Chapter VI

The foregoing discussion of Shelley’s psychology, and especially of what was abnormal in it, would hardly be complete without some reference to the possibility of his having possessed what may be termed higher psychic powers. The whole subject is, of course, difficult, and this is not the place to embark on a long analysis of the general evidence for the existence of super-normal faculties. But, in view of the considerable researches that have been of late undertaken in this field, and of the general results that have been achieved, some mention of this aspect of Shelley’s genius is not inappropriate. We have noted in his private life the recurrence of certain ideas of persecution and of certain hallucinations. These things, like all other mental aberrations, require, as their necessary condition, some degree of dissociation of the various components of the mind. Just as the growth of a tumour indicates a certain autonomy of one portion of the body, so such phenomena as hallucination, double-personality, mediumistic trances, hysteria, and obsessions, indicate the autonomy of certain constituents of the mind or personality. But this capacity for decentralisation is not merely pathological in its effects; the same partial suspension of the control normally exercised by the conscious mind may liberate either the repressed impulses of the hysterical patient or the latent divinations and intuitions which mark the genius or the mystic.

The practical difference between the genius and the humble artist is that the former reaches heights of truth and beauty unattainable by the latter; heights which seem to require, for their attainment, the operation of obscure and even occult faculties. Inspiration, divination, direct intuitive perception of the nature both of things and of men--these, when they are clarified and crystallised by a competent artist, constitute genius. But these are the operations of psychic powers such as reach their fullest development in the state of ecstasy described by the mystics or in the phenomena of mediumship which, in all ages, have given rise to the popular belief in spirits. It is difficult for completely sane and normal men to realise that the familiar faculties and senses are, in reality, but stereotyped and canalised outlets for the living personality; that they may hinder the free expression of the latter, even while they help it along their own lines. Yet the inner person, or spirit, though it may have created sense-organs to facilitate its perceptions, can, as the observations of psychiatrists fully attest, yet perceive without their aid, and may even require, for its subtlest operations, a temporary suspension of their functions.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is--infinite.

“[Typo for quotes?]For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”

These lines of Blake’s express the same thought, which, indeed, is one common to all the mystics. The vital power which perceives through “this life’s five windows of the soul,” can also transcend the limitations which they impose on it; but, to so transcend the senses, it must usually obliterate them for the time being; and with them go most of the ordinary conscious factors of personality.

So with Shelley we find, not merely the pathological results of mental dissociation, nor even only the signs of genius--swift and subtle intuitions scattered through his works--but also, at times, we see indications of powers which, for want of a better term, may be called occult.[23] His poems give indications, stronger than mere hints, that he constantly verged on a state of ecstasy. His frequent reference to the ideas of infinity, eternity, and the like; his use of epithets implying the absence of some defining and limiting attribute; his reiterated employment of such words as chasm and abysm; and his direct references to states of ecstatic rapture, mental vertigo, sudden sinkings, faintings and swoons, all show that he lived on the edge of that state of ecstasy in which the limits of normal personality are passed and a region of more extended consciousness is reached. He felt “the awful shadow of some unseen Power,” not as an abstract philosophical idea, but as a real presence.

Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy.

I do not think that anyone who has studied the writings of some of the greater mystics will fail to see much that is similar in Shelley’s poetry; although, on the other hand, it is not likely that Shelley ever attained the full state of complete ecstasy.

In comparing the lives and records of different mystics we find, according to Dr. Bucke,[24] a certain substratum of common features, which seem to be essential characteristics of the mystical disposition. Before reaching the state of cosmic consciousness, the subject must be of an earnest, truth-seeking nature; he must perceive the evils of this life, and suffer acutely in spirit; he must be moved by compassion for the fate of mankind, and by an ardent yearning after a more spiritual existence. Usually more passionate than the average man, he yet has to renounce much of the so-called pleasures of the world, and, in solitude, to wring from his own heart the meaning and purpose of life.

There is so much in Shelley’s poetry which shows him in these typical preliminary stages which precede illumination, that I will only refer to the _Ode to the West Wind_--a poem in which the intensity of passion, the despair with this life, and the overwhelming yearning for identification with nature, which are typical of the mystic, find such poignant expression.

I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

* * * * *

Be thou, spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

At the age of twenty-three Shelley wrote the poem _Alastor_. This poem is important to us, in that it forms a record of the early spiritual adventures of the poet, at a time when he pursued the half-revealed images of Truth and Beauty, which tempted him, and yet eluded his grasp. The “argument” of the poem is, in fact, the essence of Shelley’s own inner history. Alastor, a young poet, having seen, in half-revealing visions, glimpses of the Ideal, sets out on his quest for a mortal “prototype of his conception.”

“His mind is at length suddenly awakened and thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence similar to itself.” Now I have previously shown that Shelley set out on a similar quest, and have explained how inevitable was its failure. The poet instinctively recognised this as a fact, for he makes Alastor, “blasted by his disappointment, descend to an untimely grave.”

_Alastor_ shows clearly that, even in 1815, Shelley had turned to inward meditation and mystical reverie, and had cultivated his imaginative faculty.

By solemn vision and bright silver dream
His infancy was nurtured.

He wrestled with his visions and

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.

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] I remember very well that my own father (who was born in 1793, that is, one year later than Shelley)--though of active and original mind and quite advanced views--did strongly disapprove of the poet’s ideas, as generally represented and reported, especially on the subject of Marriage. Knowing my father so well, and through him having obtained glimpses of the current public opinion of that period, I appreciate all the more the mental clarity and boldness of the growing boy (for such Shelley was at that time) who so decisively cast aside the conventions that surrounded him at Eton and in his highly respectable home, and walked forth single-minded and unafraid into the great world, and to “dare the unpastured dragon in his den.”

