THE STORY OF EROS AND PSYCHE: together with SOME EARLY VERSES.
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF
THE POET SHELLEY
BY
EDWARD CARPENTER
AND
GEORGE BARNEFIELD
LONDON: GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
RUSKIN HOUSE, 40 MUSEUM STREET, W.C.
_First published in 1925_
(_All rights reserved_)
_Printed in Great Britain_
_THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
POET SHELLEY_
BY
EDWARD CARPENTER
Late studies in the Psychology of Sex have led to some interesting
speculations with regard to the poet Shelley; and it is with pleasure
that I write a few lines by way of introduction to the following paper
by my friend, George Barnefield, which puts very clearly, as I think,
some points in Shelley’s temperament which have hitherto been neglected
or misunderstood, and which call for renewed consideration.
Not having myself made a special study of the Modern Psychology, I do
not pretend to certify to the absolute truth of the theories put forward
by Mr. Barnefield, but I do certainly think, after due consideration,
that they are worthy of _very_ careful study. The profound divergence of
Shelley’s ideals from the accepted forms of our modern life is a subject
which, though it has always attracted attention, has never, I think,
been adequately explained or even _presented_ for intelligent
comprehension; and it is only perhaps in late years that it has become
possible, through the great advances that have been made in
psychological Science, to arrive at a valid understanding of the inner
nature of our greatest modern poet.
It has been a sort of commonplace of literary criticism to talk somewhat
vaguely of Shelley’s feminine appearance and disposition, or to quote
(in passing) Matthew Arnold’s remarks about his “ineffectual wings,” or
again to dwell on the poet’s more or less proved liability to delusions;
but there has (quite naturally) been no attempt to relate these
peculiarities to each other or to see their real bearing on the subject
under discussion. And this attitude has made it easy for hostile critics
to spread exaggerated and unfounded ideas.[1]
The points which I wish to bring to notice in the present Introduction
are (1) the degree to which the love-element and interest saturate all
Shelley’s poetry; (2) how, while showing the utmost boldness in facing
out certain problems connected with sex (incest, polygamy, etc.), he
does at the same time treat with marked reserve and a kind of childlike
innocence any direct reference to physical sex-acts; and (3) the modern
or Freudian view that the origin of mental delusions can frequently be
traced to some intimate disturbance or repression of a love-passion.
With regard to (1) it has to be noted of course that while the
love-interest occupies such a large part of the general field of
Shelley’s poetry, it occurs almost always in a very diffused and
abstract form. I need only refer in this connexion to three of his main
poems, namely, to _Prometheus Unbound_, in which the love-invocations
are strangely ethereal, extending directly and confessedly to all of
Nature and Humanity, but never dwelling for a moment on the concrete
corporeal charm of a single human being; or to _Epipsychidion_, in which
there is a like diffusion and abstractness, though the confessed
inspiration of the love is a known and acknowledged Woman (Emilia
Viviani); or again to _Adonais_, in which the definitely portrayed and
glorified object of the poem is a _Man_. In all these cases (I need
hardly say) sex and the sex-contacts which play so conspicuous a part in
quite modern literature, are kept well in the background. Whatever
Shelley’s real sentiments may have been, these matters are certainly
treated by him as quite subordinate and hardly demanding consideration.
This idealising habit was rooted in the very grain and texture of
Shelley’s mind; and though it may be open to a Mechanical Age to scoff
at the same, yet there remains a seed of prophecy in it and a promise
of deliverance from that double nightmare which continually oppresses
us, and from which we so hardly discern the means of escape. I mean the
Nightmare of Gold and the Nightmare of Blood.[2] For to-day the delusion
of monetary gain is indeed a nightmare; it clouds all free and
spontaneous activity of the human spirit, and its paralysing influence
derives from the false though ingrained belief that only by sacrificing
our lives in the pursuit of riches shall we be able (each one of us) to
escape into _freedom_; while the delusion of Redemption by the spilling
of Blood (which from the beginning of the world has been accepted as
the orthodox means of Salvation) is now confirmed by our failure to
perceive that whoever seeks to gain advantage for himself by sacrificing
others is really tightening the chains of his _own_ captivity. Shelley,
being free from either of these delusions, may be counted the prophet of
a new era for mankind.
