Meaning of the title

It means we have to analyse in what aspects shelley was influenced

by plato. Not only shelley but other romantics of the time were very
much influenced by plato’s idealism. Plato exerted both positive and
negative influence upon the advicates and antagonists of poetry.
Wordsworth ST Coleridge pb shelley and john keats invoked his
theories to uphold the dignity of art and literature. The influence of
plato’s ideas and philosophy is seen on the poems of keats.

Plato and his theory of idealism

plato was a poetic greek philosopher of the third century before the
birth of the Christ. He was one of the greatest philosopher of beauty
and the unmatched ethical idealist, but he is known as the prime and
unabashed enemy of poetry in both the history of ideas and
aesthetics. After plato, poetry is being defended against him and
other poetry haters. Sidney has aptly coined the term ‘misomousoi’
to denote poetry haters. Plato draws a perfect line between pseudo
poetry and poetry proper. He was mainly concerned with the
didactic side of art and literature. He believed that poetry should sub
serve individuals and social morality. plato was not against all types
of poetry. He was against the abuse of poetry. In the ‘ideal Republic’,
he welcomed those poets who composed Hymns to god and
panegyrics of famous men. Despite plato’s hatred for poets as
misleading imitators of worldly illusion, platonic ideas have
repeatedly been adopted in western literature.

Plato is known as father of idealism that means the world of sense

experience is only a shadow world. “Everything that we in the world
can perceive is a mere copy of a perfect original, which exists in a
world above us… it is this perfect archetype which really exists; the
earthly copy only seems to exist.” This is the celebrated theory of
ideas which forms the basis of palto’s philosophy. The supreme form
or idea in this whole system of perfect archetype is the idea of ​good,
which is associated in plato’s thinking with truth and beauty.
According to plato, in order to arrive at knowledge of the good, we
must consecrate ourselves to the idea of ​love, ​ Which is the ultimate
desire for immortality in beauty.

Plato’s view of imitation in relation to shelley

Plato, looking down upon the mimetic core of poetic creation,

belittles poetry proposes banishment on the poets from his ideal
Republic. He believes that poetry being an imitation of the world of
phenomena which itself is an imitation of the world of ideas, a world
of the highest order in his philosophy, presents the knowledge that is
illusive.
Shelley, on the other hand, defends poetry for its ability to acquaint
us with the real unchanging world.

Plato locates reality in the world of ideas or forms or essences or

archetypes rather than in the world of appearances that we perceive
through our senses. He thinks that his world of appearances is a
photocopy of the world of ideas and regards objects of this world as
transitory and subject to decay. The knowledge of this world for him
is illusive and relative. The poet, for Plato, imitates this transitory
world and thus his work is only a representation of what is itself an
inadequate and an ephemeral representation of the truly real,
absolute or eternal. Poetry, therefore, is an imitation of an imitation
that is twice removed from reality. Literature, for him, instead of
guiding us to the reality fills our minds with wrong ideas and inspires
in us the passion that ruins the exercise of reason. It gives us lies. So,
the poets should be banished from the ideal state.

Shelley assumes a Platonic position to argue against Plato. He assigns

a great role to imagination. Shelley breaks free from Platonic
dilemma by recognizing that the best poet, through his use of
imagination, comes directly into contact with the world of Platonic
ideas, and so with the reality, instead of simply imitating the
reflections of those ideas, as Plato himself claimed. Poets, for
Shelley, are both legislators and the prophets. For poets, not only
behold the present as it is and discourse those laws according to
which present things ought to be ordered, but they behold future in
the present, and their thoughts are germs of flower and the fruit of
the latest time. The poet can see what is eternal and the best: the
poet participates in the eternal and the infinite. Shelley also claims
that imagination is an instrument of moral good

platonic love during the romantic revival

During the romantic revival there was marked revival of interest in

the concept of platonic love and great interest in Platonism in
general.platonism is particularly noticeabale in shelleys
Epipsychidion. Plato’s conception of love coloured shelley’s view of
love. Atkin says, “ he is, in the truest sense, a light bringer, ever
guiding men’s steps to the spiritual side of art.

