philosphy of life in shelley poetry
Introduction. Shelley is not only a successful Romanticist but also an inspiring
philosopher. He was enough of a philosopher not merely to enjoy ideals for their
own sake but to make them a starting-point for bold speculations in which he
found the thrill of a wild adventure. Whether he derived his notions from Plato or
from Godwin, he was equally enthralled by them and much of his inspiration
came from them.
Revolutionary idealism. Shelley was as much a revolutionist as Byron. From his
boyhood days he was a rebel and was inspired by the ideals of the French
Revolution. He revolted against the authority at Eton school and was expelled
from Oxford. Later on he revolted against the society itself regarding his marriage
difficulty. Thereafter he become a true revolutionist and thereby a reformer
through his poems. From Godwin he got the twin ideas that social Institutions and
conventions were the sources of tyranny and corruption, and laws, customs and
authority are the hindrances to man’s liberty and happiness. From Queen
Mab onwards, his poems, were meant to express his concept of the future— a
future which is free from war, tyranny and corruption. In Queen Mab, he asserts
the ideas of revolution and prophesies a golden age in the end. In a note
to Queen Mab he wrote “The state of Society in which we exist is a mixture of
feudal savageness and imperfect civilization” In The Revolt of Islam, he has a
vision of mankind which could be liberated from the present tyranny and
corruption through the power of love, beauty and thought. In Rosalind and
Helen, Shelley disagrees with a loveless marriage. It is in Prometheus
Unbound that his revolutionary enthusiasm is best revealed. In this poem he
shows how mankind is saved from the cruel hands of tyranny and corruption and
attains Shelley’s ideal world through love and goodness in nature Shelley’s idea of
the regeneration of mankind through suffering, endurance of all pain, and hope is
well portrayed in this poem. His vision of the future world is a world with the
ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity.
Religious idealism : Shelley is not only a revolutionist but a pantheist too. He
believed in God, the supreme Power of the world. But to him Love and Beauty are
the two means to attain that Supreme Power. Like Plato, he believed that the
universe possessed a soul, and that the soul of man is pure in its nature, and
though soiled by earth is capable of its original perfection.
Erotic idealism: He believed that love and beauty were no concrete things but
ideal and abstract. He was in pursuit of love and beauty throughout his life and
this became the sole aim of his life. He describes the vain search of Beauty in
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty and meeting with that false image of pure beauty
which awakens sensual love.
Like Plato, Shelley believed love leads to the highest wisdom, the lover proceeds
by grades and stages until he achieves the supreme vision. In The Revolt of Islam,
he says,
In me communion with this purest being
Kindled intense zeal and made me wise
In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing,
Left in the human world few mysteries,
Philosophy of Evil—conflict between Good and Evil: Shelley’s philosophy mainly
deals with the problem of evil. To him this world is a combination of both evil and
good, and a conflict exists between them. Shelly was interested in finding out the
causes of the evil and wanted to eradicate them to bring in a regenerated golden
world. In Shelley’s view the forces of evil always have the upper hand and hence
he felt the good people suffered. A.G. Strong says though Shelley had such a view
still he believed that evil, “if it is positive and deep-rooted, is also eradicable. it
can be made to disappear from life and given the necessary condition of the
changes, there need be little transformation of the present order”. Throughout
his work we see Shelley’s portrayal of the conflict between Good and Evil. In The
Revolt of Islam the fight between the snake and eagle depicts the fight between
good and evil. Idea of death: Shelley’s idea of death is seen throughout his works.
In Stanzas Written in Dejection Near Naples, Ode to Liberty, and Alastor he
expresses his wish to die. In Alastor, Shelley writes:
A restless impulse urged him to embark
And meet lone Death on the dear ocean’s waste
For well he knew that mighty shadow loves
The slimy caverns of the populous deep.
Shelley points out that even limited success is evidence that the non-human
world is at least amenable to human purposes and he hopes that it may suggest
an ultimate identity in Nature.
Conclusion: Many critics who consider Shelley’s poetry as wanting in substance
refuse to take seriously the Philosophy it professes to preach, and do not regard
him as a philosophic poet at all. But a systematic study of his poetry reveals the
fact that Shelley was a truly philosophic poet and we cannot arrive at a proper
appreciation of his poetry if we dismiss his philosophy as frivolous. Baker remarks:
“Yes Shelley has not been taken seriously as a philosophical poet, and one often
gathers from remarks of his critics, whether inimical or worshipful that his
Philosophy does not matter. Yes it does matter and vitally so because it is always
either the central matter of his poetry, or the frame of reference in terms of
which his poetry has been written.”