Yet, at the time in question, Shelley himself was constantly “in love”;
and either on the one hand exalting the objects of his adorations into
an ideal sphere, or on the other hand claiming perfect liberty and
license of action and expression for them. How are we to reconcile these
varying attitudes and moods--or is it not necessary to reconcile
them?... Perhaps this last suggestion is the best. Like most
predominantly emotional people, though liable to kaleidoscopic
variations of outlook, any sustained effort to harmonise these and
render them _consistent_ with each other was painful and irksome to him.
Yet it is this very variability (but with nucleus of iron determination
and persistence) which is largely the key and explanation of Shelley’s
character. It gave him his wide sympathy with and understanding of
different and almost opposing types of humanity, and gave him at the
same time his strong determination to get at the root of things--with
the result that he ultimately combined in himself a great range of
qualities, both masculine and feminine. If he had had a longer and more
effective experience of the actual world (so we sometimes think) it
might have been possible for him to bring into line or give even more
definite form and expression to these two sides of his nature.
Familiarity with the work-a-day world of practical life would, we think,
have made it difficult for him to linger much longer among the abstract
beauties of Nature--the “mountains and fountains” of his youthful
dreams; and would have compelled him into another region where he would
have found an abundance of quite solid building material ready to his
hand.
_Prometheus Unbound_ carries the love of Nature into the realm of the
Ideal; and _Epipsychidion_ does the same for the love of Woman; but
_Adonais_ to most English ears sounds strange in its loving and highly
imaginative glorification of a _Man_; yet it is a long and elaborately
wrought poem, and perhaps in some ways the most carefully written and
direct and concrete of Shelley’s greater works. “To that high Capital
where kingly death Keeps his pale Court in beauty and decay....” It
seems impossible for anyone to be insensible to the charm and
distinction of the language--its warmth, its intensity, its glorious
movement. Yet how are the love-expressions in it to be taken? Are they
to be put aside as amiable but rather meaningless enthusiasms, or are
they to be interpreted directly and candidly, as _meaning what they
say_? A foreigner once said to me, “You English have a strange and
sinister gift for pretending that you do not see things which are
straight before your eyes.”... Shelley was not like that. His lovely
candour, his crystalline purity of mind, would not brook disguise, or
countenance any harlotry with deceit, and a great part of his precious
life was consumed in tearing from his own eyes the bandages which the
feeble conventions of that age had bound around them. For a boy at
school to adore and idealise one of the masters, _and to say so_, must
have seemed at that time a thing outrageously contrary to all the
traditions of British respectability; yet the young Percy’s devotion to
Dr. Lind (see the first stanzas of _Prince Athanase_) has a touch of
more than romance about it, and it is well-known that the growing boy
always kept a sacred place in his heart for the memory of this his
former teacher. There are two fragments of _Prince Athanase_ preserved
to us, and in the second of these the boy seems to recall the very words
of “that divine old man” when he says:
Dost thou remember yet
When the curved moon, then lingering in the west,
Paused in yon waves her mighty horns to wet,
How in those beams we walked, half resting on the sea?
’Tis just one year--sure thou dost not forget.
Then Plato’s words of light in thee and me
Lingered like moonlight in the moonless east,
For we had just then read--thy memory
Is faithful now--the story of the feast;[3]
And Agathon and Diotima seemed
From death and dark forgetfulness released.
I quote this passage almost complete, not only on account of its great
intrinsic beauty, but because it holds for us something that was
evidently very dear to the young poet--the memory of how he and his old
friend had on one occasion walked on the shore together reciting in
intimate converse the words of Agathon and Diotima as recorded in that
most precious of the Platonic dialogues, the _Symposium_--a memory
evidently very precious to Shelley, just because of his love for the one
old man who in the desert of those Eton days had gone out of his way to
encourage and assist him.
I say that this devotion to Dr. Lind--the devotion of a schoolboy to one
many years his senior--throws great light on the inner nature of the
youth and exposes for us how the latter’s affections might well, at that
time, have had an ideal cast and character, and not have been entirely
swayed by the ordinary pandemic love of the male for the female.
Among the fragments of Shelley’s poems preserved to us, there is one
short piece of only a few lines from _Epipsychidion_, written apparently
in allusion to (or suggested by) a well-known statue in the Louvre, the
Hermaphrodite.
And others swear you’re a Hermaphrodite,
Like that sweet marble monster of both sexes,
Which looks so sweet and gentle that it vexes
The very soul that[4] the soul is gone,
Which lifted from her limbs the veil of stone.
