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Title: The psychology of the poet Shelley : to which is prefixed a life of the author
Author: Barnefield, George, Carpenter, Edward
Language: English
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SHELLEY ***
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE POET SHELLEY
[Illustration: colophon]
BOOKS BY EDWARD CARPENTER
ANGELS’ WINGS: Essays on Art and its Relation to Life.
ART OF CREATION, THE: Essays on the Self and its Powers.
CHANTS OF LABOUR: a Songbook for the People.
CIVILIZATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE. Essays on Modern Science.
DAYS WITH WALT WHITMAN.
THE DRAMA OF LOVE AND DEATH: a Study of human Evolution and
Transfiguration.
ENGLAND’S IDEAL.
FROM ADAM’S PEAK TO ELEPHANTA: Sketches in Ceylon and India.
HEALING OF NATIONS, THE.
THE INTERMEDIATE SEX: a Study of some Transitional Types of Men and
Women.
INTERMEDIATE TYPES AMONG PRIMITIVE FOLK: a Study in Social
Evolution.
IOLAUS: an Anthology of Friendship.
LOVE’S COMING OF AGE: on the Relations of the Sexes.
MY DAYS AND DREAMS: being Autobiographical Notes with Portraits.
PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN CREEDS.
THE PROMISED LAND: a Drama of a People’s Deliverance. A new and
revised edition of “Moses.”
TOWARDS DEMOCRACY.
TOWARDS INDUSTRIAL FREEDOM.
A VISIT TO A GÑANI.
THE STORY OF EROS AND PSYCHE: together with SOME EARLY VERSES.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE POET SHELLEY
BY
EDWARD CARPENTER
AND
GEORGE BARNEFIELD
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
_First published in 1925_
(_All rights reserved_)
_Printed in Great Britain_
_THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
POET SHELLEY_
BY
EDWARD CARPENTER
Late studies in the Psychology of Sex have led to some interesting
speculations with regard to the poet Shelley; and it is with pleasure
that I write a few lines by way of introduction to the following paper
by my friend, George Barnefield, which puts very clearly, as I think,
some points in Shelley’s temperament which have hitherto been neglected
or misunderstood, and which call for renewed consideration.
Not having myself made a special study of the Modern Psychology, I do
not pretend to certify to the absolute truth of the theories put forward
by Mr. Barnefield, but I do certainly think, after due consideration,
that they are worthy of _very_ careful study. The profound divergence of
Shelley’s ideals from the accepted forms of our modern life is a subject
which, though it has always attracted attention, has never, I think,
been adequately explained or even _presented_ for intelligent
comprehension; and it is only perhaps in late years that it has become
possible, through the great advances that have been made in
psychological Science, to arrive at a valid understanding of the inner
nature of our greatest modern poet.
It has been a sort of commonplace of literary criticism to talk somewhat
vaguely of Shelley’s feminine appearance and disposition, or to quote
(in passing) Matthew Arnold’s remarks about his “ineffectual wings,” or
again to dwell on the poet’s more or less proved liability to delusions;
but there has (quite naturally) been no attempt to relate these
peculiarities to each other or to see their real bearing on the subject
under discussion. And this attitude has made it easy for hostile critics
to spread exaggerated and unfounded ideas.[1]
The points which I wish to bring to notice in the present Introduction
are (1) the degree to which the love-element and interest saturate all
Shelley’s poetry; (2) how, while showing the utmost boldness in facing
out certain problems connected with sex (incest, polygamy, etc.), he
does at the same time treat with marked reserve and a kind of childlike
innocence any direct reference to physical sex-acts; and (3) the modern
or Freudian view that the origin of mental delusions can frequently be
traced to some intimate disturbance or repression of a love-passion.
With regard to (1) it has to be noted of course that while the
love-interest occupies such a large part of the general field of
Shelley’s poetry, it occurs almost always in a very diffused and
abstract form. I need only refer in this connexion to three of his main
poems, namely, to _Prometheus Unbound_, in which the love-invocations
are strangely ethereal, extending directly and confessedly to all of
Nature and Humanity, but never dwelling for a moment on the concrete
corporeal charm of a single human being; or to _Epipsychidion_, in which
there is a like diffusion and abstractness, though the confessed
inspiration of the love is a known and acknowledged Woman (Emilia
Viviani); or again to _Adonais_, in which the definitely portrayed and
glorified object of the poem is a _Man_. In all these cases (I need
hardly say) sex and the sex-contacts which play so conspicuous a part in
quite modern literature, are kept well in the background. Whatever
Shelley’s real sentiments may have been, these matters are certainly
treated by him as quite subordinate and hardly demanding consideration.
This idealising habit was rooted in the very grain and texture of
Shelley’s mind; and though it may be open to a Mechanical Age to scoff
at the same, yet there remains a seed of prophecy in it and a promise
of deliverance from that double nightmare which continually oppresses
us, and from which we so hardly discern the means of escape. I mean the
Nightmare of Gold and the Nightmare of Blood.[2] For to-day the delusion
of monetary gain is indeed a nightmare; it clouds all free and
spontaneous activity of the human spirit, and its paralysing influence
derives from the false though ingrained belief that only by sacrificing
our lives in the pursuit of riches shall we be able (each one of us) to
escape into _freedom_; while the delusion of Redemption by the spilling
of Blood (which from the beginning of the world has been accepted as
the orthodox means of Salvation) is now confirmed by our failure to
perceive that whoever seeks to gain advantage for himself by sacrificing
others is really tightening the chains of his _own_ captivity. Shelley,
being free from either of these delusions, may be counted the prophet of
a new era for mankind.
Yet, at the time in question, Shelley himself was constantly “in love”;
and either on the one hand exalting the objects of his adorations into
an ideal sphere, or on the other hand claiming perfect liberty and
license of action and expression for them. How are we to reconcile these
varying attitudes and moods--or is it not necessary to reconcile
them?... Perhaps this last suggestion is the best. Like most
predominantly emotional people, though liable to kaleidoscopic
variations of outlook, any sustained effort to harmonise these and
render them _consistent_ with each other was painful and irksome to him.
Yet it is this very variability (but with nucleus of iron determination
and persistence) which is largely the key and explanation of Shelley’s
character. It gave him his wide sympathy with and understanding of
different and almost opposing types of humanity, and gave him at the
same time his strong determination to get at the root of things--with
the result that he ultimately combined in himself a great range of
qualities, both masculine and feminine. If he had had a longer and more
effective experience of the actual world (so we sometimes think) it
might have been possible for him to bring into line or give even more
definite form and expression to these two sides of his nature.
Familiarity with the work-a-day world of practical life would, we think,
have made it difficult for him to linger much longer among the abstract
beauties of Nature--the “mountains and fountains” of his youthful
dreams; and would have compelled him into another region where he would
have found an abundance of quite solid building material ready to his
hand.
_Prometheus Unbound_ carries the love of Nature into the realm of the
Ideal; and _Epipsychidion_ does the same for the love of Woman; but
_Adonais_ to most English ears sounds strange in its loving and highly
imaginative glorification of a _Man_; yet it is a long and elaborately
wrought poem, and perhaps in some ways the most carefully written and
direct and concrete of Shelley’s greater works. “To that high Capital
where kingly death Keeps his pale Court in beauty and decay....” It
seems impossible for anyone to be insensible to the charm and
distinction of the language--its warmth, its intensity, its glorious
movement. Yet how are the love-expressions in it to be taken? Are they
to be put aside as amiable but rather meaningless enthusiasms, or are
they to be interpreted directly and candidly, as _meaning what they
say_? A foreigner once said to me, “You English have a strange and
sinister gift for pretending that you do not see things which are
straight before your eyes.”... Shelley was not like that. His lovely
candour, his crystalline purity of mind, would not brook disguise, or
countenance any harlotry with deceit, and a great part of his precious
life was consumed in tearing from his own eyes the bandages which the
feeble conventions of that age had bound around them. For a boy at
school to adore and idealise one of the masters, _and to say so_, must
have seemed at that time a thing outrageously contrary to all the
traditions of British respectability; yet the young Percy’s devotion to
Dr. Lind (see the first stanzas of _Prince Athanase_) has a touch of
more than romance about it, and it is well-known that the growing boy
always kept a sacred place in his heart for the memory of this his
former teacher. There are two fragments of _Prince Athanase_ preserved
to us, and in the second of these the boy seems to recall the very words
of “that divine old man” when he says:
Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon, then lingering in the west,
Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,
How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
’Tis just one year--sure thou dost not forget.
Then Plato’s words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
For we had just then read--thy memory
Is faithful now--the story of the feast;[3]
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and dark forgetfulness released.
I quote this passage almost complete, not only on account of its great
intrinsic beauty, but because it holds for us something that was
evidently very dear to the young poet--the memory of how he and his old
friend had on one occasion walked on the shore together reciting in
intimate converse the words of Agathon and Diotima as recorded in that
most precious of the Platonic dialogues, the _Symposium_--a memory
evidently very precious to Shelley, just because of his love for the one
old man who in the desert of those Eton days had gone out of his way to
encourage and assist him.
I say that this devotion to Dr. Lind--the devotion of a schoolboy to one
many years his senior--throws great light on the inner nature of the
youth and exposes for us how the latter’s affections might well, at that
time, have had an ideal cast and character, and not have been entirely
swayed by the ordinary pandemic love of the male for the female.
Among the fragments of Shelley’s poems preserved to us, there is one
short piece of only a few lines from _Epipsychidion_, written apparently
in allusion to (or suggested by) a well-known statue in the Louvre, the
Hermaphrodite.
And others swear you’re a Hermaphrodite,
Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes,
Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes
The very soul that[4] the soul is gone,
Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
I quote this, not because the allusion _to an hermaphrodite_ positively
proves anything, but because it certainly _illustrates_ the poet’s
wide-ranging interest in whatever might possibly fall within the domain
of human experience. And, indeed, there are quite a few other
references among the Poems to this subject of Hermaphrodites. A careful
reading, for instance, of _The Witch of Atlas_ shows that the creation
of a strange Being of double sex is the central theme of that weirdly
beautiful poem. The supposed mother of this Being was “a lovely lady
garmented in light” and around her birth (a thing, indeed, most
interesting to us) floats the age-long prophecy of the ultimate
redemption of mankind.[5]
Her cave was stored with scrolls of strange device
Which taught the expiations at whose price
Men from the gods might win that happy age,
Too lightly lost, redeeming native vice;
And which might quench the earth-consuming rage
Of gold and blood--till men should live and move
Harmonious as the sacred stars above.
Here one can hardly do otherwise than pause a moment over the vision
indicated--the epitome and exposure of the mortal sins and consequent
disasters which afflict our modern world--“the earth-consuming rage of
Gold and Blood.” When we contemplate the frantic scramble of to-day
(insanely and murderously furious as it is) in pursuit of Gold, and the
rivers, the oceans of Blood poured out in the horrible process, when we
think of the regiments and regiments of soldiers and mercenaries mangled
and torn (and each one having wife or daughter or friend or lover to
give his or her life in exchange), when we realise _what_ all this
horrible scramble means, including the endless slaughter of the innocent
and beautiful animals, and the fear, the terror, the agony in which the
latter exist--we can but pay homage to the clear-eyed youth who, with
lightning swiftness, leapt to the understanding of the whole sordid
situation, and saw that only a new type of human being combining the
male and the female, could ultimately save the world--a being having the
feminine insight and imagination to perceive the evil, and the manly
strength and courage to oppose and finally annihilate it.
And so (returning to _The Witch of Atlas_) we find that the
double-natured one, the Hermaphrodite, was bidden extend his
storm-outspeeding wings,[6] till the vision of the coming redemption
should at last descend upon the earth, while at the same time with
regard to the lady witch herself it is said:
With motion like the spirit of that wind
Whose soft step deepens slumber, her light feet
Past through the peopled haunts of human kind,
Scattering sweet visions from her presence sweet
Through fane and palace-court, and labyrinth mined
With many a dark and subterranean street ...
Finally, even the soldiers have visions, they dream that they are
beating their swords into plough-shares!
