ever gazed
And gazed till meaning on his vacant mind
Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw
The thrilling secrets of the birth of Time.
And in another passage he says:
While daylight held
The sky, the Poet kept mute conference
With his still soul.
All this deep contemplation, however, did not then bring to Shelley any
overwhelming revelation, such as Boehme experienced. Possibly his youth
sufficiently accounts for this, but I think also that the erotic
conflict, previously discussed, hindered the fuller development of
these states. There is, in _Alastor_, a considerable admixture of erotic
emotion which, we may suppose, inhibited the higher state of calm
ecstasy. For some years after this poem was written Shelley’s life seems
to have been too crowded with incident, too occupied with intellectual
activities, and too much dominated by the effort to repress the
homogenic tendencies, of his nature, to allow any further development of
mystical experiences; although, scattered throughout his poems, there
are still indications of such experience.
In 1822, however, it would seem that a definite development in this
direction was taking place, and being recorded in that remarkable and
intricate poem _The Triumph of Life_.
In this poem Shelley apparently attempted to describe a mystical vision,
in which he saw the pageant of life pass before him, and in which he was
about to penetrate into the heart of the mystery of creation. I do not,
however, intend to attempt an analysis of this poem, but only to point
out some of the features in it which throw light on Shelley’s spiritual
adventures. The poem begins with a description of a “strange trance”
into which the poet fell; a trance
Which was not slumber, for the shade it spread
Was so transparent, that the scene came through
As clear as when a veil of light is drawn
O’er evening hills they glimmer.
In this preliminary “trance of wondrous thought,” the poet sees, as in a
waking dream, the human multitudes thronging a public way; a chariot,
driven by a four-faced shape, rushes by, passing heedlessly over the
crowd. The poet converses with the shade of Rousseau, who describes one
of his own visions, in which a shape (“all light”) gave him to drink
from a crystal glass.
I rose; and bending at her sweet command
Touched with faint lips the cup she raised,
And suddenly _my brain became as sand_
Where the first wave had more than half erased
The track of deer on desert Labrador;
Whilst the wolf, from which they fled amazed,
Leaves his stamp visibly upon the shore,
Until the second bursts.
In this phrase “my brain became as sand,” Shelley describes one of the
crucial points in mystical experience, namely, the blotting-out of
intellect, and the suspension of the functioning of the senses. It is
well known, of course, that the Eastern mystics deliberately practise
this effacement of thought in order to penetrate into the abyss of their
inner souls and attain the cosmic state. For Shelley’s two waves of
mystical sensation, which obliterate first the more superficial, and
then the deeper elements of consciousness, leaving the mind as blank as
a clean sheet of wet sand, are only the precursors of a new vision.
So on my sight
Burst a new vision, never seen before,
And the fair shape waned _in the coming light_,
* * * * *
So knew I, _in that light’s severe excess_,
The presence of that shape which on the stream
Moved, as I moved along the wilderness.
This sense of subjective light is a constant feature of mystical
experience, from which in fact, the word “Illumination” derives its
significance. It is shown, for example, in the instance of Moses, who
saw the bush wrapt in flames, and yet it was not consumed. William
Blake’s visions were full of bright angels and of flames of fire; and
his letter to Thomas Butts describes his “_first vision of light_.”
In particles bright
The jewels of light
Distinct shone and clear.
In their essence these experiences of ecstasy are condensed into one
phrase by St. John of the Cross:
“_On this road, to have our faculties in darkness is to see the light._”
It would seem, then, that Shelley had, at the end of his life, arrived
very near to the final stage of mystical illumination, in which the soul
seems united to the infinite spirit of the universe, and whereby the
mystery of life is solved. Yet he never actually achieved this final
state; for his untimely death occurred before _The Triumph of Life_ was
completed. What he had achieved, however, was sufficiently remarkable
for so young a man; and it may well explain his extraordinary
indifference as to whether he lived or died.
The _Triumph of Life_ ends with the query “Then what is Life?” and the
reader guesses that Shelley’s vision broke off even as suddenly as the
poem breaks, and that no answer was vouchsafed him. But the poet had
himself already attempted to answer the same question.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
It always appears to the mystic as if the Eternal Spirit limited and
hindered Itself by dwelling in this world of form and substance; and
Shelley expresses this idea rather strikingly by his image of
many-coloured glass, filtering and delimiting the various partial
aspects of the pure spirit.
_The Triumph of Life_, and to some extent also _Prometheus Unbound_,
point in the direction of mystical prophecy rather than of pure poetry,
and I am entirely of Professor Dowden’s opinion “that _The Triumph of
Life_ may have been but the starting-point for a new and higher
development of the writer’s genius.”[25] The incompleteness of the poem,
and its lack of any final and comprehensive solution of the mystery of
existence, signify little. Nor should we expect that Shelley, at the age
of twenty-nine, could have experienced anything more than a partial
fore-taste of illumination. We have to bear in mind the fact that as a
general rule such illumination usually occurs when the subject is past
thirty; whereas Shelley never reached that age. William Blake was
thirty-three when he commenced his series of Prophetic Books with _The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell_; previous to this turning-point in his
career his mystical utterances and experiences had hardly been more
pronounced than those of Shelley.
