mind those transcendental faculties which Kant posits, or he may be thinking simply of those biological features of the organ we call the brain and without which thought would not be possible. (If the latter, Shelley anticipates modern efforts by philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists and psychologists to ground our grasp of the mind in an understanding of the biology of the brain.) Shelley, appropriately enough, calls that part of the mind responsible for producing sequences of ideas our reason (516).

2 2 However, Shelley goes to argue that there is also a principle within the human being, and perhaps all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds or motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. (516) Here, Shelley seems to suggest (rightly or wrongly) that harps are limited to producing mere melodies, that is, sequences of individual notes. (Is it not possible, one might ask, for the wind to make more than one string sound at the same time?) However, the human mind is capable of much more: it can also produce the mental equivalent of musical chords, that is, a group of notes, hopefully in harmony with each other, which are played simultaneously rather than one after the other (if these are not in harmony, one would have a dischord ). To put this another way, each note comprising a musical melody may be played simultaneously with other, hopefully harmonious notes. By the same token, the human mind has the capacity to simultaneously link, connect, combine or associate one idea with another appropriate idea. If it is the reason which produces sequences of ideas, Shelley contends that it is the imagination (516) which associates ideas with each other. In all this, Shelley seems once more to be gesturing to and perhaps undermining Coleridge s distinction between allegory (where the Fancy is capable of conceiving willy nilly of comparisons between simply any two objects, resulting in metaphors and similes and the like) and symbol (where it is the Imagination that intuits a relationship of part to whole between two objects and, thus, unity and togetherness where there appears to be only distinction and separation). Where Coleridge credits the Imagination with the power of what seems to be an almost spiritual insight that allows one to glimpse how the physical world is part of as well as expressive of a larger spiritual substance that seems to permeate the universe of things, Shelley seems content to think of the imagination as restricted to the Fancy, that is, capable of drawing appropriate comparisons between any two objects. Shelley seeks to differentiate in some detail the reason from the imagination. He categorises them both as classes of mental action (516). He defines the former, reason, as the mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced (516). The reason is, in other words, responsible for reasoning, that is, producing thoughts in some sort (hopefully) of logical order. It is concerned with analysis (516), that is, seeking to understand worldly phenomena by dissecting them, splitting them apart into their constitutive elements. By contrast, the imagination is another part of the mind acting upon those thoughts [produced by the reason] so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts (my emphasis; 516). In other words, the imagination associates the thoughts utilised by reason with other thoughts, thereby colouring and illuminating them in ways peculiar to the workings of the imagination of the mind in question. The imagination has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself (516). There is no suggestion here, à la Coleridge, of the existence of some capacity to see beyond the surface appearance of physical things and glimpse some non-physical, spiritual world. It is concerned with synthesis (516): where the reason respects the differences (516) between things, the Imagination perceives the similitudes of things (516). Last but not least, the Imagination is superior to reason, making use of and building upon but also exceeding it: [r]eason is to the imagination, as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance (516). In other words, the reason is a tool used by the imagination; it is the body through which the spirit lives, moves and has its being; it is merely the shadow cast by the imagination. Towards the end of the essay, Shelley attempts to describe the creative process which remains difficult to fathom. He says that we are conscious only of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling (526). These are sometimes associated with place or person (526),