Thus it will be perceived that this poem, _The Witch of Atlas_, if
closely looked into, discloses itself as a description, and, indeed, as
a prophecy, of the coming of a being who was to combine the
characteristics of the two sexes, and whose arrival on the Earth, and
acknowledged sway there, was to be the signal of the coming of a new
age. Perhaps, indeed, Shelley saw (in the radiance of the inner light)
that in the process of the world-evolution such a being would inevitably
arise. But the poem, as might be expected, is somewhat carefully wrapt
up in its expression, and disguised in its general content by
digressions, so that the casual and hasty reader (and likely enough this
was its author’s desire and contrivance) is partly lost and does not
always attain to catch the real purport and intention of the whole.
Perhaps it is this--this careful wrapping up and concealment of the main
purport--which explains the curious neglect on the part of critics and
others, from which the poem has suffered this long time--all the more
curious because one might certainly have been inclined to suppose
beforehand that the air of mystery would have had the opposite effect,
namely of directing attention to the poem. Professor Dowden, for
example, who is usually very scrupulous about such matters, gives hardly
any space to _The Witch of Atlas_; and Mrs. Campbell (_Shelley and the
Unromantics_), who is generally a keen and active-minded observer,
ignores the work altogether! one is left to conclude (as the omissions
could hardly be accidental) that these and other critics have
deliberately passed the poem by on account of its fanciful and Utopian
character, yet this in itself is hardly an adequate reason, since in
reality the importance of the poem consists in the veritable glimpse it
affords of the working of Shelley’s mind and of the ideals which he
entertained, rather than in the actual practicability of the latter.
The third point that I wish to emphasise is the conclusion, derived from
modern psycho-sexual studies, that delusions and mental aberrations can
frequently be traced to some disturbance or repression of an intimate
love-passion.
Apart from Freud and all his works, we can easily see the great
probability of this conclusion. The love-instinct roots so deep and
dates so far back--even to the very beginnings of human life in the
earth--that necessarily any displacement of it affects the human being
most profoundly. It would not do to say at once and without collateral
evidence that Shelley’s mental disturbances were due to repressed or
disappointed love, but we have to hold that clue in mind, remembering at
the same time his _extremely_ emotional and imaginative nature.
Shelley’s later love-affairs are pretty well known, but there does not
seem to be one among them which quite answers the requirements of the
case. Harriet Grove and Harriet Westbrook may soon be dismissed. Mary
Godwin had more hold on the poet’s affection, but her nature was cold
and argumentative--too like her father’s--and there is little indication
of an attachment between her and the poet sufficiently passionate to
cause by its rupture any actual dislocation of the latter’s mind.
Trelawny, with whom on one occasion I had a longish conversation, was
somewhat contemptuous of Mary as a rather shallow person much attracted
by society considerations; and though I think Trelawny himself was often
swayed by prejudice and personal bias, yet it must be allowed that he
knew Mary pretty well. Then there is Emilia Viviani (alluded to above)
to whom Shelley wrote the long and enthusiastic poem _Epipsychidion_;
but here again, though the poem is full of rarely beautiful passages,
one cannot help feeling that it is “up in the air” all the time--a
charming piece of work, but wanting in actuality and grip on life.
There remain Shelley’s attachments to men friends, but these again are
somewhat disappointing. Hogg, whose name is often associated with that
of the poet, was, one would say, a rather uninspiring creature, but who
has this claim to our respect--that he certainly was genuinely attached
to Shelley. Though rather commonplace in character, it yet may be said
of him that he was virile and of quite keen intellect. He was also very
susceptible to feminine attractions. He obviously liked Shelley much;
but Shelley may fairly be said to have loved _him_, and in quite
romantic manner. Then, at a later time, there appeared that other
devoted friend, Trelawny, who, after reading Shelley’s Poems could not
rest till he had made the poet’s acquaintance, and who after that
returned again and again to the poet’s side, and to be with him. He was
a very different type from Hogg, somewhat bombastic, but spirited and
adventurous.
One concludes that Shelley certainly attracted the devotion of his men
friends; and on the other hand, that he was capable of warm and faithful
attachment to them, some of them.[7]
This is, I think, clearly indicated not only by his relations with Hogg
and by numerous passages in _Adonais_ and other poems, but by the fact
of his giving so much time and thought to the translation of Plato’s
_Symposium_ (whose chief subject, of course, is love between men) as
well as to the study (see his letters) of the Greek statuary. Modern
psychoanalysis has forced on people recognition of the fact that
avoidance of certain words or of allusions to certain subjects does not
by any means justify one in concluding that such words or subjects were
not present to the speaker’s or writer’s mind. Rather the contrary. In
many cases (as Barnefield reminds us) such avoidance indicates an
_over-self-consciousness_ which leads the speaker or writer to suppress
the very things which interest him _most_, or the words which would
betray his interest.
Shelley was by his very nature greatly in advance of his age. And _The
Witch of Atlas_ shows this. All through that strange poem there peep in
and out suggestions of sex-variation and of variations in
sex-attraction.[8] That poem was written a hundred years ago, but
to-day the same subjects have become almost an obsession, and situations
are freely handled and discussed which would (as the saying goes) cause
our grandfathers and grandmothers to turn in their graves! What there
may be preparing we do not know; but we can see that civilisation has
arrived at a cusp or turning-point in its progress, where further
movement is likely to be in a quite unexpected direction. Love between
two persons of like sex is nowadays widely accepted, as being an
attachment resting on a sympathy and soul-union very deep and
sincere--even though it may elude the physical ties or take little
account of them.
The modern Woman’s movement--so concrete and world-wide in its
character--seems destined to impress this more feminine conception of
love on the present age. That movement began with Mary Wolstonecraft,
whose _Rights of Women_ is even to this day one of the very best books
on the subject with which it deals; and one can trace her influence
extending down into the mind and philosophic outlook of Shelley, and
colouring many passages in his poems. I do not, of course, mean that
this last variety of affection (_comradeship_ it might be called) was
the only or even chief variety in Shelley’s mind. But there it was, and
quite possibly it was kept out of sight just on account of the strange
spell or attraction the subject exercised upon him.
Without having myself any prejudice against those people whose
_predominant_ love-attraction is towards their own sex, and believing,
as I do, that many of that type belong to the highest ranges of
humanity, I still do not think that Shelley quite shared their
temperament. What temperamental changes he might have _developed_ in the
further course of his unfinished life, of course we do not know; but his
fervent and unceasing idealisation of his female friends does, to my
mind, make any contention of the above kind seem decidedly difficult.
Shelley was quite normal, I should say, in the majority of his love
affairs; but his rapid and fertile imagination may have rendered it
possible for him (as in _The Witch of Atlas_) to leap to the
understanding of things which to the majority of human beings still
remain occult and unintelligible.
It will be remembered that in the last-mentioned poem, when the
Wizard-lady steps into the boat which is destined to bear her through
all the Kingdoms of the Earth, she brings to birth there (or creates):
A living Image which did far surpass
In beauty that bright shape of vital stone
Which drew the heart out of Pygmalion.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both.
* * * * *
And ever as she went the Image lay
With folded wings and unawakened eyes
And o’er its gentle countenance did play
The busy dreams, as thick as summer flies.
The word that will necessarily attract attention here is the word
“sexless.” When one recalls what was said at the very outset of this
paper, namely, that the love-element and love-interests _saturate_ all
Shelley’s poems, and recalls also the degree to which in modern life the
word “love” is wedded and welded with the thought of _sex_, one cannot
help wondering whether he intentionally inserted this word “sexless” in
order to indicate a change which was taking place in his mind, or
whether he felt such a change to be impending. One need not press the
point, but the passage suggests that he was thinking of a new type of
human being (at present folded in sleep, but whose coming he perhaps
foresaw)--a being having the grace of both sexes, and full of such
dreams as would one day become the inspiration of a new world-order, yet
of such a nature that its love would _not_ be dependent (as, indeed,
most loves now are) on mere sexual urge and corporeal desire, but would
be a vivid manifestation of the universal creative Life, in the body
even as in the soul. This word “sexless” occurs again--so that it does
not appear to be quite accidental--in stanza lxviii of the same poem,
where the author in truly Shelleyan fashion describes the lady of the
boat as “like a sexless bee tasting all blossoms and confined to
none”--a wizard-maiden floating down the torrent of this life “with eye
serene and heart unladen.”
Whether Shelley believed in this Vision of a new type--in the sense of
thinking it would ever become an actual and realisable thing--may be
left undecided, but as an indication of the kind of dream that was at
that time occupying his mind, it seems to me of the greatest interest. I
think somehow that his instinctive feelings _were_ pointing out the
actual direction of our future evolution. There is no doubt that in the
present day Sex is ceasing to wield the glamour which once surrounded
it. We know too much about it! Its queer vagaries and anomalies, its
variations and fluctuations (dating from past ages of the world) have
been almost _too_ well and exhaustively studied. Sex in its ordinary
procedure seems to belong to a somewhat ancient and pre-human order of
things, clumsy and elephantine and, like many ancient institutions,
oppressive in the last degree to _women_. And the question which now
remains for us to ask will be as follows: Is it not very probable that
those human types of the future which have _both_ elements, the
masculine _and_ the feminine, present in their natures, will _not_ be so
sexually excitable as those other types (with whom we have been more
familiar in the past) who being built, like Plato’s divided sections of
humanity, on a lopsided plan, are always rushing about to find their
lost counterparts, and rather madly and incontinently plunging into new
relationships, which again they dissolve almost as soon as contracted?
And may we not reasonably expect that those people whose natures contain
both elements will be more stable and reliable than the others, while at
the same time--since they share the great driving-force of the
universe--they will by no means be wanting in life and energy?
On all sides to-day we hear of the existence of such double-natured
folk, and though it _may be_ that at certain periods they become more
than usually numerous, yet the evidence shows that in _all_ ages and
places they have been frequent. Jacobus Le Moyne, who travelled as an
artist with a French expedition to Florida in 1564, left some very
interesting drawings representing the Indians of that region and their
customs; and among them one representing the “Hermaphrodites,” as they
were at that time called, apparently tall and powerful men, beardless,
but with long and abundant hair, and naked except for a loin cloth, who
were represented as engaged in carrying wounded or dying fellow-Indians
on their backs or on litters to places of safety. He says of them that,
“in Florida such folk of double nature are frequent ... and, indeed,
those who are stricken with any infectious disease are borne by the
Hermaphrodites to certain appointed places, and nursed and cared for by
them, until they may be restored to full health.” Quite similar stories
are told by Charleroix, de Pauw, and others; and one seems to get a
glimpse in them of an intermediate class of human beings who made
themselves useful to the community, not only by their muscular strength
but by their ability and willingness to act as nurses and attendants on
the sick and dying. Similar types exist in abundance to-day as we know;
but it is needless to say that they are _not_ Hermaphrodites in the
strict sense of the term--i.e. human beings uniting in one person the
complete functions both male and female--since there is no evidence that
such beings do in actual fact exist! But it is evident that they _were_
what we call intermediate types, in the sense of being men with much of
the psychologic character of women, or in some cases women with the
mentality of men; and the early travellers, who had less concrete and
reliable information than we have, and who were already prepossessed by
a belief in the possibility of complete Hermaphroditism, leapt easily to
the conclusion that these strange beings were indeed of that double
nature.[9]
It is quite possible, and, indeed, probable, that Shelley, who was an
omnivorous reader, had already come across suggestions in this
direction. Plato alone would have given him much food for thought. The
god Dionysus, one of the very finest figures in the Greek mythology, and
one whose features have often been compared with those of Christ, is
frequently represented as Androgyne (double-sexed). Apollo is portrayed
in the sculptures with a feminine--sometimes extremely feminine--figure.
The great hero Achilles passed his youth among women, and in feminine
disguise. And so on, and so on.
A big school such as Eton usually provides for a boy of genius like
young Percy a really terrible experience, soul-destroying and
calculated to crush out all originality; yet there are occasions when
even such a place may become the nurse of heroic inspirations, and may
kindle in a young soul the redeeming flame of splendid ambition. For
such a school is a miniature of the great world, and may bring the boy
into closest contact, friendly or hostile, with every variety of
character and temperament, and so may rouse and develop faculties which
under ordinary circumstances would have remained dormant. We see in Mr.