[2] See Shelley’s _Witch of Atlas_, stanza xviii (quoted below, p. 18). There are several other references to “Gold and Blood,” which show what importance he ascribed to the association; as for instance:

_Queen Mab_, section 4, line 195:

“when his doom is sealed in gold and blood”

_Triumph of Life_, line 287:

“and spread the plague of gold and blood abroad”

_Charles the First_, line 61:

“he looks elate, drunken with blood and gold”

_Hellas_, line 246:

“blood is the seed of gold.”

[3] Plato’s _Banquet_.

[4] _I.e._ To think.

[5] See for reference to this general prophecy, ch. ix of _Pagan and Christian Creeds_, by E. Carpenter. (George Allen & Unwin, 1921.)

[6] Stanza xlvii.

[7] “The charge of fickleness in friendship, so often brought against Shelley, is disproved by the simple fact that to the last day of his life he remained true to those who called him friend Leigh Hunt, Peacock, Hogg, Medwin, Williams, Trelawny” (_Percy Shelley, Poet and Pioneer_, by H.S. Salt, p. 62, footnote).

After the quantity of somewhat trashy stuff that has been poured out concerning Shelley, it is, indeed, a joy to come upon a book so keen and clear, and withal so well-based on the fundamental facts and principles of social life, as Mr. Salt’s _Shelley as Poet and Pioneer_ (George Allen & Unwin).

[8] See also in this connexion the writings of the great Goethe--his _Wilhelm Meister_, his references to Griechische Liebe in his Diaries, etc.

[9] For these and many other similar references see _Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk_ (George Allen & Unwin, 1919); also _The Intermediate Sex_, pp. 24, 25, 46, 47, 58, 59, etc.

[10] See _Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk_, p. 63.

[11] See _Primitive Folk_, by Elie Reclus (Contemporary Science Series), p. 72.

[12] See _Intermediate Types_, p. 24.

[13] See _Life of Shelley_, by Dowden, vol. i. p. 19.

[14] See _The Witch of Atlas_, stanza lxxvii.

[15] The Vaertings, in their book, _The Dominant Sex_, (George Allen & Unwin), question how far these and other secondary sexual characteristics are in reality fundamental to, and inherent in either sex. They suggest that in any society the dominant sex acquires certain traits, while the subordinate sex acquires others. But this view does not affect the present argument. Shelley lived in our modern male-dominant civilisation, and yet was born with, or else acquired, traits which, in that society, are characteristic of women, and not of men. He therefore approximated to the current feminine type.

[16] Sec Crichton Miller: _New Psychology and the Teacher_.

[17] I follow Dowden, in assigning this passage to a letter written in December 1812 to Hogg. Hogg prints it without date, as a fragment of a novel.

[18] See _Life of Michelangelo_, by J. A. Symonds.

[19] See _Shelley’s Prose Works_, ed. Buxton Forman.

[20] Compare this with his reminiscence of his Sion House friend.

[21] Shelley’s other delusions, which may have been variations on the original one, are as follows:

At York (1811). That Hogg had made overtures to Harriet? If this was a delusion, then the content of jealousy, as often happens, has replaced that of persecution, and the father has been replaced by the older friend.

At Keswick (1812). That he was attacked by a robber outside his lodgings.

At Tanyrallt (February 1813). The attempted assassination in his house, with threats of rape of his sister by the imaginary intruder.

In 1813 that he had contracted Elephantiasis.

At Pisa (1820). That he was attacked by a stranger in the Post Office. There is also recorded a nightmare of his, in which he dreamed that he was strangling his own wife, but this might be interpreted in many ways.

[22] Dr. Paul Bousfield (_Elements of Practical Psychoanalysis_), states: “In all the cases of paranoid hysteria which I have seen, repressed homosexuality seems to be the most striking feature; homosexuality is always very strongly developed in these subjects, although the patient may be totally unaware of it.”

Similarly Ferencszi, in his _Contributions to Psychoanalysis_, says: “The observation of several cases, presently to be related, seems to justify the surmise that in the pathogenesis of paranoia, homosexuality plays not a chance part, but the most important one; and that paranoia is perhaps nothing else at all than disguised homosexuality.”

Finally we may quote Freud (_Introductory Lectures_):

_Lecture 20_: “One particular mental disorder, paranoia ... invariably arises from the attempt to subdue unduly powerful homosexual tendencies.”

_Lecture 26_: “In the case of delusions of persecution, however, we observed things which led us to follow up a certain clue. In the first place we noticed that in the great majority of cases the persecuting person was of the same sex as the persecuted one; this was capable of a harmless explanation, it is true, but in certain cases, which were closely studied, it appeared that the person of the same sex who had been most beloved while the patient was normal became the persecutor after the disease broke out....

From these observations, which were continually corroborated, we drew the conclusion that persecutory paranoia is the means by which a person defends himself against a homosexual impulse which has become too powerful.”

[23] Shelley appears to have been easily hypnotised, since both Tom Medwin and Jane Williams succeeded in mesmerising him (see Dowden, vol. 2, ch. ix).

[24] Dr. R. M. Bucke, _Cosmic Consciousness_.

[25] Dowden’s _Life of Shelley_, vol. 2, ch. xii.