3 3 that is, they are derived from and, thus, a reflection of the external natural and social worlds, and sometimes regarding our own mind alone (526), that is, they originate within. Whatever their source, he contends, our thoughts and feelings are always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden (526). Notwithstanding the fact that this process if uncontrolled, the thoughts and feelings produced thereby are elevating and delightful beyond all expression (526). He stresses that creativity is not something that may be summoned at will: it is not like the reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will (527). One cannot simply say that I will compose poetry (527). Rather, inspiration has to hit you, as it were. He uses several interesting similes to describe the mind in creation (527): it is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. (527) He reiterates here that creativity is the effect partly of external influences (hence, the image of the wind from time to time causing a piece of coal in a fire to burn brightly, albeit temporarily) and partly of little understood internal impetuses. Moreover, the conscious portion of our mind (our reason) cannot predict either its coming or going. He concludes that it is accordingly an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study (527). He contends that the creative process is comparable to being haunted or possessed by a beneficent supernatural entity or power (as opposed to demonic possession): it is as it were the interpenetration of a diviner nature through our own (my emphasis; 527). However, the process remains mysterious and little understood: its footsteps are like those of a wind over the sea, which the morning calm erases, and whose traces remain only, as on the wrinkled sand which paves it (527). Representation and Form (The Mimetic and Objective Poles): What Is Poetry? (519) Read from "Language, colour, form,..." (p. 517) to "... living images" (p. 519). Having defined the poet, Shelley turns his attention to the question, what is poetry? (519), that is, to discussing both the object (what poetry is about ) and form (how poetry depicts what it does) of poetic representation. What he terms the materials of poetry (517) include religious and civil habits of action (517), while the instruments (517) of poetry include [l]anguage, color, form (517). In other words, poetry is an imitation of human actions and behaviour and to this end makes use of the medium of words. Poetry is, in short, a verbal mirror held up to human beings, their words and actions, the relationships which they share with each other and, as a result, the social world which they form. This is why Shelley speaks, towards the end of the essay, of poets as communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature (529) and functioning thereby to measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit (529). However, poetry does more than merely re-present existing reality. Rather, sounding what appears to be a Neo-Platonic and idealist note that cannot help but remind one, at least at first glance, of the views of Coleridge, Shelley contends that poets imagine and express (517) an indestructible order (517). This is because the poet participates in the eternal, the infinite, and the one (517). Poetry is, as such, an echo of the eternal music (518). It is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth (518). Its words unveil the permanent analogy of things by images which participate in the life of truth (518).

4 4 Shelley has something to say about interpreting the meaning of poetry. He stresses that the meaning of a poem is not straightforward: All high poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight. (525) It is, rather, infinitely suggestive and evocative in a way that makes it very difficult to pinpoint the meaning precisely Having discussed the content of poetry, Shelley turns his attention to questions concerning its form. He differentiates poetry (often used in days of yore as a synonym for literature in general) from other art forms such as the visual arts, the plastic arts (sculpture), and dance on the basis of its medium of representation. Poetry, he argues, expresses those arrangements of language, and especially metrical language (517). What distinguishes poetry is its use of words and, specifically, the rhythms according to which those words are arranged (metre). Metrical uses of language are created by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature of man (517). His term for this faculty the imagination. Words, he believes, have a special relationship to the imagination. This springs from the nature itself of language (517) which is a more direct representation of the actions and passions of our internal being (517) and is, as such, both susceptible of more various and delicate combinations (517) and is more plastic and obedient of the faculty of which it is the creation (517) than other media of representation, such as color, form, or motion (517), at the heart of the art forms of painting, sculpture and dance, respectively. Though both poetry and prose utilise the medium of words, Shelley differentiates the former from the latter. Gesturing seemingly to Wordsworth s claims on this score in the Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, Shelley asserts that the difference between measured and unmeasured language (518), that is, poetry and prose, lies not merely in the fact that one is written in verse while the other is not. Where a story (518) (prose fiction) is merely a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect (518) (he alludes at the end to plot), poetry is by contrast the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself the image of all other minds (518). In other words, the consciousness of the poet, which is a mirror image of all human minds, reflects and accordingly depicts in his poetry actions typical of all humans because a universal human nature is the common possession of all human beings. Prose fiction is socially and culturally specific it is nothing more than a story of particular facts (519) which is, as such, partial, and applies only to a definite period of time, and a certain combination of events which can never again recur (518). Poetry is, by contrast, universal, and contains within itself the germ of a relation to whatever motives or actions have place in the possible varieties of human nature (518). Moreover, where prose fiction is a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful (519) (he seems to be thinking here of the realism with which prose fiction is synonymous), poetry makes beautiful that which is distorted (519). Shelley also has something to say about genre. He seems to suggest that not all poetic genres are created equal. Lyric poetry seems, in his view, to be the best form of poetry by contrast to tragic poetry which has normally been elevated over other poetic kinds: [s]orrow, terror, anguish, despair... are often the chosen expression of an approximation to the highest good (526). He even seems to take a dig in this regard at his contemporary John Keats when he mentions that melancholy (526) often seems to be inseparable from the sweetest melody (526). His point in all this is, seemingly, that neither pity and fear nor melancholy provide the higher kind of pleasure produced by poetry and through which moral wisdom is communicated.