Barnefield’s paper how a vivid and absorbing attachment sprang up
between Percy and a young school-friend, which the elder folk, as we
gather (and quite as usual), did _not_ encourage. We now see--and late
psychological studies have made this abundantly clear--that love, even a
quite unregulated though ardent love, may become in boyhood one of the
best guides and tutors of the growing soul. And we know, too, that such
an attachment between persons of like sex (whether in school-life or
apart from it) as between two youths or two young women, or between a
grown man and a boy, or an elder woman and a girl--though deprived of
some of love’s recognised and obvious satisfactions--may contain, and
often does contain, the elements of a deep and lasting devotion.
In large schools all sorts of soul-shattering experiences occur and
recur--violent enthusiasms, insane jealousness, bitter hatreds,
rivalries, sexual outrages, and so forth. There are two very common
results: one attraction, the other repulsion.
Imagine for a moment a boy of Shelley’s high idealism of mind suddenly
transported into such a Babel! It is difficult for outsiders to quite
realise or face the situation, at any rate as it was at that time--the
filthy talk, the gross and insolent habits, the fagging and bullying,
the hideous dullness of the lessons, the beguilement of the time by
sex-indulgences, the rather brutal floggings (carried out by idiotic
masters under the impressions that they were suppressing lust, when
they were really rousing and redoubling the same), etc.
That the boy of whom we are speaking, finding himself in such a
situation, should have suffered a kind of agony and that consequently
his mental balance should at times have been upset, seems a very
moderate assumption, and one which quite possibly would account for his
“hallucinations”--as far as the existence of these may be satisfactorily
established.
With reference to the duplication of the elements just mentioned in
Shelley’s nature, it may be suggested that the blending of the masculine
and feminine temperaments does undoubtedly in some cases produce persons
whose perceptions are so subtle and complex and rapid as to come under
the head of genius. “It may possibly point to a further grade of
evolution than that usually attained, and a higher order of
consciousness, imperfectly realised, of course, but indicated. This
interaction, in fact, between the masculine and feminine, this mutual
illumination of logic and intuition, this combination of action and
meditation may not only raise and increase the power of each of these
faculties, but it may give the mind a new quality and a new power of
perception corresponding to the blending of subject and object in
consciousness. It may possibly lead to the development of that third
order of perception which has been called the _Cosmic consciousness_,
and which may also be termed _divination_. (“He who knows the
masculine,” says the great Lao-tsze, “and at the same time keeps to the
feminine will be the whole world’s channel; Eternal virtue will not
depart from him, and he will return again to the state of an infant.” To
the state of an infant! That is, he will become undifferentiated from
Nature, who is his Mother and who will lend him all her faculties.)[10]
There is a certain danger--as doubtless many writers have discovered--in
talking about visions, or about Second Sight, or, indeed, about any
subject which lies near the margin of definite and measurable
perception--the danger I mean for the inquirer of being set down or
passed by as a mere romancer or as a foolish and credulous person whose
opinion carries no weight. However, this danger occurs in many fields of
human thought and inquiry, and naturally cannot be entirely guarded
against. It is largely due to the paltry character of our ordinary life.
A noble and active mind must surely carry with it ever-expanding powers
and interests, and at each stage the new powers may well be perceived
and classed as “visionary”; but that forms no reason why the vision
should be immediately _rejected_! It only forms a reason for the more
careful testing of new experiences.
With regard to the fusing or blending of the two temperaments, the
masculine and the feminine, it has been observed that this double
evolution is often accompanied by a considerable development of higher
powers, more or less occult and difficult to explain. Certainly this
development was marked in the case of Shelley. His swift intuitions, his
quite extraordinary facility in the acquirement of Greek and Latin, and
in the composition of verse (not to mention other attainments)
_compelled_ attention. It may be that in such cases the two natures,
male and female, react upon each other, stimulating to higher efforts
and even fertilising each other. It has often been noticed that mediums
(spiritualistic) have a like double temperament; and it might be
contended (from his frequent visions and illuminations) that Shelley was
to some degree mediumistic. There is a passage in Elie Reclus’ account
of the Western Inoits[11] of Alaska, in which the author describes the
privations and ordeals through which, in the Arctic regions, the
_Angakok_ has to pass in preparation for the rôle of prophet and
diviner. “At an early age the novice courts solitude. He wanders in the
long nights across silent plains filled with the chilly whiteness of
the moon; he listens to the wind moaning over the desolate floes. And
then the _Aurora borealis_, that ardently sought occasion for ‘drinking
in the light’--the _Angakok_ mournful and rapt must absorb all its
splendours!... And now the future sorcerer is no longer a child. Many a
time he has felt himself in the presence of Sidné, the Esquimaux
Demeter; he has divined it by the shiver which ran through his veins, by
the tingling of his flesh and the bristling of his hair. He passes
through a series of initiations, knowing well that his spirit will not
be loosed from the burden of dense matter until the moon has looked him
in the face, and darted a certain ray into his eyes. At last, his own
Genius, evoked from the bottomless depths of existence, appears to him,
having scaled the immensity of the heavens and climbed across the
abysses of the ocean. Uniting himself with the Double from beyond the
grave, the soul of the _Angakok_ flies upon the wings of the wind, and
quitting the body at will sails swift and light through the universe.”
There is much in this passage remindful of Shelley and his frequent
absorption in Nature, and no one who has studied the Eastern initiations
in the present day will fail to recognise what I mean. Reclus,
continuing the above passage, passes in review the numerous sects of
primitive religion which may be found on the surface of the globe, and
then says, “I think the object of their ambition is ecstasy, union with
God, absorption into the infinite spirit, into the soul of the
universe.” Personally, I believe somehow that Reclus is right, and that
even beneath Shelley’s revolt in early days against conventional
religion, there is discernible this same yearning and need for
identification with the universal life.
That a marked gift in the direction of ecstasy and _divination_ should
be associated with a certain fusion between the masculine and the
feminine temperaments, might seem at first sight an unlikely
proposition; but as far back in history as Herodotus we find the
curious remark that certain classes of Scythians, suffering from a
tendency to effeminacy[12] were called Enarees or Androgynes and were
_endowed by Venus with the power of Divination_.
This idea of a double sex clearly haunted the minds of early peoples,
and I have suggested (_Intermediate Types_, p. 82) that this idea may
date not only from the fact that the sex-temperament in its earliest
form _is_ undifferentiated, but also from the fact that the great
leaders of mankind have so often shown this fusion in themselves. “The
feminine traits in genius (as in a Shelley or a Byron) are well marked
in the present day. We have only to go back to the Persian Bâb of the
last century, or to a St. Francis or even to a Jesus of Nazareth, to
find the same traits present in founders and leaders of religious
movements in historical times. And it becomes easy to suppose the same
again of those early figures--who once probably were men--those
Apollos, Buddhas, Dionysus, Osiris, and so forth--to suppose that they,
too, were somewhat bi-sexual in temperament, and that it was really
largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with far-reaching
powers and became leaders of mankind.”
* * * * *
Finally, and apart from any question of mental strain and want of
balance, there remain certain other general points (with regard to our
poet’s Psychology) which we should do well to consider here. We have
noted the great predominance of the love-interest in his life, and at
the same time the marked idealism with which he invested matters of sex,
and we are fain to see now that both these peculiarities are, in
general, more markedly feminine than masculine. If we add to them the
somewhat hysterical tendency indicated by Shelley’s behaviour at various
times, we arrive at _three_ undeniable marks of the feminine
temperament, and are impelled to conclude that the poet’s nature was
really intermediate (or double) in character--_intermediate_ as between
the masculine and feminine or _double_ as having that twofold outlook
upon the world.
The time has gone by when a remark of this kind could be interpreted as
derogatory. On the contrary, it is quite open to anyone nowadays to take
the positive line and maintain that the combination of the masculine and
the feminine in this case does really indicate that the Poet had reached
a _higher_ level of evolution than usual. That is a conclusion at least
as probable and arguable as the opposite. No one can contemplate
Shelley’s portrait, or read the descriptions of his personality left by
his contemporaries without feeling that therein a double nature (at once
both masculine and feminine) is implied and portrayed. I may mention the
gazelle-like eyes, the shy yet excitable manner, the high-pitched voice,
the tenderness and courage combined, the genius for passionate
friendship (as shown, for instance, in early days towards that other
boy at school).[13]
Or again I may mention his extreme generosity, as to Emilia Viviani or
to Tom Medwin, often when he himself was “on the rocks”; or his interest
in, and care for, Claire Clairmont’s and Byron’s child, Allegra; or yet
again his abiding love of the open air, his strange strength and
resolution of character, united to a softness of expression and a
mildness of bearing which (Trelawny says) were “deceptive”--and all
these things combining to produce a weird impression as of one who
hardly belonged to the ordinary world with which mortals are familiar.
In conclusion, and with regard to the somewhat pessimist tendency
observable in Shelley’s latest work, it is not necessary to suppose, as
some do, a particular “disappointment in love” so much as to perceive
that at the time of his death he had arrived at a rather penetrating
perception of the inadequacy of the existing world to meet and satisfy
the inner needs of his spirit, and consequently at a certain attitude of
resignation. Some of the latest events of his life rather favour this
reading. There is a story told by Trelawny of how, on one occasion when
he and Shelley were bathing in a deep pool in the Arno, and he was
urging Shelley to lie on his back on the surface of the water, and learn
to float in that way, Shelley did, indeed, remain motionless, but
rapidly began to sink (as may well have really happened owing to his
little corpulence of body) and Trelawny explained with his usual
self-insistence how if _he_ had not instantly fished Shelley out, the
latter would certainly have been drowned! It throws some light on the
situation when we realise that during those few last years the poet was
living almost recklessly in the presence of death. His little yacht was
so cranky that there was (as he himself well knew) considerable danger
in sailing it. Ballasted with lumps of pig iron, as it was on that last
voyage, it had already become a mark for the jokes of its occupants; and
there is a story that when some observer asked him in warning tones as
to what might happen if the boat were upset, Shelley gaily replied,
“Why, of course, I should go to the bottom with the other pigs!” If not
strictly accurate, this story perhaps gives an effective impression, and
contributes some elements of dramatic truth.
_The Witch of Atlas_ was not approved of by Mary Shelley, because (she
said), “It had no human interest,” yet the author himself defends the
poem vigorously, saying, “If you unveil my Witch no priest nor primate
can shrive you of that sin”--from which one may conclude that the poem
was in reality, and in its author’s opinion, _full_ of human interest,
though the same might be somewhat hidden and not very obvious for Mary
to discover.
Shelley’s poems were by no means deficient in inner meaning, and to
suppose that many of them were written merely as skits and freaks of
fancy is to betray a non-appreciation of the almost over-intense
earnestness of the Poet’s mind. Women’s Rights and the emancipation of
Women--a subject now to the last degree approved and popular--became the
main theme of _Laon and Cythna_ (now entitled _The Revolt of Islam_).
The praise of Marriage “warm and kind” and the beauty of a tender and
permanent love constituted one of the “Many thousand” gracious schemes
for the benefit of mankind, which the Witch was supposed to have
invented:[14]
Friends who by practice of some envious skill
Were torn apart--a wide wound, mind from mind,
She did unite again with visions clear
Of deep affection and of truth sincere.
And besides all this, as already indicated, there was to be a new era of
universal peace for mankind:
The soldiers dreamed that they were blacksmiths, and
Walked out of quarters in somnambulism,
Round the red anvils you might see them stand
Like Cyclopses in Vulcan’s sooty abysm
Beating their swords to Plough-shares.