I quote this, not because the allusion _to an hermaphrodite_ positively
proves anything, but because it certainly _illustrates_ the poet’s
wide-ranging interest in whatever might possibly fall within the domain
of human experience. And, indeed, there are quite a few other
references among the Poems to this subject of Hermaphrodites. A careful
reading, for instance, of _The Witch of Atlas_ shows that the creation
of a strange Being of double sex is the central theme of that weirdly
beautiful poem. The supposed mother of this Being was “a lovely lady
garmented in light” and around her birth (a thing, indeed, most
interesting to us) floats the age-long prophecy of the ultimate
redemption of mankind.[5]
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.
Here one can hardly do otherwise than pause a moment over the vision
indicated--the epitome and exposure of the mortal sins and consequent
disasters which afflict our modern world--“the earth-consuming rage of
Gold and Blood.” When we contemplate the frantic scramble of to-day
(insanely and murderously furious as it is) in pursuit of Gold, and the
rivers, the oceans of Blood poured out in the horrible process, when we
think of the regiments and regiments of soldiers and mercenaries mangled
and torn (and each one having wife or daughter or friend or lover to
give his or her life in exchange), when we realise _what_ all this
horrible scramble means, including the endless slaughter of the innocent
and beautiful animals, and the fear, the terror, the agony in which the
latter exist--we can but pay homage to the clear-eyed youth who, with
lightning swiftness, leapt to the understanding of the whole sordid
situation, and saw that only a new type of human being combining the
male and the female, could ultimately save the world--a being having the
feminine insight and imagination to perceive the evil, and the manly
strength and courage to oppose and finally annihilate it.
And so (returning to _The Witch of Atlas_) we find that the
double-natured one, the Hermaphrodite, was bidden extend his
storm-outspeeding wings,[6] 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!
Thus it will be perceived that this poem, _The Witch of Atlas_, if
closely looked into, discloses itself as a description, and, indeed, as
a prophecy, of the coming of a being who was to combine the
characteristics of the two sexes, and whose arrival on the Earth, and
acknowledged sway there, was to be the signal of the coming of a new
age. Perhaps, indeed, Shelley saw (in the radiance of the inner light)
that in the process of the world-evolution such a being would inevitably
arise. But the poem, as might be expected, is somewhat carefully wrapt
up in its expression, and disguised in its general content by
digressions, so that the casual and hasty reader (and likely enough this
was its author’s desire and contrivance) is partly lost and does not
always attain to catch the real purport and intention of the whole.
Perhaps it is this--this careful wrapping up and concealment of the main
purport--which explains the curious neglect on the part of critics and
others, from which the poem has suffered this long time--all the more
curious because one might certainly have been inclined to suppose
beforehand that the air of mystery would have had the opposite effect,
namely of directing attention to the poem. Professor Dowden, for
example, who is usually very scrupulous about such matters, gives hardly
any space to _The Witch of Atlas_; and Mrs. Campbell (_Shelley and the
Unromantics_), who is generally a keen and active-minded observer,
ignores the work altogether! one is left to conclude (as the omissions
could hardly be accidental) that these and other critics have
deliberately passed the poem by on account of its fanciful and Utopian
character, yet this in itself is hardly an adequate reason, since in
reality the importance of the poem consists in the veritable glimpse it
affords of the working of Shelley’s mind and of the ideals which he
entertained, rather than in the actual practicability of the latter.
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.
Apart from Freud and all his works, we can easily see the great
probability of this conclusion. The love-instinct roots so deep and
dates so far back--even to the very beginnings of human life in the
earth--that necessarily any displacement of it affects the human being
most profoundly. It would not do to say at once and without collateral
evidence that Shelley’s mental disturbances were due to repressed or
disappointed love, but we have to hold that clue in mind, remembering at
the same time his _extremely_ emotional and imaginative nature.
Shelley’s later love-affairs are pretty well known, but there does not
seem to be one among them which quite answers the requirements of the
case. Harriet Grove and Harriet Westbrook may soon be dismissed. Mary
Godwin had more hold on the poet’s affection, but her nature was cold
and argumentative--too like her father’s--and there is little indication
of an attachment between her and the poet sufficiently passionate to
cause by its rupture any actual dislocation of the latter’s mind.