I have previously contrasted Blake with Shelley in respect of the
polarity of their sexual natures. But, apart from this important
difference, the two poets had much in common. Both were highly sensitive
and passionate natures, revolutionary pioneers of freedom, and champions
of a new morality--especially in sex matters. In both men there was a
strong desire for solitude and for companionship with nature, and also
an ardent yearning for communion with some more spiritual universe. Both
had, even in boyhood, a marked tendency to experience visions, which are
commonly described as hallucinations. Blake studied the Bible,
Swedenborg, and Boehme intensively; while Shelley, with all his varied
reading and rationalistic proclivities, yet showed a strong predilection
for mystical and occult writers.
While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave, and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
In later years he grew out of the more childish fancies of occultism,
and turned to a more subtle mysticism. Yet, curiously enough, during
the very last year of his life he seems, for the first time, to have
actually undergone experiences which were occult rather than mystical. I
refer to the strange apparitions which he saw shortly before his death.
One of these is thus recorded in Mrs. Shelley’s _Memorials_ (Chapter
12).
“One night loud cries were heard issuing from the saloon. The Williamses
rushed out of their room in alarm; Mrs. Shelley fainted at the door.
Entering the saloon, the Williamses found Shelley staring horribly into
the air, and evidently in a state of trance. They waked him, and he
related that a figure wrapped in a mantle came to his bedside and
beckoned him. He must then have risen in his sleep, for he followed the
imaginary figure into the saloon, when it lifted the hood of its mantle,
ejaculated ‘siete sodisfatto,’ and vanished.”
A little later (May 6, 1822), he was one day walking with Edward
Williams when he suddenly caught hold of Williams’ arm, stared at the
sea, and exclaimed, “There it is again! There!” Afterwards he explained
to his friend that he had seen the child Allegra, naked, rising from the
sea and smiling at him.
At another time he dreamed that Edward Williams appeared like a corpse,
and warned him that the sea was flooding the house.
Now, although it is possible, and to most people will appear probable,
that these strange visions were mere subjective figments of the poet’s
overheated brain, yet they were curiously prophetic. Shelley and Edward
Williams were drowned together in July 1822--within a few weeks of these
apparitions. There is, indeed, much evidence in favour of the objective
reality of such apparitions. Myers, Gurney, Flamarion, and several other
well-known investigators have shown that before, or shortly after death
such phantasms have frequently been seen; sometimes by the person whose
death is impending, sometimes by near friends. It would seem that they
are even perceived by animals in some instances. In the particular case
which we are discussing, scientific evidence is, of course, not
available, and we have to rely on quite ordinary witnesses. But it would
seem that the phenomena affected at least one person besides Shelley.
When relating these events, Mary says that:
“Shelley had often seen these figures when ill; but the strangest thing
is that Mrs. Williams saw _him_. Now Jane, though a woman of
sensibility, has not much imagination, and is not in the slightest
degree nervous, neither in dreams or otherwise.”
Mary then narrates that Jane, while standing at a window with Trelawny,
saw Shelley twice pass in front of the window, although he was, as a
matter of fact, nowhere near the place at the time; and, of course,
Trelawny could not see the phantom.
I have said enough, perhaps, to indicate that Shelley may have possessed
the germs of powers and faculties that are at once vaster and subtler
than those familiar to us all. It is true that he never attained that
more extended consciousness which characterises the great mystics, and
that he died before his latent faculties were fully established; but he
gave many indications of these faculties. That those indications were to
some extent pathological is but natural, and redounds more to the
discredit of society than of the poet. Given a nature fundamentally
disposed to experience Love as an ardent and exalted comradeship towards
those of his own sex, and given an environment in which that disposition
is persecuted mercilessly; granted also a considerable liability to
mental decentralisation to begin with; and one sees that a strong
repression was bound to follow, and that some degree of paranoia would
be the probable result of that repression.
But there were other things in Shelley’s nature, psychic faculties of
tremendous significance which, having first been revealed by the
intuitions which inspired his poetry and his thought, were gradually
growing in power, and but for his death would doubtless have established
themselves. Shelley, had he lived, would have taken his place beside the
great mystics.
_BIBLIOGRAPHY_
Complete Poetical Works of Shelley, Oxford Press.
Complete Prose Works of Shelley, edited by H. Buxton Forman, 4 vol.
Letters of Shelley, edited by R. Ingpen.
Letters of Shelley, in Peacock’s “Memoirs.”
Letters of Shelley, in Hogg’s “Life.”
DOWDEN, Life of Shelley, 2 vols.
HOGG, Life of Shelley.
PEACOCK, Memoirs of Shelley.
TRELAWNY, Records of Shelley and Byron.
J. A. SYMONDS, Shelley (English Men of Letters).
PLATO, Symposium, trans. B. Jowett (Oxford); also trans. Burgess
(Bohn’s Library); also trans. Shelley (e.g. Everyman’s Library).
HAVELOCK ELLIS, Sexual Inversion.
E. CARPENTER, The Intermediate Sex.
E. CARPENTER, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk.
HIRSCHFELD, Der Urnische Mensch.
CRICHTON MILLER, The New Psychology and the Teacher.
FREUD, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.
JONES, Papers on Psychoanalysis.
BOUSFIELD, Elements of Practical Psychoanalysis.
FERENCSZI, Contributions to Psychoanalysis.
BUCKE, Dr. R., Cosmic Consciousness.
MYERS, Human Personality.