Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 6, Number 4, Winter 1997 Percy Bysshe Shelley Agape¯ vs. Eros in Poetry: Percy Shelley vs. the ‘Romantics’ The Reawakening Library of Congress Of Classical Metaphor n the years Europe felt the impact stood the Romantics, whose doctrine by Paul Gallagher of the American Revolution, the led to the modern “existentialist” I“ideas of 1789,” and the immigra- death of poetry. tion of Friedrich Schiller’s dramas, This period saw the most intense profound changes took place in Eng- political repression in Europe, also lish poetry. In its style, a deadly 150- inspired—negatively—by the threat to year straitjacket was finally thrown Europe’s oligarchy, of America’s suc- off—the sing-song “Augustan cou- cessful republican example. Poets, like plets” of John Dryden and Alexander other leading figures, took sides in the Pope. In the content of poetry, a battle struggle for freedom and justice. Percy took place. On one side, these years Shelley, both political pamphleteer continued the brief lives of the only and immortal poet, understood the two great English Classical poets of time—as Friedrich Schiller did—as “a From Plato to the the last three-hun- great moment” in founding of the dred fifty years— which people need- Percy Bysshe Shelley ed the uplifting American Republic, (1792-1822) and beauty of poetry to John Keats (1795- make them better poets have been the 1821), and that of human beings. Both ‘unacknowledged Scotland’s Robert the concept of a his- Burns (1759-1796). toric turning point legislators of the world’ On the other side as a period of “polit- The Granger Collection Granger The 37 © 1997 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. ical mass strike,” and the idea of non-violent civil disobe- heart, your true deep emotions,” or by presenting the dience, received among their very earliest expressions in “true emotions” of characters. Such an idea has never cre- Shelley’s poems and pamphlets. Lyndon LaRouche has ated beautiful poetry, nor the ability to understand or often cited Shelley’s concept that recite it. Romantic poetry, in opposition to what Shelley and [t]he most unfailing herald, companion and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in Keats practiced, is founded on the doctrines of Aristotle. opinion or institution, is Poetry. At such periods, there is an In his Poetics, Aristotle invented the dogma that poetry is accumulation of the power of communicating and receiv- based on sense images and impressions, a dogma which ing intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man became dominant in English poetry after Shakespeare’s and nature. The persons in whom this power resides may death, from the time and influence of Thomas Hobbes often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have (1588-1679). Aristotle proclaimed that poetry was noth- little correspondence with that spirit of good, of which they ing but “a mode of imitation” of that which is perceived are the ministers. But even whilst they deny . they are by the senses; thus, making all things “objects” of the yet compelled to serve the power which is seated upon the senses: throne of their own souls. (P.B. Shelley, A Defence of Poetry, 1820). It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes, each of them part of human nature. Imitation is nat- ural to man from childhood . And it is also natural for Shelley, like Friedrich Schiller, understood that poetry all to delight in works of imitation . [T]hough the is written to awaken “that spirit of good” in the human objects themselves may be painful to see, we delight to view mind and soul, by a power of beauty which is not of the the most realistic representations of them in art, the forms, senses, but of Reason, of the Intellect. He knew that poet- for example, of the lowest animals and of dead bodies. The ry uses images of sensuous power, only to lift the mind explanation is to be found in a further fact: to be learning beyond and above them through Metaphor. something is the greatest of pleasures . ; the reason of the Shelley, in a word, was passionately a Platonist. He delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time maintained that Plato, though not “technically” a poet, learning—gathering the meanings of things, e.g., that the was among the greatest of all poets, by the power of para- man there is so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing before, one’s pleasure will not be in the picture as an imita- dox and Metaphor; and, as we shall see, Shelley believed tion of it, but will be due to the execution or coloring or that Socratic paradox was the basis of tragic drama. As some similar cause. (Poetics) Socrates spoke of poetry, playfully, in the Phaedo dia- logue, Shelley too understood poetry as an activity