Read Ebook: The psychology of the poet Shelley by Barnard Guy Christian Carpenter Edward

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s the age-long prophecy of the ultimate redemption of mankind.

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.

And so we find that the double-natured one, the Hermaphrodite, was bidden extend his storm-outspeeding wings, 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!

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.

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.

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 :

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.

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 . 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.

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 , 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

BY GEORGE BARNEFIELD

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.

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 fianc?e.

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.

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.

Man and woman, Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow From lawless love a solace for their sorrow.

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.

Love, in Shelley'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?

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 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."

The shadow of that idol of my thought.

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.

An old, old man with hair of silver-white And lips where heavenly smiles would hang and blend With his wise words.

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 anchor?d 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 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.

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