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Romantic Criticism : Shelley : "Defence of Poetry"
"The Defence of Poetry" : Its Occasion—Peacock's Attack on Poetry
The immediate occasion for Shelley's pamphlet was provided by Thomas Love Peacock's attack on poetry in his Four Ages of Poetry, published in 1820. Peacock divided all poetic productions into four ages, the iron age, the gold age, the silver age and the brass age. Poetry originates in the iron age, the golden age is the age of noblest poetic productions, then sets in the artificial silver age which in its turn is followed by an age of decay and decline, the age of brass. Their own age, was the brass age of poetry. To quote his own words, "A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He livesjn the days that are past...The march ofhis intellectis like that of a crab, backward. The brighter the the lightdiffused around him by the progress of reason, the thicker is the darkness of antiquated barbarism in which he buries himself like a mole, to throw up the barren hillocks of his Cimmerian labours."
Peacock concluded his treatise by maintaining that the poet is useless and that the honour of society will more and more be given to those who promote uitility: Poetry is essentially the most ijeortMeas of all intellectual exercises : "It can never make a philosopher nor a statesman, nor in any class of life a useful or a rational man. It cannot claim the slightest share in any of the comforts and utilities of life, of which we have witnessed so many and so rapid advances... But though not useful, it may be said, it is highly ornamental and deserves to be cultivated for the pleasure it yields. Even if this be granted, it does not follow that a writer of poetry in the present state of society is not a waster of his own time and a robber of that of others. In whatever degree poetry is cultivated it must necessarily be to the neglect of some branch of useful study."
Poetry is thus condemned as a mere frivolous amusement, a mere waste of time and energy, and the superemacy ofreasanover imagination is asserted. It is such a view Of poetry which Shelley controverts, anbHKeiThe proceeds to establish the nobility and dignity of poetry, as well as its social utility. Thus what began as a mere pamphlet in a controversy soon grew into a noble defence of poetry.
Parallel with Sidney's 'Apology*—Plan of Shelley's Defence
In its title and occasion, in its purpose, and in its general plan and outline, Shelley's Defence of Poetry puts in mind Sidney's Apology of poetry which was a reply toStephen Gosson’s attack on poetry. Shelley’s is a repIy to Peacock's attack. Their aim is the same, i.e. to assert the nobility.dignity and usefulness of poetry.Their general plan and outline is identical. Both the treatises are easily divisible into three parts. In the first part, poetry is defined and its true nature is studied and elaborated in the most abstract and comprehensive manner. In the second part, the noble nature of poetry, and its moral and ethical significance to society is examined and elaborated. This provides them with an occasion for a critical review of poetry. Since knowledge of literature in Sidney's day was confined and limited, he could evaluate only Chaucer's works, and the ballad of Chevy Chase. Shelley, on the other hand, examines poetry from Homer down to his own day, and his examination though necessarily brief, as covering such a wide field, is very illuminating and suggestive. "Shelley's criticism suffers as much from a range too extensive as Sidney's does from one too narrow." Even then Shelley's review of poetry is one of the glories of English literary criticism. In the third part, both Shelley and Sidney defend poetry against the charges that have been brought against it by its detractors. Shelley adds a fourth part by way of a brief resume of the whole discussion, and ends his treatise with a rhapsodic eulogy on poets and poetry. "The general resemblance between the two treatises is very striking; and Shelley has obviously followed his predecessor in the main outline ; but he is altogether deeper and more philosophic, and he embodies some of the best results of the romantic criticism of his own time ; the 'Defence' may be described as an 'Apologie' transferred from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth." Throughout the study of Shelley's Defence, it is, therefore, desirable to keep in mind Sidney's Apology.
Definition of Poetry : Imagination and Its Role
Sidney begins by declaring that poetry is the highest of all human powers because more directly creative than any other art ; all the other arts and sciences depend upon nature ; the poet alone is not limited to study or imitation, but can improve upon nature and create better than she. Shelley interprets the function of the poet altogether more finely than Sidney. He defines poetry as the expression of imagination, and considers that all are poets who express imagination in life ; sculptors, artists, musicians, even law givers and the founders of religions. AH the arts are poetry because they render imagination ; but rhythmical language provide the highest kind of poetry, since language is itself created by the imagination and is a medium in its substance intellectual, which is not true of any other. 1 Like Sidney, Shelley considers poetry as something better than nature, though for a different reason.
