Page 13 - GALIET POETRY & Metaphor: Shelley IV

Galiet & Galiet
veil” (Adonais, 390-391). And thus, Shelley sings, “the soul of Adonais, like a star/Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are” (Adonais, 495).
Constellated in constellations, lofty poetry in the Neo-Platonic and Shelleyan sense partakes in the sublimity of starry nights, of forms of beauty and of love ever enchanting our spirits in days and nights. Poetry aims not so much to morality or utility as to delight.19 Equating “utility” with “good” and “pleasure,” Shelley defines pleasure as “that which the consciousness of a sensitive and intelligent being seeks.”20 His sentiments on pleasure are two-fold: “one durable, universal and permanent; the other transitory and particular.”21 Universal pleasure “strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense.”22 Transitory pleasure satisfies our immediate desires and needs. Hence, lofty poetry grasps, in pleasure’s wings, Plato’s empyrean songs: “all spirits upon which it falls open themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight.”23 Lofty poetry is angelic inspiration, a descending, that becomes, perhaps, that blissful tongue of fire, heavenly breath of the Holy Spirit and Divine Verb, that descends upon the Apostles on a certain and unforgotten day of Pentecost in the vast sea of time. Lofty poetry, in Shelley’s heart, “acts in a divine and unapprehended manner, beyond and above consciousness.”24 Lofty poetry beckons not its gloomy poets or imaginary man, but its splendid and noble poets who, perceiving all forms of beauty, embellish and universalize, sing and reveal each and every one of them through poetry’s exalting mirror: the imagination.
Thus, poetry and poem, poem and poet, forever entwined, sing not only the songs of imagination, forms and pleasure, but seek the morals of pure love: αγαπη or caritas. “The great secret of morals is love,”25 says Shelley. This Shelley sees as “a going out of our nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own.”26 This idealized conception of human nature 3⁄4 where the much sought-after dream of brotherhood becomes a possibility that cannot be renounced, a hope, a lamp whose nurturing light illumines and embellishes our dwellings with mercy, pity, piety and humility, just as Christ’s gospels taught
19 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 525. The “whole objection . . . of the immorality of poetry rests upon a misconception of the manner in which poetry acts to produce the moral improvement of man” (519) and an assumption that while the “exercise of the imagination is most delightful” (525), “that of reason is more useful.”
20 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 525
21Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 525 22 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 525 23 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 519 24 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 519 25 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 519 26 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973. 519
• 13 •