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

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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" . 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."

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 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 r?le 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 na?ve and feminine than he normally was; in other words, like all bisexual people, he automatically altered his polarity in accordance with his company.

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, 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."

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. 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 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."

In a letter from Naples 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.

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.

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:

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 was in reality nothing but a disguised expression of his own bisexual nature; and that Hermaphroditus represents the logical development of this expression.

If any should be curious to discover Whether towards you I am Friend or Lover, Let them read Shakespeare's Sonnets

The most important omission, however, occurs in the speech of Aristophanes. Plato imagines that Hephaestus 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."

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.

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 .

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. 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.

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 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. Dr. E. Jones 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 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.

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.

"For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

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