In the face of these and many other points in the poems, we can only
regard it as a kind of perversity, and a last relic of ancient
prejudice, to refuse to recognise Shelley’s whole-hearted efforts in the
great cause of human emancipation, and not to see how sincerely and at
what a cost to himself these efforts were undertaken--not to see,
indeed, that in his love-nature (the very kernel of his life) he was
pushing his way forward to a new conception of the world, far more
intimate and important than any at present generally attained to. We
have alluded to Goethe already, and it is clear that the English poet,
like his great German contemporary, possessed in his own nature an
extraordinary sympathy with, and understanding of, every variety and
phase of human temperament.
_THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHELLEY_
BY
GEORGE BARNEFIELD
I
The multitude of books about Shelley, and the partisan spirit which the
majority of them breathe, are evidence of the force, complexity, and
attractiveness of the poet’s personality. The biographers, however, have
all been too confused by the inherent contradictions of his character to
analyse it satisfactorily. Indeed, most of them have been too much put
to it justifying, or explaining away, his peculiarities ever to ask
themselves calmly how and why their hero differed from the average of
poetic geniuses. They paint him for us as a young, graceful, rather
feminine aristocrat, of revolutionary opinions, and somewhat unstable
mind. They credit him with all the Christian virtues, and especially
with purity of mind; yet they must record that his contemporaries saw
in him a Satanist, who not only preached moral anarchy, but actually
committed adultery and abandoned his faithful wife. Of explanation they
are totally barren.
We may, however, explain and resolve these contradictions by the light
of modern psychology. That this should give us the key to his character
will seem the less astonishing if we reflect that Shelley was
preeminently the poet of unsatisfied love, through whose every poem
there sounds the note of vague, often formless, erotic longing.
Let us first repeat some of the descriptions of his appearance. In
Trelawny’s _Records_ we find the author’s first impression noted thus:
“Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling held
out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at
his flushed feminine and artless face that it could be the poet, I
returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies
he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it
possible that this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable
monster at war with all the world?”
In Dowden’s _Life_ there is a description by one of Shelley’s Sion House
schoolmates, Mr. Gellibrand: “Like a girl in boy’s clothes, fighting
with open hands, and rolling on the floor when flogged, not from pain,
but from a sense of indignity.”
The portraits of Shelley are not very reliable guides to his physical
appearance, but they all depict him as remarkably feminine in feature.
The writer remembers with amusement how an inquisitive landlady asked
about a print of Clint’s portrait of Shelley, which graced the walls, if
it was her young lodger’s sister! Doubtless the amiable dragon suspected
that it was his fiancée.
This femininity extended beyond the facial features to the poet’s voice,
which was shrill. If I am not mistaken one of his biographers also
mentions that Shelley could not whistle like a man; and his gait was
peculiar and mincing[15].
We shall find, on closer study, that these physical traits were but the
external indications of a deeper psychic femininity. Shelley, in fact,
belonged to the class of double-natured, or intermediate, types--a class
which embraces many artists of very diverse qualities: for example,
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Wilde, and Tchaikowsky. We must, however, make
clear at the outset of this paper that the poet himself was never fully
aware of his inversion; although, towards the last few years of his
troubled life, there are indications that the repressed impulses were
breaking through the barriers, and were forcing themselves up into
consciousness. It is interesting to notice that during the period 1811
to 1814 he gave these impulses almost no expression at all, and at the
same time suffered much from his delusions. But from 1817 to the end of
his life, while he was expressing these impulses in a sublimated but
quite recognisable form, he only had one persecutory delusion. Had he
lived a few more years he would have been driven either into some final
and serious neurosis, or else to some form of conscious recognition and
expression of the repressed homosexual component of his nature. Perhaps
fortunately for Shelley, his early death cut short the conflict.
From his early youth Shelley felt himself to be in some way radically
unlike his fellows. At school he was shy, lonely, and introspective,
avoiding games and seeking solitude. According to one of his
contemporaries, he was disliked by his masters and hated by the elder
boys, though adored by his equals in age. Certainly he suffered much at
Eton where, under Dr. Keate, a pandemonium of indiscipline, bullying,
and ferocious punishment seems to have flourished. In his manhood he was
still “the companionless sensitive plant,” and could portray himself as
“the herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hunter’s dart.” He was always
fundamentally out of harmony with himself and with his fellows, a prey
to the melancholy of Prince Athanase:
What was this grief which ne’er in other minds
A mirror found? He knew not. None could know.
It is sufficiently obvious that poems like _Athanase_, _Alastor_, and
_The Question_, with their burden of tender melancholy and solitude were
inspired by vague unsatisfied sexual emotion. Francis Thompson, in his
beautiful essay on Shelley, maintained that the poet never grew beyond
childhood. But, though there is much that is true in this view, it would
be truer to say that in some respects Shelley remained always in the
adolescent stage. For this tender sadness and vague self-pitying emotion
are typical of a certain stage of adolescence, when the onset of
puberty heightens and disturbs those impulses which, as modern
psychologists are now on all sides admitting, are normal during the
middle teens.
Shelley remained in some degree fixed at this phase. He was by nature
liable to the warmest impulses of affection--often towards others of his
own sex, and he felt Love as a woman feels it: it was “his whole
existence.” But it was the tragedy of his life that he lived in a
society, whose whole influence, acting on him by suggestion from his
earliest infancy, forced his conscious mind to seek love in the form of
an idealised woman. Hence he never could achieve success, nor even peace
of mind, in this quest. It was this deep-rooted, though unconscious,
disparity between the sanctions of society and his own peculiar
impulses, we feel, that lay at the root of his enthusiasm for Free Love.
Godwin might deduce a theory of Free Love from his general philosophical
premises, but with a sage of Godwin’s type it remained pure theory, and
did not become an enthusiasm. With Shelley it was different; he began
with an instinctive reaction against social laws and restrictions in the
sphere of sex, and his general philosophic anarchism was a later
addition which served as a rationalised justification of his instinctive
tendencies. The fundamental article of his revolutionary creed is given
in these lines from _The Revolt of Islam_:
Man and woman,
Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow
From lawless love a solace for their sorrow.
Shelley’s insistence on the idea of lawless love differs somewhat from
Blake’s enthusiasm for Free Love. Blake worshipped spontaneous energy
and passion, which he believed to be purely masculine qualities; and his
imagination, when it dwelt on this theme, could only conjure up an
entirely masculine dream of unrestricted enjoyment. In _The Visions of
the Daughters of Albion_, the girl Oothoon woos her lover by disclaiming
all jealous restrictions and offering to bring him other girls to
minister to his enjoyment:
But silken nets and traps of adamant will Oothoon spread,
And catch for thee girls of mild silver or of furious gold.
I’ll lie beside thee on a bank, and view their wanton play.
In Shelley’s poetry there is no such excessive and entirely masculine
picture of unrestricted indulgence, nor is there any expression of the
male efferent desires. When Shelley speaks on this subject he speaks as
a woman might.
Then that sweet bondage which is Freedom’s self
And rivets with sensation’s softest tie
The kindred sympathies of human souls,
Needed no fetters of tyrannic law:
Those delicate and timid impulses
In Nature’s primal modesty arose,
And with undoubted confidence disclosed
The growing longings of its dawning love.
(_Queen Mab._)
Love, in Shelley’s mind (as in a woman’s mind) meant sympathy and the
passive experience of emotions and sensations. That is why he could
understand the woman’s demand for freedom, and cry
Can Man be free if Woman be a slave?
II
It will doubtless seem, to many readers, that the question of Shelley’s
inversion is at once answered in the negative by the simple fact of his
marriage. This, however, is a superficial view. Many quite inverted men
have married, either without themselves realising the nature of their
own abnormality, or for purely conventional and social reasons, or even
with the hope of thus curing themselves of their inversion. We have to
remember that Shelley was not conscious of having homosexual impulses;
he had never admitted them to himself. He married twice, and all through
his life women influenced him. Yet his relations with them were
strangely troubled, and his most intimate “affairs” were erotic
failures. His calf-love for Miss Grove had no concrete basis of
physical attraction, and it soon died out. Then came his marriage with
Harriet Westbrook. He was not in love with her, however. It is certain,
though not always recognised, that he married her from quixotic motives,
and that the element of erotic attraction was almost entirely absent.
Harriet appealed to him to save her from petty tyranny and misery at
home and at school, and Shelley, feeling himself called upon to play the
hero, rescued her. Doubtless he imagined that he would soon love her in
the proper romantic way, but Dowden makes it clear that Harriet never at
any time held the first place in his affections.
This place was held, as a matter of fact, by a young man, Thomas Hogg,
to whom Shelley, a supposedly joyful groom on the eve of his romantic
marriage, writes thus: “Your noble and exalted friendship, the
prosecution of your happiness, can alone engage my impassioned interest.
This (i.e. his approaching marriage) more resembles exerted action than
inspired passion.”
In another letter he says: “The late perplexing occurrence which called
me to Town occupies my time, engrosses my thoughts. I shall tell you
more of it when we meet, which I hope will be soon. It does not,
however, so wholly occupy my thoughts, but that you and your interests
still are predominant.”
This letter is quoted in Hogg’s _Life of Shelley_, with the date of
August 16, 1811, _the same month in which Shelley married_.
The story of the failure of this absurd and tragic marriage is well
enough known. Mary Godwin, who, like her mother, had a noticeable strain
of the masculine in her, roused Shelley to a genuine romantic passion,
which supplanted the remnants of his spurious chivalry for Harriet. He
saw that his union with the latter was a mere mockery, founded on
self-deception, and he did not hesitate to break it up. He had never
been in love with Harriet; always he was in love with Love. His
subsequent marriage with Mary was in many ways happy, and on the
surface it seemed successful, for she had more than the ordinary
intellect and was devoted to him. Yet it was not truly successful from
the erotic point of view, as is obvious from the tone of sadness and
melancholy in his later poetry. To the last he was the victim of
melancholy, and in conflict with himself, for his love-impulses remained
unsatisfied. As long as he did not acknowledge the inverted component in
these impulses, he was forced to seek ideal love in the guise of a
woman; and the same force which kept up this repression also made him
idealise Woman so extravagantly. All through his poetry we find the same
quest for an unreal ideal woman, who is at once a sister, a friend, a
leader of men, and a sexual mate. It is the theme of _Alastor_ and _The
Revolt of Islam_; and in _Epipsychidion_ he relates how his whole life
has been spent in seeking:
The shadow of that idol of my thought.
It would seem that at last he had found the ideal, for _Epipsychidion_
is a rhapsody of love for Emilia Viviani. But scarcely had the ink
dried on the paper than he realised that Emilia, like Harriet, Mary, and
Jane, was no Cythna, but a quite ordinary woman.
In spite of the views of romantic persons, the truth is that Shelley was
not very susceptible to the _physical_ charms of real women. He was
wholly influenced by his own conception of the ideal Heroine; and this
conception was a curious mixture of sexual qualities. It is worth while
contrasting Blake again with Shelley, in order to illustrate this point.
Blake was unusually masculine. All his characters and his figures are
strongly polarised--that is to say, he emphasised and exaggerated their
typical sexual characteristics. His men all represent energy, passion,
intellect, and muscular strength; his women are sweetness and tenderness
incarnate. Women attracted him by reason of their specifically feminine
qualities; but he did not idealise them, either collectively as a sex,
or individually. Indeed, he thought they were entirely negative and
passive in character: “In Heaven, there is no such thing as a female
will.” Yet his married life was placid and very happy.
Now Shelley, on the other hand, loved to create androgynous types. He
loved the feminine qualities when they were in men, and the masculine
qualities in women. It would seem as if he were continually striving to
create an ideal _bisexual_ character. For example, consider the
sensitive, graceful Prince Athanase or Laon; or, by contrast, the rebel
Cythna, whose chief qualities are her vigorous intellect, her
will-power, and her Amazonian heroism. And Shelley idealised women, both
collectively and individually, in spite of the fact that his experience
always contradicted him. His married life, to say the least, was not
conspicuously successful. In this connexion it is interesting to note
how constantly Shelley introduced a third party into his household, as
if he were quite without the ordinary domestic jealousy of those who are
“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.”
When he married Harriet he quickly took her to York, to live there with
Hogg. After this plan had broken down he induced Miss Hitchener to share
his home; and when she departed, Elizabeth, Harriet’s sister, came in.