Trelawny, with whom on one occasion I had a longish conversation, was
somewhat contemptuous of Mary as a rather shallow person much attracted
by society considerations; and though I think Trelawny himself was often
swayed by prejudice and personal bias, yet it must be allowed that he
knew Mary pretty well. Then there is Emilia Viviani (alluded to above)
to whom Shelley wrote the long and enthusiastic poem _Epipsychidion_;
but here again, though the poem is full of rarely beautiful passages,
one cannot help feeling that it is “up in the air” all the time--a
charming piece of work, but wanting in actuality and grip on life.
There remain Shelley’s attachments to men friends, but these again are
somewhat disappointing. Hogg, whose name is often associated with that
of the poet, was, one would say, a rather uninspiring creature, but who
has this claim to our respect--that he certainly was genuinely attached
to Shelley. Though rather commonplace in character, it yet may be said
of him that he was virile and of quite keen intellect. He was also very
susceptible to feminine attractions. He obviously liked Shelley much;
but Shelley may fairly be said to have loved _him_, and in quite
romantic manner. Then, at a later time, there appeared that other
devoted friend, Trelawny, who, after reading Shelley’s Poems could not
rest till he had made the poet’s acquaintance, and who after that
returned again and again to the poet’s side, and to be with him. He was
a very different type from Hogg, somewhat bombastic, but spirited and
adventurous.
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.[7]
This is, I think, clearly indicated not only by his relations with Hogg
and by numerous passages in _Adonais_ and other poems, but by the fact
of his giving so much time and thought to the translation of Plato’s
_Symposium_ (whose chief subject, of course, is love between men) as
well as to the study (see his letters) of the Greek statuary. Modern
psychoanalysis has forced on people recognition of the fact that
avoidance of certain words or of allusions to certain subjects does not
by any means justify one in concluding that such words or subjects were
not present to the speaker’s or writer’s mind. Rather the contrary. In
many cases (as Barnefield reminds us) such avoidance indicates an
_over-self-consciousness_ which leads the speaker or writer to suppress
the very things which interest him _most_, or the words which would
betray his interest.
Shelley was by his very nature greatly in advance of his age. And _The
Witch of Atlas_ shows this. All through that strange poem there peep in
and out suggestions of sex-variation and of variations in
sex-attraction.[8] That poem was written a hundred years ago, but
to-day the same subjects have become almost an obsession, and situations
are freely handled and discussed which would (as the saying goes) cause
our grandfathers and grandmothers to turn in their graves! What there
may be preparing we do not know; but we can see that civilisation has
arrived at a cusp or turning-point in its progress, where further
movement is likely to be in a quite unexpected direction. Love between
two persons of like sex is nowadays widely accepted, as being an
attachment resting on a sympathy and soul-union very deep and
sincere--even though it may elude the physical ties or take little
account of them.
The modern Woman’s movement--so concrete and world-wide in its
character--seems destined to impress this more feminine conception of
love on the present age. That movement began with Mary Wolstonecraft,
whose _Rights of Women_ is even to this day one of the very best books
on the subject with which it deals; and one can trace her influence
extending down into the mind and philosophic outlook of Shelley, and
colouring many passages in his poems. I do not, of course, mean that
this last variety of affection (_comradeship_ it might be called) was
the only or even chief variety in Shelley’s mind. But there it was, and
quite possibly it was kept out of sight just on account of the strange
spell or attraction the subject exercised upon him.
Without having myself any prejudice against those people whose
_predominant_ love-attraction is towards their own sex, and believing,
as I do, that many of that type belong to the highest ranges of
humanity, I still do not think that Shelley quite shared their
temperament. What temperamental changes he might have _developed_ in the
further course of his unfinished life, of course we do not know; but his
fervent and unceasing idealisation of his female friends does, to my
mind, make any contention of the above kind seem decidedly difficult.
Shelley was quite normal, I should say, in the majority of his love
affairs; but his rapid and fertile imagination may have rendered it
possible for him (as in _The Witch of Atlas_) to leap to the
understanding of things which to the majority of human beings still
remain occult and unintelligible.
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 (or creates):
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.
