An introduction to the
author:
·
Percy Bysshe Shelley
(1792-1822).
·
Belonged to the Romantic age of
English poetry.
·
He was a lyric poet and is also
considered as a dramatist, essayist and novelist.
·
His contemporaries and friends
include Lord Byron and John Keats.
·
Mary Shelley, who is known for
her Frankenstein, is his second wife.
·
He led an unconventional life
and had uncompromising idealisms.
·
His famous works include Ode to the West Wind, To a Skylark,
Ozymandius, The Masque of Anarchy, The Cenci, Prometheus Unbound and much
more.
Introduction to the work:
·
A Defence of Poetry is a
response to Thomas Love Peacock’s article The Four Ages of Poetry which was
published in the year 1820.
·
It was written in the year 1821
and was published posthumously by his wife, Mary Shelley in the year 1840 in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations
and Fragments.
Context:
Thomas Love Peacock had written an essay titled “The Four Ages of
Poetry” in the year 1820. Shelley was highly provoked by reading this essay. He
was not very happy with the views and arguments Peacock had made in his essay.
Shelley believed that poets were above everyone and needed better recognition
and treatment than what was done in the essay. So, he wrote this essay in
response to enunciate his arguments. It was in this essay that he wrote, “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of
the world”. He had written a small note to his publishers and to the
producer of the catalyst, Thomas Peacock. The note to the publishers reads as
follows,
“I am enchanted with your Literary
Miscellany, although the last article
has excited my polemical faculties so violently that the moment I get rid of my
ophthalmia, I mean to set about an answer to it. . . . It is very clever, but I
think, very false.”
The note to Thomas Peacock reads as follows,
“Your
anathemas against poetry itself excited me to a sacred rage. . . . I had the
greatest possible desire to break a lance with you . . . in honour of my
mistress Urania.”
How
does Shelley go about with his argument?
The younger
Romantics gave a lot of importance to poetry and considered poets above
everyone. Shelley being a contemporary of this age had similar ideologies. In
this essay, he talks about the importance of poets and poetry in the society.
“In A Defence of Poetry, [Shelley] attempts to prove that poets
are philosophers; that they are the creators and protectors of moral and civil
laws; and that if it were not for poets, scientists could not have developed
either their theories or their inventions."[1]
“...Shelley was mainly concerned to explain the moral (and thus the
social) function of poetry. In doing so, he produced one of the most
penetrating general discussions on poetry that we have.”[2]
·
The ultimate goal of this essay
is to stress on the beneficial impact of poetry. The author tries to explain
how important a role the poet plays in the society and on why he is considered
and is to be respected more than anyone else. For this he has to define the
nature of poetry first. And to understand poetry, one has to talk about the
nature of poets and before that, most important, the nature of man.
·
The author says that the mind
and thoughts of the human keeps changing with time. It is never static.
…man is an “instrument over
which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the
alternation of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by
their motion to ever changing melody.”
And according to the author, there are two
types of faculties or as he terms “classes
of mental action”. They are as follows:
i)
Conscious thoughts which are produced by
reasons. They are like scientific treaties and are explained with reasons.
These thoughts have no scope for thinking and further pondering.
ii)
The second category is Imagination. The poet considers this
type of faculty more superior to the other. He considers this because it gives
a scope for thinking, which is believed to be enlightenment of the minds. When
mind begins to imagine things, then one expresses the thoughts in poetic form
(i.e.,) figurative language.
“…mind acting upon those thoughts [produced by the reason] so as to
colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements,
other thoughts.”
iii)
The author also says that
imagination has the power to similitude things. When one imagines, thoughts
combine and then sparks innovativeness and creativity.
“…exultation and horror, grief and pleasure; eternity and change; it
subdues to union under its light yoke all irreconcilable things.”
iv)
In the course of the essay
Shelley tries to place imagination over conscious thoughts. He argues that
imagination is superior to the other faculty.
“Reason is to the imagination, as the instrument to the agent, as
the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.”
·
The author argues that
knowledge is subjective and hence it keeps transforming. The mind has the power
to do anything. We call a tree green only because we imagine it green. We call
the sea blue only because we imagine it like that. Similarly, we say hell is
bad and heaven is nice only because we imagine it like that.
…all things “exist as they
are perceived; at least in relation to the percipient”, the mind being able to
“make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”.
This capability
to imagine is creativeness or poetic faculty. It is actually a “system of thoughts.” Shelley believes
that imagination is the basis of all knowledge and studies. And poetry has the
power to make a man think and imagine. That is why it is considered above all
other field of studies.
·
Poetry is the expression of the
imagination of the poet. As Wordsworth defined poetry, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions recollected in
tranquility.”Poetry has the power to keep anyone and anything alive through
word forever. It creates eternity. The author comments on poetry as follows:
“…very image of life
expressed in its eternal truth.”
·
The author places poetry above
all other forms of art or even sciences. Poetry expressed in the form of words,
which the author believes is the most direct form of expression. It is also
superior because it makes a man to think. It brings out the imagination in man.
“…expresses those
arrangements of language, and especially metrical language, which are created
by that imperial faculty, whose throne is curtained within the invisible nature
of man.”
·
A poem lives forever. It never
dies. It lives in different forms in different minds. It has that strength to
live on and on. The poetry is infinite. A poem is interpreted and criticized again
and again as time flows. But no one can ever reach to the conclusion that this
is it, like that in the case of other forms of art.
“…all high poetry is
infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the
inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain for ever
overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight”
In
this essay, Shelley also responds to Plato’s invitation to defend poetry and
save it from exile.
·
The author here argues that
poetry gives pleasure. The biggest mistake critics and others make is placing
reason above imagination. If one thinks like that, poetry will seem useless to
them. It is true that reason gives “durable,
universal and permanent” pleasure. The pleasure obtained from imagination
might be “transitory and particular”,
but it is any day better when one thinks deeper. According to Shelley, poetry
caters to the former. He believes poetry is as follows:
“…all spirits upon which it
falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.”
“…acts in a divine and un
apprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness.”
·
Shelley also argues that poetry
spreads the message of love. It creates love and harmony in the minds of the
people. A man “to be greatly good, must
imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of
another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become
his own”. Poetry plays an important role in doing this. It creates the
feeling of love in the minds of the readers. According to Shelley,
“The
state of mind produced (by poetry) at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism,
and friendship is essentially linked with such emotions.”
·
Poetry also plays an important
role in the molding of the society. It helps to bring about social changes.
That was one of the major aims of the younger romantics which included Shelley
too. Shelley says that poetry is,
“…unfailing herald, companion,
and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in
opinion, or institution.”
Throughout
the essay Shelley tries to argue against this notion that poets are not very
significant. He is not only successful in arguing his views but has also made
everyone understand how important a role the pot plays for mankind, and poetry
for the society.
“Poets…are not only the authors of language and of
music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting; they are the
institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society…”
[1] Robert M. Hutchins and
Mortimer J. Adler, eds. Gateway to the Great Books Volume 5, Critical
Essays. Toronto: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1963, p.214. (No ISBN.)
[2]Perkins, David, ed. English
Romantic Writers, 2nd Edition. Toronto: Harcourt Brace College Publishers,
1995, p.1131. ISBN 0-15-501688-1.
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