Plato's Objection to Poetry : Shelley's Reply; Platonism against Plato
Sidney has to face the difficulty that Plato, whom he considers the most admirable of philosophers, banished poetry and poets from his Republic : "and he can only meet it indirectly and lamely ; he replies by bringing an accusation against Plato, i.e. that, since The Republic admits community of goods and women, it is itself immoral." Shelley agrees with Sidney that poetry is better than nature, "and at the same time overcomes the Platonic objection by a weapon ingeniously selected from Plato's own armoury."
Plato objects to the poet on the ground that he is thrice removed from reality ; the actual world is made up of things which are only copies of divine ideas ; the painter and the poet copy these copies and are thus thrice removed from reality ; similarly, they copy images of virtue and the like but do not understand their true nature. Poets are thus the abettors of falseness and encourage men in deceits.
Shelley accepts Plato's theory that all things in the world are only copies of divine ideas, but he claims that poetry gets behind the copy and, images directly the divine idea ; it is the revelation or expression ofthe idea itself. To quote his own words : "A poem is the very image of
life expressed in its eternal truthIt is the creation of actions
according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the Creator, which is itself the image of all other minds." This, Shelley maintains, is the secret of the sense of exaltation produced by poetry, since it expresses a deeper reality than that of the world ; it transports man to the kingdom of the Absolute and permits him to gaze upon the very features of love, wisdom, and virtue, in their divine reality. It is better than nature herself, for it rectifies that distortion of the divine idea which is occasioned when the idea is embodied in earthly objects and forms. Hence also its universality of appeal, since, by rendering the idea, it contains within itself, "the-germs of a relation to whatever motives or actions have taken place-in the possible varieties of human nature."
Time destroys the beauty and the use of any story of particular facts, but increases that of poetry by forever developing new and wonderful applications of the eternal truths that it contains.
Shelley thus agrees with Sidney that poetry is better than, nature, but gives reasons more philosophical. According to Sidney, man can actually create that which is better. "Nature's world is-brazen, the poet delivers a golden one." According to Shelley, he does not do this, but he gets, as it were, to the heart of nature by setting the eternal type free from its accidents.
The Utility of Poetry : Its Superiority over Philosophy and History
Having denned the greatness of poetry, Sidney proceeds to speak of its function as essentially moral. He praises it because it teaches better than either philosophy or history. It teaches better than philosophy because it does not deal only in precepts, but also enforces them by examples, which are more attractive and alluring. The bright pictures of poetry, appeal to the imagination and impress the memory. Poetry also instructs better than history because it is not tied to the particular fact, and can, more surely, move men to virtue. "History", Sidney naively says, "sometimes deters men from virtue, since it shows that even the cruel and unjust may be prosperous and the good unfortunate." Poetry has a great advant&gj, since it can reward all according to their deserts. History, again, exhibits good and evil mixed in the same character ; so that it is hard to distinguish what is to be admired from what is to be shunned. Poetry, on the other hand, can represent characters which are pure types of virtue and, therefore, wholly admirable, and other characters which are types of unmixed vice, and so wholly to be avoided.
Moral Function of Poetry—Ways in which It is Performed
Shelley believes in the moral efficacy of poetry no less than Sidney, but he explains its effect much less crudely, in a way that is indeed, a real contribution to philosophic thought. He is influenced partly by Aristotle's definition of tragedy, possibly also by reminis cence, conscious or unconscious, of Wordsworth's prefaces.
Poetry does not, says Shelley, instruct by direct precept, and it is only partially that it instructs by example. The highest moral effect of poetry lies in its appeal to the imaginative and emotional faculties ; in the development it gives to these it enlarges the powers of the mind itself. Imagination always plays an important role in the growth of moral sense. Men, Shelley points out, have never lacked excellent moral precepts ; they have always known, in theory at least, what they ought to do, but they have lacked the understanding to apply that knowledge in day to day life. Want of imagination means want of sympathy and want of sympathy produces callousness and cruelty. "A man to be greatly good," says Shelley, "must imagine intensely and comprehensively...Poetry strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature."
Thus the morality of poetry is higher than any that a teacher directly inculcates. To teach morality directly is wrong, because such conceptions are limited in time and place. It is for this reason that didactic poetry has always been an inferior an inferior kind. Nor does Shelley end here. He adds that poetry not only extends the imaginative power, but it also exercises an ennobling effect on the quality of the imagination itself. This idea is really to be traced to Aristotle's famous theory of katharsis concerning the purifying power of tragedy, which Shelley has interpreted in his own way. Aristotle says that tragedy, through pity and fear, causes the proper purgation of these emotions. What he means by this sentence has been greatly disputed, but Shelley conceives that the effect is mainly on the imagination. The imagination is enlarged by a sympathy with pains and pleasures so mighty that they distend in their conception the capacity of that by which they are conceived ; the good affections are strengthened by pity, indignation, terror, and sorrow ; and an exalted calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into tumults of familiar life.