The word that will necessarily attract attention here is the word
“sexless.” When one recalls what was said at the very outset of this
paper, namely, that the love-element and love-interests _saturate_ all
Shelley’s poems, and recalls also the degree to which in modern life the
word “love” is wedded and welded with the thought of _sex_, one cannot
help wondering whether he intentionally inserted this word “sexless” in
order to indicate a change which was taking place in his mind, or
whether he felt such a change to be impending. One need not press the
point, but the passage suggests that he was thinking of a new type of
human being (at present folded in sleep, but whose coming he perhaps
foresaw)--a being having the grace of both sexes, and full of such
dreams as would one day become the inspiration of a new world-order, yet
of such a nature that its love would _not_ be dependent (as, indeed,
most loves now are) on mere sexual urge and corporeal desire, but would
be a vivid manifestation of the universal creative Life, in the body
even as in the soul. This word “sexless” occurs again--so that it does
not appear to be quite accidental--in stanza lxviii of the same poem,
where the author in truly Shelleyan fashion describes the lady of the
boat as “like a sexless bee tasting all blossoms and confined to
none”--a wizard-maiden floating down the torrent of this life “with eye
serene and heart unladen.”
Whether Shelley believed in this Vision of a new type--in the sense of
thinking it would ever become an actual and realisable thing--may be
left undecided, but as an indication of the kind of dream that was at
that time occupying his mind, it seems to me of the greatest interest. I
think somehow that his instinctive feelings _were_ pointing out the
actual direction of our future evolution. There is no doubt that in the
present day Sex is ceasing to wield the glamour which once surrounded
it. We know too much about it! Its queer vagaries and anomalies, its
variations and fluctuations (dating from past ages of the world) have
been almost _too_ well and exhaustively studied. Sex in its ordinary
procedure seems to belong to a somewhat ancient and pre-human order of
things, clumsy and elephantine and, like many ancient institutions,
oppressive in the last degree to _women_. And the question which now
remains for us to ask will be as follows: Is it not very probable that
those human types of the future which have _both_ elements, the
masculine _and_ the feminine, present in their natures, will _not_ be so
sexually excitable as those other types (with whom we have been more
familiar in the past) who being built, like Plato’s divided sections of
humanity, on a lopsided plan, are always rushing about to find their
lost counterparts, and rather madly and incontinently plunging into new
relationships, which again they dissolve almost as soon as contracted?
And may we not reasonably expect that those people whose natures contain
both elements will be more stable and reliable than the others, while at
the same time--since they share the great driving-force of the
universe--they will by no means be wanting in life and energy?
On all sides to-day we hear of the existence of such double-natured
folk, and though it _may be_ that at certain periods they become more
than usually numerous, yet the evidence shows that in _all_ ages and
places they have been frequent. Jacobus Le Moyne, who travelled as an
artist with a French expedition to Florida in 1564, left some very
interesting drawings representing the Indians of that region and their
customs; and among them one representing the “Hermaphrodites,” as they
were at that time called, apparently tall and powerful men, beardless,
but with long and abundant hair, and naked except for a loin cloth, who
were represented as engaged in carrying wounded or dying fellow-Indians
on their backs or on litters to places of safety. He says of them that,
“in Florida such folk of double nature are frequent ... and, indeed,
those who are stricken with any infectious disease are borne by the
Hermaphrodites to certain appointed places, and nursed and cared for by
them, until they may be restored to full health.” Quite similar stories
are told by Charleroix, de Pauw, and others; and one seems to get a
glimpse in them of an intermediate class of human beings who made
themselves useful to the community, not only by their muscular strength
but by their ability and willingness to act as nurses and attendants on
the sick and dying. Similar types exist in abundance to-day as we know;
but it is needless to say that they are _not_ Hermaphrodites in the
strict sense of the term--i.e. human beings uniting in one person the
complete functions both male and female--since there is no evidence that
such beings do in actual fact exist! But it is evident that they _were_
what we call intermediate types, in the sense of being men with much of
the psychologic character of women, or in some cases women with the
mentality of men; and the early travellers, who had less concrete and
reliable information than we have, and who were already prepossessed by
a belief in the possibility of complete Hermaphroditism, leapt easily to
the conclusion that these strange beings were indeed of that double
nature.[9]
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 (double-sexed). 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.
A big school such as Eton usually provides for a boy of genius like
young Percy a really terrible experience, soul-destroying and
calculated to crush out all originality; yet there are occasions when
even such a place may become the nurse of heroic inspirations, and may
kindle in a young soul the redeeming flame of splendid ambition. For
such a school is a miniature of the great world, and may bring the boy
into closest contact, friendly or hostile, with every variety of
character and temperament, and so may rouse and develop faculties which
under ordinary circumstances would have remained dormant. We see in Mr.