Even when he eloped with Mary Godwin, Claire Clairmont accompanied the
pair to the continent. Finally at Pisa, and at Casa Magni, he shared his
house with Edward and Jane Williams.
III
The second unusual feature in Shelley’s life of the heart was that his
many friendships with men were no less romantic, and on the whole much
more permanent and successful, than his affairs with women. Certainly
they showed some of the same ideal character, but they also seemed real
and concrete, in a way that his heterosexual affairs did not. We know
little of his early affections, except for two instances. While he was
at Eton, probably at the age of thirteen or fourteen, he had a
remarkable affection for the Windsor physician, Dr. Lind. It is well
known, of course, that at this period of puberty boys do quite normally
tend to fall in love with men or older boys,[16] and to worship them as
heroes. But Shelley’s love for Dr. Lind was unusually strong and
tender, as is shown by the fact that it did not fade from his memory, as
such boyish enthusiasms normally do, but persisted as one of his most
precious recollections. In _Prince Athanase_ we find the good Doctor
described as:
An old, old man with hair of silver-white
And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend
With his wise words.
And the third and fourth cantos of _The Revolt of Islam_ contain a
description of Dr. Lind, and record Shelley’s worship of him. It was not
only on account of his anarchist teachings that Shelley loved this old
man; nor merely because of his evident genius for soothing the troubled
mind of the poet. There was also a certain tender physical attraction,
which Shelley reveals by his description of the Hermit in _The Revolt of
Islam_.
The old man is “stately and beautiful.” His very looks are sufficient to
heal: “And to my inmost soul his soothing looks he sent.” Shelley
recalled, or imagined, the joy of being embraced by this “divine old
man” when he wrote of the Hermit’s care for the sick Laon.
He did enfold
His giant arms around me to uphold
My wretched frame.
* * * * *
And two stanzas later:
the pillow
For my light head was hollowed in his lap
And my bare limbs his mantle did enwrap....
Then again in the second stanza of the fourth canto:
When the old man his boat had anchoréd
He wound me in his arms with tender care,
And very few but kindly words he said,
And bore me through the tower adown a stair
There is evident in these quotations a certain desire to be caressed by
this grand old rebel, and when we remember that Shelley had very little
sympathy from either his Father or his Mother, this desire seems not
unnatural; he demanded of Dr. Lind some of the physical love and
tenderness which his parents had withheld. It would be a great mistake
to imagine that, because the poet, with his unrivalled command over
language and his tendency to express abstract emotion, normally seems to
dwell in ethereal regions, Shelley the man was not often acutely
susceptible to the cravings for contact with the beloved. On the
contrary, numerous passages express this yearning; only, as they are
written with consummate art, and not put in narrative but in lyric form,
most people seem to fail to realise their meaning.
What are kisses, whose fire clasps
The failing heart in languishment, or limb
Twined within limb? or the quick dying gasps
Of the life meeting, when the faint eyes swim
Through tears of a wide mist boundless and dim,
In one caress?
The other romance of Shelley’s early boyhood concerned a schoolboy
friend at Sion House. Apparently the two boys were both of about the
same age, eleven or twelve years. The episode is recorded in a
fragmentary essay on the subject of Friendship, written shortly before
Shelley’s death, and given in Hogg’s _Life_.
“The object of these sentiments was a boy about my own age, of a
character eminently generous, brave, and gentle; and the elements of
human feeling seemed to have been from his birth genially compounded
within him. There was a delicacy and a simplicity in his manner
inexpressibly attractive.... The tones of his voice were so soft and
winning that every word pierced into my heart; and their pathos was so
deep that in listening to him the tears have involuntarily gushed from
my eyes. Such was the being for whom I first experienced the sacred
sentiments of friendship. I remember in my simplicity writing to my
mother a long account of his admirable qualities and my own devoted
attachment. I suppose she thought me out of my wits, for she returned no
answer to my letter. I remember we used to walk the whole playhours up
and down by some moss-covered palings, pouring out our hearts in
youthful talk.... I recollect thinking my friend exquisitely beautiful.
Every night, when we parted to go to bed, we kissed each other like
children--as we still were!”
There is a passion and intensity of emotion in all this which raises it
above the level of the ordinary schoolboy friendship, even when we have
allowed for the fact that this passage was written during the poet’s
last years, and is therefore perhaps idealised. Still, in spite of the
warmth of emotion, this idyll would not of itself, and taken apart from
all corroborative evidence, show the poet’s fundamental inversion if it
were not for the fact that Shelley cherished the memory of it in
manhood. Many boys have a similar romance at that age, or a little
later, but it is hardly remembered with emotion except by those who are
in some degree inverted.
The bosom friend of Shelley’s early manhood was Thomas Hogg, for whom he
had an extraordinary affection. During their short career at Oxford, the
two inseparables spent almost all their time together. Every day they
either breakfasted or lunched together, went for a country ramble, or
sat in Shelley’s room, reading, or re-modelling the universe. When
Shelley was expelled, Hogg voluntarily put himself in the same position,
and the pair went to live together in London. Their parents separated
them, but they maintained an intimate correspondence.
After Shelley’s marriage with Harriet, Hogg joined the couple at
Edinburgh, and then took them to his house at York. Here he apparently
began to pay unwelcome attentions to Harriet, who informed her husband.
Shelley appears not to have expressed the normal feelings of jealousy,
and freely forgave Hogg; but he was disappointed to find that his idol,
Hogg, had feet of clay. Shelley took Harriet away from York, and went to
Keswick. From here he wrote several letters to his friend, in which we
find such passages as these: “But pray write often; your last letter I
have read as I would read your soul.” “If I thought we were to be long
parted I should be wretchedly miserable--half-mad!” “I never doubted
you--you, the brother of my soul.” “I do not know that absence will
certainly cure love; but this I know, that it fearfully augments the
intensity of friendship.”
Later on Shelley renewed his intimacy with Hogg, though never on the old
terms of ardent affection. It has been suggested that he was mistaken in
his suspicions, and that Hogg was really quite innocent. This view is
quite tenable, since the evidence is very slender, and delusions of
jealousy often accompany delusions of persecution; which latter Shelley
certainly suffered from.
While at Keswick he wrote several long letters to Miss Elizabeth
Hitchener, whom for a few months he regarded as his dearest friend. In
these letters he tells her of Hogg’s crime, of his confession, and of
his demands to be allowed again to live with the couple. In one letter
Shelley states: “I do not love him” (dated November 26, 1811). In
December, however, he writes to Hogg: “Think not that I am otherwise
than your friend, a friend to you now more fervent, more devoted than
ever, for misery endears us to those whom we love. You are, you shall be
my bosom friend.”[17]
Altogether this episode is complicated and confusing. The evidence
against Hogg is confined to statements made by Shelley, in letters to
Miss Hitchener, and these statements do not harmonise with Shelley’s
extravagant expressions of affection for Hogg. The fact is that he both
loved Hogg intensely and suspected him. For my own part, I think that
Hogg was probably quite innocent of any great indiscretion, and that
Shelley simply magnified some mild familiarity out of all proportion.
That Shelley was subject to such mental exaggerations is well known, and
the words which he imputed to the imaginary assassin at Tanyrallt: “By
God, I will be revenged. I will murder your wife and ravish your
sister,” sound very much like a stronger development of the idea that
someone was making overtures to Harriet. As to his definite statements
on the subject, they cannot weigh very heavily, as his statements were
often only subjectively true. In addition, there are two stanzas in _The
Revolt of Islam_ which may refer to Hogg, and which, in that case, would
indicate that Shelley did finally admit that he was mistaken.
In canto 2, stanza xviii:
And that this friend was false, may now be said
Calmly--that he, like other men, could weep
Tears which are lies, and could betray and spread
Snares for that guileless heart which for his own had bled.
But in canto 5, stanza v, the friends are reconciled again:
Then suddenly I knew it was the youth,
In whom its earliest hopes my spirit found;
But envious tongues had stained his spotless truth,
And thoughtless pride his love in silence bound,
And shame and sorrow mine in toils had wound,
While he was innocent and I deluded.
This last line probably represents the real truth of the whole matter;
although, indeed, we have now no means of being certain about the
affair.
Shelley’s short-lived enthusiasm for Miss Hitchener, whose name was
mentioned above, is also instructive. It was based on the very slightest
practical acquaintance with her, though their correspondence was lengthy
and intimate; for Shelley always needed some recipient for his emotional
or philosophical outpourings. After many letters had been exchanged,
Shelley thought that at last his ideal being, the intellectual heroine,
had been found; and Miss Hitchener came to live with him and Harriet as
their “Spiritual Sister.” Unfortunately, they soon came to detest her.
In December 1812 Shelley wrote to Hogg, telling him of the good lady’s
departure, in these terms: “She is an artful, superficial, ugly,
hermaphroditical beast of a woman, and my astonishment at my fatuity,
inconsistency, and bad taste was never so great as after living four
months with her as an inmate.” Surely there would have to be something
extraordinarily repulsive in this lady to justify such an outburst. Yet
she would seem to have been quite a reasonable woman. This apparently
unreasonable outburst is paralleled in another letter from Shelley to
Hogg. After living with Harriet’s sister (Elizabeth) in his house, he
wrote: “I certainly hate her with all my soul. It is a sight which
awakens an inexpressible sensation of disgust and horror, to see her
caress my poor little Ianthe, in whom I hereafter may find the
consolation of sympathy.”
In thus idealising women before making their acquaintance, and yet in
some cases being strongly repelled by them directly he lived at close
quarters with them, Shelley behaved unreasonably, but it was a purely
instinctive, and even unconscious, reaction.
Shelley was also strongly attached to two older and rather virile men,
Trelawny and Peacock, to both of whom he appealed apparently as much by
reason of his feminine charm as by his intellectual and poetic gifts.
I have already quoted Trelawny’s description of his first meeting with
the “beardless boy, with a feminine, artless face.” To Peacock, Shelley
seemed a wayward and innocent child, totally incapable of guiding
himself safely through the hard world of practical affairs. Peacock was
a practical man, and enjoyed playing the rôle of father and worldly
guide; Shelley, moreover, liked to be allowed to be a child, and to let
Peacock manage things for him. In the company of these two men he seemed
instinctively to have become more naïve and feminine than he normally
was; in other words, like all bisexual people, he automatically altered
his polarity in accordance with his company.
Later on in his life he was much attracted by “Kind Hunt,” and a letter
referring to _The Cenci_ reveals his sentiment rather artlessly and
charmingly: “I have written something different from anything else, and
mean to dedicate it to you. I should not have done so without approval,
but I asked your picture last night, and it smiled assent.”
Several writers have sneered at Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Shelley
because of the amount of money he received from the generous poet. Hunt
has been called a parasite in consequence. I am not concerned with the
genuineness of Hunt’s affection for Shelley, though I do not doubt it
myself. What is certain is that Shelley had a very keen affection for
Hunt, whom he addresses as “My dearest Friend,” and on whom he lavished
money which he could ill afford to spend. It is noteworthy that an
extravagent generosity towards friends is such a frequent characteristic
of Uranians. One has only to think of the cases of Edward II, or of
Michelangelo,[18] both of whom were shamelessly sponged on by their
favourites, to realise that such men are an easy prey for parasites.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that such generosity forms a channel
along which some of the repressed sexual impulses may obtain an
indirect expression.
Even if we call Shelley a fool for allowing men like Hunt and Godwin to
drain his purse, we cannot but admire him for many of his other
benefactions. Trelawny relates a touching instance, when Shelley divided
a bag of Scudi between the Housekeeping expenses, Mary, and himself.
Then, says Trelawny, he whispered to Mary: “I will give this to poor Tom
Medwin, who wants to go to Naples and has no money.” “Why, Shelley has
nothing left for himself,” said Trelawny, who had overheard. In his
friendship for his cousin Medwin he revealed another typically Uranian
characteristic, namely a gift for nursing. Medwin fell ill at Pisa, and
a letter of his describes Shelley’s care for him.
