349
the epic, members of the Bible Christian Church of Manchester had, in 1809, committed themselves to a life of vegetarianism. It was in the air.
15
As for that “place”—whether the Chamonix of his “Mont Blanc,” or the “Lonely
Vale in the Indian Caucasus” of his “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude”—the actual
locus forever eluded Shelley, though not the themes and convictions that fueled its
genius. One year before his death (some have viewed it as a suicide, though Richard
Holmes has rejected such a view),
16
he wrote from Pisa to his good friend Thomas
Medwin, who was in Geneva at the time, “How much I envy you, or rather how
much I sympathise in the delights of your wandering. I have a passion for such
expeditions… I see the mountains, the sky, and the trees from my windows, and
recollect, as an old man does the mistress of his youth, the raptures of a more familiar intercourse, but without his regrets for their forms are yet living in my mind”.
17
At the time of his writing “Queen Mab,” having fully embraced vegetarianism
sometime in the early month of 1812, that pivotal place had also become conceptual, not merely topographic. He sensed, in the final stanza of Canto VIII, that a life
of non-injury to others would solve all the problems of the world. That vegetarianism was the central issue of inequality, trade, politics, commerce, hierarchy, socialization, health and nutrition, a cause at the root of human aspirations for paradise,
and the only conceivable practice that could rightly segue into a true Utopian system
for all beings.
When he writes of that paradise, it is in terms of our kind having finally liberated
itself from our species’ ecological cruelties, even as Shelley himself intuited that his
declarations were of such magnitude as to possibly incur his own demise. Having
described in inimitable detail how a human “slays the lamb that looks him in the
face,/And horribly devours his mangled flesh,/Which still avenging nature’s broken
law,/Kindled all putrid humours in his frame,” he goes on to that final phase, when
such “evil passions, and all vain belief” have come to a blessed end, such that “All
things are void of terror: man has lost/His terrible prerogative, and stands/An equal
amidst equals: happiness/And science dawn though late upon the earth”.
18
39.4 Ultimate Vindication
As for the science itself, which he hails, it is of interest that in his 17th note accompanying “Queen Mab,” namely “A Vindication of Natural Diet,” he speaks of a
human life on a par with that same “lamb”; of a person surviving on “acorns and
berries” which is the same self-professed diet of “The Monster” who tells this to his
15 ibid., Colin Spenser, p. 251.
16 “Death and destiny,” by Richard Holmes, January 23, 2004, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview1, Accessed April 21, 2020.
17 The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by F. L. Jones, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1964,
2:218–219, no. 578.
18 See Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Queen Mab, W. Clark, London, 1821, VIII., p. 79.
39.4 Ultimate Vindication
the epic, members of the Bible Christian Church of Manchester had, in 1809, committed themselves to a life of vegetarianism. It was in the air.
15
As for that “place”—whether the Chamonix of his “Mont Blanc,” or the “Lonely
Vale in the Indian Caucasus” of his “Alastor, or, The Spirit of Solitude”—the actual
locus forever eluded Shelley, though not the themes and convictions that fueled its
genius. One year before his death (some have viewed it as a suicide, though Richard
Holmes has rejected such a view),
16
he wrote from Pisa to his good friend Thomas
Medwin, who was in Geneva at the time, “How much I envy you, or rather how
much I sympathise in the delights of your wandering. I have a passion for such
expeditions… I see the mountains, the sky, and the trees from my windows, and
recollect, as an old man does the mistress of his youth, the raptures of a more familiar intercourse, but without his regrets for their forms are yet living in my mind”.
17
At the time of his writing “Queen Mab,” having fully embraced vegetarianism
sometime in the early month of 1812, that pivotal place had also become conceptual, not merely topographic. He sensed, in the final stanza of Canto VIII, that a life
of non-injury to others would solve all the problems of the world. That vegetarianism was the central issue of inequality, trade, politics, commerce, hierarchy, socialization, health and nutrition, a cause at the root of human aspirations for paradise,
and the only conceivable practice that could rightly segue into a true Utopian system
for all beings.
When he writes of that paradise, it is in terms of our kind having finally liberated
itself from our species’ ecological cruelties, even as Shelley himself intuited that his
declarations were of such magnitude as to possibly incur his own demise. Having
described in inimitable detail how a human “slays the lamb that looks him in the
face,/And horribly devours his mangled flesh,/Which still avenging nature’s broken
law,/Kindled all putrid humours in his frame,” he goes on to that final phase, when
such “evil passions, and all vain belief” have come to a blessed end, such that “All
things are void of terror: man has lost/His terrible prerogative, and stands/An equal
amidst equals: happiness/And science dawn though late upon the earth”.
18
39.4 Ultimate Vindication
As for the science itself, which he hails, it is of interest that in his 17th note accompanying “Queen Mab,” namely “A Vindication of Natural Diet,” he speaks of a
human life on a par with that same “lamb”; of a person surviving on “acorns and
berries” which is the same self-professed diet of “The Monster” who tells this to his
15 ibid., Colin Spenser, p. 251.
16 “Death and destiny,” by Richard Holmes, January 23, 2004, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jan/24/featuresreviews.guardianreview1, Accessed April 21, 2020.
17 The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley, edited by F. L. Jones, 2 vols., Oxford University Press, 1964,
2:218–219, no. 578.
18 See Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Queen Mab, W. Clark, London, 1821, VIII., p. 79.
39.4 Ultimate Vindication