of the Aristotle proceeded to apply this definition, at length, Intellect and the reasoning soul, which recognizes in Cre- to epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, and lyrical forms: we ation its own beauty: “delight” in the imitations (images) of things we already know, or in “things which happen” to noble or other . The same dream came to me often in my past life, sometimes in one form and sometimes in another, but characters in stories which are already well known. What always saying the same thing: “Socrates,” it said, “make these “things” cause in us, at best, are powerful emotions music [poetry], and work at it.” And I formerly thought it or “passions,” of fear, pity, admiration for a noble person- was urging and encouraging one to do what I was doing age—if the imitation is skillful enough. already, and that just as people encourage runners by cheer- It is immediately clear and obvious, what a complete ing, so the dream was encouraging one to do what I was opposition exists between this Aristotelean “poetics,” and doing, that is, to make music, because philosophy was the the Platonic idea of poetry proclaimed by Shelley in A greatest kind of music and I was working on that. But now Defence of Poetry. Shelley wrote poetry as he wrote pam- .. I thought it was safer not to go hence [to death] before phlets, to generate new ideas, thoughts not previously pre- making sure that I had done what I ought, by obeying the sent in his hearers’ minds, “intense and impassioned con- dream and composing verses. (Phaedo) ceptions respecting man and nature.” To Shelley’s mind, to reach into the intellect and cause change, and some It is a great and pervasive fraud that today, all English great or small experience of the emotional beauty of poetry of Shelley’s period is falsely, blurringly named change, was the poet’s purpose: “Romantic,” and that Shelley and Keats—Classical poets, Like a poet hidden not Romantics—are lumped together with William In the light of thought, Wordsworth, the “founding” poet of English Romanti- Singing hymns unbidden cism. This fraud indoctrinates successive generations to ’Til the world is wrought the fantasy that poetry is composed by “baring your To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 38 The Aristotelean dogma of “poetics,” directly from poetry in general; Wordsworth called it “petty pagan- Aristotle and his ancient commentators Longinus and ism”; Sir Walter Scott considered it “Cockney drivel”; Quintillian, had been revived after Shakespeare’s death Coleridge would have put it in his opium pipe and by the evil Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ heir John Dryden, smoked it indifferently with everything else. Shelley and and Dryden’s heir Alexander Pope, had made the dogma Keats, in distinction to these, were the only great Classical of sense images even worse, by tagging mandatory English poets of the past three-hundred fifty years. “rhyming” onto it, and had tried to outlaw intellectual change and Metaphor entirely.1 Two hundred years later, Images of the Wordsworth and the “Romantics” were still following Hobbes’ Aristotelean doctrine. Creative Mind At that point, Shelley and Keats consciously attacked that doctrine to overthrow it, and made beautiful, That poetry expresses, above all, the beauty of the human metaphorical English poetry possible again. But, the mind’s power of reason, was stated by Shelley—provoca- Romantic current of Wordsworth prevailed, leading in tively—in the Preface to his lyrical drama Prometheus the Twentieth century to existentialist poetry of pure Unbound (1819): sense images, thrown together without form or The imagery which I have employed will be found . to meter—unless we might name new forms, such as have been drawn from the operations of the human mind, “meander-verse” and “stumble-verse,” jumbled with or from those external actions by which they are expressed. obscenities and random profanities, as the inventions of This is unusual in modern poetry, although Dante and these new Romantics expressing their “true feelings.” Shakespeare are full of instances of the same kind; Dante, Poetry has died an erotic death, and children are taught indeed, more than any other poet, and with greater success. that any unashamed eroticism, any sing-song rhyming, But the Greek poets . were in the habitual use of this is “poetry.” power. [Emphasis added] Shelley, Keats, and Burns held to their ideal of poetic beauty and human freedom to their deaths, ostracized Shelley pointed to lyrics like the following; a song of and outcast. They composed poetry to express of the the spirit which comforts Prometheus in the second act of human spirit, its highest activities and sentiments, its his drama, singing of how poets “nor seek nor find” plea- need to search for truth.