“Shelley tended me like a brother. He applied my leeches, administered
my medicines, and, during six weeks that I was confined to my room, was
assiduous and unremitting in his affectionate care of me.”
When we thus survey the whole range of Shelley’s affections, and compare
his love-affairs with his friendships, can we readily distinguish any
great difference between them? Surely the erotic nature of his feelings
towards his young school-friend, and towards Dr. Lind, Hogg, Hunt and
the rest, is obvious enough, and were it not that these were balanced by
obviously erotic relationships with women, we should be led to class him
as a pure Uranian. Indeed, we must always remember that, since the whole
weight of herd-suggestion actively fosters and encourages the expression
of all feelings of love towards the opposite sex and actively represses
any patently homosexual expression, one clear indication of the latter
is worth more as evidence than a dozen conventional signs of the former.
It is because this herd-suggestion is so strong and so persistent that
many naturally inverted people are artificially induced to appear as
lovers of women, and to behave in a manner that is for them unnatural.
This appears to have been the grand tragedy of Shelley’s life, and the
source of all his melancholy, his mental troubles, and his
inconsistencies. As has been pointed out by Stopford Brooke, in his
edition of Shelley’s Lyrics, “Love was felt by Shelley not quite
naturally; not as Burns, or even Byron, felt it. Love, in his poetry,
sometimes dies into dreams, sometimes likes its imagery better than
itself. It is troubled with a philosophy.” And Stopford Brooke adds, “Of
course, he was therefore fickle.” This is typical of all those who
suffer from repressed (and hence unconscious) homosexual impulses of
comrade-love; for with their _conscious_ mind they seek love in the form
of a woman. The quest is for them necessarily hopeless, and they are
tormented and baffled by finding an inner falsity in each new object of
their affections. One after another the dreams, the hopes, the ideals,
are shattered, because the conscious mind is seeking a goal which is the
polar opposite of that desired by the whole unconscious, but
_purposive_, self.
IV
Scattered throughout Shelley’s writings we find many indications of his
bisexual disposition. For example, his heroes, Laon, Athanase, and his
heroines, Laone, Beatrice, etc., each combine masculine energy and
intellect with a feminine grace and gentleness. His ideal of human
beauty as of character, was bisexual, as can be seen from his comments
on the Greek sculpture in Italy.[19] His highest praise is given to the
statues of adolescent boys--a Ganymede, an Apollo: “It was difficult to
conceive anything more delicately beautiful than the Ganymede; but the
spirit-like lightness, the softness, the flowing perfection of these
forms, surpass it. The countenance, though exquisite, lovely, and
gentle, is not divine. There is a womanish vivacity of winning yet
passive happiness, and yet a boyish inexperience exceedingly
delightful.” On an Olinthus, he remarks:
“Another of those sweet and gentle figures of adolescent youth, in which
the Greeks delighted.”
His description of the “Bacchus and Ampelus” is worth quoting at some
length. “The figures are walking as it were with a sauntering and idle
pace and talking to each other as they walk, and this is expressed in
the motions of their delicate and flowing forms. One arm of Bacchus
rests on the shoulder of Ampelus, and the other ... is gracefully thrown
forward corresponding with the advance of the opposite leg.... Ampelus,
with a beast skin over his shoulder, holds a cup in his right hand, and
with his left half-embraces the waist of Bacchus. Just as you may have
seen (yet how seldom from their dissevering and tyrannical institutions
do you see) a younger and an elder boy at school walking in some remote
grassy spot of their playground, with that tender friendship towards
each other which has so much of love.”[20]
In a letter from Naples (December 22, 1818) he tells Peacock of one
statue: “A Satyr, making love to a youth: in which the expressed life of
the Sculpture and the inconceivable beauty of the form of the youth,
overcome one’s repugnance to the subject.”
Personally I have never visited the Naples gallery, but I have been
credibly informed that this statue is one of the very few indecently
homosexual pieces. If so, it is curious that Shelley should have singled
it out for mention, for he had a horror of everything crude or obscene.
Another statue that evidently fascinated him was the Louvre
“Hermaphrodite,” for he refers to it in a fragment for _Epipsychidion_
as:
That sweet marble monster of both sexes,
That looks so sweet and gentle, that it vexes
The very soul that the soul is gone
Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
His delight in bisexual forms is also evident in his description of the
angelic being, called “Hermaphroditus,” which was created by the Witch
of Atlas.
A sexless thing it was, and in its growth
It seemed to have developed no defect
Of either sex, yet all the grace of both,
In gentleness and strength its limbs were decked,
The bosom swelled lightly with its full youth,
The countenance was such as might select
Some artist, that his skill should never die,
Imaging forth such perfect purity.
One of the most peculiar traits in Shelley’s psychology was his interest
in the theme of incest between a brother and sister. To most of his
readers this pre-occupation with such a subject appears repulsive and
inexplicable, for there is nothing attractive, or even interesting, in
incest _per se_. Nevertheless, for some obscure reason, the subject
fascinated Shelley; and I think we shall be able to explain this fact by
connecting it with his general bisexual tendency. We have seen that his
heroines and heroes were dual types, in whom the masculine and feminine
traits were blended, and that, in _The Witch of Atlas_, he went a step
further, and created an ideal Hermaphrodite, to symbolise his conception
of perfect being. Surely it was in the same mood that he originally
created Laon and Cythna to be brother and sister; thus emphasising their
absolute similarity, and, by their incestuous union, achieving a more
complete fusion of the two sexual natures. Swedenborg went a step
further in this direction, when he said that two true lovers became, in
Heaven, one angel.
It is important to remember that love, in Shelley’s mind, depended upon
the perception of the similarity of two lovers; not upon any polar, or
complementary attraction. Thus Alastor’s mind “thirsts for intercourse
with an intelligence similar to itself”; while Laon refers to:
“That _likeness_ of the features which endears the thoughts expressed by
them.” It was for this reason that Shelley made the Spirit of the Earth
fall in love with his sister, the moon.
In real life, too, Shelley always sought for a similar soul to mate
with. Thus, he calls Hogg: “The Brother of my soul”; and Miss Hitchener,
before he knew her intimately, was his “spiritual sister.” And in the
same key he cries to Emilia:
“Would we two had been twins of the same mother!” From all these
considerations, I think we may suggest that Shelley’s pre-occupation
with the theme of incest between brother and sister (for other forms of
incest did not occupy his mind at all, except in the one instance of
_The Cenci_, where the interest is purely dramatic) was in reality
nothing but a disguised expression of his own bisexual nature; and that
Hermaphroditus represents the logical development of this expression.
There can be little doubt that if Shelley had survived a few more years
his true nature would have forced itself into his conscious recognition.
He seems to have had a predilection for such classical authors as
Theocritus, Moschus, and Plato, in all of whom there is an atmosphere
of “ideal homosexuality.” He translated a sonnet of Dante’s to Guido
Cavalcanti, and another by the latter to Dante, and he had obviously
appreciated the significance of Shakespeare’s _Sonnets_.
If any should be curious to discover
Whether towards you I am Friend or Lover,
Let them read Shakespeare’s Sonnets
During the years 1817-18 he occupied himself much with Plato’s
_Symposium_. He apparently only read this dialogue in Latin, but its
thought fascinated him, and he set himself to translate it, and also to
write a commentary on its subject. The manner in which he achieved this
is significant. In spite of the fact that homosexual love is the theme
of the dialogue, and in spite of the fact that this dialogue so
fascinated him that its lore became an integral part of his philosophy,
his translation omits all the definitely homosexual passages that can
possibly be omitted. For example, he omits an entire passage in
Alcibiades’ speech, where the drunken youth relates his unsuccessful
siege of Socrates, and praises the philosopher for his (to the speaker)
superhuman chastity.
The most important omission, however, occurs in the speech of
Aristophanes. Plato imagines that Hephæstus appears to two lovers, as
they lie inarmed, and offers to grant them their dearest wish, namely,
to melt them permanently together into one being. The point of the
passage is that the lovers are both male, for Plato wishes to maintain
that such lovers are purer, nobler, and less selfishly sensual than the
lovers of women. These latter, he says, are sections of the original
androgyne, and are for the most part lascivious and adulterous. But the
sections of the original double-male, those who seek the love of men,
“are the best and most manly of youths.”
We might conclude from these omissions that Shelley, like many a prudish
and normal translator, wished to gloss over passages which offended him.
But this view is really quite untenable. Shelley was remarkably
courageous and frank, and all the evidence shows that he was attracted,
and not repelled, by what has been called “ideal homosexuality.”
Moreover, he had no need to translate the _Symposium_ at all, and only
did so because it fascinated him. In a letter to Peacock dated August
16, 1818, the following instructive passage occurs: “I have translated,
and Mary has transcribed, the _Symposium_, as well as my poem; and I am
proceeding to employ myself on a discourse upon the subject of which the
_Symposium_ treats, considering the subject with reference to the
difference of sentiments respecting it, existing between the Greeks and
Modern Nations: a subject to be handled with that delicate caution which
either I cannot or I will not practise in other matters, but which here
I acknowledge to be necessary. Not that I have any thought of publishing
either this discourse or the _Symposium_, at least till I return to
England, when we may discuss the propriety of it.”
The discourse referred to was begun but never completed. It is given in
his prose works, usually under the title _On the Arts and Manners of the
Athenians_. In reading through this discourse we are forcibly struck by
a marked timidity and caution, quite foreign to Shelley’s nature. Here
is an author who frankly advocated “lawless love” and defended incest;
and yet he was quite unable to face the question of Greek Paiderastia.
He set out to write an essay on that one theme, for that is the subject
of the _Symposium_, if one differentiates between Greek Love and Love in
Modern Nations. Yet when his essay, after a general introduction,
demands a statement and description of this custom he at once hedges,
and digresses into vague general statements, and finally breaks off.
It is obvious that mere respect for the prejudices of publishers or
readers would not have deterred Shelley had he wished to describe or
even to defend Paiderastia; moreover, he wrote in Italy, and states that
he had no particular intention of publishing the discourse, nor even
the _Symposium_. It is possible that he deferred somewhat to the
feelings of his wife, for one can hardly suppose that Mary would enthuse
over certain passages of Plato. On the whole, however, his timidity and
weakness in handling this theme sprang from internal subjective causes.
Instinctively he shrank from a definite conscious revelation of his own
half-repressed impulses, even if that revelation were only made to
himself. And yet Shelley was vaguely aware, in a quite general way, of a
conflict within himself, even although he could not specify precisely
the sources of the trouble. He rightly attributed his constant
melancholy to this cause, as his self-analysis in _Prince Athanase_
shows:
For all who knew and loved him then perceived
That there was drawn an adamantine veil
Between his heart and mind--both unrelieved
Wrought in his brain and bosom separate strife.
The fact that he was thus dimly aware of a conflict proves that the
repressed impulses were somewhat near the surface, and were not entirely
subjugated.
V
If, as is here maintained, Shelley suffered from a repression of
homosexual impulses, an experienced psychoanalyst should be able to
trace the effects of this on his life and behaviour. The writer is not
such an expert, but he would nevertheless indicate in a general way how
psychoanalytic theories may confirm his views as to Shelley’s nature.
Shelley suffered from Paranoia, in a distinct, though not acute, degree.
Paranoia is a mental disease characterised by delusions of persecutions,
jealousy, or grandeur. These delusions are usually intermittent, and
often change in their content. For example, the persecutor may first be
one person and later another, or several others, or a whole class (e.g.
the “Kings, Priests, and Statesmen” of _Queen Mab_).
Sometimes a delusion of persecution is replaced by one of jealousy, or
vice versa.
Shelley’s delusions have been described, but only very inadequately
discussed, by his biographers, and I can only summarise them here. The
earliest of them is the most important, for it probably reveals the
cause of them all.[21] It concerned his father, who was a bluff Country
Squire, rather boorish, and totally incapable of understanding Shelley’s
nature. What the relations between Shelley and his father were before
this delusion, we do not know; but for the rest of his life the poet
was hostile and antagonistic to Mr. Timothy, and, moreover, suspicious
of him.