5 5 The Reader (The Pragmatic Pole): Poetry s Effects Upon Society (519) Read from "Having determined what is poetry..." (p.519) to "... advert to this purpose" (p. 520); and from "But let us not be betrayed..." (p. 525) to "... impressions blunted by reiteration" (p. 528). Shelley, like so many theorists and poets before him, also responds in this essay (hence, the title) to Plato s invitation to rescue poetry from exile by arguing that it has beneficial moral, social and political effects. Having discussed who are poets (519) and what is poetry (519), Shelley proceeds to focus on its effects upon society (519). Shelley responds in particular to the claim that while the exercise of the imagination is most delightful [Horace s dulce] (525), that of reason is more useful [utile] (525). He does so by arguing that poetry s utility (525) (i.e its usefulness) is accomplished by means of both the pleasure (525) (i.e. the delight) which it produces and the good (525) behaviour which it inspires in the reader. It is in this way that poetry has a beneficial moral impact. Shelley first turns his attention to the goodness which poetry inspires in people. He contends that the whole objection... of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man (519). However, Shelley is of the view that all spirits upon which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight (519). Poetry acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness (519). Pointing out that it is not for want of admirable [religious and philosophical] doctrines that men hate, and despise, and censure, and deceive, and subjugate one another (519), Shelley contends that poetry acts in another and diviner manner (519). It awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought (519). It lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar (519). The impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which it coexists (519). The great secret of morals is love (519), Shelley writes, that is, a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own (519). A man, he argues, in order to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own (519). For this reason, the great instrument of moral good is the imagination (520). Poetry, he asserts, administers to the effect [i.e. the propagation of good] by acting upon the cause (520), that is, enlarging the circumference of the imagination by replenishing it with thoughts of ever new delight, which have the power of attracting and assimilating to their own nature all other thoughts (520). Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man (520) in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb (520). This is why Shelley counsels against openly moralising in poetry: the effect of... poetry is diminished in exact proportion to the degree in which they compel us to advert to this purpose (520). He acknowledges, too, the possibility that morality may be socially and historically specific, arguing that the poet s conceptions of right and wrong... are usually those of his place and time (520), rather than universally applicable. With a tip of the hat to Horace and his famous definition of the best poetry as being utile et dulce (both morally useful and sweet or delightful), Shelley then turns his attention

6 6 to the pleasure produced by poetry. In a way that anticipates Freud s notion of the pleasurepain principle (i.e. humans instinctively seek pleasure and avoid pain), Shelley argues that pleasure is that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks (525), the implication being that the opposite is true where pain is concerned. He argues that there are two kinds of pleasure: one durable, universal and permanent; the other transitory and particular (525). The former strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense (525). The latter performs a much narrower (525) function in that it merely banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature (525) (i.e. satisfies our natural needs, especially those sexual and nutritional in nature), and assists in surrounding men with security of life (525), dispersing the grosser delusions of superstition (525), and conciliating such a degree of mutual forbearance among men as may consist with the motives of personal advantage (525) (i.e. it encourages humans to treat each other kindly insofar as there is some personal advantage to be gained). However, this is a much more limited (525) form of pleasure and those who are concerned with propagating it merely follow in the footsteps of poets (525). The production and assurance of pleasure in this highest sense (526) of the word, Shelley argues, is the province of poetry. This is poetry s true utility (526). Shelley contends that [t]hose who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets or poetical philosophers (526). The conventional view, at least among philosophers and scientists ever since the Socratics, is that it is our reason which holds all the answers to our questions. For all such thinkers, reason is the key to understanding the universe as a result of which the creative arts in general and poetry in particular should be considered useless and largely relegated to the margins of productive intellectual life. These beliefs have only intensified, Shelley believes, since the seventeenth century (the so-called Age of Rationalism ) and the Enlightenment synonymous with the eighteenth century. The result has been that we have more moral, political and historical wisdom (526) and more scientific and economical knowledge (526) than ever before. However, man s lot has scarcely, if at all, improved precisely because the crucial importance of poetry in not only understanding but also changing the world has been tragically overlooked. (Shelley seems to anticipate by several years Karl Marx s famous dictum to the effect that our goal should not simply be to understand the world but also to change it for the better.) Shelley expressly claims that it is the imagination which is the ultimate and true basis of all knowledge (526). The reason for this is quite simple, according to Shelley: all knowledge is subjective, to be precise, all things exist as they are perceived; at least in relation to the percipient (527), for which reason the mind is accordingly able to make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven (527). The role of the imagination is accordingly crucial and takes two forms: first, it creates new materials of knowledge and power and pleasure (526) and, second, it engenders in the mind a desire to reproduce and arrange (526) these materials according to a certain rhythm and order which might be called the beautiful and the good (526). Pointing out that the poetry in these systems of thought [which [privilege the reason over the imagination], is concealed by the accumulation of facts and calculating processes ( ), in other words, that there is a rhetorical and literary dimension to the work of philosophers and scientists which they do not or will not acknowledge, Shelley asserts that what is accordingly lacking in the contributions of most philosophers and scientists is precisely the creative faculty to imagine that which we know;... the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want [i.e. lack] the poetry of life (my emphasis; 526). In other words, they lack the ability to imagine a better alternative to the here and now and to act on this vision. By emphasising a scientific understanding of the universe instead of seeking a poetry of life, they have contributed to man s continued enslavement to inimical natural, social and political forces beyond his control, rather than his emancipation: the

