347
Irish Independence during an epidemic of British tyrannies. He’d been a “spy” and
something of an outlaw, if an elegant one, as characterized by authorities.
6
His itinerary during these times were harrowing for him. But one imagines mostly his utter
discontent with the human state of affairs; what today would be most readily typified as an ecological melancholy, firing up ideals, preparing him for a no-return saga
of expatriotism. He recognized in humanity the “beast.” But the haggard vagabond
of the most tender demeanor viewed nature as a living compendium of the benign
and enchanted. This dichotomy, for Shelley a fatal paradox combining an ecological
exile that would take him from his native England to the Continent, would inform
his literary outpourings still before him, epics both long and diminutive. These
included “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude,” “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical
Drama,” “The Revolt of Islam,” “Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue,” “The
Masque of Anarchy,” “Epipsychidion,” “The Cenci: A Tragedy,” “Intellectual Hymn
to Beauty,” “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats,” “The Triumph of
Life,” and perhaps most quintessential to Shelley’s rightful legacy, the soon to follow, “Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem.”
Many, most notably T. S. Eliot, have assailed Shelley’s pioneering political and
spiritual motivations for his art. They confused his remarkably consistent and adamant environmental convictions with sentiment, and for generations, he was rather
dismissed at best by Victorian and early modernist readers and critics. A few, particularly the Chartists (British political reformers from 1838 to 1857), and Shelley’s
most devoted biographer and animal rights activist, the polymath Henry Salt, have
made of Shelley a spiritual figurehead, never a zealot but the purest of poets, as lyrical and incisive as Shakespeare, though far more well-read. That plus one additional
quality, which was the ultimate measure of man, for Salt: Shelley’s emphatic love of
animals, a passion so intense that it could be said to have carried him to his grave.
Had he not perished at the age of 29, his likely other outpourings present a dizzying
prospect, not to mention his brimming passions for Greek Independence, contraception for women, along with universal suffrage, systematic reforms in Parliament (as
Richard Holmes has discussed), and hopes to found a vehicle to erode the noxious
conservatism of the Torries. He would have made a most compelling poet/politician
of his era, Holmes has suggested.
Some, like literary critics Axon, Cameron, and Bate, have followed the line of
quasi-adoration advanced by the underrepresented Henry Salt (1859–1931) who
would follow, with his great work Animals’ Rights – Considered In Relation To
Social Progress (1892),
7
in the steps of Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), the great
Neoplatonist who had translated Plato’s (then controversial) Symposium in 1792.
Shelley’s own great interest in Plato would have led him to Taylor, and, by turns,
Taylor back to Shelley. Just one year after Shelley died, Taylor translated The Select
6 See Richard Holmes, Shelley – The Pursuit , E. P. Dutton, New York, 1975, pp. 117–132.
7 George Bell & Sons, London and New York, 1892. The book includes a nearly 30-page
Bibliography of works on animal rights in English between 1723 and 1887, sufficient data to suggest that Shelley was in his purest form when he combined his poetic gifts and complex voice to
causes which, by all contemporary accounts, meant more to him than almost anything else.
39.3 Details Compelling His Apotheosis
Irish Independence during an epidemic of British tyrannies. He’d been a “spy” and
something of an outlaw, if an elegant one, as characterized by authorities.
6
His itinerary during these times were harrowing for him. But one imagines mostly his utter
discontent with the human state of affairs; what today would be most readily typified as an ecological melancholy, firing up ideals, preparing him for a no-return saga
of expatriotism. He recognized in humanity the “beast.” But the haggard vagabond
of the most tender demeanor viewed nature as a living compendium of the benign
and enchanted. This dichotomy, for Shelley a fatal paradox combining an ecological
exile that would take him from his native England to the Continent, would inform
his literary outpourings still before him, epics both long and diminutive. These
included “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude,” “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical
Drama,” “The Revolt of Islam,” “Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue,” “The
Masque of Anarchy,” “Epipsychidion,” “The Cenci: A Tragedy,” “Intellectual Hymn
to Beauty,” “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats,” “The Triumph of
Life,” and perhaps most quintessential to Shelley’s rightful legacy, the soon to follow, “Queen Mab: A Philosophical Poem.”
Many, most notably T. S. Eliot, have assailed Shelley’s pioneering political and
spiritual motivations for his art. They confused his remarkably consistent and adamant environmental convictions with sentiment, and for generations, he was rather
dismissed at best by Victorian and early modernist readers and critics. A few, particularly the Chartists (British political reformers from 1838 to 1857), and Shelley’s
most devoted biographer and animal rights activist, the polymath Henry Salt, have
made of Shelley a spiritual figurehead, never a zealot but the purest of poets, as lyrical and incisive as Shakespeare, though far more well-read. That plus one additional
quality, which was the ultimate measure of man, for Salt: Shelley’s emphatic love of
animals, a passion so intense that it could be said to have carried him to his grave.
Had he not perished at the age of 29, his likely other outpourings present a dizzying
prospect, not to mention his brimming passions for Greek Independence, contraception for women, along with universal suffrage, systematic reforms in Parliament (as
Richard Holmes has discussed), and hopes to found a vehicle to erode the noxious
conservatism of the Torries. He would have made a most compelling poet/politician
of his era, Holmes has suggested.
Some, like literary critics Axon, Cameron, and Bate, have followed the line of
quasi-adoration advanced by the underrepresented Henry Salt (1859–1931) who
would follow, with his great work Animals’ Rights – Considered In Relation To
Social Progress (1892),
7
in the steps of Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), the great
Neoplatonist who had translated Plato’s (then controversial) Symposium in 1792.
Shelley’s own great interest in Plato would have led him to Taylor, and, by turns,
Taylor back to Shelley. Just one year after Shelley died, Taylor translated The Select
6 See Richard Holmes, Shelley – The Pursuit , E. P. Dutton, New York, 1975, pp. 117–132.
7 George Bell & Sons, London and New York, 1892. The book includes a nearly 30-page
Bibliography of works on animal rights in English between 1723 and 1887, sufficient data to suggest that Shelley was in his purest form when he combined his poetic gifts and complex voice to
causes which, by all contemporary accounts, meant more to him than almost anything else.
39.3 Details Compelling His Apotheosis