At one time in his boyhood Shelley contracted a fever, and, presumably
during his convalescence, he became convinced that his Father was
secretly plotting to have the boy (who was indubitably erratic) locked
up in a mad-house. Shelley appealed to Dr. Lind who, so the story goes,
came over and spoke strongly to Mr. Timothy, and thus rescued Shelley.
The date of this delusion is not known, but it occurred while the boy
was at school, probably in the earlier Eton days. Peacock, after quoting
Hogg’s account of Shelley’s description of this scheme, adds: “However
this may have been, the idea that his father was continually on the
watch for a pretext to lock him up haunted him through life, and a
mysterious intimation of his father’s intention to effect such a purpose
was frequently received by him, and communicated to his friends as a
demonstration of the necessity under which he was placed of changing
his residence and going abroad.”
In canto 3 of _The Revolt of Islam_ we have a record of this fever and
of Shelley’s delirium. Laon is imprisoned, and suffers the horrors of
temporary madness.
With chains which eat into the flesh alas!
With brazen links my naked limbs they bound:
After lying in chains for three days, madness overcomes him:
My brain began to fail when the fourth morn
Burst o’er the golden isles--a fearful sleep,
Which through the caverns dreary and forlorn
Of the riven soul, sent its foul dreams to sweep
With whirlwind swiftness--a fall far and deep--
A gulf, a void, a sense of senselessness--
These things dwelt in me, even as shadows keep
Their watch in some dim charnels loneliness,
A shoreless sea, a sky sunless and planetless!
The forms which peopled this terrific trance
I well remember--like a choir of devils,
Around me they involved a giddy dance;
And then comes the old Hermit (or, in real life, Dr. Lind) whose mere
presence heals the disordered brain.
In the deep,
The shape of an old man did then appear,
Stately and beautiful; that dreadful sleep
His heavenly smiles dispersed, and I could wake to weep.
* * * * *
He struck my chains and gently spake and smiled:
As they were loosened by that Hermit old,
Mine eyes were of their madness half beguiled,
To answer those kind looks.
The significance of all this lies in the fact that the authorities on
psychoanalysis mostly seem to agree in attributing Paranoia, with its
delusions of persecution and of jealousy, to a repression of
homosexuality.[22] Dr. E. Jones (_Papers on Psychoanalysis_) states:
“In Paranoia, for instance, it is now known that such delusions always
arise to begin with in connexion with persons whom the patient has tried
to love, but for internal reasons (repression of homosexuality) has been
unable to.”
In Shelley’s case, we have seen that the original delusion concerned his
father, which is conclusive evidence of his inversion.
After this it will not seem too rash to say that Shelley’s various
persecutory delusions sprang, in all probability, from a like cause. We
have, indeed, brought forward considerable positive evidence, from
Shelley’s life and writings, to show that in him was a strangely double
nature, and that there was certainly a homosexual _component_ in his
make-up. His character was complex, and full of contradictions, and he
showed an unusual number of physical and mental traits which are common
in women rather than in men. More than any other English poet, he was
the minstrel of Love; and his own erotic nature was surely the most
important thing about him. Yet on this hardly a significant word has
been written by his biographers. Until we understand the inner tragedy
of his life, we can hardly understand the poet or his song.
VI
The foregoing discussion of Shelley’s psychology, and especially of what
was abnormal in it, would hardly be complete without some reference to
the possibility of his having possessed what may be termed higher
psychic powers. The whole subject is, of course, difficult, and this is
not the place to embark on a long analysis of the general evidence for
the existence of super-normal faculties. But, in view of the
considerable researches that have been of late undertaken in this field,
and of the general results that have been achieved, some mention of this
aspect of Shelley’s genius is not inappropriate. We have noted in his
private life the recurrence of certain ideas of persecution and of
certain hallucinations. These things, like all other mental
aberrations, require, as their necessary condition, some degree of
dissociation of the various components of the mind. Just as the growth
of a tumour indicates a certain autonomy of one portion of the body, so
such phenomena as hallucination, double-personality, mediumistic
trances, hysteria, and obsessions, indicate the autonomy of certain
constituents of the mind or personality. But this capacity for
decentralisation is not merely pathological in its effects; the same
partial suspension of the control normally exercised by the conscious
mind may liberate either the repressed impulses of the hysterical
patient or the latent divinations and intuitions which mark the genius
or the mystic.
The practical difference between the genius and the humble artist is
that the former reaches heights of truth and beauty unattainable by the
latter; heights which seem to require, for their attainment, the
operation of obscure and even occult faculties. Inspiration, divination,
direct intuitive perception of the nature both of things and of
men--these, when they are clarified and crystallised by a competent
artist, constitute genius. But these are the operations of psychic
powers such as reach their fullest development in the state of ecstasy
described by the mystics or in the phenomena of mediumship which, in all
ages, have given rise to the popular belief in spirits. It is difficult
for completely sane and normal men to realise that the familiar
faculties and senses are, in reality, but stereotyped and canalised
outlets for the living personality; that they may hinder the free
expression of the latter, even while they help it along their own lines.
Yet the inner person, or spirit, though it may have created sense-organs
to facilitate its perceptions, can, as the observations of psychiatrists
fully attest, yet perceive without their aid, and may even require, for
its subtlest operations, a temporary suspension of their functions.
“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to
man as it is--infinite.
“[Typo for quotes?]For man has closed himself up till he sees all things
through narrow chinks of his cavern.”
These lines of Blake’s express the same thought, which, indeed, is one
common to all the mystics. The vital power which perceives through “this
life’s five windows of the soul,” can also transcend the limitations
which they impose on it; but, to so transcend the senses, it must
usually obliterate them for the time being; and with them go most of the
ordinary conscious factors of personality.
So with Shelley we find, not merely the pathological results of mental
dissociation, nor even only the signs of genius--swift and subtle
intuitions scattered through his works--but also, at times, we see
indications of powers which, for want of a better term, may be called
occult.[23] His poems give indications, stronger than mere hints, that
he constantly verged on a state of ecstasy. His frequent reference to
the ideas of infinity, eternity, and the like; his use of epithets
implying the absence of some defining and limiting attribute; his
reiterated employment of such words as chasm and abysm; and his direct
references to states of ecstatic rapture, mental vertigo, sudden
sinkings, faintings and swoons, all show that he lived on the edge of
that state of ecstasy in which the limits of normal personality are
passed and a region of more extended consciousness is reached. He felt
“the awful shadow of some unseen Power,” not as an abstract
philosophical idea, but as a real presence.
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy.
I do not think that anyone who has studied the writings of some of the
greater mystics will fail to see much that is similar in Shelley’s
poetry; although, on the other hand, it is not likely that Shelley ever
attained the full state of complete ecstasy.
In comparing the lives and records of different mystics we find,
according to Dr. Bucke,[24] a certain substratum of common features,
which seem to be essential characteristics of the mystical disposition.
Before reaching the state of cosmic consciousness, the subject must be
of an earnest, truth-seeking nature; he must perceive the evils of this
life, and suffer acutely in spirit; he must be moved by compassion for
the fate of mankind, and by an ardent yearning after a more spiritual
existence. Usually more passionate than the average man, he yet has to
renounce much of the so-called pleasures of the world, and, in solitude,
to wring from his own heart the meaning and purpose of life.
There is so much in Shelley’s poetry which shows him in these typical
preliminary stages which precede illumination, that I will only refer to
the _Ode to the West Wind_--a poem in which the intensity of passion,
the despair with this life, and the overwhelming yearning for
identification with nature, which are typical of the mystic, find such
poignant expression.
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!
* * * * *
Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!
At the age of twenty-three Shelley wrote the poem _Alastor_. This poem
is important to us, in that it forms a record of the early spiritual
adventures of the poet, at a time when he pursued the half-revealed
images of Truth and Beauty, which tempted him, and yet eluded his grasp.
The “argument” of the poem is, in fact, the essence of Shelley’s own
inner history. Alastor, a young poet, having seen, in half-revealing
visions, glimpses of the Ideal, sets out on his quest for a mortal
“prototype of his conception.”
“His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse
with an intelligence similar to itself.” Now I have previously shown
that Shelley set out on a similar quest, and have explained how
inevitable was its failure. The poet instinctively recognised this as a
fact, for he makes Alastor, “blasted by his disappointment, descend to
an untimely grave.”
_Alastor_ shows clearly that, even in 1815, Shelley had turned to inward
meditation and mystical reverie, and had cultivated his imaginative
faculty.
By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured.
He wrestled with his visions and
ever gazed
And gazed till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of Time.
And in another passage he says:
While daylight held
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
With his still soul.
All this deep contemplation, however, did not then bring to Shelley any
overwhelming revelation, such as Boehme experienced. Possibly his youth
sufficiently accounts for this, but I think also that the erotic
conflict, previously discussed, hindered the fuller development of
these states. There is, in _Alastor_, a considerable admixture of erotic
emotion which, we may suppose, inhibited the higher state of calm
ecstasy. For some years after this poem was written Shelley’s life seems
to have been too crowded with incident, too occupied with intellectual
activities, and too much dominated by the effort to repress the
homogenic tendencies, of his nature, to allow any further development of
mystical experiences; although, scattered throughout his poems, there
are still indications of such experience.
In 1822, however, it would seem that a definite development in this
direction was taking place, and being recorded in that remarkable and
intricate poem _The Triumph of Life_.
In this poem Shelley apparently attempted to describe a mystical vision,
in which he saw the pageant of life pass before him, and in which he was
about to penetrate into the heart of the mystery of creation. I do not,
however, intend to attempt an analysis of this poem, but only to point
out some of the features in it which throw light on Shelley’s spiritual
adventures. The poem begins with a description of a “strange trance”
into which the poet fell; a trance
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer.
In this preliminary “trance of wondrous thought,” the poet sees, as in a
waking dream, the human multitudes thronging a public way; a chariot,
driven by a four-faced shape, rushes by, passing heedlessly over the
crowd. The poet converses with the shade of Rousseau, who describes one
of his own visions, in which a shape (“all light”) gave him to drink
from a crystal glass.
I rose; and bending at her sweet command
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly _my brain became as sand_
Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador;
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,
Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,
Until the second bursts.
In this phrase “my brain became as sand,” Shelley describes one of the
crucial points in mystical experience, namely, the blotting-out of
intellect, and the suspension of the functioning of the senses. It is
well known, of course, that the Eastern mystics deliberately practise
this effacement of thought in order to penetrate into the abyss of their
inner souls and attain the cosmic state. For Shelley’s two waves of
mystical sensation, which obliterate first the more superficial, and
then the deeper elements of consciousness, leaving the mind as blank as
a clean sheet of wet sand, are only the precursors of a new vision.
So on my sight
Burst a new vision, never seen before,
And the fair shape waned _in the coming light_,
* * * * *
So knew I, _in that light’s severe excess_,
The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness.
This sense of subjective light is a constant feature of mystical
experience, from which in fact, the word “Illumination” derives its
significance. It is shown, for example, in the instance of Moses, who
saw the bush wrapt in flames, and yet it was not consumed. William
Blake’s visions were full of bright angels and of flames of fire; and
his letter to Thomas Butts describes his “_first vision of light_.”
In particles bright
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
In their essence these experiences of ecstasy are condensed into one
phrase by St. John of the Cross:
“_On this road, to have our faculties in darkness is to see the light._”
It would seem, then, that Shelley had, at the end of his life, arrived
very near to the final stage of mystical illumination, in which the soul
seems united to the infinite spirit of the universe, and whereby the
mystery of life is solved. Yet he never actually achieved this final
state; for his untimely death occurred before _The Triumph of Life_ was
completed. What he had achieved, however, was sufficiently remarkable
for so young a man; and it may well explain his extraordinary
indifference as to whether he lived or died.
The _Triumph of Life_ ends with the query “Then what is Life?” and the
reader guesses that Shelley’s vision broke off even as suddenly as the
poem breaks, and that no answer was vouchsafed him. But the poet had
himself already attempted to answer the same question.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
It always appears to the mystic as if the Eternal Spirit limited and
hindered Itself by dwelling in this world of form and substance; and
Shelley expresses this idea rather strikingly by his image of
many-coloured glass, filtering and delimiting the various partial
aspects of the pure spirit.
