The psychology of the poet Shelley

by Edward Carpenter; Guy Christian Barnard

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]