346
39.3 Details Compelling His Apotheosis
By 1811, Percy Shelley had begun to put his map of the human psyche together for
himself in a way that would spell out a charged sequencing of humanity’s shortfalls,
particularly as they triggered political injustice and animal abuse. The first part of
that equation came together for him with the limited publication of his (relatively
recently discovered) poem, “Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things,” on
behalf of a miscarriage of justice carried out against the wrongly imprisoned Mr.
Peter Finnerty
2
. It might well have been written by George Kennan, given the maturity and scope of the Shelley’s outrage and concerns.
4
By that same Summer, the 18-year-old Shelley (1792–1822) had been both disowned by his family and expelled from Oxford for declaring himself an “Atheist.”
In the late Summer of 1816, he would actually inscribe his name and atheist in the
register at the Mer de Glace glacier in Chamonix, inciting great consternation from
others who preferred—upon stepping onto the actual ice—to shoot their guns and
proclaim their devotions to God before such grand scenery.
5
But in 1811, Shelley was also furiously probing logical, Utopian remedies for the
abuses of the French Revolution. By March 1812, he was living in Dublin, catapulted by the writings of Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man) and Paul Henri Baron
d’Holbach (Système de la Nature) and assessing what to him had become revelatory, namely, the depths of despair of the Irish working class that would figure
expressly in his 12,000 word, “Address to the Irish People,” propounding hopes for
Yoseloff, Publisher, New York, 1960; Shelley – A Life Story, by Edmund Blunden, The Viking
Press, New York, 1947; Shelley – The Last Phase, by Ivan Roe, Roy Publishers, New York, 1955;
Shelley’s Platonic Answer to a Platonic Attack on Poetry, by Joesph E. Baker, University of Iowa
Monograph, by Joseph E. Baker, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1965; Shelley’s Jane
Williams, by Joan Rees, William Kimber, London, 1985; Jefferson Hogg – Shelley’s Biographer,
by Winifred Scott, Jonathan Cape, London, 1951; Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Esdaile Note-Book,
Edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron, from the Original Manuscript in The Carl H. Pforzheimer
Library, Faber and Faber, London, 1964; Shelley – His Thought And Work, by Desmond KingHele, Second Edition, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Teaneck, Rutherford, Madison, 1971;
Verse And Prose From The Manuscripts Of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Sir John C. E. ShelleyRolls, Bart and Roger Ingpen, Privately Printed, London, 1934; Essays on Shelley, Edited by
Miriam Allott, English Texts And Studies Liverpool University Press, 1982; and Shelley: A voice
not understood, by Timothy Webb, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1977.
4 http://poeticalessay.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/; See also, “Shelley’s long-lost poem – a document for our
own time (and any other),” by John Mullan, The Guardian, November, 11, 2015, https://www.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/shelley-lost-poem-essay-existing-state-of-things,
Accessed January 12, 2020.
5 See Gavin de Beer, “The Atheist: an Incident at Chamonix,” in On Shelley, ed., Edmund Blunden,
et al. Oxford University Press, New York, 1938, pp. 43–54. See also, Sir Archibald Alison’s Some
account of my life, An Autobiography, Edinburgh 1883. Alison was in Chamonix in 1816 and
wrote, “Unable to take my eyes from the mountains, I threw myself on the ground and drank in,
gasping, the enchanting spectacle.” It was John Ruskin who had been infuriated upon seeing tourists firing their “rusty howitzers” in admiration of the mountains. See A Vision of Nature – Traces
of the Original World, by M. C. Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, p. 287.
39 Shelley’s Ecological Exile and His Utopia of Animal Rights
39.3 Details Compelling His Apotheosis
By 1811, Percy Shelley had begun to put his map of the human psyche together for
himself in a way that would spell out a charged sequencing of humanity’s shortfalls,
particularly as they triggered political injustice and animal abuse. The first part of
that equation came together for him with the limited publication of his (relatively
recently discovered) poem, “Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things,” on
behalf of a miscarriage of justice carried out against the wrongly imprisoned Mr.
Peter Finnerty
2
. It might well have been written by George Kennan, given the maturity and scope of the Shelley’s outrage and concerns.
4
By that same Summer, the 18-year-old Shelley (1792–1822) had been both disowned by his family and expelled from Oxford for declaring himself an “Atheist.”
In the late Summer of 1816, he would actually inscribe his name and atheist in the
register at the Mer de Glace glacier in Chamonix, inciting great consternation from
others who preferred—upon stepping onto the actual ice—to shoot their guns and
proclaim their devotions to God before such grand scenery.
5
But in 1811, Shelley was also furiously probing logical, Utopian remedies for the
abuses of the French Revolution. By March 1812, he was living in Dublin, catapulted by the writings of Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man) and Paul Henri Baron
d’Holbach (Système de la Nature) and assessing what to him had become revelatory, namely, the depths of despair of the Irish working class that would figure
expressly in his 12,000 word, “Address to the Irish People,” propounding hopes for
Yoseloff, Publisher, New York, 1960; Shelley – A Life Story, by Edmund Blunden, The Viking
Press, New York, 1947; Shelley – The Last Phase, by Ivan Roe, Roy Publishers, New York, 1955;
Shelley’s Platonic Answer to a Platonic Attack on Poetry, by Joesph E. Baker, University of Iowa
Monograph, by Joseph E. Baker, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 1965; Shelley’s Jane
Williams, by Joan Rees, William Kimber, London, 1985; Jefferson Hogg – Shelley’s Biographer,
by Winifred Scott, Jonathan Cape, London, 1951; Percy Bysshe Shelley – The Esdaile Note-Book,
Edited by Kenneth Neill Cameron, from the Original Manuscript in The Carl H. Pforzheimer
Library, Faber and Faber, London, 1964; Shelley – His Thought And Work, by Desmond KingHele, Second Edition, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, Teaneck, Rutherford, Madison, 1971;
Verse And Prose From The Manuscripts Of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Sir John C. E. ShelleyRolls, Bart and Roger Ingpen, Privately Printed, London, 1934; Essays on Shelley, Edited by
Miriam Allott, English Texts And Studies Liverpool University Press, 1982; and Shelley: A voice
not understood, by Timothy Webb, Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, 1977.
4 http://poeticalessay.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/; See also, “Shelley’s long-lost poem – a document for our
own time (and any other),” by John Mullan, The Guardian, November, 11, 2015, https://www.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/11/shelley-lost-poem-essay-existing-state-of-things,
Accessed January 12, 2020.
5 See Gavin de Beer, “The Atheist: an Incident at Chamonix,” in On Shelley, ed., Edmund Blunden,
et al. Oxford University Press, New York, 1938, pp. 43–54. See also, Sir Archibald Alison’s Some
account of my life, An Autobiography, Edinburgh 1883. Alison was in Chamonix in 1816 and
wrote, “Unable to take my eyes from the mountains, I threw myself on the ground and drank in,
gasping, the enchanting spectacle.” It was John Ruskin who had been infuriated upon seeing tourists firing their “rusty howitzers” in admiration of the mountains. See A Vision of Nature – Traces
of the Original World, by M. C. Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, p. 287.
39 Shelley’s Ecological Exile and His Utopia of Animal Rights