Page 18 - GALIET POETRY & Metaphor: Shelley IV

Galiet & Galiet
the species to the species, or by analogous relationship.44 Metaphor, pure potentiality in its subliminal sense, becomes pure possibility by association of dissimilars that becomes the other: “x” a “y.” Thus, metaphor weaves and enjoins the notions of infinity and potentiality into one. This self-infinitude in the Word, and poem, and poetry denies Hegel’s ‘bad infinitude,” the chasing of an ideal that is never fully realizable. Instead, Shelley’s analogy suggests infinity in its ample sense. It possesses much more than the Homeric sense of incalculable vastness: that of the sea or earth. For Shelley, as for Aristotle, it becomes the boundless and limitless sea song of possibility, as encapsulated in the Greek notion of ‘Apeiron.’45 ‘Apeiron,’ the matriarchal ‘indefinite’ in contrast to the patriarchal ‘definite’ or ‘Peras.’ ‘Apeiron’ that belongs to ‘mythos’ and infinite ‘becoming’ in poetry’s and metaphor’s breath. Shelley, like Plotinus, transforms mere poetry into high poetry: high and dulcet poesy that aspires to the infinite as its indefinite possibility of being:
Poetry “transmutes all that it touches, and every form moving within the radiance of its presence is changed by wondrous sympathy to an incarnation of the spirit which it breathes: its secret alchemy turns to potable gold the poisonous waters which flow from death through life; it strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.”46
Poetry in Cervantes’ words “is the product of an Alchemy of such virtue that he who is able to practice it, will turn her into pure gold of inestimable worth. He that possesses her must keep her within bounds, not permitting her to break out in ribald satires or soulless sonnets.”47
Veil after veil may be lifted and undrawn, and the inmost denuded nature and beauty of poetry’s meaning never fully exposed. And precisely there, in some unknown resplendent sphere, we too evoke Novalis’ siren’s song, song that sings, as Shelley’s, to “the poetry of the infinite.”48 Melody, that sings to that “most intimate communion” between finitude and infinitude. Sublime, yet no less fearful song that may alienate every Odysseus were not he to deafen himself to its enchanting euphonies in the sea of despair. Sublime form-and-siren song that Shelley’s poet of Alastor and Adonais opts to listen to, alienating himself to satiate, as Keats, his endless thirst for beauty, truth and virtue, knowledge and liberty divine. Sublime, feverish and lethal song to which every high
44 Aristotle. Poetics. XII, 1457b and Rhetorica III, 4, 1406b (and still maintained by Hegel in Aesthetics 12: 533 to 540)
45 Aristotle. Physics III 4, 203. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Physics. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001. 46 Heath, William. Major British Poets of the Romantic Period. Shelley. A Defence of Poetry. New York: McMillan Publishing Co., 1973.
47 Cervantes. Don Quixote. Trans. Ormsby, John. Chicago, USA: The University of Chicago Press, 1952. 251-252
48 Novalis. Werke I. Germany: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1969. 657
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