7 7 cultivation of those sciences which have enlarged the limits of the empire of man over the external world, has, for want of the poetical faculty, proportionally circumscribed those of the internal world; and man, having enslaved the elements, remains himself a slave. (526) As a result, Shelley believes, although intellectuals like Locke and Voltaire have accomplished many important things and bequeathed many important insights to us, it is easy to calculate the degree of moral and intellectual improvement which the world would have exhibited, had they never lived (526). In other words, whatever their contributions to epistemology and metaphysics, they have made very little difference to the amelioration of the social and political conditions of man s existence. It is impossible, however, to calculate the moral condition of the world (526) were it not for the existence of poets like Shakespeare: the human mind could never, except by the intervention of these excitements [on the part of poets], have been awakened to [i.e. by] the invention of the grosser sciences, and that application of analytical reasoning to the aberrations of society, which it is now tempted to exalt over the direct expression of the inventive and creative faculty itself. (526) The reason and the sciences may have gained supremacy over the imagination and the creative arts in intellectual circles and, increasingly, the public imagination, but this is a tragic error. It is poetry which will save us from ourselves, Shelley suggests, not the calculations of scientists. Through the powerful and unique combination of moral utility with pleasurable delight in poetry, Shelley argues, the state of mind produced (527) is one at war with every base desire (527). By state of mind, he has in mind such emotions (527) as the enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship (527). These positive emotions are the result of the fact that poets colour all that they combine with the evanescent hues of this ethereal world (527): a word, a trait in the representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted chord and reanimate in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past (527). Poetry, Shelley famously claims, is the main portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit... into the universe of things (527). For this reason, Shelley argues, poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things. It transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms. (527) Shelley contends that, as such, poetry defeats the curse which binds us to be subjected to the accident of surrounding impressions. And whether it spreads its own figured curtain, or withdraws life s dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It... purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.... It creates anew the universe, after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration. ( ) Poetry, Shelley asserts, is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds (527). It makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world; it

8 8 arrests the vanishing apparitions which haunt the interlunations of life, and veiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind (527). It redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man (527) because it turns all things to loveliness (527). Shelley s allusions to but also his significant differences from Coleridge s conception of beauty should be evident from a close reading of this passage. Arguing that the blossoming of literature has ever preceded or accompanied a great and free development of the national will (529), he contends that the present period is the latest to engage in a national struggle for civil and religious liberty (529) and that poetry is the unfailing herald, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion, or institution (529). Such conditions of being (527), Shelley avers, are experienced mostly by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination (527). Because of their power to envision an alternative world, poets are more than mere writers: they are institutors of laws,... founders of civil society,... inventors of the arts of life,... teachers, who draw into a certain propinquity with the beautiful and the true, that partial apprehension of the agencies of the invisible world (517) which we normally call religion. Shelley terms them legislators (517) and prophets (517) because the poet not only beholds intensely the present as it is, and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be ordered, but he beholds the future in the present and his thoughts are the germ of the flower and the fruit of the latest time (517).