_The Triumph of Life_, and to some extent also _Prometheus Unbound_,
point in the direction of mystical prophecy rather than of pure poetry,
and I am entirely of Professor Dowden’s opinion “that _The Triumph of
Life_ may have been but the starting-point for a new and higher
development of the writer’s genius.”[25] The incompleteness of the poem,
and its lack of any final and comprehensive solution of the mystery of
existence, signify little. Nor should we expect that Shelley, at the age
of twenty-nine, could have experienced anything more than a partial
fore-taste of illumination. We have to bear in mind the fact that as a
general rule such illumination usually occurs when the subject is past
thirty; whereas Shelley never reached that age. William Blake was
thirty-three when he commenced his series of Prophetic Books with _The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell_; previous to this turning-point in his
career his mystical utterances and experiences had hardly been more
pronounced than those of Shelley.
I have previously contrasted Blake with Shelley in respect of the
polarity of their sexual natures. But, apart from this important
difference, the two poets had much in common. Both were highly sensitive
and passionate natures, revolutionary pioneers of freedom, and champions
of a new morality--especially in sex matters. In both men there was a
strong desire for solitude and for companionship with nature, and also
an ardent yearning for communion with some more spiritual universe. Both
had, even in boyhood, a marked tendency to experience visions, which are
commonly described as hallucinations. Blake studied the Bible,
Swedenborg, and Boehme intensively; while Shelley, with all his varied
reading and rationalistic proclivities, yet showed a strong predilection
for mystical and occult writers.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
In later years he grew out of the more childish fancies of occultism,
and turned to a more subtle mysticism. Yet, curiously enough, during
the very last year of his life he seems, for the first time, to have
actually undergone experiences which were occult rather than mystical. I
refer to the strange apparitions which he saw shortly before his death.
One of these is thus recorded in Mrs. Shelley’s _Memorials_ (Chapter
12).
“One night loud cries were heard issuing from the saloon. The Williamses
rushed out of their room in alarm; Mrs. Shelley fainted at the door.
Entering the saloon, the Williamses found Shelley staring horribly into
the air, and evidently in a state of trance. They waked him, and he
related that a figure wrapped in a mantle came to his bedside and
beckoned him. He must then have risen in his sleep, for he followed the
imaginary figure into the saloon, when it lifted the hood of its mantle,
ejaculated ‘siete sodisfatto,’ and vanished.”
A little later (May 6, 1822), he was one day walking with Edward
Williams when he suddenly caught hold of Williams’ arm, stared at the
sea, and exclaimed, “There it is again! There!” Afterwards he explained
to his friend that he had seen the child Allegra, naked, rising from the
sea and smiling at him.
At another time he dreamed that Edward Williams appeared like a corpse,
and warned him that the sea was flooding the house.
Now, although it is possible, and to most people will appear probable,
that these strange visions were mere subjective figments of the poet’s
overheated brain, yet they were curiously prophetic. Shelley and Edward
Williams were drowned together in July 1822--within a few weeks of these
apparitions. There is, indeed, much evidence in favour of the objective
reality of such apparitions. Myers, Gurney, Flamarion, and several other
well-known investigators have shown that before, or shortly after death
such phantasms have frequently been seen; sometimes by the person whose
death is impending, sometimes by near friends. It would seem that they
are even perceived by animals in some instances. In the particular case
which we are discussing, scientific evidence is, of course, not
available, and we have to rely on quite ordinary witnesses. But it would
seem that the phenomena affected at least one person besides Shelley.
When relating these events, Mary says that:
“Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing
is that Mrs. Williams saw _him_. Now Jane, though a woman of
sensibility, has not much imagination, and is not in the slightest
degree nervous, neither in dreams or otherwise.”
Mary then narrates that Jane, while standing at a window with Trelawny,
saw Shelley twice pass in front of the window, although he was, as a
matter of fact, nowhere near the place at the time; and, of course,
Trelawny could not see the phantom.
I have said enough, perhaps, to indicate that Shelley may have possessed
the germs of powers and faculties that are at once vaster and subtler
than those familiar to us all. It is true that he never attained that
more extended consciousness which characterises the great mystics, and
that he died before his latent faculties were fully established; but he
gave many indications of these faculties. That those indications were to
some extent pathological is but natural, and redounds more to the
discredit of society than of the poet. Given a nature fundamentally
disposed to experience Love as an ardent and exalted comradeship towards
those of his own sex, and given an environment in which that disposition
is persecuted mercilessly; granted also a considerable liability to
mental decentralisation to begin with; and one sees that a strong
repression was bound to follow, and that some degree of paranoia would
be the probable result of that repression.
But there were other things in Shelley’s nature, psychic faculties of
tremendous significance which, having first been revealed by the
intuitions which inspired his poetry and his thought, were gradually
growing in power, and but for his death would doubtless have established
themselves. Shelley, had he lived, would have taken his place beside the
great mystics.
_BIBLIOGRAPHY_
Complete Poetical Works of Shelley, Oxford Press.
Complete Prose Works of Shelley, edited by H. Buxton Forman, 4 vol.
Letters of Shelley, edited by R. Ingpen.
Letters of Shelley, in Peacock’s “Memoirs.”
Letters of Shelley, in Hogg’s “Life.”
DOWDEN, Life of Shelley, 2 vols.
HOGG, Life of Shelley.
PEACOCK, Memoirs of Shelley.
TRELAWNY, Records of Shelley and Byron.
J. A. SYMONDS, Shelley (English Men of Letters).
PLATO, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett (Oxford); also trans. Burgess
(Bohn’s Library); also trans. Shelley (e.g. Everyman’s Library).
HAVELOCK ELLIS, Sexual Inversion.
E. CARPENTER, The Intermediate Sex.
E. CARPENTER, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk.
HIRSCHFELD, Der Urnische Mensch.
CRICHTON MILLER, The New Psychology and the Teacher.
FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
JONES, Papers on Psychoanalysis.
BOUSFIELD, Elements of Practical Psychoanalysis.
FERENCSZI, Contributions to Psychoanalysis.
BUCKE, Dr. R., Cosmic Consciousness.
MYERS, Human Personality.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] I remember very well that my own father (who was born in 1793, that
is, one year later than Shelley)--though of active and original mind
and quite advanced views--did strongly disapprove of the poet’s ideas,
as generally represented and reported, especially on the subject of
Marriage. Knowing my father so well, and through him having obtained
glimpses of the current public opinion of that period, I appreciate all
the more the mental clarity and boldness of the growing boy (for such
Shelley was at that time) who so decisively cast aside the conventions
that surrounded him at Eton and in his highly respectable home, and
walked forth single-minded and unafraid into the great world, and to
“dare the unpastured dragon in his den.”
[2] See Shelley’s _Witch of Atlas_, stanza xviii (quoted below, p. 18).
There are several other references to “Gold and Blood,” which show what
importance he ascribed to the association; as for instance:
_Queen Mab_, section 4, line 195:
“when his doom is sealed in gold and blood”
_Triumph of Life_, line 287:
“and spread the plague of gold and blood abroad”
_Charles the First_, line 61:
“he looks elate, drunken with blood and gold”
_Hellas_, line 246:
“blood is the seed of gold.”
[3] Plato’s _Banquet_.
[4] _I.e._ To think.
[5] See for reference to this general prophecy, ch. ix of _Pagan and
Christian Creeds_, by E. Carpenter. (George Allen & Unwin, 1921.)
[6] Stanza xlvii.
[7] “The charge of fickleness in friendship, so often brought against
Shelley, is disproved by the simple fact that to the last day of his
life he remained true to those who called him friend Leigh Hunt,
Peacock, Hogg, Medwin, Williams, Trelawny” (_Percy Shelley, Poet and
Pioneer_, by H.S. Salt, p. 62, footnote).
After the quantity of somewhat trashy stuff that has been poured out
concerning Shelley, it is, indeed, a joy to come upon a book so keen
and clear, and withal so well-based on the fundamental facts and
principles of social life, as Mr. Salt’s _Shelley as Poet and Pioneer_
(George Allen & Unwin).
[8] See also in this connexion the writings of the great Goethe--his
_Wilhelm Meister_, his references to Griechische Liebe in his Diaries,
etc.
[9] For these and many other similar references see _Intermediate
Types Among Primitive Folk_ (George Allen & Unwin, 1919); also _The
Intermediate Sex_, pp. 24, 25, 46, 47, 58, 59, etc.
[10] See _Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk_, p. 63.
[11] See _Primitive Folk_, by Elie Reclus (Contemporary Science
Series), p. 72.
[12] See _Intermediate Types_, p. 24.
[13] See _Life of Shelley_, by Dowden, vol. i. p. 19.
[14] See _The Witch of Atlas_, stanza lxxvii.
[15] The Vaertings, in their book, _The Dominant Sex_, (George
Allen & Unwin), question how far these and other secondary sexual
characteristics are in reality fundamental to, and inherent in either
sex. They suggest that in any society the dominant sex acquires
certain traits, while the subordinate sex acquires others. But this
view does not affect the present argument. Shelley lived in our modern
male-dominant civilisation, and yet was born with, or else acquired,
traits which, in that society, are characteristic of women, and not of
men. He therefore approximated to the current feminine type.
[16] Sec Crichton Miller: _New Psychology and the Teacher_.
[17] I follow Dowden, in assigning this passage to a letter written in
December 1812 to Hogg. Hogg prints it without date, as a fragment of a
novel.
[18] See _Life of Michelangelo_, by J. A. Symonds.
[19] See _Shelley’s Prose Works_, ed. Buxton Forman.
[20] Compare this with his reminiscence of his Sion House friend.
[21] Shelley’s other delusions, which may have been variations on the
original one, are as follows:
At York (1811). That Hogg had made overtures to Harriet? If this was a
delusion, then the content of jealousy, as often happens, has replaced
that of persecution, and the father has been replaced by the older
friend.
At Keswick (1812). That he was attacked by a robber outside his
lodgings.
At Tanyrallt (February 1813). The attempted assassination in his house,
with threats of rape of his sister by the imaginary intruder.
In 1813 that he had contracted Elephantiasis.
At Pisa (1820). That he was attacked by a stranger in the Post Office.
There is also recorded a nightmare of his, in which he dreamed that he
was strangling his own wife, but this might be interpreted in many ways.
[22] Dr. Paul Bousfield (_Elements of Practical Psychoanalysis_),
states: “In all the cases of paranoid hysteria which I have seen,
repressed homosexuality seems to be the most striking feature;
homosexuality is always very strongly developed in these subjects,
although the patient may be totally unaware of it.”
Similarly Ferencszi, in his _Contributions to Psychoanalysis_, says:
“The observation of several cases, presently to be related, seems to
justify the surmise that in the pathogenesis of paranoia, homosexuality
plays not a chance part, but the most important one; and that paranoia
is perhaps nothing else at all than disguised homosexuality.”
Finally we may quote Freud (_Introductory Lectures_):
_Lecture 20_: “One particular mental disorder, paranoia ... invariably
arises from the attempt to subdue unduly powerful homosexual
tendencies.”
_Lecture 26_: “In the case of delusions of persecution, however, we
observed things which led us to follow up a certain clue. In the first
place we noticed that in the great majority of cases the persecuting
person was of the same sex as the persecuted one; this was capable of
a harmless explanation, it is true, but in certain cases, which were
closely studied, it appeared that the person of the same sex who had
been most beloved while the patient was normal became the persecutor
after the disease broke out....
From these observations, which were continually corroborated, we drew
the conclusion that persecutory paranoia is the means by which a person
defends himself against a homosexual impulse which has become too
powerful.”
[23] Shelley appears to have been easily hypnotised, since both Tom
Medwin and Jane Williams succeeded in mesmerising him (see Dowden, vol.
2, ch. ix).
[24] Dr. R. M. Bucke, _Cosmic Consciousness_.
[25] Dowden’s _Life of Shelley_, vol. 2, ch. xii.
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