Barnefield’s paper how a vivid and absorbing attachment sprang up
between Percy and a young school-friend, which the elder folk, as we
gather (and quite as usual), did _not_ encourage. We now see--and late
psychological studies have made this abundantly clear--that love, even a
quite unregulated though ardent love, may become in boyhood one of the
best guides and tutors of the growing soul. And we know, too, that such
an attachment between persons of like sex (whether in school-life or
apart from it) as between two youths or two young women, or between a
grown man and a boy, or an elder woman and a girl--though deprived of
some of love’s recognised and obvious satisfactions--may contain, and
often does contain, the elements of a deep and lasting devotion.
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 (carried out by idiotic
masters under the impressions that they were suppressing lust, when
they were really rousing and redoubling the same), 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.
With reference to the duplication of the elements just mentioned in
Shelley’s nature, it may be suggested that the blending of the masculine
and feminine temperaments does undoubtedly in some cases produce persons
whose perceptions are so subtle and complex and rapid as to come under
the head of genius. “It may possibly point to a further grade of
evolution than that usually attained, and a higher order of
consciousness, imperfectly realised, of course, but indicated. This
interaction, in fact, between the masculine and feminine, this mutual
illumination of logic and intuition, this combination of action and
meditation may not only raise and increase the power of each of these
faculties, but it may give the mind a new quality and a new power of
perception corresponding to the blending of subject and object in
consciousness. It may possibly lead to the development of that third
order of perception which has been called the _Cosmic consciousness_,
and which may also be termed _divination_. (“He who knows the
masculine,” says the great Lao-tsze, “and at the same time keeps to the
feminine will be the whole world’s channel; Eternal virtue will not
depart from him, and he will return again to the state of an infant.” To
the state of an infant! That is, he will become undifferentiated from
Nature, who is his Mother and who will lend him all her faculties.)[10]
There is a certain danger--as doubtless many writers have discovered--in
talking about visions, or about Second Sight, or, indeed, about any
subject which lies near the margin of definite and measurable
perception--the danger I mean for the inquirer of being set down or
passed by as a mere romancer or as a foolish and credulous person whose
opinion carries no weight. However, this danger occurs in many fields of
human thought and inquiry, and naturally cannot be entirely guarded
against. It is largely due to the paltry character of our ordinary life.
A noble and active mind must surely carry with it ever-expanding powers
and interests, and at each stage the new powers may well be perceived
and classed as “visionary”; but that forms no reason why the vision
should be immediately _rejected_! It only forms a reason for the more
careful testing of new experiences.
With regard to the fusing or blending of the two temperaments, the
masculine and the feminine, it has been observed that this double
evolution is often accompanied by a considerable development of higher
powers, more or less occult and difficult to explain. Certainly this
development was marked in the case of Shelley. His swift intuitions, his
quite extraordinary facility in the acquirement of Greek and Latin, and
in the composition of verse (not to mention other attainments)
_compelled_ attention. It may be that in such cases the two natures,
male and female, react upon each other, stimulating to higher efforts
and even fertilising each other. It has often been noticed that mediums
(spiritualistic) have a like double temperament; and it might be
contended (from his frequent visions and illuminations) that Shelley was
to some degree mediumistic. There is a passage in Elie Reclus’ account
of the Western Inoits[11] of Alaska, in which the author describes the
privations and ordeals through which, in the Arctic regions, the
_Angakok_ has to pass in preparation for the rôle of prophet and
diviner. “At an early age the novice courts solitude. He wanders in the
long nights across silent plains filled with the chilly whiteness of
the moon; he listens to the wind moaning over the desolate floes. And
then the _Aurora borealis_, that ardently sought occasion for ‘drinking
in the light’--the _Angakok_ mournful and rapt must absorb all its
splendours!... And now the future sorcerer is no longer a child. Many a
time he has felt himself in the presence of Sidné, the Esquimaux
Demeter; he has divined it by the shiver which ran through his veins, by
the tingling of his flesh and the bristling of his hair. He passes
through a series of initiations, knowing well that his spirit will not
be loosed from the burden of dense matter until the moon has looked him
in the face, and darted a certain ray into his eyes. At last, his own
Genius, evoked from the bottomless depths of existence, appears to him,
having scaled the immensity of the heavens and climbed across the
abysses of the ocean. Uniting himself with the Double from beyond the
grave, the soul of the _Angakok_ flies upon the wings of the wind, and
quitting the body at will sails swift and light through the universe.”