In the renaissance age, plato’s view of physical beauty as an outward

sign of spiritual perfection is prevalent in love poetry, while in the
age of romanticism his idealist philosophy was absorbed by shelley.
Plato conceived of supreme power i.e divine power, which moves
through all the objects of Nature and human life. Shelley’s religious
ideas were more in conformity with the greeks rather than
Christians. Like plato, he conceived of a supreme power,which is
transcendent, which moves through all the objects of nature and
human life.

Like Plato, Shelley believed love leads to the highest wisdom, the lover
proceeds by grades and stages until he achieves the supreme vision. In ​The
Revolt of Islam, he says,

In me communion with this purest being

Kindled intense zeal and made me wise

In knowledge, which in hers mine own mind seeing,

Left in the human world few mysteries,

In ​Sensitive plant, S​ helley celebrates platonic love; and shows love is

evident in all parts of nature, and individualizes itself in the individual
flowers:

………….the maid-like lily of the vale,

whole youth makes so fair and passion so pale,

Philosophy of the One Mind:

Like Plato, Shelley believed that the world possessed a soul. One mind, one power,
one all pervasive and informing spirit—that is the cardinal principle of Shelley’s
philosophy and faith. In Adonais he expresses this faith more passionately:

The one remains, the many change and pass

The one spirit’s plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there

All new successions to the forms they wear

Torturing the unwilling dress that checks its fight

To its own likeness as such may beat.

Like plato, shelley beleieved that the one spirit moves through the
universe, giving them form and shape according to its power, in
adonais, shelley represents this power:

“​The one remains many change and pass

Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadow fly

Life like a dome of many coloured glass

Stains the white radiance of eternity

Until death tramples it to fragments”

In the above lines, Shelley conceives of a divine spirit, which is

external and endless, gives shape and form to life. Shelley celebrates
this spirit in many different ways. Sometimes this spirit takes the
form of love and sometimes that of supreme beauty. In some poems
that spirit assumes the form of supreme wisdom and supreme
liberty on the whole, like Plato; Shelley describes it as the informing
and formative spirit which completes matter to its will. All objects in
this world are forced by this shaping spirit to develop to perfection.
Shelley takes this spirit as the spirit of love. In the poem Adonais,
Shelley considers it as the spirit of love, which moves through all

the objects of Nature.

“------- That sustaining love

Which through the web of being blindly wove

By man and beast and earth and air and sea,

Burns bright or deem, as each are mirrors

of the fire for which all thirst”.

The Romantic poets believed that the artist was a supremely
individual creator, whose creative spirit is more important than strict
adherence to rules and regulations. They revolted against the
classical movement. Motivated by Plato, both Shelley and Keats
were and ardent lovers of the Greeks. Shelley dealt with several
platonic ideas in his poetry. Shelley is platonic in his conception of
beauty. There are strains of platonic philosophy in the poems like
Hellas, Sensitive Plant Adonais and Epipsychidion​. In the Sensitive
plant the poet remarks wisely like a philosopher and believe in the
eternity of love, beauty and delight as exhibited in the following
lines.

“For love and beauty and delight,

there is no death nor change”.

Didactic purpose of poetry

Plato mostly railed upon the inspirations. We see that wordsworth

shelley keats treated poets and poetry in a similar way to some
extent. They believed that poets are visionary, different from
ordinary mortals. Like plato, they believed that poetry might serve
community by helping to educate it. Shelley employed poetry for
effecting reforms in the society. He wrote Hellas , the drama, in the
honour of Greece. In Epipsychidion he sings of his love for a beautiful
young Italian girl. Adonais is an elegy dedicated to john keats.

Compton rickett remarks

Wordsworth found brooding and tranquilizing thought at the heart

of nature; shelley an ardent and persuasive love”. Shelley finds in
nature the true manifestation of his own nature and derives from
nature what may be called his philosophy of life.