A further moral effect of poetry lies, Shelley believes, in the increased value it gives to ordinary human life. Here Shelley is influenced by Wordsworth. Wordsworth, we are told by Coleridge, in writing the Lyrical Ballads had desired to give the charm of novelty to things of everyday life, and to exercise a feeling analogous to the supernatural by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom and directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us, "an exhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity, we have eyes that see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand." In other words, poetry reveals unsuspected sources of pure enjoyment in the world arouvd. So Shelley says that poetry, "strips the veil of familiarity from the world and lays bare the naked and. sleeping beauty tvhich is the. spirit of its forms." And again : "Poetry purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being. It creates anew the universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recurrence of impressions blunted by reiteration."
Further, in his Preface Wordsworth defines poetry as, "The brtath and finer spirit of all knowledge," and says that, "The Poet bii\d» together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human socidy as it is spread over the whole earth and over all time." So with Shelley : "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds. Poetry thus makes immortal all that is best and most beautiful in the world...... A great poem is a fountain for ever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight."' Shelley explains that, after one age has exhausted all its capacities, another will still find new ones.
Immorality of Poetry—The Love Theme : Its Vindication
After having vindicated the greatness of poetry in his Apologie, Sidneynext meets the arguments of those who urge that particular kinds of poetry, especially love poetry, are immoral and that poets sometimes lend their art to ignoble uses. It is true, he admits, that poets do speak too much of love and they even speak of lust and vanity and scurrility, yet, "it it not poetry which abuses man's wit but man's wit that abuses poetry." Shelley follows this general outline, but again with much more insight. He would scarcely grant that poetry could speak too much of love, providing the love were spiritual, and he boldly asserts that poetry, in so fa/ as-it is poetry, is invariably moral and pure and cannot be otherwise. Really great poetry can be produced only in a noble age, and, when the social decay of any period begins, then poetry decays with it, becoming colder and less lifelike.
"Obscenity is at the opposite pole from poetry, for obscenity is blasphemy against the divine beauty of life of which poetry is the embodiment." Even those luscious and sensuous poets, such as the Alexandrian' Greeks, who are considered immoral, are not so in relation to their own age ; when we regard their work more closely we find that they embody the good which still survived in that age. "It is not what the erotic poets have, but what they have not, in which their imperfection consists." Poetry remains in every age, however corrupt it may be, the light of life, and communicates all the pleasure men are capable of receiving.
Rhyme and Metre
Yet another point of resemblance between Sidney and Shelley lies in the insistence of both that there is no essential difference between prose and verse. Sidney says : "It is not rhyming and versing that maketh Poesie. One may be a poet without versifying and a versifier without poetry." Sidney, however, strongly advocates verse on the ground that it is an aid to memory.
Shelley also denies the necessity of rhyme and metre ; the essential things are dignity and nobility of thought and language suitably harmonious and rhythmical; but rhythm is not limited to verse, and good prose possesses excellent rhythm of its own : "The distinction between poets and prose writers is a vulgar error….. Plato was essentially a poet….. The truth and splendour of his imagery and the melody of his language are the most intense that it is possible to conceive." So also, he asserts, Lord Bacon was a poet.
In this particular respect, Shelley differs from Coleridge, who maintains that the language of poetry is, and ought to be, different from the language of prose, since the mere addition of metre presupposes a state of high excitement, and, therefore, should produce a change of language. "Theoretically we may agree with Coleridge that the language of poetry ought to be different from the language of prose ; but practically it is difficult to deny that Shelley is right; the language of Jeremy Taylor or of Bacon is certainly more poetic than that of poets like Pope or Crabbe ; it is possessed of more energy and has a nobler rhythm."
Historical Survey of Poetry : Shelley's Practical Criticism
Then follows a comprehensive review of the world's poetry and its general function in history. His judgments are brief, but they have, all of them, the winged and enchanting quality of enthusiasm. We notice, especially, his preoccupation with the Greek and Italian literatures, perhaps the only ones he fully appreciated. He extols the Athenian drama above all other varieties of poetry ; considering that it contains, as a class, the noblest poetry the world has seen. It is only the interpenetration of comedy in King Lear— comedy which Shelley splendidly defines as, "universal, ideal, and sublime"—which turns the balance in its favour as against the Oedipus Tyrannus or the Agamemnon,