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.
That a marked gift in the direction of ecstasy and _divination_ should
be associated with a certain fusion between the masculine and the
feminine temperaments, might seem at first sight an unlikely
proposition; but as far back in history as Herodotus we find the
curious remark that certain classes of Scythians, suffering from a
tendency to effeminacy[12] were called Enarees or Androgynes and were
_endowed by Venus with the power of Divination_.
This idea of a double sex clearly haunted the minds of early peoples,
and I have suggested (_Intermediate Types_, p. 82) that this idea may
date not only from the fact that the sex-temperament in its earliest
form _is_ undifferentiated, but also from the fact that the great
leaders of mankind have so often shown this fusion in themselves. “The
feminine traits in genius (as in a Shelley or a Byron) are well marked
in the present day. We have only to go back to the Persian Bâb of the
last century, or to a St. Francis or even to a Jesus of Nazareth, to
find the same traits present in founders and leaders of religious
movements in historical times. And it becomes easy to suppose the same
again of those early figures--who once probably were men--those
Apollos, Buddhas, Dionysus, Osiris, and so forth--to suppose that they,
too, were somewhat bi-sexual in temperament, and that it was really
largely owing to that fact that they were endowed with far-reaching
powers and became leaders of mankind.”
* * * * *
Finally, and apart from any question of mental strain and want of
balance, there remain certain other general points (with regard to our
poet’s Psychology) which we should do well to consider here. We have
noted the great predominance of the love-interest in his life, and at
the same time the marked idealism with which he invested matters of sex,
and we are fain to see now that both these peculiarities are, in
general, more markedly feminine than masculine. If we add to them the
somewhat hysterical tendency indicated by Shelley’s behaviour at various
times, we arrive at _three_ undeniable marks of the feminine
temperament, and are impelled to conclude that the poet’s nature was
really intermediate (or double) in character--_intermediate_ as between
the masculine and feminine or _double_ as having that twofold outlook
upon the world.
The time has gone by when a remark of this kind could be interpreted as
derogatory. On the contrary, it is quite open to anyone nowadays to take
the positive line and maintain that the combination of the masculine and
the feminine in this case does really indicate that the Poet had reached
a _higher_ level of evolution than usual. That is a conclusion at least
as probable and arguable as the opposite. No one can contemplate
Shelley’s portrait, or read the descriptions of his personality left by
his contemporaries without feeling that therein a double nature (at once
both masculine and feminine) is implied and portrayed. I may mention the
gazelle-like eyes, the shy yet excitable manner, the high-pitched voice,
the tenderness and courage combined, the genius for passionate
friendship (as shown, for instance, in early days towards that other
boy at school).[13]
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 (Trelawny says) 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.
In conclusion, and with regard to the somewhat pessimist tendency
observable in Shelley’s latest work, it is not necessary to suppose, as
some do, a particular “disappointment in love” so much as to perceive
that at the time of his death he had arrived at a rather penetrating
perception of the inadequacy of the existing world to meet and satisfy
the inner needs of his spirit, and consequently at a certain attitude of
resignation. Some of the latest events of his life rather favour this
reading. There is a story told by Trelawny of how, on one occasion when
he and Shelley were bathing in a deep pool in the Arno, and he was
urging Shelley to lie on his back on the surface of the water, and learn
to float in that way, Shelley did, indeed, remain motionless, but
rapidly began to sink (as may well have really happened owing to his
little corpulence of body) and Trelawny explained with his usual
self-insistence how if _he_ had not instantly fished Shelley out, the
latter would certainly have been drowned! It throws some light on the
situation when we realise that during those few last years the poet was
living almost recklessly in the presence of death. His little yacht was
so cranky that there was (as he himself well knew) considerable danger
in sailing it. Ballasted with lumps of pig iron, as it was on that last
voyage, it had already become a mark for the jokes of its occupants; and
there is a story that when some observer asked him in warning tones as
to what might happen if the boat were upset, Shelley gaily replied,
“Why, of course, I should go to the bottom with the other pigs!” If not
strictly accurate, this story perhaps gives an effective impression, and
contributes some elements of dramatic truth.
_The Witch of Atlas_ was not approved of by Mary Shelley, because (she
said), “It had no human interest,” yet the author himself defends the
poem vigorously, saying, “If you unveil my Witch no priest nor primate
can shrive you of that sin”--from which one may conclude that the poem
was in reality, and in its author’s opinion, _full_ of human interest,
though the same might be somewhat hidden and not very obvious for Mary
to discover.
Shelley’s poems were by no means deficient in inner meaning, and to
suppose that many of them were written merely as skits and freaks of
fancy is to betray a non-appreciation of the almost over-intense
earnestness of the Poet’s mind. Women’s Rights and the emancipation of
Women--a subject now to the last degree approved and popular--became the
main theme of _Laon and Cythna_ (now entitled _The Revolt of Islam_).
The praise of Marriage “warm and kind” and the beauty of a tender and
permanent love constituted one of the “Many thousand” gracious schemes
for the benefit of mankind, which the Witch was supposed to have
invented:[14]
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 (the very kernel of his life) 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.
_THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHELLEY_
BY
GEORGE BARNEFIELD
I
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.
Let us first repeat some of the descriptions of his appearance. In
Trelawny’s _Records_ we find the author’s first impression noted thus:
“Swiftly gliding in, blushing like a girl, a tall thin stripling held
out both his hands; and although I could hardly believe, as I looked at
his flushed feminine and artless face that it could be the poet, I
returned his warm pressure. After the ordinary greetings and courtesies
he sat down and listened. I was silent from astonishment: was it
possible that this mild-looking, beardless boy could be the veritable
monster at war with all the world?”
In Dowden’s _Life_ there is a description by one of Shelley’s Sion House
schoolmates, Mr. Gellibrand: “Like a girl in boy’s clothes, fighting
with open hands, and rolling on the floor when flogged, not from pain,
but from a sense of indignity.”
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 fiancée.
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[15].
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.
It is sufficiently obvious that poems like _Athanase_, _Alastor_, and
_The Question_, with their burden of tender melancholy and solitude were
inspired by vague unsatisfied sexual emotion. Francis Thompson, in his
beautiful essay on Shelley, maintained that the poet never grew beyond
childhood. But, though there is much that is true in this view, it would
be truer to say that in some respects Shelley remained always in the
adolescent stage. For this tender sadness and vague self-pitying emotion
are typical of a certain stage of adolescence, when the onset of
puberty heightens and disturbs those impulses which, as modern
psychologists are now on all sides admitting, are normal during the
middle teens.
Shelley remained in some degree fixed at this phase. He was by nature
liable to the warmest impulses of affection--often towards others of his
own sex, and he felt Love as a woman feels it: it was “his whole
existence.” But it was the tragedy of his life that he lived in a
society, whose whole influence, acting on him by suggestion from his
earliest infancy, forced his conscious mind to seek love in the form of
an idealised woman. Hence he never could achieve success, nor even peace
of mind, in this quest. It was this deep-rooted, though unconscious,
disparity between the sanctions of society and his own peculiar
impulses, we feel, that lay at the root of his enthusiasm for Free Love.
Godwin might deduce a theory of Free Love from his general philosophical
premises, but with a sage of Godwin’s type it remained pure theory, and
did not become an enthusiasm. With Shelley it was different; he began
with an instinctive reaction against social laws and restrictions in the
sphere of sex, and his general philosophic anarchism was a later
addition which served as a rationalised justification of his instinctive
tendencies. The fundamental article of his revolutionary creed is given
in these lines from _The Revolt of Islam_:
Man and woman,
Their common bondage burst, may freely borrow
From lawless love a solace for their sorrow.
Shelley’s insistence on the idea of lawless love differs somewhat from
Blake’s enthusiasm for Free Love. Blake worshipped spontaneous energy
and passion, which he believed to be purely masculine qualities; and his
imagination, when it dwelt on this theme, could only conjure up an
entirely masculine dream of unrestricted enjoyment. In _The Visions of
the Daughters of Albion_, the girl Oothoon woos her lover by disclaiming
all jealous restrictions and offering to bring him other girls to
minister to his enjoyment:
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.
(_Queen Mab._)
Love, in Shelley’s mind (as in a woman’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?